In an earlier post I took issue with some of Sam Harris' arguments against the existence of free will. I highlighted three issues in particular: there is no room for free will in a fundamentally deterministic system, the granularity at which Harris analyzes the brain is too fine, and free will is never satisfactorily defined. At the end of the post I promised to offer my own opinions on free will, which I shall attempt to do here.
Before I begin, let me offer the disclaimer that I am not a scholar of philosophy or psychology and I do not claim to have any expertise in either field. My opinions are based solely on my experience and my own thoughts on the matter.
So what do we mean when we say that an individual has free will? Certainly we are implying that the individual in question is not being manipulated by any other individual or entity. In general, however, it is implied that the individual in question is also not manipulated by his or her environment or fate or some supernatural or spiritual being. An individual with completely free will is the source of his or her own decisions.
This sounds simple enough, except we are assuming we know what an individual is and what decisions are. The notion of the self is just as tricky as the notion of free will, so for the sake of brevity let us assume the existence of the individual for now and see where it gets us. That leaves us with the task of defining what it means to make a decision.
Conceptually we may think of a decision as the moment before which many options were possible to the individual, and after which only one option is possible. A choice has been made and possibility has been reduced to necessity. Unfortunately this is a somewhat mystical way of looking at the situation and tends to defy analysis. How can we move in a single moment from a nondeterministic state of mind to a deterministic one? The mystic will tell us that this question is unanswerable. The skeptic, on the other hand, will search for causes. Surely there must be some reason why one choice was made and another was not.
Again it may be instructive to consider how a computer is able to make what appear to be decisions to the outside observer. A computer is always presented with a multitude of options: what instruction to execute next, which thread of computation to attend to, and so on and so forth. Which option the computer will choose is either determined by its hardware and the software it is running at the time, or external factors over which it has no control. A computer does not so much make decisions as it evaluates expressions and executes instructions which determine the next course of action.
So it is by and large with the human brain. We tend to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of various options if we are thinking rationally, or pick the option that feels correct if we are thinking intuitively. In either case we are allowing internal processes in the brain, whether intellectual or emotional, essentially make a decision for us. Again, this process is far more complicated than the process of selecting the next instruction in a computer, but the principle is basically the same.
However, let's imagine that the individual in question is aware of all of these factors and in the course of making a decision starts thinking about the decision process itself. "My rational mind will clearly conclude that option A is the correct option and therefore I shall decide option A," she says, "but as I am aware of this imminent decision I shall instead choose option B." With complete knowledge of the processes of her own brain she must know what option she will choose. However that knowledge can be used to subvert the decision itself, which then implies that she never had complete knowledge of her mental processes to begin with.
Here we have a classic Douglas Hofstadter self-referential paradox. Knowledge implies power, but power subverts knowledge. Logically speaking then, this particular knowledge of ones own mental processes must be impossible. But if that knowledge is impossible can we truly say that said processes are deterministic? They might be, but we can't ever prove it. For all intents and purposes, they might as well be nondeterministic, or at the very least are shrouded in mystery. It is at this point that the mystic smugly says to the skeptic "I told you so" and proceeds to start babbling on about the akashic field and how everything is connected and the skeptic orders a very strong drink.
So do we have free will or not? I'll offer some concluding thoughts in part III.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
We Don't Need No Education
My friend Sean posted an excellent response to a blog post by Chris Tompkins about programming languages that seems to be generating some controversy. The original post argues for a more user-friendly natural language based programming language for people who are turned off by overly terse notation typical of most languages. Sean argues that programming is a skill that takes years to master and the terseness actually ultimately benefits the programmer.
However, Tompkins has a very good point. He just argues it very, very poorly.
Let's start with what he gets wrong. As Sean points out, programming can be very difficult to the novice because communicating to a machine is very different than communicating to a person. People have a vast amount of contextual knowledge that they take for granted, and can become frustrated when a computer does not possess this knowledge, and therefore must be instructed to do things in excruciating detail. This is a typical novice mistake: assuming the computer knows more than it does.
