andrewducker | Interesting Links for 15-02-2012

As you don't believe that the Bible is entirely true, do you believe that any of it is true? If so, what is your method of choosing that some bits are truer than others?

I guess I use the same method that you would use in deciding which bits of a newspaper article are true -- do they fit in with my overall world view.

Oh, I don't see how that can work for deciding whether things are true or not. Depending on what you mean by "world view". I mean, my world view is "liberal", but that doesn't mean that things written in liberal newspapers or by liberal people are more likely to be true than things written by people I find reprehensible.

I don't want to misunderstand you here - it sounds to me like you're saying that you believe things based on whether they feel good to you or not, but if that's not what you mean then I don't want to assume. (Particularly after our previous misunderstandings!)

I don't believe my method for determining what is true or untrue significantly differs from how most people do it, except, I guess that I've got a bit of statistical training so I'm slightly able to escape certain biases.

How do you determine what is true?

Testable models, and relying on other people arguing over _their_ experience and testable models to build something which approaches truthiness.

When it comes to historical fact (as opposed to things you can experiment on or run statistical models against) - wodges of documentation.

I'm not sure how either of these can be applied to deciding which bits of The Bible to believe are true.

None of those methods would seem to work when it came to moral beliefs though. Testable models and documentation don't help really. Do you believe you have a rigorous way to construct a moral framework? (Incidentally, I would certainly not argue "pick one from a religious text" lest you think I'm trying to say that -- actually, I used to be an atheist and my moral stance has not really changed since).

I believe that you can have a totally coherent moral framework, as with any logically consistent framework - you just have to pick your axioms and then follow them to wherever they lead.

I do believe that morals are just opinions though - They're statements of like and dislike.

I like it when people have free speech, I dislike it when millions of people are killed because of their genetic grouping. But I wouldn't try and say those are somehow facets of the universe, they're facets of me (and many other people, of course).

And how do you pick your axioms?

(Incidentally, do you really believe your moral framework was constructed by choosing axioms and then logically working them through to their conclusions?)

If morals are just opinions how do you pick your opinions?

I don't have a coherent moral framework. You asked if it was possible to construct one, not if I had one.

I don't pick my opinions - they just are. Much the same way as I like chocolate and dislike being kicked in the crotch, I like free speech and dislike torture.

Some of them change over time, of course. I didn't used to like salt and vinegar crisps, and now I do. And, of course, sometimes my opinions clash, and things I thought seemed like a good idea turned out to not produce results that I liked.

Apologies, I realised I phrased my question badly. When I asked "Do you believe you have a rigorous way to construct a moral framework?" I was more asking a question about how you picked your moral beliefs -- rather than whether it was in theory possible to create a logically consistent moral framework.

When people say "you just choose the parts of the bible/koran/atlas shrugged/D&D second edition rules/bhagvad gita that make you feel good" (which is where this started) it strikes me as unjust but a question worth considering. But really this is part of a larger question about how we construct our beliefs about the world.

For clear-cut science/history things this is easy (um... well not easy, but easy to state the approach one would like to have). For moral/societal choices it strikes me as much more difficult and that most of us aquire a bunch of disparate moral beliefs from what we have read and what we found compellingly argued and try to make this into a consistent whole.

I used to love the idea of having a coherent whole - and then I studied some philosophy at university, read a bunch of stuff about belief systems, and came to the conclusion that moral systems are ungrounded and fractal - trying to make them fit into a single "Doing X will always produce the right answer" system never works, and what you end up with is usually the opposite - people who have a nice coherent system and then get horribly defensive when you try to point out that their system falls apart when dealing with the complexities of the real world. This is where libertarians, or communists, or anarchists, or various other -ians and -ists go wrong (IMHO) - the system becomes the answer, rather than a useful set of guidelines to save people from decision overload.

If you look at where most people get their morals from, it's usually themselves. People might espouse particular codes, but if you look at what they actually do it's what they believe to be right. See that Russell piece for perfect examples of that - people who espoused Christianity, while utterly ignoring what Jesus (is supposed to have) said. When you get down to it, they didn't actually believe in that model of Christian Values, they just claimed to (and quite possibly believed they did - people are exceptionally self-deceiving), while actually doing what they wanted.

