I'd be interested in you doing an article on determinism. Feel like you hinted at it in without being able to expand on it.
To me it seems clear that, whilst we have the feeling of choice and free will (in the sense that we feel we have options available for us and theoretically could make any choice), you will always make that same choice when presented with the exact same inputs?
My first ever essay (about a year ago) was a deep-dive into my reasons for thinking that free will exists. I also think the free will/determinism divide underpins much of our politics actually, so there's an essay in the works on that and perhaps I'll flesh out my rejection of determinism there too.
I want to agree with your intuition that you can't categorically say suffering = bad, but your arguments do not really convince me. You write a lot about suffering from running, which I also find really enjoyable without the suffering part. Might be linked to the endorphines or whatever. And other forms of suffering rarely feel purposeful either - it might help you realize your meaning in life, might highlight the meaning that is already there in some cases, but does it create it?
Fair pushback. I also realise that most of my examples were examples of voluntary suffering, and agency seems to be a key mediator of meaning/purpose in these instances. Nonetheless, I do maintain that suffering is itself morally valuable.
Broken down most fundamentally, suffering is just an experience. And I think all experience (ie, life) is morally valuable. Whether we call experiences “good” or “bad” is just a matter of perspective, but I think both are “good” in the cosmic/divine sense. I’m probably not being any more convincing here!
Would you then rank experiences by some other factor than "goodness" though, like intensity? Your remarks on animal vs human suggest so to me, but I'd be really curious about the implications from this.
Yes perhaps there are two dimensions. Intensity and goodness (although there seem to be different levels of "goodness"). For an intelligent being who can meditate on their experiences, one's own suffering becomes just something interesting to observe and be curious about, and it adds to life.
Are you depressed, by any chance? If you're devoid of happy feelings, I can see this stance making sense, otherwise it seems absurd to me to categorically put a positive value on suffering.
Like, I'd totally agree with you that a little suffering is maybe even necessary for the good life. But you need to remember that the concept of suffering is not a real thing, to an alien what we call suffering might very well be 2.5 completely distinct things. Or just think of it as some golden-mean crap.
Cause people are damaged, scarred or broken from suffering all the time. You wouldn't ask survivors of terror attacks or horrible wars how their "interesting" experiences have added to their life, would you? Sure, there are accounts of bad things being received positively, like the allied bombings of German cities in WWII improving the overall morale among survivors and similar phenomena regularly occuring during/after natural desasters - but that's mainly due to the strengthened sense of community that often emerges in crises like these, plus the relief that things aren't worse. And there might have been a few exceptional people "enjoying" prison, gulag, or concentration camp "in a cosmic sense", but they might be grossly overrepresented in your perception since the others don't like to talk about their experiences.
Haha I'd consider myself to be the opposite of depressed!
Maybe if I replace the word "value" with "depth" then you'd be more inclined to agree with me? Any experience certainly adds depth to life, no matter whether it is "good" or "bad" in the surface sense. I'd say a deep but painful life is preferable to a shallow and pleasurable life.
Take David Benatar's arguments about the asymmetry of pleasure and pain in life. Life clearly is overwhelmingly infused with suffering than it is with pleasure. But where I disagree with Benatar is that this doesn't make it any less worth living. Au contraire.
Totally get in in some contexts. Deep but occasionally painful is certainly better than shallow and pleasurable if you're thinking about people that don't dare anything - sure, for living a rich life you need to leave your comfort zone, take some risks here and there, etc.
But what about looking at it from another perspective? Take the heart breakers, the villains, the traitors and the warmongers. What do you think of them? Sure, they're doing bad, but how often do good things come out of bad ones? And if we want to believe that "shaking things up" is already so valuable in itself, shouldn't we worship those that take away peace, comfort, and security, instead of hating them?
Like, it seems kind of stupid to advocate for voting the most hawkish president into office and dating the most mentally unstable partners. I'd also never maliciously "bring depth into others' life" for the sake of it. So I'm just saying there has to be some more nuance to all of this, or it would make for really weird ethical implications.
Then you misunderstood the issue. S/he/it’s existence or not has never been ‘provable’ or ‘disprovable’. If you ever thought s/he/it disproven then you were also mistaken, as your title indicates you are still.
Belief in the Catholic/Christian God is and always will be a matter of faith, never proof. Christianity belies its core whenever evidence or logic are advocated. Its credibility is most undermined when apologists do so.
Then what reason would one ever have for their faith? If you disregard all evidence, then there is … nothing. Christians surely believe that Jesus existed, and use evidence to support that belief. Are you saying otherwise? Is it merely an exercise in obstinately believing when you know that there isn’t evidence? I wasn’t aware that this was what theism was.
There has to be *some* reason to believe other than just “I believe X without any logical reason to do so because this act demonstrates blind faith, which I think is good”.
How would anyone ever persuade anyone to join their religion if this was so?
