Just subscribed, man. I always leap to read your work and I’m still trying to figure out why (the reason is a good one whatever it is). But fresh and entertaining writing must nourished lest we be left with the horror show of most the rest of the internet.
My only ask is that you wrote more frequently. I like your stuff.
Really good piece, but one point this conversation never gets into is the fact that the old religions had a lot of ordinances that are totally arbitrary and don't improve life in a material or psychological sense in any way. You mention the Orthodox Jews stoning people on Shabbat, but we see stuff like that in every religion. That's the problem with sidelining rationalism too much- spirituality may serve as a conquest of the poetic over the prosaic, but it also actively encourages arbitrarily deciding what's "true" and what's "good". Rarely does it truly stop people from doing bad things as a whole, it just gives them an unfalsifiable source to point to so they can claim ultimate moral authority. Just look at Pope Nicholas V's "Dum Diversas" papal bull, where he authorized Alfonso of Portugal to force all "pagans and Saracens" into "perpetual servitude". Or Charlemagne's genocide of the Saxons in the name of Christ. Or the insane casualties of the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War. Even when spirituality was taken much more seriously than it is now, it certainly didn't prevent people from abusing one another. So while effective altruist spreadsheets are certainly missing something, spirituality definitely doesn't have a great success rate when it comes to keeping people from hurting each other.
You insist on the importance of absolutes and axioms, but is uncertainty really so fatal to meaning in life? Is it not, on the contrary, the very lifeblood of the journey of discovery that we so often celebrate as superior to the destination?
When it comes to moral calculus, utilitarianism strikes me as a red herring; for the individual, interpersonal encounters that constitute the narrative arc of a human life Bayesian updating seems perfectly compatible with an empirical, materialist worldview. We begin with some innate, but not immutable, intuitions about the nature of human well-being. Experience, then, strengthens or weakens our convictions as well as informs us about our limitations as conscious--but finite--beings.
If "dealing with reality" is a process and not a state, I don't see why "myth, ritual and folklore" and "data, empiricism and skeptical inquiry" should be regarded as incompatible, let alone mutually exclusive. Both channels can be useful for processing and communicating subjective experience. Both are valid as interpretive frameworks that help us explore the frontiers of our epistemic abilities. Problems arise for religion when it presents itself as a historical account of matters that reside deep in the heartland of human rational competence. Problems arise for science when it tries to tell a story.
Totally brilliant. Had never thought of all the weird diets, etc. in terms of religion, but it’s completely obvious once you hear it.
Also, was surprised there were so few comments and likes. I guess your Substack hasn’t blown up yet. With pieces like this, it’s only a matter of time before it does.
very good if you are preaching to the choir: i.e. upper class well educated in recent intellectual fads urban elites. And you are right: Flannery would have a field day in today's world.
Alas, it has little or nothing to do with my life or the life of my family or my patients. But hey, I always was out of the mainstream.
my advice? Get your hands dirty working with non elite folks.
Regarding the organ harvesting example: I don't think it's necessary to reduce the objections to organ harvesting to a metaphysical level any more than any other banal value judgement (e.g. whether I think burning my hand is “good” or “bad”). Just as I naturally repel from putting my hand into a fire, I find it uncomfortable to think that a friend, or myself, may ever fall victim to forced organ harvesting. Insofar as the state is effective at preventing these cases I support legislation banning it, even at a hypothetical net cost to total societal well-being, just as I would likely refuse burning my hand for 10 minutes straight even if it yielded me a million dollars and net me more well-being in the long term.
The same chemical processes that produce the first reaction produce the second. Saying that a position regarding organ harvesting or slavery *has* to derive from some higher metaphysical position is equivalent, for a materialist, to saying that me not liking the pain associated with my hand burning also derives from some metaphysical view at the root.
This is so great. So glad I found your writing. It might be of interest that Jonathan Pageau sees Christianity without Christ as one way of understanding anti-Christ. https://youtu.be/BSxwhXdYl3E
This is so great. So glad I found your writing. It might be of interest that Jonathan Pageau sees Christianity without Christ as one way of understanding anti-Christ. https://youtu.be/BSxwhXdYl3E
You conclude basically that we have to live as if God and moral imperatives exist, and whether they or He really does is irrelevant. I would say that lets pretend is no basis for a civilization and so determining whether God is fantasy or truth becomes of the highest importance. How to find out for sure? That involves an inner struggle and search which modern man avoids and has forgotten to pursue.
