Very Good Creation

propositional posts: The Solution to Suffering

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, in "Couldn't God Have Used Evolution?" wrote:

"If we compromise on the history of Genesis by adding millions of years, we must believe that death and disease were part of the world before Adam sinned... How could a God of love allow such horrible processes as disease, suffering, and death for millions of years as part of His 'very good' creation?"

He could do so because those processes are not horrible; they are good. Life, death, survival and reproduction create thriving, vibrant, dynamic, beautiful, good ecosystems.

As I've hopefully conveyed previously on this site, "good" has no meaning except in terms of some value goal. Creation was good in that it was built for the satisfaction and freedom of mankind. It's a wonderful and beautiful Petri dish in which to squirm.

But the death and suffering of creatures must bother Ham. To Ham, a world in which bacteria, mice, ants, and algae perish is "bad." But that's Ham's opinion, not God's.

God is concerned about the welfare and free action of mankind, both in general and in the particulars, from the ancient past into the distant future. I don't think God is bothered when a muskrat or dandelion or bacterium inconsequentially ceases to function.

Bonus link: "Death Before the Fall of Man" by Greg Neyman

The Mortality of Man

In October of 2008, John MacArthur's "Grace to You" radio program was entitled "The Battle for the Beginning: Creation Day 6, Part 3 / The Implications of Evolution."

In it, he said the following:

"Man is distinct from every other created creature. In Ecclesiastes, chapter 3 and verse 11, a wonderful statement is made: 'He has made' (speaking of God) 'everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart.' What a great statement. 'He has set eternity in their heart.' That is true only of man. Down in verse 21 of Ecclesiastes 3, 'Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward, and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?' The writer is saying man, his spirit, goes up. Any other created being upon death, his spirit goes down, goes into the ground as it were out of existence because God has set eternity in our hearts. You can take away our body and we will live forever."

MacArthur took Scripture out of context in order to use it as a "proof text." Look at what Ecclesiastes 3 actually says, starting at verse 19:

"For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of the beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?"

Ecclesiastes 3 says exactly the opposite of what MacArthur claimed it said. MacArthur took a rhetorical question (whose implied answer is "nobody") and treated it as a statement of fact, distorting and twisting Scripture's clear intent. The notion that man is naturally or inherently immortal is extrabiblical teaching.

Reread Ecclesiastes 3:19-21 and ponder its words. MacArthur's false claim about what it said should disturb everyone.

If man were naturally or inherently immortal, we would not need the resurrection of the dead. We would persist in some form independent of God's Gracious intervention. On the contrary; we rely on God for eternal life. Only God, through his Grace, can save us and preserve us eternally.

Owning Your Desires

propositional posts: The Deterministic Dryer Functional Free Will

Causal self-ownership ("CSO") is the degree to which portions of your self can be considered "yours" as opposed to "someone or something else's."

It might be suggested that having a unique identity constitutes CSO. I think, however, that while dissimilarity can be an indicator of CSO, it's actually a mere (possible) symptom of CSO rather than a cause of CSO.

CSO is acquired by recursive processes that incorporate a variety of many unique (as it so happens) experiences and existent properties, and moreso as time goes on. Uniqueness is merely a commonplace product of those processes over time.

And two people can share a piece of their identity without sharing the degree of CSO with regard to that piece.

Take two dryers. Both have been running for a while. I then turn them off. The dryer on the left has a jacket with certain properties -- wetness, wrinkles, position, folds, etc. The dryer on the right does not have this jacket. Using the starship Enterprise's replicators and transporters, I exactly duplicate the jacket and put it in the dryer on the right.

The two dryers now share a piece of their identity. But the dryer on the right does not own its new jacket very much. In fact, the forced reception of the jacket is grossly externally manipulative.

I then turn the dryers on again. As the new jacket tumbles about among the other contents of the right dyer, it becomes less and less a product of external manipulation and more and more a product of internal manipulation. As each second passes, the jacket's state owes more and more of its properties to causes within the drier than without (but never becomes completely historically divorced from its external causes, of course).

Metaphysical libertarians think living things earn causal self-ownership by actually transcending the physical world. On the contrary, living things earn causal self-ownership by abstractly "transcending" the external world. The moment the first protobiont's outer membrane was formed, securing and shielding its innards, the "transcendence" began.

The Deterministic Dryer

propositional posts: Chaos Functional Free Will

Consider the clothes dryer. It has certain settings, certain speeds, and certain procedures by which those settings and speeds are executed. Not only that, but different dryers have different kinds of chambers. Some are larger in diameter than others. Some have different numbers, and different shapes, of "fins" that help spin the clothes around.

In the apartment complex at which I currently live, a dryer session costs 75 cents. But the dryer isn't very effective. In fact, it takes a minimum of two sessions to get my clothes dry, and it's a coinflip whether my denim's still slightly wet.

But as you might be thinking now, I suppose the degree to which my clothes become dry is a function also of the clothes themselves. If I stuff the thing extremely full, there's less of a chance that I'll thoroughly dry my clothes. On the other hand, if I only throw my jeans in there, my shirts and such are going to stay completely wet.

Let's stop the dryer at an arbitrary point in its cycle and take a look at what we have.

There's the dryer, with all the nuance in its "hardware"; there's the fins, the speeds, the settings, the procedures, the diamater, etc.

And then there's the clothes. The "software." There might be a pair of jeans in there, several shirts... there might even be a few towels, which take up a ton of space.

Combine the two, and you have the "soul" of the dryer (as I'm defining "soul").

Now, this isn't to say that the dryer is a transcendent entity. Its "software" (the clothing) was a relatively recent addition, which came from external sources. And though its "hardware" is far less proximal in causal distance, the dryer still owes itself to a bunch of subcomponents that began relatively far apart from one another. Thinking in terms of causal distance, it would be fair to say that the dryer's subcomponents are "external" to the dryer; foreign entities came together to form the object of our discussion.

If we are biological Determinists, we can think of ourselves like the clothes dryer.

• Our "hardware" came from a distant externality; we were formed from fairly foreign parts.
  

• Our "software" is more proximal; our current constitution is the product of both our "hardware" and the stuff we've recently taken in. I suppose there's an important functional distinction in that, unlike the dryer, we can reject new "clothing" we find distasteful.

The point of this analogy is to draw attention to the emergent individuality of the dryer-self, and that of ourselves. Our selves receive causal independence through chaos -- emergent complexity in the causal system.

Think of how chaotic is the end state of the dryer-self, hardware and software.

Each nuance (to the molecular level) of the hardware (its material, its form, its procedure, and countless other relevant properties) combines with each nuance (to the molecular level) of each piece of clothing (its fabric, its form, its wetness, and countless other relevant properties), which combines again with other pieces of clothing, transferring wetness, force, and even material.

And what individuality in the end state! The dryer's hardware has X degree of wetness and Y degree of heat, possibly warping and modifying it for the next run. And look at the state of the clothing! Though it looks like a jumbled mess, it was the deterministic product of innumerable causes. It's a unique composition, with wrinkles and fibers and wet spots and positional properties, contributing to a total "dryer entity," hardware and software, that is probably unique in history and unique eternally into the future.

