Yet another person's thoughts

Some moral propositions

2011-09-19T17:26:00.000-07:00

Just a quick attempt to sketch out some moral views:

Actions in and of themselves can't be good or bad.
What makes them good or bad are their consequences/logical implications.
Actions can be "intrinsically wrong" if they necessarily imply/lead to a bad consequences. For example murder is intrinsically wrong since it necessarily implies the unjustified death of someone.
Actions can also be "contingently wrong", if, practically, they lead to bad consequences, but don't necessarily. For example, incest is only contingently wrong: in most circumstances it would lead to problems, but it is possible for people to engage in incest without any repercussions.
A lot of confusion in thinking and discussions about morality come from not properly distinguishing between intrinsically wrong and contingently wrong.

NOTE: I'm seriously rethinking my statements in this post. More to come.

2011-07-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

One statement that never ceases to frustrate me is "I'm fine with so and so believing X, I just wish they wouldn't get in everyone's faces about it." For example, "I'm fine with vegetarians, I just wish they wouldn't get in my face about it." Well, it would certainly seem to me that if one believes that killing animals for food is murder they should be getting in everyone's face about it. To stand idly by while people continue to benefit from murder would be gross neglect of one's moral duty, akin to ignoring the Holocaust when you know it to be deeply wrong.

Take another example. "I'm fine with such and such a religious group, I just wish they would stop trying to convert me." Once again, this ignores the fact that, because of the very nature of someone's beliefs, for them to not try to convert you would be to neglect their moral duty. After all, they believe that if you are not converted you will suffer, which means, in fact, that not attempting to convert you would not only be neglecting their moral duty but, specifically, neglecting their moral duty towards you. To not try to convert you would be akin to letting you drown when they had an opportunity to try to rescue you. Similarly, it is absurd to expect the religious to keep their faith separate from their politics: if one believes, for example, that homosexuality is a sin and dangerous to our nation's spiritual well-being, it would be negligent for them to not try to combat it.

Now, one can argue whether the killing of animals for meat does constitute murder*, or whether such and such is the path to salvation, or whether homosexuality is a sin. But this is exactly the issue that is at stake: whether or not someone's beliefs themselves are sound.

*incidentally, I myself am conflicted on this point and, as such, have not become a vegetarian.

Born This Way

2011-06-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

So one subject that keeps getting discussed in the gay marriage debate is whether or not homosexuality is innate. Gay advocates argue that if it is (and the evidence seems to be that it is), then homosexuals are being discriminated against for something they did not choose.
However, it has always seemed to me that this question - of whether homosexuality is innate - is a red herring. In fact, while it's an interesting scientific question, it has no bearing on whether or not homosexuals have the right to engage in their preferred lifestyle.
Suppose (as is almost certainly the case) that homosexuality is innate. Why should this give homosexuals the right to engage in their lifestyle? After all, many mental disorders are innate, but that doesn't mean that a psychopath has the right to go out and kill people. Someone who has a mental disorder that causes them to engage in immoral behavior has one of two options: either overcome the disorder, or be removed from society. This is regardless of whether the disorder is curable or not. And one can't say "God made me this way", because God made people with destructive mental disorders too.
And what if it isn't innate? Well, neither are most lifestyles people choose. We aren't born, for example, to live a certain religious lifestyle: we choose it (or are forced into it). But as long as lifestyle isn't hurting others, it does not concern them (obviously, there ARE some cases where a lifestyle might be hurting the person engaged in it in a way that is of concern to society as a whole). This is the important point. The question isn't whether one was born homosexual or chose the lifestyle: it's whether people have the right to behave the way they would like as long as it doesn't hurt others (offense doesn't count). This is why I'm an ally.

* * *

While I'm on the subject of bad arguments for causes I support, let's talk about abortion. I am pro-choice in a fuzzy way: I believe that the abortion of, say, a week-old embryo is completely blameless regardless of circumstances, partial-birth abortions are immoral unless for extreme medical reasons, and the time in between is one big gray fuzzy mess. I discuss my views in detail here.
So, obviously, I do not agree with the pro-lifers. However, I think the argument that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her body completely misses the point. It is the pro-lifers who are actually talking about what matters in this case: namely, whether the fetus is a human life. My beliefs are that it isn't (until fairly late in its development), and this is why I think abortion is OK. But if it is, then it seems to me that a woman's right to choose becomes questionable at best. It is intuitively likely that one's right to choose what to do with one's body stops at the point that that choice entails killing another human being. We could justify it on utilitarian grounds that the psychological and physical distress of carrying and giving birth to the child outweighs the value of its life (which is how I'd look at it): but even in this case the woman's right to choose is only considered relative to the what the value is of the human to be destroyed.

Blah blah blah

2011-06-17T22:33:00.000-07:00

So, first, I totally failed in regards to the whole "keeping up with this blog" thing. Obviously I tried to pretend that I wasn't failing by posting my papers from college, but...that's cheating. I know this now.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the following:

Understanding. I may end up doing my Div III (senior dissertation for all you non-Hampshire people) on it. Here's the problem: what does it mean to "understand" something? It is not an intentional state ("intentional state" is a fancy philosophical way of saying "thought", although it specifically refers to thoughts about things in the world: for example, when I think to myself "The Eiffel Tower is in Paris" [as I am wont to do] the thought is about the Eiffel Tower. Beliefs are also intentional states, since if you believe something, you believe something about something [once again, my belief that the Eiffel Tower is in Paris is about the Eiffel Tower]), since it doesn't correspond to anything. I.e. when I say "I understand the theory of relativity" I'm not making a statement about anything out there in the world. So maybe "understanding" is a subjective sensation. But no! We can't be wrong about our subjective sensations. But we can be wrong as to whether we do, in fact, understand something, so it seems. We can think we've understood something without understanding it at all. And is the converse possible? Can we not think we understand something when in fact we do? Why is any of this important? Because it's at the core of almost all arguments. Namely, we have to understand something in order for it to mean anything.

Meat n' Stuff

2011-06-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

So I was think about all the commercials for dog food where they're like "it's made with fresh ingredients" "you're dog knows it's delicious" etc. and they show beautiful images of fresh ingredients. I decided there should be a dog food brand called "Meat n' Stuff", which is exactly that: low quality meat and various nutrients that your dog needs to survive. Here are some slogans I came up with (NSFW):

Meat n' Stuff: because your dog doesn't give a fuck

Meat n' Stuff: because your dog is eating it, not you

Meat n' Stuff: for crying out loud, your dog likes to eat it's own shit

Did I lock the door? The cognitive neuroscience of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

2011-05-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

Hampshire College

Brain and Cognition

Introduction

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a common disorder that appears in both children and adults. It consists of obsessions, compulsions, or both. Obsessions consist of recurring thoughts or impulses that are intrusive and unwarranted by the environment (but still perceived as originating from the patients own mind, distinguishing them from “though-insertion”), causing distress or anxiety, and compulsions are repetitive behaviors the obsessive-compulsive feels he/she must perform. Compulsions are often related to the obsessions, and are meant to neutralize the distress caused by such obsessions. Some of the most common obsessions include germaphobia, fear of causing harm to oneself or to others, and worrying that important tasks have been left undone, for example being unsure whether one has locked the door, and compulsions include behavior such as hand washing, counting, and checking. The patient is usually aware of the absurdity of their thoughts and actions, but nevertheless feels powerless to stop them (American Psychological Association, 2000).
In this paper, I will discuss the neurocognitive findings regarding OCD, particularly as they relate to the SEC/OCD model proposed by Huey et al (2008). I will begin with an overview of some of the brain studies of OCD, moving on to some popular models of the disorder. Finally, I will discuss the SEC/OCD model.

The Brain Regions Implicated in OCD and their Functions

Despite copious amounts of research, the precise neuropsychology of OCD is uncertain (Markarian et al, 2010). Different studies often provide different and even contradictory results. Despite this, there are some generally agreed upon neuroanatomical features of OCD. Specifically, it has been consistently found that obsessive-compulsives reveal anatomical and functional abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex, and also the basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, and thalamus (Markarian et al, 2010; Huey et al, 2008).

Several studies have reported reduced bilateral orbitofrontal cortex volumes in obsessive-compulsives, and there seems to be a correlation between greater reductions and worse symptoms (Maia, Cooney, & Peterson, 2008). The orbitofrontal cortex seems to be involved in reward learning and emotions, and the regulation of complex behavior. It has been found that the orbitofrontal cortex responds to reward stimuli, but not when the desire for the stimuli has been satiated. Macaques with orbitofrontal have difficulty learning the reward value of stimuli, and are slow to change their behavior when reward conditions change (Huey et al, 2008).

There is evidence of increased anterior cingulate cortex activation in obsessive-compulsives (Fitzgerald et al, 2005). The anterior cingulate cortex is implicated in decision-making. In particular, it acts as a conflict and error detector, responding when there is a discrepancy between expected and actual events. Activation of the anterior cingulate cortex seems to lead to negative emotional states, such as anxiety (Huey et al, 2008).

It has been found that damage to the basal ganglia through infection can lead to obsessive-compulsive symptoms. The basal ganglia seem to play an important role in the generation and regulation of motor activities. Specifically, it has been suggested that the basal ganglia acts as a sort of gate for motor signals, facilitating certain motor actions while suppressing others (Huey et al, 2008).

The thalamus shows higher activation in subjects with OCD compared to controls, and has been reported to be larger in obsessive-compulsives (Maia, Cooney, & Peterson, 2008; Huey et al, 2008)). The thalamus seems to be a gateway for interactions between brain areas involved in OCD (Huey et al, 2008).

Some Models of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Based on behavioral and neuroanatomical evidence, there have been numerous models proposed for OCD.

The Cognitive-Behavioral Model: According to this model, OCD arises from dysfunctional beliefs regarding the importance of thoughts. Almost everyone has had intrusive thoughts that are perceived as inappropriate: for example, the fleeting, unwarranted, and unwanted mental image of stabbing a loved one with a knife. Healthy subjects recognize this as just meaningless junk in the stream of consciousness. However, obsessive-compulsives, according to the cognitive-behavioral model, incorrectly view these thoughts as highly significant—for example, as evidence that one will, in fact, lose control and stab someone. Because of the importance attached to these thoughts, they develop into obsessions, and compulsions arise as a way to attempt to get rid of these unwanted thoughts and/or neutralize the danger associated with such thoughts. These compulsions are then reinforced by the temporary reduction in anxiety they cause and the fact that they prevent the obsessive-compulsive from learning that harmful consequences will not arise as the result of their thoughts (McKay & Abramowitz, 2010). This model has gathered a lot of support (with some exceptions), but does not provide a neuropsychological explanation.

The Standard Model: The standard neuroanatomical model of OCD proposes that the disorder arises as a dysfunction of elements of a post-frontal cortex-basal ganglia-thalamic loop. This model is consistent with most of the data collected on the neuroanatomy of OCD and forms the basis of many following models. However, it does not explain the psychological mechanisms of OCD (Huey et al, 2008).

The “Feeling of Knowing” Model: Szechtman & Woody (2004) propose a model wherein OCD is caused by an inability to create the “feeling of knowing” that a task has been completed. Specifically, they argue that the common symptoms of OCD—washing, checking, fear of causing harm, etc.—are those that evolutionarily would have been related to the security of the organism and its fellows. This need for security leads to the evolution of a security-seeking system. Because there are no external stimuli that indicate the completion of a security-seeking task (for example, there could always a predator that the animal has missed), the completion of such tasks is indicated by an internally generated “feeling of knowing”. Obsessive-compulsives have a deficit in generating this subjective sensation, leading to the odd phenomena in which the obsessive-compulsive is perfectly aware, objectively, that, for example, their hands are perfectly clean, but they do not feel clean, leading to further washing.

The SEC/OCD Model

Huey et al’s (2008) model of OCD expands on Szechtman &Woody’s model and also on their own earlier work where they propose that complex behaviors with beginnings, middles, and ends are stored in the prefrontal cortex in the form of Structured Event Complexes, of SECs. For example, the knowledge of how to correctly eat dinner at a restaurant—finding a seat, ordering, eating, paying the bill, leaving—would be an SEC. SECs are usually implicitly recalled, and in this respect are similar to procedural memory. SECs are stored when a complex sequence of behavior leads to a reward, in order that such a sequence may be repeated. As evidence of these SECs, patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex have often reported difficulty with ordering and sequencing events and actions.

Just as the completion of an SEC can be rewarding, so too can the inability to complete an SEC can feel punishing. Furthermore, there are SECs that are themselves punishing but which bring about the removal of punishment: for example, few people feel good about doing their taxes, but most are relieved when their taxes are finally done.

In the SEC/OCD model, it is proposed that the initiation of an SEC is accompanied by a motivational signal, experienced as anxiety encouraging the animal to complete the SEC. In healthy subjects, the completion of the SEC is accompanied by a reward signal. According to the model, obsessive-compulsives have a deficiency in this latter process. Although the SEC is complete, the obsessive-compulsive does not have the sensation that it is done. This leads the anterior cingulate cortex to produce an error signal. The orbitofrontal cortex responds to this error as punishment, leading to a feeling of anxiety. This feeling is unconscious, leading the obsessive-compulsive to attempt to assign an explicit cause to it. This interpretation forms the basis of an obsession. The compulsion is caused by the fact that the completion of an SEC, for example hand washing, gives the obsessive-compulsives only partial relief, so that they feel they must repeat the SEC.

In regards to the basal ganglia, Huey et al suggest that just as it facilitates some motor actions while suppressing others, so too does it gate SECs. It is proposed that the basal ganglia sets thresholds for the activation of SECs, and when this threshold is lowered, for example by damage, it can lead to the overactivation of SECs, causing symptoms of OCD.

Conclusion

The cognitive neuroscience of OCD is still in its infancy. Much work is still to be done. However, Huey at al’s model provides a useful paradigm for further work. It shares and integrates elements from many of the previous models: along with expanding on Szechtman & Woody, it provides an explanation of why undue importance would be attached to fleeting thoughts as per the cognitive-behavioral model (the brain is looking for an explicit source of anxiety), and explains the possible psychological mechanisms of OCD that the standard model leaves out.

References

American Psychiatric Association (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR, 4th ed Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Text Revision.

Fitzgerald, K., Welsh, R. C., Gehring, W. J., Abelson, J. L., Himle, J. A., Liberzon, I., & Taylor, S. F. (2005). Error-Related Hyperactivity of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Biological Psychiatry, 57(3), 287-294.

Huey, E. D., Zahn, R., Krueger, F., Moll, J., Kapogiannis, D., Wassermann, E. M., & Grafman, J. (2008). A psychological and neuroanatomical model of obsessive- compulsive disorder. The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 20(4), 390-408.

Maia, T. V., Cooney, R. E., & Peterson, B. S. (2008). The neural bases of obsessive- compulsive disorder in children and adults. Development and Psychopathology, 20(4), 1251-1283.

Markarian, Y., Larson, M. J., Aldea, M. A., Baldwin, S. A., Good, D., Berkeljon, A., & ... McKay, D. (2010). Multiple pathways to functional impairment in obsessive– compulsive disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(1), 78-88.

McKay, D., Taylor, S., & Abramowitz, J. S. (2010). Obsessive-compulsive disorder. In D. McKay, J. S. Abramowitz, S. Taylor, D. McKay, J. S. Abramowitz, S. Taylor (Eds.) , Cognitive-behavioral therapy for refractory cases: Turning failure into success (pp. 89-109). Washington, DC US: American Psychological Association.

Szechtman, H., & Woody, E. (2004). Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder as a Disturbance of Security Motivation. Psychological Review, 111(1), 111-127.

Epiphenonema: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

2011-05-19T15:47:00.001-07:00

Hampshire College

Philosophy of Mind

Introduction

Frank Jackson, in his paper “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, argues that we could know all the physical facts about the world, yet we would never know of qualia, and that therefore qualia are not contained in the physical world. Furthermore, he claims that qualia are epiphenomenal: that is, that they are caused by physical processes, but do not have any effect on the physical world. In this paper, I will argue that this claim that qualia are epiphenomenal destroys the Jackson’s first argument, and yet, this same argument does not work without epiphenomenalism. I will conclude by discussing the reasons I think that we should continue to believe a physicalist thesis regarding qualia.

Epiphenomenalism

In the second half of his paper, Jackson argues that there is no good reason that one should not accept that qualia might be epiphenomena—caused by physical processes, yet with no causal power whatsoever in the physical world. I do not believe that he establishes the epiphenomenalism as a sound hypothesis.

Jackson lists three major objections that he feels philosophers often have against epiphenomenalism:

“It is supposed to be just obvious that the hurtfulness of pain is partly responsible for the subject seeking to avoid pain, saying ‘it hurts’ and so on.”
“According to natural selection the traits that evolve over time are those conducive to physical survival. We may assume that qualia evolved over time—we have them, the earliest forms of life do no—and so we should expect qualia to be conducive to survival. The objection is that they could hardly help us to survive if they do nothing to the physical world.”
“…how can a person’s behavior provide any reason for believing he had qualia like mine, or indeed any qualia at all, unless this behavior can be regarded as the outcome of the qualia…And an epiphenomenalist cannot regard behavior, or indeed anything physical, as an outcome of qualia.”

The first objection, as Jackson phrases it, is silly, as all arguments resting on “obvious”-ness are, and so his reply to it is not very interesting for our purposes. The second objection betrays a substantial misunderstanding of evolutionary theory, and I think Jackson’s reply to it is correct[1]. The third objection, however, is very interesting, and it is in his reply to this objection that Jackson makes the argument that I now wish to deconstruct.

Jackson’s reply to this third objection is in the form of an analogy, which I will paraphrase. Suppose I read in the New York Times that the mayor of NYC is cutting funding for police. I can reasonably infer that the New York Post also reports on this fact, even though the New York Times and the New York Post may not have any influence on each other. I can do this because I know that the New York Times and the New York Post both report on issues of interest to New Yorkers, that the New York Times reporting that the mayor is cutting funding for police is a good indication that the mayor is, in fact, doing such a thing, that this is an issue of interest to New Yorkers, and that therefore the New York Post has also probably reported on this fact. The analogous case for qualia (which Jackson never explicitly lays out) is that given that my nervous system produces both qualia and certain types of behaviors (analogous to how the mayor’s actions “produce” the stories in both the New York Times and the New York Posts), and that your behaviors are similar to mine, I can infer that you have the sort of nervous system that would also produce qualia.

The difficulty with this argument, as Daniel Dennett (“’Epiphenomenal Qualia?”) points out, comes from the fact that, according to Jackson’s account, qualia have no causal powers in the physical world. Because of this, qualia cannot influence my behavior in any way[2]: otherwise what we have is not epiphenomenalism, but interactionist dualism. For this reason, it is impossible for me to know that I myself have qualia, as their existence or non-existence would make no difference to the workings of my brain.

“Ah,” it may be replied, “but just because qualia do not have any effect on the workings of your brain, they may still have an effect on the workings of your mind, say, your belief that you have qualia.” This is, strictly speaking, a valid move. However, it has troubling consequences: for example (referencing Dennett), if I lost my qualia, I would presumably no longer believe that I had them, but I would still act exactly as if I did. Mental states could no longer be said to influence behavior, as those mental states are potentially influenced by qualia and qualia cannot influence behavior[3]. It seems, then, that the epiphenomenalist is left with two options. One, they could say that qualia influence mental states, in which case mental states cannot influence behavior and my mind is completely severed from the physical world, or two—if we want to preserve the influence of mental states on behavior—that qualia do not influence mental states, in which case it is impossible for me to know whether I myself have qualia. The first option is unpalatable (as I will discuss below), yet if the epiphenomenalist takes the second position, he/she must admit that there is no way for me to infer the existence of qualia in others, since I cannot even use myself as an example!

The Knowledge Argument

“Alright,” says the epiphenomenalist. “Let us assume your analysis is correct. If qualia have no effect on the physical world, then it is impossible for us to know whether we ourselves have qualia. However, there may be many things that it is impossible for us to know about, but which nevertheless exist. For example, there might be creatures that live beyond—and will always live beyond—the area of the universe that we can observe. It would be impossible for us to ever know about them, yet that does not change their existence.”

Against this, many would argue that, in the absence of any sort of evidence, it is useless to speak of some thing’s “existence”. There is a much larger philosophical issue at stake here. Happily, we do not need to discuss this issue now. For if qualia are truly epiphenomenal, then Jackson’s Knowledge Argument—the central part of his paper—completely falls apart.

This argument is as follows. Imagine that there is a neuroscientist, Mary, who for some reason has been forced to live her whole life inside a black-and-white room[4]. Despite this, Mary becomes a specialist in color vision and, eventually, learns everything that it is possible to know about how color vision works: complete descriptions of the physical mechanisms, the functional roles that color perception and various colors play, etc. One day, Mary’s captors decide to let her out of the room. She gets handed a tomato—the fruit of choice for released prisoners—and finds that, despite her omniscience regarding color vision, the color of the tomato is a completely new experience for her. “Aha,” she exclaims, “so this is what ‘red’, the color I know is associated with tomatoes, actually looks like!” She has learned a new fact about color that was not amongst any of the physical facts: what such color is like. This would seem to imply, then, that this fact about what red is like—the quale associated with red—is not part of the physical world.

However, this story does not make any sense if we accept that qualia are epiphenomenal. Firstly, if qualia have no influence on the physical world, it cannot be the new quale that caused Mary to make any sort of exclamation. She would have said the same thing, quale or not. This objection does not mean much, though—it can easily be countered that even though we cannot know from her actions whether or not Mary has learned a new fact, it is still the case that her subjective experience obviously now includes that fact. Perhaps we can imagine that Mary merely thought about the fact that she now had this new qualia, so we don’t have to worry about its effect on her actions. This does not help, though, as we must now ask whether Mary’s thoughts are reflected in the workings of her brain. I.e., could some sort of neuroscientific Laplace’s Demon, who knows everything about the physical structure of Mary’s brain at any time, be able to tell us what she is thinking? I think Jackson would want the answer to this to be yes. Yet, if it is true that qualia can influence Mary’s thoughts, and that thoughts are reflected by brain states, then one of two options become must be chosen: either qualia can influence brain states, and are therefore not epiphenomenal, or thoughts—and this would seem to include all thoughts, not just those specifically about qualia, as any given thought could always have qualia as part of its causal history—are entirely distinct from those brain states, even though they are reflected by them. If we choose this latter option, then the causal relationship between thoughts and brain states, if one exists, must be a one-way street: thoughts are caused by the brain states, but thoughts cannot influence brain states, and are, in fact, epiphenomenal. However, if thoughts are epiphenomenal, then anything that can be influenced by thoughts would have to be epiphenomenal too (otherwise, thoughts could exert some sort of influence on the physical world). This would likely include any mental state Mary might have (thoughts are, after all, quite influential in the mental world). In fact, if the entity called Mary can learn a new fact from experiencing a new quale—Mary can be influenced by qualia—then Mary herself must be an epiphenomenon: something caused by the lump of matter that has just been released from its black-and-white room, but with no ability to influence that lump of matter in any way.

Does the Knowledge Argument work without Epiphenomenal Qualia?

We have seen that if qualia are truly epiphenomenal, and yet I can learn a new fact from experiencing new qualia, then I myself must be epiphenomenal—otherwise, qualia can influence the physical world through me. While there is no immediately apparent logical reason why this view could not, possibly, be true, I think very few would be willing to accept it. If I am epiphenomenal, then, by definition, I have no power over the physical world—not even my own body. I am merely experiencing the effects of processes over which I have no control. In my mind this consequence is a sort of informal reductio ad absurdum, and I think most philosophers would agree[5].

