The Best Possible World, Part 1: Idealism

Armchair philosophy time! As always, this is all just my own ramblings.  I’m not a philosopher by any means, and it’s very likely anything I say has been said and discredited.  I’m just trying to start conversations!

What defines an idealist? I hate to do the cliché thing and say “The dictionary defines idealism as…” but, uh… the dictionary defines idealism as “the practice of forming or pursuing ideals, especially unrealistically.” An ideal is a scenario that is “desirable or perfect, but not likely to become a reality” and an idealist is “a person who is guided more by ideals than by practical considerations.”  We tend to think of idealists in an almost romantic way; they are “good people” who want what’s best for the world, but are a bit naive in what they think is realistic.  The antithesis of an idealist is a pragmatist, one who is more “grounded” in practical considerations than idealistic. 

A stereotypical way of viewing liberals and conservatives is that liberals tend to be more idealistic (the positive implications being kind hearted and wanting what’s best for the world, the negative being naive and unrealistic)  and conservatives tend to be more pragmatic (cold hearted but realistic).  You know the saying: If you’re not liberal when you’re young you don’t have a heart, and if you’re not conservative when you’re old you don’t have a brain.  If you look into this quote it’s amazing how many times it’s popped up since the 1800’s.  The funny thing about this statement is that the majority of people tend to stay with whatever political affiliation their parents had, so it seems it has less to do with hearts and brains and more to do with comfort zones and closed-mindedness… but anyway.

The issue I have with the above definitions is: how do you determine what is practical and realistic? When it comes to policy, isn’t it only apparent that something was realistic or not after the fact, once it’s clear whether or not it worked? I mean, none of us pursue a plan if we don’t think it’s realistic, do we? I believe we all imagine ourselves as both idealists and pragmatists, depending on the issue and how we’re framing it – We have an image of the best possible version of the world and the most realistic way of achieving that scenario.  I’ll come back to this.

 I want to draw an important distinction between the best possible version of the world and the best imaginable version of the world.  I feel that the best imaginable version of the world isn’t going to differ that much between individuals, no matter the culture or beliefs, and it boils down to two things: Zero suffering and infinite happiness.  The only things that will differ across individuals in their account of Heaven are the aspects that will facilitate this infinite happiness and absence of suffering.

The other end of that spectrum would be the absence of happiness and infinite suffering – Hell.  I bring these up to try to frame the possibilities of the world as a two-axis Utilitarian spectrum, with suffering on the y-axis and happiness on the x.  It is important to note that happiness and suffering are two separate things entirely, not two ends of the same spectrum.  This is true both semantically and psychologically.  They are related in that they can influence each other, but they are not the same thing.

Somewhere within this two dimensional space lie two points that I will be referencing.  The first is where we are, or our world in its current state.  The second is the best possible world (BPW).  I am defining the BPW as a world that is actually achievable, where suffering is minimized (not necessarily 0) and happiness is maximized.  Basically I’m defining the BPW in utilitarian terms, and if you’ve learned about utilitarianism as a system of ethics you know there are problems with it, but I’m not really talking about ethics here and I’ll keep it at a surface level.  I’m open to other definitions of the BPW, not necessarily in utilitarian terms.

 

So when I say we are all pragmatists and we are all idealists, what I mean is that what we tend to disagree on is where in this 2D space the BPW lies.  In general terms, a conservative might think it lies closer to where we are and a liberal might think it lies closer to heaven.  Our ideas of the BPW have no real bearing on where the BPW actually lies in the spectrum, but my argument is that the BPW is a thing that actually exists… not in the sense that “there exists a world that is the best possible,” but in the sense that, logically, there must be a state that is obtainable, where we cannot move closer to Heaven within this space.

For simplicity’s sake, from here on out if I will treat this space as a spectrum, despite what I said earlier.  So when I say “increase happiness” I may actually mean “increase happiness,” or I may mean “reduce suffering” or I may mean both.   

So when a conservative and a liberal argue over economic policy, they’re arguing over methods of moving us closer to the BPW.  A liberal might think that a more progressive tax will get us there by funding social programs that make people happier, whereas a conservative might think that it will reduce happiness by reducing job availability.  Likewise, a liberal might think a state-funded healthcare system will increase happiness by increasing healthcare availability, whereas a conservative may argue that it will reduce happiness by limiting medical innovation.

   

Now all this I say with one large caveat: I am ignoring selfishness in how it may motivate an argument or influence one’s claim of where the BPW lies.  A liberal may say “universal healthcare will improve healthcare for all,” while thinking “I can’t afford healthcare, I need someone to pay my bills!” Likewise, a conservative may say “universal healthcare will reduce medical innovation,” while thinking, “My employer covers my healthcare, I don’t want to pay more taxes to cover those who can’t.”  While followers of Ayn Rand may tell you that selfishness leads to the BPW, I want to draw a distinction between a person who pays lip service to the BPW and a person truly believes a course of action will lead to the BPW.  I don’t believe either truly exists, and if we examine the whole of all of our thoughts and actions we will find that we are a mix of the two.  However, when it comes to policy making, the only arguments that should be given credibility are those that lead to the BPW.  We may not be able to separate the altruist from the egoist within ourselves, but we absolutely can separate them from within an argument.  An argument should be able to stand up to logic and empiricism on its own, regardless of the motivations that created it.

I probably need to defend my claim that only policies that lead to the BPW should be considered.  Imagine a politician saying, “While this law would benefit the overwhelming majority of Americans, it adversely affects me specifically, so I will not be voting for it.” How likely are you to vote for them? Likewise, when you are arguing politics with your friends and family, do you ever say, “Yeah, I know this is the best thing to do for society, but it doesn’t benefit me so I don’t think we should do it.” No.  Even if you are self-aware enough to see that influence within you, you don’t bring it up – you say something about trickle-down economics instead (I kid, I kid).  Civilization exists because we recognize that often what is best for the whole is detrimental to the individual.  We don’t steal because we recognize that a society that allows stealing can’t succeed, and because we don’t allow stealing (unless it’s state-sponsored! There, now my jokes are fair and balanced) we have a world where you can spend your life making buttons and know that you’ll be fed because the system protects those buttons from being stolen.  Now that’s not to say that selfish motivations can’t be a part of the path to the BPW! But selfishness itself, by itself and for itself, should never be an end-justification for a policy.