Determinism does not destroy individuality. Nor does it destroy the unique value of the self merely by acknowledging the self as a caused thing. Nor does it imply that our selves are or ought to be human-determinable.

Metaphysical libertarians find fault with determinism because it denies self-transcendence. Determinists, however, are content with the functional grasp toward self-transcendence afforded by complexity and time.

Addressing an Incompatibilist

Professor Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago has written a new book entitled Why Evolution is True. He also wrote an associated article for The New Republic. The article was called "Seeing and Believing" with the subtitle, "The never-ending attempt to reconcile science and religion, and why it is doomed to fail."

In his article, Coyne attacks science-Bible compatibilists Karl Giberson and Ken Miller and science-Bible compatibilism in general. This is the second incompatibilist article I've read this week, both from atheistic angles.

I will address two of the article's main arguments.

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The first is a common one among the atheistic incompatibilists: That evolution is not a teleological process (it works without a "purposeful" aim), and thus all teleological claims about our universe are false.

The rebuttal is easy, of course: local nonteleology does not imply global nonteleology. The interaction between falling domino A and subsequent, upright domino B is mechanically nonteleological, but that doesn't prove that I did not set up an elaborate chain of dominoes around the room.

Miller and Giberson don't do it "the easy way," apparently. According to Coyne, they instead bring up evolutionary convergence and claim that humanoids were inevitable because of the probability of a humanoid "niche" at some point or another. I guess that's one way of going about it, but it's pretty inelegant.

Then comes Professor Coyne, proclaiming that their attempt is "the only way":

"Miller and Giberson are forced to this view for a simple reason. If we cannot prove that humanoid evolution was inevitable, then the reconciliation of evolution and Christianity collapses."

"Forced to this view"? False dilemma, Professor Coyne. Here's where it's awesome being a Determinist. Contingency and necessity are equivalent under retrospective Determinism; the inevitability of human evolution is proven merely by its having happened.

But it's a double-edged sword. Under Determinism, this inevitability doesn't point at anything teleological. Oh well -- at least we stopped the reconciliation of evolution and Christianity from COLLAPSING.

-

The second argument is that harmonizing science and religion requires doublethought.

"This brings us to the second reason why [Stephen Jay] Gould's [non-overlapping magisteria] explanation does not cohere. It is all well and good to say, as he did, that religion makes no claims about nature, but in practice it is not true... Here are some. Jesus was born of a virgin and, after crucifixion, came back to life."

Oh really! I was not aware that the virgin birth and resurrection were claims about nature!

And to call out Crowe's deceptive wording is the solution. There is no logical conflict between these statements:

1. There was once a baby born of a virgin.
2. Natural, commonplace births necessitate copulation.

There is likewise no logical conflict between these statements:

1. Once, a man smoothed a stone in mere days using a machine.
2. Natural, commonplace stone-smoothing requires years of environmental impact.

Nor between these statements:

1. There was once a purple chicken egg with yellow dots.*
2. Natural, commonplace chicken eggs are not purple with yellow dots.

* It was painted for Easter.

Crowe's secret, unstated issue is not about the mechanics of virgin births, but his disbelief in the possibility of miraculous intervention.

It is, after all, possible to produce a virgin birth using technology available right now. Crowe deceptively phrased his atheism as a claim of mechanical discrepancy, when there clearly is none. Miller and Giberson aren't doublethinkers; they just believe in an efficacious God.

Order from Chaos Simulated

propositional posts: Link: Cellular Automata Chaos

Some literal Creationists claim that there's a dichotomy between believing that everything, on the level of complexity we observe, came about miraculously, and believing "it all came about by chance."

From a summary of "Truth That Transforms: A Rational Defense," a Creationist video from the late D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries: "Chaos could not have given birth to the tremendous order in our world."

"Order cannot come from chaos." This is not an uncommon thing to hear from Creationist organizations. But what are they referring to, specifically, when they talk about observing "order"? Are they referring to the productions of man (pottery, music, architecture), as if they must have been divinely granted rather than naturally innovated? Or are they referring to the current living genera, as if they could not have evolved? Or are they referring to living things entirely, as if they could not have emerged from protocellular constructs? Or are they referring to molecular constructs themselves, as if their tendency to order themselves in certain configurations could not have natural impetuses?

They are, in fact, referring to all four, which makes it tough if you're a Christian who believes in the natural innovation of music and art but not evolution or abiogensis, or a Christian who believes in the evolution of existent genera but not in unassisted abiogenesis, or a Christian who believes in both evolution and abiogenesis but that God wrote the fundamental "rules." How would such Christians respond to the charge that you must decide between "created by God" and "created by chance" across the board? I bet they'd have a problem picking either one!

The following is a detailed analogy to explain to across-the-board Creationists how apparent order can emerge from chaos.

-

Larry programmed a deterministic particle simulation. Here's a screen shot:

There are many simulated particles in this box. Each particle moves only left or right, and bounces back on its path whenever it hits a wall. The contents of the box are chaotic (chaos is the apparent randomness in deterministic systems once they become complex enough). It would be pretty hard to keep a mental handle on the entire contents of the box at every moment, especially if the particles were moving extremely quickly.

Every so often, a particle reproduces. It spawns another particle directly above or below itself. Things are getting more and more chaotic!

Now, let's say there's a hole in the wall. That wall becomes a selective filter. It allows out only particles that are near the same latitude:

The particles that escape create a line of particles. Speed the particles up and zoom out a bit, and the particles apparently constitute a straight line! Voila, order from chaos!

"But we only got order because we punched a hole in the wall, creating a selector! Isn't that cheating?"

Well, the wall is actually made of particles as well, and something in their behavior causes them to open up holes in their structure from time to time.

"Okay, you've demonstrated order from chaos on this layer of observation. But that only works because the particles themselves, the bouncing particles and the wall particles, were hardcoded by Larry to do what they do."

Actually, these particles weren't hardcoded by Larry to do what they do! Here's what one of the bouncing particles looks like when we zoom in:

Let's call it a "tier 1 particle." It's a complex maze of reactions between even tinier particles... "tier 2 particles," one might say. A tier 1 particle is a machine made from a network of tier 2 particles chaotically interacting and selecting themselves until they arrive at some kind of orderly equilibrium.

Let's zoom in and take a look at these tier 2 particles:

"Okay, so tier 1 particles weren't hardcoded. They're the result of chaotic undercurrents. But certainly the tier 2 particles, which produce those chaotic undercurrents, are hardcoded by Larry."

Nope! A tier 2 particle is made of tier 3 particles, chaotically interacting and selecting themselves until they arrive at some kind of orderly equilibrium.

And does it stop there? Did Larry hardcode the tier 3 particle? Nope. The tier 3 particle is also the orderly result of chaotic processes.

"My mind is being blown asunder! How far does it go?"