However, perhaps we have been too concerned with epiphenomena. Perhaps Jackson’s Knowledge Argument still works—perhaps he just made a mistake by attaching epiphenomenal qualia to it. Of course, there are numerous objections to the Knowledge Argument not related to epiphenomenalism: perhaps what Mary learns is not a new fact, but a new mode of knowing some fact—not a “what”, but a “how”, or perhaps, as Dennett points out, our reaction to the Mary story merely reflects that we cannot conceive of what it would mean for Mary to know everything physical that there is to know—perhaps, with that knowledge, she would be able to reconstruct the subjective experience of seeing red. According to Dennett’s objection, Jackson is merely begging the question by pre-supposing that knowing all the physical facts will not allow Mary to have the experience. However, I want to take a different tack. I want to argue that, without epiphenomenalism, the Knowledge Argument does not work. Of course, we also just saw that with epiphenomenalism the Knowledge Argument doesn’t work. This means that if I’m successful, the Knowledge Argument will have nowhere to go.

If qualia do exist, but are not epiphenomenal, that is, they do have some sort of influence on the physical world, how does this affect the story of Mary? Let’s go back to before Mary left the room, when she knew everything physical there is to know about color vision. If the qualia associated with seeing color have a physical effect, then this effect would have to be included in Mary’s knowledge. This would lead to one of two options: either qualia are non-physical, in which case Mary’s description of the physical mechanism of color vision would have to have some sort of causal hole in it—that is, she could say only that A causes B, and then B causes something or other, and that something or other causes D—or that qualia is included in the physical description, in which case Mary would already know the subjective sensation of seeing red before leaving the room. Obviously, the second option leads to physicalism (although it is possible that the physical description might include stuff that we have not yet incorporated into our neuroscience), so it is obviously the first option that anyone who wants to say that qualia are non-physical must choose. This option implies that the physical world is not closed under physical causation—that is, that there are non-physical things that can nevertheless have physical effects. Now, there is no prima facie reason why this isn’t a viable option. However, there is also no prima facie reason to choose one of the two options over the other (at least, not until one considers the arguments of those such as Dennett). Once again, we are faced with the problem of begging the question: Jackson must pre-suppose that qualia would not be included in a complete physical description. Of course, those who want non-physical qualia could say that the physicalist is also guilty of question begging. The question is empirical.

Qualia of the Gaps

The question is empirical, but we must ask: can it, in fact, be answered? We move now to the realm of personal opinion. It seems likely to me that there is no possible empirical evidence that could allow us to choose between the two options until such time as we do find a physicalist description of qualia. That is, there is no way that we could determine whether the causal gap we have encountered—the place where we throw up our hands and say “well, something happens”—is, in principle, impossible to bridge. The question now becomes: what assumption shall we make when we encounter a seeming explanatory gap? Do we assume that it is intrinsically inexplicable, or do we assume that we just don’t know enough, or may not even be smart enough? I think the latter is a much more satisfactory option, as it allows and motivates us to continue searching for an answer. Furthermore, the history of science includes numerous examples of the solution of seemingly insoluble problems, problems that were declared to be permanently insoluble. Physicalism has triumphed in the past, and I believe that we can reasonably assume that it will continue to do so.

[1] Namely, that the fact that some trait exists does not mean that it was evolutionarily selected for. It may, instead, be a necessary byproduct of some other trait that was selected for.

[2] To clarify, in all following discussion I assume that epiphenomenalism defines the inability to influence the physical world as a necessary property of qualia instead of a contingent one. I.e., I take it to mean not only that qualia do not happen to influence the physical world, but that they cannot influence the physical world (at least not in our reality).

[3] At this point a particularly legalistic reader might have begun to object to my characterization of “influence”. “Qualia influence mental states, and mental states influence behavior, but you have failed to show that qualia influence behavior,” that reader may say. To this I would reply: imagine that qualia were taken out of the causal chain. Would this not change the behavior of things further down in the chain? At least one property of influence/causal power is that if in order to give a complete causal account of the behavior of B one must describe the behavior of A, then A influences B.

[4] We may suppose also that, for whatever reason, she cannot see the colors of her own body.

[5] It may be objected I am pre-supposing the existence of free-will here, which would be ironic, as I do not believe in free-will. However, I think the objection is unfounded. Even though we may not have control over our volitions, it still seems very hard to hold that those volitions do not have the causal powers that we feel they do.

Extended Cognition

2011-05-19T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hampshire College

Philosophy of Mind

Introduction

In their paper “The extended mind”, Clark & Chalmers argue that the traditional view of cognition and the mind as being “inside the skull” is incorrect. Instead, they argue, cognitive processes—and, indeed, the mind itself—are partially constituted by the surrounding environment. Clark & Chalmers’ position is more than simple externalism—the position that a consideration of external, environmental factors is important in understanding the workings of the mind—it is radical, active externalism, arguing that the external, environmental factors are part of the mind. Clark & Chalmers focus in particular on the ways that belief can be extended. In this paper, I argue that belief is not something that can be, as of now[1], extended, and that memory can much more plausibly be considered to be extended, and I propose a criterion by which we could consider something part of the mind. The mind is extended, just not in the particular way Clark & Chalmers argue for.

Clark & Chalmers’ Argument

In their paper, Clark & Chalmers spend most of their focus on beliefs as an example of extended cognition. Specifically, they introduce us to Otto, a man with Alzheimer’s who has developed a system for keeping track of the various information that he would like to recall: he writes it all down in a notebook, a notebook that is reliably available to him whenever he needs it. When Otto hears that the Museum of Modern Art is having an exhibition he would like to see, and that the MoMA is on 53^rd St., he writes this information down in his trusty notebook. For all intents and purposes, Clark & Chalmers argue, the content of Otto’s notebook constitutes his standing beliefs about the world. Because beliefs are part of the mind, Otto’s mind extends outside his skull, and, similarly, our own mind can be considered extended, since after all we quite often store information outside ourselves and there is no important difference between our writing stuff down in a notebook and Otto doing the same (except, of course, that we do not have Alzheimer’s).

Beliefs, and Why Otto’s Notebook Doesn’t Contain Them

Clark & Chalmers make a distinction between standing and occurrent beliefs, a distinction that is useful to go over before we continue. Occurrent beliefs are the beliefs that one is conscious of at any given moment: for example, the belief that is now brought to my mind that this essay is due today. Standing beliefs are those beliefs we have that we may not be consciously aware of at this moment, but which influence our actions and may, at any time, become occurrent. It is not even necessary that we be conscious in order to have standing beliefs: my standing belief that Mars is red exists even when I am in non-REM sleep.

It is my (occurrent and standing) belief that the contents of Otto’s notebook do not satisfy the definition of standing beliefs and also lack some important properties of such beliefs that are not contained in the definition (though perhaps they should be). Imagine some unfortunate person Alicia, who has sustained brain trauma that has made it very difficult for her to access semantic information about cars. Perhaps she can’t access it at all without some form of rehabilitation[2]. Furthermore, she has no implicit memories regarding cars: she behaves exactly as one who knows nothing about them. However, she does not lack the information: with appropriate help she can access it without having to relearn it. It is simply impossible for her to access it without significant effort. Does she have any beliefs regarding cars before she is able to access the information? It is apparent that she does not.

What is it about Alicia’s case that makes it apparent that she lacks beliefs about cars? First, that standing beliefs not only influence our behavior, but that they can do so without us being aware of them. So, for example, I do not have to consciously recall my beliefs about gravity to become concerned when some fragile object falls, even though without such belief that situation would have no reason to concern me (if I have no beliefs regarding gravity, for all I know the object may become safely suspended in midair). Or, for another example, at any particular moment I may act as if there is or isn’t a God without consciously referring to my beliefs on the matter. (Indeed, it seems that quite often the only times we become aware of many of our standing beliefs is when they are challenged in some way: things aren’t where we expected them to be, someone argues against our basic assumptions, etc.) Alicia’s information about cars cannot do this. And the content of Otto’s notebook cannot do this either: it cannot influence Otto’s behavior without him becoming consciously aware of it. Secondly, and on a related note, standing beliefs can, and often do, become occurrent beliefs automatically and/or without our conscious control. For example, when someone mentions the Empire State Building the belief that it is in New York may occur to me, quite without my willing it to. Once again, Alicia’s information about cars cannot do this and, once again, the contents of Otto’s notebook cannot do this: someone mentioning the MoMA would not cause any occurrent beliefs on the matter for Otto, unless he made a willful decision to check.

There are likely many more important differences between the sorts of things that standing beliefs can do and the sort of things that the contents of Otto’s notebook can do. At least in regards to the two I’ve described, which seem particularly essential, the first by itself is justification for rejecting the description of the contents of Otto’s notebook as “beliefs”, as those contents cannot influence behavior directly.

Memories

So while beliefs can’t be plausibly extended, does Clark & Chalmers’ thesis still hold: can the mind be extended? Is there some aspect of our self that reaches out into the world? I believe that memory fits the bill. When Otto writes down information in his notebook, what is contained in the notebook is not beliefs, but memories.

The distinction between memories and beliefs is perhaps subtle, but it is clear that there is a difference. Memories can do many of the things beliefs do that I described above: they can influence our behavior without us being aware of them, they can be recalled automatically, etc. In the case of memories, however, these properties are not in any way essential. Going back to the case of Alicia, we can ask whether she has memories regarding cars. It is apparent that she does: the memories were there, she just could not access them. What would she be re-accessing otherwise? Memories need be nothing more than the storage of information[3]. (Of course, one could ask whether, without access to information regarding cars, that information, and hence those memories, could be said to belong to Alicia. I discuss this question—that of the ownership of memories—later on.)

Otto’s, and Our, Memories

Memories seem to be much more plausibly extended than beliefs[4]. Information stored outside the body seems to serve the same functional role as memory, for the same reasons Clark & Chalmers argued that such information serves the same function as belief. If we follow Otto around, we will see that where we would commit some information to memory, he writes it down, and where we would consult our memory, he consults his notebook. It is more difficult and effortful, perhaps, for him to access the information in his notebook than it normally is for us to access our memories while in a normal state; however, it is no more difficult for him than it would be for us to access our memories if we were tired, distracted, or had suffered the same sort of brain trauma as Alicia. In fact, even in a normal state the access of our own memories can be difficult: I often find, for instance, that the name of some person is inaccessible to me (despite the fact that I know it) and that I have to perform some sort of effortful memory search to re-access it. There is perhaps a qualitative difference in our memories: whereas my memories “feel” like information that I knew all along, the contents of the notebook would not. But this only reflects the fact that we are accessing the memories through different modalities.[5]

Who’s Memories?

In this discussion, the question may arise: if memories can be stored outside of the body, what makes those memories one person’s instead of another’s? Or, furthermore, what makes some information I’ve written down my memory, instead of just a record of information? I think this is the wrong question to ask. It assumes that my memories are encased in a unitary shell, that one person’s memories cannot be another’s, and that something is either my memory or it isn’t. I propose, instead, as an object of further study, that there is a degree to which a memory can be considered to belong to a particular individual. This degree is determined by a combination of properties, neither of which are necessary in and of themselves, although it is necessary that there be at least one or some combination of them: first, how easily is the information recalled by that particular person, and secondly, how important is the information to the identity of that person? By the first criteria, anything stored “in the head”, which when recalled has the qualitative sense of being “mine”, is indisputably my memory, regardless of how relevant it may be to my identity; and by the second criteria, a record of my life, sealed away so that I even cannot review it, would also constitute my memory. These are the extreme examples—most memories share both properties to some extent. In Otto’s case, the information in his notebook serves as his memory because of its reliability and ease of access, and also because without his notebook he would likely feel that he had lost an important piece of himself. [6]

But What of the Mind?

Perhaps, at this point, the reader will object that while memories may be extended, they are not aspects of the mind; therefore, the mind is not extended. Perhaps the mind is only those operations we perform on our memories; after all, there are many sources of information that the mind draws from in order to function that are not themselves part of the mind—sensory data, for instance, or, if you feel that the senses are part of the mind, the content of that data—and perhaps memory is such a source. To this, I would reply that in my formulation my “mind” is identical with my “self”, and it is our memories that make us who we are: if you remove some memory that is important to my conception of self, I would not longer be the same person, and, therefore, I am not of the same mind. Therefore, memories are part of the mind.

I think the difficulty lies in thinking of “the mind”: of the self as being one unitary thing, that if extended is extended in its entirety. Instead, I propose as a question for further study that the mind is made up of several different parts. Our conscious awareness is one such part, but our memories are also important. This non-unitary structure explains how outside sources of information can be memories and part of the mind, even though our recall of them is qualitatively different than that of memories stored “in the head”: the conscious aspect of our mind recalls them in different ways. Of course, now we need to ask how we determine what, exactly, can be considered part of the mind. There are many important factors that allow us to think—the beating of our heart, etc. How do we determine which of these should be considered part of the mind? I propose that the factors that are part of our minds are those that contribute functionally to the workings of the mind in such a way that they cannot be replaced without changing the identity of that mind—regardless of whether these factors are inside the head or not.

[1] I don’t consider it at all impossible that beliefs could be extended through the use of neural prosthetics in the future, as long as they satisfy the requirements listed later on in this paper.

[2] That, for the purposes of this thought experiment, does not include relearning the information.

[3] Although one can argue about whether and what certain types of stored information can be considered “memories”. I do not discuss this here.

[4] Furthermore, it seems much more natural to extend them this way: colloquially, we talk about a book of recollections, or a box full of memories, or even of places that remind us of the past as somehow containing the memories themselves (“this house is full of memories”), in a way that we do not for beliefs. While this fact about natural usage of terms does not show that it is in fact wrong to speak of beliefs as being extended (although as seen earlier it seems that it is), it does lend support to that assertion, and it make it even more likely that memories can be plausibly extended, as the idea does not seem too far from our natural intuitions about the use of our terms.

[5] One objection could be raised related to recent research on memory: it seems that when we recall memories, we re-imagine and rewrite them. Otto does not do this with the contents of his notebook (or, at least, it isn’t necessarily part of the process), therefore the contents are not memories. I would reply by saying that this fact about memory as it happens to work in no way describes an essential property: it could have turned out that the recollection of memories did not work this way, yet we would still call it memory.

[6] It is also possible for entities other than individuals to have memories: collective memory is allowed for, if the information is easily accessed by and/or important to the identity of the people as a collective.

Mind-Brain Identity

2011-05-19T15:36:00.000-07:00

Hampshire College

Philosophy of Mind

What is identity theory? In this paper, I explain it, and explain why it is flawed, namely, because it does not account for multiple realization.
Identity theory is the metaphysical doctrine that, while epistemically distinct, brain states and mental states are ontologically identical. By this I mean that mental states and brain states are the same thing: the only difference is in how one perceives, thinks about, and describes this thing. The fact that brain states and mental states are identical is an empirical observation: it is not known a priori. An analogy that will perhaps make this whole idea clearer is the case of lightning, and its identity with electrical discharge. It is known that lightning is electrical discharge; however, the way we perceive, think about, and describe lightning is completely different from the way we perceive, think about, and describe electrical discharge. Furthermore, we would not know that they are the same thing if it had not been experimentally confirmed (ala Benjamin Franklin and his kite). Similarly, evidence from cognitive neuroscience leads to the hypothesis of identity. Identity theory is a reductionist theory; it posits that the description of any higher-level phenomenon can be reduced to a description of lower-level phenomena without a loss of information, i.e., mental states can be reduced to brain states, which, being physical states, are further reducible to the laws of physics.

Identity theory is, furthermore, a theory of type-identity: it claims that any particular mental state type (such as pain) is reducible to a particular brain state type (such as C-fibers firing)—indeed, that it must be that brain state type, just as lighting must be electrical discharge. This is distinguished from token-identity, which claims merely that any instance of some mental state is reducible to some sort of brain state. Type-identities, though not without their difficulties, are much easier to clearly define than token-identities. Take, for example, the claim that “pain is C-fibers firing”. If something is pain, it is C-fibers firing, and if it is C-fibers firing, it is pain—plain and simple. Token identities are fuzzier: for example, what is it about this object in my hand that makes it a mug? If we want strict definitions of our token-identities, we must be able to say that those things, and only those things, that satisfy a certain set of criteria (has a handle, holds liquid, etc.) are tokens of a certain type. We must either posit functional types—i.e., that all tokens that are representative of the type X have the particular combination of functions Y, and that all things that have the particular combination of functions Y are X—or physical types—all tokens that are representative of type X share a particular physical trait Y, and all things that share the physical trait Y are X.

The advantages of a reductionist theory like type-identity theory are apparent: it gives our experience a sort of explanatory, causal, and even ontological coherence and closure. When things are reduced, the method of explanation for any particular phenomenon is no longer different from the method of explanation for any other phenomena: they can both be explained in terms of the same underlying process. Causally, reductionism implies that there are not separate chains of causality for different phenomena, i.e. that there are not mental processes going on according to their own laws of causality separate from the physical processes and their laws of causality. And ontologically, reductionism reduces the number of posited kinds of entities (minds, heat, etc.) down to, potentially, one.

There is, however, a problem, which may be fatal for identity (or, specifically, type-identity) theory, and, indeed, reductionism in general—multiple realization, i.e., the fact that the same higher-level system can be implemented on entirely different underlying physical systems. For an example, consider an algorithm (a set of rules for how to perform some function). Let’s say the rules of this algorithm are to take an input number and add 2 to it. This algorithm can be run on multiple, almost incomparable physical systems. For example, I can do it in my head, I can do it with a pen and pencil, I can design a contraption out of Tinkertoys to do it, I can create a program on my calculator to do it, it can be done on a Mac, and it can be done on a PC. In fact, there are a potentially infinite number of ways that this one algorithm could be implemented, with nothing physically similar about any of them.

Similarly, there seem to be multiple ways in which a mental event, for example seeing green, can be correlated with brain events—after all, the way that you see green might be quite different from the way I see green. In fact, in order for the description “seeing green” to be useful, it must describe these multiple ways: otherwise, the only thing that could be described as truly seeing green would be me, as everyone’s brain is different and I am the only person with the exactly the physical brain state that I have when seeing green! The case of C-fibers being pain would seem to be easier: C-fibers are, after all, a particular type of neuron shared by us all. But if pain is C-fibers firing, does that mean that a petri dish full of C-fibers and nothing else would experience pain? If there is any conclusion we do not want our theory of mind to entail, it is this. This would be true of any mental event: if one attempts to identify it with some very specific thing (the activities of a type of cell, the presence of a chemical, etc.) one must claim that that thing, all by itself, is the said mental event, a claim which leads to absurdity. Pain, instead, seems to identify with various events interacting amongst different parts of the brain, the specific organization of which is once again going to be less and less similar between any two people. The problem becomes even more difficult when considering the supposed mental lives of non-humans. Monkeys, dogs, reptiles, etc., have brains that are physically more or less different from ours. Identity theory would seem to suggest that these creatures cannot have the same sort of mental events we do[1]. And these creatures at least are biologically similar to us: what about computers or aliens?

In fact, everything that has mental states would seem to have to have distinct types of mental states! Our ontologically simple theory has failed us: instead of pain, for example, we now have my pain, your pain, Sue’s pain, dog pain, alien pain, computer pain, etc. Instead of simplifying our ontology, identity theory requires us to posit a new type of mental state for each possible case. This is no good—we would like a theory of mentality that not only explains the nature of mental states we happen to have, but that also has some degree of generalizability, allowing us to say something about the mental states of others in a way that such states can be related to our own. Identity theory has very weak explanatory power in this regard—it would be as if we had a theory of biology that didn’t allow us the make comparisons between different species.

Is there a solution, wherein we can avoid dualism, keep physicalism, and not run into these problems? I believe so, and I believe the answer lies in a sort of functional type-identity theory that I glossed over earlier. Let’s go back to the algorithm: I said that it was the same algorithm regardless of the physical implementation: but what makes this the case? It is that the algorithm is performing the same function. Similarly, a mental event is a sort of function processing information in a certain way. While there may be difficulties with this theory, it seems to me to be one worth pursuing.

[1] I must qualify this statement, because identity theory has, occasionally, done the exact opposite. If we identify pain with C-fibers firing, and another creature has C-fibers, then they feel pain: we can therefore infer that animals such as, say, cows experience the same kind of pain we do, as the physiology is quite similar. This argument, unfortunately, does not hold under scrutiny, since, as said earlier, pain identifies the interaction of several parts of the brain which is going to be very different between us and other creatures.

Logic and Mathematics

2011-05-19T15:34:00.000-07:00

Hampshire College

Low-Tech Comupting

Mathematics and logic are, firstly, systems whose original purpose for existence is the same: to provide a system for more effectively operating within our world. Both, as they began, did so through a codification of common sense. They quantified our experience and defined what operations we could apply to those quantities so that we could systematically find facts of which we were previously unaware. The distinction between the two was in what they attempted to quantify: mathematics was primarily concerned with objects in the world, such as money, land, and later the laws of physics, whereas logic was primarily concerned with concepts in the mind, such as propositions and categories (although those concepts often related to objects).

However, despite their different foci, logic and mathematics were based on a common method: deduction, that is, a system of rules which you can apply in such a way as to arrive at a conclusion which is both new and necessarily true (pg. 99). As such, it was almost inevitable that the two would meet. One of the earliest examples of this meeting is probably Euclid’s “Elements” (pg. 324), but the true synthesis came with the work of Boole and Frege, where it was shown that logic could be dealt with mathematically, and that one could attempt to build mathematics on a logical foundation (pg. 329-330).

The question now raises itself: is mathematics a branch of logic or logic a branch of mathematics? The logicists such as Frege and Russell believed the first, intuitionists believed the latter (pg. 328). I believe both are wrong. Just as philosophy is not a branch of logic, but instead logic is the method by which we do philosophy, so too is mathematics not a branch of logic—logic is the method by which we do mathematics, in the construction of theorems and proofs. Because of this, though, logic cannot be considered a branch of mathematics: while it is a mathematical system that works in a way particular unto itself and distinct from other areas of mathematics, it nevertheless permeates the entire structure of the enterprise. If mathematics is a tree with branches, logic is how the tree grows.

However, it is here that we run into our difficulty. Because while logic is how the tree grows, logic won’t necessarily make it grow the way we want. Logic and mathematics both have the same problem that the way that they allow us to systematically analyze the world by turning that world into symbols, which are then manipulated according to a strict set of rules. This is formalism, which attempts to avoid errors due to flaws in human intuition by making logic and math completely devoid of meaning. But as long as the symbols, statements, and rules aren’t mutually inconsistent, you can come up with whatever rules you like and make whatever statements you like. Yet, only some of these rules and statements will give you a system that provides an accurate description of the world—which is, after all, the original purpose of mathematics and logic. The test of a logical or mathematical system’s truth would seem to be, then, concurrence with the actual world, with experience. But if this is the case, then why should we try so hard to logically prove that, for example, 1+1=2, as was done in 300 pages by Russell and Whitehead? To do so is to use a system whose truth is based on experience to prove something that according to experience we already know to be true!

I must admit that I don’t know the answer, and furthermore don’t know enough about mathematics to even know whether I’m asking the right questions. I can say, however, that I have a very strong conviction that we should attempt to prove as much as we can by starting with the least and most simple and obvious assumptions. I suppose this really is the maxim of all work in philosophy, mathematics, and science, which has allowed those fields to flourish: to not take anything for granted, unless one absolutely has to.

