The Fallacies Of Physiognomy

What makes something "pseudoscience" as opposed to legitimate science?  Pseudoscience masquerades as something scientifically valid, yet it either is not observable, repeatable, or measurable or it is incapable of being empirically demonstrated at all.  Just as fallacies render an argument or belief irrational, a failure to meet the criterion of being observable, repeatable, and measurable means that a claim is extra-scientific or pseudoscientific.

Something which I have addressed in some previous articles of mine that is pseudoscientific is the concept of the subconscious mind, with subconscious here meaning outside of what the conscious mind is capable of perceiving.  By this definition, even if it existed, by its very nature it cannot be seen by either a first-person subject or by other researchers [1].  Because the subconscious could never be observed and thus could never be quantified even if it does exist, it is incapable of being demonstrated to exist by science.

Another pseudoscientific matter is the doctrine of physiognomy.  Physiognomy is the attempt to discern someone's personality features or moral character by assessing that person's body parts, especially--but not limited to--facial features.  It is a wonderful example of a pseudo-scientific endeavor that is littered with errors.  In the case of physiognomy, we have something that is both illogical and unscientific, since its conclusions neither rest upon valid premises nor can be established on the basis of empirical observation.

What kind of connections between personalities and bodily features does physiognomy seek to uncover?  Perhaps a certain nose shape will be seen as indicating a deceitful spirit, or maybe a certain eye shape is held to mean that someone has a tendency to be hardworking or honest.  Maybe someone who is deemed "attractive" [2] is also expected to be intelligent.  Another example of physiognomy might be thinking that a person with large genitals must have a high sex drive.  Of course, the allegedly corresponding personality traits are purely arbitrary, since there is no logical connection tying them to the body parts.  Neither logic nor repeated empirical observation (the scientific method) establishes a connection of any sort between a certain sized or shaped nose, eye, or other body part and a certain moral habit or personality characteristic.

Can someone tell if this man is honest, dishonest, consistent,
kind, selfish, aggressive, or calm, etc, just by looking at his
face?  Not at all!

One does not even need science to realize that physiognomy is a bullshit discipline, since logic proves, entirely a priori, that it does not follow whatsoever from having body parts of a certain type or size that one must have certain personality traits.  Just because someone has a specific facial structure does not mean that he or she by necessity has some behavioral characteristic that is revealed by the appearance of the physical body.  The only way that physical appearance and mental traits are correlated is in people with certain bodily and mental disabilities.  For instance, the face of someone with Down's syndrome may look abnormal compared to other faces, but even this has nothing to do with judging moral character or basic personality types.

Though physiognomy is, fortunately, not widely embraced on the popular level these days, the historical development of such an asinine discipline exemplifies the idiocies one can stoop to when straying from logic.  Let it serve as an example of what stupidities result when logic and science are exchanged for fallacies and pseudoscience.


[1].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-subconscious.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/an-analogy-for-subconscious.html

[2].  Although any claim about beauty (like "His body is very attractive," "That color looks great," or "Her hair looks very beautiful today") is by necessity either true or false, all perceptions of beauty are purely subjective, hence the quotation marks used above.

Game Review--Doom (Xbox One)

"I am not the villain in this story.  I do what I do because there is no choice."
--Samuel Hayden, Doom


A game that is very focused on a few key experience features, Doom appeals to a very particular audience, relying on its brutal intensity and action-oriented FPS gameplay to entice players.  And, if you are part of that audience, you could derive some serious enjoyment from playing it.  It is the first Xbox One game I played by myself, so I thought I'd review it to commemorate the occasion.

Production Values

The graphics are clear and detailed, and I never experienced frame rate drops despite the screen sometimes being crowded with enemies--and sometimes it can get very crowded, with numerous enemies of different types descending on you.  The combat can become very intense in some situations, and yet the frame rate stayed consistent for me.  The sound keeps up with the action rather well.  Expect a lot of loud explosions, gunshots, and demonic shrieks accompanied by electric guitar riffs.  Voice acting is competent, but, considering the focus on fast-paced gunplay and mild solo exploration, there is little actual dialogue.

Gameplay

People who want to play this game probably want to have fun killing demons with diverse weaponry, and those who appreciate inflicting death on the enemies will have a lot to enjoy.  The fighting can get brutal, and I died multiple consecutive times in the same area more than once.  The difficulty can be adjusted mid-gameplay via the pause screen if one needs to tone down the challenge.  Combat takes the form of using vicious gun (and chainsaw) attacks and melee finishing moves to obliterate hordes of demons intent on overpowering the unnamed character controlled by players.

Players will find that Doom combines retro and modern elements, blending arcade-like elements with contemporary graphics.  The power ups, collectibles, and minimal emphasis on story all contribute to the game being one that struck me as an old formula in a new skin.  I still loved the experience!

Metroid lovers might see some similarities between that franchise and this game, since Doom has map stations, a map screen that looks like one from the Metroid Prime games, and various collectibles often findable only through optional exploration.  Really, Doom is basically an intellectually simpler version of Metroid Prime with God of War level violence added.

Story

(Some spoilers are below)

No, Doom doesn't have a particularly developed narrative, but that's not what the creators aimed for.  The premise of the game is that in the future a group of scientists in an organization called the UAC, led by an android-like robot inhabited by a human mind named Samuel Hayden, have engaged in an operation on Mars that resulted in a portal to Hell being opened.  The unnamed player character wakes up and finds the facilities in a state of infestation by various demons.

Samuel Hayden apologizes for the disaster, but insists that his work was strictly for the betterment of humanity, his utilitarian ethics coming up at least at one key later time.  A former employee of his (I think) named Olivia Pierce is in league with the demons, seemingly having been seduced away by promises of power, and she is the one who opened the portal that allowed the demons to come to Mars.  The purpose of the UAC Mars operation was to harvest Argent energy.

The player visits hell to pursue Olivia, returns to Mars, and eventually goes back to hell to actually kill Olivia.  The journey there led to the destruction of devices used in the Argent energy project, and Hayden confiscates an object from Hell, saying he will continue his work and that he expects to meet the player character again in the future.


Intellectual Content

If players are up for some exploring, they can find different types of collectibles (ranging from data logs to suit upgrade tokens to little figures).  But the item hunting is definitely secondary to the shooting.  Still, there is definite collectible variety for completionists who want to obtain all the secrets.

Doom features an artificial intelligence, a cyborg, and a semi android-like being.  The "android" (he is humanoid, but taller than the average person and doesn't have actual or simulated human skin like some androids do) is actually a shell holding the consciousness of Samuel Hayden, a scientist.  The game largely glosses over the issue of cybernetic transference, which is transferring a human consciousness into a machine body.  Such a thing is logically possible, though this does not mean that in actuality humans will ever be able to preserve their minds by placing them in machines.  I don't recall the game actually explaining how this transference happened, only (in an optionally readable data file) that Hayden, diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, used the last months of his human life to ensure his nonphysical mind would outlast his biological body.

A human mind/consciousness is not a brain, even if it is generated by a brain.  A brain is a physical organ; consciousness is the immaterial thing that perceives, thinks, experiences, and reasons.  However, if the biological death of the brain means the cessation of consciousness (at least in terms of it animating a body), then I don't know how that consciousness could be resurrected into a machine frame.  Doom doesn't explain this in the course of its narrative.  If it does in the optional data files, I missed where it does so.


