Requesting Relief From Trials

Only less than 10 days ago I found myself observing a debate among a group of Christians about how to respond to a particular trial.  A person representing one side of the argument made a claim that no man or woman of God has ever requested relief from trials--a universal proposition.  Since the person in question offered the claim via text message, I have replicated the message below:

"Furthermore, find me one apostle or disciple who ever asked God to give him or her less work or less pain.  You won't find one.  They asked for strength to walk through challenges, not ways to get out of them."

In this post I will challenge this unbiblical proposition, highlighting the danger of believing this claim and how the Bible utterly refutes it.  First of all, since no human has known every Christian man or woman from all of history, no one can assert that none of them asked for "less pain" without committing the logical fallacy of appeal to ignorance; but not only can no one support the assertion with any evidence whatsoever, the Bible provides positive examples of important figures who did indeed ask God to alleviate or prevent their suffering.

Interesting, Jesus did exactly what this man said no Christian has done.


Luke 22:41-42--"He (Jesus) withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them (the disciples), knelt down and prayed, 'Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.'"


As a basic reading of this passage indicates, even Jesus himself requested relief from the greatest trial of his life.  He asked God if he truly had to die, especially by crucifixion [1], because while he was willing to submit to God's will he did not find it immoral to ask for a path of escape.  Jesus serves as the ultimate example to imitate in all of Scripture, so the fact that he asked God if he could avoid his fate means that it is not sinful for us to do the same.


2 Corinthians 12:7-9--"To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given to me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'"


In blatant contradiction of the claim I described at the beginning of this post, Paul clearly asked God more than once for less pain.  Job also pursued relief from God.


Job 6:8-9--"'Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant what I hope for, that God would be willing to crush me, to loose his hand and cut me off!'"


In addition to these passages, the book of Psalms also contains pleas for God to intervene in the lives and trials of individuals.  If no Christian has ever sought relief from a trial from God, then the Bible is not a sound basis of Christian doctrine!  The idea that people who want alleviation of pain and difficulty are sinning by having such a desire is a destructive lie that the Bible regularly refutes.  To propose that no Christian can or should ask for reduction of suffering does not acknowledge the truth that many places in the Bible oppose such an idea, but it also, in the minds of those who believe this error, can lead to great amounts of false guilt.  Telling people in the midst of agonizing trials that they should not seek help or relief is to heap a fallacious abuse of reason and Scripture onto those already in personal pain.

I wrote this post out of frustration with someone who should have known better than to make a claim about Christians and the Bible that is drenched in absurdity, error, fallacies, and a spirit that resembles Stoicism, not Christianity!  I hope that those who agree with his statement will reflect on the issue and recognize that the Bible and logic contradict their belief.  Hopefully any who read this will either remember--or realize for the first time--that God does not expect the creatures he loves to submit to any trial or injustice without asking him for their trials to end.  After all, Jesus himself did not believe the alternative.  And if any Christian wants to oppose the example of Jesus, they have lost credibility in this area and the right to be listened to about the matter.


[1].  Jesus had to die for the gospel to come to fruition, but he did not have to be crucified.  Yet the prospect of crucifixion certainly would have increased his anxiety in this chapter.

Attraction In Cross-Gender Friendship

Attraction is a powerful impulse, but one misunderstood by many.  In the 21st century American culture, people at large seem to have great difficulty not sexualizing attraction and intimacy, especially between men and women who are not dating, married, or family members.  Instead of combating this illogical error, Christians have exploited this cultural misunderstanding by levying all sorts of fallacious extra-Biblical rules and man-made restrictions on interaction between the two sexes.  But attraction is not inherently sexual or romantic, and physical or romantic attraction does not necessarily bring a terminus to cross-gender friendship.

Attraction is liking something or someone and finding the object of the attraction exciting and pleasurable.  Not all attraction is physical or sexual.  All positive human relationships require some form of attraction to function, and in many relationships this attraction has nothing to do with sexuality or romance.  Even friendships between people of the same gender possess attraction--otherwise the friendships wouldn't even exist.  Not many realize this, partly because many seem to romanticize or sexualize the concept of attraction and have difficulty separating the word from the false context for it which they have either invented themselves or inherited from others.

Even if physical attraction (which is different than perceiving someone to be physically attractive) does arise, nothing about the friendship needs to necessarily change.  If a man and woman in a friendship find each other's bodies attractive, it is not logically necessary that they will be attracted to each other's bodies in a sexual sense.  Likewise, if a man and woman in a friendship enjoy each other's personalities, it is not logically necessary that they are or will become romantically or sexually attracted to each other's personalities.  But if romantic or sexual attraction does arise, the relationship can emerge unscathed and stronger than ever.

So what if a married person with opposite gender friends suddenly experiences physical attraction (remember, I do not mean by this that he/she just thinks the friend is attractive) towards any of the friends?  Overreacting to these feelings is relationally unhealthy, irrational, and assumptive.  There is nothing inherently adulterous or sinful about the presence of these things.  Also, these feelings are not common.  They are not an inescapable outcome.  They do not represent some unavoidable, inevitable hurdle that eventually demands confrontation (I have never experienced any of them thus far in my friendships with women, nor do I believe myself the only person in that category)!  Men and women in this situation need not panic about something insignificant that can fade away.  If such feelings do appear, they can dissipate quickly with ease, with no danger to the relationships between the friends and their potential significant others, if they have any, or to the relationships between the friends themselves developing.  Feelings come and leave, but friendships hinge on more than mere feelings.  Just as I hope that no one bases a marital relationship on nothing but subjective and fleeting feelings, I hope that no one flippantly and speedily changes the dynamic of other relationships, including cross-gender friendships and other relationships, in response to ever-shifting feelings.

Men and women who love each other as best friends will probably find it impossible to view each other as anything else.  Of course, such friendships would not exist without deep attraction and intimate love, but neither is an inherently sexual or romantic thing.  Once a certain threshold is crossed, they will likely have extreme difficulty even imagining the relationship changing into something else.  Reason and experience can confirm with total certainty that this is possible.  Only a fallacious mind or an inexperienced heart would ever believe that intimate non-sexual cross-gender friendship is unattainable.  I do not know why some people have such reluctance in admitting this, as they merely need to think clearly to recognize the truth of the matter.

It is unfortunate that many conservative evangelical Christians ignore simple truths like this and prefer living in fallacious isolated bubbles to engaging in genuine, fulfilling cross-gender friendships.  Society and the congregants of many conservative churches cannot legitimately criticize what they do not comprehend, for to condemn or caution against something one must understand it first.  Truly, other than logic (of course!), nothing can erase the fear and suspicion so often exchanged between the two genders via legalism better than the direct experience of intimate cross-gender friendships.  If people in the church want to truly treat members of the opposite gender as brothers and sisters in Christ, then they will not universally flee from each other out of fear, suspicion, or guilt--they will embrace each other out of respect, love, and joy.

Atheism Is Not Naturalism

Sometimes certain words get misused, getting falsely equated to other words that actually refer to different concepts.  Apologetics, theology, and philosophy mandate the use of proper definitions of and distinctions between various terms, as the opposite can generate confusion and halt intellectual and conversational progress.  As such, anyone who seeks clear understanding of ideas and how to communicate them must learn to correctly distinguish between different ideas and the words that describe them.

Two words that some confuse are atheism and naturalism.  Although some use them interchangeably, they do not at all refer to the same philosophy.  Atheism is the belief that no gods or goddesses exist; naturalism is the belief that nothing exists other than nature (the material world).  While all naturalists are atheists by necessity, not all atheists are naturalists.  Adherents of both ideologies will sometimes appeal to the same types of "evidence" for their worldviews and may even seem very similar, but the core of their philosophies differ sharply.