Agnosticism does not exist

2011-04-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

OK, so this argument makes some people angry, so follow me:

In the literature, there are usually two varieties of Atheism that are distinguished from each other: weak (negative) atheism and strong (positive) atheism. Weak atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of God: weak atheists feel that those who believe in God carry the burden of evidence. Strong atheism is the belief that God does not exist: strong atheists feel that the evidence points to God not existing. (Note that a lack of belief in X does not necessarily entail a belief in Not X.)
One cannot both believe that God exists and not believe that God exists. They can, however, believe neither.
Now, an agnostic is, according to Merriam Webster, "one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god". Agnostics do not believe that God exists, nor do they believe that God does not exist.
Therefore, by 2 and the definition of agnosticism, agnostics do not believe that God exists.
Therefore, by 4 and the definition of weak atheism, agnostics are weak atheists.

Now, there are people who would probably consider themselves religious agnostics: they believe in God but think there's room for doubt. But in this case they ARE "committed to believing in...the existence of...God or a god."

So in summary: one can either believe that God exists, or not believe that God exists (although the latter does not entail believing that God does NOT exist). Because agnostics do not hold any particular attitude about God's existence, they do not believe that God exists. Therefore they are weak atheists.

Note on "belief" and "knowledge": "agnosticism" strictly means "not knowing". So strictly speaking, religious people and atheists could be agnostic, even though they have beliefs on the matter, if they do not feel that they know whether god exists. However, the term has come to mean not believing anything one way or the other (as can be seen in the definition). With this meaning, my argument holds.

Why did I think this post was a good idea?

2011-02-22T22:31:00.000-08:00

So I decided it would be worthwhile to check out the stats on my blog.

Search Keywords that got people here:

All Time

dervine7.blogspot.com
peter benzi
sandra pettinico
taliesin nyala
"richard wayne lee" or "lee, richard wayne" strained bedfellows
nvcc homeschool pdf connecticut
patricia pallis
peter benzi nvcc
petr benzi
"douglas hofstadter" utilitarianism

All pretty predicatble. Stuff I've mentioned in my posts (especially the teachers I mentioned in my commencement speech). It's mildly interesting that 2 people apparently got to my blog looking for the article by Richard Wayne Lee that I cited. But who is this Taliesin Nyala? Turns out that she's an Alum of Hampshire, and she shows up on my page because I follow the Culture, Brain, and Development blog. Which makes these next keyword stats very confusing...

Past Month

dervine7.blogspot.com
"taliesin nyala"
agent hujinikabolokov
religious humanism strained bedfellows pagans
taliesin nyala how pleasure works
taliesin nyala naked
taliesin nyala sex

Your guess is as good as mine. Especially as if you search those last two the only website you get that has ALL those words in it is mine! ("naked" appears in my blog post about the sayings of Jesus, and "sex" appears in my favorite quotations)

(By the way, Agent Hujinikabolokov is from Sleep Talkin' Man.)

Referring Sites

Actually, never mind. This wasn't a terribly interesting blog post to begin with and now it's 2:24AM. Except for uupdates.net and Facebook, the referring sites just a bunch of referral spam (I'm guessing porn), which is mildly depressing. From Russia, it seems. Although I have been getting a lot more views from Facebook recently, which means my friends are looking at this blog, which is cool! Speaking of Russia, that spam makes it so that they are one of the top countries to view this blog. So there you go.

EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS!

2011-02-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start trying to post regularly! I'm sure that for all of you guys who check this blog regularly only to be disappointed by the lack of, well, blogging, this will once again fill your lives with meaning...

OK, so the title of this blog is hyperbolic. Which leads to the second development, which is that I realized my blog was distinctly serious and formal. Which is odd, because I have a distinct lack of seriousness and formality. So, more silliness.

So......yeah. That's the story.

Doodled this during a class...

2011-02-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

The Turing Test

2011-02-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

Hampshire College
Philosophy of Mind

The Turing Test involves the following procedure: a person, the interrogator, is talking to both a machine, designed to imitate a human, and to an actual human. (The communication is entirely through text.) The interrogator’s job is to determine what is the human and what is the machine. If no interrogator can determine which is which, the machine is judged to be thinking. Is this accurate? In this paper, I will argue that it is, because we can only judge thought based on behavior, and if the behavior of the machine is identical to a human’s but the machine is not thinking, we must doubt the existence of human thought.

When discussing the Turing Test, it is important to make a distinction between what we can measure and the “inner nature”, so to speak, of that which we are measuring. The discussion then involves two questions: by what criteria are we to judge something as thinking, and is that thing, in fact, thinking?

In regards to the first question, let’s begin with considering the method that we, in fact, employ, before moving on to the method we ought to employ. I.e., how is it that we naturally determine that some particular thing in our environment is thinking? A first answer to this question might be that we ascribe thought to other members of the human race, and nothing else. This will not do, however, as we often say that certain humans lack thought: definitely if they are brain dead, for instance, and more controversially if they are mentally handicapped or a child. And although there are no non-controversial examples of non-humans thinking in our experience, we nevertheless have no problem imagining that non-human beings, such as extraterrestrials—that have no genetic or physiological resemblance to us (or, in some cases, no physiology at all)—could nevertheless think. Also, it seems that we often ascribe thought to non-human animals of which we do have experience, i.e., “the dog is thinking about where to hide its bone”. Perhaps in this later case we use “thinking” as a figure of speech, a sort of shortcut for “acting as if they are thinking”. But why then do we not say that when we talk of other humans “thinking” we are using the same shortcut? After all, we do not perceive thoughts (except for our own)—we perceive their manifestations, the acting-as-ifs. For those who need to be convinced of this fact, consider the following thought experiment.

Suppose that someone had been rendered completely incapable of moving any part of his/her body, either through nerve damage or some sort of outside force: furthermore, the parts of his/her nervous system that we believe are responsible for thought have been hidden from us in some way (perhaps encased in some material which is opaque to any sort of scan), so that we cannot determine whether they are active or damaged. (We could also suppose that there has been no damage to the nerves carrying signals to their brain, if this supposition is deemed necessary.) It is undeniable that this person could be thinking: victims of temporary paralysis can describe the experiences and thoughts they had while they were paralyzed. But it would be completely impossible for us determine whether this person is, in fact, thinking.

So how do we naturally determine whether other things in our environment are thinking? The examples given of brain-dead individuals and aliens make it apparent that this judgment is not ultimately made on the basis of belonging to a certain species, human. It may be initially made on that basis—we probably have an instinctual tendency to ascribe thought to any other human we meet and ascribe a lack of thought to any non human (for example, on encountering a brain-dead individual we might assume he/she is aware until we find out their condition, or in meeting a sufficiently strange alien we might assume it’s just a non-thinking creature until we learn more about it)—but it isn’t ultimately made on it. Instead, we make this judgment based on whether the thing behaves in a way that appears to indicate thought.[1] Furthermore, the example in the thought experiment above makes it clear that this is the only way that we can make this judgment; and, pragmatically, it is the way that we ought to make this judgment. This means that for a machine that passes the Turing Test we should judge it to be thinking: it is behaving exactly like a human, human’s think, therefore it is behaving in the sort of way that indicates thought—and if from these facts we do not infer that machine is thinking, then we are holding it to a different standard than the other things about which we make such judgments.

Now we move on to the second question. Does our judgment, made for pragmatic reasons, reflect actual reality? Is the machine, in fact, thinking?

It is useful now to define exactly what we mean by “thinking”. Turing’s definition[2] is that the sort of thing that thinks is the sort of thing that passes the Turing Test, a definition which is useful for him as a computer scientist interested in what computers can do but not very useful for philosophers of mind, as the definition makes it tautological that a machine which passes the Turing Test is thinking. For our purposes, I propose the following definition: something is thinking when the part of it responsible for thought is manipulating models of the world (which are not physical models), and when it has a subjective, qualitative awareness of the models and manipulations that it is performing on them. The first part of the definition comes from the fact that one of the things that distinguishes thought from non-thought is that while the latter consists of observably deterministic responses to force and/or stimulus and in solving problems purely by trial and error behavior (randomly producing behavior until something works), the former consists of considering the best course of behavior before doing anything, and this consideration is made by the thinking thing modeling the situation and then running through the possible solutions, noting what those different solutions do within the model—observationally, this means that something that acts as if it thinks can look at a puzzle and then proceed to quickly (relative to trial-and-error) perform the solution. This is how we, who are thinking things, behave, and it is a major part of the acting-as-if by which we judge that other things are thinking. However, the second part of this definition is important, as there are many things that manipulate models of the world that may not be thinking: any computer would fall under this category. The second part of the definition is more essential to our question, as we are making the distinction between what we can measure and the “inner nature” of that which we are measuring. Because of this, it is important to specify that the subjective awareness be qualitative, i.e., that there is something that “it is like”, so to speak, for the thing to be aware of what it’s doing—as computers can monitor and analyze their own internal processes and still not be considered to be thinking.

However, the fact that computers can do this might mean that there is something “it is like” and we just do not realize it. For this reason I will not ask the general question about what sorts of computers could think, but the specific question of whether the sort of computer that can pass the Turing Test thinks; I’m concerned with whether passing the Turing Test is sufficient for allowing us to infer thought, not whether it is necessary.[3]

We are now ready to answer the question: is the machine that passes the Turing Test thinking? We have shown that if we are to judge whether it is thinking the way that we judge whether other things are thinking, we must judge it to be thinking. And based on the facts considered so far, I believe that our judgment would be accurate. The machine that passes the Turing Test is the machine that perfectly imitates human behavior. If it is not, in fact, thinking, then humans that pass the Turing Test would not have to be thinking either. Thinking would not have any explanatory force or necessary connection to behavior, and we therefore would have no reason to assume its existence. Furthermore, it could be argued that if the machine is not thinking, humans must not be thinking, as we have a case of two things that are behaving in an identical manner and therefore it would seem that any phenomenon produced by one must be produced by the other (even if the phenomenon looks different: for example the same program run on my Mac plays music, whereas if it were run on a mechanical computer it does not). If the machine that passes the Turing Test is not thinking, then solipsism becomes a truly viable option: and this, I think, is a conclusion no reasonable person wants to accept.

[1] One who objects to this assertion might bring this up the case of the paralyzed patient who, while not exhibiting any behavior, nevertheless exhibits certain brain activity from which we infer that he/she is thinking. However, the only reason that we can make this inference is that that sort of activity is normally associated with thought-exhibiting behavior: if we had not observed such a correlation, we would not know what, if anything, the brain activity indicated. We can also imagine that a neurological (or whatever word we’d use for the study of the part of the alien involved in cognition) examination of a thinking alien might reveal completely different sorts of activity. Therefore, my assertion can be easily extended to say that, in cases where we cannot make judgments based on behavior, we can infer thought if the thing we’re dealing with exhibits some observable phenomena that is normally correlated with thought-exhibiting behavior amongst examples of that thing (if examples of that thing engage in thought-exhibiting behavior).

[2] “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, pg. 3

[3] Indeed, it is not necessary: our paralyzed patient from the earlier thought experiment would not pass it, although he/she is thinking. It is also possibly that a beings with a higher level of thought than our own would fail it: the sorts of things they might say might appear to us to be total gibberish.

Proof

2011-02-16T16:16:00.000-08:00

Hampshire College
Low-Tech Computing

Prove: there are as many even numbers as there are natural numbers.

Proof: any even number can be divided by 2 and the result is one unique natural number, and any natural number can be multiplied by 2 and the result is an even number. Therefore, every even number has a corresponding natural number and there are no natural numbers that do not have a corresponding even number. If there were not as many even numbers as there are natural numbers, then there would have to be some natural number that could not be multiplied by 2 to get an even number, or an even number that, when divided by 2, produced more than one natural number. Neither of these are the case. Therefore, there are as many even numbers as there are natural numbers. ☺

Analysis "They're Made of Meat"

2011-02-16T16:09:00.000-08:00

Hampshire College
Philosophy of Mind

Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made of Meat” raises the dual issues of the seeming disconnect between our physical baseness and our mental capacities, and of human chauvinism. In regards to the first question, we are made to see the seeming absurdity in modern cognitive neuroscience, in that “meat”, the same stuff that constitutes a hamburger, is understood to give rise to the mental life that we value so much. It is interesting, however, that the other, normal, non-meat creatures that the narrators discuss are also physical beings, although of a different sort than the “meat” on earth. Therefore, intelligence is still ultimately based in physical processes, such as the dynamics of an electron plasma. Because of this, “Meat” does not in fact suggest that the mind cannot be the result of physical processes, unless it makes that suggestion through the irony of having beings whose minds arise from physical processes alien to us finding the physical processes that our minds arise from bizarre.
This brings us the second issue, that of human chauvinism. We, humans, assume that if we find intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, they will be, fundamentally, the same as us. (There are even those, such as John Searle in his essay “Minds, Brains, and Programs”, who seem to suggest [however vaguely] that mental processes can only arise from the sort of physical processes that happen in the human brain.) The story’s challenge to human chauvinism only goes so far, however, as the minds of the narrators and the non-meat beings they encounter still seem to work the same way as our own, just with a different underlying physical structure (which brings up a whole new set of issues and questions about the relationship between the mind and the physical to be discussed at some other time). Indeed, their minds are similar enough to our own that contact is possible, and while it seems we might not find them if we were looking for extraterrestrial biology similar to our own, it still seems that we would recognize their activities as carrying the stamp of intelligence (the situation is the same for the narrators of the story in regards to us: they could recognize the radio signals we produce as coming from intelligent beings). As such, “Meat” does not really confront us with the possibility of minds that are unrecognizable to us as such; we are not presented with odd situations such as Jupiter having a subjective life that arises out of the dynamics of its atmosphere, or a light bulb experiencing being on or off, or the interactions of the entire human race producing a mind of which we are as unaware and incapable of understanding as individual neurons are of our own minds. Of course, this would be an extraordinarily difficult story to write; and it would be similarly difficult, possibly even impossible, for us as humans to find such minds. And so, while being careful not to look only for physical life that is like our own, in regards to extraterrestrial intelligence we would have to rely on a sort of Turing Test: are the sorts of things it’s doing the sort of things we do? If so, then regardless of how exactly it works, we would seem to have discovered a mind elsewhere in the universe.

Personal Pronouns

2011-02-16T15:58:00.000-08:00

Hampshire College
Psychology of Language

Introduction
Consider the following statement: “You asked me to go to the store to pick up some eggs for grandma. I picked them up for her.” For a normal adult speaker of English, this sentence is completely comprehensible; furthermore, it is a statement that would be easily and naturally produced. However, imagine that you are an alien with no understanding of English. Your English-speaking companion makes this statement, helpfully pointing at you when she says “you”, herself when she says “me” and “I”, and grandma when she says “her”. After a few conversations like this, you think you have gotten the hang of English. Walking up to your companion (who is sick at home) after giving grandma a ride, you proudly state: “You drove grandma to the store. Her picked up some eggs for her. Oh! Are I sick? You hope me get better!”
From a theoretical standpoint, pronouns should be hard, and it is remarkable children can use them properly. When using pronouns, one must decide what
1. person & gender to use (are you talking about yourself [1st Person]: “I/me/my/mine”; to someone else [2nd Person]: “you/your/yours”; or about someone else entirely [3rd Person]: “he/him/his/she/her/hers/it/its”? In regards to 3rd Person, is the referent a person [“he/she”] or an object [“it’], and is it male or female?)
and what
2. case to use (what function does the pronoun have in the sentence? Is the sentence about something the referent does [Nominative, Subjective]: “I/you/he/she/it”; something that is being done to the referent [Objective]: “me/you/her/him/it”; describing something as the property of the referent [Adjectival Genitive] or naming it as such [Nominal Genitive]: “my/your/his/her/its” or “mine/your/his/hers/its”; or something the referent is doing to itself [Reflexive]: “myself/yourself/himself/herself/itself”)
and whether you are talking about one person or thing or more than one person or thing. You must also realize that although you can freely interchange 3P pronouns and names, it is not acceptable to refer to yourself or the person you are talking to by name (Chiat, 1986).
The issues that will be focused on in this paper are those related to shifting reference, pronoun reversal, and the use of names or pronouns amongst typically developing children and children with autism.

Shifting reference
Most words name things: more importantly, they always name the same thing. A table is a table, Mr. Jones is Mr. Jones, the teacher is the teacher, regardless of whether you are talking, your friend is talking, you are reading a book, etc. One thing might have multiple names, or one name might signify multiple things, but the meaning of the name does not change depending on who is speaking (Clark 1978; Fay and Schuler, 1980; Ricard et al., 1999). Children learning a language must comprehend, through some means, that the person the words “you”, “I”, or “me” refer to changes depending on who is speaking to whom (Bates, 1990; Chiat, 1986; Clark, 1978; Ricard, Girouard, and Gouin-Decarie, 1999). How do children understand these rules? This question has intrigued psycholinguists for some time in regards to the light in might show on the connections between language, the conceptions of self and other, and theory of mind. Charney (1980) noted three ways in which children might understand pronouns: speech-role referring, person referring, and person-in-speech-role-referring. In a role-referring understanding, the child correctly understands the pronouns to refer to different members of the discourse depending on who is speaking. This understanding requires that the child have some sort of non-egocentrism, allowing it to take the point of view of others. In a person-referring understanding, the child understands the pronouns as a sort of name (see below). In a person-in-speech-role understanding, the child learns the pronouns most relevant to itself. The child understands pronouns in relation to the child’s own speech roles, i.e., it understands that “I” refers to it when it is speaking, but may not understand that “I” refers to others when they are speaking. This last theory is the one Charney supports.

Pronoun use by typically developing children
A natural assumption would be that children, on hearing themselves referred to as “you” and their parents referring to themselves as “I”, would assume that these terms are a type of name (Clark, 1976): our alien in the introduction made precisely this type of error. The child would assume that it is “you” and either its parent or adults in general are “I”. This phenomenon has been referred to as “pronoun reversal” (although “nonreversal” might be a more accurate term [Fay and Schuler, 1980; Fay, 1982], as the error in fact stems from the child not reversing pronouns to accommodate speaker roles). Interestingly, pronoun errors of this type are rare; even more interestingly, despite their rarity they are still found amongst typically developing children, often enough to be well documented in the literature (Clark 1978; Cruttenden, 1977; Chiat, 1986). According to Bates “it is quite common at age twenty to twenty-four months for a child to say ‘carry you/hold you/help you’ to mean ‘carry me/hold me/help me’” (1990). Cooley (1908) noted in a diary study that his third daughter would use “she” and “I” to refer to herself from the age of 1;11-2;3, such as in the statement “I carry you”, expressing the desire to be carried. Inconsistent reversals were also noted, such as “I want to take a walk with me”. Chiat (1981) performed a case study in 3 sessions with the subject, Matthew. The sessions took place at ages 2;4.16, 2;4.24, and 2;5.11, and Matthew’s comprehension and production were tested, the latter naturalistically in the 2nd session and with some attempts to elicit pronouns in the third. In the second session, Matthew’s use of 1P pronouns was usually correct, but he almost never used the correct pronoun for the addressee, as in the examples “I cry”=you’ll cry. This was particularly true in possessive contexts, such as “That my umbrella”=that’s your umbrella. 2P pronouns were used to refer to himself, as in “You’ll cry”=I’ll cry. Also, pronouns were occasionally inconsistent, with both the correct and incorrect forms used in a single utterance, similarly to Cooley’s observations. In the 3rd session, reversals of pronouns in regards to the addressee were still present, but had become rare, with Matthew often correcting himself. Despite these errors in production, Matthew’s performance on tests of comprehension was perfect. In a cross-sectional and longitudinal study by Loveland (1984) a correlation was found between mastery of different spatial points of view and pronoun errors, with some reversal errors observed amongst those children who did not understand different points of view. These errors often happened in contexts where the child was asked a question and repeated the pronoun used, e.g. “What do I have?” “I have cup”. Errors in comprehension were noted. Jordan (1989), in a comparison of autistic, typical, and mentally handicapped children, noted errors made by a few of the typical children in comprehension and production, with two typical children misunderstanding “you” as referring to the speaker and 3 children making errors in the production of “you”, one of them also making an error in the production of “me”. Oshima-Takane’s (1992) case study followed a pronoun reversing child, David, from age 1;11-2;10. The data they collected were his performance on comprehension tasks, 45-minute to 2 hour samples of his speech, and information from interviews with his mother and babysitter. At age 1;11 David’s mother had noticed that he was making consistent pronominal errors. At that time, he would use 1P pronouns to refer to the addressee 94% of the time and 2P pronouns to refer to himself 100% of the time. By the age of 2;10 his errors had almost completely disappeared. However, the development of the correct use of 1P and 2P pronouns was significantly different: while the error rate for 1P pronouns declined regularly between the 2;4-2;10, the error rate for 2P pronouns remained pretty much constant until 2;8, dropping dramatically between 2;8 and 2;10. In regards to comprehension, up until 2;4 he understood “you” as referring to himself even when he wasn’t the one being addressed. Oshima-Takane attributed David’s errors to a lack of experience with people using pronouns when talking to each other and not to him, making it difficult for him to generalize. Fraiberg and Adelson (1977) noted that blind children, capable in all other respects, often reversed pronouns well into their 5th year, which she attributed to the difficulties of forming a concept of self without the visual modality. And, in perhaps the most striking example of pronoun reversal, a deaf child was noted to make reversal errors in pointing, even interpreting all “you” signs as referring to herself (Bates 1990)!
However, as stated before, pronoun errors are exceedingly rare amongst typically developing children (Huxley, 1970; Charney, 1980). Much more commonly, children will use names instead of pronouns. This might reflect a confusion about pronouns that causes the child to avoid them altogether, as evidenced by the fact that children who use names master pronouns more quickly when they begin to use them (Bates, 1990)—suggesting these children were using the time to work out what pronouns actually mean. It might also be caused by the fact that the nominal style is what the child often hears, as parents will often use names in order to effectively get the child’s attention (Chiat, 1986; Bates, 1990). Interestingly, there seems to be a distinction in the child’s use of names vs. pronouns when they use both, where the name refers to the physical body and the 1P pronoun to the self as an actor (Cooley, 1908).

Autism and personal pronouns
Whereas pronoun reversal is rare amongst typically developing children, amongst autistic children it is common enough that it is often considered pathognomic of the disorder (Jordan, 1989; Hobson, 1990). As Kanner wrote (qtd. in Lee et. Al., 1994):
Personal pronouns are repeated just as heard, with no change to suit the altered situation. The child, once told by his mother “Now I will give you your milk,” expresses the desire for milk in exactly the same words. Consequently, he comes to speak of himself always as “you,” and of the person addressed as “I”.
What Kanner described here is the phenomenon of echolalia, where the autistic child associates statements with the situation as they, the child, perceive it, and not with the parent’s mental state or intentions (Charney, 1981; Hobson, 1990). It is also possible that the child’s errors may be traced to their difficulties in gestural behavior and joint attention (Fay and Schuler, 1980).
Autistic difficulties with pronouns are well documented in the literature (Fay and Schuler, 1980). Jordan (1989) found that while errors were rare amongst typical and mentally handicapped children, 9 out of the 11 autistic children made the maximum number of possible errors in the experiment in the production of both 1P and 2P pronouns. 3 of these children made pronoun reversals. The autistic children were also much more likely to use a name instead of “you”, while their results for names vs. pronouns in referring to themselves were more scattered. One child used her name 3 times and the experimenter’s names 7 times for “you”, with the numbers being reversed for “me”, indicating confusion about identity. Lee et al. (1994) found, in preparation for their study, that teachers reported several cases of pronoun reversal amongst autistic students, such as the student who told a teacher on return from sick leave “I’m better now”. Lee et al. (1994), in comparing autistic children with other mentally disabled children, found a tendency amongst autistic children to use proper names instead of the pronouns “I”, “me”, and “you”, that was not found amongst the other children. There was also a tendency to use the pronoun “I” instead of “me”. There were however no significant cases of pronoun reversal, although two autistic subjects did respond to the question “who can see X?” with the response “I can’t” as opposed to “you can”. Strangely, though, one of the subjects who had performed capably throughout the experiment said, on leaving, “Thank you for seeing you, Tony”. Lee et al. interpreted these results to a lack of a sense of “me-ness” or “you-ness”: the autistic subjects, according to their interpretation, lacked the sense of self (and other) as actor that Cooley (1908) had described. This also could explain why those autistic subjects who performed well could still experience occasional lapses, and their use of names for pictures of themselves and others.