Having been frustrated by the inherent complexity of the task, the novice blames the tools for being insufficient. This is another typical novice mistake, as the novice has no idea what decisions were made when those tools were created, what their intended use was, and by whom they were intended to be used. The fact that the blog post confuses C and Objective-C is a tip-off that the poster doesn't fully understand what he is talking about.
But what rankles me the most about this post as a professor of computer science is that the poster assumes that a very complex skill can be learned quickly without the benefit of a proper education. There are plenty of self-taught programmers out there, but each and every one of them spent hours and hours honing their craft and learning the ins and outs of programming, and are probably still doing so. For those who need a bit of a leg up there are books and classes and degrees aplenty to provide assistance in mastering these skills. Fundamentally, if you are not willing to do the work of learning, you will not learn.
All of this is a great shame, because the blog post has touched on a very real problem that the blogger frankly lacks the expertise to properly explain. The problem is that historically, the first programmers were solving mathematically sophisticated problems dealing with complex tasks like computing weapons trajectories and cracking encrypted messages, and therefore the languages they created were highly mathematical in nature. Despite the fact these types of problems have become the minority of what programmers deal with today, many of the mathematical concepts (functions, variables, structures, etc.) persist.
Of course this complaint is nothing new. In 1959 a committee came up with a language intended for use by business professionals who lacked the advanced technical training required to program in a language like Fortran or ALGOL. The result was COBOL, a hugely successful language that is still widely used today. However COBOL had one little problem: working programmers and computer scientists hate it. The great Edsger Dijkstra one said that "[t]he use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
Here we have arrived at the great tension in programming languages that poor Mr. Tompkins has blundered into without the knowledge and experience to address properly: if you create a programming language that is easy enough for anyone to learn, people will assume that programming is easy and proceed to write very, very bad programs. This is the main reason why languages like COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, Visual Basic, PHP, and JavaScript get as much flak as they do. This is not to say that bad programs do not exist in other languages, they most certainly do. However, if one is not willing to learn the admittedly opaque syntax of a language like C, one is probably not willing to learn the much more important principles of programming.
That said, I think there is plenty of room for languages that make it easier to write good code, and resources that help aspiring programmers to understand the complexity of the tasks they are about to take on. I hope that both my research and my teaching can contribute to the equally important tasks of making programming easier to learn and providing the understanding to do it well.
However, Tompkins has a very good point. He just argues it very, very poorly.
Let's start with what he gets wrong. As Sean points out, programming can be very difficult to the novice because communicating to a machine is very different than communicating to a person. People have a vast amount of contextual knowledge that they take for granted, and can become frustrated when a computer does not possess this knowledge, and therefore must be instructed to do things in excruciating detail. This is a typical novice mistake: assuming the computer knows more than it does.
Having been frustrated by the inherent complexity of the task, the novice blames the tools for being insufficient. This is another typical novice mistake, as the novice has no idea what decisions were made when those tools were created, what their intended use was, and by whom they were intended to be used. The fact that the blog post confuses C and Objective-C is a tip-off that the poster doesn't fully understand what he is talking about.
But what rankles me the most about this post as a professor of computer science is that the poster assumes that a very complex skill can be learned quickly without the benefit of a proper education. There are plenty of self-taught programmers out there, but each and every one of them spent hours and hours honing their craft and learning the ins and outs of programming, and are probably still doing so. For those who need a bit of a leg up there are books and classes and degrees aplenty to provide assistance in mastering these skills. Fundamentally, if you are not willing to do the work of learning, you will not learn.
All of this is a great shame, because the blog post has touched on a very real problem that the blogger frankly lacks the expertise to properly explain. The problem is that historically, the first programmers were solving mathematically sophisticated problems dealing with complex tasks like computing weapons trajectories and cracking encrypted messages, and therefore the languages they created were highly mathematical in nature. Despite the fact these types of problems have become the minority of what programmers deal with today, many of the mathematical concepts (functions, variables, structures, etc.) persist.