In terms of strict metaphysical claims, atheism does not go beyond the
rejection of belief in any deity.  On the other hand, naturalism holds
 that nothing other than the natural, physical world exists, excluding the
possibility of anything supernatural that does not reduce down to a
purely physical substance or reaction.

Let's hypothesize about a fictional scenario.  A powerful sorceress has revealed herself to others by direct demonstrations of her magical abilities, startling witnesses and leading all of them to believe that an actual source of her power exists.  At this point an atheist and a naturalist both investigate the phenomena in an effort to reconcile them to their worldviews.  Both do not deny what their eyes have seen, curious about the ramifications for their respective ideologies of atheism and naturalism.  After months of investigation, the atheist concludes that the sorceress has done exactly what it seems: tapped into a mystical, immaterial power and learned to manipulate it.  She does not think that this discovery directly challenges her atheism.  But the naturalist, holding a different worldview than the atheist, concludes that the sorceress' magic simply represents a manifestation of some unidentified exploitation of natural forces.  In other words, he does not think that the magic is supernatural in any way, only that it appears so to non-naturalists.

The atheist in this scenario conceded the possibility and actuality of supernatural forces, while the naturalist believed that an undiscovered natural force produced the "magic".  Yet both arrived at conclusions entirely consistent with their worldviews.  This distinction highlights the difference at the core of the two beliefs.  One certainly makes a far more sweeping claim than the other.  In fact, the two encompass drastically different models of reality.

In and of itself atheism denies the existence of deities and nothing more.  An atheist can believe in things like sorceresses, paranormal activity, morality [1], and meaning [1], whereas a naturalist denies that anything exists outside of pure nature and matter--by nature of its claims naturalism inherently excludes things like morality, beauty, meaning, and even logic from existing.  Nothing immaterial can exist according to this worldview, and this means, ironically, that logic itself cannot exist, though it serves as the only tool a naturalist could even use to argue for naturalism in the first place.  Since both the existence and veracity of logic are self-evident and self-verifying [2], any worldview that denies or cannot account for the existence and innate reliability of logic is automatically refuted.  Because of this, ontological naturalism is impossible.  Of course, the impossibility of naturalism alone does not refute atheism, because, as I have specified, they are two separate worldviews.

The consequences of naturalism become far more severe than those of pure atheism.  Atheism can still account for things like logic and mathematics--they simply exist by pure necessity whether or not God does.  But a naturalist cannot consistently say that inviolable, immaterial laws of logic exist because to do so would contradict the fundamental tenet of naturalism.  In the same way, naturalism is entirely incompatible with moral judgments about how the world should be or how people should behave; on this view, there is a way the world is and no way it should be.  Now, moral truths are not self-evident [3] and thus, alone, things like the existence of conscience and the tendency of people to make moral judgments do not undermine naturalism.  But moral realism (the belief that moral truths exist) and naturalism cannot both be true at once, as they mutually exclude each other.  Atheism also excludes moral realism, but in a far more indirect manner.  Nothing but theism can provide an ontological anchor for moral truths, yet atheism as a worldview does not intrinsically oppose belief in moral truths, only belief in deities.  However, naturalism immediately denies anything immaterial and thus it becomes obvious far more quickly that morality cannot exist in a naturalistic universe.

Debates need to carefully distinguish between
different positions to minimize confusion and
maximize clarity.

In intelligent debates, Christians need to carefully distinguish between the two so as to avoid both the straw man fallacy and general confusion.  To equate atheism with naturalism is like equating postmodernism with relativism [4]--the two simply do not hold to the same claims.  I have noticed that Christians sometimes misrepresent or misunderstand contrary positions other than atheism and naturalism.  Relativism is the belief that no objective truths exist and postmodernism is the belief that subjectivity prevents most knowledge of objective reality--these two philosophies do not teach identical claims, yet I have seen Christians straw man postmodernism for relativism and thus fail to either understand postmodernism or address it properly.  In the same way, it may be easy for some people to misunderstand that these two ideas do not offer synonymous claims about reality, even though anything beyond a superficial examination will show that they do not share similar conclusions beyond denying the existence of a supernatural deity.

Terms and ideas need the utmost clarity in dialogues and contemplation, and unambiguous and explicitly distinct definitions for different concepts can help alleviate or avert much frustration, wasted energy, and vagueness in conversations.  To correctly and soundly verify or falsify an idea one must first understand what the idea does and does not encapsulate, and this definitely applies to atheism and naturalism.  The two also at times demand different refutations.  All it takes to prove naturalism false is examination of the immaterial nature of logic, whereas it requires a lengthier argument to prove that an uncaused cause (what I and other people call God) exists [5].  The differences in position mandate differences in approach in handling them.  Debate requires clear language and definitions and thus Christians need to distinguish atheism from naturalism, just like they need to clearly identify other terms, for this enables them to grasp and dismantle individual ideas.


[1].  Atheism itself is merely disbelief in God, not in moral truths, yet if there is no God there is no morality, and thus while atheism technically does not oppose belief in moral realism, no atheist has legitimate philosophical grounds upon which to believe that morality exists in any form because if atheism is true then morality does not exist.  Same with meaning.

[2].  See the following:
A.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-self-evidence-of-logic.html
B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-problem-of-criterion-reflection-on.html

[3].  ". . . I do not mean by this, as some Christian apologists state or imply, that we can have any certain moral knowledge from our conscience or that we can "just know" that a moral claim is true.  A written example of people claiming that certain moral truths are self-evident would be the Declaration of Independence, which declares that the following content of the document is held to be "self-evident" by its authors and contributors, including the moral judgments made against the king of England at that time and the moral rights credited to all humans.  But something is not self-evident because it strikes someone as seemingly obvious or because most or all people agree upon it; something is self-evident if its denial brings the denier into contradiction.  For instance, someone who denies that truth exists, that some knowledge is possible, or that logic is reliable contradicts himself or herself as soon as he or she articulates or thinks such a thing, because such truths as the ones being denied are unavoidable, necessary, and self-verifying.  Moral claims do not have this property and thus are not self-evident."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html

[4].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/postmodernism-clarifying-straw-man.html

[5].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

The Reliability Of The Senses

Are our sensory perceptions reliable?  Many people
seem to merely assume that their senses are reliably
informing them of the way external objects really are.

 

Can we trust our senses?  How can we discern if our senses deceive us or not?  What ramifications follow from the truth of the matter either way?  Every day I rely on my senses to inform me of things like my position in a room, the distance between me and other objects, and other information.  These questions clearly address a very important issue.  We use our senses constantly when not asleep, forced to use them simply by our very nature.  Here I will detail several truths about the senses.

As I proved in a post on the reliability of memory [1], it is impossible for my memory to be unreliable unless I have a memory to begin with.  In the same way, my senses cannot deceive me unless I have senses; the recognition of this foundational truth forms the logical starting point for all knowledge about my senses and the perceptions of stimuli (things that stimulate sensory responses) that they receive.  Anyone contemplating the reliability of the senses must begin with this knowledge.  As for the definition of what qualifies as a sense, when I use the word I am referring to something that allows me to perceive external stimuli.

Even if we have distorted senses, it remains objectively
true that we have actual sensory perceptions.

With that point addressed, one of the next major points that follows is that I have no reason to suppose that my senses are totally inaccurate in how they perceive the external world.  No one can demonstrate that they possess total reliability, and one can demonstrate that sometimes they do deceive me, but no sound argument for the total unreliability of my senses exists.  Whether such an argument would take the form of an argument for the simulation hypothesis or not, no one can appeal to a legitimate argument of this type because there isn't one to appeal to.