Proposal for future studies
The fact that pronominal errors are rare amongst typically developing children means that systematic, large-scale experiments have rarely been done. Most information on personal pronoun difficulties has come, instead, from detailed case studies. Strangely, though, I did not encounter such case studies in regards to autistic children. I propose that such a study be performed, testing both production and comprehension. Diary studies such as Cooley’s (1908) would also be insightful. This would allow for a comparison between the pronoun use of otherwise typically developing children with pronominal errors and autistic children with pronominal errors. As the cognitive reasons for the errors made by autistic children are fairly easily understood but the cognitive reasons that some children should reverse pronouns when they have the same capabilities as their peers are not, such a comparison could shed light on the latter. For example, it could distinguish whether the reasons for pronoun errors amongst typically developing children are primarily cognitive or based on abnormal experience of pronoun use (as Oshima-Takane [1992]) suggests. It would also give a more in depth understanding of autistic pronouns.

References
Bates, E. (1990). Language about me and you: pronominal reference and the emerging
concept of self. In, D. Cicchetti and M. Beeghly (Eds.), The Self in transition:
infancy to childhood (165-182). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Charney, R. (1980). Speech roles and the development of personal pronouns. Journal of Child Language, 7, 509-528.

Charney, R. (1981). Pronoun errors in autistic children-support for a social explanation. British Joumal of Disorders of Communication, 15(1), 39-43.

Chiat, S. (1981). If I were you and you were me-the analysis of pronouns in a pronoun- reversing child. Journal of Child Language, 9, 359-379.

Chiat, S. (1986). Personal pronouns. In, P. Fletcher and M. Garman (Eds.), Language acquisition: studies in first language acquisition, 2nd Ed. (339-355). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Clark, E. (1978). From gesture to word: on the natural history of deixis in language acquisition. In, J. Bruner and A. Garton (Eds.), Human growth & development: Wolfson College Lectures, 1976 (85-120). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cooley, C. H. (1908). A study of the early use of self-words by a child. The Psychological Review, 15(6), 339-57.

Cruttenden, A. (1977). The acquisition of personal pronouns and language 'simplification'.
Language and Speech, 20(3), 191-197.

Fay, W.H., & Schuler, A. L. (1980). Emerging language in autistic children. Baltimore: University Park Press.

Fraiberg, S. & Adelson, E. (1977). Self-representation in language and play. In, S. Fraiberg, Insights from the blind (248-270). New York: Basic Books, Inc.

Hobson, R. P. (1990). On the origins of self and the case of autism. Development and Psychopathology, 2, 163-181.

Huxley, R. (1970). The development of the correct use of subject personal pronouns in two children. In, G. B. Flores d'Arcais & W. J. M. Levelt (Eds.), Advances in psycholinguistics. New York: American Elsevier Publishing Company, Inc.

Jordan, R. R. (1989). An experimental comparison of the understanding and use of speaker-addressee personal pronouns in autistic children. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 24, 169-179.

Lee, A., Hobson, R., & Chiat, S. (1994). I, you, me, and autism: An experimental study.
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 24(2), 155-176.

Loveland, K. A. (1984). Learning about points of view- spatial perspective and the acquisition of 'I/you'. Journal of Child Language, 11, 535-556.

Oshima-Takane, Y. (1992). Analysis of pronominal errors-a case study. Journal of Child Language, 19, 11-131.

Ricard, M., Girouard, C. P., & Gouin-Decarie, T. (1999). Personal pronouns and perspective taking in toddlers. Journal of Child Language, 26, 681-697.

2010-11-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

This is a project I'm doing for my "Freewill and Determinism" class at college. I'm trying to get the opinions of non-philosophers (as well as philosophers). Please check it out and send it around! Thanks! (if the quiz doesn't appear, please visit this link.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Commencement Speech

2010-06-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

This is a speech I gave as the Distinguished Student when I got my Associates Degree:

Hello teachers, staff, fellow students, and parents and friends of fellow students. I’d like to thank my parents, P and E, for my existence and their love support, along with my grandmother B, who did so much to foster my intellectual development, and my grandparents C and C, all of whom provided me with so much love, knowledge, and support, and who I can’t leave out since they are sitting in the audience. I’d also like to give a shout out to my brother, M, and all my friends. And thank you, faculty and staff of NVCC, President Daisy Cocco De Filippis and Dean Mitch Holmes, for giving me this education, and this honor. I must admit I feel vaguely like Obama accepting the Nobel Peace Prize: I’m not entirely sure why I should have been chosen over any other student, and I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge all my fellow students who have worked and continue to work hard, both inside and out of class.
So, I should probably tell you all a bit about myself. I was homeschooled since the beginning of my education: I never went to public or private school. Mostly unschooled, I was free to pursue whatever I was interested in, although my parents certainly required that I learn certain subjects that may not interest me as much as others. But it wasn’t hard: I loved gathering information. I would wake up in the morning to a pile of assignments on the table: when I was done, my schoolday was done, which could take as little as a few hours or as much as several days. If I needed help, I would ask them.
However, there was a point where my parents could no longer help me the way they had, specifically in math. They reached a point where they were only giving me the odd-numbered questions out of textbooks, since those were the ones that had answers in the back. So when I was thirteen I started taking classes here, well, not here, but at NVCC. We chose NVCC not only because of the beautiful campus and the caring, professional atmosphere we felt from the staff, but also because of the school’s adept system for dealing with homeschoolers. I was not to be treated any differently from any other student: teachers didn’t even have to know my age (fortunately, at thirteen, I could pass for much older than I was). I only took College Algebra the first semester, but after that I started taking other classes that appeared interesting, and even though I still considered myself homeschooled, my education pretty much entirely took place at NVCC.
Perhaps it is just my own temperament, but I have had no bad classes at NVCC that I can think of. A couple weren’t excellent, but none were terrible. Most all of the teachers I have had cared about teaching, and were often thrilled to have a student as talkative and interested in the material as I was. This is probably a good time to mention some of the teachers who meant a lot to me. I almost feel bad about doing so: if I had a could without boring you, I’d mention every single teacher I had. But there are a few that come to mind: Sandra Pettinico and Anthony Prushnicki, the teachers I alternated between during my four semesters of trig and calculus, both clear, fun, and engaging, and the latter the most hilariously curmudgeony person I’ve known. Students of higher level Calculus definitely constitute something of an exclusive club, and my relationship with my fellow students and these two teachers probably constitute my closest and most favorite times in the classroom. Patricia Pallis, my English 102 teacher who through her love of my work helped me realize my abilities as a writer. Peter Benzi, my physics II teacher, with his dry humor and his intelligence. Richard Gard, head of the music department, who’s, well, you have to know him, and Kirsten Peterson, my infinitely patient one-on-one music composition teacher. Christine Mangone, head of the theater department, who I’ve never taken a class with come to think of it but who has been a wonderful, patient, caring director in the two shows I’ve done with her. And I’ll also add two teachers who aren’t at the school anymore: Mark Priest, my Music Theory II teacher, and Ed Wierzbicki, my Acting I and II teacher.
NVCC has prepared me for the rest of my education. It allowed me to explore my interests at an early age, which I certainly did to, some might say, excess: I have after all been a nearly full-time (I was usually a few hours short) student here for 5 years, and only got the last two requirements for a Liberal Arts degree out of the way this last semester. I have made friends, and even those friendships that didn’t last beyond the end of classes were some of the closest relationships with other human beings I’ve ever experience. I’ve had the opportunity to be in numerous shows, which is wonderful, since I never got that through school. This school has been my life for five years: it’s going to be hard for me to leave, although I take comfort in the fact that, being a student in both the theater and music departments, I’m just going to keep coming back, whether I want to or not. On the last day, I bought a large french-fries at the caf, and ate every single one, ‘cause as I’m sure you’re all aware, those things are ridiculous, and I may never have them again. I’m going to miss the friends who are still here. All in all, I’m going to miss this place.
So what now? I’ll continue learning. I have always felt that knowledge is an end of its own. We are, as human beings, incredibly lucky to be able to understand the world around us, and to take it’s materials and create something new. We are, as Carl Sagan said, a way for the cosmos to know itself. I have always felt that with these abilities that we are, as humans, lucky enough to have comes a responsibility, and responsibility to understand, to think, to create. Doing otherwise, we are turning our back on the universe that created us, and provides us with life and infinite mysteries to be discovered and explored. There is, I think, to much beauty in knowing to not know. However, not all are going to be interested in, or even capable of, this pursuit of knowledge. But if we are to learn more, we, as a species, must survive, and this survival is the responsibility of all. We must feed eachother, care for eachother, entertain eachother, understand eachother. As Carl Sagan also said, if you disagree with another human, let him be. In the entire universe you will not find another like him. I would add that if another human needs your help, help them, for once again, they’re like no other. This would be my message to all.
Thank you.

Sermon for Church: The Symphony of Science

2010-03-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

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I did a paper last semester on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As I continued to write the paper late into the night, what began as a last-minute attempt to squeeze out the minimum of 5 pages turned into a 10 page monster. I blame Beethoven. There were so many little things to pick up on, so many elegant ways in which everything fit together, in which the entire piece was planned. For some, perhaps, this would reduce the joy of the music. Not for me. For me, every time I hear that piece, it will mean even more to me. Understanding it makes it even more sublime.

Music has a peculiar power of the human spirit. It can make us feel things in ways nothing else can. Especially words. The most inane poetry can reach us deeply if made into music. I mean, really, “in the desert you can remember your name, ‘cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain”? Because of its power, music has often been the vessel for important messages, that can resonate with you in entirely new ways. Such was the case when I first saw one of the videos of “The Symphony of Science”. I have always had a deep sense that there’s something profoundly spiritual about a scientific understanding of the natural world, yet when I watched “The Unbroken Thread” it hit me powerfully. It probably helped that it was near midnight. But also the words of scientists expressing their deep reverence for the universe, put to music, had a stunning effect.

This reverence is one I share. People have commented that the language I and those such as Carl Sagan use to describe our feelings about the universe are suspiciously similar to that used by religious people to describe their experience of god. They are absolutely right. The difference is that we take God out of the picture. Why can’t we admire the universe not because we view it as the work of God, but because it is simply something worth being admired? I feel that the natural, material world is so full of mysteries and beauty that it is almost a waste to concern ourselves with spirits and angels and gods. This is the hypothesis I’d like to put before you: that there is nothing beyond the natural, material world. No spirits, no gods, no karma, no qi. I call it a hypothesis because I honestly do not know enough to say for certain that such phenomena do not exist. But I want to show why, for me, they are unnecessary for filling the spiritual need.

Let’s start close to home. Really close to home, in fact. Let’s start in our heads. Put your fists together like this. Your brain is slightly lager than this. An utterly insignificant lump of jelly, when you get down to it. Yet there’s something bizarre about this lump of jelly: it contains you. Everything about you. All your memories, the maps of where you’ve been, your personality, your perception of me. It contains our ideas. If you are an artist, it produces your creations. If you are a writer, it is capable of inventing and keeping track of entire worlds, worlds with other personalities in them, vast fantasy landscapes contained within this small lump of matter. Think about it. Really think about it.

Think about how, when you look at the night sky, you are looking at the source of every particle in your body. Every ancient particle. You are made out of matter that has existed since nearly the beginning of time. You are constantly exchanging that matter with the universe around you. At a subatomic level, there is nothing, really, separating you and the rest of the universe. Think about how the little dots you see are stars many, many times, sometimes thousands of times larger than our earth, which is so huge we cannot even perceive it as round. Some ofwhat you see are galaxies, which are collections of billions of these starts, which look close together in a picture, but are really light-years apart. A light year is about 6 trillion miles.

Think about each individual cell in your body. The complex machinery, honed over years of evolution. And we can’t even see them. We are made of trillions of them. Think about all the other intricate machines that constitute life. (give examples)

Think about the pebble you kick down the street. How that pebble is also made of particles that have been around for nearly eternity. How it’s made of minerals that were forged in the collision of dust particles and rocks that created our earth, burped up from the inside of our earth, and hewed by billions of years of geology.

Think about a rainbow. How it is a product of photons produced by nuclear fusion deep within the sun, which take thousands of years to push their way to it’s surface, finally escaping and zipping across millions of miles of space, before colliding with water droplets in the atmosphere and getting refracted into all sorts of different wavelengths, then traveling through the air to your eyes, where the hit your retina and produce electrical sensations that travel to your brain and are perceived as color, and then spread out and activate your capacity for pleasure, for memory, for imagining the entire cosmic play I just described.

Some people are scared to think about it. For some reason, they believe that to understand beauty is to kill it. Those such as John Keats accuse Isaac Newton of unweaving the rainbow by explaining it. Why should discovering the intricate, elegant laws that underlie the world make it any less beautiful? If an artist attempts to portray the meaning of a rainbow, it is beauty: if a scientist attempts the same thing, it is somehow ugly. If someone can appreciate the wonder and beauty of a scientific worldview, they are somehow seen as a little weird: a nerd, an egghead. So many people don’t want to hear about the fascinating underpinnings of everything they experience, about the new ideas that scientists are constantly coming up with. The scientist is often the fool on the hill who sees the world going round, but who no one wants to listen to. I must admit, I am not entirely sure why. Because while people may think that because I live in a world understood it must be dull or dry, nothing could be further from the truth. I live in a world that constantly amazes and fascinates me. I am never without a source of stimulation if I want it: not when I can consider the mysteries of my brain, not when I can look at the sky and imagine space stretching out into infinity, with pricks of light that are galaxies incomprehensibly huge, not when I can feel my connection with everything around me. Not when I can look at the familiar as though it was unfamiliar, as something new and exciting. Science let’s us look a little more deeply into things. It isn’t a methodology or collection of facts. It’s an attitude. It’s an appreciation that beauty understood is even more beautiful. To understand the symphony of science is only to make it more sublime.

More Ally Stuff: Uganda

2009-12-12T15:21:00.000-08:00

Uganda is considering legislation that would make homosexuality illegal, give life sentences to those who engage in homosexuality, and the death penalty to those who do it multiple times or have AIDS:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Uganda_introduces_anti-homosexual_legislation
http://wthrockmorton.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/anti-homosexuality-bill-2009.pdf

English Paper: Unitarian Universalism

2009-12-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

This is a paper I wrote for my English class. A lot of the works cited are websites, by the way.

I have an interesting, if not nowadays unusual, religious background, although the “conclusion” of my spiritual journey is not usual. My family was never religiously homogenous. My mother was once very Christian, though of the liberal, Congregationalist variety. My father has never been particularly religious (though never atheistic): he’s too independently minded for that. When we moved down to Connecticut, we became chronic church-hoppers, rarely staying in one place for more than a year or so before we gradually stopped going (my father never went); and then, after a period of sleeping in on Sunday mornings, my mother would feel the need and find some other church. I gradually became less and less religious, and eventually found myself in the middle ground between Atheism and Agnosticism, which is where I remain. My mom also gradually became less religious at a rate which was parallel to, but behind, my own. My brother has always been and is pretty much where I was and am, although more laid back than myself. Where this all ended up—the religiously diverse family, the church-hopping, our own spiritual progressions—was with a family that had some vaguely religious sentiments, with varying degrees amongst its members, and yet still wanted to share our lives with a community.

My religious beliefs were, as I said, atheistic/agnostic, with a prominent strain of philosophical universalism[1]: I felt all points of view, if not correct, did at least have something to offer. I also discovered, when happening upon the Wikipedia entry on the subject, that I was a Humanist. Overall, like many people, I was already a Unitarian Universalist—but I didn’t know it.

I don’t remember exactly the order of the events that brought us to the church we attend. One such event was that my grandmother, who lives with us, began going. Another is that we read some columns in the Religion section of the newspaper by the minister of the church about such topics as gay marriage, and her sentiments resonated with us. The end result of it was, my mother, my brother, and I attended the church for awhile, with my brother and me hooked pretty much instantly and my mother taking a bit longer, uncertain at first about the lack of a specifically God and/or Christianity orientation. Eventually we also managed to bring our dad along. Once he started coming regularly, there was no turning back: this was the first church (since the one we went to when we lived in Maine, which my dad had attended for the community and the music) we could attend as a family. We quickly became close with the minister’s family. We had found a religious home.

We became deeply involved in the congregation very quickly, to the extent that the old curmudgeons one find in any church complained that we were “doing everything.” Our entire family is very musical, so we became a staple of the congregation’s musical life (incidentally, it was partly through the church’s musical program that we managed to get our father to come). I got very involved in the Youth Group, and after the minister’s son, who had kept things going, left, I became the de facto leader of the group, holding it together and working to build it into something more than it was at the time. My mother and I were nominated and approved as members of the board (me as the Youth Liaison)—necessitating, incidentally, a suspension of the bylaws as we had not been members for the specified period of time. In numerous ways, our coming to the church was coincidental with a new period of change in the congregation—which had been, quite frankly, troubled—and we were there as part of all that was happening (for all I know, we helped cause it). Anyways, the church has become a staple of our lives and something with which we are deeply involved.

Perhaps you, reader, are wondering at this point what Unitarian Universalism is. Unitarian Universalism can be hard to understand, even for many Unitarian Universalists. If someone asks us what we believe, we are hard pressed to give an answer. This is because we are not held together so much by a common set of beliefs—although there are some common beliefs we profess to share—as by common goals: to grow spiritually and philosophically and help each other do the same, to provide community, and to do what we can to improve, or at least help, humanity, the world. And the two beliefs I feel are central to our faith are that every person should have the ability to judge for him or herself what is truth, and the value and dignity of every person. We acknowledge and respect the many religious and philosophical sources of our faith.[2]

Beyond that, there are many beliefs within even my own congregation: we have Humanists, Agnostics, Christians (although most would not ascribe to a belief in the resurrection), Pagans, Wiccans, Jews, Atheists, Buddhists, and many belief systems that don’t have a name because they were developed by the person who holds them. Politically we are pretty much overwhelmingly liberal, yet there are a few in our congregation who are conservatives, even staunch conservatives. However, almost all of us are critically-minded, individualistic, spiritual, and philosophically universalist.

For me personally, being a Unitarian Universalist helps me be individualistic about my beliefs by, perhaps paradoxically, providing me with a community. I can have a measure of security when standing up for my own beliefs. I have somewhere to go on Sunday morning where I can feel I belong, where I am surrounded by like-minded, understanding people. The Youth Group has become one of those few places where I feel I completely fit in, where I can be entirely myself.

Unitarian Universalism gives me the opportunity to share my spirituality and spiritual experiences with others. This brings me to yet another aspect of Unitarian Universalism that is of great importance: we do not believe one has to believe in God, gods, and afterlife, or even a “spiritual realm” to be spiritual—to have spiritual experiences, to experience ecstasy in the wonders of the world. One can believe in any of these things, but one does not have to.

Being surrounded by people of many different viewpoints and backgrounds has enriched my own understanding. I am constantly given opportunities to absorb points of view that I can either absorb into my philosophically universalist framework; or confront, in the process of with I develop a greater understanding of my own views.

Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me something to be committed to. I am committed to Unitarian Universalism. I am committed to spreading its message, not to convince people to join us, but to reach out to people, like me, who were already Unitarian Universalists before they had even heard of such a thing. I am Atheist, Humanist, Rationalist, and many other -ists. But first and foremost, I am Unitarian Universalist.

Part 2

When asked to explain Unitarian Universalism, many UUs begin with the history of our religion. Part of the reason stems from a difficulty in formulating exactly what UU is, as ours is a non-creedal religion. Yet I think that taking a historical perspective in explaining UU is valid in and of itself, as, because of our lack of creed, we are an evolving faith. It’s therefore inaccurate to try to state exactly what we are: a fuller knowledge comes in describing how we got where we are today. Also, by describing our background to those unfamiliar with our faith, we convey a sense of history, and tie ourselves to the stream of religious thought.

Our history begins with two decidedly Christian religious movements: Unitarianism and Universalism. Both took root in the United States, and these American varieties were responses to Calvinism (which holds the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God, including the doctrine that humans are predestined to go to either Heaven or Hell). Unitarianism was usually the religion of the urban elites, whereas the appeal of Universalism was more populist and rural; one expression I’ve heard is that Unitarianism was a religion of the head, while Universalism was a religion of the heart. Unitarianism is usually acknowledged as the major force in our history, so it is with it that I will begin.

Theological Unitarianism is the belief in God as one being, with a rejection of the Trinity. Jesus is viewed as either a very special human with supreme moral authority, or as a supernatural being separate, subservient to, and created by God. There is usually an emphasis on rationality, critical thinking and reading, concern for the matters of this world instead of the next, and freedom of thought in regards to religious matters.

There were precedents to Unitarianism in the earliest forms of Christianity: in fact, Unitarians believed that they were restoring the original concept of Jesus, before it had been corrupted by Trinitarianism. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke, so called because they describe the same events) and the early letters of Paul, for example, are vague on the question of Jesus’ divinity, and seem to claim that God declared him his son either when he was baptized or because he was such an exemplary human being (Armstrong; personal interpretation). Early Christians had heated arguments about the nature of Jesus in relation to God, with several different theologies put forth, and the question was not decided until the establishment of the Nicene Creed in 325, and even after that it simmered for 50 years, until the revisions to the Creed made in 381. This Creed was a rejection of Arianism, based on the theology put forth by Arius which held that Jesus was a special type of being and God’s greatest creation, but separate from God himself. After the final establishment of the Nicene Creed, Unitarianism went almost entirely extinct (Fisher).

Then Gutenberg invented the printing press.

The Bible was no longer the sole property of the clergy; and when people read the Bible for themselves, they found that many of the teachings of the Church had no Biblical basis. It was also during this time that Martin Luther set the Protestant Reformation in motion, influencing Henry VIII of England and the French legal scholar John Calvin, developer of Calvinism. Because of these related developments, Protestant sects began appearing and splitting off from each other everywhere, led by those who read the Bible for themselves and were emboldened by the Reformation to disseminate their ideas. One such man who read the Bible for himself was a Spanish doctor by the name of Miguel De Servet, also known as Servetus, who through his readings came to the conclusion that there was no Biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity, and published a book defending this interpretation, “On the Errors of the Trinity.” This work forced Servetus to go into hiding, where he was eventually found and executed in Geneva, Switzerland, on the orders of John Calvin. However, he had influenced a number of people with his ideas, amongst them a fellow physician Giorgio Biandrotta, who himself influenced other Italians and a Hungarian minister by the name of Ferenc David. David set up a Unitarian church in Transylvania, and converted that country’s king, John Sigisimund. Instead of using this opportunity to have his church declared the national religion of Transylvania, David convinced the king to declare freedom of conscience in religious matters. This was one of the first countries in Christian history to officially declare religious liberty. Unlike Arianism, this Unitarianism declared that Jesus was a man, though of a special sort; it also tended to reject the concepts of Original Sin and, by logical extension, Vicarious Atonement (that Jesus died as payment for our sins). Sadly, after Sigisimund died, David was sent to prison for heresy, where he also died. However, the Church he founded is still a major denomination in Transylvania (Fisher; Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, “Unitarianism”).

By the 18^th century, many intellectuals were reading the Bible and coming to Unitarian conclusions, including the philosopher John Locke, the physicist, mathematician, and scholar Isaac Newton, who devoted much of his later life to Biblical analysis, and Joseph Priestly (Fisher), an English polymath and theologian who “discovered” air, had a major effect on both English and American Unitarianism, and was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin’s (Johnson; Robinson 21-23).