Of course this complaint is nothing new. In 1959 a committee came up with a language intended for use by business professionals who lacked the advanced technical training required to program in a language like Fortran or ALGOL. The result was COBOL, a hugely successful language that is still widely used today. However COBOL had one little problem: working programmers and computer scientists hate it. The great Edsger Dijkstra one said that "[t]he use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."
Here we have arrived at the great tension in programming languages that poor Mr. Tompkins has blundered into without the knowledge and experience to address properly: if you create a programming language that is easy enough for anyone to learn, people will assume that programming is easy and proceed to write very, very bad programs. This is the main reason why languages like COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, Visual Basic, PHP, and JavaScript get as much flak as they do. This is not to say that bad programs do not exist in other languages, they most certainly do. However, if one is not willing to learn the admittedly opaque syntax of a language like C, one is probably not willing to learn the much more important principles of programming.
That said, I think there is plenty of room for languages that make it easier to write good code, and resources that help aspiring programmers to understand the complexity of the tasks they are about to take on. I hope that both my research and my teaching can contribute to the equally important tasks of making programming easier to learn and providing the understanding to do it well.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Another Brick in the Wall (Part I)
Sam Harris has a book out called The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values where he discusses among other things the nature of free will. I have not read his book, but I did read his recent posts about free will on The Huffington Post (here, here, and here). His thesis is that from a neurological perspective there is no evidence for the existence of free will in the human brain. He makes a good case, but there are some flaws in his arguments that I'd like to address.
The first and most glaring flaw, which Harris himself may not see as a flaw, is that it is difficult to see how there could be any evidence for free will from a neurological perspective. Analyzing the human brain at that granularity is a bit like analyzing a computer at the level of transistors. Actually, it's quite a lot like analyzing a computer since the brain is basically doing the same thing a computer is doing which is storing and processing information, and sending signals. The main difference is that the brain is far more complex than the average computer and mixes the durability of hardware with the malleability of software. But essentially the same things are going on in both.
The comparison is important because viewed from that level both the brain and the computer are essentially deterministic. The same signal sent to the same part of the brain/computer in the same state should have the same results. I say essentially, because in both cases there is a certain amount of non-determinism in both systems, but despite this they both function under a certain set of rules. In a deterministic system there can not be any room for free will or choice of any kind.
If this was all there was to say about free will, Harris could have made this argument and stopped there.
This leads us to the second problem with his argument, which is that while at the granularity of neurons we have a largely deterministic system, this is not the granularity at which the notion of thoughts have much meaning. This discrepancy was discussed with great eloquence by Douglas R. Hofstadter in his masterful book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. In it he compares the brain to an ant hill in which the ants themselves are simply sending signals back and forth, unaware of the larger purpose of the ant hill (which appears as a sort of consciousness which has befriended an anteater in one of the book's dialogues).
The important distinction in the analogy is between signals (the individual ants), which represent very simple pieces of information, and symbols (the larger activities of the anthill of which the ants are unaware) which are much richer and more complex and exist on a much higher level. It is at the level of symbols at which the notion of though starts to make sense. Thoughts are composed of words and images, both of which are symbols used to represent reality. It is only at this level that we can discuss concepts like will or intention with any clarity.
Now, this does not mean that at the level of symbols and thoughts that the system is any less deterministic. If we build a complex system using simple mechanical components it will still be a machine whether it is carbon or silicon based. On this I think Harris and I both agree with Alan Turing. Computers of a sufficient degree of complexity should be just as capable of thought as human beings are. Rather, I make the distinction in order to point out why Harris' particular argument is flawed.
Finally, and most crucially, I think Harris fails to properly define what free will is. This is understandable because free will, like many philosophical concepts, is very difficult to define. Like the notion of cause and effect, it's very hard to explain what free will means without ending up in an infinite regress of circular definitions. However, this does not mean one should not make a good faith effort at doing so.
I'll stop here for now, and discuss my own opinions on free will in my next post on the subject.