After this point, the system won't let us zoom in any further. We can only guess that, at some mysterious point, maybe at tier 4 or 5 or 1001, Larry hardcoded some sort of "rules."

We haven't yet discovered where that point is, of course; we haven't yet found the foundational gap that requires Larry's attention to fill.

Now, remember the orange room mentioned at the beginning? That room, and the line of particles it shoots out, is a subcomponent of a relatively massive tier 0 particle.

Now what if someone came along and told you that Larry hardcoded the tier 0 particle? And that any other explanation for the tier 0 particle is impossible, because "order doesn't come from chaos?"

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The fact eluding the Creationists who make this argument is that order does come from chaos, because the only difference between order and chaos is the perceptual confusion of the observer. If the observer is bewildered, it's called "chaos," and if the observer makes sense of it, it's called "order." Both order and chaos are "orderly" in the sense that they both are governed by a single deterministic system.

The more proper claim is that "order/chaos cannot emerge from completely acausal systems," which does not apply to things like evolution by natural selection, the formation of protocellular machines, etc., because those systems are causal.

God Under Identity

related post: The Solution to Suffering

Fundamental to logic is identity.

X = X

"X is what X is."

In a figurative sense, identity "governs" every proposition or property that is discretely true or false. If it's certainly given that Dave is alive, we can say with certainty that he is not dead.

When we say this, are we implying that Dave is weak in some way? Does Dave fail a test of strength when parametric statements about him are "governed" by identity? Do we say that Dave, in his inability to be both alive and not-alive at the same time, lacks a skill that another could possibly have? Of course not.

But that's what happens when misguided theists attempt to explain away theodicean problems by claiming that God is "above logic," or "above identity." If the world's observed attributes and God's proposed attributes logically contradict, their solution is to say that God doesn't play by the rules, as if they were invented by some ancient human arbitrator -- as if they were invented, period.

If a man responds by saying that God is subject to identity, he is accused of saying God is less than all-powerful. But overcoming identity is not a matter of power. In fact, "overcoming identity" is incoherent, as is any discussion of a god "above" identity.

And that's the point I usually reach when I argue with theists who wish "identity" to be within the domain of actual "stuff," as if it was something real and malleable. The conclusion we reach is that we ought to discontinue our conversation, because everything we say about a god "above" identity is incoherent.

Everything.

That's one reason why Christians should agree that God is subject to identity (remember that overcoming identity is not a matter of power, so this subjection is not at all an infringement upon all-power). Fundamental to Christianity is the belief that God has revealed things about himself to us -- things that are discretely true. We are able to talk about God's parameters, like his ultimate benevolence and his perfect wisdom. In revealing discretely true parameters, God proved to us that he is "under" identity. We can coherently say "He is ultimately benevolent, thus he is not ultimately malevolent," if and only if he is "under" identity!

The second reason is because, among others, God has given us a name to know him by:

YHWH

"I am who I am."

Criticism of the FSM Fad

While I appreciate the thought, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a sloppy satire that doesn't make a cogent point and has dubious consequential value. Its use by opponents of intelligent design in science classrooms should be abandoned.

Wikipedia, January 15, 2009. "The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is a deity created as a satirical protest to the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. The FSM is the deity of the parody religion The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson. Since the intelligent design movement used ambiguous references to an unspecified 'Intelligent Designer' to avoid court rulings prohibiting the teaching of creationism as a science, this presumably left open the possibility that any imaginable thing could fill that role."

Indeed that's exactly what ID does, and that's why ID advocates feel as if ID's inclusion in science classrooms is legitimate -- it's ambiguous, and the designer's role can be filled with any sort of entity, from God to Chronus to Ymir to the FSM. In other words, if what the Wikipedia article tells us was truly the intent of the satire, it doesn't actually "work." It fails as a colloquial sort of reductio ad absurdum because ID never states who the designer is. That's the whole point of the ID movement.

So is Henderson guilty of this blunder? Was this the intent of his satire as originally written in his letter to the Kansas State Board of Education? Let's find out. He wrote:

"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design."

So far so good. But then he wrote (and the rest of the letter continues along this line of thinking):

"It is for this reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory [FSM] be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories [ID and biological evolution]."

As one can immediately see when reading his letter, Henderson's poorly thought-out satire conveys two incompatible theses:

• That intelligent design includes the possibility of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
• That the FSM proposition is an alternative to intelligent design that must be taught in addition to it.

If he had abandoned the latter thesis in favor of the former, the ID advocate would properly respond, "Yes, indeed it does. That's the point: any designer is possible, and that's how we're able to skirt around the issue of church/state separation." And if he had abandoned the former thesis in favor of the latter, the ID advocate would properly respond, "No it's not. What you describe falls under the umbrella of intelligent design."

How could the FSM "work" as a satire? It would "work" if and only if exclusive religious doctrines were formally associated with intelligent design, and if the FSM was being excluded by those doctrines. This is the only way he could claim, as he did at the end of his letter, that FSM should be allotted a different time slot than ID. It, of course, fails to do this.

But the casual reader expects the satire to "work," and infers from the letter that ID does more than it actually does (that it teaches literal Creationism, for instance). In this way, the Flying Spaghetti Monster satire attacks a strawman in its sloppiness; its inferred meaning attacks those who formally approve of teaching about a named intelligent designer in science classrooms, which the ID movement is careful not to do.

Do the ends justify the means?
After being convinced of the logical non-cogency of the FSM satire, the science advocate might argue that although it's technically flawed, the FSM is an absurdly viral meme* -- notice the adolescent cheers when a speaker gleefully cites it -- that could at least serve to politically and socially embolden those against ID in science classrooms.

* (I mean, the FSM doctrines talk about pirates, and pirates sure seem funny right now. Maybe there's something about Chuck Norris in there as well.)

One problem with this, however, is that it likewise emboldens the ID advocates, who recognize that the FSM satire fails to penetrate their armor and that FSM acolytes alone are pushing for a specifically-named designer in science classrooms. How is the abortion discussion served if pro-lifers claim that the pro-choicers are genocidal? And how is it served if pro-choicers claim that pro-lifers are against women's rights in general? Attacking strawmen does not quell either side; it inflames.

Is there an imperative excuse?
Others might argue that although the FSM satire is imperfect, and although it may do as much harm as good in the end (a final result of which we are uncertain, which should temper our activity), that they have the "right" to be sloppy and dishonest because intelligent design is likewise dishonest. After all, the intelligent design movement is an attempt to peddle religious ideas where they don't belong. It's a retreat from directly peddling Creationism and of the smallest possible extent, at exactly the minimum length needed to avoid legal trouble.

To this I would respond that imperatives are never to be used as excuses in spite of consequences. That's destructively dogmatic thinking, and science advocates should hold themselves to higher standards.

And that last clause is an excellent conclusion.

God's Goalpost

propositional posts: The Solution to Suffering God's Goodness Defined and Predestination Solved

If you want to make a field goal, one of the most important things to consider is the goalpost. Where is it? What does it look like? How far away is it? Where can the ball go, and where can't it go, for it to count?

