A Theory of Morality
A recent post on another blog raised a topic that I’ve been mulling on for quite some time now. The way we currently ‘do’ morals is to try to find what we all agree to be common goals and try to protect them. It’s nicely summed up in the phrase “Live and let live”.
The problem is that it’s completely constrained to our current world view and doesn’t come anywhere near covering all the potential issues that are ahead of us (or even many existing issues like abortion, war, stem cells, euthanasia and so on).
Here’s my initial stab at a theory for discussion (read my meme post if you are unfamiliar with the term):
“Morality is the degree to which an expressed meme will affect the survival of the host’s memes and genes.”
I’ve played with lots of different variations and I suspect this one has holes in it too but I’m putting it out there for critique.
I’ve included the meme because non-living objects and organisms that are unable to share ideas are only really directly responding to their environment and so can really do no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. One could argue that we only ever respond to our environments but in a more complex way in which case you would probably have to throw out the concept of morality altogether (or perhaps introduce the meme of morality to further influence how we respond?).
I’ve treated the issue as a matter of survival of memes and genes in much the same way that Dawkins treated our bodies as if they were “lumbering robots” that exist to make more copies of genes.
Please, feel free to pick this apart or even come up with your own all-encompassing theory.
[edit:] I’m becoming less and less satisfied with this hypothesis; it doesn’t cover the ‘wrongness’ we feel when people torture animals (or perhaps it does if the actions that are tied to harming animals are also tied to harming people). Also, we can see that morality evolves (slavery, animal welfare, capital punishment, etc) so it may well be that any definition of morals has to evolve as well?
January 11th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Another thoughtful and well-written piece.
I’m off to bed now (me staying up too late makes bad memes in my wife!
), but I’ll think about your suggestion and try to comment later.
Cheers,
-d-
January 12th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Intriguing (and extremely brief) summary, Damian.
I wonder, though, if we shouldn’t look deeper than memes for our morality (or at least their origins or base).
Maybe it’s just the current influence ( I’ve been reading Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought - provides a lot of food for thought and, of course, has implications wider than religious memes) but I think we should be looking at the more basic reasons why particular memes “take,” persist , are transmitted and evolve.
Apparently we have evolved so that our brains contain a range of specific inference systems and maybe these provide a base for memes to “take” and persist. Regarding morality, our evolution as a social species involved in human cooperation and exchange and reacting to dangers in our environment has produced a brain structure with mental process that we can’t consciously access (at least as individuals) but nevertheless has strong influences at the conscious level. These may manifest themselves very strongly as emotions and feelings.
There is no doubt we have strong moral intuitions and feelings or emotions. Guilt, gratefulness, pride, etc., strongly influence our concept of right and wrong. We know what is right, but we don’t know how we determine this because those mental processes are not accessible - although modern science is now starting to give us ways of identifying them. We may be able to study the physiological and chemical basis of our intuitions and feelings, but not mentally within ourselves.
These inference systems, the evolved physiology and chemistry of our brain, provides not only a system of moral intuitions, emotions and feelings, but a basis for “explaining” them - a transferred meme. This is what I mean by a meme “taking” - there are existing “points of attachment” in our brain that will favour one meme over another, influence their efficiency of transference and evolution.
The meme is, in effect, parasitic to the host - our brain with its inbuilt specific inference systems.
Regarding morality - of course religious memes have generally filled that role. They have provided a codified version of morality for educational, legal and disciplinary purposes. But the morality has come from within our brains - the religious code is merely an artificial “explanation.” Interestingly, the naturally selected meme is not necessarily, probably very rarely, the orthodox transcribed or “biblical” version. These usually don’t fit perfectly with our inbuilt inference systems. Therefore in transmission and evolution the “personal religious code” is selected for and the non-selected aspects of the “official” religion are not accepted or taken seriously by the individual.
Of course, in this day and age, memes providing moral and ethical codes are not exclusively religious - far from it.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Hmmmm, yes the evolution of morality sounds like an interesting topic and something I hadn’t really considered when trying to pin morality down. It seems as though morals have become more inclusive over time - do you think this might be to do with the way society is evolving?