Conclusion

If you don't like gory games, Doom is one to skip.  If you like games with deep lore and stories, again, Doom is one to skip.  But if you are fine with violence and an emphasis on action over character development and a dissection of grand themes, then Doom might be a game you will take pleasure in playing!


Content:
1. Violence:  As some of the screenshots here indicate, Doom is a very graphic game.  A variety of melee attacks and guns can be used to rip apart enemies, and, yes, there is a lot of blood.  All of this violence is inflicted on demonic beings, though, and thus not on humans.

The Nature Of Sexiness

What one person finds sexy another person might not, and many variables could contribute to this--immediate mood, past experiences, natural personality, etc.  Experience can confirm this, and logic can prove it independent of interacting with others.  A person or act is perceived to be sexy if it is sexually attractive or arousing.  And, as I already stated, what people perceive to be sexy is subjective.  But there is something else that might often be overlooked: some things that people might find sexy--indeed, a great deal of them--are objectively nonsexual.

In some cases there is a difference between perception of a thing and the thing itself.  Something might be different than it is perceived to be, and perceptions can vary greatly from person to person.  What are some things people might perceive to be sexy that are not sexual (the only things that are themselves sexual are sexual feelings and activities)?

Sapiosexuals are sexually attracted to intelligence, yet there is nothing sexual about intelligence.  Demisexuals experience sexual attraction to people they are very emotionally close to, yet there is nothing sexual about emotional intimacy.  Likewise, some women might be sexually attracted to male muscularity (and vice versa), although there is nothing sexual about muscularity.  Or some people might find a certain hairstyle or smile sexy, when there is nothing sexual about hair or smiling.  Some men might perceive a specific bikini to be sexy and some women might perceive shirtless men to be sexy, although there is nothing sexual about either bikinis or shirtlessness.

Nonsexual things can arouse people sexually, and sexual things might not arouse people, at all or in a given situation.  A person might not be either mentally or physically aroused by a spouse's sexual beckoning, or by sexual thoughts, or by watching erotic media.  As reason plainly demonstrates, a priori, there is no connection whatsoever between a thing being sexual and someone being sexually aroused by or attracted to it.  Different sexual activities can arouse different people differently, even though each of the acts is objectively sexual in nature.

A sexual activity, like masturbation, might not even be engaged in out of sexual desire, even if the man or woman masturbating is not asexual, as one can engage in a sexual act like masturbation simply because the act physically feels good.  So even sexual things can be done with minimal sexual motivations or without any sexual motivations at all.

So what is the nature of sexiness?  It is impossible for many things that people might perceive to be sexy to actually be sexy in themselves because they are not even sexual in themselves to begin with.  And just because something is sexual in nature does not mean that people will find it sexy.  A thing is either sexual or nonsexual irrespective of perceptions, yet perceptions of sexiness are purely subjective and, as explained, have nothing to do with the actual nature of what is found sexy.


Summary of observations
1. Sexiness has to do with something/someone being sexually attractive or arousing.
2. Perceptions of sexiness are purely subjective.
3. Only sexual feelings and activities are sexual.
4. Something that is not sexual (eg clothing, a situation) cannot be objectively sexy, since a thing that is objectively nonsexual cannot be objectively sexy.
5. People can find nonsexual things sexy, and just because something is sexual doesn't mean it will sexually arouse or excite them.

The Laziest Moral Epistemology

Well, it happened yet again.  Another professor of mine at HBU uttered a very erroneous idea recently.  The class is business ethics, and the professor has only rarely articulated an argument that is both sound and valid.  He, in an attempt to refute moral relativism, partially dismissed it because according to him it is "lazy."  Ironically, despite the impossibility of moral relativism, his own proposed moral framework is even lazier--in fact, it is the laziest possible system of moral beliefs!

According to this professor some moral truths are "self-evident."  This is entirely untrue, but I find it highly amusing that the person who calls seeing conflicting moral beliefs, realizing that they cannot all be true, and concluding that ethical truths are relative lazy thinks that just having a feeling is the legitimate pathway to moral knowledge.  Moral relativism is fallacious, impossible, and only believed by intellectual insects, but it still takes far more effort to survey the vast discrepancies between moral beliefs and actively consider them than it does to just have a moral feeling and automatically conclude that it must reflect some moral reality.

For something to be self-evident, it must require no other foundation for it to be known--it must prove itself in some way, since it cannot rely on other premises to be confirmed.  It must be evident in itself.  Only logical axioms and necessary truths have this property.  They cannot be denied without contradiction and they cannot be false.  Moral claims, on the other hand, do not possess this property.  One can deny them without any contradiction whatsoever.  And they are certainly not evident in themselves!  For moral truths to exist a moral standard must exist, and for a moral standard to exist there must be a moral authority above humans.  There is no other way for there to be such a thing as morality, and even if morality exists that does not mean that moral truths are known by intuition or conscience, for neither can soundly inform us of moral truths [1].

This means that the existence of morality and specific moral truths cannot be self-evident, since to know that these moral prescriptions exist and to know what they are one must first discover if there is a deity (without which there could be no moral authority), then inquire into the nature of this deity, find if it has a moral nature, and then see if the moral nature of this deity can be known.  Moral truths by their very nature cannot be immediately known, since they are true even if people do not agree, meaning that conscience can never be legitimately appealed to as a route to moral knowledge because conscience is just a subjective emotive tool, one that cannot even inform someone if his or her conscience is accurate.

Moral nihilism and moral realism are the only moral systems which are even logically possible, with moral skepticism being a position of uncertainty as to which is correct or what specific moral truths exist.  Either there is no right or wrong or moral truths are objectively binding whether or not we are aware of them.  There are no other legitimate options.  Moral relativism contradicts the inviolable laws of logic.  A thing is what it is, and a thing cannot be and not be in the same way at once.  Yet moral relativism holds that two or more people can believe different moral ideas--mutually exclusive ones--and somehow still all be correct at the same time.  This is impossible, and, besides, it does not follow from disagreement about morality that no objective moral truths exist (this is a major non sequitur fallacy).

Ultimately, a moral relativist is often arguing for moral nihilism with some additions, holding that there are no moral truths while also arguing that his or her subjective preferences or feelings have some moral significance.  This is just an asinine position; it, in a sense, clings to moral nihilism (which could never be proven even if it is true) while going beyond it.  I need to be clear that moral beliefs are almost entirely relative to one's subjective conscience or culture.  But the plurality of moral beliefs one can find in no way means that moral truths are relative or that they do not exist, only that moral beliefs are relative and that moral consensus does not exist.  And if moral consensus did exist, this would prove only that everyone agrees, not that they are correct.

Moral relativism is actually less lazy than what my business ethics professor believes is the proper moral epistemology.  Neither moral relativism nor the belief that humans can "just know" moral truths is correct, as both are refuted in full by logic.  Moral relativism is indeed objectively impossible (moral nihilism would be the closest possible thing), but thinking that you can know moral truths by immediate introspection or by pangs of conscience is a far lazier belief, one that, like relativism, cannot be true.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html

The Hidden Presence Of Brain Activity

During ordinary experiences or focused introspection I directly experience my consciousness.  Something I find highly fascinating is that my experience of basic consciousness does not in any way reveal the neuron activity occurring in my brain.  Just as I cannot know about blood circulating through my arm simply from the experience of moving my arm around, I cannot know about specific brain activities from mental experiences alone.