Only after considering the nature of the goalpost can the most probably-successful play tactics be determined -- actually, you can consider the act of gathering knowledge as a tactic in itself, to precede all subsequent tactical decisions.

Previously in this blog, I've suggested that both the freedom and satisfaction of mankind constitute the moral goalpost by which God acts. God is said to be benevolent, but goodness is a moral quality, which means it makes a reference -- it requires an identifiable goalpost.

Some suggest that freedom is not a part of the goalpost, but is most properly considered a tactic. People tend to be more satisfied when they are less oppressed. But I think this tendency is one of contingency, not necessity. I can conceive of some device that proximally controlled everyone's actions and thoughts directly, eliminating all "automatic freedom," while simultaneously ensuring that everyone felt satisifed. Such a circumstance seems axiomatically bad, which is why I prefer freedom at the goalpost.

But it just seems that way -- badness, again, is a moral quality, which makes a reference, and if such a circumstance had human satisfaction as its sole goalpost, it would actually be very good. It seems wrong to us, emotionally, but that might just be the byproduct of recognizing, over and over again in our lives, the pattern association between oppression and dissatisfaction. Thus satisfaction as the sole goalpost is not inherently problematic.

What about true knowledge? Could true knowledge be considered part of the goalpost? Many philosophers say no, acquiring and applying true knowledge is merely a tactic. It is, however, a tactic vital to every single decisionmaking process, and the more and more it is relied upon, the greater a mental association develops between true knowledge and successful scoring, false knowledge and unsuccessful scoring. Some may begin to see the acquisition of true knowledge as part of the goalpost.

If we agree that satisfaction is our primary goalpost, the proper locations of freedom and knowledge sound like very similar issues. If freedom merely helps rather than being essential for satisfaction, we could conceive of a world in which there is perfect satisfaction and yet no freedom. But this world seems bad. Likewise, if knowledge merely helps rather than being essential for satisfaction, we could conceive of a world in which there is perfect satisfaction and yet no true knowledge. This world also seems bad. And yet, by defining badness as "dissatisfaction," it's guaranteed that both such worlds are fine by definition.

What happens when you decide that freedom or knowledge should be part of the goalpost? Weird things happen. The goalpost goes into a hybrid, Venn diagram form with an infinite range of degrees of overlap, each yielding different point values. The new hybrid goalpost is also mechanical, with bars and circles expanding and shrinking, swaying and rotating according to what it senses on the field in front of it.

Making the best tactical decisions is now a matter of getting the best score for the circumstance, rather than getting the highest score that the goalpost claims to yield. All you can ask for with this new goalpost is maximization rather than perfection.

The Old Creation View

propositional posts: Day-Age Creationism Link: The Contemporary Relevance of Augustine's View of Creation

The interpretation of Creation among Christians has been an open topic from the earliest centuries of Christianity.

• Theophilus argued for a literal Creation account in 181 AD, and Basil the Great agreed in 270 AD.

• Justin Martyr associated the "thousand year day" with the Creation Day in 155 AD, and Irenaeus echoed that notion in 189 AD (and Cyprian in 250 AD, and Lactantius in 307 AD).

• Clement of Alexandria expressed his view that the use of time is not consistent in the Creation account in 208 AD.

• Origen proposed a metaphorical Creation account, "the history having taken place in appearance and not literally." He and his colleagues "found fault" with those who took the six days literally. Said he, "What man of sense will argue with the statement that the first, second and third days, which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars? What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in Paradise like a husbandman?... I believe every man must hold these things for images under which a hidden sense is concealed." This was 225 to 235 AD.

• Augustine of Hippo, recognized across all boundaries of Christianity as one of the most important and inspiring Church fathers, wrote "The Literal Intepretation of Genesis" in 408 AD and "The City of God" in 419 AD. In both, he argued for a metaphorical Creation account. He claimed that the days we measure by sunrise and sunset recall Creation days without at all being regarded as similar to them. He explained that the Creation days are so profoundly mysterious that they're difficult or even impossible to conceive of.
  
  Augustine is often quoted by science-Bible compatibilists as saying, "It is disgraceful, ruinous, and greatly to be avoided, that [a non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these [scientific] matters (as if [the Christian's] views were in accord with Christian writings) and might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are."

Among the early Church fathers, a partially-figurative Creationism was prevalent. A Creationism that treated those first chapters of Genesis with various degrees of symbolism is the "old view" as far as Christianity goes.

The Protestant Reformation prompted a popular return to the literal, 6-day view of Creation among the affected Christians. John Calvin was a hardcore literal Creationist, as was Martin Luther: "The Days of Creation were ordinary days in length. We must understand that these days were actual days, contrary to the opinion of the Holy Fathers."

Generalized Functionalism Defined

propositional posts: A Tale of Two Drones

Functionalism usually refers to a philosophy of the mind in which mental activity is defined by its functional role rather than by its physical composition.

But the principles of functionalism can apply to much more than simply mental states. In fact, thinking about stuff like freedom and ethics in functional terms can be extremely useful.

Let's call that idea "generalized functionalism." You might have noticed that some of my entries are tagged with "functionalism" or "functional abstraction." The former are entries where I overtly challenge "nonfunctionalistic" ways of thinking. The latter are entries where I find meaning in abstracted patterns.

In fact, generalized functionalism is all about meaning, and I believe thinking in terms of functions is vital to proper ethical decisionmaking.

The entry "A Tale of Two Drones" was probably the best illustration I can provide to explain generalized functionalism. Near the end I touch on the underlying principle of generalized functionalism (it's tautological, which is how you know it's certainly true):

"Everything that matters to X matters to X. Nothing matters to X except that which matters to X."

By expressing the activity of one thing upon another as a function, it's easier to see what doesn't actually matter to the recipient of activity and ought to be weeded out. Doing such weeding saves time and effort and prevents confusion!

Day-Age Creationism

Some day-age Christians take issue with certain liberties of translation they perceive in English Bibles. Some claim that "day" in the Creation account should have been translated as "age."

The original passages state that the world was created in 6 "yom"s, which most often means "day," but can occasionally refer to an indeterminate period of time (like an age, or eon). But there are two problems with simply retranslating "yom" as "age": First, the ages are out of chronological order according to our scientific observations. Second, the Bible refers to evenings/mornings as delineations between the "yom"s.

I believe the better interpretation here is to translate "yom" as "day" but in the context of an overall apocalyptic allegory. The order of the Creation days are numerologically significant, because they lay foundations that are completed three days later (note where else we see "3-day fulfillment"...):

• Foundation of light, then luminaries 3 days later.


• Foundation of sky and water, then birds and fish 3 days later.


• Foundation of dry land and plants, then land animals (including humans) 3 days later.

Rather than a literal description of events, it more reasonably appears to be an abstract and beautifully poetic description of how God creates, conveyed in a way that perhaps resonated better with the people of the primitive fertile crescent than with the modernist reader.