There was a time where it would have been morally right to kill someone from a clan from over the mountain and to take their womenfolk and children as slaves. As our society has become more inclusive we’ve seen the abolishment of slavery, the equality of women, acceptance of homosexuals, and the ethical treatment of animals.
What’s with the expansion of morals to include animals? Is this because people who mistreat animals are also flawed in such a way that they also mistreat humans?
I keep wanting to see if I can tie our sense of morality to purely selfish needs - i.e. “I’ll act in this manner because if everyone else acts in this manner I will benefit”.
January 14th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Sorry, just realised you were talking about biological evolution rather than the evolution of the concept of morals. I agree, the physical mechanisms that allow us to have morality in the first place are important to understand as well.
I’ve been having some fairly involved conversations with a guy about dualism vs materialism. He’s not really open to the concept of materialism for reasons of faith but it’s been an interesting exercise trying to discover how a wholly physical thing can be self-aware. But that’s for another topic.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Morality or moral behaviour, is certainly not set in stone, although some have used stones to set moral behaviour.
However, its consequences are certainly set in our relationships with each other and the physical world. Many of these are obvious, others not so.
The underlying concept that limits us seeking a universal morality, is probably the one based on neurological research of our physiology, that may well only tell us how we react to situations in life. As we are also not fully hardwired, the neurological structures of the brain modify in response to life circumstances. (Ye Olde nature vs nurture).
It seems that this was recognised in various ways, even before neurological science developed, in the development of ancient moral codes to govern the behaviour of individuals in society.
Interesting point, Ken, about our physiology giving us, in effect, an inference system for morality, as though there may be a moral compass within, to which we try to align/derive our moral codes of behaviour. Do these codes (memes?) in turn reinforce our physiological prescriptive moral inference?
The concept of moral inference seems to line up with some Biblical teaching on human behaviour, even before a moral code (Mosaic Law) is used to enlighten and reinforce this moral inference. Although these moral codes, together with wisdom stories and parables, are sometimes ignored in practical terms, they provide a moral background against which a peaceful society can thrive.
Further, the idea of the problem of evil (creating a feeling of wrongness) - ideas or actions that may be harmful to ourselves, our clan or other societies to which we do not belong - is difficult to reconcile with this concept of physiologically derived morality that is driven by biological survival.
Of course, moral codes differ from society to society, era to era, but is there really a detectable evolution of moral progression? To whose or what standard can we judge the ‘wrongness/rightness’?
This is especially so in a global society, where political and economic agendas and even plain ignorance/complacency is later described as morally bankrupt.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:11 am
Seem to be having this discussion everywhere at the moment - made some comments in response to Dale at Christian problems with morali….
I think our moral intuitions are only a starting point, and often on applying some reason and logic we may reject them anyway. It’s possible that our moral inferences may still be developing - some of them may only be a few thousand years anyway.
Of course, there are other inference systems as well and the “in” group/”out” group conflict is also one of them. Zimbardo showed this and also how we can all be “evil.”
January 21st, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Yes, I’ve been following your conversations but haven’t felt able to add anything of substance.
I suspect it might be useful to try to quantify what morality is for a start: Does it only apply to humans? Does it change over time or do we just get better at it? Is it entirely down to the issue of ’suffering’? Is it absolute or relative? Internal or external? Is it merely a function of society? Can it be entirely selfish?
I think one of the biggest problems is that we are coming at it from a purely materialistic angle and Dale and co are seeing it as something from God.
———
I’ve added a list of these questions along with my thoughts on the humanrace forum.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Yeah, fun stuff to think/talk about, aye?
Damian, your ‘quantifying’ questions are excellent and thoughtful.
I’ve got heaps on this week, so might not be too active in commenting…
Cheers for now…
-d-
February 25th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Damian,
Interesting idea!
Here is one of the best articles I’ve seen on morality. This fascinating but lengthy 8-pager talks about the evolution of morality and its rudimentary elements (abstract or memes?): harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity. It may be helpful for fleshing our your idea.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
February 25th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Hi A3 and welcome!
Wow, that article was a really good find. And it took a lot of reading. I like Pinker’s work.
The article didn’t seem to be attempting to provide a theory of morality as such but did a good job of dissecting how it works.