While in England Unitarianism remained mostly below the surface, in America, specifically Boston, it became one of the leading liberal religious movements. This Unitarianism began as a reactionary movement against the Great Awakening, a religious movement which was extremely Calvinistic, fundamentalist, and emphasized extreme and irrational religious experience. Against this movement stood those, like Charles Chauncy, that emphasized human free will, critical thinking, above all, rationality in religious matters. This movement simmered until the 1810s, when a remarkable preacher by the name of William Ellery Channing began preaching and writing from a liberal religious viewpoint, and came to a head when he delivered the sermon “Unitarian Christianity” in 1819. This sermon embraced the term Unitarian, originally a derogatory term used by the more conservatively religious, and set the stage for the formation of a denomination. Churches began to split between the Unitarians and the Puritans, and one such split in a congregation in Dedham, Massachusetts gave a major boost to the growth of Unitarianism. In an important turn of events, the Unitarian faction of that congregation won the church building and property, which set a precedent allowing other such Unitarian splinter groups to gain control of the Church buildings (Fisher; Robinson 3-5, 9-37; Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, “Unitarianism”). Amongst those who were Unitarian or admired Unitarianism were such Founding Fathers as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the latter, though never officially a Unitarian, stating “I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian” (qtd. in Robinson 23).

Unitarianism produced its own rebellion, Transcendentalism. Associated with such figures as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Henry David Thoreau, this movement emphasized intuitive experience of the divine in nature. Jesus was demythologized to an extent beyond that of even the most extreme liberality. It was this individualist and anti-establishment movement that would set the stage for the Humanism of later years (Fisher; Robinson 5, 75-83).

Unitarians became deeply involved in the Abolitionist movements and the Union cause. This cause helped to unite the Unitarians, and Henry W. Bellows, who did much work in the abolitionist and Union cause, saw this as an opportunity to establish Unitarianism as a national denomination, forming the National Conference of Unitarian Churches in 1865. While these attempts to organize Unitarianism were successful, uniting so many individualists and free-thinkers was not easy. These dissidents (successfully) fought any establishment of an official creed by the NCUC (the constitution of the organization, while stating common beliefs of Unitarians, stated that “nothing in this constitution is to be construed as an authoritative test” [qtd. in Robinson 122]) and even formed their own organization, the Free Religious Association, which was a prominent breeding ground for Secular Humanism (Fisher; Robinson 5-7, 83-122).

The first half of the twentieth century saw a vigorous debate between the Humanists and the more traditionally religious in Unitarianism about the importance of God, with the Humanists ultimately coming out on top, although the traditional Humanist image of the goodness and progress of man was challenged by the two World Wars (Fisher; Robinson 7-8, 143-157). It was also during WWII that the modern symbol of Unitarian Universalism, the Flaming Chalice, was developed. It was originally the symbol of the Unitarian Service Committee, which assisted those escaping Nazi persecution (Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, “Our Symbol”). Unitarians were deeply involved in women’s suffrage, the formation of the United Nations, and the early Civil Rights movement.

We come now to the time of the merger, so let’s first explore the history of Universalism. Theological Universalism is the belief in universal salvation—that a loving God would not send anyone to eternal hell. In some versions of Universalism, hell does exist, but it is only temporary, a place where one becomes cleansed through suffering so that he/she can enter heaven. The Universalists were traditionally more theologically homogenous and more orthodox—they believed in Biblical authority and Christ’s divinity and atonement—than the Unitarians, although they too eventually drifted away from a Christian emphasis.

Like Unitarianism, Universalism has precedents in the Christianity of Biblical times, and Universalists also believed that they were restoring the original teachings of Christ and the early church fathers. Once again, there is Biblical evidence to support their claims. Some early Christians who held Universalist views were St. Clement of Alexandria, who wrote “[s]o He saves all; but some He converts by penalties, others who follow Him of their own will, and in accordance with the worthiness of His honor, that every knee may be bent to Him of celestial, terrestrial and infernal things (Phil. 2:10)” (qtd. by Christian Universalist Association), and his student St. Origen (Christian Universalist Association).

During the Reformation, various sects that held more or less Universalist views sprung up in Europe, including the Anabaptists, Moravians, and Quakers (Christian Universalist Association). However, Universalism did not really come into its own until a series of English Universalists, such as John Murray and Hosea Ballou, brought their beliefs to America in the 1700s. It is interesting how these Universalists turned Calvinism on its head: essentially, it held that ALL people were “predestined” to go to heaven. The Universalists fought against the system of tax support for churches, part of a rebellious tendency that was a defining feature of their history, and were very active in prison reform and Abolition. They were the first denomination, in 1863, to ordain a female minister, Olympia Brown (who incidentally was a former minister of the church I attend, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Bridgeport). In the early 20^th century, this emphasis on social action and a new interpretation of the meaning of “Universalism” began to shift the denomination away from a Christian outlook, though this shift was slower than it was amongst the Unitarians. This new interpretation of the name of the faith emphasized the universality of religion instead of any particular theological position (Christian Universalist Association; Robinson 3-7, 47-73, 123-141; Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, “Universalism”).

The idea of a merger of the two denominations had been floating around since the 19^th century. However, theological and class differences (as stated earlier, the Unitarians tended to be much more rich and influential) made this infeasible, as did the fear amongst Universalists that they would be subsumed by the more powerful and influential Unitarians. By the 60s, however, the denominations had grown very close in theology and outlook, and in 1961 they were merged, forming the Unitarian Universalist Association[3] ^{(Robinson 168-174)}. The emphasis in the early days of Unitarian Universalism, and one of the motivations behind the merger, was social action. UUs were extremely active in the Civil Rights movement (a number of UU ministers were killed for their efforts), gay rights and feminism. There has been an ongoing debate within UU about its role in politics and pacifism (Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, “Unitarian Universalism”).

In the 1980s, UUs worked to clarify their spiritual views, resulting in the formulation of our Seven Principles and the Sources of our faith:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:

Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love;
Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support. (Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, “Our Principles”)

From its merger, UU has been fraught with spiritual difficulties, unsure of its status as a Christian organization[4], or even one that acknowledged the importance of “God”. Soon, though, the movement was dominated by the Secular Humanism it had inherited from its Unitarian side. However, because of its inclusive nature, UU has embraced many of the New Age spiritual movements of the century, often providing the environment these religious movements needed in order to grow. Humanists have reacted with alarm to the increasingly spiritual emphasis and irrationality they feel the denomination has been embracing over the past 20 or so years, including groups that accept beliefs in magic, tarot readings, visions, etc. Some feel we are becoming the religion that we are often dismissively characterized as, a religion where one can believe whatever they want, and no one is allowed to criticize anyone else’s beliefs. A related issue is to try to determine what exactly it is that holds our denomination together. A firestorm erupted when our latest president, William Sinkford, implored that the UUA “reclaim the holy”, and described the UU mission in explicitly religious and God-affirming terms. Once again, the Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics feel that they are being left out in the cold on the wave of a trendy new spiritualism (Eckstrom; Haught; Higgins; Lee).

For a church with such a history of involvement in Civil Rights and social equity, and which so values multiculturalism, UU faces the fact that it is overwhelmingly white and rich, not only in numbers but also in culture. There is tension over how far we want to go to reach out to ethnic and poor groups, how the needs of those groups should be faced within our congregations, and other such issues (“Racial, multicultural tensions still best Unitarian Universalists”).

Possibly the biggest challenge for modern UU, and indeed the challenge that contains all of the other challenges, is growth. UU is a religion of people who have left other religions or grew up with no religion at all: not many of our members were raised UU. Unfortunately, many of those people define themselves as UU but are not official members: 629,000 adults as of 2001, four times as many as were in official church rolls(Dart).

However, beyond these people who identify themselves as UUs but aren’t in any official relationship with the UU congregations, there are the possibly vast number of people who “were Unitarian Universalists all along and never knew it”, to quote a popular phrase amongst new UUs. And it is in reaching out to these potential members that we face our greatest challenge, a challenge that incorporates our lack of an official creed, the debate between Humanism and Spiritualism, and our struggles with multiculturalism. It was in an effort to reach out that President Sinkford asked that the holy be incorporated into our principles(Eckstrom). How much are we willing to adjust our culture to bring in those who aren’t white and wealthy? How far are we willing to stretch to accept people of more unusual beliefs, or more traditional beliefs that go against the Humanism that has dominated out movement?

It is my belief that in order to survive we have to focus on the goals that I feel are central to UU, as described in Part 1: to grow spiritually and philosophically and to help others do the same, to provide community, and to do what we can to improve, or at least help, humanity and the world. I believe that to grow spiritually and philosophically one has to accept criticism of one’s own beliefs and to allow those beliefs to be held up to the light of reason; I also believe helping others to do the same involves offering that criticism. I think that this would allow the Humanists and Spiritualists to live together respectfully while preventing us from being a religion of believing anything one wants.

Of course, we can’t sit in discussion groups all day discussing our beliefs. We also need to act in the world. An effort to do such not only keeps us strong and healthy, but also increases our visibility. And visibility is, I think, our biggest problem. People simply do not know that we exist. We are, I think, too careful about seeming overbearing that we do not evangelize as we should. I don’t mean evangelize to try to convince people to come to us. I mean evangelize simply to “spread the good news”, to inform people who may want to be a UU if they only knew about and understood us. UUs themselves need to be more visible. I’ve been told that there are UU politicians who do not have their names appear on the public church rolls, that keep their religion secret. There are numerous UU actors, musicians, writers, thinkers, and historical figures (some already mentioned here) that we never hear about: or, if it is mentioned that they are UU, it is only in passing[5].

I think our message is too important to be kept in the dark, away from those who may need it. That’s why I proudly say that I am a Unitarian Universalist, and try to educate others on what we’re about. Perhaps this assignment has helped me to do just that.

Works Cited

Armstrong, Karen. A History of God. New York: Ballantine Books, 1994.

Christian Universalist Association. The History of Universalism. 17 December 2008. 3 December 2009. .

Dart, John. “Churchgoers from elsewhere. (Surveys: 'UUSIM' Unique).” The Christian Century. 5 December 2001:8(2). Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Doerr, Ed. “Humanism and unitarian universalism.” The Humanist. March-April 1998: 37(2). Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Eckstrom, Kevin. “UUs asked to reclaim 'the holy'. (News).” The Christian Century. 14 June 2003: 13. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Fisher, Chris. A Brief History of Unitarian Christianity. 31 August 2004. American Unitarian Conference. 3 December 2009. .

Haught, James A. “The Unitarian Quandary: Is religious humanism running the humanist religion?” Free Inquiry. Fall 2002: 48(2). Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Higgins, Richard. “A Heated Debate Flares in Unitarian Universalism.” The New York Times. 17 May 2003: B6. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Johnson, Steven. Interview with Stephen Colbert. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 5 March 2009.

Lee, Richard Wayne. “Strained bedfellows: pagans, new agers, and "starchy humanists" in Unitarian Universalism.” Sociology of Religion 56.n4 (1995): 379(18). Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Lewis, Jone Johnson. Famous UUs. 11 Novemeber 2006. 7 December 2009 . Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

“Racial, multicultural tensions still best Unitarian Universalists.(News).” The Christian Century. 24 July 2007: 16. Academic OneFile. Web. 20 Oct. 2009

Robinson, David. The Unitarians and the Universalists. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. Our Principles. 18 November 2009. 3 December 2009. .

—. Our Symbol: the Flaming Chalice. 25 November 2009. 3 December 2009. .

—. Unitarian Universalism. 25 November 2009. 3 December 2009. .

—. Unitarianism. 25 November 2009. 3 December 2009. .

—. Universalism. 25 November 2009. 3 December 2009. .

[1] Different from the historical Christian Universalism which was incorporated into Unitarian Universalism.

[2] Our goals, beliefs, and sources are encapsulated in the “Seven Principles” (notice: Principles, not rules) and “Sources of our Faith” developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association. My statements are my own interpretation of what Unitarian Universalism is all about.

[3] However, organizations continued and continue to exist which are specifically Unitarian or Universalist, and more explicitly Christian, such as the American Unitarian Conference and the Christian Universalist Association that I cite.

[4] There is an organization within the UUA for UUs of a Christian outlook, the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship (UUFC).

[5] Ray Bradbury, Christopher Reeve, Pete Seeger, Kurt Vonnegut, are just some of the names of contemporary UUs; Millard Fillmore, William Taft, Adlai Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott, P.T. Barnum (a former member of my own church), Ambrose Bierce, e. e. cummings, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Beatrix Potter, Carl Sandberg, Frank Lloyd Wright, Clara Barton, and a sizable number of our Founding Fathers are a few of the names of Unitarians and/or Universalists one finds in history (Lewis).

Sad

2009-11-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

Alright, no high-minded philosophy for this post. Maybe later, on this subject, but not right now. It is 1:22 AM, and it seems pretty much certain that marriage rights for all people were rejected in Maine. :(

A Short Essay on Morality with Respect to Groups. (my respects to Bertrand Russell)

2009-08-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Humans are tribal animals. This is apparent in primitive societies, and it is apparent in our society. We have a deep seated need to attach ourselves to some group (and often to exclude and regard with suspicion those separate from our group). I myself happily associate myself with a number of groups.

Morality's fundamental purpose is in promoting the welfare of whatever group with which we are concerned, including the "group" that includes our individual selves.

However, we need to recognize that these groups into which we divide ourselves are arbitrary and dependent on custom, if we are to survive. What we need to do is determine which ways of dividing humanity into groups have objective significance. From a moral standpoint, these should be the only ways of dividing up humanity that should be of any importance.

I'll define a grouping with objective significance as one whose boundaries are more clearly and distinctly defined than any other way of grouping; where there is very little fuzziness and almost no examples of something that is "in between" the two groups. This leads to three groupings that have objective significance:
The Individual
Man or Woman
Humanity as a Whole
Now "Man or Woman" would not have moral importance as it is merely biological distinction, and although women and men are on average different, there is overlap in their abilities, needs, wants, etc...everything that is important to morality. Therefore from now on the only groups whose welfare we should consider when contemplating moral questions are those of the individual and of humanity as a whole. I feel that these two groups are equally important: humanity's needs don't in general override those of the individual, and the individual's needs don't in general override those of humanity.

Justice or Revenge?

2009-08-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

So the whole thing with the Libyan bomber in Scotland got me thinking about "justice". For instance, some relatives of the victims are saying things like "he showed no mercy to the hundreds of people he killed, so he deserves no mercy"--a fairly common notion in regards to "justice". But is such a sentiment a good thing?

Let's make clear what we're talking about. There IS a meaning of justice with which I have no issue: the justice that demands that people be not be treated wrongly. I.e., a "just" trial, "justice" for those who were enslaved, etc. This is what I'll call "positive justice": at it's core is the assertion that those who have been dealt pain deserve to be given pleasure. But there is also "negative justice", which is the type of justice I wish to discuss: the assertion that those who have dealt pain deserve to have pain dealt to them. Now, it could also be argued that this form of justice is positive in the sense that it gives pleasure to those who have been dealt pain to know that the person who dealt them pain suffer. This assertion has two difficulties:

Justice implies "rightness", and it is not always true that what we want is "right". We can't be true that people's desire for pain to be caused to those who caused them pain is "right".
Imagine we could take, say, Hitler, and, without expending any effort or money, have him taken care of at a luxury resort. However, we tell the world that he is being cruelly punished, and it is somehow absolutely impossible that anyone will ever find out the truth. Therefore, everyone gets the pleasure of knowing that he is suffering (ref. Bertrand Russel). Chances are, considering this hypothetical situation, most people's immediate reaction is that justice has not been served.

Therefore negative justice is more than positive justice in regards to those who the subject wronged.

However, at its fundamentals, this type of justice is absolutely identical to revenge: A caused pain, therefore A deserves to be dealt pain. The only difference is that justice is assumed to be enacted by or in regards to some authority or principle (the Law, God, Karma, Moral Accounting, etc.). This makes it "right".

I don't see how such a sentiment can be a good thing.

New Testament Politics

2009-08-16T13:39:00.000-07:00

So, I've been reading the New Testament (haven't gotten to the Old yet), up to 1 Corinthians. So far, I have yet to figure out how conservatives reconcile their views of economics, military strategy, law and order, etc., with their Christianity (please excuse the hyperlinks in the first several passages: I copied and pasted from www.bible.com):

Economics:

Matthew 5:3

³ "Blessed are^(B) the poor in spirit, for^(C) theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

6:24

²⁴^(A) No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and^(B) money.^[a]

19:16-24

¹⁶^(A) And behold, a man came up to him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to^(B) have^(C) eternal life?" ¹⁷And he said to him, "Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good.^(D) If you would enter life, keep the commandments." ¹⁸He said to him, "Which ones?" And Jesus said, ^(E) "You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, ¹⁹Honor your father and mother, and,^(F) You shall love your neighbor as yourself." ²⁰The young man said to him,^(G) "All these I have kept. What do I still lack?" ²¹Jesus said to him, "If you would be^(H) perfect, go,^(I) sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have^(J) treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." ²²^(K) When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. ²³And Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly, I say to you,^(L) only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴^(M) Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter^(N) the kingdom of God."

25:29

²⁹^(A) For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

25:31-46

³¹^(A) "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him,^(B) then he will sit on his glorious throne. ³²Before him^(C) will be gathered^(D) all the nations, and^(E) he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates^(F) the sheep from the goats. ³³And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. ³⁴Then^(G) the King will say to^(H) those on his right, 'Come, you^(I) who are blessed by my Father,^(J) inherit^(K) the kingdom^(L) prepared for you^(M) from the foundation of the world. ³⁵For^(N) I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you^(O) gave me drink,^(P) I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶^(Q) I was naked and you clothed me,^(R) I was sick and you^(S) visited me,^(T) I was in prison and you came to me.' ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? ³⁸And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? ³⁹And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' ⁴⁰And^(U) the King will answer them,^(V) 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these^(W) my brothers,^[a] you did it to me.' ⁴¹"Then he will say to those on his left,^(X) 'Depart from me, you^(Y) cursed, into^(Z) the eternal fire prepared for^(AA) the devil and his angels. ⁴²For^(AB) I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' ⁴⁴Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' ⁴⁵Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these,^(AC) you did not do it to me.' ⁴⁶And these will go away^(AD) into eternal punishment, but the righteous^(AE) into eternal life."

[note that the emphasis of this parable is on doing good works; NOT on whether you had sex, believed some particular dogma, etc.]

Mark 10:17-25

7^(A) And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and^(B) knelt before him and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to^(C) inherit eternal life?" ¹⁸And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. ¹⁹You know the commandments:^(D) 'Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.'" ²⁰And he said to him, "Teacher,^(E) all these I have kept from my youth." ²¹And Jesus,^(F) looking at him,^(G) loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go,^(H) sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have^(I) treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." ²²^(J) Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. ²³And Jesus^(K) looked around and said to his disciples, ^(L) "How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter^(M) the kingdom of God!" ²⁴And the disciples^(N) were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, ^(O) "Children,^(P) how difficult it is^[a] to enter^(Q) the kingdom of God! ²⁵It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter^(R) the kingdom of God."

Luke 6:20-21

²⁰And^(A) he lifted up his eyes on his disciples,^(B) and said:
"Blessed are you who are poor, for^(C) yours is the kingdom of God.
²¹^(D) "Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.
^(E) "Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

6:24-25

²⁴^(A) "But woe to you who are rich,^(B) for you^(C) have received your consolation.
²⁵"Woe to you who are full now, for^(D) you shall be hungry.
"Woe to^(E) you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.

12:13-21

¹³^(A) Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." ¹⁴But he said to him, ^(B) "Man,^(C) who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" ¹⁵And he said to them, ^(D) "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." ¹⁶And he told them a parable, saying, ^(E) "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷and he thought to himself,^(F) 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' ¹⁸And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my^(G) barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up^(H) for many years; relax,^(I) eat, drink, be merry.' ²⁰But God said to him,^(J) 'Fool!^(K) This night^(L) your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared,^(M) whose will they be?' ²¹So is the one^(N) who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

12:33

³³^(A) Sell your possessions, and^(B) give to the needy.^(C) Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with^(D) a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.

14:12-14

¹²He said also to the man who had invited him, "When you give^(A) a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers^[a] or your relatives or rich neighbors,^(B) lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. ¹³But when you give a feast,^(C) invite^(D) the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, ¹⁴and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid^(E) at^(F) the resurrection of the just."

14:33

³³^(A) So therefore, any one of you who^(B) does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

16:9-14

⁹And I tell you,^(A) make friends for yourselves by means of^(B) unrighteous wealth,^[a] so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
¹⁰^(C) "One who is^(D) faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. ¹¹If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? ¹²And if you have not been faithful in^(E) that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? ¹³^(F) No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."
¹⁴^(G) The Pharisees, who were^(H) lovers of money, heard all these things, and they^(I) ridiculed him.

16:19-31

¹⁹"There was a rich man who was clothed in^(A) purple and fine linen and^(B) who feasted sumptuously every day. ²⁰And at his gate^(C) was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, ²¹who desired to be fed with^(D) what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. ²²The poor man died and was carried by^(E) the angels^(F) to Abraham’s side.^[a] The rich man also died and was buried, ²³and in^(G) Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and^(H) saw Abraham far off and Lazarus^(I) at his side. ²⁴And he called out,^(J) 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and^(K) cool my tongue, for^(L) I am in anguish in this flame.' ²⁵But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that^(M) you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. ²⁶And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' ²⁷And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— ²⁸for I have five brothers^[b]—so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' ²⁹But Abraham said, 'They have^(N) Moses and the Prophets;^(O) let them hear them.' ³⁰And he said, 'No,^(P) father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' ³¹He said to him, 'If they do not hear^(Q) Moses and the Prophets,^(R) neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

18:18-25

¹⁸^(A) And a ruler asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to^(B) inherit eternal life?" ¹⁹And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. ²⁰You know the commandments:^(C) 'Do not commit adultery, Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother.'" ²¹And he said,^(D) "All these I have kept from my youth." ²²When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "One thing you still lack.^(E) Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have^(F) treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." ²³^(G) But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich. ²⁴Jesus, seeing that he had become sad, said, ^(H) "How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter^(I) the kingdom of God! ²⁵For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter^(J) the kingdom of God."

19:26

²⁶'I tell you that^(A) to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

[Could be construed, out of context, as applying to wealth.]

[Note that nowhere is Jesus concerned with whether the poor deserve to be poor because they're "lazy" and vice versa with the rich]

Acts 2:44-45

⁴⁴And all who believed were together and^(A) had all things in common. ⁴⁵And^(B) they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.

4:32 & 34-35

³²Now the full number of those who believed were of^(A) one heart and^(B) soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but^(C) they had everything in common. ³³And with great^(D) power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and^(E) great grace was upon them all. ³⁴^(F) There was not a needy person among them, for^(G) as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold ³⁵and^(H) laid it at the apostles’ feet, and^(I) it was distributed to each as any had need.

[the early Christian church was communist]

Judgmentalism:
Morality, Moralism, Self-Righteousness, Adherence to Tradition, (Criminal Justice):
Matthew 5:17-20

¹⁷^(A) "Do not think that I have come to abolish^(B) the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but^(C) to fulfill them. ¹⁸For truly, I say to you,^(D) until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹^(E) Therefore whoever relaxes^(F) one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least^(G) in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds^(H) that of the scribes and Pharisees, you^(I) will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

5:27-32

²⁷^(A) "You have heard that it was said,^(B) 'You shall not commit adultery.' ²⁸But I say to you that^(C) everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ²⁹^(D) If your right eye^(E) causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into^(F) hell. ³⁰^(G) And if your right hand^(H) causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into^(I) hell.
³¹^(J) "It was also said,^(K) 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' ³²^(L) But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and^(M) whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

6:22-23

²² "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, ²³ but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

7:1-5

¹ "Judge not, that you be not judged. ² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. ³Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.