Now, I indubitably know on a constant basis that I am indeed actually feeling, seeing, and hearing things.  No way exists for this fact to be an illusion manufactured by an external source; I know with absolute, infallible certainty that I do perceive some things on a regular basis with my senses of sight, hearing, and feeling (touch).  The most direct of experiences confirms this to me all the time.  The only legitimate skepticism about these perceptions has to do with whether or not they conform to reality, not whether or not the actual perceptions or stimuli exist!  This directly contradicts the claim of an infamous philosophy called solipsism.  Ontological solipsism posits that nothing exists outside of the mind of the self, so if I were a solipsist, I would believe that nothing at all exists outside of my own mind.  But logic exists outside of my mind.  To deny the existence or reliability of logic is to affirm both at the same time [2], and thus logic--a series of self-evident, self-verifying immaterial laws that are immaterial and inescapably exist by necessity--exists outside of myself, meaning that ontological solipsism is utterly impossible.

Solipsism, the belief that nothing exists outside of one's own
mind, is logically impossible.

Unless I momentarily jump into the air or leap off of a tall object, I constantly contact something outside of myself and have awareness of this as long as I do not sleep.  Interestingly, every argument for skepticism about our perceptions of the external world inescapably involve an idea of the external world themselves.  Descartes' evil demon hypothesis, the brain in a vat scenario, the Matrix, and any other non-solipsistic ideas about reality (remember, solipsism is impossible) still incorporate an external world, meaning that regardless of whether or not my specific sensory perceptions (i.e. I am holding my iPad to type this) conform to the external world, an objective external world still exists.  If Descartes' demon deceives me then the demon and the material world still exist; if I am a brain in a vat being stimulated by a scientist to perceive certain images and experiences then a scientist, a vat, equipment, and the rest of the material world still exist; if I am in the Matrix as sentient robots rob me of my energy then robots and the material world still exist, and so on.

As an aside, although it is seemingly a popular belief that humans have five senses, in reality humans possess at least 10 distinct senses.  The traditional five senses exist alongside at least several others, which are called proprioception (sense of position), equilibrioception (sense of balance), nociception (sense of pain), thermoception (sense of temperature), and chronoception (sense of time).  Some of these senses may seem like they are just subcategories of the traditional five, but a closer examination reveals that they are indeed distinct senses of their own [3].

In the end I still cannot fully verify that my senses perceive correctly, only that they perceive.  But that is all I need to know for sure to live my life!  As I explained in my post Brain In A Vat: Reality Remains Unchanged [4], the possible existence of some sensory simulation that could engulf me even as I write these words changes nothing about ultimate reality.  At the absolute worst, there is simply another layer between me and the objective external world, I still stand responsible for all of my decisions, will still bear the consequences of my worldview, and can still use logic to prove certain truths to myself.  At some point I will collide with the truth one way or the other, but reality remains unaffected by any faulty perceptions of mine.

The question of the reliability of the senses poses an epistemological problem, not an ontological one.  Nothing about ultimate reality changes even if our senses were to constantly deceive us!  With that in mind we can afford ourselves some security about the state of our knowledge pertaining to the senses.  After all, both our lives and objective reality will still continue onward either way.


Summary of observations:
1. I have senses, whether or not they are reliable.
2. I have no reason to think my senses are totally unreliable.
3. Even if something is manipulating or deceiving my senses, I still know that my senses are processing stimuli; I know for sure that they are contacting and interpreting something.
4. I cannot know if my senses are perceiving the external world as it truly is.
5. Objective reality remains unchanged by any potential unreliability of my senses.

 

 

[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-reliability-of-memory.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-self-evidence-of-logic.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/more-than-five-senses.html

[4].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/brain-in-vat-reality-remains-unchanged.html

Circular Reasoning And Use Of Memory

It seems to me that people sometimes misunderstand what makes a claim commit the fallacy of circular reasoning.  I remain unsurprised about the paucity of grasping logic that exists in my culture, and that paucity sometimes manifests itself in this way.  I have recently thought about a very particular example of this: how I have heard people say that we can't use memory to verify memory.  What is problematic about this?

Using memory to verify memory is not necessarily circular reasoning in the sense of saying that the government is telling the truth about something because the government says it is telling the truth; it is to demonstrate by use of a tool that the tool itself succeeds.  Allow me to use a specific example to illustrate this.  For instance, if someone wanted to know if he or she had memorized a Bible verse correctly, the only possibly way for someone else who has not memorized the verse to verify or falsify the results would be to simultaneously check a Bible and have the other person recite the verse.  It would not be circular reasoning for the memorizer to say that he or she will prove that perfect memorization of the verse has occurred by reciting the verse, as that is the only way to verify to the other person that the verse was properly memorized.

Not every instance of allowing something to verify itself indulges in the fallacy of circular reasoning!  In fact, sometimes the exercise of a faculty is the exclusive way to verify the reliability of that faculty.  Only an unreasonable person would not understand how some aspects of memory memory certainly fall into this category.  Someone commits circular reasoning when he or she assumes a conclusion to be true as part of an argument for the very conclusion in question, not by allowing select things like specific forms of memory to prove themselves valid.  Clarity in the proper identification of circular reasoning will prevent misclassifying certain arguments as fallacious when they do not contain erroneous logic at all.

The Uncaused Cause

In other places I have detailed at least portions of a proof for an entity I call "the uncaused cause", or "God."  Here I have devoted a post exclusively to proving the logical necessity of an uncaused cause by presenting and affirming each of the premises necessary to arrive at such a conclusion.  Philosophers and theologians sometimes call this argument/proof the Kalam Cosmological argument, and it has enjoyed great popularity in recent times among Christian apologists and deists alike.  Even if Christianity, a very specific form of theism, had absolutely no evidence to support it, I could not simultaneously be a rational person and deny the contents of this post to follow.  I have placed the main premises and the conclusion of this proof in bold and will explain each premise.


1. Something exists.

Anyone who denies that something exists has to exist in order to deny the proposition.  That makes this truth something I refer to as an axiom--a truth that holds no matter what else is true, and one that no one can deny without appealing to it and thus proving it in the process.  This also makes the truth of the claim self-evident.  By this I mean that since no one can refuse it apart from the contradiction of relying on it, it is immediately evident to any being with properly-functioning cognitive faculties.


2. Everything that exists either had a beginning or had no beginning.

These are the only two options; no other possibilities exist.  Anyone who rejects this truth has abandoned reason and must therefore use logic to argue against logic, a hopeless contradictory exercise.


3. Everything that begins to exist has a cause; nothing can be caused by nothing.

Nothing can come out of absolutely nothing.  I am not merely appealing to a complete absence of an experiential or scientific basis of something arising uncaused from absolutely nothing.  I am not relying on a probabilistic case based on estimates of probability derived from sense experience, though everything in modern science does suggest that everything that begins to exist must have a cause.  If the best argument for the fact that everything that begins has a cause rested on mere lack of anyone experiencing something appearing out of nothing, then it would not have an actual proof.  However, I am not appealing to this (true) point.  I am noting that it is logically impossible for something to arise and begin in a complete vacuum of anything.  Out of nothing nothing comes.  Logic proves this impossible.

The first three premises/statements (in bold) that I have presented in this post can be known by immediate, infallible reasoning.  The first is self-evident, because someone has to affirm it in order to deny it.  The second is nothing more than a simple use of the law of excluded middle.  The third articulates an immediately obvious logical truth that no scientific discovery could ever overturn.