The first and most glaring flaw, which Harris himself may not see as a flaw, is that it is difficult to see how there could be any evidence for free will from a neurological perspective. Analyzing the human brain at that granularity is a bit like analyzing a computer at the level of transistors. Actually, it's quite a lot like analyzing a computer since the brain is basically doing the same thing a computer is doing which is storing and processing information, and sending signals. The main difference is that the brain is far more complex than the average computer and mixes the durability of hardware with the malleability of software. But essentially the same things are going on in both.
The comparison is important because viewed from that level both the brain and the computer are essentially deterministic. The same signal sent to the same part of the brain/computer in the same state should have the same results. I say essentially, because in both cases there is a certain amount of non-determinism in both systems, but despite this they both function under a certain set of rules. In a deterministic system there can not be any room for free will or choice of any kind.
If this was all there was to say about free will, Harris could have made this argument and stopped there.
This leads us to the second problem with his argument, which is that while at the granularity of neurons we have a largely deterministic system, this is not the granularity at which the notion of thoughts have much meaning. This discrepancy was discussed with great eloquence by Douglas R. Hofstadter in his masterful book, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. In it he compares the brain to an ant hill in which the ants themselves are simply sending signals back and forth, unaware of the larger purpose of the ant hill (which appears as a sort of consciousness which has befriended an anteater in one of the book's dialogues).
The important distinction in the analogy is between signals (the individual ants), which represent very simple pieces of information, and symbols (the larger activities of the anthill of which the ants are unaware) which are much richer and more complex and exist on a much higher level. It is at the level of symbols at which the notion of though starts to make sense. Thoughts are composed of words and images, both of which are symbols used to represent reality. It is only at this level that we can discuss concepts like will or intention with any clarity.
Now, this does not mean that at the level of symbols and thoughts that the system is any less deterministic. If we build a complex system using simple mechanical components it will still be a machine whether it is carbon or silicon based. On this I think Harris and I both agree with Alan Turing. Computers of a sufficient degree of complexity should be just as capable of thought as human beings are. Rather, I make the distinction in order to point out why Harris' particular argument is flawed.
Finally, and most crucially, I think Harris fails to properly define what free will is. This is understandable because free will, like many philosophical concepts, is very difficult to define. Like the notion of cause and effect, it's very hard to explain what free will means without ending up in an infinite regress of circular definitions. However, this does not mean one should not make a good faith effort at doing so.
I'll stop here for now, and discuss my own opinions on free will in my next post on the subject.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Soundtrack to the End of the World
And while we're on the subject of the apocalypse, here's a playlist I cooked up some time ago that seems pretty relevant now:
- Final Day - Young Marble Giants
- It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - R.E.M.
- Five Years - David Bowie
- Armageddon Days Are Here (Again) - The The
- Apocalypso - The Lords of the New Church
- The End of the World - Pet Shop Boys
- Banned From the End of the World - Sleater-Kinney
- The End of the World - Avengers
- World War 3 - D.O.A.
- (I'll Love You) Till the End of the World - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- Should the World Fail to Fall Apart - Peter Murphy
- World's End - Leæther Strip
- The Future - Snog
- Isle of Man (V2) - Ministry
- The Great Annihilator - Swans
- Shiva Descending - Comsat Angels
- Until the End of the World - U2
Until the End of the World
It seems like everyone's talking about Harold Camping and his prediction that tomorrow, May 21st will be Judgement Day. Camping is by no means the first to make a prediction like this and, much to his followers' disappointment, will not be the last. Leaving aside the Rube Goldberg-like rationale for this particular date (based on a variety of Biblical passages, sketchy dates, and obscure numerology), what could possible drive someone to make a prediction like this?
Empirically speaking, every prediction of a date marking the beginning of the end of the world that has proved wrong should be a warning sign to anyone attempting to make further predictions. Camping himself got it wrong multiple times in the past, but according to him these were due to errors of interpretation. No doubt, when Saturday comes and goes he will most likely have more excuses at the ready. Many others have brought up Matthew 24:36 which states "But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." (King James Translation)
Yet there are still many who do not believe we know when the so-called "rapture" will happen, but still believe it will happen someday. There is certainly no shortage of apocalyptic rhetoric in the Bible to support their arguments, most prominently in the Book of Revelation. Of course, anyone who has studied up on the scholarship on Revelation knows it was written as a polemic against the Roman Empire. The beast and the number 666 are both thinly veiled references to Nero, who was no friend to the early Christians.