7:21-27

²¹ "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' ²³ And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'
²⁴ "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. ²⁶And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. ²⁷And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it."

[Regardless of what Paul says, this passage seems to indicate to me that you can't get away with not doing what Jesus said you should do.]

9:10-13

¹⁰And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. ¹¹And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" ¹²But when he heard it, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. ¹³Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

12:1-14

¹At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. ²But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath." ³He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: ⁴how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? ⁵Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? ⁶I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. ⁷And if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. ⁸For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath."
⁹He went on from there and entered their synagogue. ¹⁰And a man was there with a withered hand. And they asked him, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?"— so that they might accuse him. ¹¹He said to them, "Which one of you who has a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? ¹² Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." ¹³Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. ¹⁴But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

15:1-20

¹ Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, ² "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat." ³He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴For God commanded, 'Honor your father and your mother,' and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' ⁵But you say, 'If anyone tells his father or his mother, "What you would have gained from me is given to God," ⁶he need not honor his father.' So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. ⁷ You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:
⁸ "'This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
⁹in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'"
¹⁰And he called the people to him and said to them, "Hear and understand: ¹¹ it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person." ¹²Then the disciples came and said to him, "Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?" ¹³He answered, "Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. ¹⁴Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." ¹⁵But Peter said to him, "Explain the parable to us." ¹⁶And he said, "Are you also still without understanding? ¹⁷Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? ¹⁸But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. ¹⁹For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone."

18: 8-9

⁸ And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. ⁹ And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

18:25-35

²⁵ And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. ²⁶So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' ²⁷And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. ²⁸But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.' ²⁹So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' ³⁰He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. ³¹When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. ³²Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. ³³ And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' ³⁴ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. ³⁵ So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."

19:1-12

¹Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. ²And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.
³And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?" ⁴He answered, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, ⁵and said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? ⁶So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." ⁷They said to him, "Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?" ⁸He said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹ And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery."
¹⁰The disciples said to him, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." ¹¹But he said to them, "Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. ¹²For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it."

Mark 2:15-17

¹⁵And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" ¹⁷And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."

4:24-25

²⁴And he said to them, "Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. ²⁵ For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away."

7:1-23

¹ Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, ²they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. ³(For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders, ⁴and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) ⁵And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?" ⁶And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

"'This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
⁷in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'
⁸You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men."
⁹And he said to them, "You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! ¹⁰For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother'; and, 'Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.' ¹¹But you say, 'If a man tells his father or his mother, "Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban"' (that is, given to God)— ¹²then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, ¹³thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do." ¹⁴And he called the people to him again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵ There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him." ¹⁷And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. ¹⁸And he said to them, "Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, ¹⁹since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?" ( Thus he declared all foods clean.) ²⁰And he said, "What comes out of a person is what defiles him. ²¹For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, ²²coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. ²³ All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

10:1-12

²And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" ³He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" ⁴They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away." ⁵And Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. ⁶But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' ⁷ 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, ⁸and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. ⁹ What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate." ¹⁰And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. ¹¹And he said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, ¹²and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."

14:3-9

³ And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. ⁴There were some who said to themselves indignantly, "Why was the ointment wasted like that? ⁵For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor." And they scolded her. ⁶But Jesus said, "Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ⁷For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me. ⁸ She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial. ⁹And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her."

Luke 6:1-11

¹ On a Sabbath, while he was going through the grainfields, his disciples plucked and ate some heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands. ²But some of the Pharisees said, "Why are you doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath?" ³And Jesus answered them, "Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: ⁴how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?" ⁵And he said to them, "The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath." ⁶On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. ⁷And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. ⁸But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come and stand here." And he rose and stood there. ⁹And Jesus said to them, "I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?" ¹⁰And after looking around at them all he said to him, "Stretch out your hand." And he did so, and his hand was restored. ¹¹But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.

6:46-49

⁴⁶ "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? ⁴⁷ Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: ⁴⁸he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. ⁴⁹ But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great."

7:31-50

³¹"To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? ³²They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another,

"'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.'
³³For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.' ³⁴The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, 'Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' ³⁵Yet wisdom is justified by all her children."
³⁶ One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. ³⁷ And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, ³⁸and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. ³⁹Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner." ⁴⁰And Jesus answering said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." And he answered, "Say it, Teacher."
⁴¹"A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?" ⁴³Simon answered, "The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt." And he said to him, "You have judged rightly." ⁴⁴Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. ⁴⁵ You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. ⁴⁷Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little." ⁴⁸And he said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." ⁴⁹Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, "Who is this, who even forgives sins?" ⁵⁰And he said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you; go in peace."

13:10-17

¹⁰Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. ¹¹And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. ¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, "Woman, you are freed from your disability." ¹³And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. ¹⁴But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, "There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day." ¹⁵Then the Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? ¹⁶And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?" ¹⁷As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.

13:22-30

²² He went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying toward Jerusalem. ²³And someone said to him, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And he said to them, ²⁴ "Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. ²⁵ When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, open to us,' then he will answer you, 'I do not know where you come from.' ²⁶Then you will begin to say, 'We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.' ²⁷But he will say, 'I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!' ²⁸ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. ²⁹And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. ³⁰And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last."

14:1-6

¹One Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully. ²And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy. ³And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?" ⁴But they remained silent. Then he took him and healed him and sent him away. ⁵And he said to them, "Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?" ⁶ And they could not reply to these things.

¹Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. ²And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them."
³So he told them this parable: ⁴ "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? ⁵And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. ⁶And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' ⁷Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
⁸"Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? ⁹And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' ¹⁰Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
¹¹And he said, "There was a man who had two sons. ¹²And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And he divided his property between them. ¹³Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. ¹⁴And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. ¹⁵So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. ¹⁶And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.
¹⁷"But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! ¹⁸I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. ¹⁹ I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."' ²⁰And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. ²¹And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' ²²But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. ²³And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. ²⁴For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate.
²⁵"Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. ²⁶And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. ²⁷And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.' ²⁸But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, ²⁹but he answered his father, 'Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. ³⁰But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!' ³¹And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. ³²It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'"

16:17-18

¹⁷But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.
¹⁸ "Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

John 8:1-11

Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. ² Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. ³The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst ⁴they said to him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. ⁵Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" ⁶This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. ⁷And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." ⁸And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. ⁹But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. ¹⁰Jesus stood up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" ¹¹She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."

Militarism, Criminal Justice, "Patriotism":
Matthew 5:7-9

⁴"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
⁵"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
⁶"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
⁷"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
⁸"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
⁹"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

5:21-26

²¹ "You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.' ²²But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire. ²³ So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, ²⁴leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. ²⁵ Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. ²⁶Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

5:43-48

⁴³ "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. ⁴⁶ For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

[but apparently it's "treason" to give "aide and comfort to the enemy" (whatever that means).]

10:34-36

³⁴ "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

18:21-35

²¹Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" ²²Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. ²³"Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. ²⁴When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. ²⁵ And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. ²⁶So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.' ²⁷And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. ²⁸But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, 'Pay what you owe.' ²⁹So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, 'Have patience with me, and I will pay you.' ³⁰He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. ³¹When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. ³²Then his master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. ³³ And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' ³⁴ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. ³⁵ So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."

22:34-40

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" ³⁷And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Mark 7:24-30

²⁴And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. ²⁵But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. ²⁶ Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷And he said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs." ²⁸But she answered him, "Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs." ²⁹And he said to her, "For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter." ³⁰And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

9:38-40

³⁸ John said to him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us." ³⁹But Jesus said, "Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰ For the one who is not against us is for us.

Luke 6:27-38

²⁷"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸ bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹ To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. ³⁰ Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. ³¹And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
³² "If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. ³⁵But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. ³⁶ Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
³⁷ "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸ give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you."

10:25-37

²⁵ And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" ²⁶He said to him, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" ²⁷And he answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." ²⁸And he said to him, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live." ²⁹But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" ³⁰Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. ³¹Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. ³²So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. ³⁴He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' ³⁶Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" ³⁷He said, "The one who showed him mercy." And Jesus said to him, "You go, and do likewise."

[the Samaritans were despised by the Jews, ref. also John 4:9]

11:23

²³ Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

12:51-53

⁵¹ Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. ⁵²For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. ⁵³They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."

17:3-4

³Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, ⁴and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, 'I repent,' you must forgive him."

[this sounds like it should be the basis of a lenient and merciful justice system]

Arguments for the Existence of God and the Refutations

2009-08-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

Note: refuting these arguments in no way proves God's non-existence. In a future post I will explain how, even as an Atheist, I have a conception of something that might be called "God".

Arguments taken from http://conservapedia.com/Arguments_for_the_existence_of_God

Kalam cosmological argument

The aim of this argument is to show that the universe had a beginning in the finite past. The argument battles against the existence of an infinite, temporal regress of past events which implies a universe that has infinitely existed. This argument implies the existence of a First Cause.

The form of the argument is:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Note that the key phrase here is "begins to exist". The question is not "whatever exists".

The atheistic counter argument has traditionally been to point 2, taking the position that the universe has always existed. With the advent of the Big Bang theory pointing towards a starting point, this line of defense has become rather shaky. It should also be noted that the Kalam argument removes one of the knee jerk reactions to any discussion on creation involving God which is "Then who created God?" Since God has no beginning, the question becomes meaningless. The Bible makes clear that God exists outside of our construct of time in many locations, including 1 Corinthians 2:7, 2 Timothy 1:9, and Titus 1:2.

Refutation: the first two premises are unproven. Firstly, we cannot prove that anything that begins to exist has a cause for the simple reason that we have never observed something beginning to exist, strictly speaking. We only have experience of matter being rearranged in such a way that it excites a concept in our minds that it didn't before. It might be argued that concepts begin to exist, but once again it would seem that they are only rearrangements or such of already existing concepts.

But backtracking a bit...it does seem that we MIGHT have observed things beginning to exist, in the quantum realm. And these things DO NOT appear to have a cause, beyond the randomness inherent in quantum physics.

And then of course there are the points argued by Hume about the phenomenon of cause and effect, and what it means, whether it actually exists, etc.

The second premise is already discussed in the article.

And finally, it is argued that God did not "begin to exist". How do you know this? You can't base it off of Biblical authority as such authority is dependent on the existence of God, which is what we are attempting to prove.

Thomistic cosmological argument

What we observe in this universe is contingent (i.e. dependent, or conditional)
A sequence of causally related contingent things cannot be infinite
The sequence of causally dependent contingent things must be finite

Conclusion: There must be a first cause in the sequence of contingent causes

Why must the second premise be true? This is like arguing that the numbers cannot extend to infinity, therefore there must be some largest number.

Leibnizian cosmological argument

The argument comes from a German polymath, Gottfriend Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz wrote, "The first question which should rightly be asked is this: why is there something rather than nothing?"

The argument runs as follows:

Every existing thing has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
The universe is an existing thing.
Therefore the explanation of the universe is God.

Some atheists object to premise 2 in that God does not have to be the explanation, but that the universe can be what is called a necessary being (one which exists of its own nature and have no external cause). This was a suggestion of David Hume who demanded, "Why may not the material universe be the necessarily existent being?" (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 9). The Kalam Cosmological Argument is helpful. If Hume (and other atheists) is right in saying that the universe is a necessary being/thing, then this implies that the universe is eternal. This is exactly what the Kalam argument seeks to disprove. Thus, the Kalam is a valuable supplement to the Leibnizian argument

One refutation is already mentioned in the article. Also: not only is it possible, as Hume said, for the universe to be a necessarily existent being, but also, if it isn't, why does God have to be its cause? (and why does the universe being a necessarily existent being imply that it is eternal?)

Is God an existing thing? Then what is its cause?

Teleological argument

(the "unmoved mover")

Probably the most popular argument for God's existence is the teleological argument. Derived from the Greek word telos, which refers to purpose or end, this argument hinges on the idea that the world gives evidence of being designed, and concludes that a divine designer must be posited to account for the orderly world we encounter. Although the teleological argument dates at least as far back as Plato, it is perhaps most memorable today from the work of William Paley (1743-1805), in his Natural Theology (1802). Recently, the teleological argument has gained renewed interest as a core element of the theory of Intelligent Design and the related efforts to reconcile science and faith.

Although there are variations, the basic argument goes something like this:

X is too complex to have occurred randomly or naturally.
Therefore, X must have been created by an intelligent being, Y.
God is that intelligent being.
Therefore, God exists.

Comments on the teleological argument

The first and second premises assume that one can infer the existence of intelligent design merely by examining an object. This is the same principle that archaeology uses to determine if, for example, a piece of stone is a stone tool.

The teleological argument assumes that because life is complex, it must have been designed. This is based on observations that complexity is not the outcome of random processes. Some object that life or objects are described as, “orderly” or “ordered”, and that this implies that an intelligent designer has ordered them. These objector claim that a system can be non-random or ordered simply because it is following impersonal physical processes, for example diamonds or snowflakes. However, such "ordered" systems do not have complexity, which life has.

The third premise is rejected by some even if the first and second premises are accepted, as the implied designer (Y) might be an unknown force or mere demiurge, not God as God is commonly understood. It is argued in defense that the outside force through which Y came into being might then be explained as a more powerful being resulting in either an omnipotent being or infinite regression.

Critics often argue that the teleological argument would apply to the designer, arguing any designer must be at least as complex and purposeful as the designed object. This, they say, would create the absurdity of an infinite series of designers. However, the counter-argument of an "undesigned designer," akin to Aristotle's uncaused causer, is common. Furthermore, it has been argued that God is not complex, that is, He is not composed of many interrelated parts, so the complexity argument does not apply.

The first premise assumes the wrongness of evolution, obviously. It is also impossible to prove one way or the other: if, for instance, it was shown that DNA was able to develop independently in an environment analogous to the natural one it first developed in, while that would SEEM to be evidence that complexity can be produced by natural processes, it could also be argued that some intelligent entity was guiding the process without our knowing of it.

This argument is, at its core, an analogy: the only basis on which it can be made sense of is in considering a human's ability to create complex things. To create something more complex, a human being has to be more intelligent: the "natural" things we see around us are more complex than anything we've created, therefore whatever created them must be that much more intelligent than us, or at least be intelligent. I do not see how the argument can be understood in anything other than this context and still be understood at all, without presupposing what the it seeks to prove.

Therefore, the question becomes whether this analogy works. The first flaw I see is in not defining "intelligence". For instance, in saying that such and such couldn't happen by natural processes, and therefore must have been produced by something intelligent, it is implied that intelligence is not a natural process. Since the argument only makes sense by considering the analogy of HUMAN intelligence, it pre-supposes that human intelligence does not arise from natural processes--a debatable assumption.

And would the intelligence of God even be analogous to that of human beings? Now, obviously, this argument alone would require that it is--by "analogous" I mean that even though the intelligence could be thought to be infinitely greater than that of a human, it is still of the same nature. However, other assumptions about God that people who make this argument also tend to want to make are inconsistent with it having intelligence analogous to that of humans, meaning that this argument does not prove the existence of the God they are attempting to prove the existence of. Human intelligence fundamentally consists of the ability to solve problems, the ability to conceive of what is not immediately apparent, and, if we allow for free will, the ability to adjust one's own actions. An omnipotent, omniscient, sovereign being would not need any of these abilities, and indeed some of them would be contradictory to its nature.

Finally, you can't get away from the objection that if God is the designer, it must be more complex than its designs, therefore by the argument's reasoning it must have its own designer, because, once again, the argument only makes sense through the analogy of human intelligence. Does we assume that human intelligence is more complex than the things it creates? Now we're comparing complexity in completely different realms of being: immaterial and material, and the question seems to be meaningless. Anyway, in order to argue that complexity is not a term that applies to God, we'd have to argue that its not a term that applies to human intelligence, or at least in some limited way it does not apply. (This is actually a reasonable point of view for Descartes, that human intelligence is not composed of many interrelated parts.)

HOWEVER, while it can be argued that complexity does not apply to human intelligence, it still applies to the means by which our intelligence creates things: our bodies, which the analogy assumes to be more complex than the things we create. Therefore there must be some aspect of God that is more complex than the things IT creates.

Anthropological argument

The anthropological (anthropos meaning "man") argument is made on the basis of the condition of humanity, of mankind's basic moral standards and the thread a search for a higher being. It is related to the cosmological and teleological arguments in that it if man has a yearning for God and a conscience when offending him, ostensibly these have their origin and cause in God and not in man. The argument was perhaps most famously posited by Blaise Pascal, who reasoned that it was better "bet" to believe in God than not to do so.

I think they're discussing two arguments here: I don't see how Pascals wager is an anthropological argument as defined. Anyway, the anthropological argument really doesn't deserve comment.

I discussed Pascal's Wager in my previous post, although for interest of accuracy, I'd replace "infinite", every time I use it in that discussion, with "indefinite".

Ontological argument

The ontological argument attempts to prove God's existence through abstract reasoning alone. The argument is entirely a priori, i.e. it involves no empirical evidence at all. Rather, the argument begins with an explication of the concept of God, and seeks to demonstrate that God exists on the basis of that concept alone.

“

"The argument is ingenious. It has the appearance of a linguistic trick, but it is a difficult task to say precisely what, if anything, is wrong with it. All forms of the argument make some association between three concepts: the concepts of God, of perfection, and of existence. Very roughly, they state that perfection is a part of the concept of God, and that perfection entails existence, and so that the concept of God entails God's existence." ^[3]

”

The ontological argument was first formulated by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), one of the great medieval philosopher-theologians, in his Proslogium, Chapter 2. Anselm’s ontological argument rests on the identification of God as “that than which no greater can be conceived”. Once it is understood that God is that of which no greater can be conceived, Anselm suggests, it becomes evident that God must exist.

A problem with this argument is that it merely defines God into existence. It is unclear if the concept of being able to conceive of a perfect being has any connection to actual existence. Without being able to make this connection, the merit of the argument can become questionable.

Descartes' ontological argument

We have the idea of an infinitely perfect Being. Since we are finite, and everything around us is finite, the idea of an infinitely perfect Being could not have originated with us or with the nature around us. Therefore the idea of an infinitely perfect Being must have come from such a being - God.

Besides the discussion in the article, there are a few points I'd like to make.
That perfection entails existence is an assumption, and a Western one at that. "Nirvana", for instance, is non-existence.
As to Descartes' argument, I doubt, almost to the extent of being certain its not true, that we have an idea of an infinitely perfect Being, just as we have no idea of higher dimensions or the vastness of the universe. We can reason regarding them, but we cannot really conceive of them. And the fact that we can reason about them does not prove their existence, as is the case with higher dimensions.

Free will argument

There can be no free will in a totally naturalistic system
Free will exists
Therefore God exists

Oxygen and hydrogen don't 'choose' to combine, they do so due to natural laws. In a naturalistic system every component that makes us up obeys similar natural laws. The concept of freewill or choice would therefore not exist.

Objections

Some challenge this argument on the basis that premises one and two have not been proven. They argue:

In challenging premise 1, those ascribing to compatibilism believe that our experience of free will is still compatible with naturalistic causes even if the mechanism that causes this to be is not yet known and no viable explanation can be postulated apart from acting as if it is so.^[5] Since this can not be disproven, it is possible that free will exists in a naturalistic system.
In challenging premise 2, those ascribing to determinism simply believe that free will does not exist and no one has free will. Therefore there is no importance to the concept of God.

Beyond the objections mentioned in the article, there's also the fact that, if God is omniscient as commonly supposed, free will can't exist.

Consciousness

Nature consists of a finite number of elements.
We (our physical bodies) consist of those elements.
The elements themselves which we consist of, and nature itself, have no consciousness.
Despite our elements themselves having no consciousness, we do.
Consciousness can not happen by chance, therefore there must be a being who supply that to us.
Infinite regress of beings is illogical, therefore a single, uncaused causer must be the causer of consciousness.
This uncaused causer of the conscience is God

Objections

This argument fails to address gestalt consciousness.
Evolutionists typically argue that consciousness may happen by chance, and that for this reason, the argument is invalid.
Infinite regress is allowable both in modern mathematics and physics.
The last point (that the uncaused causer is God) is unsupported unless it is taken as a statement of definition. If this is the case, the prior arguments are unnecessary.

Besides the objections mentioned in the article, there's also the contention that conciousness cannot be an emergent property. To show why this contention is not necessarily true, consider this, probably rather silly sounding, analogous argument:

Nature consists of a finite number of elements.
A fire consists of those elements.
The elements themselves which a fire consist of have no heat [heat is a nonsensical concept at the particle level].
Despite our elements themselves having no heat, fires do.
[Therefore something must give the fire heat.]

A Debate about God, and involving Evolution, Biblical Accuracy, Meaning, Comlexity, Morality, Chance, and whether water is needed for alien life.

2009-06-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

(This is an extended comment [it was long enough that I wrote it as a note] I wrote in response to comments on one of my friend's notes on FB, along with the discussion that followed. The responses are to comments by 3 people. It has been edited for grammar, spelling, and clarity, and also to protect people's identities [I use initials for their names] [and also removing anything that is irrelevant to the discussion or to anyone outside my circle of friends]. Obviously the context of the comments I'm responding to is missing, but I doubt that's essential.)

"Nothing backs up evolution except the claims of people who don't want to believe the Bible. Thing is if there is evolution we would have seen it happen and proven it but we haven't and we can't so I think its BS."
We have. On a miniscule scale, of course, but that is what we would expect given the fact that our observations are made over relatively miniscule periods of time. I can give you several examples if you want them. Plus there's the fossil record, which has holes, but that's to be entirely expected: the amount of life that becomes fossilized and where those fossils survive to the present day is a small, small fraction of all the life that was, and by no means a necessarily representative fraction either.
Or there's the vestigial body parts, such as the remnants of legs in some types of whales, or the muscles that allow some people to wiggle their ears--indicative of some former, forgotten use.
Or the inductive conclusions you can draw from the similarities and dissimilarities between species, which was obviously noticed on a subconscious level even before Darwin (as he pointed out, naturalists had always classified species as if they were related to each other, even though that was not their intention. After all, we have "Families" of animals.)
Or the evidence from the genetic code.
Shall I go on?
Oh, and also the fact that natural selection is obvious if you just reason it out: if for various reasons some animal (and human) babies turn out a bit better at surviving and reproducing than their peers, which you can't deny is the case, then they are going to leave more offspring. That's basic natural selection in a nutshell, and many of its intricacies logically follow.

"I would rather live my life a fool than end it going to hell. So you can choose which you would rather do, take a chance and roll the dice or play it safe as a fool."
"I'm saying that I would rather be a fool and believe the Bible than doubt it and go to hell. The odds are not for me. I am all for acquiring knowledge."
You're rolling the dice anyway. You could believe in the wrong God and still be screwed. Besides the number of Gods people around the world believe in, there are also an infinite number of hypothetical Gods, and even if most of these Gods would be merciful even if you didn't believe in them exactly, that still leaves an infinite number of Gods who would not be (and infinity divided by infinity is impossible to determine). So not only are you rolling dice, you have no clue what your odds are (and they are no better or worse than an atheist's).

"There are facts on god, you just need to believe the facts are facts. It's called the Bible for a reason."
Many theologians throughout history have denied this, pointing out that God, if it does exist, must be so utterly transcendent that it is impossible to understand it in any human terms, and all Biblical language describing it must therefore be highly figurative. And it's obviously not true that "the fact are facts", since there are so many different religions and individuals that dispute or interpret the facts in highly different ways, and claim incontrovertible Biblical support for their views.