And I'm not trying to claim this is just Christians - this is pretty much everyone. Ayn Rand was a rubbish Objectivist, L Ron Hubbard probably sucked at Scientology :->

When I actually went back and asked myself "What do I mean when I say 'Eating babies is wrong.'?" I was left with the conclusion that I meant "I do not like it when people eat babies." And as my likes and dislikes are something that are sourced internally (although, clearly, affected by the world around me), trying to take the various things that make up my moral tastes and make them all fit into a single code seems remarkably silly and counterproductive.

It would be like trying to fit my liking of "Aliens" and "The art of Dave McKean" into a single system - we could spend countless hours trying to define different systems of taste, fitting things into it, or I could use a simple label like "Geeky stuff" and understand that that's a very vague descriptor, with oodles of places where it doesn't fit.

And that's fine, because my feelings on rape squads and Monet don't tell you anything about external truths of the universe, they just tell you about things in my head.

Now, getting back to the tricky stuff of belief, if your Christianity is a purely moral "I think that most of the stuff that Jesus (is said to have) talked about is pretty good, and the world would be a better place if more people took care of the sick and poor and stopped throwing stones at each other." then that makes perfect sense to me. That's not making any statements about whether there even was a person called Jesus, it's just making statements about the way you'd like people to act.

If you think that Genesis definitely didn't happen, but Jesus was definitely resurrected then I'm left wondering why you think that two things that both seem impossible from my understanding of the universe are differently possible in your understanding - but I'm happy to hear explanations of your logic :->

Speaking of which - looking at the definition of Christian in the Russell piece, it seems to be belief that (1)There is a God (2)There is immortality and (3)Christ was at the least a great man.

I haven't seen any evidence for (1) or (2), and (3) seems debatable as I'm not convinced that the Christ described in the Bible existed, or that I would agree with all of his beliefs, although a lot of them do seem like a good start, particularly for someone born in a pretty unpleasant part of human history.

*phew* I don't half ramble on.

I used to love the idea of having a coherent whole - and then I studied some philosophy at university, read a bunch of stuff about belief systems, and came to the conclusion that moral systems are ungrounded and fractal - trying to make them fit into a single "Doing X will always produce the right answer" system never works

This is pretty much where I am as well... If you've ever read anything Feyerabend wrote about the nature of science, what you describe here seems to be the same thing for morality and ethics... that while people want to believe in a coherent logically constructed moral system (which I suspect is why so many people are drawn to utilitarianism), in fact what most people do is gain beliefs over their lifetime and cobble them together and try to make them consistent.

the system becomes the answer, rather than a useful set of guidelines to save people from decision overload.

Indeed... a reaction to the complexities by believing a simple system will somehow work.

That's not making any statements about whether there even was a person called Jesus, it's just making statements about the way you'd like people to act.

Which is pretty much were I come from.

If you think that Genesis definitely didn't happen, but Jesus was definitely resurrected

I don't think the second either... you'd perhaps be surprised how common a position it is. http://preacherwoman.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/the-resurrection/ (only the first few pars worth reading)
So apparently the second belief is not necessary to get to the rank of Bishop in the Church of England.

However, I take your more general point that there are things which seem unevidenced.

as I'm not convinced that the Christ described in the Bible existed,

The evidence is better than most people would make out given that he was just one guy with a relatively small number of followers some time in the past. A comparison I like to make is, imagine trying to find evidence that the poll tax riots had happened if the entire resources you had to work with were a handful of small public libraries where 9/10ths of the books had been destroyed. But yes, it's certainly not 100% convincing. I find the evidence that he existed more convincing... the opposite involves believing in later forgers (presumably Christian) inserting into at least one text.