4. Infinite regress of cause and effect is impossible.

If cause and effect (or time) extended infinitely into the past, nothing could ever actually happen, as there would always be an infinite number of causes and effects in the past and thus no particular effect could ever actually be caused.  This also applies to time, as I have explained before [1].  No present moment of time could ever arrive if there were always an infinite number of moments in time before it.  For this reason someone cannot count down from either positive or negative infinity to any particular number; there has to be a starting point for any counting down of numbers to be achieved.

I will recite words I wrote last year to demonstrate this:

"Someone can know with absolute certainty--with no way he or she is wrong--that any possible universe must have a beginning by using logic and math, both of which contain principles that are knowable a priori; that is, for certain components of them nothing more than brief rational reflection is required to understand the proof.  It is absolutely possible count down from 5 to 0.  This is obvious.  A person could even count down from 6,000 or 13,000,000,000 (both the general opposing estimates of the age of the universe from different ideologies) to 0, even if it takes a monstrous amount of time.  But no one can count down from infinity to 0 because it is impossible to do so without a fixed starting point.  Otherwise the person would be forever counting and never reach 0.  In the same way, it is impossible for any possible universe to not have a beginning because the present moment of time could never arrive.  Nothing could ever happen in a universe with an infinite past because there would be no starting point to reach any particular event or moment from.  Because the material world--the natural world--had a beginning and nothing can be responsible for its own creation, since self-creation is impossible because something would have to exist before it existed in order to create itself, the cause of the cosmos must by definition and logical necessity be supernatural" [2].

Anyone who denies that past moments of time exist has embraced an impossible idea, for a moment of time passes from the future into the present, and from the ever-so brief present into the past, where it becomes a part of elapsed moments of time.  Time is a duration of existence, divided up into individual moments by which we measure it.  Anyone who believes time is an illusion must think and reason in time to even come to that belief.


5. Therefore an uncaused cause exists.

Since something exists, nothing can come from nothing, and an infinite regress of causality and time is impossible, an uncaused cause exists by pure logical necessity.  Something has always existed uncaused, uncreated, and outside of the need for time.  I call this entity or thing God.  I have elaborated in other posts on what attributes this uncaused cause must possess (you can see excerpts about this below in the footnotes).  This truth remains unaffected and mandatory in any material world, so no one can use the simulation hypothesis, multiverse theory, or panspermia theory (the idea that aliens created humans) to avoid it.  Whether or not the uncaused cause crated humans directly has nothing to do with this proof for its existence, so the possibility that, for instance, aliens created human life does not negate the absolute need for an uncaused cause of everything in the material world.  The uncaused cause is not an unnecessary notion--without such a thing nothing else could ever come to exist.  Even apart from all of the evidence for Christianity, logical proof of a theistic entity was available to all people at all points in history; they only needed to reflect using pure logic to arrive at this conclusion.

No, this does not prove that the uncaused cause is the Yahweh of the Judeo-Christian worldview.  No, it does not prove that the uncaused cause has a moral nature or a loving one.  It does not follow from the conclusion that the uncaused cause is even a personal being.  In addition, there are things that neither were created nor depend on the uncaused cause for their existence, since they exist by intrinsic necessity of their own (the laws of logic and the space that holds matter [3]), although almost all theists deny this brute fact or are ignorant of it.  What this syllogism does prove is that an uncaused cause exists by inescapable necessity, regardless of how fiercely some people may hate the potential ramifications.


[1].  See the following for more details:
  A.  "This cosmological model has sparked some speculation that a multiverse would be eternal in the past.  Contrary to what some new atheists like Lawrence Krauss have implied, a multiverse cannot escape an initial "Big Bang" (a beginning of the multiverse).  Allow me to demonstrate why.  It is impossible for there to be an infinite number of events or moments of time in the past.  If I asked someone to count down from 63 to 0, they could do so.  Even if I asked this person to count down from 15,000,000,000 to 0, it would be possible to comply even if an extraordinary quantity of time was spent doing this.  However, if I requested that he or she count down from infinity to 0, they would be entirely unable to.  Why?  With no starting point, this individual could never reach 0, much less even begin their task.  In the same way, there cannot be an infinite amount of time in the past because there would be no way for the present moment to arrive.  Thus, time itself had an absolute fixed beginning that each second moves me further away from.  A multiverse cannot avoid this fact or threaten it in any way.  Note that this proof has nothing to do with whether or not the future is infinite; there can be an infinite number of moments in the future but there cannot be in the past."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-multiverse-part-1.html
  B.  "I decided to state up front that, usually, I do not like citing scientific evidence for the Big Bang as support for the fact that the universe had a beginning and I want to explain why: although the existing scientific evidence for the Big Bang is very strong, logic and its counterpart/extension mathematics are necessary to prove that there is no such thing as an infinite number of moments in the past and therefore it is logically impossible for there to not be a finite beginning to time and thus the universe also.  While current cosmology strongly supports a finite past, logic alone can actually prove that the past is finite."
--http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-god-of-big-bang.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/simulation-hypothesis-hints-of-theism.html

[3].  See here:
  A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-ramifications-of-axioms.html
  B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-refutation-of-naturalism-part-2.html

The Distinction Between Absurdism And Nihilism

In all of my posts on absurdism so far [1] I have not yet shown from the writings of Camus, the French existentialist philosopher who popularized absurdism in the 1900s, how absurdism differs sharply from nihilism and what our response (according to Camus) to living in an absurd life should be.  I aim to accomplish the realization of those goals here.  If you do not know what I mean by the word absurdism, perhaps you should read some of my other relatively short articles on the topic to gain understanding of the term.

Camus' philosophy of absurdism can sound like nihilism depending on the description read, but, at its core, it presents a wholly different worldview, and in Camus' version, a more optimistic one.  According to his essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" he did not claim nihilism as his worldview but expressed skepticism about the issue of objective meaning:

“I don’t know whether this world has meaning that transcends it.  But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it” (18).

Camus, knowing that he cannot prove that meaning either exists or does not exist, avoids the non sequiturs that would result if he claimed the philosophy of nihilism; he can thus support the more defensible position of skepticism with regards to objective meaning.  In this vacuum of knowable or actual meaning, the question of suicide becomes elevated to the highest of priorities in our lives, as every other issue pales in comparison to it in terms of sheer existential significance.  This is why suicide stands as such a prominent theme in "The Myth of Sisyphus".  As Camus said, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide . . . All the rest . . . comes afterwards.  These are games" (1).  Nothing--not matters of science, aesthetics, or personal opinion--could rival this issue in terms of all-consuming importance.

Criticizing those who deny absurdity on the grounds that acknowledgement of absurdity leads to despair, Camus states a simple truth:

“This cry is not likely to stop the absurd man . . . Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable” (14).

Irrespective of the subjective reactions of individuals to the realization of absurdity, Camus posits that the truth haunts us whether we face it or not.  He never shirked from verbally acknowledging what he believed life to be like--an incomprehensible thing that may or may not prove significant in the end.  But nothing that Camus said amounted to nihilism.  Nihilism denies that any meaning exists in the universe, known or unknown, whereas absurdism holds to skepticism towards claims of objective meaning.  For, according to absurdism, to know meaning we would have to escape our current limitations and process information behind our ability to learn and decipher.  As Camus said in a quote I mentioned already, he did not assert that objective meaning does or does not exist, only that if it does he does not know of it.