"If we can't trust the Bible how can we trust any historical books? All the books we see in the library are put together by a group of people or one author by using supposed historical sources--how do we know these sources aren't fictitious?"
They could be. However, the historical record has been corroborated by the independent examination of numerous records (at least ideally, more on that later): some parts of the Bible have, some haven't, and even those that have the miraculous details have not. Also, it is recognized that the historical record can contain human error, and is therefore open to revision and improvement in light of new evidence: again, your beliefs regarding the Bible imply this cannot be done. Also, why do you trust the Bible by default?

"...and you know what, I am NOTHING without my lord God. Without him what is there worth living for? There is no real ownership of anything, there is nothing to look forward too, except to attempt to please yourself in your life and then bring your kids into a world with only the hope they will live to suffer before they die?"
"To me if there was no God I wouldn't be here right now. (I would be dead) God gives me hope and something to live for, otherwise everything I go though would be somewhat of a meaningless pain."
There are many other possible sources of meaning in life. The search for meaning itself can provide meaning. Here is a document of my own search: www.dervine7.blogspot.com.

And even if there is no meaning without God, that is not evidence that he exists, simply evidence that it's useful to believe in him in order to provide meaning.
Let me digress for a moment and point out that certainty and sensation of God don't prove anything. Members of Al Quaida are as certain of their God as you are of yours. And sensations can quite obviously be illusory.

"...for example, it seems as if even through examining one cell we find evidence of a creator. Everything is so complex--how could it possibly have formed in the life of this planet? There isn't enough time."
There's 4.5 billion years, 15 billion (they think) if you count the entire history of the universe. Timescales utterly inconceivable to human beings (4.5 billion is 4,500 times the entire lifetime of humanity, and many more again times the existence of civilization).
Also, the observable universe has 3 to 7×10^22 stars (3 to 7 followed by 22 zeros, or--if stars were money--more than 30 to 70 billion stimulus packages :P ). There's probably more universe than what we can observe. So even if the chance is teeny-tiny of complex life appearing, the amount of stuff over the amount of time given means that it's probably going to happen at some point. All you need is a molecule capable of making copies of itself that manages to make enough copies of itself so that it doesn't die off, and then the molecules that happen to be a little better at surviving and reproducing, which seem to be the more complex molecules, make more copies of themselves than their fellows, etc. etc., you have life.

"If god doesn't exist what is my motivation to be good? I could be the worst scum on earth, and in the end nothing horrible would happen. And if I was ever tortured for being a scumbag, all I would have to do to stop my tormentors is die."
"When I eventually have kids I plan to love them and to teach them my religion so they have a chance of going to heaven. If there was no God, then why should anyone not kill?"
So you're only a good person for entirely selfish reasons, i.e. to avoid punishment? That's kind of disturbing. Actually, I believe people, and the basis of morality, are ultimately selfish too, but I think this selfishness has much less to do with the avoidance of punishment than with the achievement of reward, that reward being the feeling of pleasure that comes from doing good and helping other people--an instinct that exists to insure the continued existence of humanity, and that we must nurture so that it can accomplish its end.
It is also obvious to me that morality is more fundamental any particular religion, since there are moral systems such as the Golden Rule that exist in completely independent religious traditions (such as Judeo-Christianity and Buddhism)--many of which have conceptions of God so different from ours that we would be unlikely to consider it "God" at all--and even independently of any religious tradition at all (Humanism). If many different things possess attribute X, but are different in other attributes, it is natural to assume that X is the more fundamental attribute.
Will your children really be true believers if they did not have to choose to believe? The beliefs will not be truly theirs: they will be yours, given to them. They will not have earned them for themselves.
It is possible to develop ethical systems without God in them, based on logical principles: once again, you can see my own explorations in this regard (link above).

(the following is the discussion that followed this note:)

T C:

"Members of Al Quaida are as certain of their God as you are of yours."
I love this. Because not only are they both certain of their god, that particular god is exactly the same one... Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship the God of Abraham. And yet, somehow, they all believe that their God is the right one, and the God of the other two is wrong...

That one, I just don't get.

F H:

There is zero merit in being good in hope of the reward of heaven, and out of the fear of hell. Besides, what would lead you to think that the rest of us would allow you to get away with being rotten? Who is that yoyo? To paraphrase Twain: Hell is where the interesting people will be. So I'd prefer to go there.

T C:

You know, as a well-educated Christian, I see so much wrong with this, I almost want to write my own. He's wrong on almost all points from both the scientific and the theological point of view. A decent Christian Education class might do some good.

Me:

Most of the comments are R D's, except for the first and second to last, which are by C M and A K, respectively. All more or less good friends (not more or less good, more or less friends, i.e. I only sort of know some of them :P ) that I (obviously) disagree with--and I'm all the happier for it! (It makes life much more interesting.) [note to commenters on this blog: please don't attack my friends.]
I'm wrong or the person who I'm responding to is wrong?

T C:

The person you're responding to is wrong... I didn't realize there were multiple originals.

You're fine, at least from the debatable starting point of the non-existence of God.

My response would be very much like yours, except for the inclusion of several Biblical verses and theological arguments showing where they're original premises are ALSO completely false.

Me:

I don't think I actually claim there isn't a God (although it's obviously implied)--just that their reasoning for its existence is flawed.

R D:

[...]and what I have said is what I believe to be true. I am not saying that I am nice because God exists, I am nice because I LOVE my God.

Me:

I know their your beliefs, I'm just debating. I've always been of the opinion that it is important to examine beliefs thoroughly and adjust them if reason requires. I don't want to attack anyone's beliefs, I just want to get them to do what I've stated above.
OK, but that was not how you put it in your original comments.

F H:

Yow! Well, it is perhaps a fine point - I start at the null hypothesis - There is no God - all I ask for is evidence. - The bible, both Old and New Testament, is not evidence for much of anything, except that the jews were good at syncretism and adapting other peoples mythologies when it suited them. And the fact that so many people believe isn't evidence either. To date I have been presented with 0 evidence for the existence of any deity. So I'll be your atheist.

A K:

I do believe in natural selection--I think in that way we have "evolved"; however, I really don't believe we came from monkeys. I heard someone actually mathematically disproved such evolution but apparently it's so engrained in the minds of scientists.
But even if we did come together by some sort of collision in space..where did the universe come from? Are there other universes? How do you explain the fact that somewhere around 98 percent of matter is unaccounted for?

Me:

We do share over 99% of our genetic material with chimpanzees.
I wouldn't be surprised if the mathematical proof you're talking about has to do with entropy, and if it is, it's nothing new (my physics teacher discussed the flaws in its reasoning). I can't think of any other ways someone could attempt to disprove human evolution mathematically.
If God created the universe, where did God come from? If you say nothing created God, and he just exists of his own accord, why can't I say the the same about the universe? It's as if someone said a billion is the biggest number, but when someone else said the biggest number is a million, the first person told them that that makes no sense. They're both arbitrarily choosing limits on how big number can get, and similarly the two of us would be arbitrarily choosing limits on the chain of causality.

F H:

Good questions, and science is working on them. Darwin knew that evolution was real, it was the only rational explanation of the evidence. But he didn't know the mechanism, and admitted that to be an argument against his theory. (Darwin actually stated, in print, that there were several arguments against his theory, and should any of them prove true, it would be a serious blow. To date, NONE have proved true). And no other theory was (is) better at explaining the evidence. But just because they didn't know the mechanism was no reason to stop working and say "God did it." There HAD to be a mechanism, and along came Crick and Watson and the discovery of DNA.

Me:

There might be other universes: we don't have enough evidence right now to know for sure, but my understanding is that such a possibility is actually very likely.
The situation is the same in regards to dark matter: we don't have enough evidence yet to reach a definite conclusion. We probably will eventually though, which points to the danger of invoking God to explain things we don't understand: when we do finally understand it, God ends up having one less thing to do. To go back in time to the extreme, it used to be believed, for instance, that there were no laws of nature, and everything happened due to God's (actually, at that point, several gods') direct interference. There is a trend here, and I think if the idea of God is to survive, we'll probably have to stop considering it as an explanatory causal agency altogether--even in regards to morality--lest the deeper, most sublime aspects of the idea of God disappear along with our need to invoke it in explaining things.

(If at the moment anyone is thinking "wait, I thought you were an atheist", I call myself an atheist because if I said I believed in God, my conception of God would be so radically different from anyone else's that I might as well say I own a dog when I actually own a cat.)

R D:

Organized religion is the third or fourth step in the transformation from roaming tribes into true civilizations, so whether you do or do not believe in God he has played the biggest role of any being ever

Me:

I don't deny that. In fact, I whole-heartedly agree with it. But it doesn't prove his existence, and it's also entirely possible that God is a stage of development that is highly important, but that we need to move beyond, or at least alter significantly (kind of like how our parents play the biggest and most important role in our childhood, but there comes a time when if we are to become healthy adults we must sever the bonds to some extent, or at least alter our relationship to them [it's a very imperfect analogy]).

Another analogy would be the several ideas about the world around us that as children we NEED to have in order to be healthy, and are important to our development, but that we must alter and/or discard as we become older.

Me:

Found another "mathematical disproof" you might have been talking about. Once again, it's nothing new, and the reasoning is flawed.
"When one is dealt a bridge hand of thirteen cards, the probability of being dealt that particular hand is less than one in 600 billion. Still, it would be absurd for someone to be dealt a hand, examine it carefully, calculate that the probability of getting it is less than one in 600 billion, and then conclude that he must not have been [randomly] dealt that very hand because it is so very improbable." -John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences

By the way, T C, I'd be really interested in seeing the biblical and theological points you talked about.

T C:

For some reason, people fail to read the Bible with historical perspective. Which is strange, since parts of it were written 4,000 years ago.

For instance, the creation story. If you read it, you'll notice that there are actually two of them. there's the one everyone knows in chapter 1. and there's the one in chapter 2.

The one in chapter 2 was written first. It's the actual Hebrew creation story from forever ago. The first one was written much later, during the Babylonian occupation. It's the Babylonian creation story. The Babylonians say that the Sun (they're main god) created the world in seven days. The jewish version has God creating the world in 6 days (he rested on the 7th), and on the first day, he created the Sun. I.e., The Hebrew God is better because he created the babylonian god, AND he did it faster.

It's essentially a political story, aimed at improving the morale of the Jews while they're being scattered around by the Babylonians.

Additionally, of course, is the more standard, but still sound reasoning that the Hebrew "day" in that creation story can be translated as "era". In which God created the world in 6 eras. And if you do that, it actually follows science pretty well. First came the sun and the stars. Then came earth, and sea life, and plant life, and animal life, and people.

Also worthy of note is that no one believed in the 6 day creation until the 1800s, when the fundamentalist christians started. The jews treat it as figurative. The early christians, the roman catholics, and the mainline protestants all followed suit. So this whole 6,000 year old earth theory is only about as old as the theory of evolution by natural selection anyway.

A K:

There is enough historical evidence to prove many of the events in the Bible did indeed occur. I don't really think that people can really prove scientifically that God exists, but I'm not sure how you explain my sightings of angels and demons.
There has to be a concept of truth; otherwise it would just be a figurative word.
And it seems there's something to Christianity: its the most persecuted, yet most popular religion worldwide. People die horrendous deaths everyday for it. I'm not saying that other people of other religions don't die for their God...but it is the Christians who have been the most persecuted.
I also think the reasoning behind evolution is flawed. And many of the evolutionists like Darwin and Aristotle either renounced or modified their theories before their deaths; a fact that most of the public has not acknowledged.
Also, we are actually closer to pigs genetically than monkeys.
If we formed from some sort of collision, how are we so extremely complex? How is it that the more we study the brian the less we really know? Why is it that even though the earth is densely populated with life there aren't there even the smallest life forms on other surrounding planets?

Me:

Again, not the miraculous details, and the historical evidence is speculative as late as after the Exodus, I believe; T C would probably have a better idea. There's historical evidence of Troy, but we don't believe in the Greek gods that Homer says caused the events there.
People sight all sorts of things--especially when worked into a state of religious ecstasy, which isn't dissimilar to hypnosis (not a bad thing in the slightest, don't get me wrong)--and if you were Indian you'd have sightings of elephant gods with multiple arms. We also have a knack for recognizing patterns that aren't actually there, especially when we're looking for them; one of the reasons people who believe in ghosts are much more likely to see one, when what they're really seeing is perhaps a random bit of mist that happens to vaguely resemble a human being.

Truth can exist independently of God: there is just as much reason for truth to be self-sufficient as there is for God to be self-sufficient.

What reasoning do you think is flawed?

Even this site denies the veracity of that claim.
Also, scientists are always modifying their theories: that's what makes it science.

I could find no specific info on the pig similarity, but I'm sure it's false. The reason they are looking to use pigs for organ transplants is because they are readily available: however, they have to be genetically modified so that they are not rejected by the host body. Everything I came across said primate-human transplants would be much easier because of genetic closeness, but it isn't feasible.

The article I linked to has answers to many of the complexity arguments.

We don't even have enough evidence to know for certain whether or not there's life on mars, the closest planet and the one we know the most about (though it seems like they're pretty sure there isn't).
Also, if life is very unlikely (which we also don't know: we have an entire universe to check out before we can reach that conclusion), it's to be expected that it would only pop up very rarely, just like 10 coins coming up heads is only going to happen, on average, every 1,024 fair coin tosses.

T C:

There is also, of course, the common theory that life requires liquid water. Water is only liquid for a very small range of temperatures (180 degrees) So far, liquid water has only been discovered on one planet - Earth. However, there's a small chance for life on Mars, and a lot of excitement over the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. We've only been landing on other astronomical bodies for 40 years, and only landed on two of them.

How many single-celled organisms do you expect to find with a telescope?

Me:

Plus, the only reason we assume life requires liquid water is that that's what life on earth uses. Which, of course, points to the other problem with looking for life on other planets: we can only look for stuff that resembles what we know.
So do you have any info on historical confirmation of biblical texts? (as per my earlier comment)

T C:

Historical accuracy of the bible is iffy. There are some places where we take it as historical fact, because it's the only surviving record. There are other places where it's definitely wrong. The historic records from 2000BC are extraordinarily sketchy, but we do know generally that the Israelites were slaves of the Egyptians, and were put to work building the pyramids (the whole making bricks thing). There is no Egyptian record of the plagues though, for instance, so again with the miracles not being substantiated. So we have historical records of some things going all the way back into the later parts of Genesis.

There's also some pretty strong evidence of a great flood in the Mediterranean, since the Jews, the Greeks, and several other ancient cultures have myths of one. Noah's Ark itself is probably not true, but works as a serviceable myth to explain the existence of rainbows.

But there's also obvious historical flaws. At the beginning of Luke, (which was only 2000 years ago, and we have pretty good historical records from the time), it says "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was the first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria)" Lk 2: 1-2. The problem is, that according to Roman governmental records (which are pretty accurate), Cyrenius wasn't governor of Syria while Augustus was Caesar.

So for the Old Testament, it was long enough ago, that with the shortage of records, we can only verify certain very broad things, but no specifics. And in the New Testament, we can verify some things, but prove others completely false. It leaves the Bible on sketchy territory as a historical document.

And of course, one must remember that it is heavily biased toward Israel. If the Bible were to be believed, the Israelites were one of the major middle eastern powers in ancient times. But if that were the case, some of the other major powers (Egypt, Babylon, Assyria) would have mentioned SOMETHING about them. In reality, they were a loose band of small tribes in Canaan, and pretty damn unimportant.

Me:

And you'd think the Egyptians would be kind of concerned about the plagues if they happened :P
Aren't some books in the Old Testament contemporary and/or recently historical accounts, though?

Who's the earliest biblical figure we can be pretty sure existed?
By the way, I'd still be interested in seeing your theological/biblical citation responses to R D and A K (as a contrast to my secular responses).

F H:

OK. To date, there has been ZERO evidence of the Exodus found anywhere. It is impossible that two million people could wander around the sinai for forty years and leave NO evidence. Now as regards miracles and other things - Every day many people pay good money to see Penn and Teller do the impossible. These people are EYEWITNESSES and they KNOW that they are being deceived, they're LOOKING for the TRICK, and they STILL don't see it! Just imagine how easy it is to fool someone who WANTS to believe.

T C:

@ F H: I didn't say there was evidence of the exodus. I said there was evidence of the Jews being slaves. There is a big difference. but it is worth pointing out for anyone that missed it, so thanks.

@ [my] various questions: Some of the books are "histories". The historicalness of them, however, is a little iffy, just like the rest of it. Kings, Judges, and Samuel in particular are supposedly history of the jews. Many of the minor prophets are just more detailed sections of those books (Ruth, Ester, Daniel, for example).

The newest parts of the Old Testament were written a few hundred years before Christ. The oldest are written records of oral tradition (which, by tradition, were set down by Moses, but that's almost certainly BS).

The first person in the Bible that we know existed would probably be David or Solomon (almost certainly one of the Kings, as they're important enough for other people to write about them) but I don't happen to know that particular tidbit.

T C:

"I would rather live my life a fool than end it going to hell. So you can choose which you would rather do, take a chance and roll the dice or play it safe as a fool."
"I'm saying that I would rather be a fool and believe the Bible than doubt it and go to hell. The odds are not for me. I am all for acquiring knowledge."

The two aren't mutually exclusive. My pastor was a science teacher. I feel like by reading any of my previous posts, it's pretty obvious that it's pretty easy to believe in God and science. Christianity doesn't have to make you a moron.
Also, you don't go to hell for doubting the Bible. Doubt and unbelief are very different things. Doubt is like being sick. Unbelief is like being dead. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Sickness is a necessary part of life. Doubt is a necessary part of faith.

"Without [God] what is there worth living for? There is no real ownership of anything, there is nothing to look forward too, except to attempt to please yourself in your life and then bring your kids into a world with only the hope they will live to suffer before they die?"
"To me if there was no God I wouldn't be here right now. (I would be dead) God gives me hope and something to live for, otherwise everything I go though would be somewhat of a meaningless pain."
There's no reason to own anything if you believe in God. "It's harder for a rich man to see the Kingdom than it is for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle." In Acts, the early disciples pooled all their posessions and distributed them each according to his need.
What is there to look forward to when you believe in God? The afterlife. so why not just die? If you don't believe in God, there's LIFE to look forward to.

And again, what does God give you to live for? Oh yeah, death. You're faith has GOT to be something more than "when I die, I get a reward." Otherwise, it's nonsensical.

Pain is not God testing you. It's life. God is just what helps you through the pain. People ask "Why did God let Katrina happen?" God didn't LET it happen. It happened. It was not God punishing New Orleans. God then used Katrina as a way of glorifying him - all those mission trips to rebuild, and the people coming together. that was what God had to do with Katrina.

"If god doesn't exist what is my motivation to be good? I could be the worst scum on earth, and in the end nothing horrible would happen. And if I was ever tortured for being a scumbag, all I would have to do to stop my tormentors is die."
"When I eventually have kids I plan to love them and to teach them my religion so they have a chance of going to heaven. If there was no God, then why should anyone not kill?"
So are you saying that since God didn't say not to kill anyone until the 10 commandments, everyone was totally free to kill everybody all the way through Genesis? You've got to be kidding.

People don't kill each other because it's good for society. The human race wouldn't survive very long if everyone killed everyone. so it's in the interest of the collective good that people don't murder.

Not to mention of course that you don't go to Heaven for being good. you go to Heaven for believing in God. Paul knocks this home again and again throughout his letters. We are human beings, and as human beings, we are imperfect. We cannot follow the law.

So Jesus died for our sins. Let's put this another way that may knock it home a little better. Jesus, who was perfect, and completely innocent, was executed (i.e. got the death penalty). He did it so that no one else would ever have to die again - ever. All we have to do to live forever is believe that Jesus sacrificed himself for us. That's ... Read Moreit. nothing more. and nothing but unbelief can get in the way of that. In theory, you could go out and kill everyone with no consequences whatsoever.

You're not good so you can go to heaven. you're good as a way of thanking god for being so damn nice to you, even though you're a nasty, sinful, dirty wretch, and don't deserve it at all.

One last comment.
"It's called the Bible for a reason."
Yes it is. "Bible" is from the Greek for "Holy Book." It's not a history book. It's not a manual for living. It's not a science book. It's a holy book. It teaches you about a religion.

So if you want to learn about Christianity, read the Bible. If you want to learn about science, read a science book. If you want to learn about history, read a history book. But don't expect The Origin of Species to teach you about Christianity, and don't expect the Bible to teach you about the origin of species. It's silly.

M M:

A K, a couple things I'd like to say to some of your comments back a while ago:
"I really don't believe we came from monkeys."
Science people, correct me if I'm wrong, but we did NOT evolve from monkeys. Monkeys and us evolved from a common ancestor wayyy back in the evolutionary chain.
"And it seems theres something to Christianity: its the most persecuted, yet most popular religion worldwide. People die horrendous deaths everyday for it. I'm not saying that other people of other religions dont die for their God...but it is the Christians who have been the most persecuted."
You may be right - I can't prove that for certain. But if the Jews don't beat the Christians they come pretty damn close (and probably the reason Christians are most persecuted is through sheer force of numbers - since there are a whole bunch of Christians, even a small fraction of them being persecuted is still gonna be a pretty big number).

Me:

It's also true that at many times in history Christians were the most persecutING group.

(and more often than not persecuting other Christians)

Me:

Something I meant to say earlier: early monotheists were called atheists by the general pagan population, both because they denied the existence of the pagan gods, and also because their God was so different from those pagan gods that the pagans didn't recognize it as being any sort of "god" at all.
We all deny the existence of numerous gods: I just deny the existence of God along with them.
Let me rephrase that: I don't personally believe in the existence of God as a causal entity of any sort whatsoever, with a personality, plans, and intentions. As I said, I would have no trouble saying I believe in God, except that most people's definition of that word would be totally wrong for me.

A K:

If you're serious about finding out wether there is a god...ask God if he's real and if he really is then he'll show you. But only do it if you realy want to know.

A K:

Christians founded this country and we came here to have freedom of religion..for over 1000 years people in europe were burned and hacked to pieces and tortured of they didnt abide with what the pope/Catholic church wanted. It's because of Christians that you have the freedom to be..agnostic.

Me:

The first people who came here--Columbus, the Spanish--came here for money and adventure. Many if not most of them WERE Catholic. They also decided that they were going to convert the Native American population, which they did in the manner you described: horrifically.
The pilgrims (who were one of the later waves of Europeans) came to America several decades after the Reformation--at which point they promptly denied religious freedom to anyone who didn't agree with THEIR theology and dogma. (And treating the Native Americans badly in the meantime, by the way.)
By the way, is the Catholic Church not christian?
More than a few of the Founding Fathers were only nominally Christian: Franklin, who doubted the divinity of Christ, and Jefferson, who edited his own version of the Bible with all the miraculous details left out, are two examples.
There is also no mention of God in the Constitution. Zero. Zilch. There isn't even any mention of "Providence" or anything like it. The only mention of anything religious in nature is in the First Amendment's prohibition against endorsing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This is despite the fact that many people at the time were specifically pushing for there to be religious language in the Constitution.
Despite all this, I do not deny the debt agnostics, atheists, and humanists owe to liberal Christians of the past. Humanism grew out of Christianity, particularly it's social philosophy. And we owe our religious freedoms to liberal Christians, of course. I don't really see how that has any bearing on the discussion, though. Even if our country was founded by Christians, so what? It was also founded by slave-owners--which has no bearing on our attitudes towards slavery (just to be clear, I am NOT comparing Christians to slave owners in any way!).

Me:

I guess where that makes me a little nervous is what "if you really want to know" means. Cults will also say "don't believe us? Just open your mind and find out how great we are...if you really want to know." Or people will say ghosts exist, and the reason you never see them is because you don't believe in them. I.e., you have to accept something is true in order to determine if it's true in the first place--begging the question.