References to the day of judgement in the Gospel of Mark are similarly predicted as near-term events. After describing the coming apocalypse Mark 13:31 states "[t]ruly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened". Most scholars believe this passage refers to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 66 C.E.
While the apocalyptic prophets of today frequently misinterpret these and other scriptures, their doomsaying is remarkably consistent in spirit to that of the earlier writers, especially John of Patmos (the supposed author of Revelation). The mindset comes from a sense that the world is full of injustice, sin, and general disobedience to the will of God. Naturally a just God would not tolerate this state of affairs and would bring a final judgement to the Earth separating the sheep from the goats. Unsurprisingly, the people who make these predictions almost invariably see themselves as among those who will be saved.
But what does it say about one's faith if it can only be validated by the torture and eventual death of the vast majority of the population of the world that does not share that faith? What kind of person actively wishes for terrible disasters to befall the people of the world so that their doctrines may be proven right? As Fred Clark of slactivist has pointed out, many of the people who believe in the Rapture were indoctrinated when they were very young and have been traumatised throughout their lives. They deserve some measure of compassion from the rest of us. However, if an adult who is capable of understanding the ramifications of one's beliefs still chooses to promote this vile nonsense, I have very little sympathy for their point of view.
Empirically speaking, every prediction of a date marking the beginning of the end of the world that has proved wrong should be a warning sign to anyone attempting to make further predictions. Camping himself got it wrong multiple times in the past, but according to him these were due to errors of interpretation. No doubt, when Saturday comes and goes he will most likely have more excuses at the ready. Many others have brought up Matthew 24:36 which states "But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." (King James Translation)
Yet there are still many who do not believe we know when the so-called "rapture" will happen, but still believe it will happen someday. There is certainly no shortage of apocalyptic rhetoric in the Bible to support their arguments, most prominently in the Book of Revelation. Of course, anyone who has studied up on the scholarship on Revelation knows it was written as a polemic against the Roman Empire. The beast and the number 666 are both thinly veiled references to Nero, who was no friend to the early Christians.
References to the day of judgement in the Gospel of Mark are similarly predicted as near-term events. After describing the coming apocalypse Mark 13:31 states "[t]ruly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened". Most scholars believe this passage refers to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 66 C.E.
While the apocalyptic prophets of today frequently misinterpret these and other scriptures, their doomsaying is remarkably consistent in spirit to that of the earlier writers, especially John of Patmos (the supposed author of Revelation). The mindset comes from a sense that the world is full of injustice, sin, and general disobedience to the will of God. Naturally a just God would not tolerate this state of affairs and would bring a final judgement to the Earth separating the sheep from the goats. Unsurprisingly, the people who make these predictions almost invariably see themselves as among those who will be saved.
But what does it say about one's faith if it can only be validated by the torture and eventual death of the vast majority of the population of the world that does not share that faith? What kind of person actively wishes for terrible disasters to befall the people of the world so that their doctrines may be proven right? As Fred Clark of slactivist has pointed out, many of the people who believe in the Rapture were indoctrinated when they were very young and have been traumatised throughout their lives. They deserve some measure of compassion from the rest of us. However, if an adult who is capable of understanding the ramifications of one's beliefs still chooses to promote this vile nonsense, I have very little sympathy for their point of view.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Beyond Belief
I am an agnostic. Contrary to popular belief, that does not mean that I am indecisive or wishy-washy. Quite the opposite, in fact. I am very decisively of the opinion that I do not know the mind of God. Neither do I know that there is a mind of God, or a God for that matter. I do not know these things because there is no evidence to draw on nor is there any reasonable argument that can shed any light on these matters. Without reason or evidence there can be no knowledge, so I am firmly of the position that I do not know.