All this is a build-up to another word that is mocked by self-proclaimed pragmatists: Utopia.  This will be the topic of Part 2, which I promise I will actually write and have out in a reasonable amount of time, considering I can only do so much job searching per day.

Identifying Empirical Questions

Last weekend I had a very nice conversation with some of Caroline’s coworkers about liberalism and conservativism and current events and all that jazz.  Free will only came up a little, and I didn’t latch on to it believe it or not, I think I’ve mostly gotten that out of my system and I think I’m able to discuss it now with a little more tact and in a way that’s not so off-putting (saying “free will doesn’t exist!” tends to get people on the defensive).  Don’t get me wrong, my views on it are still basically the same.  I’m just not as passionate about it as I was when the idea was new to me.

But anyway, a recommendation that came out of that conversation was that I should read Atlas Shrugged.  It’s been on my shelf for a couple of months, and I just finished one of J.K. Rowling’s detective novels (or Robert Galbraith’s, whatever) so I figured it was time I tackled this thousand page tome.  I’m pretty curious about it but I’m worried about my own biases; having a more liberal social circle, I’ve heard lots of not great things, and reading Ayn Rand’s Wikipedia page it sounds like academic philosophers have largely dismissed her ideas.  However, I will try to be as objective as possible.

As part of my prep for it I spent some time on Rand’s Wikipedia page, as well as the various pages dedicated to her ideas.  One quote from her struck me: “I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows.”

What I find amazing is the number of people in this world who espouse reason as the best way to determine truth (I count myself among them), yet arrive at very different conclusions about the nature of the world, morality, philosophy (typically the armchair brand) in general etc. (how do you end a sentence with etc.? It looks weird to leave it just like that, but it’s also weird to write out et cetera…).  You’d think that if everyone who promoted reason were perfectly reasonable, they’d all agree on most things, no?

Not going into differences in critical thinking ability, education, etc. I was trying to think of where exactly do things break down, and I think a large part of it is the ability to identify empirical questions, or to identify beliefs that should be based on and evaluated/reevaluated on empirical principals.  I didn’t really think of questions in this sort of dichotomy until Bjoern came along.  We would be discussing something and I would make a claim and he’d respond with, “Well, that’s really an empirical question, isn’t it?”

Empiricism is an epistemological view that, basically, the best way to determine the reality of a thing is to observe it.  Want to know the color of an apple? Go look at an apple.  Better yet, go look at a million apples from all different parts of the world, then have a hundred of your friends do the same thing.  If you’ve had any scientific training, this should sound familiar to you, as it’s the basis for the philosophy of science. 

So without going into a diatribe about science (which I actually just did for half a page, realized I was way off track, and then deleted), what defines an empirical question? The short answer is: given omnipotent abilities, could you observe something and get an answer to the question? From this perspective most things turn out to be empirical questions, though sometimes the answers to these questions are not currently observable, given technological limitations, ethical imitations, what have you.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t empirical questions. 

The reason I bring this up is that people form beliefs about empirical questions without realizing that the answers to these questions could be obtained through observation.  If the data isn’t there, any formation of a belief about that question cannot really be justified.  Individual feelings and anecdotes are not good data.  So getting back to Ayn Rand and more broadly politics and economics in general, maybe the empirical question that’s being asked is, “How do we make the best society possible?” Operationally defining “best” is tricky and a blog post of its own, but let’s go with: a society that maximizes utility (or happiness or contentment or whatever) for the most current and future humans (sorry non-humans, again, another blog post).   A libertarian might say, “Minimize government interference and let people live up to or down to their potential.” A liberal might say, “Provide a safety net so that chance and poor circumstance don’t inhibit one’s happiness.” A Christian might say, “Follow the teachings of Christ and follow his example.”  Obviously this one question is made up of several smaller questions; that’s why we have economists and sociologists and such.

But, like I said, it’s an empirical question.  Given omnipotence, we could “look” at the world and get an answer.  It’s just super complicated.  But yeah, here’s the rub: we can’t just throw our hands up and say, “I have no opinion!” because we’re left with the fact that we have to make decisions about these things, as a society and as individuals.  So, the best thing is to use what data we have, and the best source is the majority opinion of the experts – contentious, I know, but I’m not going to go into that here.

I have to say, though, that particularly as a psychologist (and specifically an eating behavior researcher), many people have beliefs about nutrition and the way the brain works that are just… not based on good data.  I guess it comes with the territory.  Everyone has a brain, everyone eats food, so everyone’s an expert.  I hate to sound like your high school teacher here, folks, but news articles, blogs, and that thing your friend told you are not good bases for belief formation.  Even if your GP told you something, don’t take it at face value.  A GP is not a nutrition specialist (or an anything specialist, that’s why they’re GPs).  Do some Google Scholar searches people, ffs.

P.S. No offense to any GP’s out there, but there are a lot of them and you know they’re not all reading every specialized health journal that comes out.  Health is complicated stuff.  Also maybe some GP’s are specialists, or used to be, I don’t know how that game works.

P.P.S. Yes I know this is my first blog post in like two years.  As many of you know I’m finishing up my dissertation, but fewer of you may know that I want to try my hand at writing while I’m looking for a real job.  I’m going to try to write some every day, whether it’s a blog post or fiction (or dissertation, I guess) just to try to keep it up and keep in the habit.  So maybe you’ll see more of these.

Emotion and Motivation

Most of you who know me well know that for the past 2 or 3 years or so, whenever we start talking about serious issues, I somehow always wind up on one topic: Free Will.  The reason I do this is that I feel like it is a topic that’s at the center of almost every issue, though usually buried deep.  Religion, politics, science, economics, justice… many of the conclusions and beliefs we hold hinge upon the concept of free will.