F H:

When My Aunt Mary Ann was a teacher in northern maine she grew to hate the tent revivals.
The tent revival would come to town. there would be singing and praying and "healing". In the days that followed there would always be children who returned to school no longer wearing their glasses. When asked why, Mommie or Daddie would reply "they don't ... Read Moreneed glasses any more, because they had been "healed". " Needless to say, in all the years she taught, NOT ONE of those children had been healed. Their vision was still bad. They STILL needed glasses. And now she had to fight with the parents to convince them little johnny HADN"T been healed, and really needed to wear his glasses in order to see. The glasses had often been thrown away. Gods evident reluctance to actually heal the children of the true believers, is just one of many many things that cause me to not believe.

T C:

That seems like a lame reason to not believe. (not that i really have any better reasons for believing in the first place, mind you). God doesn't go around healing all the believers. Never did. Would it be a miracle if it happened every day? (Not to mention that I mange to associate tent revivals with scam artists.) I like to believe that God heals people that actually need it. If you can see fine with glasses, why do you need your eyes fixed?

F H:

It's just one of many, many reasons. There's the evidential argument from evil, The euthyphro dilemma. The fact that 19 men of faith hijacked four planes and flew them into buildings with the express intent of killing as many people as possible, believing it to be a supremely moral and righteous act. They believed just as fervently that the Qu'ran is the word of god, as I'm certain you do that the bible is. How do you know that you're right, and that they are wrong?

T C:

I don't. The Crusades were fought by thousands of people that believed that to a supremely moral and righteous act too. I don't believe they were right, just as I don't believe those 19 men were right. But I'm not about to say that 19 fanatics with a misinterpretation of the God's word mean that God doesn't exist either. (and I take it to be a misinterpretation because my God is their God, and we all at least agree that God says killing is wrong).

Fact of the matter is that there's no substantive evidence either way, so everyone is free to believe what they'd like. In the absence of concrete evidence, nothing can be proven about anything.

As I said, I have no better reasons for believing in God than you have for not believing. I just have to take it on faith, just as you do, in the lack of any evidence.

CONTROVERSY TIME: Abortion

2009-06-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

Alright, so obviously, I am writing a blog post when I promised I wouldn't. So the deal is now: no Free Will Part 2 until someone makes a comment that get's discussion going.

There was a poll on FB that went like this:
When does a human's life actually begin? When should someone be considered a human being and enjoy the rights, freedoms and privileges as other humans?
- At the moment of conception
- At the moment the pregnancy is detected
- At the end of the 1st trimester
- Once brain activity has been detected
- At the end of the 2nd trimester
- Once survival outside the womb is viable
- Within one month of expected delivery date
- After the entire body is outside vaginal canal
- After the cord is severed and baby survives
So I was thinking of responding, but I realized my views were much too nuanced.
The question isn't when life begins, but when it is that that life assumes worth. Quite obviously a fetus is alive, as is bacteria. And we don't worry about killing bacteria.
Even with this distinction, I don't think a clear line can be easily drawn. The most I feel I can say with certainty is this:
At the moment of conception, the life has no particular worth;
Near birth, the life does have worth
In between the distinctions are very fuzzy.

Let's throw out one argument off the bat: the argument from potential. Often one will hear the argument "what if the child that's being aborted would've grown up to be Beethoven? Or Einstein?" Well, what if it had grown up to be Hitler or Stalin? Or for all we know it could've ended up being a miscarriage, or a stillbirth, in which case it wouldn't have grown up to be anything at all.
More fundamentally, this argument could easily be used to prove that it's wrong not to have sex when the woman has eggs ready to be fertilized. After all, if the eggs were fertilized, who knows what great things those children could accomplish? Ergo, by the reasoning used earlier, it is a disservice to humanity to not have sex. Reductio ad absurdum.
(If one brings in "God's will", it actually gets even more complicated, since then you have to bring in all the theological issues involving omniscience, omnipotence, and sovereignty.)

Therefore we can only reason in regards to what the embryo/fetus IS, not what it might be. And here is where the worth of it's life get's fuzzy. Because as I said before, we have no problem killing bacteria, which perform many lifelike functions that an embryo does not. And unless we're vegetarian, we're even willing to kill animals that have more sentient behavior than a newborn baby. Obviously the argument hinges on the fact that the embryo is "human", whereas the other things are not. Yet, this is not terribly different from one race of people saying it's OK to kill people of other races, but not members of their own race. Just as the color of one's skin is less important than their qualities of personality, so too whether one belong to the species of Homo Sapien is less important than their human-like qualities in determining whether their life has value (for the benefit of the doubt, I am making the assumption here that the value of life depends on humanness in some form--not necessarily a sound assumption [although I think it's necessary, more on that in another post]). For instance, if by some freak coincidence on genetics, if a chimpanzee was born with the mental abilities of an adult human, we would almost certainly say it deserved human rights, and also that it almost certainly had a soul. But then, how far do we have to go before we say it ceases to have these things? If it has the abilities of a teenager? A child? A toddler? A newborn? In fact, chimps do have abilities beyond those of a young toddler. Why, then, does the toddler have human rights, and a soul, and the chimp does not, even though their abilities are just as "human"? And why should we be concerned with the life of an embryo, but not a bacterium?

(This was written of the cuff, late at night, so I sort of rambled.)

A bargain

2009-05-25T16:32:00.000-07:00

Part 2, and any other posts, won't come until someone comments on any of my previous posts in a way that induces discussion :-P

Free Will-Part 1

2009-05-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

It is my belief that the concept of free will makes no sense. This has nothing to do with science or theology, but the fact that I think "free will" is self-contradictory, in a sense.
What reason and/or cause is there for one to make whatever decision they make? If there is no reason/cause, then the decision is arbitrary and/or spontaneous, and not truly "willed" any more than a hiccup is "willed". If there is a reason/cause, then the decision is contingent on other factors, and not truly "free". Now at this point someone might say something along the lines of "well, there may have been a reason/cause, but it was ignored, or disregarded, or etc." But that just leads to a regress: what reason/cause was there then for the ignorance (or whatever) (once, again, if there was no reason/cause, then the ignorance was arbitrary and random)?
Let's illustrate this by considering a simple case: someone has to make a choice between two options, which we'll call "good" and "bad", however those terms are defined (they are essentially arbitrary designations in this argument). Let's consider the situation where someone makes a "good" choice. Assuming that the choice wasn't arbitrary or random, what was the reason/cause that that choice was made? The answer "because it was the good choice" makes no sense, because if that is the sole cause for making the choice, then everyone would make the "good" choice, which destroys the concept of free will, since every decision would have only one absolute outcome. Neither does the answer "because the person is good" make any sense, because it implies that the choices made by an individual are determined by the individual's nature. Is it impossible for someone of a "good" nature to make a "bad" decision? If so, then the person is constrained by their nature, and are not free. If not, then why would someone with a "good" nature make a "bad" choice, if not for some other reason/cause? And once again, if one was to argue that there is a reason/cause but it may or may not influence the decision, the question becomes: well, what was the reason/cause for whether or not the decision was influenced? And you have a infinite regress.
That is essentially my argument for why "free will" conceptually makes no sense. Practically, I also think even if free will exists, the opportunities one has to practice it are so few as to make it effectively impossible. Each decision one makes is dependent on a number of external factors: namely, what options are available. Among "options" I'm also including what is permitted by one's mindset, psychology, neurology, etc. These options are what they are because of numerous miniscule decisions made in the past, which were too tiny to be noticed (and as such are effectively meaningless as far as free will is concerned), but are amplified over time by the "butterfly effect", eventually determining what large-scale options we have available.
Now, someone might say "well, God gives us free will", but this really just makes the problem worse. First, it does not solve the problem of free will itself being self-contradictory. Secondly, it is usually assumed that God is omniscient. If we define omniscient to mean it knows EXACTLY what will happen at any point in the future, free will makes no sense. In order for us to have free will, we must have choice. In order to have choice, we must have a number, more than one, of practicable options. But if god is omniscient in the sense described above, there is only one practicable option. Notice this says nothing about whether or not God CONTROLS our actions: the mere fact that is knows our actions in advance violates free will. And in traditional theology, this is a major problem, since God judges those decisions and determines punishment and reward for them. I read something once where an apologist was arguing about how materialism must imply determinism, and they saw this a problem, yet I would argue that at least in materialism there is no entity determining ultimate reward or punishment for actions we cannot control.
Part 2 will be about the implications of the lack of free will, which I believe are much less dire than people seem to think. (Essentially, my arguments rest on the idea that we do not have to worry about people acting as if they have no free will, since the very statement "acting as if they have no free will" implies a willed decision to act a certain way.)

Speech for Church

2009-05-03T17:20:00.000-07:00

This is a speech I had to write for a Youth Service at church (www.uua.org). It's a rehashing of earlier posts (I did it at the last minute, as is usually the case with me), but I think it's worth putting up:

I believe that the protection of individual rights is fundamentally important in human ethics. Without this protection, the most well-meaning moralities can quickly evolve into totalitarianism, authoritarianism, fascism, and so on. This is because morality is centered on the promotion of well-being, and it is not immediately obvious that freedom leads to well-being. Obviously it does when contrasted with a semi-lack of freedom, but what about with a total lack of freedom? After all, if our minds were controlled, we could very well be better off. So while a Utilitarian morality of “the greatest good (or happiness) of the greatest number of people” is, I believe, the best morality we have, it MUST include a clause protecting individual rights.
What then is the fundamental right? What makes it so? Obviously, presence in the Bill of Rights does NOT make something a fundamental right. The right to marriage, the right to bare arms, the right to raise one's children as one sees fit, etc., although they may or may not be rights, cannot be FUNDAMENTAL rights either, since they are dependant on other rights and circumstances.
I believe that there must be a fundamental right for each person to pursue their vision of truth and meaning, to advocate their vision of it, and to be given the greatest opportunity to do both. I believe that this right, a right of thought, is absolute, unlike rights of action.
I come tot his belief by the consideration of three premises:
1. It is uncertain if there is such a thing as truth and meaning, although I believe it is likely that there is.
2. If however there is, it is more important than anything else.
3. It is highly unlikely, in fact I believe impossible, for any person or group of people to know all there is to know about truth and meaning.
The first two premises lead me to a sort of "Pascal's Wager" in regards to truth and meaning: the importance of finding it if it does exist far outweigh the benfits (such as comfort) of restricting people in their search for it whether it exists or not.
There exists, however, the possibility that someone who believes they have found total truth and meaning to then insist that everyone else agree with them: religious authoritarianism and dogmatism is an example. So is racism, sexism, and any other form of prejudice. This is where the third premise comes in.
Both of these arguments are essentially saying the same thing: in restricting the pursuit of truth and meaning to serve what is believed to be "truth and meaning", humanity and individuals are prevented from finding what may be even greater truth and meaning. It does not matter how noble the ideas that are being protected are. A dogmatic belief that humans are basically good, or that every human’s life is important, or that genocide is bad, is still a dogmatic belief. It is possible, though perhaps inconceivable, that these ideas could be wrong, or at least incomplete.
It is pointless to have a right to pursue truth and meaning if we do not have access to ideas though. Therefore, as part of a right to pursue truth and meaning, we also must include the right to access to ideas and a right to education, giving us the opportunities to exercise our right. Children must also be educated to have as open a mind as possible, since beliefs formed during childhood are incredibly difficult to shake off, preventing us from the pursuit. And part of having the access to ideas is that all people have the right to advocate their vision of truth. And we must advocate them forcefully, though not through use of force. This is because one’s search for truth must also be responsible. To often people say “these are my beliefs, and I have a right to my beliefs, so leave me alone”. This is nothing more than dogma on a personal level, and can be just as damaging. For me, pursuing truth and meaning means one must constantly be challenging one's own beliefs, constantly submitting them to change and improvement on logical, empirical, and spiritual grounds. It also means not being afraid of having one's beliefs criticized and challenged by others, but instead considering others' arguments and changing one's beliefs appropriately.
With this right and these reponsibilites, we can move forward, and as a species, grow. If there is no truth, than we have lost little. If there is, though, we stand much to gain as the interaction of our many different ideas allows thought to evolve towards the archetype that is ultimate truth.

Truth-An Idea

2009-04-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

I talk about truth a lot. Yet, I am not sure what it means. However, a couple of days ago, I was debating with someone about politics. They came from a basically conservative point of view and were arguing on the basis of "absolute truths". I came up with the following towards the end of my argument:

Do I believe in complete moral relativism? No. Absolute truths necessarily
exist: the very statement "There is no absolute truth" is itself asserting an
absolute truth. What I DO believe is that these absolute truths are understood
relative to our viewpoints and ideas. For an admittedly bad analogy, consider a
screwdriver. The "screwdriver" in and of itself is imagined to be an "absolute
truth". However, depending on one's needs and cultural background, it is
something for driving screws, something to pry things with, a shovel, a symbol
or industry, maybe even something of sacred value (ala the Coke bottle in "The
Gods Must be Crazy!"), or a number of other things. (I know that's a horrible
analogy, and I use it because I have not yet worked out the problem of truth in
a satisfactory way.)

I'm not entirely sure where the screwdriver analogy came from, and I'm not terribly impressed by it in its current form, but it stuck with me and I continued to mull it over, with that sensation one gets occasionally when they know their on to something.
And this feeling didn't even come from the original purpose of the analogy. It came from my arbitrary choice of comparing truth to a screwdriver.
While truth is fundamentally undefinable, I think it's possible to make the analogy of truth as a tool. Truth is the tool by which one understands and manipulates ideas. The truth in and of itself is absolute, however how it is used depends on our needs and background, and it is useless if it cannot be adapted to suit varying needs. If a screwdriver was capable only of driving screws and nothing else, it would be useless if there was nothing to be screwed (...you with the dirty minds), yet its capability to perform other tasks makes it almost univerally useful. Or if a person with no concept of drving screws came across a screwdriver, they might decide that it is a toy.
So does anyone think I'm onto something?

Freedom of thought and speech

2009-04-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

Just expanding on the "Rights" post...
My reason for believing in the absolute right to pursue one's vision of truth and meaning and to advocate that vision stems from three premises:

1. It is uncertain if there is such a thing as truth and meaning, but I believe it is likely that there is.

2. If there is, it is more important than anything else.

3. It is highly unlikely, in fact I believe impossible, for any person or group of people to know all there is to know about truth and meaning.

The first two premises lead me to a sort of "Pascal's Wager" in regards to truth and meaning: the importance of finding it if it does exist far outweigh the benfits (such as comfort) of restricting people in their search for it whether it exists or not.

There exists, however, the possibility that someone who believes they have found total truth and meaning to then insist that everyone else agree with them: religious authoritarianism and dogmatism is an example. This is where the third premise comes in. (Which I must admit is not a premise that has any logical justification other than some arguments from consequence and my own personal feelings. I.e., there is no way to know whether or not someone who claims to have found total truth and meaning is wrong.)

Both of these arguments are essentially saying the same thing: in restricting the pursuit of truth and meaning to serve what is believed to be "truth and meaning" (whether this be religion, comfort, well-being, etc.), humanity and individuals are prevented from finding what may be even greater truth and meaning.

Freedom of advocate one's vision of truth and meaning and to have free and open access to all ideas are also essential, no matter how much they may inconvenience us and make us uncomfortable, since, as stated before, a right to freely pursue truth and meaning is pointless without access to different ideas.

Past, Present, and Future

2009-04-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

Another random idea and off-the-cuff post...
There seems to be divide in human thought between past, present, and future. By past, present, and future, I mean not only their meaning in time but also ideas associated with each of them. For instance

Past: experience, ideals, tradition, security

Present: sensation, pragmatism, pleasure

Future: imagination, ideals, innovation, revolution

(Present is probably the category with the most diversity: pragmatism and pleasure, for instance, might very well be opposed to eachother)

Here's how I would categorize some philosophies, mind-sets, and types of people according to the past/present/future distinction:

Past: conservatism, fundamentalism, respect for elders/ancestors, Confucionism, literalism, "conservative" intellectuals, reactionaries, Guardians

Present: some elements of conservatism, libertarianism, hedonism, empiricism, Zen, artists, hippies, thrill seekers, "down-to-earth", "do what needs to be done", Artisans

Future: liberalism, "the children are our future", Western Thought in general, some elements of Randian philosophy, inventors, artists, philosophers, radicals, Idealists, Rationals

(it should be obvious that, just because two things are in the same category, doesn't mean they are compatible: "down to earth" people and hippies probably would not get along very well, for instance. They are however both focused on the present.)

The Fundamental Rights

2009-03-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Since in some earlier posts I've talked about individual rights, let me specify what I believe the fundamental rights to be.
Obviously, presence in the Bill of Rights does NOT make something a fundamental right. The right to marriage, the right to bare arms, the right to raise one's children as one sees fit, etc., although they may or may not be rights, cannot be FUNDAMENTAL rights either, since they are dependant on other rights and circumstances.
(On a side note, "States' Rights" and any other sort of collective right, in my opinion, only exist as long they do not violate individual rights, as collectives are wont to do. This is why I believe one of the functions of federal government should be to make sure that state governments do not violate individual rights, and likewise state governments should make sure county governments and city governments respect individual rights, etc.)

So here's my attempt to define some fundamental rights:

1. The right to freely pursue truth and meaning--and to advocate one's vision of it--and to be given the greatest opportunity to do so. This right is absolute.

2. "The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. (John Stuart Mill)" Offense is not a valid form of harm. This right requires more than some qualification.

3. The right to be judged and treated based on individual merits and faults.

(The first two rights are really one right, individual sovereignty, but I divided it into two because while the right to freedom of thought is absolute, the right to freedom of action [without harm to others] becomes necessarily restricted.)

Notes:
The first right's meaning is obvious, although the "opportunity to do so..." part requires some explanation: a right to pursue truth and meaning is useless if one's access to ideas is restricted. Therefore, as part of a right to pursue truth and meaning, we also must include the right to access to ideas and a right to education, both of which are implied by the "opportunity to do so...".
(Getting into murkier territory, it is also my opinion that this right extends to children, since beliefs formed during childhood are very hard to shake off, which is a barrier to a pursuit of truth and meaning. But this also ends up requiring much qualification.)
Also, it should be noted that this right implies all of the rights enumerated in the First Amendment of the Constitution, as well as the right to the "Pursuit of Happiness" (if happiness is the individuals idea of meaning). The right to not be killed is also implied, since it's hard to pursue anything if you're dead ;-)

The second right will require a discussion of it's own.

If the third right seems a little confusing, just add "instead of being judged and treated based on race, gender, nationality, class, sexuality, etc."

Materialism, Spiritualism, and Humanism

2009-03-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

(inspired by reading Douglas Hofstadter)
Why should spiritualism and materialism be incompatible? Or spiritualism and humanism?
Consider: materialistically, the human brain is a lump of matter not much bigger than two fists, the thoughts that one perceives nothing than chemical reactions and the firing of neurons. Yet this utterly insignificant lump of chemistry is capable of modeling an entire house, many times bigger than itself. It is capable of perceiving the expansiveness of a mountain range. It is capable of enveloping within it's processes the workings of the universe. And, if this brain is the brain of a fiction writer, of creating and managing universes of its own, such as the worlds of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, which contain within them characters with thought processes seemingly of their own. Is there not something profoundly spiritual in that?
There is room for souls in a materialistic universe, as long as one is willing to expand their notion of a soul, not as some immaterial ghost that inhabits our minds, but as a natural creation of the processes of our brains. This makes it no less real! To say the soul doesn't exist because it's "no more" than chemical reactions...well, one might as well argue that happiness, sadness, love, war, the law do not exist either. These are all ideas, and ideas are "nothing more" than chemical processes, yet they exert an obvious influence on the world, they interact with each other, and they operate in ways of their own (look up emergence theory). Or one could argue that this computer, my chair, cars, blocks of wood, and any other of the many things which to us humans have obvious existence are nothing more than the interaction of subatomic particles. In fact, at a certain level, it IS meaningless to talk about the distinction between objects, because at a small enough level there really isn't any such distinction: you cannot say "that atom belongs to the computer and that atom next to it belongs to the desk". So if one is going to argue that the soul does not exist because it's "nothing more" than a collection of chemical processes one must also be willing to argue that computers, chairs, cars, and block of wood don't exist either. It all becomes very Zen-like, which isn't a problem, but involves operating at an entirely different level. Indeed, it's all a question of levels: you get to the subatomic level and the distinction between objects and the concept of a soul have dissappeared, you get to a galactic level and object and souls are so insignicant that distinctions between them disappear, but somewhere in between, at our level, both exist. These arguments also have obvious implications for God and Religion.
And sepaking of God and Religion, I'd like to address and issue of particular importance to Unitarian-Universalists, but really of importance to everybody: the conflict between Secular Humanism and Spiritualism. I do consider myself unabashedly a Secular Humanist, and the definition fits me to a t, yet I'm embarassed by the allergic reactions many Secular Humanists seem to have to mentions of God or anything spiritual. I think embracing the full meaning of "Humanism" REQUIRES an acceptance and respect of spiritualism, for this too is part of the human experience. Indeed, it is one of the greatest accomplishments of the human creativity which Humanists so admire. I'm not asking for us to give up our commitment to secularism, but instead broaden our concept of it to embrace a definition similar to tah expounded by the Dalai Lama: "I call these secular ethics, secular beliefs. There’s no relationship with any particular religion. Even without religion, even as nonbelievers, we have the capacity to promote these things." Secularism, and particular Secular Humanism, should not be exclusionary, but inclusionary.

Yet another person's thoughts

Some moral propositions

Born This Way

Blah blah blah

Meat n' Stuff

Did I lock the door? The cognitive neuroscience of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Introduction

The Brain Regions Implicated in OCD and their Functions

Some Models of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

The SEC/OCD Model

Conclusion

References

Epiphenonema: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em

Hampshire College

Philosophy of Mind

Introduction

Epiphenomenalism

The Knowledge Argument

Does the Knowledge Argument work without Epiphenomenal Qualia?

Qualia of the Gaps

Extended Cognition

Introduction

Clark & Chalmers’ Argument

Beliefs, and Why Otto’s Notebook Doesn’t Contain Them

Memories

Otto’s, and Our, Memories

Who’s Memories?

But What of the Mind?

Mind-Brain Identity

Logic and Mathematics

Agnosticism does not exist

Why did I think this post was a good idea?

EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS!

Doodled this during a class...

The Turing Test

Proof

Analysis "They're Made of Meat"

Personal Pronouns

Commencement Speech

Sermon for Church: The Symphony of Science

More Ally Stuff: Uganda

English Paper: Unitarian Universalism

Sad

A Short Essay on Morality with Respect to Groups. (my respects to Bertrand Russell)

Justice or Revenge?

New Testament Politics

31(J) "It was also said,(K) 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' 32(L) But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and(M) whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Arguments for the Existence of God and the Refutations

Kalam cosmological argument

Thomistic cosmological argument

Leibnizian cosmological argument

Teleological argument

Comments on the teleological argument

Anthropological argument

Ontological argument

Descartes' ontological argument

Free will argument

Objections

Consciousness

Objections

A Debate about God, and involving Evolution, Biblical Accuracy, Meaning, Comlexity, Morality, Chance, and whether water is needed for alien life.

CONTROVERSY TIME: Abortion

A bargain

Free Will-Part 1

Speech for Church

Truth-An Idea

Freedom of thought and speech

Past, Present, and Future

The Fundamental Rights

Materialism, Spiritualism, and Humanism

³¹^(J) "It was also said,^(K) 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' ³²^(L) But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and^(M) whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.