This of course is the point at which many religious people would argue that this is a matter of faith, not a matter of reason or evidence. To which I would reply that any belief that is not grounded in reason or evidence is probably grounded in ignorance and wishful thinking. By and large, this sort of faith does more harm than good however well intentioned it may be. There are some that are of the opinion that one's beliefs determine whether or not one is a good person (rooted most likely in a misreading of the Apostle Paul) and others that are convinced that believing in something hard enough will make it happen (rooted in an unfortunately accurate reading of Norman Vincent Peale and reinforced by countless Disney movies). I am of the opinion that beliefs are largely irrelevant, it is one's actions that determine one's goodness and one's effectiveness.
So where does that leave religion? Well, that depends on what you mean by religion. Jonathan Z. Smith, having studied the religions of many cultures, proposed a theory of religion as comprised primarily of myths and rituals. Myths are stories that make sense of the natural, social, and imaginary worlds. Rituals are events that align those worlds together in the present moment. But myths are also used as a crude sort of history and as a means of predicting the future. Rituals are often performed in order to affect events in the natural world. In an age of reason and science these applications of myth and ritual are no longer necessary, yet they persist. At the core of all of this are beliefs that are not based in reason or evidence, but on the way we want the world to be.
This is why I am not a Christian. Even in the most progressive denominations myth is still confused with history and ritual is still confused with science. I do not believe in the Resurrection or Heaven or Hell or God because there is no evidence or reason for these things. Furthermore I have no desire to believe in them, because they do nothing to enrich my life. I have no need for an afterlife, or for my sins to be forgiven, or for a God to worship and pray to. This life is good enough. I can forgive myself and hope that others forgive me for any wrongs I have done them. And no amount of worship or prayer will make life any less terrible or more wonderful than it already is. And it doesn't really matter what I believe anyway; it's what I do that matters. And that's enough for me.
This of course is the point at which many religious people would argue that this is a matter of faith, not a matter of reason or evidence. To which I would reply that any belief that is not grounded in reason or evidence is probably grounded in ignorance and wishful thinking. By and large, this sort of faith does more harm than good however well intentioned it may be. There are some that are of the opinion that one's beliefs determine whether or not one is a good person (rooted most likely in a misreading of the Apostle Paul) and others that are convinced that believing in something hard enough will make it happen (rooted in an unfortunately accurate reading of Norman Vincent Peale and reinforced by countless Disney movies). I am of the opinion that beliefs are largely irrelevant, it is one's actions that determine one's goodness and one's effectiveness.
So where does that leave religion? Well, that depends on what you mean by religion. Jonathan Z. Smith, having studied the religions of many cultures, proposed a theory of religion as comprised primarily of myths and rituals. Myths are stories that make sense of the natural, social, and imaginary worlds. Rituals are events that align those worlds together in the present moment. But myths are also used as a crude sort of history and as a means of predicting the future. Rituals are often performed in order to affect events in the natural world. In an age of reason and science these applications of myth and ritual are no longer necessary, yet they persist. At the core of all of this are beliefs that are not based in reason or evidence, but on the way we want the world to be.
This is why I am not a Christian. Even in the most progressive denominations myth is still confused with history and ritual is still confused with science. I do not believe in the Resurrection or Heaven or Hell or God because there is no evidence or reason for these things. Furthermore I have no desire to believe in them, because they do nothing to enrich my life. I have no need for an afterlife, or for my sins to be forgiven, or for a God to worship and pray to. This life is good enough. I can forgive myself and hope that others forgive me for any wrongs I have done them. And no amount of worship or prayer will make life any less terrible or more wonderful than it already is. And it doesn't really matter what I believe anyway; it's what I do that matters. And that's enough for me.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
So Cruel
Recently, Paul Krugman wrote a column in which he described the federal budget proposal from Rep. Paul Ryan as both "ludicrous and cruel". Robert Reich wrote a blog post where he characterized the Republican party as bullies for their behavior in the recent battle over the budget. Meanwhile, Ezra Klein wrote a column about how Obama and the Democrats appear to be celebrating the fact that they made major concessions in that battle to keep the government from shutting down.