I first started to really think about the topic when I learned about perception; about how the early parts of the visual system transduce light energy into chemical reactions that take tiny little pieces of information, and through neural connections and activity recreate our whole visual experience.  I took this one example of how the brain can perform extremely complex tasks with relatively simple mechanisms and began to think about how it may apply to the whole of human experience.

Before I really delve into it though, I need to talk about what free will means.  It’s one of these loaded expressions, and it means different things to different people.  To me, free will means that I, as an agent, am the one who is ultimately responsible for my actions.  While other variables may influence my decisions, in the end, I am the initial cause.  This means that I can take pride in my accomplishments and feel guilt over my shortcomings.  I can be either good or bad.  The choice rests on me.  This is the view of free will that I am arguing against.

Discussions of  free will attempt to explain the causes of decision making.  Everything that can be seen as good or evil, right or wrong, is the result of a decision.  We do not assign blame to individuals who take actions outside of cognitive control.  If I punch my wife in my sleep because of a bad dream I’m having, she may be physically hurt and surprised, but she’s not going to blame me for it.  However, if I’m fully awake and I punch someone in a bar, then I get the blame for that because I consciously made that decision.  Even if we acknowledge that I may have been in a bad mood or inebriated, the responsibility still rests on me and not on my circumstances.

My argument is that every decision can be explained fully by circumstances that are, ultimately, beyond an individual’s control; that the very idea of control is an illusion.  Now, as I said, free will is a loaded concept and a loaded subject (that’s part of the reason that I’ve decided not to use the term “free will” in my verbal arguments).  While you may already have some ideas about the topic, I encourage you to hear me out.  Ultimately, the view that I’m presenting may not even really change that much in the way we see the world and ourselves, with the exception of a few key points that I will get to at the end of this post.  The reason that this is so important to me, and the goal that I hope to accomplish, is that I hope to get people to look at human decision making in a more pragmatic manner, and I think that it is key to making the world a better place.  Even in my own life, this type of thinking has improved my interpersonal relationships, my conflict resolution skills, and my understanding of those with whom I disagree.

Early on, my arguments against free will came from a materialist, determinist perspective.  I would argue that the universe operates in a deterministic way; all physical interactions follow the laws of cause and effect.  The brain is no exception, and there is no evidence of any supernatural phenomena happening in the brain.  That is, you are your brain.  Every decision you make is a result of and carried out by neural activity.  There are some problems with this argument, though, and I don’t really use it any more.  First off, the universe is not deterministic! Sub-atomic particles behave in probabilistic ways, and the current view of physics claims that their behavior cannot be predicted with certainty.  The thing about that is that it is unclear just how much of a macroscopic effect the behavior of subatomic particles has.  In the right conditions and with the right tools, you can predict with certainty the way large physical bodies will interact.  That’s how we are able to shoot spacecraft millions of miles to hit tiny, tiny targets.  The macroscopic, physical universe is predictable.  This seems counter-intuitive; we can’t even predict the weather accurately, much less even more complicated systems (e.g. the human brain)! That doesn’t mean that these phenomena are unpredictable; it just means that right now, we do not have a way to measure all of the variables that come into play within the system, and our current methods for modeling the system are not complex enough to be an accurate representation.   It may be the case that the brain is deterministic and one day, with the right tools and the right models, its behavior will be as predictable as the rotation of the planets.  If it is, then my argument will be much easier.  However, we are not there yet, and ultimately it is unnecessary to present my case.

My argument against free will is, again, that every decision can be explained by psychological mechanisms: Most important to moral decisions, emotion (your mood, your emotional reactivity) and motivation (your desires and goals), but also working memory capacity and contents (what you’re thinking about, your ability to process information), and long term memory contents (life experiences, your access to those experiences, the emotional “weights” you’ve tied to those experiences).  As a disclaimer, while I am studying psychology, I am not an expert in decision making (nor physics or philosophy, for that matter).  I have had some training in cognitive psychology and decision making, and I do draw from that, but most of what I’ve learned about decision making has to do with decisions that have a “correct” and “incorrect” response, not so much those that have a “good” and “evil” response (that is, what I would call moral or ethical decisions).  There most likely are better models of ethical decision making than what I’m describing, and I would, of course, defer to those if someone else has a better understanding of them.

Let’s put this in the framework of an example.  Let’s say I have an opportunity to cheat on my wife, and I’m trying to decide whether or not to do it.  What goes into that decision? What’s the difference between someone who would cheat on their spouse and someone who wouldn’t? Imagining myself in that situation, all of these things would factor in (not an exhaustive list by any means):

• How content I am in my relationship.
• My libido.
• My mood.
• My stress levels.
• My relationship with this other person.
• The emotional weights I attach to the value of “faithfulness”.  This is a tricky one.  What does this mean? I have a collection of life experiences that have conditioned me to value faithfulness.  “Values” are ideas that have a positive or negative emotional weight.  You can think of these weights as multipliers to the emotional reaction that you will have to a specific concept.  I have a very negative emotional weight attached to the concept of adultery.  Values are not inherent; they are engendered through a lifetime of education and experiences, good and bad.

These are only a small handful of the things that would go into that decision, and many others can be added to the list.  But the thing is that I am not responsible for any of them.  They can all be explained by my internal and external circumstances.  Sure, decisions that I’ve made previously can have an impact on them.  For example, maybe I had decided earlier that day to escalate an argument with my wife, which may reduce my emotional aversion to cheating on her.  But my decision to escalate the argument is, itself, a result of circumstances beyond my control.  The same can be said of every decision I’ve ever made.  That doesn’t mean that my decisions don’t matter.  A lot of who and where I am is a result of decisions I’ve made.  But ultimately, those decisions are a result of my biology (my emotional reactivity, my working memory capacity) and my upbringing (my education and experiences) working together to create a set of values and an emotional state that is conducive to a certain decision outcome.

