The Rotten Body that Faith Resides in

Suppose that there is a God. And suppose that there is a faith that brings us into communion with Him. And suppose that this faith needs the trappings of a religion to be made intelligible.

If there existed a religion that originated in a hoax, was spread by means of deception and violence, and only among the adherents was honesty possible because all the teachers knew the falsehood of what they taught (at least initially until the first teachers died and the religion took on a life of its own), would this be a suitable religion by which we could approach God?

Or perhaps we should ask if it is possible to find a religion that was not similarly rotten?

To What Extent Am I Responsible for Motion

If you do not grow, then you are stagnant. Stagnation is basically conscious death. You go nowhere, but you continue to feel what it is like to go nowhere.

But there is a midpoint between growth and stagnation. Stillness. Basking in being what one is at this very moment instead of rushing on to become something else.

Maybe Stillness and Stagnation is the same thing - just approached with a different attitude.

All the same, I have to wonder, to what extent must I propel myself forward and to what extent will fate, my environment, and my nature carry me? Is it acceptable to just continue being what I am until some kind of motivating pain or motivating situation occurs? Or is that indicative of laziness? Reverse it all - is there something wrong in being too quick to change into something else? Is it our responsibility to spend a little time experiencing what it is like to be what we are?

All this talk of responsibility is, of course, disingenuous. Does the question make sense without that kind of talk? No, not as a question, so instead I can say it like this:

You can sit and wait for something to happen that causes you to change and evolve, or you can try to force the change yourself. Neither is correct; neither is wrong. But it is the way life is.

An Effective Method?

I read, but I don't understand. My eyes scan all of the words and I flip through the pages and eventually I come to the end, but I spent the whole time skating along the surface. All of the words were read and have their opportunity to be represented in my brain, but I do not understand them. I can not explain them to you. Its okay, I did not expect to understand.

So I keep reading. I keep consuming more words, but only skating along the surface. And the depths of the writing still eludes me. I can not follow the author in twisting and stretching and exercising my mind the way he has. But I still don't get it.

And as I keep reading, slowly, I begin to notice patterns. I cannot deny the value that secondary works have in this, not because they tell you what the work means, but because they are an additional perspective that is using similar material for different ends. This makes the patterns stand out more.

And I think back to the books I have read and I realize how little I understand. I realize how the bulk of the book was lost on me. But it is different now, because knowing what I did not know implies that I am now capable of knowing it.

Is this an effective method of learning? No, probably not. It would certainly be a pisspoor way of approaching programming, biology, or history. But it is an appropriate way to approach poetry, I think. Literature as well. These should not be "learned" they are to be experienced. Repetition with minute changes - perhaps along with the occasional sudden breakthrough - this seems to be the proper way to approach literature and poetry. Skating, enjoying, absorbing as a full man instead of cramming information in like something distilled to just reason.

I think this method is an essential step in learning. Skating familiarizes you. Then at some point, you have to start digging down into the material, or all you will ever have is a skater's understanding.

What Makes a Suitable Religion?

If there did exist a Pure Faith, but we could only approach it by first placing it into a religious body, is there some way to determine a best religious body to put it in?

More to the heart of my question: there are religious bodies that seem to make historical claims. Suppose we could disregard the truth of these historical claims, would choosing a religion that made such claims be inferior to one that did not?

Could one use the Christian body for their faith if they could not bring themselves to consider the crucifixion and resurrection an historical event? Is there anything left of the body once you discard that?

What About the Non-Philosopher

On occasion I get into the tendency of seeing philosophy as very important, similar to the way that I used to (well, still do) see religion as very important. If I could not go on philosophical and religious investigations, my life would deflate, it would just be work, sleep, and aimless Googling. And sometimes I forget that this is the way the world works for me, but not for everyone.

The human species is such that anything can be lovable and anything can be loathsome to us. The human species is also such that no matter what is loved there is going to be someone else who just does not care that much. No matter what philosophical perspectives or religious heights we might pioneer, frankly, most of the world is simply not going to care.

It is best to just accept the fact that diversity dictates that your life will not fit correctly on another person's shoulders.

How to Approach Ones Conscience

What is the conscience? It is a moral feeling - a moral voice - it is moral inclination from within. It is a kind of guidance. But what is the nature of its guidance?

Does the conscience proceed from the will? Then the conscience simply beckons you to keep being yourself. To be more like yourself. To keep you to the path that you have chosen.

Does the conscience proceed from instinct? Then the conscience beckons you to live according to your nature. Your biological nature, anyway. It beckons you to be human. To live in a way determined by your genes.

Does the conscience proceed from upbringing? Then the conscience beckons you to live according to society. It tells you to be more like those around you. It tells you to shape yourself according to the lessons you have been taught.

For that matter: is the conscience constant or is it dynamic? If it is constant, then we have found something seemingly mystical, because what else about a human being's feelings and thoughts is so constant? If it is dynamic, then what kind of guide is that who tells you to do one thing and then another?

There are hypothetical ethical imperatives that can be cast as a science. There are moral intuitions and inclinations that make up our conscience. The former lend themselves well to a nihilistic view of values in the world, as well as a utilitarian approach to created value, or an approach that aims to be a certain kind of person, or an approach that aims to value and will in a certain kind of way. The latter lend themselves to what?

I want to say that we should disregard the conscience as anything but a helpful feature that does... something, but does not offer genuine guidance. But it intrigues me. The possibility that it is something deeper than my current understanding of ethics allows makes me want to look a little further. Is it possible that it offers a kind of real, individual guidance in the world? If so, we can approach ethics without bogging down the individual in universal "moral facts" that make it impossible for a man to be himself and instead tells him to be everyone, but also without doing away with imperatives apart from the hypothetical imperatives that exist only after someone has already chosen a goal or thrown his will behind a value.