Early Church fathers like Justin Martyr, Cyprian of Carthage, Lactantius and Irenaeus were fans of the "Creation day = 1000 years" theory, whereas those like Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo preferred to think of the Creation account as highly symbolic and mystical. I side with the latter group, so I don't have a problem with "yom" as "day." And neither do I feel it's a bad translation, because "yom" as "day" makes the most sense in the context of the story and its symbolism.

A better example of bad English translation would be the flood account. In most places where "erets" is used, it's translated as "the land" and refers to the covenantal land of God's people. But in the flood account of many English Bibles, it's translated as "the earth." You can imagine the difference in interpretation between "the whole land" and "the whole earth." Consider 2 Samuel 24:8: "So when they had gone about through the whole land [erets], they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days." Imagine if that verse was translated as "the whole earth!"

The word that refers to the whole planet is "tebel." The flood account doesn't use "tebel."

It's a similar story with the word "har," often translated as mountain. The problem is that "har" also means "hill." About a third of the time in the English Old Testament, it's translated as "hill." Where Noah probably lived, the nearest actual mountains were beyond the horizon. 23 feet above the hills is a perfect amount of water to flood the fertile crescent and wipe everyone out. This theory receives further support by looking at the Tower of Babel account; the special materials used indicate it was built to withstand another flood, which makes no sense if the flood was thousands of feet high.

The Argument from Improbability

What are the chances that life could have emerged from natural processes that aren't living? Some argue that the chances of such a thing happening are so low that such a thing is practically impossible, like the chances of a tornado through a junkyard forming a fully-functional aircraft. The Creator, then, must have miraculously built the first living thing ("intelligent design"), rather than setting up conditions by which it formed naturally, emerging from existent materials and processes ("intelligent foundation").

I disagree!

Let's say there's a daily lottery game called Powersphere. In Powersphere, six slots are assigned random numbers from 1 to 50. My pre-bought ticket contains a six-number sequence of my choosing. The more slots I match, the more I win. If I match all six slots, I win the jackpot!

If I was given one Powersphere entry per day, it would take me about half a million years to win the jackpot. The odds are astronomical!

But what if, every time I matched a slot, that slot was "locked in," so that future drawings would count that slot as "matched" regardless of what I picked for it? The result might surprise you: It would probably take me less than a year to win the whole jackpot.

We see that this quality of "incremental, persistent development" makes the difference between half a million years and one year. As long as the tiny elements of the jackpot persist, eventually hitting the jackpot is almost certain to happen.

Michael Behe, intelligent design proponent and author of Darwin's Black Box, responded to this with the notion of "irreducible complexity." He argued that at some primitive level of living configuration, removing anything would ruin that configuration's faculty of persistence.

(Let's, for now, ignore the fact that we're finding more and more that the organic machines that were once thought to be irreducibly complex actually had a role in more primitive, persistent machines, and/or that parts chopped off didn't irrevocably injure these machines.)

He's arguing, in essence, that when playing Powersphere, you shouldn't be allowed to lock in any slots until you match, say, three at once -- that Powersphere doesn't start locking in until a certain degree of "sufficient complexity." Let's grant him that. In that case, it'll take me about 350 years to win the jackpot. That might seem like a long time, but that's far less than half a million -- If I've been playing Powersphere since the date of the creation of the earth as supposed by scientific common consent, that means I've won the jackpot about 13 million times already.

It's hard to conceptualize geologic time. Suffice it to say that it gives us astronomically-many chances at spinning the wheel of fortune, which counteracts the odds thrown our way, especially when those odds are tempered by "locking in."

Beware of "probability" arguments for intelligent design. They are deceptive, intentionally ignoring the power of incremental, persistent development.

Bonus fascinating link: protobionts

New Covenant Consequentialism

propositional posts: Moral Absolutisms

Under the New Covenant, we make decisions in consideration of their consequence, rather than simply in consideration of their conformity to the Law. Sometimes the Law is in harmony with the best consequential decision, but as Jesus often explained, imperative legalism can undergo maladaptation over time, and should be reconsidered in light of end goals.

Similarly, we may find, from time to time, that a decision we make, while "justified by the Law" or "legally permissable," is not consequentially justifiable. Again and again under the New Covenant, we're taught that though something may be "right," it may not be right, due to consequential byproducts that we're able to predict.

The Gospel According to Matthew, Chapter 17 When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the two-draghma tax came to Peter and said, "Does your teacher not pay the two-drachma tax?" He said, "Yes." And when he came into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of earth collect customs or poll-tax, from their sons or from strangers?" When Peter said, "From strangers," Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are exempt. However, so that we do not offend them, go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for you and me."

Though Jesus knew that, legally, he shouldn't have to pay the tax, he did so anyway because doing otherwise would be counterproductive. Putting up a big fuss would have been principled, perhaps, but it wouldn't have been pragmatic.

Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, Chapter 8 (With regard to whether it's permissable to eat pagan "sacrificial" meat...) We are niether the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat. But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone sees you, having knowledge [of the invalidity of idols], dining in an idol's temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things [as if they were] sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And so, by sinning against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.

Paul knew that since idols aren't real, it's not legally wrong to eat food from apparent idol sacrifices. But he also knew that not everyone understood that. If he wanted to be selfishly principled, he could have said it's the fault of the ignorant for their misunderstanding. Or, he could have said that the solution to the problem was to educate the ill-informed.

Instead, however, he made the pragmatic choice: he suggested avoiding such food.

Paul made a similar argument in the next chapter, when he explained his reason for not accepting payment for missionary work. He explained that he would be perfectly justified, based on both the Law and on simple reason, to accept payment, but he rejected payment simply because he didn't want anyone getting the wrong idea about what he was doing. Does this imply that no Church official should be paid? As Paul would say: "By no means!" This was a particular concern of Paul's in the situation he was in.

This New Covenant consequentialism, pushing aside the Old Covenant paradigm of thorough and imperative mandates, must be acknowledged by Christians. It's especially relevant to political issues. If a practical position does net harm, it's junk, even if it's "principled."

Principles are valuable only insofar as they are productive. Rules must follow results.

The Ontological Argument for God

similar posts: Pascal's Wager

The Ontological Argument for God is one among several attempts at proving that God exists without a strong contingency on observation. I think it's terrible! Although there are many good ways to refute it, I think the important thing is coming up with a refutation that is easily conveyed and easily comprehensible.

The Christian philosopher St. Anselm of Canterbury, in the 11th century, phrased the argument in a way similar to this:

• (1) God is, by definition, a being greater than anything that can be imagined.


• (2) Having existence is greater than not.


• (3) Therefore, God must exist in reality: if He did not, He would not be a being greater than anything that can be imagined.

The trick is in (1). There's an occasional functional distinction between a definition and a premise. (1) cites a definition but then uses it as a premise. By "occasional," I mean that, often times, the two are functionally the same. In this case, though, they are different, but conflated to subtly beg the question. A true premise would read as follows:

• (1) God is sometimes regarded as a being greater than anything that can be imagined.

