This amazing and engaging lecture, by Lawrence Krauss, will bring you up to speed on our current understanding of the universe. You don’t need to understand every detail to appreciate the logic behind the prevailing cosmological model of “everything”. Everything came from nothing. It seems the old adage is correct: nature really does abhor a void. Nothing is more unstable than nothing. Make sense? Maybe the video will help . . .
“Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.” ~George Bernard Shaw
As I will argue, below, if a prerequisite of “true” Christianity is to follow Jesus, then nobody is a true Christian. The very reason for this also reveals our tacit acknowledgement that religious morality is subordinated to our innate human morality.
Nobody in their right mind, Christian or not, would fully obey Jesus. Do you know any Christians who abandon their worldly goods and rely on God to feed, clothe and shelter them? Of course not! But that’s what Jesus tells us to do. How many Christians actually turn the other cheek; or love their enemies; or forgive transgressors 7 times 70 times? There’s no question about it: nobody is a true believer in, or follower of, Jesus.
So how can there be billions of people who claim to be Christians? What else can it be? They’re selective Christians: they cherry-pick what they want and ignore or deny the rest. It’s a good thing the Bible actually contains some wise and virtuous ideas; otherwise Christians would be cherry-picking from slim pickings. Actually, there are so many contradictions in the Bible, it’s not even possible to follow it absolutely.
So . . . ALL Christians are selective Christians. There are virtually no true Christians willing to commit to the instructions Jesus urged upon us. But that’s not surprising, it’s the only way there can be any Christians at all. Show me a bona fide exception and I’ll recant.
Once you accept this fact, certain other truths become evident. First of all, what do you think cherry-picking is? It’s our true morality, deciding what is worthy of following. We use our true morality to cherry-pick what is acceptable from the Bible.
What we reject from the Bible tells us a lot about our true morality. How many of us (Christian or not) cherry-pick values like: the subjugation of women; slavery; battlefield excesses; or blood sacrifice (real or symbolic)? Almost everybody rejects these things (although many Christians do accept symbolic blood sacrifice) despite the fact that they’re condoned, supported, or even encouraged, by the Bible (a.k.a. ‘the holy, immutable word of God’).
By overruling biblical morality, we decide what is religiously worthy. WE decide what is religious: so, why do we need religion in the first place?
And what, exactly, is this “true morality” I keep repeating? It’s the morality born of experience and empathy. I know what hurts me (experience), so I know what hurts you (empathy). It’s a morality that crosses racial, religious and cultural divides because it’s a part of the human condition.
Science tells us that empathy is a survival mechanism that evolved as a consequence of our need, as social animals, to cooperate. It’s a natural part of the human condition. Basically, the Golden Rule, is a seed within us all that grows and matures as we gain experience which, in turn, informs our empathy. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you . . . because we all need each other to survive.
Hopefully, you won’t suffer the kinds of abuses that might subvert your humanity; your innate morality. For most of us, it takes a lot to corrupt our humanity. People are resilient. But enough physical, sexual or psychological abuse might affect us in ways we’re not even totally aware of. Perhaps, the most common threat to human morality is the religious morality that tries to replace it. Given all the wrongs committed in the name of God, God’s followers need to be careful that their religious morality doesn’t stand in the way of doing what is right. Abdicating your human morality to your religion means surrendering your responsibility to decide which morals are religiously worthy. That is a recipe for atrocities.
Our true morality is an expression of our humanity and is vastly superior to the cold authority of religious morality.
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If you’re interested, there’s a related post (‘Confusing Morality with Religion‘) available in this blog.
© Copyright 2011 AtheistExile.com
eMail: AtheistExile@AtheistExile.com
Determinism is the principle that causality is responsible for all events in the universe: that everything is determined by causality. Hard determinism maintains that causality rules out free will. When I use the word determinism in this post, I mean hard determinism.
Free will is a more slippery concept than is determinism and has different meanings to different people. This essay will try to explain free will from my compatibilist point of view.
Because time is linear, the future hasn’t happened yet. Future events unfold everywhere simultaneously, yet is locally unique. The birth and death of an entire galaxy is irrelevant to us if it’s so remote we can’t even detect it. While the senseless death of a starving child in Africa is tragic and heartbreaking, you’ll undoubtedly never know about it. The point is that causality permeates the entire universe and makes its mark on everything: whether or not any particular event seems momentous or even noteworthy. But how do these events affect the future? Will anything we do make a difference in the grand scheme of things? The Big Bang has predetermined the demise of the universe . . . so aren’t our own lives equally predetermined?
With this frame of reference, I propose that the future does NOT exist and is NOT predetermined everywhere, for everything. The futures of inanimate objects, however, ARE predetermined unless they fall under the control of animate beings. Wherever intelligent life leaves an impression, the future is far from predetermined. What I’m talking about is the distinction between animate and inanimate modes of response to causality — the difference between us and rocks. This distinction is most clear when we use humans as the example. This is because humans, unlike other lifeforms, clearly embody ALL the key phenomena of life — motility, consciousness, intelligence and, yes, free will.