When I turn my mind's attention toward itself, focusing on a memory,

an idea, or a present emotional state, I do not sense the presence of

bustling activity of the scores of neurons in my brain.

According to some estimates there are as many as approximately 100 billion neurons in my brain, and yet mental activities like thinking (in this case by thinking I mean activities like actively reasoning or imagining things), perceiving, or introspecting, do not yield any awareness of this!  Mental activity occurs without communicating anything of neuron behavior to the conscious self.  Introspection and logic, thus, cannot discover the presence of neurons on their own.

Consciousness is a very simple and yet enigmatic thing.  It is omnipresent in experience, but its very existence can only be correctly accounted for on certain worldviews!  The existence of consciousness is self-evident, meaning one has to be conscious to doubt or deny that one is conscious, yet the existence of neurons is very far from self-evident.

If neurons are active in or around the brain, one cannot know this simply by experiencing or reflecting on consciousness; one would have to use additional empirical means beyond introspection and logic isolated from scientific data.  This confirms, yet again, the distinction between mental and brain activity that one can discover through logic without any scientific inquiry.

Asexuals Are Still Sexual Beings

I am an asexual, meaning I have little to no natural sexual desire at any given time.  But I am still a sexual being.  Is this not a contradiction?  Not at all!  There are two general components to sexuality: the emotional/mental aspects of it and the physical/physiological aspects of it.  Asexuality in itself exclusively pertains to an absence of the former.  It does not erase the latter.  Sexuality is not limited to either just sexual feelings or the physiological capacity for sexual acts, as it encompasses both.

Although some may be puzzled that an asexual would say this, I, an asexual, am still a being with sexual physiology, as are other asexuals with normally-functioning genitals.  This is not surprising to those who realize the distinction between the mental and physical aspects of sexuality.  The two often interact, but one can exist without the other.

In fact, there is evidence that God intended for humans to be physiologically sexual beings even when they are not experiencing or cannot experience the mental aspects of sexuality.  The very fact that people can have their genitals involuntarily become sexually aroused during sleep, even without erotic dreams, shows that God designed humans to naturally experience bodily sexual arousal even when unaccompanied by actual sex acts or sexual desires, and even when people are not in sexual relationships.

This does not change just because someone is an asexual.  Asexuals have no need to feel confused by this because it does not contradict the definition of asexuality--even someone who is entirely without sexual feelings can still be a sexual being.

An Examination Of Basic Islamic Christology

The Quran, when it comes to the nature of Jesus, outright agrees with the New Testament in some ways and totally deviates from it in others.  I will give credit where it is due, yet also draw attention to the aspects of Islamic Christology that contradict both the Bible and historical evidences.  In one sense Islam regards Jesus highly.  It calls him someone who was tasked by God with presenting the Gospel and confirming the Torah, yet it also denies his death entirely.

Surah 4 summarizes key points about the Islamic position on Jesus:

Surah 4:155-158--". . . No!  God has sealed them in their disbelief, so they believe only a little--and because they disbelieved and uttered a terrible slander against Mary, and said, 'We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of God.'  (They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them; those that disagreed about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge to follow, only supposition: they certainly did not kill him--No!  God raised him up to Himself."

First of all, the Jews (the context reveals that the Jews are the people in question in these verses) did not crucify anyone, as the Torah both does not prescribe execution methods like crucifixion and condemns them [1], so the implication in the text that the Jews thought they had directly crucified and killed Jesus is totally unfounded.  Second of all, this passage contradicts what is actually supported by historical evidence by saying that Jesus wasn't crucified and didn't die, but merely appeared to.  Islamic Christology, then, ultimately admits that Jesus existed, even calling him a servant of God, but then denies what the historical data actually points to: that he died via Roman (certainly not Jewish!) crucifixion.  Josephus, Tacitus, the Babylonian Talmud--there are definitely sources that provide historical evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus!

It is the Bible that says the crucifixion occurred as recorded by non-Christian historians.  Since Muslims can conjure up no historical data to reinforce the claim that Jesus never died and was even never crucified to begin with, the New Testament teaching that Jesus did die is the one out of the two claims that is most compatible with external evidences.

Only one verse later, though, Surah 4 actually says something that, ironically, is similar to something Philippians 2:9-11 teaches:

Surah 4:159--"There is not one of the People of the Book who will not believe in [Jesus] before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a witness against them.)"

The Quran does say that Jesus has some special eschatological significance in that he will eventually condemn the Jews who did not follow Islam, which does somewhat parallel what Philippians 2 describes--that every knee will bow to Christ and every tongue will confess his authority and divine nature.  The differences between this and the similar Quranic teaching, of course, are that Philippians says that every person will acknowledge Christ, not just non-Christian Jews, and that Jesus is actually called divine.  

It is indeed important that I show where the Quran does teach things about Jesus that are Biblically true.  Elsewhere, the Quran affirms the Torah by saying that Jesus came on behalf of God to testify to its veracity:

Surah 5:46--"We sent Jesus, son of Mary, in their footsteps, to confirm the Torah that had been sent before him: We gave him the Gospel with guidance, light, and confirmation of the Torah already revealed--a guide and lesson for those who take heed of God."

As I've explained before, this is ironic, because one notion of the Quran that contradicts the Torah disproves Islam, and in an earlier post I showed how the Quran contradicts the Torah on a crucial matter of justice [2], though there are other disparities I could write about in the future.  All it takes is one inconsistency for Islam to be falsified, whether or not the Torah is true, meaning that, since the Quran contradicts the Torah, Islam can be rationally disproven as a system and legitimately set aside, leaving us with no reason to think that Jesus merely "appeared" to die.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/we-are-getting-what-our-deeds-deserve.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/quranic-punishment-surah-538.html

Ned Stark's Ignorance Of The Pragmatic

I know that most of my Game of Thrones related posts have been released in an order that at least somewhat corresponds to the chronological events of the show, but I felt like examining a crucial event from the latter half of season one: the arrest of Lord Ned Stark (some spoilers will follow!).  In episode seven of season one Ned Stark attempts to arrest Queen Regent Cersei Lannister and her son Joffrey, who sits upon the Iron Throne.  Some viewers might mistake his capture (and eventual execution) as being brought about by his unwillingness to do things he considered morally wrong or ambiguous, but his downfall came about not because of his deontological moral beliefs, but because of his unwillingness to be pragmatic in a way that is not amoral or immoral.  Ethical behavior and pragmatism are not always incompatible things.

Let me summarize the events leading to his apprehension.  Cersei, the wife of the king, has had a lasting adulterous and incestuous relationship with her brother that produced Joffrey.  Being a child of incest, he has no legitimate claim to the throne by law.  Once Lord Stark learns of this fact, he warns Cersei that he will tell her husband when he returns from a hunt, but she arranges for him to get drunk while away, and the king is fatally wounded by a boar as a result.  When he dies, Joffrey assumes the throne, and when Ned tries to dethrone him without bloodshed, he himself is ultimately taken into custody under false accusations of treason when a politician named Littlefinger betrays him.

Now, with the recap out of the way, I want to point out how Ned's moral impulse to not storm in and kill Cersei and her son without a trial, consistent with his moral beliefs that oppose all murder (even that of foreign political rivals like the unborn baby of Daenerys), is not responsible for his death.  Trying to minimize loss of life and injury to all parties involved is a morally good thing (at least by Christian standards).  He did not, however, warn anyone else about the incestuous origin of Joffrey, nor did he carefully weigh the probability of his ally Littlefinger betraying him.