This same process can be applied to any decision that you feel proud of or guilty for, or to any decision that someone has made that has angered you.  Where is the room for the “self” in decision making? In fact, I would wager that you know this and believe it.  When thinking about a decision that we regret, we sometimes say, “I could have done this or that instead.”   But that makes no sense.  If you were in the exact same position, the exact same state of mind, the exact same contents in your working memory, the exact same long term memory, the exact same emotional and motivational state, literally that exact moment in time, then how is it possible that we could have made a different decision? Even if it was a decision you struggled with, you made the choice because of your thoughts and feelings at the time, even if you knew the decision was immoral.  Sure, you can imagine a decision that seems random as having a different alternative (i.e. heads or tails), but when we talk about free will we don’t really mean random actions, do we? We are talking about the causal pathways between the self and the decision, and attributing the cause to the self.  And that’s not unfounded; “you” in a sense are the cause of your decisions, but “you” are the result of your biology and your environment.  This is a good opportunity to briefly bring up the dualistic/monistic view of the self, but I will have to go into that in another post.  I will briefly say, however, that even if there is a soul actively involved in your decision making process, it doesn’t change anything; your decisions are still a result of emotional and motivational weights that you do not get to choose.

To put it another way, let’s think, again, about what it means to say, “I am the cause of my own actions.”  Even if you acknowledge the fact that external variables can affect your decision making, this statement can be shown to be nonsensical.  To act without biological or environmental influence would mean to act without motivation.  This is a paradox.  All intentional action arises out of a motivation to do so.  To lack motivation is to lack action.  Yes, you can change your motivations, but only if you are motivated to do so.  To put it another way, you can only change what you want to do if you want to.  You always do what you want to do unless there are external constraints.  I may feel like I want to eat an 19th brownie, but if I choose not to, that’s because my emotional state has been affected by various influences (social pressure to not eat 19 brownies, etc.) in such a way that what I actually want is what I always do.  This doesn’t mean that you don’t have conflicting desires, but whichever side of the scale has the most weight is what you always end up doing (again, in the absence of external constraints such as chains, locked doors, etc).  To be truly free from all influences on decision making would mean to stop acting… kind of reminiscent of Buddah, who, upon attaining enlightenment, sat beside a tree for a week.

What people mean when they say they have free will is that we have the ability to learn from our mistakes and to alter our values, and if presented with a similar decision in a future point in time, we would choose the other alternative because we’ve learned from our past.  This is true to an extent, but it varies by the individual.  Yes, some of us are emotionally responsive to the negative outcomes of bad decisions.  Some of us are not.  Some of us make the same wrong decision again and again, because when faced with that decision, the immediate emotional benefits of the “wrong” choice outweigh the immediate benefits of the right choice.  But we don’t choose those emotional weights, they are, again, the result of biology and a lifetime of experience, and it is wrong to think that everyone has the same capacity and motivation to change and adapt to decisions that you do.

Now, I get to the part where I list what I am not arguing.  I am not saying that your decision making processes don’t matter.  Many have the reaction of, “Oh, well if I don’t have free will then why struggle with any decision? If my actions are predetermined, why should I even bother?” Your decision making process is how you go about trying to figure out the best course of action for you.  It’s how you analyze the situation and make an attempt to predict how each alternative will impact you.  Yes, it may be predetermined, but what difference does that make? In fact, “predetermined” in this case doesn’t necessarily mean predictable.  If you had knowledge of how you would supposedly respond in a situation 1 week from now, that knowledge would influence your decision and probably change the outcome.  Maybe if you were an isolated system, an outside observer (also completely isolated) with magical knowledge of all of the variables that would affect you could predict your behavior, but if it has no impact on you, why should it matter?

I am also not saying that we shouldn’t hold people accountable for their actions or praise them for their accomplishments.  Often, praise or guilt can serve as powerful motivators that alter one’s future behavior.  When used appropriately and in a pragmatic sense, these can be effective for improving people’s lives.

Now we get to the crux of the issue, and that is the implications of all of the above, and why I feel that it’s so important.  For many, even if they find that they can agree on the premises of the argument, the implications push them away.

In my opinion, the most applicable and practical implication is that we should take a pragmatic approach to our relationships with others and in our conflict resolution strategies.  Realizing that everyone, no matter how angry they’ve made you with a certain decision, has done so because of a set of unique circumstances that is specific to them allows you to step back and empathize  with them before engaging with them.  Even if you still feel wronged, it allows you to see the decision from their situation and then decide on the best course of action to deal with the conflict.  Sometimes an angry response may cause the desired change, but usually it only makes things worse.  Anger is, in my opinion and with no empirical knowledge to back up the claim, the most damaging emotion.  People respond amazingly well to understanding and empathy, and it is often much easier to get a person to change their behavior by letting them realize that you understand why they did what they did.

There are a variety of social and political implications as well, which merit a much longer discussion than I want to bring up here.  It should be clear, though, that everyone’s situation is ultimately the result of their specific circumstances.  The rich are rich because they are intelligent, they were raised to value hard work and have the emotional makeup to make hard work acceptable.  The poor are poor because they were born and raised with a brain that left them that way.  For some, the suffering caused by poverty is enough to motivate them to take the actions necessary to change their situation, but most just live the life they were born into and stay in the same socioeconomic class that they were born into.  If suffering does not cause change, then it serves no pragmatic purpose.  The ideal state of the world is one that maximizes happiness and minimizes suffering (again, another topic for debate, but I think everyone would agree that if everyone was happy and content that would be pretty great).  Moreover, the effect of wealth on happiness is not positive above a certain point, so if there are a few with enough resources for many, and it’s not improving their happiness, why should they be allowed to keep what was randomly given to them?