Continuing on, we would get:

• (2) Having existence is greater than not.
  
• (3) Therefore, God is sometimes regarded as existing in reality.

Look what happens when we fix (1)! We find out that the Ontological Argument was trivial the whole time. Of course God is regarded as existent! He's also regarded as not existent! Whoop-dee-doo.

I believe that's what mainly went wrong with the Ontological Argument. Other problems, like improperly referring to "existence" as a property transferrable across fundamentally distinct things like concepts and beings (this is the problem at the time addressed by the monk Guanilo, and later by St. Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant) , might just be byproducts.

But what's the easiest, quickest way to refute it? Though not thorough, this is pretty good:

"An atheist would say, 'False premise. God is not a being geater than anything that can be imagined. God, a fabrication, is neither a being nor greatest.'"

Don't be too hard on St. Anselm, though. He founded the Scholastic movement, which started a chain reaction of Western philosophical development that brought us to where we are today.

Ignorance and Responsibility

propositional posts: Imperical Responsibility Definition of Imperics

In the last post, I shared my attempt at systemizing responsibility. In the system, everything depends on this idea of a "moral decision set" or MDS. An MDS is a list of all possible courses of action paired with their "moral intensity" values. Moral intensity comes from the expected utility change (relative to the other courses of action) multiplied by the probability of that change occuring as expected (probability is 0.0 to 1.0, or 0% to 100%, so multiplication usually mitigates).

Each course of action could have multiple possible consequences with different probabilities each. One course might involve pressing The Red Button, which has a 50% chance of giving you a dollar and 50% chance of destroying the world, while another course might involve doing nothing, which has a very high chance of doing neither as far as you know.

In a truly inclusive MDS, every course of action would be paired with every perceived-potential result. The list would be indefinitely long. And each entry on the list would receive a probability value. Given this list, you could figure out the best course of action, and credit or blame the decider according to how much he followed or deviated from that course. (Since we're incorporating both utility gain and loss, our final scale would go from -1.0 to 1.0, or -100% to 100%, where -100% is full blame and 100% is full credit.)

The problem is that we are not given this list! We have to come up with probability values for each entry. An omniscience would simply put a bunch of 100%s and 0%s wherever they needed to be. As less omniscient folks, we have to assign probability values according to the knowledge that we have.

This brings us to the problem of ignorance. Let's say Dave makes a gain-expectant decision according to his MDS. His personal MDS is relative to his knowledge, so it's qualified -- it's "MDS[Dave]." Dave, however, is ignorant. According to MDS[Omniscience], his decision was really loss-expectant. If Dave was never given the opportunity to cure his ignorance, he is blameless. If he was given the opportunity, however, then we appeal to those decisions Dave made that kept him ignorant.

This creates a chain of appeals until one of two things happen: Either we find that, at some point, Dave made a blameworthy decision that kept him ignorant, or we find that Dave made a creditworthy decision (according to Dave) every time he kept himself ignorant. If the former, he is responsible for this latest decision to a degree exactly equal to the degree that he is responsible for that ignorance-maintaining decision. If the latter, he is blameless.

Now we have a practical problem. We probably have no way to trace through the Dave's indescribably complex history to execute this ideal method. That's where the "common social expectation," or CSE, comes into play. The CSE is a list of everything anyone could possibly know, and an associated percentage indicating how common that knowledge is. Using the CSE, Dave is blamed according to the percentage associated with what he didn't know. As the "S" should indicate, the CSE is determined by society, either implicitly or explicitly.

Imperical Responsibility

propositional posts: Cars and Car Mechanics Definition of Imperics

To avoid a war, the king sent a message at the eleventh hour with his fastest courier. Along the way, the courier's horse's shoe broke. The message was delayed too long, and the king found himself at war.

As it turns out, the broken shoe was the fault of the blacksmith, who knowingly did poor work on it, but could not have foreseen it leading to war.

Is the blacksmith responsible for the war?

I say "no."

-

A while ago I realized that there are two senses in which we use the term "justification" when speaking about decisions and their results. A serial killer's actions indirectly bring about world peace. Were they then justified? In the consequentialist sense, yes, but in the imperative sense, no. As has been covered earlier, imperatives are general, practical expressions of ideal consequentialism. Uncertainty -- ignorance that grows proportionally to chaos, among other things -- is the main problem that makes them necessary.

There is, then, a wall of "invincible ignorance" between being a mere contributory cause of a result and being responsible for that result. This isn't to say that ignorance inherently makes a man morally invincible. Instead, for every decision and result, there can be a kind of ignorance that makes the decider more or less invincible to credit or blame. Invincible ignorance is a kind of ignorance, not the denotement of a quality inherent to ignorance.

When we say "ignorance is no excuse," what we really mean (or should really mean) is that there is some sort of ignorance that is not invincible. This sort is determined, for the most part, by common social expectation. Intent-driven morality is not powerful enough, because it doesn't consider these common social expectations.

Over the past few days I've been working on systemizing responsibility -- credit and blame -- metaethically. What follows is my Imperical notion of responsibility.

-

A moral decision set is a group of all potential, mutually-exclusive courses of action at a given moment. Each course is assigned a moral intensity. A course's expected degree of xUtility change, relative to that of other courses, affects this intensity (more xUtility loss means increased negative intensity, more xUtility gain means increased positive intensity). This amount is then multiplied by the probability of this expectation bearing itself out to yield the decision's final moral intensity value.

A moral decision set is objective, but relative to the "x" in "xUtility" (as well as limited in scope to the capabilities of the decider, of course). Once "x" is chosen, a moral decision set would be certainly and consistently determinable by an omniscience.

A man should get the xCredit/xBlame for the result of his decision. This result can be past and actual, yet to happen, or such that it could have happened, hypothetically.

The stronger the moral intensity, positive or negative, as defined by the moral decision set, the higher degree of xCredit/xBlame is warranted. The weaker the moral intensity, the lower degree of xCredit/xBlame is warranted.

Chaos != Disorder

propositional posts: Chaos

I dislike when the ID advocate claims that evolution is said to produce orderly mechanisms "by chance." But I even more dislike when the evolutionist defends this strawman, as if this, indeed, is what evolution is said to do.