It was not Ned Stark's righteousness that got him arrested.  It was his failure to be cunning in a morally legitimate manner.  Indeed, even if being an ethical person was what led to his arrest, the obligation to do the right thing would not have disappeared.  The ease with which someone can do the right thing has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not a certain action is or isn't wrong.  Ease and difficulty only reveal someone's willingness to do the right thing, not what is or isn't morally good.

On at least some occasions, being pragmatic--planning and acting in a way that aims at producing a certain realistic end--does not stand opposed to being morally upright.  Had Ned opted for murdering Joffrey and his mother without giving them a trial in order to secure a desired outcome, he would have morally erred, yet he did not have to be so irrationally trusting to uphold his ethical code, and he did not need to keep his awareness of the incest a secret until he had no liberty to share it with others because of his arrest.  He could have waited until the king returned from his hunt and told him of his wife's incest without warning Cersei in advance.  He could have arrested Cersei and Joffrey directly after the king's death.  His attempted arrest didn't have to end in knowledge of the truth dying with him, as he could have sent out ravens with messages to other cities to tell them of the incest and illegitimate lineage of Joffrey.  In short, it is not as if being pragmatic excluded taking a course of action that avoided murder or extralegal activity.

Ned certainly needed to communicate his findings about the Lannister family to others if he wished for the truth to be made known, and he certainly needed the support of someone far less self-serving than Littlefinger if he wanted to arrest Joffrey and Cersei.  A pragmatism that contradicts rightly living out morality is an abomination, but being pragmatic does not itself necessarily mean one must live unethically.  In Ned's case, acting in a pragmatic manner and doing the right thing could both be pursued simultaneously, but he simply failed to acknowledge this and act upon it.  Ned's rejection of the pragmatic is not all due to him being a moral deontologist.  Some of it had to do with him simply not being a thoughtful political strategist.

Defining The External World

I have explained what the external world is and is not in at least one previous post, but, since I was thinking about this issue again today, I want to be clear that the external world is not everything outside of my mind.  This post is just for good measure for the sake of newcomers to my blog!

The external world is the world of matter outside of my consciousness, and depending on the specific context it could refer to either all matter, including my body, or all matter beyond my body.  My consciousness is what it is external to, hence the descriptive phrase used to refer to it.  The world of matter, though, is certainly not the totality of everything that exists beyond my mind.  There is at least one thing that exists outside of my mind that is immaterial and thus by definition not a part of the external world, and there is strong evidence for others.

Logic is immaterial, and thus it is not a part of the external world despite governing the entirety of it [1].  Since logic cannot not exist, I do not even need to demonstrate that any other immaterial thing exists in order to show that the material world does not encompass everything outside of my mind, especially since logic would exist even if neither the external world nor my consciousness (or any other minds) existed at all.

Although I cannot prove that other minds exist, and thus I cannot know if they do, what I can prove is that other minds, even if they animate physical bodies as my own conscious mind does, are immaterial, thus also not being a part of the external world.  If there are any other minds/consciousnesses besides my own, then they, too, are not part of the material world because their metaphysical natures prevent this from being true.  Then, of course, there is the fact that on the Christian worldview it is even more troubling to call the external world everything that exists outside of my mind, because, in addition to logic and any other existing minds (including Yahweh's), things like sin and moral obligations are also immaterial and not part of the material world.

As rationalists can see, it is very misleading and to call the external world "everything" outside of one's mind.  To believe such a thing is to believe an impossibility.  While some might be tempted to misuse language with reference to the concept of the external world, it remains utterly invalid to say that the external world is comprised of everything whatsoever that exists outside of my consciousness.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-immateriality-of-logic.html

The Object And Method Of Faith

There is a difference between an object of faith and faith as a method or a basis for belief.  It is vital to distinguish between these, appraise what is meant by each concept, and then declare the truth about both things.  The object of faith is the thing that is trusted in.  Thus, having faith in someone's honesty means that a person's honesty is the object of faith.  But as a methodology or foundation, faith is belief in something without confirmation.  This is what is meant when someone defends a claim by saying he or she believes in it on faith.  The former can be consistent with reason (in that the thing believed in/trusted in might actually be real and true), yet the latter is contrary and exclusive to rationality.  You cannot hold something to be true on faith and know it is true simultaneously.

The object of someone's faith might indeed be true and consistent with the necessary laws of logic, but faith as a method or basis for a belief is never compatible with reason, since it inevitably involves belief or trust in something beyond what can be proven.  I will give an example: if someone believes on faith (by trust in what has not been or cannot be proven) that extraterrestrial life exists, he or she has no basis whatsoever for that belief, though it is entirely logically possible that alien life exists, and thus it is not the conclusion that is intrinsically irrational but the method used to arrive at the conclusion.  If alien life exists, that person was only right by accident; if it does not, that person was no less irrational, since the veracity of the conclusion has nothing to do with the validity of the methodology.

These points are seldom clarified when Christians discuss faith and reason, especially since some of the positions I've frequently encountered are quite untrue.  One is that reason itself requires faith, a claim which is by its very nature impossible [1], and another is that it is somehow rational to believe in what cannot be proven in full--again, the nature of logic makes this impossible, for it can never be rational to believe in what cannot be rationally proven.  The object of someone's faith might be rational and true, but believing in something because of faith is inherently irrational whether or not the object of faith is real.

I have made it clear to those around me that I am not a Christian because of some introspective experience, because I was raised by Christian parents, or because of some emotional insecurity or preference.  I don't even believe that the entirety of Christianity is true; I believe that Christianity is internally consistent, consistent with all external evidence I have found, supported by a great amount of various evidences, and that parts of it are true by logical necessity (the parts holding that truth, a material world, and an uncaused cause exist, or that the mind is distinct from the body, for example), because that is all that I can demonstrate to be true.  I can prove that Christianity is evidentially-fortified, but that is not the same as proving that the entirety of it is correct.

Still, I am committed to Christianity because of the evidential strength that it boasts.  Nothing about Christianity is logically impossible, but that does not mean that it is true--all I can prove are that some parts of it are true and that the rest seems quite probable.  Acting upon what evidence reveals is not irrational if one keeps in mind that even great evidence is not a total proof and understands the distinction.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-impossibility-of-faith-in-reason.html

Autocracy Is Not Inherently Tyrranical

The idea that autocrats, otherwise called dictators, are by necessity tyrants is the result of fallacious thinking.  An autocrat is someone who rules with a great degree of power, while a tyrant is one who rules through illicit fear--particularly by unjust threats or unjust force.  Having great or even absolute power over a group of people does not itself mean that one will abuse that power or impose it in illicit, sinful manner.

For instance, an autocrat who rules using the right set of just laws is not a tyrant (Biblically, autocracy itself is not sinful, but it could be used in sinful ways).  Even if an autocrat had absolute power he or she will not necessarily be cruel.  This is demonstrable simply by comparing the concept of a tyrant to that of an autocrat, for one can see that the two are not synonymous; although an autocrat could become a tyrant, such a thing is never an unavoidable outcome.  People who argue that autocracy is evil because of what might come about from it commit the slippery slope fallacy.