I’ve just finished reading Freakonomics (a book I thoroughly recommend and which I’ll be blogging about soon) and the author says in passing “Morality, it could be argued, represents the way that people would like the world to work…”. It’s a fairly good definition but doesn’t cover animals that we can observe experiencing similar ‘moral’ dilemmas (like the rhesus monkeys in the article).
I’m trying to come up with an explanation that will still apply in a distant galaxy - far removed from everything we’ve imbued ‘morality’ with as humans. A definition that will allow for this gradual fading away of what we perceive as morality as organisms become less complex.
My latest thoughts are that morality is the degree to which a system capable of making choices achieves a goal or shared goals. But do we actually really make choices or are we just responding to our environment?
Dunno, too hard.
Thanks for the link to the article! I’m planning on buying Pinker’s book “Blank Slate” next - I’ve heard good things about it.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Damian,
I’d never heard of Pinker before reading the article. I just looked up “Blank Slate” - it looks like a good book! I just added it to my Amazon wish list. Thanks for the tip.
I’ve been interesting in understanding more about the underpinnings of morality too. I finished Frans De Waal’s “Primates and Philosophers” a few months back; aptly named because De Waal puts forth his experimental evidence that Bonobos, Chimps, and other primates have a sense of morality, then he lets 3 philosophers comment (they agree and disagree with different aspects of De Waal’s theory). It’s a great book which I highly recommend.
I’m not sure the concept of morality would (or must) necessarily apply to extraterrestrial life. I’m not saying it couldn’t, just that it needn’t. If morality depends on the evolution of particular brain function, extraterrestrial life may not have a brain at all, or it may have more than one brain, or arrays of brains, or their brain(s) may lack certain features required to support morality. On the other hand, maybe the more general concepts of “good” and “bad” would be universal in the way that you suggest?
I think the act of making choices IS just responding to the environment. “Free will” I think is the experience we have while making our predetermined choices. It is the experience of the the “falling dominoes” so to speak.
February 26th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I think that perhaps using the words ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’ don’t help when discussing what morality is. These kinds of words are deeply subjective and are often more based on personal belief rather than reason.
I like to replace them with ‘beneficial’ and ‘detrimental’ because it helps to lead you to the next question which asks ‘to what extent’ and ‘in what circumstances’.
Take the example of the brother and sister who indulge in incest in the article you linked to. I feel that this is wrong but this feeling is probably more a shortcut to some logical reason for incest being dangerous for genetic survival. When we change the word ‘wrong’ to ‘detrimental’ we then have to answer the question that that leads to: ‘Detrimental to what?’. If we say ‘detrimental to any offspring that may occur’ or ‘the mental health of the couple’ the example manages to cover those bases and we find that reasoned objections from that angle are not valid. There may well be some other detriment that wasn’t covered in the example (and that I can’t think of off the top of my head) and, if so, then at least you’d have a valid reason for stating that something was ‘wrong’.
And then you can take this example of incest and apply it to other species; in many species there’s a good chance that it’ll be detrimental if any offspring are produced but in others incest can, and does, occur without the same penalty we face.
‘Beneficial/detrimental’ opens the conversation up whereas ‘right/wrong’ closes it down.
I would go out on a limb and say that if morality can be defined using the words ‘beneficial’ and ‘detrimental’ then any entity that is capable of making choices would experience a form of morality.
I like your example of ‘falling dominoes’. It’s got me thinking that even in the absence of choice (like if we were riding those falling dominoes or passengers in a runaway tram where we are victims of whatever the environment throws our way) we still retain the ability to observe whether something is beneficial or detrimental but that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in the context it’s often used doesn’t work.
So perhaps that’s it; perhaps in order to define morality in a way that applies not just to our subjective selves we need to swap out those words and use ‘beneficial’ or ‘detrimental’?
February 28th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I agree that “beneficial/detrimental” are more descriptive than “good/bad” for evolution and ethics (specifically utilitarian ethics, as opposed to say deontological ethics). For example, a large brain is detrimental because it consumes more energy and is therefore more onerous to feed; on the other hand it is beneficial for dominating one’s environment and makes getting food easier - so overall, it is beneficial. Steeling is detrimental to society but it is beneficial to the thief (unless he’s caught!).