—Is it reasonable that an omnipotent Deity would require his only son as sacrifice for the redemption of all humankind? Merely so everyone could live again, wholly unreasonable. Why not simply let everybody live? Why is there some rule that the son of God had to be sacrificed? God made the rules right? Unreasonable for him to not just change the rules? Is he omnipotent or not?
—And look again, there is no corroborating evidence that Jesus was a real person. Only reports of his life 100-200 years after it’s claimed he lived.
Now to the real problems of reason and Catholic God: The logical ones
—Triune God?
—Water turns to blood of Christ??
—Gave humans free will knowing full well that they would abuse their freedoms, create suffering, and require that his son , his only son be sacrificed for the very people who me gave free will. This is not reasonable.
No, it is only through believers believing and them witnessing that the spirit moves you to believe also. Reason is not an option. Faith only that the Son of God died for your sins.
Finally, if God wanted to provide reason, why doesn’t he just show himself to everyone then we would have all the reason to believe.
Christianity is not reason based it is faith based. You can try to find reasons, but that’s not the basis of the religion. Search for a reason and you will reason yourself out of religion, either believe or don’t.
Do some real reading about God and doubt and faith then start trying to write about proof or not proof of God’s existence. Lose a child or a spouse and then ask about God‘s reasons.
Welcome to the PHD Club. Looks like you’ve got a good start into Piling it Higher and Deeper.😁
Hmm I take your point. "Search for a reason and you will reason yourself out of religion, either believe or don’t" is well put.
Many of those other claims of Catholicism I agree with you are unreasonable. But Jesus' existence I think is very reasonable: there are many non-Christian sources that corroborate the existence of Jesus. But if you mean non-written evidence (like archeological evidence) then I suppose I have to cede the point. But the same is true for any of Jesus' contemporaries. The same is true for Socrates. Even Pontius Pilate we only really have written records of. The "physical" evidence for Pontius Pilate is just writing on limestone that we found in 1961. If we can be certain anyone existed 2000 years ago, we can be certain Jesus did.
Also, "them witnessing that the spirit moves you to believe also" sounds like a good reason for an individual to believe in Christianity!
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
I grew up Catholic (76)and have gone back and forth about God-quite jealous of those who believe and never question.
Equally, I’m quite surprised at atheists that never question!
I'd be interested in you doing an article on determinism. Feel like you hinted at it in without being able to expand on it.
To me it seems clear that, whilst we have the feeling of choice and free will (in the sense that we feel we have options available for us and theoretically could make any choice), you will always make that same choice when presented with the exact same inputs?
My first ever essay (about a year ago) was a deep-dive into my reasons for thinking that free will exists. I also think the free will/determinism divide underpins much of our politics actually, so there's an essay in the works on that and perhaps I'll flesh out my rejection of determinism there too.
https://rochussen.substack.com/p/the-free-will-illusion-delusion
I want to agree with your intuition that you can't categorically say suffering = bad, but your arguments do not really convince me. You write a lot about suffering from running, which I also find really enjoyable without the suffering part. Might be linked to the endorphines or whatever. And other forms of suffering rarely feel purposeful either - it might help you realize your meaning in life, might highlight the meaning that is already there in some cases, but does it create it?
Fair pushback. I also realise that most of my examples were examples of voluntary suffering, and agency seems to be a key mediator of meaning/purpose in these instances. Nonetheless, I do maintain that suffering is itself morally valuable.
Broken down most fundamentally, suffering is just an experience. And I think all experience (ie, life) is morally valuable. Whether we call experiences “good” or “bad” is just a matter of perspective, but I think both are “good” in the cosmic/divine sense. I’m probably not being any more convincing here!
Would you then rank experiences by some other factor than "goodness" though, like intensity? Your remarks on animal vs human suggest so to me, but I'd be really curious about the implications from this.
Yes perhaps there are two dimensions. Intensity and goodness (although there seem to be different levels of "goodness"). For an intelligent being who can meditate on their experiences, one's own suffering becomes just something interesting to observe and be curious about, and it adds to life.
I'm reminded of the study where most participants preferred to give themselves an electric shock instead of doing nothing for 15 min. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1250830
Are you depressed, by any chance? If you're devoid of happy feelings, I can see this stance making sense, otherwise it seems absurd to me to categorically put a positive value on suffering.
Like, I'd totally agree with you that a little suffering is maybe even necessary for the good life. But you need to remember that the concept of suffering is not a real thing, to an alien what we call suffering might very well be 2.5 completely distinct things. Or just think of it as some golden-mean crap.
Cause people are damaged, scarred or broken from suffering all the time. You wouldn't ask survivors of terror attacks or horrible wars how their "interesting" experiences have added to their life, would you? Sure, there are accounts of bad things being received positively, like the allied bombings of German cities in WWII improving the overall morale among survivors and similar phenomena regularly occuring during/after natural desasters - but that's mainly due to the strengthened sense of community that often emerges in crises like these, plus the relief that things aren't worse. And there might have been a few exceptional people "enjoying" prison, gulag, or concentration camp "in a cosmic sense", but they might be grossly overrepresented in your perception since the others don't like to talk about their experiences.