There appears to be a perverse relationship between the two parties right now, which I would describe as Sadomasochistic. The Republican party has become the party of Sadism, and while they prefer to cite Ayn Rand rather than the Marquis as an intellectual influence, ultimately both Rand and De Sade extolled cruelty as a virtue. On the other hand, the Democratic party has behaving as if they derive pleasure from being beaten, much like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. There's only one way this dynamic can go: the Republicans beat up on the Democrats and the Democrats ask for more.
I would argue that this paradigm extends beyond the way the parties treat each other and into their respective fundamental governing philosophies. The Republicans want to make life more difficult for the most vulnerable Americans, while at the same time making life much easier for the most powerful. They can yap all they want about balancing the budget, but during the Bush years taxes went down while spending went up and a record surplus became a record deficit. The Democratic response is not to fight back, but to accept the Republican narrative that suffering is necessary and to beg the Republicans not to hurt us all too much.
How do we break out of this vicious cycle? Someone needs to stand up to the bullies and refuse to assume the position and receive the next punishment. Someone needs to stand up for the most vulnerable in our society, most of whom are suffering hardships not because they are lazy or immoral but because they are unlucky. Someone needs to advance the philosophy that cruelty and unnecessary suffering only diminish us, and that exercising compassion and justice is the right way to govern this country.
There appears to be a perverse relationship between the two parties right now, which I would describe as Sadomasochistic. The Republican party has become the party of Sadism, and while they prefer to cite Ayn Rand rather than the Marquis as an intellectual influence, ultimately both Rand and De Sade extolled cruelty as a virtue. On the other hand, the Democratic party has behaving as if they derive pleasure from being beaten, much like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. There's only one way this dynamic can go: the Republicans beat up on the Democrats and the Democrats ask for more.
I would argue that this paradigm extends beyond the way the parties treat each other and into their respective fundamental governing philosophies. The Republicans want to make life more difficult for the most vulnerable Americans, while at the same time making life much easier for the most powerful. They can yap all they want about balancing the budget, but during the Bush years taxes went down while spending went up and a record surplus became a record deficit. The Democratic response is not to fight back, but to accept the Republican narrative that suffering is necessary and to beg the Republicans not to hurt us all too much.
How do we break out of this vicious cycle? Someone needs to stand up to the bullies and refuse to assume the position and receive the next punishment. Someone needs to stand up for the most vulnerable in our society, most of whom are suffering hardships not because they are lazy or immoral but because they are unlucky. Someone needs to advance the philosophy that cruelty and unnecessary suffering only diminish us, and that exercising compassion and justice is the right way to govern this country.
Friday, March 18, 2011
No Hell Below Us, Above Us Only Sky
I've been reading Fred Clark's excellent slacktivist blog quite a bit lately, and recommend that you do too. One of the things he's been talking about in recent posts is the furor that Rob Bell has created in the evangelical Christian community for suggesting that God loves people and doesn't send them to Hell to suffer in eternity. It turns out that a lot of folks are very invested in the concept of Hell, even though (as Clark points out) there's not much of a basis for it in the Bible.
Unlike Clark, I am not a practicing Christian (though I used to be not that long ago) so I don't consider the New Testament to be the authority on this subject. My disbelief in Hell has pretty much been a constant throughout my entire life. Even as a child it seemed implausible to me that after we die our souls are relocated below the surface of the Earth to be tortured for eternity. Aside from the fantastical nature of it, Hell doesn't make any logical sense. As Bert Russell argued in his excellent essay, "Why I am Not a Christian" there is no crime that can be committed in a finite lifetime that could possibly merit eternal punishment. And what would be the point of the punishment anyway? If it lasts forever there's no opportunity to affect one's behaviour or improve one's character.
Fundamentally, the concept of Hell exists to make up for a perceive lack of justice in life. If everyone got what they deserved in life, there would be no reason for them to be punished or rewarded after they die. Even under this framework the eternal nature of Hell is overkill. But many modern evangelicals take this idea even further. People are not just sent to Hell for the terrible and evil things they have done. They go there for the simple fact of not subscribing to the evangelical Christian dogma of accepting Jesus Christ as their personal lord and saviour, whatever that means. Simply put, if you're one of "us" you are rewarded for eternity and if you're not you are punished for eternity.