The final implication that I want to bring up here is what this means for religion, specifically the idea of Hell.  If God created the universe, He knows all of the variables that are at play.  He would know every decision you would make from the moment he knocked over that first domino and created the great chain reaction that lead to your existence.  If He is a just God, how could He send someone to Hell because they didn’t make the right decision? If you are a Christian who believes that a person goes to Hell unless they accept Christ, all you need to do is look at basic facts about religious demographics to know that for some, the cards are just stacked against them.  If you are lucky enough to be born in a Christian household, you are far more likely to become a Christian.  Would a just God sentence someone to Hell for being born in the wrong part of the world, to the wrong parents, and with the wrong emotional makeup?

If God is just, and everyone has an equal chance to accept Christ, then Christianity would be distributed equally across the world.  Everyone would have a fixed % chance of becoming a Christian.  That is clearly not the case.  So either God is not just, or you don’t go to Hell for not saying the right words with your eyes closed.

That pretty much wraps it up! Lots of sub-topic that could be pulled out of this if I decide to do another blog post in 7 or 8 years.  Thanks if you actually read this novel, and as always, I welcome all comments and discussion points, and feel free to send me personal messages! I like to think I have an open mind, and I am persuaded by good arguments!

Where I Started, Where I Am Now

In this post I would like to tell how I've gotten to where I am spiritually: what I used to believe, the important parts of what I believe now, and how I got here.  I was raised as a Southern Baptist, and while our family wasn't as far right as one can be (dancing and rock n' roll were ok), we still fell on the right side of the fence on most religious and controversial issues.  I believed that the Bible was the literal word of God, given through men under divine inspiration.  I did not believe in evolution.  I believed that homosexuality was a sin.  I believed that everyone who did not accept Christ as savior would go to Hell.  Growing up in the South, these were pretty easy things to believe as most of my peers believed the same thing and most of these issues didn't really come up too much outside of church.  Nor were they really discussed when gathering with Christian peers; everyone was kind of on the same page, so we talked about things that we actually struggled with: being kind and loving to everyone, letting Christ shine through us, being in the world but not of the world, and setting a good example. The better parts of Christianity, in my opinion.

As I got older (late high school), I started to become what I think many Christians who are passionate about their faith become in young adulthood: an apologist.  I read a lot, and began to debate certain ideas with myself, for two reasons really.  I wanted to make it so that if I were ever in a position where I needed to defend my faith, I could do so rationally, and with intelligent and well thought out points.  Also, I wanted to be a good evangelist.  If everyone who doesn't accept Christ goes to Hell, then it is my duty as a Christian to try to convince non-Christians to accept Christ.

To me, reason and logic (logos) are and always have been the best tools to change belief, although evidence would suggest that pathos is far more effective (a fact that I hate and to this day willfully and belligerently ignore with all of my heart).  To that effect, I did my best to educate myself on my beliefs and the reasons behind them.  That's what ultimately lead to my beliefs changing.  The problem with being an apologist is that you begin with a foregone conclusion, and then build the facts and the arguments to support that conclusion.  This is bad logic and bad science, and it's not specific to apologists; we all do it all the time.  In psychology, we call it Confirmation Bias.  Any time we specifically seek out and give more weight to evidence that supports a conclusion that we already believe, we are victims of Confirmation Bias.  Even being aware of it doesn't make you immune to it.  It's something that I struggle with especially, being someone who feels very strongly about these issues.  Yet I always try to catch myself and keep an open, unemotional, and detached mentality.

Back then, while I didn't have a name for it, I recognized the problem of confirmation bias, and recognizing that allowing it to guide my reasoning weakened my argument, I tried to suppress it by looking at opposing arguments objectively (which is challenging when your goal is still to support a foregone conclusion).  I suppose the first big issue I struggled with was the issue of homosexuality, and why it was a sin.  The Gay Marriage issue was just starting to be a big thing around that time.  I knew that the Bible said that homosexuality was a sin, but I did not believe that something could be a sin if it was not chosen.  The simplest answer that Christians usually give is that sexuality is a choice, which is pretty much insane and not a response that I dealt with very much.  I could not choose to be sexually attracted to men.  Why would anyone choose those feelings, given the social stigma and persecution that they would undoubtedly face? Wouldn't it just be easier to "choose" to be straight? However, as I said before, pathos is far more powerful than logos, and many people have convinced themselves that sexuality is a choice, despite all common sense, to support their preconceived notions.

The second and far more reasonable response is that while being gay was not a sin, having sex with someone of the same gender was.  Ok... that makes more sense.  While I can't choose my sexuality, I can choose who I have sex with.  I could get behind that.  However, I had difficulty relating this to the issue of gay marriage.  Our legal system is based on a separation of church and state, and the idea (for the most part) that as long as my actions don't interfere with the rights of others, they are legal and up to the individual to decide what's right and what's wrong.  Why would Christians push to keep gay marriage illegal, but not push to illegalize porn, pre-marital sex, drunkenness, idolatry, etc.?

The second major thing that lead to me changing some beliefs was actually reading the Bible.  I realized that I had been supporting this book for years, but had never actually taken the time to read it myself.  If you are an adult Christian who hasn't read the Bible, how can you argue for it? Everything you've been taught about it has been told to you by preachers and parents, presenting tiny little snippets always taken out of the context of the book or letter that contains it? If you believe the Bible is the word of God, why are you putting your faith in the humans who read it to you and not taking it straight from the horse's mouth? Further evidence for the power of pathos is the fact that so many Christians will do just that: argue until they're red in the face, throwing out scripture that they've heard in church and memorized the numbers that go along with it.

I read all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament, though admittedly some bits of the old testament were a real challenge (and most Christians pick and choose what they like out of the old testament anyway).  What really made me struggle with the Bible wasn't the miracles or the prophecy, or even the inconsistencies between books and letters (though I'll come back to that).  It was the fact that it doesn't read like it came from God, it reads like it came partly from spiritual men who were telling what they felt and believed in the best way they could, and partly from political regimes attempting to justify their actions by placing God into the context of tribal warfare and feudal politics that were common among ancient nations.  Moreover, most of the books never even claim to be the voice of God speaking directly through their authors.  When you actually learn about the Bible, you realize that its canonization and divinity were attributed to it long, long after the individual books and letters were actually written, by humans that were attempting to make sure that everyone was on the same page and teaching the same things in order to form a more unified church.