Haha I'd consider myself to be the opposite of depressed!
Maybe if I replace the word "value" with "depth" then you'd be more inclined to agree with me? Any experience certainly adds depth to life, no matter whether it is "good" or "bad" in the surface sense. I'd say a deep but painful life is preferable to a shallow and pleasurable life.
Take David Benatar's arguments about the asymmetry of pleasure and pain in life. Life clearly is overwhelmingly infused with suffering than it is with pleasure. But where I disagree with Benatar is that this doesn't make it any less worth living. Au contraire.
Totally get in in some contexts. Deep but occasionally painful is certainly better than shallow and pleasurable if you're thinking about people that don't dare anything - sure, for living a rich life you need to leave your comfort zone, take some risks here and there, etc.
But what about looking at it from another perspective? Take the heart breakers, the villains, the traitors and the warmongers. What do you think of them? Sure, they're doing bad, but how often do good things come out of bad ones? And if we want to believe that "shaking things up" is already so valuable in itself, shouldn't we worship those that take away peace, comfort, and security, instead of hating them?
Like, it seems kind of stupid to advocate for voting the most hawkish president into office and dating the most mentally unstable partners. I'd also never maliciously "bring depth into others' life" for the sake of it. So I'm just saying there has to be some more nuance to all of this, or it would make for really weird ethical implications.
Then you misunderstood the issue. S/he/it’s existence or not has never been ‘provable’ or ‘disprovable’. If you ever thought s/he/it disproven then you were also mistaken, as your title indicates you are still.
Belief in the Catholic/Christian God is and always will be a matter of faith, never proof. Christianity belies its core whenever evidence or logic are advocated. Its credibility is most undermined when apologists do so.
Then what reason would one ever have for their faith? If you disregard all evidence, then there is … nothing. Christians surely believe that Jesus existed, and use evidence to support that belief. Are you saying otherwise? Is it merely an exercise in obstinately believing when you know that there isn’t evidence? I wasn’t aware that this was what theism was.
There has to be *some* reason to believe other than just “I believe X without any logical reason to do so because this act demonstrates blind faith, which I think is good”.
How would anyone ever persuade anyone to join their religion if this was so?
Your opening question reveals your confusion.
‘Reason’ assumes reasonable.
—Is it reasonable that a dead man lived again?
—Is it reasonable that an omnipotent Deity would require his only son as sacrifice for the redemption of all humankind? Merely so everyone could live again, wholly unreasonable. Why not simply let everybody live? Why is there some rule that the son of God had to be sacrificed? God made the rules right? Unreasonable for him to not just change the rules? Is he omnipotent or not?
—And look again, there is no corroborating evidence that Jesus was a real person. Only reports of his life 100-200 years after it’s claimed he lived.
Now to the real problems of reason and Catholic God: The logical ones
—Triune God?
—Water turns to blood of Christ??
—Gave humans free will knowing full well that they would abuse their freedoms, create suffering, and require that his son , his only son be sacrificed for the very people who me gave free will. This is not reasonable.
No, it is only through believers believing and them witnessing that the spirit moves you to believe also. Reason is not an option. Faith only that the Son of God died for your sins.
Finally, if God wanted to provide reason, why doesn’t he just show himself to everyone then we would have all the reason to believe.
Christianity is not reason based it is faith based. You can try to find reasons, but that’s not the basis of the religion. Search for a reason and you will reason yourself out of religion, either believe or don’t.
Do some real reading about God and doubt and faith then start trying to write about proof or not proof of God’s existence. Lose a child or a spouse and then ask about God‘s reasons.
Welcome to the PHD Club. Looks like you’ve got a good start into Piling it Higher and Deeper.😁
Hmm I take your point. "Search for a reason and you will reason yourself out of religion, either believe or don’t" is well put.
Many of those other claims of Catholicism I agree with you are unreasonable. But Jesus' existence I think is very reasonable: there are many non-Christian sources that corroborate the existence of Jesus. But if you mean non-written evidence (like archeological evidence) then I suppose I have to cede the point. But the same is true for any of Jesus' contemporaries. The same is true for Socrates. Even Pontius Pilate we only really have written records of. The "physical" evidence for Pontius Pilate is just writing on limestone that we found in 1961. If we can be certain anyone existed 2000 years ago, we can be certain Jesus did.
Also, "them witnessing that the spirit moves you to believe also" sounds like a good reason for an individual to believe in Christianity!
RE "real reading", what would you recommend?
This post by our colleagues addresses some of the issues we are discussing. I’ll dig out suggested references soon.
https://open.substack.com/pub/besci/p/bb3-orienting-part-2-what-are-we
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Very apt. Romans 5:3 also came to mind for me when writing this.
The Law of Conservation of Energy and Matter is a good argument for God.