Love the way this is worded: The modern condition is this: We’re hairless apes who evolved on the third planet from an unexceptional star in an unremarkable galaxy adrift in a desolate universe ruled by mathematical laws of no discernible purpose. The only thing separating us from the various molds, bacteria, and mammals that swarm the planet is that we’re aware of that fact.
BUT! I do have to say, whenever I hear people make this argument, that we are unremarkable, that life is a fluke, I want to say that's not the point. Or, if I could put it another way, describing life as unremarkable is equally absurd as describing it as remarkable. Just another human invention. The only way to deal with life is to live. Asking why should just help us figure out how to do it.
And P.S., I find life infinitely remarkable when I live it.
Hmm... might try a bit of reframing to see if the analogy holds:
Secular ethics: start with a goal (e.g., the well-being of conscious creatures, quality-adjusted life years, etc), evaluate different approaches to achieving that goal (e.g., kill your neighbor, don't kill your neighbor), measure results, then codify norms into law and institutions, being sure to build in mechanisms that allow us to update norms as we get new information.
Religion: a group of people lived a long time ago and created an arbitrary set of rules. I either follow the rules exactly as written (sometimes writing whimsical books in the process https://ajjacobs.com/books/the-year-of-living-biblically/, sometimes flying planes into buildings), or I follow the ones I like and ignore the ones I don't, most likely using secular ethics (or their fruits) as my guide.
Let's allow that both camps have their share of non-adherents, and that both camps have a bunch of people that have basically adopted the secular ethics of their community. In that case, the primary difference between religion and secular ethics is that religion spits out fundamentalists and/or AJ Jacobs, neither or which are very fun at dinner parties?
Television replaced the church, and the new church liked the environment better than Jesus. Not only was Jesus their rival for eyeballs, so they preferred to get away from that, but eco is more visually interesting, which played on the media better. It took global warming and expanded it from one of many problems out there into Ragnarok. Greta Thunberg is the parallel of Joan of Arc or St Bernadette, seeing CO2. Most people's actions are signalling their observance rather than serious change (e.g. recycling vs taking the bus).
Great text! Interestingly concurrent with a BWeinstein/JPederson discussion about humanities apparent psychological/genetic need for religion. Darkhorse podcast on March 8th.
Just subscribed, man. I always leap to read your work and I’m still trying to figure out why (the reason is a good one whatever it is). But fresh and entertaining writing must nourished lest we be left with the horror show of most the rest of the internet.
My only ask is that you wrote more frequently. I like your stuff.
Really good piece, but one point this conversation never gets into is the fact that the old religions had a lot of ordinances that are totally arbitrary and don't improve life in a material or psychological sense in any way. You mention the Orthodox Jews stoning people on Shabbat, but we see stuff like that in every religion. That's the problem with sidelining rationalism too much- spirituality may serve as a conquest of the poetic over the prosaic, but it also actively encourages arbitrarily deciding what's "true" and what's "good". Rarely does it truly stop people from doing bad things as a whole, it just gives them an unfalsifiable source to point to so they can claim ultimate moral authority. Just look at Pope Nicholas V's "Dum Diversas" papal bull, where he authorized Alfonso of Portugal to force all "pagans and Saracens" into "perpetual servitude". Or Charlemagne's genocide of the Saxons in the name of Christ. Or the insane casualties of the Thirty Years War and the English Civil War. Even when spirituality was taken much more seriously than it is now, it certainly didn't prevent people from abusing one another. So while effective altruist spreadsheets are certainly missing something, spirituality definitely doesn't have a great success rate when it comes to keeping people from hurting each other.
You insist on the importance of absolutes and axioms, but is uncertainty really so fatal to meaning in life? Is it not, on the contrary, the very lifeblood of the journey of discovery that we so often celebrate as superior to the destination?
When it comes to moral calculus, utilitarianism strikes me as a red herring; for the individual, interpersonal encounters that constitute the narrative arc of a human life Bayesian updating seems perfectly compatible with an empirical, materialist worldview. We begin with some innate, but not immutable, intuitions about the nature of human well-being. Experience, then, strengthens or weakens our convictions as well as informs us about our limitations as conscious--but finite--beings.
If "dealing with reality" is a process and not a state, I don't see why "myth, ritual and folklore" and "data, empiricism and skeptical inquiry" should be regarded as incompatible, let alone mutually exclusive. Both channels can be useful for processing and communicating subjective experience. Both are valid as interpretive frameworks that help us explore the frontiers of our epistemic abilities. Problems arise for religion when it presents itself as a historical account of matters that reside deep in the heartland of human rational competence. Problems arise for science when it tries to tell a story.
Totally brilliant. Had never thought of all the weird diets, etc. in terms of religion, but it’s completely obvious once you hear it.