I think “good” and “bad” are still necessary terms for discussing morality since morality deals with our feelings about the acts themselves, and not only the outcome of the act. Morality is subjective, even if its evolutionary underpinnings of morality are objective. We feel that murder is “bad” (even if it saves lives as in the trolley-car dilemma) and that helping is “good”. Could “like/dislike” perhaps be better terms in moral discussions? I think “good/bad” is universal judgment where “like/dislike” is personal opinion. I tend to think that morality functions on the level of judgment. We don’t simply prefer one act over another, we feel that our preference is absolute. We feel as though genocide is absolutely wrong or “bad” and we don’t feel that any other opinion is justified (though certainly we can believe and understand intellectually that others may feel differently). Even so, we can still have a discussion about whether morality is beneficial in evolutionary terms.
One benefit of terms like “beneficial” and “detrimental,” as you already pointed out, is that they don’t imply any absolute pronouncements; they imply a relationship of an act to its context. So those terms engender discussions about why one act is more beneficial than the alternative. “Good” and “bad” on the other hand, can be misunderstood as absolute (since we feel that they are) and therefore those terms can make it easier for a discussion to get derailed. When that happens, we have to point out that some things are more good than others, hence the moral dilemma (and perhaps give examples of dilemmas).
Wow! What a ramble!! Sorry…
February 28th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Very good points. I like your usage of ‘like/dislike’ too.
Perhaps all I’m really concerned about is the narrow-mindedness of some people when they unthinkingly state that “such and such is wrong” solely on the basis that they’ve been told so by an external authority.
So, if morality is subjective (even if we universally subjectively agree on an issue) how would you describe it in a way that can describe what we see in other, more complex species as well as humans?
Let’s break it down with some scenarios:
1. A group of medieval villagers are throwing tomatoes at a person who they’ve put in the stocks because that person was caught stealing. Are these villagers showing that they’ve used a form of moral judgement?
2. A rhesus monkey refuses to take food when she realises that in doing so a fellow monkey is harmed in the process. Is she using a form of moral judgement?
3. An ant is defective and attacks members of his own colony which prompts other ants to kill him. Are the other ants displaying a form of morality?
4. A venus fly trap is triggered when a fly brushes against small hairs at the centre of its trap but not when the fly walks on the stem of the plant. Is this a form of morality?
5. A rock falls from a cliff face and kills an ant. Is the rock demonstrating morality?
The only ones that are easy to me are the human example and the rock example - I’m unsure where along this spectrum morality fades away and pure, mechanical instinct kicks in. Am I right to be sure about human morality? Or are we merely a super-dooper-complex version of the venus fly trap?
Where does morality start or end? How do we define it in a way that works in all situations?
February 29th, 2008 at 4:04 am
Good question about how to qualify morality. I think we can eliminate 3 through 5 on the basis that ants, venus fly traps, and rocks all lack the brain features that are required to support morality. 1 and 2 are candidates since humans and rhesus monkeys both have the required brain features, and can be shown clinically to exhibit empathy (empathy is required for morality). If the behavioral components of morality are the following: avoidance of harm to others, fairness, group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity, then we can test for the presence of these behaviors in both humans and in rhesus monkeys. But your point is, we can find many instances that are gray areas where, even based on clinical testing, we can’t be sure that certain species are capable making moral decisions. It gets even more difficult if you consider that even if a species is capable of moral decisions, some individuals of the species may lack that capacity.
On the other hand, if the goal is simply to show that morality is not a divine attribute reserved for humanity, but is instead a trait that evolved naturally, then I don’t think you have to solve the problem above. I think all you have to show is that like any other related trait, related species have related abilities for making moral decisions, which can be demonstrated by physiology of the brain and by behavioral testing of species who share a common ancestor with us. For example, if the functions of the frontal lobe and the amygdala are known to participate in moral decisions, we can follow the development of these soft-tissue structures by looking at the shape of ancient human (and other ape) skulls, and also by comparing the physiology or related, extant species. We can also do brain scans on humans as they make moral decisions to see where the brain activity is. We can do brain scans on bonobos and rhesus monkeys as well and look for similarities. We can theorize the contribution of each brain area based on pathological studies on subjects where the brain area is damaged, or underdeveloped.