Edited 2012-02-15 20:12 (UTC)

If your belief system consists of "There was probably a person called Jesus, and he may have done some of the things from the Bible, and generally he seems to have been a pretty good guy." then that's fine (and fairly non-contentious), but it doesn't seem like religion to me, insofar as it has no connection to any deity. It's more a fan club for a chunk of history - like thinking that Gandhi was great.

It's the adding of the supernatural elements, and the idea that Jesus wasn't just great, but that he was connected to the creator of the universe, who has ideas about right and wrong that we should listen to that converts it from a fan club into a religion. And that's the unevidenced bit - unless you believe that The Bible is an accurate account, in which case we're back to "Which bits and why?".

And that is, I guess where these discussions bottom out. If you believe things which are obviously unreasonable people think you are obviously unreasonable and if you do not believe things which are obviously unreasonable people think you are somehow cheating or not believing properly.

The problem being that what is obviously unreasonable to me may not be the same as it is to you, and is clearly very different from what is obviously unreasonable to Rick Perry.

And brings me back to my original point, I think* which is that given a book in which large chunks are obviously unreasonable, why take any of it as fact?

To use an analogy that's simplified to the point of silliness, imagine if people took Narnia as a religion, with The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe as their religious text. There would be your strict Narians, who believed that the whole thing was literal fact, passed down by Aslan. And there would be those who said that _obviously_ it was unreasonable to think that the children literally passed through the wardrobe into Narnia - that bit was metaphor, but the Pevensie children still existed and visited that house during the blitz, and that bit was fine, because it's not obviously unreasonable.

And I'd be wondering why we'd take a book where 3/4 of it was agreed to be metaphor/myth and take 1/4 of it seriously, just because there was an actual Blitz, and houses like that really did exist in the 1940s.

*Or at least, I'm going to segue there anyway.

But really, have you ever actually met a christian who believes the entire bible is true. In my experience you only come across them in newspaper stories.

a) I've had evangelical Christians on my friends list.
b) Talking to people who believe in bits of the bible, their methodology usually comes down to "These bits make me feel happy." Which fills me with horror and rage at their lack of intellectual rigour, while also making me envious that they can do that kind of mental separation/juggling.

*heh* It's the "not proper Christian" thing. I used to have it about vegetarians... "ooh, how can you call yourself a vegetarian but wear leather" and used to work myself into a bit of a rage about the lack of intellectual rigour.

I think when you actually ask evangelical Christians whether they literally believe that (say) god put two of every type of animal on a big boat you'll find the number who say yes is a small proportion of evangelicals. Follow that by asking if they believe that the hare "cheweth the cud" and all observations by field naturalists are incorrect... I may be wrong, you may have some very rare examples but I suspect if you asked them these questions you'd find that actually they don't genuinely believe everything said in the bible is literally true and you've been doing them something of a disservice in your beliefs about them.

You still haven't said what makes you a Christian then. It's a self-applied label, so it clearly means something to you - but so far you haven't corrected me from "I believe things that it makes me feel happy to believe.", which is surprising, as I'd have thought that you wouldn't be happy with that label.

I picked my definition of Christian from Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I am not a Christian." It's excellent and part of the reason I stopped being an atheist. You can find it here:

http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html

but so far you haven't corrected me from "I believe things that it makes me feel happy to believe."

Then let me take this opportunity to do so.

I'll go and read that now - I may be a while in responding to this one, as I also have dinner arriving momentarily, and possibly also a shopping delivery :->

And please don't take this as me trying to wind you up. It's not often I get a chance to talk to someone about their religious beliefs, and actually try and understand what they really believe, and why.

I find talking about religious beliefs pretty uncomfortable. People tend to assign you with all kinds of bonkers opinions afterwards... it's as if you've admitted to thinking that gravity is wrong. For some people it gives them an automatic "oh, they only believe that because" so I don't actually tend to mention it too much because in my experience it only ever reduces people's opinion of you.

That's understandable - especially if you're surrounded by sciency geeky types, who pounce on things and try to tear them apart.

If it helps, I'm appreciating the discussion, and it's not lowering my opinion of you :->

Interesting Links for 15-02-2012

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