Without any true logical or ontological justification, Camus encouraged people to not commit suicide in light of the absurd.  He instead believed that we should defy absurdity by choosing to not take our own lives, simultaneously confronting and rejecting the absurd on a constant basis.  He stated this position quite explicitly: "To abolish conscious revolt . . . is to elude the problem.  The theme of revolution is thus carried into individual experience" (18).  The intriguing thing about absurdism is that although it does not ultimately deny meaning it cannot provide an objective reason why people should not commit suicide, the very thing that Camus called the central question of all philosophy.  After all, why defy the absurd if one cannot even know if that is meaningful?  What point would there be?  All Camus could offer was a question-begging "solution" based on subjective personal preference, not objective logic.

Although absurdism is quite distinct from nihilism, in the end, an absurdist who does not invent a subjective, arbitrary construct of meaning for himself or herself will inevitably end up living like a nihilist.  The two positions are not at all synonymous, yet absurdism does not offer a verifiable reason to reject suicide.  People from either worldview can easily end up resembling each other in action and attitude.  Ultimately, Camus reached the illogical conclusion that although we cannot know meaning, if such a thing even exists at all, we should still find revolting against absurdity compelling and live accordingly.  But if no meaning is knowable, then why pretend that what equates to effectually (in action) denying reality proves meaningful or comforting?  It inescapably eludes the problem just as much as or more than suicide.  That Camus would believe that, regardless of his feelings or preferences, is quite absurd.


[1].  See here:
A.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/on-absurdism.html
B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/theistic-absurdism.html
C.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/absurdism-in-hamlet.html


The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.  Camus, Albert.  Trans. O'Brien, Justin.  New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Game Review--Moon Chronicles (3DS)

"Ever since Roswell we've known we're not alone.  Now, more than a century later, they've found this hatch on the moon.  Is this going to be our next giant leap?"
--Major Edward Kane, Moon Chronicles


Moon Chronicles is a graphically-enhanced port of a 2010 DS game called Moon, designed by Renegade Kid, the creators of Dementium Remastered, which I reviewed earlier this year [1].  A short sublunar adventure that contains some slight intellectual themes, it may appeal to some who want a portable science fiction shooter that plays like a retro title.

As with the photos on my reviews for the God of War Collection, Dementium Remastered, and Killzone Mercenary, all photos here were taken by myself (photos from my 3DS games are taken using Miiverse).


Production Values

The graphics exceed those of the original.  Environments and textures have much more clarity than before, all at a constant 60 frames per second that does not drop even with the 3D turned on.  Seemingly pulled right from the DS version without update, in contrast, the cinematics that do not utilize the in-game engine look terrible and outdated by comparison, having obvious pixellation and lack of clarity.  Neither graphical style equals the highest-quality visuals the 3DS has seen, still paling by comparison to the colors and clarity of other 3DS games.  The techno soundtrack largely repeats the same tracks, a trap Dementium also fell into.  Otherwise, the sound possesses clarity, with noises and music distinct and easy to hear.

As with Renegade Kid's other first-person 3DS offering, the inclusion of C-stick support greatly enhances the controls for those who don't want to hold the system with one hand and use the stylus with the other.  Overall, the controls and engine are practically identical to those of Dementium Remastered.

Renegade Kid also improved on its formula for Dementium by introducing more enemy variety than they did previously, a move that seriously alleviates some of the monotony that can set in.  Ultimately, the production values approximately match those of the previous remaster Renegade Kid released for the 3DS.


Gameplay

Moon Chronicles definitely is not the most action-oriented first-person shooter, instead combining sporadic shooting sections with exploration of structures under the moon.  Collectibles include alien artifacts that unlock bonus virtual reality training missions, health expansions, and ammo expansions.  As expected from a Renegade Kid game, multiple weapons await scattered around for discovery.  The weapons are basically just versions of ordinary first-person shooter weapons (pistol, shotgun, etc) with more of a science fiction aesthetic.  A mixture of bosses, sometimes reused, challenge the player at certain intervals.  Players may get a serious Metroid vibe--I mean, the game has map stations, save stations, optional data logs, doors with "eye"-like locks that fire at you, an escape section . . . I thought of Metroid more than once while playing it.

Two devices called the Remote Access Droid (RAD) and the LOLA-RR10 vehicle add some variety to the gameplay (you can see photos of both at the bottom of this section).  These two units of technology rescue the story and gameplay from the much greater monotony that would have resulted in their absence.  After a while, the game does seem repetitive because the basic mechanics don't change much.

Metroid Prime Hunters and Call of Duty: Black Ops (and Modern Warfare 3) for the DS were much more action-based than this title, both of them energetic games that demonstrated that first-person shooters on the DS could not only exist but excel at utilizing the system to its maximum potential.  Regardless of this, it still provides a welcome presence for the genre on the system.  Moon Chronicles still stands alongside its cousin Dementium Remastered as one of the only first-person shooters for the 3DS regardless of the comparative lack of energy in it.

Story

In the year 2058, American science and weaponry has progressed thanks to humans learning about alien technology leftover from the Roswell wreckage.  Major Edward Kane of the ETEO (Extra-Terrestrial Encounter Organization) finds himself summoned to a moon base because of the unexpected discovery of a hatch on the surface; markings on it match those from Roswell, attracting the attention of the ETEO.

Guards stationed at the hatch are unexpectedly overpowered by an unknown force, with floating drones invading the base and killing several technicians.  As he explores the facility, Kane stumbles upon a mysterious blue substance that revives him and discovers that it boosts vitality.  To recover his missing companions, he enters the shaft and travels below the moon's surface.  During this time scientists analyzing the components of the blue substance eventually identify them as human organs like hearts and lungs.

(Spoilers for things beyond approximately the first 45 minutes ahead!)

At this point, scattered computer terminals illuminate the background story: the moon has long been the location where a process by which human organs (and those of other species) are extracted for use in a potent and addictive drug is conducted, the drugs distributed throughout the galaxy to black markets, politicians, and other users.  Soon an unknown communicator contacts Kane.  Nothing ever clarifies if this mysterious informant is a human or an alien, not even at the end.

Information from the terminals provides more and more clarity as the game progresses.  The aliens had to develop greater security measures when humans, "Unlike species harvested elsewhere" (HISTORY LOG MDAT-0009), discovered spacecraft technology, and they made an error that resulted in the Roswell crash, an event that alerted humanity to the presence of aliens in the universe even if nothing more about the extraterrestrials was known.  Eventually the public learned of the procedures and in response the organization making the drugs developed stronger security robots to protect its investments.

Because of the interference with their operations the aliens (later called the Fermians) plan to destroy humans on earth according to the unnamed informant; Kane teleports to their homeworld and defeats their leader, and as he departs, he is followed by a trio of alien vessels.  Hopefully a second season (the present content is divided into four episodes called season one) will continue the story and explain what unfolds next.


Intellectual Content

Moon Chronicles does feature several collectibles, but almost none of them are concealed enough to warrant any more skill to discover them than whatever minor attention is necessary to explore unentered areas of the map.  People who expect an experience more like a Metroid Prime game will find themselves disappointed with the puzzles and collectible hunting here.

I have more directly talked about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and the theological ramifications of such a thing elsewhere [2].  It is logically and theologically possible that alien life exists; there is no evidence for any extraterrestrial life; nothing about the existence of sentient or non-sentient extraterrestrial life contradicts or threatens either theism or Christianity.  Speaking of religion, a readable terminal suggests that at least some religions were fabricated and disseminated among humanity by the aliens as part of a plan to manipulate the inhabitants of earth to make them more vulnerable to abduction.  One of the optional logs details how the abductions occurred before recorded history, when humans exhibited great proneness to superstition.  Exploiting this fact, the Fermians employed strategies that intentionally created ideological rifts in human civilization in order to weaken the possible resistance of the humans.  A computerized journal entry reads as follows:

"One tactic has been to introduce contrasting theologies to the Earth, throwing the population into factionalism and infighting".

