andrewducker | Interesting Links for 15-02-2012

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.

Interesting Links for 15-02-2012

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