Back to the inconsistencies in the Bible.  Most of them are minor, some of them are major, but they all bring to mind this one unavoidable fact: that there is room for error within the Bible.  The apologists realize this, and have spent years attempting to explain them away or justify them, often to extreme and ridiculous ends and always with a complete disregard of Occam's Razor. If there is any room for error at all, how can you possibly tease apart truth from human bias and error, especially after all of the translations and interpretations that it's gone through?

The final issue (and one that I still focus on all the time) is the issue of free will.  Free will is essential to the idea of Hell.  If humans are not equally free to accept Christ, then what kind of a just God would send someone to Hell for not doing so?   I started thinking about it in my first year of graduate school with just a little mind game (I don't remember why I started thinking about it, maybe I was just bored).  It's a really simple question that I'm sure plenty of you have toyed with before and has been dealt within sci-fi plenty of times.  If you had a machine that could predict the future, and you asked it, "Will I raise my left hand or my right hand?", knowing that you intended to do the opposite of what it said, what would it say? It's a silly question, but it got me thinking about the issue of free-will and what exactly that means (which I'm sure I'll go into more detail about in a later post).  Since the physical universe seems to follow (for the most part, and at the macroscopic level) the rules of cause and effect,  if we are claiming that Humans have free choice, then we are saying that there is a non-physical aspect of humanity (a mind and/or soul) that interfaces with the brain at some point, but is not subject to the same laws that govern the physical part of us.  This would mean that there would be a non-physical element that is causing physical phenomena within the brain that are significant enough to completely govern decision making.  Despite the fact that there is zero evidence of this so far, why would God, who has gone to such great lengths to make himself hidden and unprovable, hide in such an obvious place? Moreover, if every human had an equal chance to accept Christ, then the likelihood of one becoming a Christian should not be predictable by any external factors.  Christianity should be distributed equitably across the world.  Yet that's not what we see.  It is very, very likely that you will stay within the faith that you were born into.  While there is always a slight probability that you can change, the cards are stacked against you if you were born into Islam or Judaism.  This doesn't apply only to religion.  Psychology is the science of destroying free will.  The more we learn, the more predictable human behavior becomes.  Yes, right now there is a lot of variation.  But psychology and neuroscience are still very young, and the brain is incredibly complicated, subject to a currently immeasurable number of environmental and biological factors.  But it's only a matter of time until we will be able to map your brain and fully predict how you will respond to any situation or stimulus.  Again, this is a very complicated issue and this post is already pretty long, and I know the free will thing is a tough pill to swallow.  I plan to do a longer post dedicated to free will some time in the next ten years or so, but if you're interested I highly recommend reading "Free Will" by Sam Harris.  Super short read, you can finish it in an afternoon.

One thing that I want to point out: none of these changes happened because I went to college, or because I let any influence come into my life.  In fact, it is very rare that I actually debate anyone on any of these points (which is really sad, I wish I had someone who felt strongly but believed differently and was willing to debate these things without getting emotionally invested).  I realize that many of the beliefs that I'm describing here are very specific to certain Christian ideologies, and do not represent all Christians or all viewpoints.  This is just where I come from and where I am.  The only person I'm really arguing against here is myself.

Growth means change.  If you ever stop changing, that means you have stopped growing, and that is a tragedy.  To consider yourself "good enough," or to think that your beliefs and ideas are complete is either extreme arrogance or worse, a willful ignorance and a cowardice that prevents you from facing your imperfections and challenging yourself to continue to grow.  I hope I never get to that point, and I hope I continue to be proven wrong and continue to change and grow.  I try my best to keep an open mind and to read and objectively consider opposing viewpoints on every issue.  No one should ever stop growing, and therefore changing, because no one is perfect.  This does not mean that I believe that if you don't wind up where I am, then you've stopped growing.  That's not at all what I'm trying to say.  All I'm saying is that you should never just accept that your current belief system is the right one with any level of confidence.  If any of these issues were clear or complete, then everyone would agree and there would be no room for debate.  At the very least, educating yourself about the flaws in your belief system and attempting to address all of the counter arguments will make you more able to argue for them, and if you intend to convince anyone of your ideas, this can be a very important thing.

Theism Part 1: Agnosticism is the way to go.

I've started and stopped writing several entries since my last post several weeks ago.  I always find myself in the same situation: I start writing, and the next thing I know I've written several pages and gone waaaayyyy off of my originally intended topic, digressing to the basis of my world view.  Everything comes back to God.  It really makes sense, if you think about it.  All opinions on moral issues come out of our world view, which for many of us centers around the existence of God.  So I've decided to tackle the big issue before I go into any others, and I'll be able to relate all future topics back to this one.  But first, I want to make one thing clear.  To all my Christian friends, don't start getting excited just yet, and to all of my atheist friends, don't start making assumptions about my beliefs or my intentions.  I am not espousing any specific religion with this post.  My only claim is that it is more beneficial to our society to believe that we were intentionally created by an intelligent being than to believe that we are a random byproduct of the universe.

I suppose I should start with this claim: The only logical belief regarding the existence of God is agnosticism.  I know this is quite a stretch for many devout believers in either God or the spaghetti monster who refuse to entertain the possibility that they could be wrong (see my post on Confidence).  But here's the fact of the matter:  God has never revealed himself in any definitive way.  Sure, theists will argue that he's revealed himself to individuals who have shared their experiences with others.  This may come as a surprise to you, but people often lie.  Sometimes they lie for selfish reasons.  Sometimes they lie for good, selfless reasons, like to fix a broken, archaic religion or to bring together a warring people.  Hell, sometimes they lie to themselves so well that they aren't even aware that they're lying to others!