For the moment, though, I have to call it intriguing, not desirable.

A Moment of Self-Doubt

I do not believe that a God's eye view of the world is possible for any human. I do not believe it is possible for any human to escape the relation between perception and perspective and somehow reach Perception. I do not believe that it is possible to grasp reality as it is, a privileged point of view that somehow stands "true" above all vantage points.

If someone were to take issue with my saying this (which there are many who would) I do not know how I would answer them. In matters of evidence, two people of good faith can take a journey down the available evidence together, wherein the conclusion becomes obvious. On this issue, I can think of no evidence I could show to someone who disagreed, nor can I think of any evidence that my opponent could give to me.

Perhaps there is only this. I can show you an entire species utilizing diverse vantage points at different times; sometimes thinking according to these rules, sometimes according to others. Can you produce a single example of a man thinking rightly?

This gets us nowhere. Because of course you can show me men thinking rightly. And then you will simply be frustrated when I say that I don't think he's free from perspective at all. Because he's thinking the way that you think is correct and free from perspective. But to me, it's just one more perspective.

Why do I see a world of diverse vantage points and an inability to transcend perspective? It is not because my concept of vantage points has proven itself; it is because I have not yet found a justice or a rationality that can show itself to be correct, except relative to certain basic values. From this, I make a leap from "all hitherto are such" to "all are such." This is, of course, still a leap.

I have no rational obligation to believe in a true perspective or a true ethic. But neither do those who believe in such things have a rational obligation to come over to my point of view. I can point to past failures, but they will just say that one of those failures was actually a success. My concept of vantage points makes it impossible for me to demonstrate the validity of my concept of vantage points.

It seems that my perspectivism gets itself into a self-referential tangle at some point. If everything is only true according to the epistemic lens that you use; then in what way is it true that we only use epistemic lenses instead of epistemic eyes?

King Theodore, Ethics, and a Question of Importance

I imagine a fantasy kingdom, wherein a fatal and easily communicated skin condition breaks out in a large village. King Theodore covertly chooses a very capable team of light infantry and sends them into the village with armor that he says will protect them from the skin disease with orders to slaughter every man, woman, and child in the city. They are told to burn the city afterward, and then strip off their armor before returning to the palace. As soon as they remove their armor, a team of archers executes them.

The disease is eradicated. Many are dead. The archers never speak a word of their mission to anyone.

What role would an ethical question play in all this? If you said that what King Theodore did was wrong, what does it matter that you say that? If you say that it was right, what does that matter? What does your opinion about King Theodore's action matter in the least?

There is only one ethical investigation that matters: King Theodore's own investigation prior to setting his plot in motion. This is the only ethical question that could have changed anything. Anything after that is impotent, insofar as the plot itself is concerned.

If you condemn him now, you are not actually affecting King Theodore, but rather you are making an ethical decision for your own life. The ethical decision to not be like King Theodore. And if you praise him, your ethics only affect yourself. Your value judgments only influence your own behavior. Your ethics hold sway only over yourself.

For this reason, I can not conceive of values apart from valuers. If it were a fact of the universe that what Theodore did was right, what would it matter? And if it were a fact of the universe that what Theodore did was wrong, what would it matter? What would change? Where is the importance of this fact?

When we praise and condemn, we are making ethical decisions for ourselves and ourselves only.

A Clarification on Evolutionary Psychology

Perhaps I am wrong, considering that I am not an evolutionary psychologist, but it seems that there is a common consistent flaw in the use of language when talking about the findings of evolutionary psychology. Consider this statement:


People behave X, because it is more advantageous to reproduction and survival.

X here could be anything: "in an altruistic way," "in a promiscuous way," "in a dominant way," or you could get more specific, "Men tend toward non-monogamous behavior because this is the best way to ensure the spread of his genes."

This may be true, but the language in statements like these fails to communicate the fullness of the situation, and leads to a misunderstanding.

Suppose someone said to you that the reason you like to gossip is because your ancestors used gossip to keep track of more and more people, thereby making it possible for complex societies to develop, which in turn led to increased reproduction. This is true in one sense: the cause of your desire to gossip is that you are the latest in a long line of people inclined toward gossip and you have all those gossipy genes inside of you (disregarding environmental factors for the moment). But when you start talking about how Krissy was totally making out with Bryce even though Bryce is engaged to Melissa, well, your motivation is not to hold society together. Your motivation is a love of this kind of information.

And your ancestors were the same way. They did not gossip because they wanted to hold society together, they gossiped because they enjoyed it, they gossiped because it was their nature to gossip. It just so happened that there was also an evolutionary advantage to it, so their genes and, by extension, their preferences spread because their very nature was advantageous.

Perhaps no one else ever found that the way statements from evolutionary psychology research are presented sometimes seemed to skew that fact, but I have noticed it a time or two.

Faith Reduced to Metaphor

There are those who expect to have their faith and their rationality too by turning faith into metaphor. They rightfully say that their faith is not literally true, and they add that their faith gives them useful metaphors by which they can live their lives.

This, however, does not preserve faith. This simply kills faith peacefully so that rationality can wear its clothes without bloodsplatter. Metaphors are communicative tools; if faith were nothing more than a system of metaphors faith would be superfluous except as a means to help people understand certain rational ideas that are, for the moment, too high for them to grasp. It's a ladder to what is really of substance, nothing to be loved or sought in itself.

But then, that is not really the way we approach faith. The whole difficulty that leads to people trying to hold onto their faith in this way is that they love the faith itself.