'We should pause to notice that the order from which cosmic and biological evolution takes rise must have been one of considerable power and complexity, since it provided the basis of, precisely, cosmic and biological evolution. Evolution itself is a process that exhibits order of stunning dimensions, diachronic as well as synchronic, especially if given the scope customary among anti-theists. That specific type of structure found in evolution did not itself come about through evolution, any more than, as Liebniz pointed out, the laws of mechanics were instituted by the laws of mechanics. It is important to take note of this, because some partisans of evolution hold before us the image of being without order as that from which being with order emerged. Thus we find Dawkins, in the book mentioned above ["The Blind Watchmaker"], discussing the non-random arrangement of pebbles of various sizes on an ocean beach. Clearly the pebbles seem sorted and arranged. But, as he points out, this "arranging was really done by the blind forces of physics, in this case the action of waves. The waves....just energetically throw the pebbles around, and big pebbles and small pebbles respond differently to this treatment so they end up at different levels of the beach. A small amount of order has come out of disorder, and no mind planned it." (p. 43) .... After letting him enjoy a small moment of triumph, we can only say to this highly qualified scientist: "You gotta be kidding! No mind (directly) planned it, but nothing whatsoever 'has come out of disorder' in this case." The interaction of the waves and the pebbles in this case is a perfectly orderly process, even if our comprehension of that order can only be statistically expressed. Moreover, we know for sure that Dawkins himself knows this. What afflicts him at this point can be very simply described: He is in the grip of the romanticism of evolution as a sweeping ontological principle, bearing in itself the mystical vision of an ultimate Urgrund of disorder and nothingness of itself giving birth to the physical universe. —— Which is all very fine as an aesthetic approach to the cosmos, and vaguely comforting. But it has nothing at all to do with "evidence of...a universe without design," as the sub-title of his book suggests.'

(Dallas Willard adversus Kai Nielsen)

A Solution to the Problem of Suffering

propositional posts: Functional Welfare Functional Free Will Definition of Imperics

The Problem of Suffering states that the theodicean attributes of God (omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence) contradict observation (the experience of suffering by creatures). Here is a solution.

Formal version

Definitions.

• Maximal[1]: The highest available under nature.
• Maximal[2]: The highest available under both nature and freedom/welfare disharmony.

Argument.

• (Theodicean attributes assumed.)
• p1: God is subject to identity and derivations therefrom (what we call "logic").
• p2: God desires to provide maximal[1] freedom and welfare to people in general and persons in particular.
• p3: Provision of maximal[1] freedom and welfare is not logically possible under some possible circumstances.
• p1 + p2 + p3 -> C1: Under some possible circumstances, God is unable to perfectly manifest his desire.
• p4: Rebelling against God's desire yields C1-circumstances (while freely conforming to God's desire yields maximal[1] welfare).
• C1 + p4 -> C2: Rebelling against God's desire yields circumstances in which God is unable to maximally[1] manifest that desire (God's plan becomes separated from his desires -- the possibility of troughs of suffering and/or divine oppression is unavoidable).
• p2[C2] -> C3: God's separated plan would provide maximal[2] freedom and welfare to people in general and persons in particular.
• p5: Providing maximal[2] freedom and welfare to people in general and persons in particular justifies any particular troughs of suffering and/or divine oppression by definition.
• C3 + p5 -> C4: God's plan justifies the suffering and/or divine oppression we undergo.
• C2 + C4 -> C5: Though omnipotent, God cannot prevent all suffering and/or divine oppression, and all suffering and/or divine oppression that happens is justified.

Verbose version

God's will encapsulates both his desires and the expressions thereof (his "plan"). Without circumstantial contradiction, these two components would be in perfect harmony. The fall, then, would have simultaneously been a separation, in that it would have created a rift between his desires and his plan. His plan would have become an imperfect -- but maximally-perfect, best, or optimal -- expression of his desires.

The plan would have to perpetually accommodate every causal thread between every event from the beginning and into the future, in order to generate the best possible net utility in two senses: charity for humanity as a whole and charity for the individual (which can be another circumstantial contradiction). God would understand this causal network with perfect knowledge, and would be the sole being capable of doing so. Thus God would have planned causes to generate the maximally-charitable (both freedom and protection) effects (for humanity in general and humans in specific).

Those causes could be miraculous and exceptional, or naturally consistent but full of suffering. They could hurt the individual but help the community, or they could hurt the community but help the individual. They could represent provision of freedom over protection, or they could represent provision of protection over freedom. They could positively affect the suffering people locally, or such suffering could serve to positively affect distant folks in space and/or time. This indescribably complex balancing act would be the logically-necessary result of God's provision of freedom and what man did with it.

The "separation," then, would not just have cursed the future -- it would have, in a sense, "cursed" creation retroactively, because God's plan would have been built to accommodate it from the beginning. The joy we'd have amid all the suffering is that mankind would enjoy a state much greater than it would have under complete divine oppression. Hypothetically, God saw it all from the beginning and called it good (for man). He recognized that we imperfect beings, if loved maximally, would necessitate that his desires be enacted imperfectly in the transcendent sense (the separated plan, with troughs of suffering), and yet knew that it would be a justified creation.

God's Goodness Defined and Predestination Solved

propositional posts: Functional Welfare Functional Free Will Deterministic Compatibilism

The Bible says that God is good. "Goodness," we know, is a moral quality, and as such necessitates a reference in order to receive meaning. The Creation apocalypse constitutes a special revelation that, among other important things, God's goodness receives definition from a moral reference that values the welfare and free will of man.

The ancient philosopher Solomon, in Ecclesiastes 5:18, agrees with my definition of functional welfare as satisfaction that appeals to something basic: "Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him."

Although the subject of free will being intrinsically valuable is never explicitly addressed, there are innumerable Biblical references in every form that attest to the depreciative nature of oppression.

Why, then, are there sharply-divided viewpoints with regard to the Biblical acknowledgment of free will?

Because the Bible is Deterministically Compatibilistic! Sometimes it refers to proximal human experience (Deut 30:19, Josh 24:15, Prov 3:31, Phil 1:14, James 4:17, Rev 22:17), and other times it refers to the divine perspective (Prov 21:1, Eph 2:4-10, Rom 8 & 9, 2 Tim 1:9).

It's a mistake to conflate the two perspectives as if the Bible is a single-layer, straightforward didacticism. Let's say I ask Richard, "Is it possible for you to buy some bread for me?" From a proximal perspective, he might respond "Yes, but I really don't want to, so I'm not going to." From a transcendent perspective, he might respond, "No, because I don't want to, and I cannot act in spite of my net desire." Due to contextual disparity, these statements don't contradict one another, though one starts with "yes" and the other starts with "no."

Just as God, though maximally satisfying, is responsible for action that damages welfare in the immediate (the destruction of Sodom, for instance), God, though maximally light-handed, has likewise been responsible for action that overtly oppresses in the immediate (the Pharaoh's heart, for instance). The problem of oppression, plaguing theologians (Augustine, Calvin, Wesley, Dominicans vs. Jesuits) for almost 1700 years, turns out to be equivalent to the solved problem of suffering. Thanks David Hume!

Religion and Bad Behavior

propositional posts: The Infinite Reference Problem of Imperics Pascal's Wager

Last October, Richard Dawkins and John Lennox debated one another ([1] [2] [3]) over the content of Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion." Both men were woeful disappointments, as was the debate format.