The law of causality states that: “every material effect must have an adequate antecedent cause”. This is true of both animate and inanimate objects. The difference between the animate and inanimate modes of response to causality is that inanimate objects have only one potential reaction to an event while animate beings have variable potential reactions to an event. One major reason for this is that animate beings are complex systems. They have many functional parts that integrate, holistically, into single entities. Animate beings are much more complex and much less predictable than inanimate objects. I’ll be discussing determinism versus free will, so, for animate beings, let’s stick with humans.
Whether or not you believe in determinism or free will . . . or believe free will is compatible with determinism (as I do), it’s pretty difficult to deny causality (and, therefore, determinism). Without a single scientific experiment for support, we can, at any time, observe that cause always precedes effect. Conventional wisdom holds that free will is antithetical to determinism . . . but I hope to show that human intelligence interacting with causality actually creates free will.
Human identity and experience presents a problem for determinism. We all live as if we have free will: we work, play, think and plan as if we have free will. On the other hand, we can see that causality determines all events. How do we reconcile the difference? First, we need to acknowledge there might not be a difference. What if causality creates free will in humans?
That’s my basic premise: causality creates free will when it is processed by intelligent human beings. Nothing I’ve written above is essential to what follows — I just wanted to frame free will in context of time and animate beings: of life.
Allowing no exceptions to causality, we must accept that effects can’t exist without antecedent causes. Therefore, the processes of the brain, such as memory, thought, analysis and imagination, can be thought of as effects caused by the brain. Of these effects, imagination is most relevant to free will . . . because imagination can be prescient. As Thomas Hobbes wrote, in Leviathan, “man observeth how one event hath been produced by another; and remembereth in them antecedence and consequence”. We can extrapolate cause and effect into the future to imagine potential scenarios that might occur. We then evaluate these potential scenarios and gauge the likelihood (and to what extent) they might actually happen. This is, essentially, the process of planning. We use our experience and intelligence to estimate future outcomes, then plan the steps and contingencies necessary to best ensure — or avoid — those outcomes. Of course, short term, simple, plans are more likely to succeed and require less adjustments than long term, complicated, plans. Depending on our skill at prognostication, our success rates vary from person to person. But, on the whole, short term plans usually succeed. I know this, without question, from my professional experience as a project manager.
How does planning relate to free will? Here’s the interesting, awesome, part. Our ability to mentally anticipate cause and effect represents a temporal advantage over causality. Causality must wait for the future to unfold in the present but we can keep steps ahead of causality by extrapolating it into the future. In other words, we can (in our imagination) go where causality can’t . . . and bring back conclusions that greatly affect our decisions. Steered by these conclusions, our choices guide us, step by step, through potential futures.
When causality meets human intelligence, we make decisions based on forecasts of events likely in our futures. There are other causal factors involved, like experience, heredity, education, circumstances, etc., but it’s prescient imagination that steers our decisions in self-directed ways. When determinism meets human imagination, it becomes self determinism: free will.
The claim that free will (volition) is antithetical to determinism is a false dichotomy stemming from any assertion that assumes free will is undetermined or indeterminate. If that’s how you define free will then, of course, free will would be impossible. After all, EVERYTHING is determined. Right? Free will is not a conscious process or goal of itself, requiring effort to exercise: it’s an on-going, natural, human, reaction (effect) to the world around us (cause).
Volition, of itself, is not free will. That would make free will indeterminate — and we know that’s not possible: EVERYTHING is determined. Volition, desires, plans — whatever you want to call them — are just causal factors that combine with other causal factors to influence our decisions.
The compatibilist view sees free will as natural and within the confines of physical laws. Undetermined or indeterminate choices or actions would be anything but free will: acting without reason or purpose is not free will. Neither is acting randomly. So, claiming that free will is not deterministic means that, if we do have free will, then we must act without reason or purpose, or we must act randomly, or some combination thereof.
But we KNOW we act with purpose. We don’t stumble through life continually shocked to find ourselves doing things we don’t want to do. That would make planning impossible! We KNOW we’ve planned our own dinners, careers, families, retirements and funerals. Our experiences represent continuous empirical evidence for free will.
Our ability to plan is so natural and human that we take it for granted. We’re inured to it. The future and planning –anticipation — is a larger consideration in our lives than most people realize. Anticipation is caused by the brain’s interaction with the world (causality). Free will is the effect produced by intelligently anticipating causality.
It’s a paradox. We have no choice but to be self-directed. We are causally self-determined. Free will is a part of human nature.
Our destinies are not written in the stars (may the force be with you). We might eventually face extinction as the universe grows cold and fades away but our individual destinies are ours to make.
© Copyright 2011 AtheistExile.com
eMail: AtheistExile@AtheistExile.com
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