Am I saying that autocracy is obligatory?  No!  I am merely pointing out that it is not some inevitably destructive thing that must, by necessity, end in malevolent, selfish tyranny.  Autocracy, like monarchy [1], is neither sinful nor obligatory.  I am not arguing for autocracy, only proving that it is not what some represent it as being.  Autocracy is not an automatic indicator of corruption or evil.  In fact, an autocrat who rules justly is better than a leader who has a more limited power and yet acts unjustly.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-moral-theology-of-monarchy.html

Winter Is Here: Redemption In Game Of Thrones

At the start of Game of Thrones, winter was coming.  By the end of season seven, winter has come.  Due to the length of the seasons of summer and winter in-universe, years elapsed before winter arrived.  And much occurred in those years.  Many characters appeared, many died, and the ones that survived have been deeply changed by their hellacious experiences.  Over season seasons, Game of Thrones touches on many philosophical, theological, moral, and epistemological issues.  It is not that every episode or season covers its own specific philosophical theme, but that there are lines of dialogue and concepts spread all throughout that at least brush up against some aspect of reality, even if only a line or two is devoted to that topic.  One thing that is developed throughout the entire current series, though, is redemption.

By the end of the seventh season many of the surviving characters have truly grown in some way.  Sansa was a mere child in the first episode but has been transformed by abuse, political terrors, and the loss of family members into a more confident person.  Daenerys has matured from an abused bride into a powerful queen who can deliver Westeros from impending destruction.  Theon started out as a selfish, power-hungry young man willing to betray the kind family that raised him, but is now a person committed to doing the right thing.

Included in the character changes, as one might expect, are some changes for the better, though they can take entire seasons to unfold.  Tyrion is a promiscuous alcoholic who learns to truly love, eventually deciding to try to dethrone his largely tyrannical family.  Jaime is an incestuous attempted child-killer revealed to have saved thousands of people by making a difficult decision to violate an oath, a man who who eventually comes to recognize the irrational self-absorption of his sister Cersei and walks away from her madness.

Characters like Theon and Jaime are given season-spanning redemption arcs that really flesh them out and show how drastically people can change for the better with time.  Although the show has yet to provide a basis for many of the characters to hold their moral beliefs to be true, it does allow some characters to move in a direction that Christianity would certainly call redemptive.  Westeros is not only a place of misery and tyranny; it is also a place of moral growth (by Christian standards, I mean, as I do not know if Westeros itself has a moral standard above it [1]).  It holds many evil people.  But it also shows that people do not have to remain moral monsters.  They can and sometimes do change, and not always into more wicked persons.  Humans are not bound by necessity to remain in evil habits, since they are rational creatures with free will, the capacity for self-reflective introspection, and the desire to move from one moral state to another.

I sincerely wish more Christians would recognize the power of entertainment that is as honest, as thoughtful, as masterful as Game of Thrones.  The show portrays a fictional yet very familiar world where everyone does what is right in his or her own eyes, the majority of characters consumed by short-sightedness, egoism, and utilitarian leanings--but it still insists through its unfolding narrative that redemption is possible.  Game of Thrones is a gloriously executed examination of the complexity of human nature, acknowledging both selfishness and redemption in dozens of little ways.  Winter is here, and it has been preceded by some deeply insightful character arcs.


[1].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/moral-skepticism-in-westeros.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/moral-skepticism-in-westeros-revisited.html

Rationalism A Source Of Confidence

When one is devoted to reason, one is freed from bondage to the errors of others--and also from fearing their rejection.  And with freedom from their errors comes recognition that their approval is utterly meaningless.  One of the most liberating side effects of rationalism for me is that I have a deep confidence, a confidence that extends down into every part of my life, one that leaves me without any fear over whether or not the truths I know are accepted or denied by others.  This confidence, a foundation of internal assurance, is a security in the truth that is unaffected by how other people respond or act.

Confidence is one of the most empowering things a person can experience, and the firmest confidence can only be obtained from a right understanding of reality.  This is something only rationalism can impart.  Without rationalism one is adrift in uncertainty and assumptions.  With it, one can be prepared to face popular delusions.  With it, one looks to truth and not acceptance by other people.

I care nothing for their feelings, preferences, traditions, assumptions, or fallacious objections.  I loathe the very people themselves quite often.  It is not that I hate those who are walking on the path to truth and yet are stumbling along the way, but that I hate those who refuse to acknowledge blatant errors, instead persisting in believing outright impossibilities or in things that cannot possibly be verified, even after multiple corrections.

Because of rationalism I can look at others, see the common idiocies of the masses, and know that I am not like them.  Intellectual freedom is being right (therefore being free from submission to errors) and knowing that you are right.  It can bring the most secure kind of confidence--knowledge that you do not need to be trapped in the same stupidity that so often engulfs others, a knowledge which can so easily accompany security rooted in the truth and not their fictions.

Deborah: The Female Judge

Those in the church who say that God is against women leading men must do so in spite of the fact that the Bible itself clearly describes women as holding legitimate positions of authority over men.  One such example is Deborah, prophetess and judge of Israel (Judges 4:4-5).  God himself is said to have raised up the judges (Judges 2:16-19), so readers cannot rightly claim that Deborah, being a woman, was in moral error simply by presiding over Israel.  The judges were non-monarchical leaders who presided over the Israelites, sometimes leading them to military victories.  They were not called kings or queens, but they did lead on behalf of God:


Judges 2:16, 18--"Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved Israel out of the hands of these raiders . . . Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived . . ."


Judges 2 and 4 alone absolutely demolish the idea that Yahweh is against women leading men.  If it is sinful for a woman to lead a man, and if God cannot sin (James 1:13), then God could not have raised up a female judge!  Thus the fact that he did means that female leadership over men is not sinful.  Some complementarians might say that God only settled for Deborah because no men were willing to accept the role of leadership meant for them.  But where the hell does the text say this?  It does not!  What it does say is that God raised up judges and that Deborah was a judge.

Oh, how I love observing how insecure complementarian men can be when they meet a female leader who is competent, qualified, and in authority over them--especially if it bruises egos that have been shaped by stereotypes that so many blindly believe in!  When fallacious minds encounter things that disprove their false assumptions, the result is always cognitive dissonance, a refusal to adapt to reality, or a right change of mind.  Since complementarianism wouldn't exist without fallacious minds embracing it, the complementarian response to reason and Scripture usually isn't a right change of mind, unfortunately.

God does not condemn female leaders.  No one is qualified for leadership simply by being a man, and no one is disqualified from leadership simply by being a woman.  Sound logicians realize that denial of this involves fallacies--non sequiturs, begging the question, circular reasoning, appeals to tradition, etc.  It doesn't follow at all from having a certain body that one is or isn't capable of competent, skillful leadership; instead it follows from one's personality traits or experiences.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

Quranic Punishment: Surah 5:45

While reading Surah 5, I noticed a pair of verses in the Quran that both agree with and deeply contradict the Bible.  I will quote both verses below and examine them after.


Surah 5:44-45--"We revealed the Torah with guidance and light, and the prophets, who had submitted to God, judged according to it for the Jews.  So did the rabbis and the scholars in accordance with that part of God's Scripture which they were entrusted to preserve, and to which they were witnesses.  So [rabbis and scholars] do not fear people, fear Me; do not barter away My messages for a small price; those who do not judge according to what God has sent down are rejecting [God's teachings].  In the Torah We prescribed for them a life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, an equal wound for an equal wound: if anyone forgoes this out of charity, it will serve as atonement for his bad deeds.  Those who do not judge according to what God has revealed are doing grave wrong."