I respect the arguments that Rob Bell and Fred Clark make against the concept of Hell from a Christian perspective. However, I have to point out that many of the same arguments applied to Hell can be applied to Heaven as well. Just as the concept of Hell satisfies the desire for the evil or the simply non-pure to be punished, the concept of Heaven satisfies the desire for the good or the pure to be rewarded. Even if this were true, who among us can truly claim to know who is good or pure? Who can claim to know the mind of God?
But of course it can't be true, because it doesn't make any sense. What is the purpose of an eternal reward? What is it for? Wouldn't people start to get a bit bored after a while? What would you do? What motivation would you have to do anything if you already earned eternal bliss? Like Hell, the whole Heaven idea starts to fall apart very quickly when you start to analyze it. It's not only implausible, it's unnecessary. Why do we need an eternal reward to motivate us to be good people at all?
All that remains then is wishful thinking. No one who has lost someone close to them can be faulted for wanting to be reunited with them after they die. But let's analyze this a bit closer as well. If we really are reunited with all of our loved ones after we die (presuming that we and they all meet the preconditions for Heaven) what does it matter that we lost them in the first place? What does any of our time on Earth matter if we spend an eternity in Heaven? If anything, the existence of an afterlife implies that we should not cherish the moments we have in life at all, as long as we live in the prescribed manner. If death has lost its sting, hasn't life lost its meaning?
Unlike Clark, I am not a practicing Christian (though I used to be not that long ago) so I don't consider the New Testament to be the authority on this subject. My disbelief in Hell has pretty much been a constant throughout my entire life. Even as a child it seemed implausible to me that after we die our souls are relocated below the surface of the Earth to be tortured for eternity. Aside from the fantastical nature of it, Hell doesn't make any logical sense. As Bert Russell argued in his excellent essay, "Why I am Not a Christian" there is no crime that can be committed in a finite lifetime that could possibly merit eternal punishment. And what would be the point of the punishment anyway? If it lasts forever there's no opportunity to affect one's behaviour or improve one's character.
Fundamentally, the concept of Hell exists to make up for a perceive lack of justice in life. If everyone got what they deserved in life, there would be no reason for them to be punished or rewarded after they die. Even under this framework the eternal nature of Hell is overkill. But many modern evangelicals take this idea even further. People are not just sent to Hell for the terrible and evil things they have done. They go there for the simple fact of not subscribing to the evangelical Christian dogma of accepting Jesus Christ as their personal lord and saviour, whatever that means. Simply put, if you're one of "us" you are rewarded for eternity and if you're not you are punished for eternity.
I respect the arguments that Rob Bell and Fred Clark make against the concept of Hell from a Christian perspective. However, I have to point out that many of the same arguments applied to Hell can be applied to Heaven as well. Just as the concept of Hell satisfies the desire for the evil or the simply non-pure to be punished, the concept of Heaven satisfies the desire for the good or the pure to be rewarded. Even if this were true, who among us can truly claim to know who is good or pure? Who can claim to know the mind of God?
But of course it can't be true, because it doesn't make any sense. What is the purpose of an eternal reward? What is it for? Wouldn't people start to get a bit bored after a while? What would you do? What motivation would you have to do anything if you already earned eternal bliss? Like Hell, the whole Heaven idea starts to fall apart very quickly when you start to analyze it. It's not only implausible, it's unnecessary. Why do we need an eternal reward to motivate us to be good people at all?
All that remains then is wishful thinking. No one who has lost someone close to them can be faulted for wanting to be reunited with them after they die. But let's analyze this a bit closer as well. If we really are reunited with all of our loved ones after we die (presuming that we and they all meet the preconditions for Heaven) what does it matter that we lost them in the first place? What does any of our time on Earth matter if we spend an eternity in Heaven? If anything, the existence of an afterlife implies that we should not cherish the moments we have in life at all, as long as we live in the prescribed manner. If death has lost its sting, hasn't life lost its meaning?
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