Nowhere does the story hint that this tactic had anything to do with the "ancient astronaut" theory, the unverifiable and unfalsifiable hypothesis that at various points (or one point) in human history extraterrestrials visited earth and shared crucial knowledge or otherwise dramatically affected the trajectory of human civilization.  While the Fermians did visit earth consistently for millennia, they did not directly reveal themselves; that is the distinction between their interactions with humans and the ancient astronaut hypothesis.


Conclusion

Despite its successful elements, Moon Chronicles suffers from the same hindrances as Dementium Remastered: brevity and repetitive enemies, environments, and music.  The largest drawbacks may be its price and the lack of anything beyond a remastered version of the original game.  The developers have not released a second season that adds completely new content to the story.  With a current price of $8.99 for episode 1 and $9.00 for the season pass, which included episodes 2-4, the cost seems steep for only around 3.5 hours of enjoyment of a game that contains little replay value or incentives.  My approximate completion times for each episode on normal difficulty are below (and I found every collectible in each episode):

Episode 1--38 minutes
Episode 2--32 minutes
Episode 3--74 minutes
Episode 4--58 minutes

Players who desire to play a relic from the past of the DS will still want to explore this title, as will those who love Renegade Kid's efforts on the system.  So will people who want a sci-fi first-person shooter on the 3DS.

I hope that Dementium II Remastered will be released on the 3DS eShop this year!  Until that day hopefully arrives, both Moon Chronicles and Dementium Remastered are available on the eShop for those who appreciate Renegade Kid's style or want to experience the nostalgia of either DS classic.


Content:
1. Violence:  Combat involves the use of various weapons on robotic sentries and other enemies.  Shooting is bloodless and without gore.
2. Profanity:  A small handful of uses of "hell" that I noticed.  Kane says "damn" at least once.
3. Other:  All throughout the game Kane can read logs detailing various aspects of how the Fermian race has kidnapped a great multitude of humans (and members of other species) and, in a manner specifically intended to psychologically and emotionally and even physical harm the subjects for "maximum chemical output", harvested their organs, murdering the victims, and used the body parts to continue production of a controversial substance.  None of this is shown besides occasional areas with humans in containers, but the subject matter described will strike some people as rather grotesque.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/game-review-dementium-remastered-3ds.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-threat-of-alien-life.html

The Epistemic Problem Of Moral Platonism

The Greek philosopher Plato proposed that beyond our sensory inputs exist objects he called the "forms," with forms of beauty, goodness, and other concepts existing.  These forms, existing outside of temporal human experience, would remain immutable and thus the concepts they reflect would not change.  Moral Platonism is the belief that moral truths simply exist abstractly.  I will contrast this view with theonomy, the belief that God's moral laws alone have moral validity.  On this view there is no other moral authority besides God and no ultimate way to know morality apart from his (or her in non-Christian theonomy) revelation.

With moral Platonism defined, its severe epistemological flaw becomes apparent.  On this worldview, nothing exists to reveal moral truths to humans.  Humans can be born with a sense of morality or develop one by various means; whether or not this moral sense conforms to reality is unverifiable and unfalsifiable.  The greatest epistemic problem with Platonism of this type is the fact that humans would have absolutely no way to view the forms--since they exist abstractly outside of our sensory perceptions--and no therefore no way to correctly judge if a particular view (say, of justice or virtue) matches the forms or even if the forms exist.  Someone consistently living as a moral Platonist to the logical end of such a worldview will arrive at despair, moral skepticism, and uncertainty.

But with theonomy, God actively reveals moral truths to humans, negating the epistemological problem of moral Platonism.  If God is good, then good can only be one of three things: 1) something randomly decided by God at his possibly fluctuating whims, 2) a standard external to God which God can deviate from, or 3) God IS good.  According to 1) there is not necessarily such thing as something inherently or unchangingly good, as all moral obligations could change as God's whims do.  With 2), God only possesses the attribute of goodness inasmuch as he complies with an outside standard of morality.  This would best describe the relationship between God and morality in a universe governed by moral Platonism.

In other words, we would obey God not because he is good, but only because he happens to instruct us in a way consistent with this standard that exists independent of him.  But with 3), God does not do good by looking to an outside standard or by redefining good as his decision and commands change; he acts according to his nature and thus his commands are objectively good because his nature is objectively good.  Christian doctrine from the Bible can merge this idea with the explicit Scriptural position that God's nature never changes (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, etc), the two forming the Christian idea that moral truths never change.

Because God is the metaphysical anchor for morality, he must reveal moral truths to humans for them to have moral knowledge.  The common idea that conscience serves as moral revelation to humans cannot provide an adequate basis for moral knowledge, however, as conscience is inescapably subjective, malleable, and subject to deadening and fluctuation.  I have written more extensively elsewhere on why conscience can do nothing more than restrain the acts of individuals who honor it [1].  Because of the limitations and unreliability of conscience, God, who IS good, must reveal to us details about right and wrong, or we would otherwise never know them except by accident.  Even this represents a major epistemological advantage over moral Platonism, though!

We do not need to aimlessly and blindly align our actions with arbitrary moral beliefs and just hope that the "forms" of morality happen to coincide with our moral beliefs.  Clearly, access to and understanding of special divine revelation [2] will vary depending on variables like geography and other sociocultural, political, and educational forces.  Theonomist morality does remain unknown to people who only have their subjective or socially-conditioned moral ideas to base their ethical beliefs on.  Yet it is the only logically verifiable ontological source of moral knowledge.  Even if true, however, moral Platonism fails to provide any means for us to access true moral knowledge, always leading to hopeless moral skepticism in the end.


Summary of observations:
1. Moral Platonism holds that moral truths exist abstractly.
2. If moral Platonism is true, we have no way to know moral truths.
3. Christianity proposes that God is the standard of morality instead of saying God is either good or evil depending on his actions.
4. God must reveal moral truths to humans for them to have moral knowledge.


[1].  See here:
  A.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-illusionary-guidance-of-natural-law.html
  B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html

[2].  By special divine revelation I mean information from God not accessible simply by reason or human experiences without divine assistance.

The Importance Of The Resurrection

Happy Easter everyone!  In honor of today, I will explain some of the theological significance of the resurrection of Jesus and several of the basic arguments that this event truly did occur in 1st century Israel.

According to Christian theology the resurrection finalized the demonstrations of Christ's supremacy over creation and his power over sin.  To this event the truth of Christianity is inseparably attached.  By living righteously Christ resisted sin; by dying he satisfied the penalty of death for sin; by resurrecting he silenced the universal byproduct of sin that death embodies.  The latter, of course, is what Easter celebrates.  This miraculous feat serves as an example of what will happen to all Christians.  Eventually God will raise the bodies of believers just as he did to Christ.  In this sense, the resurrection of Jesus exemplifies the fate of all Christians in the future.

But according to Paul, the author of much of the New Testament, the very veracity of Christianity stands on whether or not the resurrection actually occurred.  As Paul admitted in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus did not resurrect then Christianity amounts to nothing more than a failed ideology whose followers have hopelessly deluded themselves (the falsity of the resurrection would not affect the validity of Judaism and the Old Testament).  Thus knowing the significance of and evidence for the resurrection is something of no small necessity for a seeker of truth.  An inspection of accepted historical facts from 1st century sources combined with a rational emphasis on normal human behaviors will reveal a great deal of historical support for the resurrection, with abbreviated summaries of some notable arguments for the resurrection including the following:


1).  There was no material or other personal benefit for the 12 apostles to fabricate a story that would attract the wrath of almost all non-Christians at the time.  Why would they invent a tale and then not concede its falsity when others slandered, tortured, and executed them?  Of course later converts might die and submit to torture for something they earnestly believed based on subjective feelings or personal preference, but how likely is it that a group would intentionally contrive the entire resurrection story and not abandon the tale when persecution started?