First, I'll focus on the contradictory aspect of this passage I alluded to above.  The Quran here restates its explicit teaching that Yahweh/Allah did indeed give accurate moral revelation to Moses in the Old Testament (Surah 2:53), adding that to disregard what God has revealed is a serious error.  How ironic, considering that multiple times the Quran prescribes totally different penalties for certain crimes than the Bible does, meaning that the Quran contradicts the very Torah it itself claims is true and binding on multiple occasions!  I recently wrote on the disparity in the punishment for theft, the Bible prescribing restitution to the victim, while the Quran prescribes the amputation of the thief's hand [1].

As for Lex Talionis, though, the Quran and the Bible do not disagree.  This is where Surah 5:44-45 actually concurs with the Bible.  Surah 5:45 is one of the Quranic verses where preserving Jewish moral theology does win out over the tendency for Mohammed to make revisions while still claiming consistency with the Old Testament.  Whereas Mohammed drastically deviated from some Biblical penalties, here he upholds one of them, and for that I will give him credit.

I've clarified before that the Biblical Lex Talionis laws apply only to permanent physical injuries/mutilations, not to sexual assault, nonpermanent physical injuries, or certain forms of torture like flogging [2].  Likewise, in Sharia Law, for instance, rape is not punished by rape, but by death, as in Deuteronomy 22:25-27.  As long as Islamic law reserves Lex Talionis for only permanent injuries or mutilations, there is no difference between the Lex Talionis of Islam and of Christianity.  Still, the words immediately surrounding the Quranic affirmation of Lex Talionis in Surah 5 only highlight the differences between other Biblical and Quranic punishments!

The Quran does not totally disregard or deny what the Torah and the rest of the Bible teach.  But when it does do so is rather blatant and significant.  I aim to explore the Quran, bit by bit, making observations, identifying what the text does and does not say, and describing my findings here on my blog, as I've already done twice before this month.  Expect more posts about ways that the Quran either affirms Biblical teachings or contradicts the Bible to be periodically posted in the future!


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/quranic-punishment-surah-538.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/12/bible-on-torture-part-2.html

Movie Review--Tomb Raider

"All myths have foundation in reality."
--Richard Croft, Tomb Raider


For all of its cliches, at least Tomb Raider is legitimately not a terrible video game movie!  Despite being competently made in general (though not always spectacularly realized), it stands in large part thanks to the performance of Alicia Vikander.

Photo credit: junaidrao on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Production Values

Alicia Vikander makes for a great Lara Croft--one that is just beginning to become an independent explorer, one that is affected by her first kill, one that learns by necessity.  She takes damage over the course of the film, too.  This Lara is not an invulnerable video game character transplanted into the movie!  Thankfully, Alicia musters enough toughness and emotional sensitivity to allow her to navigate the narrative script in a fitting way.  Dominic West (whom I recognized from 300 [1]), who plays Lara's father Richard, is effective in his role, even if his character isn't particularly developed.  Likewise, the same is the case with Walton Goggins, who plays the villain Matthias Vogel.  He isn't bad as an actor, his character is just simplistic and not fleshed out.  At least Lara is developed somewhat.

Tomb Raider's visual effects are fine, just like the general acting.  But the film structure is rather cliched, with Lara becoming entangled in a search for a seemingly supernatural power, competing against a ruthless antagonist who wants to find the same force that she is looking for--and, of course, there is a danger-laden final trip to a tomb/artifact that causes one or more deaths.  Just so readers know, I have not yet played any of the reboot games that the movie is reportedly based on, so I do not know how its story compares to theirs.  Although the story can be fairly cliche in its narrative, being a fairly predictable Uncharted/Indiana Jones tale (with one major difference that I address in the spoiler-filled story section below), the film is still well-executed.


Story

(Spoilers below!!)

Lara Croft, a young woman who refuses to live off of her missing father's large inheritance, receives a Japanese puzzle her father (Richard Croft) intended for her to have, solving it and producing a key, a key that enables her to discover a special room containing her father's work.  Despite being the owner of a vast corporate regime, he had tried to thwart a shadow group called Trinity as it attempted to collect supernatural relics.  In particular, Richard was fixated on a a reportedly violent, manipulative Japanese sorceress queen named Himiko, brought to an island by her own soldiers to end her tyranny.

After some research, Lara arrives at the island thought to be the burial place of Himiko, but she is quickly captured by a band of murderous Trinity employees who have enslaved stranded fisherman and bought passengers from abductors in order to assemble a workforce.  To her surprise, Richard is still alive on the island, but a man named Matthias Vogel claims to have killed him.

The tomb of Himiko is eventually discovered, and Lara enters alongside Richard and Vogel.  It turns out that Himiko was not a malicious woman forcefully brought to the island, but someone who voluntarily sacrificed herself to contain a lethal disease she was carrying.  Richard is infected, dying in an explosion that Lara escapes.  She returns home to sign a document that preserves her ownership of Richard's estate and property--only to realize that one of the Croft family business' subsidiaries is a front for Trinity operations.


Intellectual Content

Leading up the exploration of Himiko's tomb, Richard and Matthias cling to different fallacies, the former holding without confirmation that Himiko was a wielder of supernatural powers, and the latter dismissing the legends of her supernatural abilities as errors.  When entering the tomb area, Richard calls a sudden gust of wind an act of her power, while Matthias insists it is just the subterranean atmosphere changing.  Once Himiko's sarcophagus is located and its lid removed, her body soon springs to a sitting position.  This is quickly realized to be the result of a mechanical process in the sarcophagus.  Vindicated in the end, Matthias spoke without knowledge earlier in the film.

Richard assumed that Himiko was a sorceress because the oral and written legends said she was one, and Matthias assumed that there was nothing supernatural about her tomb area before he even saw that the corpse had sprung to a sitting position because of a mechanism below.  Both of them, although holding perfectly opposed conclusions about the matter, merely assumed that they were right before having a chance to thoroughly assess the evidence!  Himiko wasn't actually a tyrannical sorceress--or even a sorceress at all--but was a selfless woman who isolated herself on the island to quarantine herself and stop a disease she carried from spreading, something that may have killed a great deal of the human race otherwise.  So, yes, Matthias was ultimately right, but he had no way of knowing without investigating the tomb and body himself.

If a person wants to be both correct and intentionally correct, they won't make assumptions like Richard or Matthias did.  Neither could have proven from logic alone that the area was or was not haunted by the supernatural, so the only legitimate way to find out would be to examine the interior of the tomb itself.  As Richard says, all myths have some foundation in reality; the only way for a claim to be totally deviant from reality is if it is not made, since all truth claims at least acknowledge the necessary existence of truth.  Still, sometimes that basis in reality is very minimal.


Conclusion

Tomb Raider doesn't bring any groundbreaking new plot devices to the genre epitomized by Indiana Jones, but it does successfully manage to not be total shit, a common label of many movies based on video games (though I thought that the Silent Hill movie was actually rather competent).  If you love the Tomb Raider franchise, enjoy the new video games the film is modeled after, or like the explorer genre, then you might appreciate Tomb Raider.  But expectations of anything more than a formulaic but well-executed story with some fitting acting will lead to disappointment.