Picture this.  You're praying in your bedroom late at night.  You've been struggling with a personal issue, maybe you're going through a divorce or struggling financially.  "God," you say, "just give me strength."  Suddenly, you feel this immense feeling of calm, and you just know that everything is going to be okay.  Maybe you don't know much about psychology and the powerful effects of meditation and positive thinking.  Maybe you do, and you just really want to believe that that unearthly peace was God resting his hands on your shoulders and giving you comfort.  The next day you go to church and tell your friend that God spoke to you last night and told you that He would take care of things.  Next thing you know, word gets around the church that you've had your own little miracle happen.  But the fact is, you never saw or heard anything.  You had an emotional response at a time when you needed it.  This is only a small, innocent example, but all of our individual experiences with God can be explained by an outside observer as being some combination of psychological phenomena and simple lying, accidental or intentional.

But isn't that the essence of faith? If God were to prove himself to us, wouldn't that completely negate faith? Yes, it would.  In fact, if God does exist, he's gone to incredible lengths to hide himself.  Just look at this huge universe! Why build all this if it's just about us silly little monkeys on this tiny blue dot in space? Makes perfect sense if he wanted to not make himself provable.  That's why we should be even more skeptical of individual experiences with God.  If faith is so important, and God has hidden himself so well, why would he prove himself to any particular individual? I guess you could argue that having a huge amount of faith gets you some sort of "in," where God just says, "Well, this guy's gonna believe in me no matter what, so I guess I'll heal his sprained ankle when nobody's around to see it."  Whether that's what's happening or not, my point is that God doesn't reveal himself to the whole of society in any way that can go without question, and hasn't left any tangible proof of his existence, so no one can logically conclude that God exists.

So, how about the other side of the coin? If we can't logically conclude that God exists, that means that we must conclude that He doesn't exist, right? Unfortunately, we can't do that either.  I find it baffling that anyone can confidently proclaim that something doesn't exist when we are faced with the overwhelming and improbable fact of our own existence! The most basic question that anyone who thinks about these things asks is: Why is there something instead of nothing? Wouldn't nothingness make much more sense? Wouldn't it be far more simple?  But instead, we have this huge, immeasurable universe.  And more than that, we have intelligent, conscious beings who can observe that universe and ask what it all means.  I really think that's all it takes to show that it is illogical to claim that "God doesn't exist."  Now, don't get me wrong... I am NOT claiming that: "Our universe exists, so someone must have created it!" What I am saying is that we have no way of gauging the likelihood of anything existing or not existing.  We know that Universes can exist (because we live in one).  We know that conscious, creative beings can exist (because we are such beings).  Therefore, who's to say that our Universe wasn't created by some other type of conscious being in another type of Universe?

Now, I know many of you are probably thinking of a teapot that's floating in orbit somewhere between Earth and Mars, and I strongly suggest you read the Wikipedia article on Russell's teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot).  In short, the burden of proof does lie on the believers, but both theists and atheists are believers; both are just making different truth claims about the origins of the Universe.  It makes no difference if that truth claim is positive (i.e. something exists) rather than negative (something doesn't exist).

So... we can't logically claim that God exists, nor can we claim that he doesn't exist.  What are we left with? The ultimate cop out! The only logical view to take is no view at all.  We don't know whether God exists or not, so it only makes sense to hold no opinion on the matter..  Remember, you can certainly refute many religious claims, but I am not talking about any specific religious claims.  I am only discussing the existence of some creative consciousness outside of our universe that is responsible for our existence.

In my next post (which I will get to when I have sufficient time + motivation and/or insomnia + beer), I will address my 2nd claim: That agnosticism is functionally useless.  In the meantime, I am open to debate on the specific claim made in this post (that agnosticism is the only logical viewpoint), so please, share your thoughts!

On Confidence

I ended my last post with a comment about emotion being the enemy of reason, which conveniently brings me to the point of what I've been thinking about lately, and that is confidence and how much I hate it.

Political debates are the worst.  The candidates never say anything.  It's just buzzword after buzzword, intentionally designed to play off of your emotions.  This is because voters think with their hearts and their subconscious perceptions, not with their minds.  There is seldom any real content.  But then, later you hear everyone talking about who won the debate, and I'm thinking, "How can you tell?! No one actually said anything!" And the things they talk about are things like, "Oh, well Candidate X kept wiping his brow and looking down at his papers.  Candidate Y was clearly more composed, I think he really came out on top, Jim."  Bullshit.  Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.  The state of modern debate is entirely focused on pathos with a bit of ethos for an occasional stab here or there.  Political debates are only an example, what I'm really talking about here are one on one arguments between two people.  Time after time I've seen arguments where one or both of the parties involved use emotion, confidence, and clever wording to support their claims, yet make logical fallacies left and right.  They rarely use facts or scientific evidence to back up their points, and who usually comes out on top? Whoever was the most confident, said the most things, and spoke the loudest.

Bear in mind that I'm only talking about debates about factual matters.  When you're arguing over which pudding is better (ice cream or vanilla), or whether disco is better than reggae, you're arguing over preference.  It's important to distinguish between the two.  In arguments over factual matters, there is one, true answer.  For example, if an atheist and a theist are arguing over the existence of God, this is not a matter of opinion; there either is a God or there isn't. Where this gets fuzzy is when you realize that your terms aren't specific enough.  What do you mean by God? Do you mean an intelligent creator, or do you mean some cosmic, creative force? Maybe both parties are wrong: maybe the theist is a Christian and is arguing for the Christian version of God, when in actuality the universe was created by Brahma, or some other unspecified, unintelligent creator.  The point is that there is one, single truth of the matter.  However, the reason these issues are controversial is either because there is not enough evidence to definitively say one way or another, or because the evidence that proves a certain truth is not salient enough to convince some people of a that truth when it runs up against differing beliefs that carry with them some emotional weight that makes the truth of the matter painful.  Once again, here is another division in any topic for debate.  In one type of argument, there are issues where the truth is currently unknowable, either because there is not enough evidence to support any rational decision on the matter (i.e. the existence of a universal creator) or because the truth of the matter lies in Value (that is, why is something "good" or "bad"), the source of which is unknowable (i.e. abortion).  For ease of reference, let me call these "Arguments about the Unknown."  In the other type of argument, there is heavy, observable evidence pointing to the truth, but the salience of the evidence is outweighed by the emotional baggage that is attached (i.e. evolution, global warming).  Let's call these types of arguments, "Emotional arguments."