In this post, I will address a poor argument of Dawkins:

"There is a logical path between religion and doing terrible things. There's a logical path that says, 'If you really, really, really believe that your god... wants you to do something ('You'll go to heaven, you'll go to paradise if you do it') then it's possible for an entirely logical, rational person to do hideous things.' I cannot conceive of a logical path that would lead one to say, 'Because I am an atheist, therefore it is rational for me to kill, or murder, or be cruel, or do some, some horrible thing.' I can easily see that there are plenty of individuals who happen to be atheists, maybe individuals who have some other philosophy which incidentally happen to be associated with atheism, but [in these cases] there is no logical path [of the aforementioned kind]. ... [Religious fanatics] believe deeply in what they're doing. And it follows logically, once you grant them the premise of their faith, then the terrible things that they do follow logically. The terrible things that Stalin did did not follow from his atheism -- they followed from something horrible within him."

It's entirely possible for a logical, rational person to do hideous things regardless, and theism alone makes no promises (there are theistic religions, like Christianity, as well as atheistic religions, like Juche). So the claim that this "logical path" exists necessarily for theists and not necessarily for atheists is false from the outset. Let's give Dawkins the benefit of the doubt and figure out what, perhaps, he meant to say.

Perhaps he meant to say that environmental incentives for performing an action can encourage the action, and that divine favor or even reward is a particularly strong incentive. This is certainly true, but is true both of virtuous action and of vicious action, not simply of vicious action.

Instead, perhaps he meant to say that environmental incentives coerce the individual, and coercion hurts functional free will. This is certainly true, but Dawkins admits that Stalin's terror came from "something horrible within him," so in this case, obstructive coercion would have certainly been justified, and the damage done to Stalin's free will would have been praiseworthy.

Instead, perhaps he meant to say that it's not scientific (rational[x], where X is naturalistic methodology) to make decisions based on promises of incentives which can't be reliably tested with public observation. This is certainly true, but is also tautological (and in this case, an analysis that offends nobody).

Instead, perhaps he meant to say that it is not good to make decisions based on promises of incentives that have not undergone scientific testing. But some promises are such that they simply can't be tested under that thankfully-picky methodology. That the full experience of cause and effect often cannot be sufficiently conveyed to the public can cause ineligibility for scientific testing.

Instead, perhaps he meant to say that it is not good to make decisions based on promises of incentives that have not undergone testing of any sort and/or have no association with those that have. I agree, which is why I insist on reasonable religious assumption, which follows from critically testing such promises and building upon them an associative faith.

Dawkins and I would have a common enemy: Pascalian faith; faith that follows from desire rather than from reason.

It would have been great if he actually said what he possibly meant to say. In reality Dawkins is a folk philosopher, and extracting cogent arguments from his statements requires ignoring his bad premises (like regarding atheism as a moving target, and not theism) and fighting past his colloquial usages of "rational," "faith," "moral," etc. And I doubt that will improve, given his dismissive attitude in the debate toward semantic issues.

Functional Welfare

propositional posts:
Definition of Imperics
The Infinite Reference Problem of Imperics

How should we define welfare in a way that's compatible with Imperics? In this entry, I will propose a definition of welfare that proceeds from our common, everyday usage but with "folk appeals" filtered out.

I propose that welfare is synonymous with satisfaction, because welfare is a relative term that makes a direct appeal to an agent's desires.

Like anything Imperical, this definition leaves a lot to discuss in practice. An agent can have any number of competing desires, and the sort of desire that "wins out" for a given individual might not be the sort of desire to which the meaning of "welfare" is appealing in some contexts. For instance, if I talk about mankind as an agent and about mankind's welfare, it's tempting to define "mankind's desire" as "mankind's net product," which makes mankind satisfied tautologically. This seems absurd, and the problem is easily solved by looking at something a little deeper to determine "mankind's desire" -- perhaps something imperative, or even impulsive.

Earlier we talked about solving the infinite reference problem of Imperics by "forgiving" irrationality only at the cusp of desire, a core so inviolable and strictly determined from constitutional identity that it can't be rationally criticized. More than just "That's just how I feel," which is almost always mutable, this cusp is "That's what drives me at a systemic level."

This gives us some ground to stand on when talking about welfare as well. What sort of welfare enapsulates satisfaction of mankind's systemic-level drive, the single point of acceptable irrationality from which all rational desires are derived?

Functional Free Will

propositional posts: Deterministic Compatibilism

How should we define free will in a way that's compatible with Determinism? In this entry, I will propose a definition of free will that proceeds from our common, everyday appeals to the term, but with Libertarianism filtered out.

The will is the function of a decisionmaking system and the translation of its choices to its appendages.

I propose that a perfectly free will has pure self-referential desires ("independence"), perfect translation of desires to expression ("expression"), and procedural contiguity over the long term ("contiguity"). "Perfection" here is maximization under the nature of the system -- "excellence" -- rather than transcendent perfection.

By procedural contiguity over the long term, I mean that even though the constitution of the system may change over the long term, the "way things work" stays proximal and relatively perpetual. The modern stock market, for instance, involves different companies and different participants than it did 20 years ago, but the overall procedure hasn't budged.

At this point it should be apparent that a perfectly free will has a big "problem" -- the system can never change its desires or, in other words, learn to value anything differently. This is fine if it doesn't need to change its desires (thus the quotes around "problem"), but we can certainly dream up an selective, deadly environment to "create" such a need. This is a demonstration not of a problem with the definition, but a practical problem we can have with free will. We often solve such circumstantial problems through ethical indoctrination.

Abstraction

propositional posts: Ced 1DCA Illustration of Functional Abstraction

First, we looked at how we can abstract a functional cell from his environment through pattern recognition, and yet recognize how that functional cell is still the same "stuff" as his environment and is subject to the same rules.

Next, we looked at the case study of Ced and how, though a mere sequence of automatic atoms, he exhibits functions analogous to recognition, reaction, memory, metabolism, intent and being.

Every time we jump from something basic (where we see rows as mere determined results of previous rows following a simple rule) to something abstract (where we recognize emergent patterns in the basic medium and recognize them as functionally special) we climb one "layer of abstraction."

There are a few new terms I'd like to establish before going further.

Plane
The plane is the layer of abstraction (upon which we recognize some relevant function) that we're currently talking about.

Mesaplane
One layer of abstraction downward. If a Ced is on the plane, Ced's atoms might be considered mesaplanar.

Metaplane
One layer of abstraction upward. Ced, with all his functionality, might be part of a colony of Ced-like creatures. Discussing the relevant function of that colony would be, relatively, metaplanar.

Essentially, abstraction involves grouping a collection into an aggregate, and then talking about the aggregate. It can be as straightforward as abstracting cells working cooperatively into a human and talking about the human, or as indirect as abstracting a function that several disconnected objects share into a "quality." It can be spatial, like abstracting parts of a car into a car, or temporal, like abstracting a sequence of states over time into a behavior or trend.

There isn't some universal hierarchy. Each abstraction comes from pattern recognition, and people can recognize all sorts of different kinds of patterns. It's a little bit arbitrary in that sense. Nothing is set in stone, because abstraction is carried out, consciously or unconsciously, by pattern recognition systems that know about different things and care about different things.