2).  No Jew or Roman--both of which constituted members of groups that initially despised Christianity--ever produced documentation that Jesus' corpse was in the tomb after his followers reported his resurrection.  There is historical documentation of the existence and crucifixion of Christ, though (see Josephus, Tacitus, the Babylonian Talmud, etc), but not of his body being in the tomb after his disciples claimed otherwise.

3).  It is extremely unlikely that a group of 12+ people would all have the same mass hallucinations of a resurrected Jesus.  Apart from hallucinations, the most plausible possibility is that the early Christians lied about the return of Christ from the dead, yet I already mentioned some severely improbable ramifications of that position.  That means that if they weren't lying and weren't hallucinating, then the most defensible and probable position is that they told the truth when they asserted that Christ had risen from the dead.


Ultimately, if it happened, the resurrection is a thing of incredible importance.  If you are a Christian, why not familiarize yourself with what the Bible and historical apologetics say about it?  If you are a non-Christian, why not acquaint yourself with the historical evidence and arguments for the resurrection of Christ and consider its historicity?  If the historical evidence for the resurrection testifies to legitimate facts, then it is far more probable that Jesus resurrected than remained deceased and entombed.  Either way, why not contemplate the ramifications of and evidence for the resurrection of one of the most controversial figures in history?  If true, the resurrection story verifies the status of Jesus attested to by Christians and reminds us of what will happen to Christians at a future point.  But it has great significance either way, for it has either deceived millions or it has secured the spiritual redemption of millions.

The Objectivity Of Beauty

If you live in America then you almost certainly have heard the phrase "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."  The times this saying will inevitably surface can become quite predictable.  People might meet together; someone judges a thing to be beautiful; the others do not share that perception; the group then intellectually shrugs it off by saying that beauty is subjective, implying that no one's aesthetic judgments are truly correct.  One can easily demonstrate, after all, that people undeniably disagree about aesthetic judgments.

One person finds a waterfall more visually appealing than a colorful arrangement of plant life, whereas another person believes the opposite.  One person prefers a significant other with red hair to one with other hair colors, but another person judges black hair more beautiful.  Each pair of judgments cannot be simultaneously correct--but it does not follow that nothing is beautiful in and of itself, independent of perception or preference.  Beauty is objective.  I mean by this that something is beautiful in and of itself or it is not, but our perceptions and preferences have no effect on this (and even aesthetic nihilism acknowledges this).

So, how can beauty be objective if everyone has a different subjective aesthetic taste?  For starters, it is logically invalid to claim that beauty is not objective because people disagree about what makes something beautiful.  This succumbs to a common type of non sequitur fallacy.  If two people from different civilizations or eras of time met and disagreed about scientific matters, does that mean that no objective scientific truths exist?  Of course not!  If two historians dispute whether or not a particular event occurred, with one claiming that it did and the other denying this, does that mean that objective historical facts do not exist?  Not at all!  Likewise, two or more different perceptions of beauty do not mean that no objective beauty exists.

Aesthetics still differs from logic and mathematics in an important regard: no one can show that a judgment of beauty is correct or incorrect, only that something is either objectively beautiful or not beautiful.  If two people calculating the solution to a math problem arrive at different answers, one of them or an observer could (if the problem is simple enough) pinpoint exactly who has a false answer and how to correct it.  The same goes for disagreements about whether a syllogism has sound form or not.  But there is no way to know which of two conflicting perceptions of beauty is right--or if either one is right.  Still, none of this negates the objectivity of beauty.

A rarer claim that I want to address at this point is the belief that if beauty exists, then God must exist.  There is a beauty argument for God--it has the same basic structure as the moral argument.  Just as no morality could exist if God did not exist, no such thing as beauty could exist in the ontological absence of God (although subjective moral and aesthetic preferences do not prove that morality and beauty exist, thus not proving that God does).  Now, people may object that even if God did not exist then some things would still be morally right or wrong--or aesthetically beautiful.  But how?  Without a deity, people could still have arbitrary, subjective perceptions and opinions about what makes something good, evil, beautiful, or ugly, but there would be no metaphysical anchor for these judgments.  Nothing would make them true or false beyond the fact that it is true that people have the perceptions.

People would simply, by nature or because of social conditioning, find that certain things seem beautiful or moral or immoral to them, yet nothing would ever actually be moral, immoral, beautiful, or ugly.  Besides, people would still hold sharp disagreement over the criterion for morality and beauty, but no deity would exist to reveal the criterion.  Not only would no anchor for them exist in a metaphysically atheistic cosmos, but, even if objective morality and beauty did exist in a universe without God, we would have no hope of ever learning of them in a general or specific sense except by complete accident.

The reasoning I have described in this post also applies to other areas as well--disagreement about what makes something good, evil, sexy, boring, fascinating, or fun never means that nothing objectively has those properties.  But since the Bible does not informs us about any of these things except morality and since humans can only experience subjective perceptions of many of these things, we humans have no way to know if many of our perceptions align with reality.  We cannot know what is, for instance, objectively fun or boring.  Logic proves to us that these concepts are objective, yet logic cannot demonstrate to us when something possesses these attributes.  Divine revelation also does not.  The Bible contains extensive information about how to distinguish good from evil--and it even calls certain men and women objectively beautiful [1]--but it never divulges the criterion by which to distinguish the objective veracity and falsity of value judgements about other issues.

Perceptions of beauty rest entirely in the eye of the beholder, but the beauty of a thing itself exists or does not exist entirely independent of our awareness or preferences.  It puzzles me that people who realize this about morality hesitate to say the same about aesthetics.  You could probably find people in your life who already treat morality one way and beauty in another, despite the illogicality of doing so.  With all of this in mind, watch yourself if you ever find yourself about to say that beauty is subjective--for this amounts to a fallacious claim.


Summary of observations:
1. People disagree about what makes something physically beautiful.
2. Disagreement about beauty does not mean that objective beauty does not exist.
3. Something is either objectively beautiful or not (law of non-contradiction and law of excluded middle), regardless of our perceptions.
4. Logic and the Bible do not tell us what makes something beautiful, but the Bible does mention that certain men and women were physically beautiful.
5. We are ultimately left with subjective perceptions of beauty that are either objectively true or not.


[1].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-beauty-of-both-genders.html

Women Are Visual

If evangelical Christians believed about women what they do about men, then ideas like the following would appear far more often:

"Men, this upcoming summer we need to guard our sisters from lust--and this will affect what we wear.  It is evident that women are visual, and we know of Biblical examples that show this.  Potiphar's wife!  The allegorical Israel in Ezekiel 23!  There are significant Biblical precedents demonstrating that God created women to experience strong visual attraction to the opposite gender, so we need to take the biological perspectives of women into consideration when we take off our shirts at swimming pools or beaches this summer.  All sorts of movies from films like Captain America and Thor to 300 showcase attractive shirtless men.  Men take off their shirts with normality in our culture.  It is difficult for our sisters in Christ to ever find relief from the constant struggle with their visuality.  Because of this, we men are obligated to help them in their struggles.  If we Christian men really love our sisters in Christ, we will not enable them to commit the sin of lust by exposing our bodies so inappropriately.  If we show as much of our bodies at the beach as men usually do, we cause or can cause our sisters to stumble and sin.  Besides, is it not merely indecent to go shirtless at the beach?  It is simply immodest and no one needs to see us uncovered that way as it is.  Wear shirts and save your bodies for your wives."