Photo credit: junaidrao on VisualHunt / CC BY-NC-ND

Content:
1. Violence:  There are scenes of gunfighting and blows, but the wounds and deaths are not graphic.
2. Profanity:  There is occasional use of profanity.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/movie-review-300.html

Sociopathy Does Not Necessitate Cruelty

It is better to be a sociopath who has accurate moral knowledge and acts accordingly than to have and act on a strong conscience that is misdirected.  No, someone is not cruel or selfish just because he or she is a sociopath (see here [1] for the difference between psychopathy and sociopathy when I use the terms).  It is not sinful to have no conscience (Deuteronomy 4:2).  It is only sinful to commit certain acts or to harbor evil motivations and desires.

Just as lack of conscience does not mean that one is cruel, having a conscience does not mean that one is kind, just, or selfless--in fact, conscience can never even tell anyone what is just or what is right.  The dangers of a faulty conscience are numerous.  It astonishes me how rarely people will actually proclaim the dangers of conscience, a tool that is purely subjective and without the ability to verify its own accuracy!

Conscience is useful only for convincing an individual to act in a certain way, and for nothing more; it is entirely without significance when it comes to moral epistemology or theology, proving absolutely nothing at all about the existence or nature of morality [2].  A conscience only proves to the one who has it that he or she has a sense of morality, not that morality exists, not that one's sense of morality is correct.

Someone with sociopathy does not necessarily not believe in morality.  Having sociopathy doesn't mean that one, by happenstance or by calculated effort, does not do the right thing (I know that moral truths cannot be known with absolute certainty, I am making a separate point).  In itself, sociopathy is not even dangerous.  How someone with sociopathy handles the condition, however, can be dangerous, yet much danger is also present in the case of someone who acts on a misdirected conscience--like if someone commits an act of illicit killing or torture because that person feels like he or she is doing the right thing.

If the death of conscience means one can pursue right moral epistemology without emotional hindrances, then, if this death occurs, it is a loss that can yield vital results.  Sociopathy can be helpful in that it sheds conscience-based concern for preferences, feelings, and social norms, which are all entirely incapable of illuminating moral truths.  It is better to have no conscience and yet to have right moral knowledge and behave rightly than it is to have a conscience and be misled by it.  And since conscience is nothing but a subjective, malleable, emotion-based sense of moral feelings, if one's conscience was accurate, one would never know through conscience if that was the case.

If you have a strong conscience that is oriented around actual moral truths that are actually known through the right means, then that is wonderful!  But the absence of conscience does not mean that one is wicked and a strong conscience does not mean that one is upright.  A sociopath can be a very ethical person and a person with a strong conscience can be far from the right path.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/08/psychopathy-and-sociopathy.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-nature-of-conscience.html

What Is Emergent Naturalism?

Naturalism/physicalism in its strictest sense says that the only things that exist are various arrangements of physical matter.  In this form, it is utterly incapable of being true [1].  This is because things like consciousness and logic are immaterial and are simply not composed of physical matter.

Just like seeing is different than an eyeball, consciousness is
different than a brain.  Consciousness cannot be an illusion,
 for perceiving an illusion requires consciousness [2].

Emergent naturalism, rather than deny outright that immaterial things like consciousness exist, holds that immaterial things are somehow generated by the physical world.  The word emergent refers to how nonphysical things like consciousness "emerge" when physical components are arranged in a certain way.  The dilemma of explaining just how this emergence occurs in terms of causality is called the hard problem of consciousness.

Consider the Internet as an example of the emergence concept.  The Internet is a vast series of pages and networks that one can access through a device like a desktop or laptop computer, smartphone, or tablet.  It itself is not a tangible, physical thing, although physical things are required to both generate and access it.

All computer software, like the Internet, is itself immaterial, yet
it only exists because of physical hardware.  One can grab the
 physical hardware because it is a tangible thing made of matter,
yet one cannot grab the software, only the thing that software
runs on.

At the very least, since a naturalism that denies the existence of immaterial things like consciousness simply cannot be true, emergent naturalism is the only form of naturalism that could even be legitimately considered by rational people.  Even this is only because, although it holds that the brain is the sole origin point of consciousness, it acknowledges that consciousness is objectively distinct from the brain.  Someone could be both an emergent naturalist and a mind-body dualist with regard to distinguishing consciousness/mind from the brain, although I rarely hear this clarified.  Emergent naturalism is still a kind of mind-body dualism!  Actually, depending on the scope of what one means by emergent naturalism, the emergent naturalist conception of consciousness is not logically incompatible with basic theism, free will, or the existence of immaterial entities like demons.  Emergent naturalism pertaining to consciousness is also, left to itself, not an intrinsically atheistic idea.

I must now explain that logic itself is immaterial, and it would exist even if there were neither conscious minds nor physical matter [3].  My conscious mind allows me to grasp logic, and the senses in my physical body allow me to grab matter; the immaterial grasps the immaterial and the material grasps the material.  Logic is not and cannot be some emergent phenomenon that comes about from the existence of matter because even if no matter existed logic, including the basic three laws of logic and the fact that certain things follow from others, still exists.  It cannot not exist!  It is intangible, transcends all physical things, and does not even rely on the existence of a mind for its own necessary existence.  Thus even if emergent naturalism is the correct explanation of consciousness there is still something immaterial that transcends all matter, meaning not all immaterial things are brought about by arrangements of matter.

How does Christianity relate to emergent naturalism?  Well, in Genesis 2:7 God himself is clearly credited with giving the breath of life--consciousness--to Adam.  Yet this does not in itself explain how consciousness is imbued into the next generation.  Does God specifically imbue each new baby with consciousness in the womb?  Did God make it so that each subsequent generation after Adam and Eve would receive consciousness in an emergent way?  Even the latter option would mean that God is at the very least still indirectly responsible for the emergence of consciousness after Adam and Eve.  Either way, even irrespective of the truth of Christianity, there is an uncaused cause, so whether or not emergent naturalism is the true explainer of consciousness there is a god if one uses "god" to mean the uncaused cause [4].  On a non-Christian theism, though, it is hypothetically possible that the uncaused cause created matter and that matter eventually produced mind.

Emergent naturalism (whether as pertaining to consciousness or the Internet or some other immaterial thing) must be distinguished from strict physicalism/naturalism because it actually admits the existence of some immaterial things.  As readers can hopefully see, while one can refute the strictest sort of naturalism rather easily, emergent naturalism requires more serious engagement.  There is still the enormous hurdle for emergent naturalists of solving the "hard problem," but, in the sense of logical proof or disproof, no one can actually verify or falsify emergent naturalism regarding human consciousness in its entirety.  But let's be clear: emergent naturalism does not contradict all theistic models.

What can a rationalist take away from studying emergent naturalism?  One can see that 1) consciousness is immaterial regardless of its exact origins, 2) consciousness is not the brain, 3) not all immaterial things (i.e. logic) are or even can be emergent, 4) and there is still an uncaused cause even if consciousness is emergent.

[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-refutation-of-naturalism.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/consciousness-cannot-be-illusory.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-immateriality-of-logic.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-uncaused-cause.html

The Children Of Rulers

At last I reached the last episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones!  I want to focus here on something fallacious that the character Cersei says, and, intriguingly, something that not only logic but also the series narrative itself rejects--there will be mild spoilers below.