Also, was surprised there were so few comments and likes. I guess your Substack hasn’t blown up yet. With pieces like this, it’s only a matter of time before it does.
very good if you are preaching to the choir: i.e. upper class well educated in recent intellectual fads urban elites. And you are right: Flannery would have a field day in today's world.
Alas, it has little or nothing to do with my life or the life of my family or my patients. But hey, I always was out of the mainstream.
my advice? Get your hands dirty working with non elite folks.
Thanks - any comment on apartheid Israel?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1XaAZ9WQAA5YeR?format=jpg&name=small
Regarding the organ harvesting example: I don't think it's necessary to reduce the objections to organ harvesting to a metaphysical level any more than any other banal value judgement (e.g. whether I think burning my hand is “good” or “bad”). Just as I naturally repel from putting my hand into a fire, I find it uncomfortable to think that a friend, or myself, may ever fall victim to forced organ harvesting. Insofar as the state is effective at preventing these cases I support legislation banning it, even at a hypothetical net cost to total societal well-being, just as I would likely refuse burning my hand for 10 minutes straight even if it yielded me a million dollars and net me more well-being in the long term.
The same chemical processes that produce the first reaction produce the second. Saying that a position regarding organ harvesting or slavery *has* to derive from some higher metaphysical position is equivalent, for a materialist, to saying that me not liking the pain associated with my hand burning also derives from some metaphysical view at the root.
Does it mean that life is a meaningless path from the maternity ward to the crematorium? Well, no: https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism
Exceptionally sharp. Sounds Iike me in my courses and seminars. When not busy complimenting myself.
This is so great. So glad I found your writing. It might be of interest that Jonathan Pageau sees Christianity without Christ as one way of understanding anti-Christ. https://youtu.be/BSxwhXdYl3E
This is so great. So glad I found your writing. It might be of interest that Jonathan Pageau sees Christianity without Christ as one way of understanding anti-Christ. https://youtu.be/BSxwhXdYl3E
You conclude basically that we have to live as if God and moral imperatives exist, and whether they or He really does is irrelevant. I would say that lets pretend is no basis for a civilization and so determining whether God is fantasy or truth becomes of the highest importance. How to find out for sure? That involves an inner struggle and search which modern man avoids and has forgotten to pursue.
Love the way this is worded: The modern condition is this: We’re hairless apes who evolved on the third planet from an unexceptional star in an unremarkable galaxy adrift in a desolate universe ruled by mathematical laws of no discernible purpose. The only thing separating us from the various molds, bacteria, and mammals that swarm the planet is that we’re aware of that fact.
BUT! I do have to say, whenever I hear people make this argument, that we are unremarkable, that life is a fluke, I want to say that's not the point. Or, if I could put it another way, describing life as unremarkable is equally absurd as describing it as remarkable. Just another human invention. The only way to deal with life is to live. Asking why should just help us figure out how to do it.
And P.S., I find life infinitely remarkable when I live it.
Pompey desecrated the Temple in 63 BC not AD. He died in 48 BC in Egypt
Hmm... might try a bit of reframing to see if the analogy holds:
Secular ethics: start with a goal (e.g., the well-being of conscious creatures, quality-adjusted life years, etc), evaluate different approaches to achieving that goal (e.g., kill your neighbor, don't kill your neighbor), measure results, then codify norms into law and institutions, being sure to build in mechanisms that allow us to update norms as we get new information.
Religion: a group of people lived a long time ago and created an arbitrary set of rules. I either follow the rules exactly as written (sometimes writing whimsical books in the process https://ajjacobs.com/books/the-year-of-living-biblically/, sometimes flying planes into buildings), or I follow the ones I like and ignore the ones I don't, most likely using secular ethics (or their fruits) as my guide.
Let's allow that both camps have their share of non-adherents, and that both camps have a bunch of people that have basically adopted the secular ethics of their community. In that case, the primary difference between religion and secular ethics is that religion spits out fundamentalists and/or AJ Jacobs, neither or which are very fun at dinner parties?
Television replaced the church, and the new church liked the environment better than Jesus. Not only was Jesus their rival for eyeballs, so they preferred to get away from that, but eco is more visually interesting, which played on the media better. It took global warming and expanded it from one of many problems out there into Ragnarok. Greta Thunberg is the parallel of Joan of Arc or St Bernadette, seeing CO2. Most people's actions are signalling their observance rather than serious change (e.g. recycling vs taking the bus).
Great text! Interestingly concurrent with a BWeinstein/JPederson discussion about humanities apparent psychological/genetic need for religion. Darkhorse podcast on March 8th.