If this sounds stupid and like a complete distortion of the Bible and reason, then congratulations!  You probably understand why evangelical modesty teachings are ridiculously illogical!  Now, what I wrote is addressed towards a hypothetical male crowd, whereas Christians endorsing modesty address their speeches and articles to women, though the basic reasoning and arguments remain the same.  But I've thoroughly refuted the alleged Biblical and moral justifications for "modesty" elsewhere [1].  These ideas are false because 1) neither the Bible nor reason reveals a standard of modesty (meaning all such judgments are subjective and arbitrary), 2) they (the teachings) often confuse attraction for a sinful impulse, 3) they add to the Bible when the Bible says to not add to its commands, 4) they view the human body as dangerous and tempting when it is objectively good according to Christianity, 5) they sexualize beauty, attraction, and the human body (none of which are inherently sexual), 6) they pretend that responsibility for sin rests anywhere except the hearts and minds of the sinner, 7) they imply that sexual feelings are uncontrollable and sinful, and 8) they teach that men are very visual and sexual beings but women are not, at least not to the same degree.  The latter is particularly damaging, since it trivializes female sexuality, disregards the fact that personality has nothing to do with gender, and conditions people to expect men to be sexually aggressive, even when such a thing is unwanted.

But I will not refute many of these again in detail here.  Instead, I will focus on a particular assumption embedded in these beliefs--8) above.  According to the Christians who support these teachings, men are very visual/sexual beings but women are not, and this amounts to the key reason that some Christians direct asinine modesty teachings almost exclusively at females.  Why, for instance, do Christians morally condemn bikinis and tell women to wear more while swimming (how much more they should wear nobody agrees upon because it's a 100% subjective judgment that has nothing to do with the Bible or logic!) yet not tell men to wear shirts while swimming with the same concern and frequency?  Why the double standard, evangelicals?  As summer approaches and legalistic Christians resume their idiotic crusades against bikinis and the human body, I want to illustrate how one of the fundamental tenets of evangelical modesty teachings--the belief that men are visual but women aren't--is laughably untrue.  Better yet, the Bible tells us so!

One of the most fun ways to refute evangelical Christians is to show that the Bible they claim to honor contradicts them when they cling to certain positions.  Ultimately, this strategy alone dismantles and refutes many evangelical beliefs.  Three such beliefs I have done this with on my blog are the fallacious doctrine of eternal conscious torment, the alleged legal irrelevance of Mosaic Law, and the idea that the thieves crucified alongside Christ deserved Roman crucifixion.  Here I will show that the Bible and reason oppose the evangelical myth that men are visual but women are not.

If evangelicals accept the authority of the Bible, then they must admit that the Bible never teaches that males are hypersexual, hypervisual beings that all or always struggle with sexual lust.  Instead, it not only never says that God made either gender to experience constant hypervisuality but also clearly teaches that women are sexual and "visual" just as men are--and it provides multiple examples of this!  Potiphar's wife sexually harassed Joseph and perhaps almost adulterously raped him (Genesis 39); the allegory in Ezekiel 23 uses the vehement visual lust of a woman to represent the spiritual adultery (idolatry) of Israel; Paul mentioned that widows can have very strong "sensual desires" in one of his letters (1 Timothy 5:11).  The Bible clearly teaches that women have sexual desires just as men do and that women are "visual", which means attracted physically or sexually to the opposite gender by sight of bodily beauty.  Interestingly, the Quran concurs with the Bible on this point.  Islamic belief assigns the name Zuleika to Potiphar's infamous wife.  In Surah 12, according to the Quran, Zuleika invited some female friends to prepare food and, when Joseph entered the room, the women cut their hands from the distraction of finding Joseph so physically attractive.  Before this event they, according to the Quran, mocked Zuleika for her attraction to Joseph, but afterwards they understood her experiences.  I find it amusing that a Muslim text directly teaches what many Christians will not acknowledge--women are visual and sexual beings just like men are!



Christians who think women are not visual and sexual beings
just like men are (though men do not have the hypervisual or
hypersexual natures attributed to them) do not understand
the Bible, women, or why relying on cultural beliefs as
evidence for a position subverts and rejects reason.

Really, the idea of God creating men with extremely high levels of sexual desire and hypervisuality and women with dramatically lower levels of sexual desire and visuality is the idea that God intentionally created uneven sexual desires between men and women and thus purposefully created a very problematic difference between the two genders.  Now, complementarians might argue that this arrangement will reveal God's glory by having two different types of beings come together in a marriage relationship supposed to glorify God--but this is nothing more than a contrived explanation built around an unbiblical belief, as complementarianism rests on fallacies and misinterpretations of the Bible [2].  When analyzing this issue objectively, it becomes clear that there is no obvious reason why God would ever want to completely mismatch the degree of sexual desire in men and women.  In fact, it would be to create something that would inevitably produce conflict and a wedge between married men and women, which is the opposite of the goal of marriage, as marriage is intended to unite a couple together into "one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).

The fact that women are "visual" and that men are not as "visual" as society stereotypes them to be has also found some support from modern sexologists [3].  Women are reported to look at erotic images just as long as men do and to act in ways typically associated with male sexuality when they ignore societal ideas.  Of course, women themselves have admitted that they are visual too and that they are not less sexual beings than men.  In addition to this, the "visuality" of men or women varies from individual to individual, meaning that stereotypical cultural assumptions amount to nothing but inherited fallacies.  Female friends and acquaintances of mine say things that blatantly contradict the way the church and society claim women are not visual or are less sexual than males.  However, the visual attraction that people can have for members of the opposite gender (note that I said can have, not constantly have) does not constantly overpower them all the time.  This is why men and women can gather together, for instance, at a beach or swimming pool while wearing very little or nothing and recognize that the situation is not sexual, nor are the exposed male and female bodies around them.  Men and women can admire each other physically without any desire to have sex despite the fact that God has made both men and women to generally find each other's bodies attractive.  Just because someone finds a person attractive does not mean that the former will actually be physically attracted to the latter, and even if attraction does occur the attraction does not necessarily signify the presence of sexual desire.  Why is this so hard for evangelical Christians to comprehend?



Evangelicals prove their ignorance and inconsistency
by condemning one but not the other.  Of course,
condemning either bikinis or shirtless males is an
example of the type of extra-Biblical, legalistic,
irrational, subjective nonsense that Jesus harshly
rebuked when he criticized the Pharisees for adding
to his moral laws.

Men and women can both admire each other's bodies without sin and take comfort in the fact that God did not create opposing natures in them--and can stop assuming that stereotypes and societal constructs are true.  The church, of all places, should be full of people who understand that women are "visual" and otherwise sexual beings, and who understand why.  When people referring to the two genders commit the fallacy of composition and the fallacy of appeal to popularity, they gravely damage how men and women view both themselves and each other.  God may have made humans--not just men and not just women--to be visual and sexual beings (although the extent of this varies drastically from person to person and asexual people do exist), but that does not at all mean that these elements of general human nature must overpower our reason and self-control, constantly hang over everything, and impede true fellowship!


[1].  See here:
  A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-folly-of-modesty-part-1.html
  B.  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-folly-of-modesty-part-2.html

[2].  http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/why-ephesians-5-does-not-teach-rigid.html

[3].  https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/06/turns-out-women-have-really-really-strong-sex-drives-can-men-handle-it/276598/