When negotiating with Jon Snow (season seven, episode seven), who was raised by Lord Ned Stark, Queen Cersei Lannister says that she knows that Ned Stark's son will be honest and thus that she will accept his word if he agrees to a certain promise.  Ned Stark, one of the only serious moral deontologists in all seven current seasons of Game of Thrones, was certainly an honest and consistent person, refusing to allow circumstances or estimated consequences to affect his moral decisions.  He was one of the relatively few non-utilitarian ethicists in the show.  And, yes, Jon Snow likewise proves to be a very consistent deontological ethicist, the objections of others not keeping him from doing at least what he thinks is right.  But this does not come about simply because Jon was raised by Ned.  Cersei assumes that the son will be like the father.

Ironically, Cersei's own son refutes her assumption!  Her child Tommen Lannister was nothing like Cersei, who repeatedly affirms that she cares only for herself and for several family members, and who repeatedly uses whatever methods bring her satisfaction, whether that means charging her brother Tyrion with a regicide he did not commit without evidence or authorizing the prolonged private torture of a personal enemy or some other atrocity.  She admits to doing things only because they feel good to her, including her incestuous deeds.  Being the mother of her own son Tommen, even if she did not recognize the illogicality of what she said about Jon she still had experiences living in a city ruled by a son who was not selfish like her!  Tommen was gentle and actually expressed interest in being a good ruler.  Even if she did not consult the illumination of deductive reasoning, she has personal experience that disproves her assumption about Jon Snow.

It is true that in a hereditary monarchy, like the one of King's Landing (the city the Lannister family rules from), a throne and title get passed on to a child without any preemptive guarantee that the child will be just, rational, and righteous as opposed to unjust, irrational, and cruel.  Even in the Biblical accounts of 1 and 2 Kings one can see that there is absolutely no connection between the righteousness or depravity of someone's parents and what that person will do or become.  Good kings or queens can follow wicked ones and wicked ones can follow good ones.  This, of course, does not mean that monarchy itself is either good or evil, it is only further proof that there is nothing sinful or obligatory about monarchy [1]; it is solely how it is used that makes a particular monarchy good or evil, for the basic concept of a monarchy is morally neutral, as I've demonstrated in a separate post.  But a just reign can lead to a tyrannical one, and vice versa, with there being no way for someone with my epistemic limitations to know in advance what the outcome will be.

We do not have to be like our parents, and we should not be treated in a certain way just because our parents did or didn't do something.  Justice is treating each individual as he or she deserves, not as his or her parents deserve (Deuteronomy 24:16).  This is why it is absolutely idiotic to think highly or lowly of a person because of his or her familial background.  Absolutely nothing--nothing at all--about the intellectual stability, moral character, or personality of a person follows because the parents were or weren't a certain way.  To think otherwise is to embrace a blatant non sequitur fallacy.

Although Game of Thrones gives many examples of people who are atrociously depraved by Christian standards (seriously, fuck every person in real life who is anything like a great deal of them), it does also give examples of how one's parentage does not determine one's actions, beliefs, or degree of ethical goodness.  This certainly means that no one will by necessity be good or rational because of the goodness or rationality of either parent.  But it also means, very importantly, that no one will by necessity be a monster just because his or her parents were vile.  With Jon Snow, Cersei made a lucky guess.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-moral-theology-of-monarchy.html

The Fallacy Fallacy

We must be sure, when debating a fallacious mind, to not reject a person's conclusion just because he or she uses fallacies in his or her arguments.  Fallacies inescapably invalidate arguments for conclusions, but do not prove that the conclusions themselves are also false.  What's the difference here?

If someone were to say that 1) chairs have four legs, 2) glass can be transparent, and 3) therefore the universe began to exist, the structure of the argument is nonsense.  Premises one and two are red herrings to the conclusion, and the conclusion does not follow from the premises in any way.  Yet the conclusion is still true despite the fallacies in the argument!  Similarly, a claim about history, science, or metaphysics might be true even if an argument used in an attempt to affirm it is extremely unsound.

The fallacy fallacy is the name of the fallacy that appears when people reject a conclusion because of flaws in an argument used to reach it.  It is, like many fallacies, a type of non sequitur [1], since it does not follow from fallacies appearing in an argument that the conclusion is by necessity also untrue.  Thoroughly rational people will not dismiss a claim just because its defenders cling to erroneous premises.  Instead, they will recognize that it could be true, despite the stupidity of the argument or the one making the argument, and will either remain agnostic about it unless proof is discovered or will verify or falsify it on their own.

Yes, some people are so stupid that when they are right they are often only right by accident, by happenstance, not by accurate reasoning.  But rational people will realize that their stupidity does not mean that their conclusions are necessarily false, even if their premises and arguments are total shit.  The fallacy fallacy will be avoided by thorough critical thinkers.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-non-sequitur-fallacy.html

Does The Quran Teach Annihilationism?

Islam, because it claims the Torah is true while contradicting it [1], cannot be true, yet that does not mean that the Quran teaches everything some might ascribe to it.  For instance, from what I have read, the Quran does not actually prescribe that women wear burkas, although many might think that burkas are prescribed in the Quran itself (I still want to look into this more though).  Another thing that the Quran might not teach is eternal conscious torment, meaning it might actually concur with the Bible's teachings on annihilationism [2].  I need to read more of the Quran to be certain, yet people can always be reminded to not represent a worldview as teaching what it does not hold to.  I read some of Surah 4 today, scanning for verses about hell, and I wanted to highlight some of my findings.


Surah 4:29-30--"You who believe, do not wrongfully consume each other's wealth but trade by mutual consent.  Do not kill each other, for God is merciful to you.  If any of you does these things, out of hostility and injustice, We shall make him suffer Fire: that is easy for God."

Surah 4:138--"[Prophet], tell such hypocrites that an agonizing torment awaits them."


Nothing in these verses inherently suggests eternal conscious torment; both of them are consistent with either eternal conscious torment or annihilationism.  This means that they do not themselves contradict a type of Islamic annihilationist theology.  The direct teaching that sinners will suffer agonizing torment in hell does not necessarily mean that they will suffer agonizing torment endlessly.  But what about verses like Surah 4:156?  While this verse may seem to promote something closer to eternal conscious torment, logic reveals it is compatible with annihilationism and, again, that it does not necessarily teach that unsaved sinners will suffer forever in hell.


Surah 4:56--"We shall send those who reject Our revelations to the Fire.  When their skins have burned away, We shall replace them with new ones so that they may continue to feel the pain: God has the power to decide."


Although the verse refers to God replacing burned skin with new skin to prolong the sinners' torment, nothing in this verse by necessity teaches a kind of eternal conscious torment.  The verse does say that God will replace skins consumed by hellfire, but, as logic demonstrates, this might mean only that God will replace the skins once, or that God will replace them a certain other number of times.  The text never specifies if this entails an infinite number of replacements, a finite number of replacements, or how many replacements it signifies if the number is finite.  Indeed, the clarification at the end of the verse--that God "has the power to decide"--might refer to God having the power to decide to release an unsaved person from his or her torment into annihilation.

I am not saying that I know yet if the Quran teaches either annihilationism or eternal conscious torment.  It certainly teaches, like the Bible does, that there is a hell and that God will send unsaved sinners there, but it might also teach annihilationism, just like the Bible does.  But I do know, as someone who was taught a lot of shit extra-Biblical theology by Christians growing up, that the Bible does not at all teach many of the ideas I have seen ascribed to it, and the Quran (while certainly false) might also be misrepresented to and by some Muslims and Christians alike, whatever their intentions.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/quranic-punishment-surah-538.html

[2].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-justice-of-annihilationism.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-truth-of-annihilationism.html
C.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-destruction-of-soul.html