Let me take a sidebar here to talk about "Truth." When I say "truth," I mean an objective fact about existence.  The problem with truth and the human condition is that we can never know an objective truth outside of our own perception.  For example, we can never, with 100% confidence say "this apple is red."  The best we can do is say "I perceive that this apple is red."  Now, we can be fairly confident that the apple is objectively and does in fact reflect wavelengths within the visible spectrum that we perceive is "red," but only because we democratically agree that all of us healthy observers perceive the apple as red.  Therefore, the closest we can get to making any logical statements about the objective universe is: "We collectively perceive this object as red, therefore it is very likely that this object is, in Truth, objectively red."  Some would lead you to believe that this implies that there is no objective reality, but there's really no reason to believe that.  Even if we are all suffering from planet-wide delusions, even if we all live in the Matrix and all of our perceived reality is just a product of our own consciousness, it is utterly undeniable that existence exists.  What these people are trying to do is come up with a clever way of dealing with the conundrum.  Therefore, there is an objective truth to all debates.  We just cannot know it.  Therefore, for the purposes of having a purpose, and the fact that we have to believe that there are facts, we should agree that all "Truths" of the objective universe can be determined when the observer(s) with the most evidence from observation interpret that evidence to indicate one alternative over all other alternatives (carefully applying Occam's Razor), that interpretation is very likely to be the objective "Truth," but can be usurped should a simpler truth or a truth that explains more phenomena should arise.

Anyway... how is this related to confidence? People are often incapable of recognizing where their arguments breakdown, many of them being astonished that there's even a controversy at all.  "Of course abortion should be legal! It's the woman's body, it's no one else's right to tell her what to do with it, how is this even an argument??" Or, alternately: "Of course abortion should be outlawed! The child is an individual human with its own genetic code! What changes in it's development that suddenly gives its life value? How is this even an argument?" This pisses me off to no end.  How can you be so confident on a controversial issue that you are flabbergasted by the opposition? And some of the most confident people I've ever met are religious people, about their beliefs.  Your faith is based entirely on emotion.  How does God speak to you? Through your heart.  How many times has God audibly proclaimed himself to you? Christians, are you aware that there are Muslims who are SO confident in their beliefs, that they will kill and die for them (and vice-versa)? You can't both be right, what makes your case any better than theirs?  I am not an atheist, but doubt is a very good thing.  Doubt makes you ask questions.  Doubt can make you back off emotionally when you come across someone who disagrees with you, because you realize that there is a chance that you just might be wrong.

Unfortunately, many people are afraid of doubt, and think that it is a bad thing.  I was brought up to believe that doubt showed a lack of faith; it's best not to ask questions, or you might make God mad.  What a convenient thing to be taught by a faith that loses its power if it loses its members, huh? For others, doubt is a sign of weakness.  Or rather, being wrong about something is a sign of weakness.  We are remarkably good at convincing ourselves of pretty much anything, so we ignore the reasonable part of our minds telling us that we are wrong so that our fragile egos don't have to deal with it.

Again, I am not an atheist, nor am I agnostic.  My whole point here is that the universe is a mysterious place.  Human reasoning is so subjective, and none of us are capable of purely rational thought.  Being overconfident in your beliefs blinds you. It shuts you down to other alternatives, and it keeps you from fully investigating your own beliefs, which in turn keeps you from being able to adequately defend those beliefs to others.

I'm not going to even start on how much of a role confidence plays in dating and in getting jobs, which is equally dumb (I act like I'm the shit, so you think I'm the shit).  Maybe I'll make a part two where I rant about that.

First Post: Disclaimer

So, blogging.  I often find myself wanting to say things in some sort of public forum, usually by making Facebook statuses.  But there are a variety of problems with this.  First, statuses are too frickin short! I post one snippet of an idea, and next thing I know I'm roped into hours long discussions which I've already had a million times.  So this will be a way to get more fleshed-out thoughts out there, so that I can address several points all at once and hopefully avoid so many repeated one on one discussions.  That is definitely NOT to say that I don't like one on one discussions; I love them! This is just a way to go ahead and dispel many of the surface arguments against my viewpoints and jump right in to the meat of it.  Second, pretty much everyone can see a Facebook status, whether they want to or not, and many of the things I say can be offensive or off-putting.  So, I've decided to start a blog; a place where I can speak my mind and pretend people are reading it, and if you are actually reading it you have chosen to do so, and it was not forced down your throat by appearing on your news feed.

Along those lines, if you are easily offended by people with strong opinions that may be different from yours, and who are, indeed, actually trying to be offensive at times, and if you find being offended to be an unpleasant thing, and if you are unable to debate your deeply held beliefs without getting upset, then please don't read this.  Expect a lot of religion, a hefty amount of armchair philosophy, politics (though not really current affairs, more like "governance" in general).  I plan to be brutally honest and overly personal, probably self-deprecating, and definitely arrogant and pretentious.  Also, I will ramble incoherently.  I'm usually going to be writing these in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way.  While part of me is doing this because I want to form a cohesive argument, most of me is just doing it because I need some sort of outlet, and putting things out there makes me happy.  Therefore, I will not spend a lot of time editing and reorganizing things.  It is what it is.

If you are a family member, please be warned that I probably haven't talked to you about a lot of my opinions on things.  Why start arguments with loved ones over these silly things?  If you're taking the time to look at this, it's probably pointless to tell you that you shouldn't read it, so if you really want to talk to me about it, please actually do that: let's get together for dinner or a drink and talk about our ideas, on the one condition that we can agree to keep our heads cool.  Emotion is the enemy of reason.