February 29th, 2008 at 6:55 am
I think I see what you’re saying now. I’ll take a stab at a definition based on my understanding of where you are coming from:
“Morality is the degree to which a life form that is capable of empathy (the ability to see the world from another life form’s point of view) behaves in a way that is mutually beneficial to one or more other lifeforms.”
or.. “Morality is a measure of the mutual benefit of interactions between empathetic organisms”
Does that work?
February 29th, 2008 at 10:23 am
It sounds like you are defining is a way we can measure to what extent social behavior is beneficial, but I don’t think morality is that metric. Instead, I see morality as one of the mechanisms that prompts the beneficial social behavior you are describing.
For example, the feeling of hunger evolved because it causes us to urgently seek food. Urgently seeking food is the beneficial behavior, but the feeling of hunger is not a measure of how beneficial the act of seeking food is. Rather hunger is the mechanism that evolved which prompts the behavior. In the same way as hunger is a feeling which evolved, and also in the same way that the feeling of hunger prompts behavior, I think that morality is a set of feelings (more than one) that evolved which prompts us to act in socially beneficial ways.
Then to relate morality to empathy, empathy is just one of the moral feelings that prompt us to act socially. For example, in order for you to feel outraged that someone was cheated, you have to first empathize with the deceived victim. The victim is angry, and you may be able to sense the anger, but you are still not outraged about the deception. So far, you only feel for the victim in the same way you might feel for him if he was angry about accidentally dropping a thousand dollars down a deep well. But empathy is necessary for you to feel outrage, but it is not sufficient. What’s missing is the sense of fairness. Both feelings have to be present. Make sense?
Conversely, if you are cheated, you may feel outraged at the unfairness, even if the feeling of empathy is not relevant in this context. Empathy might cause you not to cheat someone else, because your actions would cause anger in the victim and you would feel his anger. The sense of fairness would cause you to want to punish the the cheater.
March 19th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Just for posterity, a while ago A3 and I continued this discussion indirectly on another blog. In a part of one of my comments I wrote (talking to someone else):
And A3 later wrote:
March 20th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Carrying this on a bit A3:
I kind of agree here but would like to point out that much of what we see touted as ‘morals’ are actually just strict adherences to a behaviour that has been moral in one particular situation.
Take the issue that many Christians have with homosexuality for example: I believe that this is a moral - and perhaps, misguided - objection from a time where civilisation really couldn’t afford to have non-reproducing members of their society but that the situation today has changed enormously. To use the analogy of the buckets of water this is like someone who’s ancestors came from a swampy island but who now live on a desert island and yet still insist on tipping out buckets of water because it was a moral thing for their ancestors to do.
Another example of this would be some of the dietary restrictions that many religions have. I suspect that the real reason it became ‘immoral’ to eat pork for the Jews was for health reasons and that around the time of Jesus we see this restriction being lifted because the situation had changed. I would guess that desert-dwellers would be more susceptible to illnesses caused by badly-kept pork than the city-dwellers of Jesus’ time. Are Jews ‘moral’ to continue on this tradition completely out of context? Or are they dogmatic?
It may be that in this case everyone thinks they are acting morally and has the best intentions in mind but when you get to a situation where your traditional (and now defunct) morals are actually hurting other people this sense of absoluteness loses its appeal.
And I think that the difference here is that what we sometimes think of as a loyalty to one’s community (which is a useful evolutionary and social adaptation) is often actually loyalty to an idea (or meme) which may or may not still be good for one’s community.
In fact, I’d say that the truest form of morality is that which takes stock of the situation and acts accordingly rather than that which blindly follows what tradition dictates.
Morality vs dogma. Reason vs religion.
Can you see where I’m coming from?
March 24th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Fascinating reading your analyses of how certain Christian and Jewish morals came into being. Not sure what basis you start your reasoning, especially when such reasoning appears to be unknown to the two groups to whom you have applied this ‘hidden’ motivation for them developing certain morals.
It seems that you are aware that context has a bearing on the moral stance of any culture. We need to be careful when appraising moral codes within cultures not our own, for fear of slighting them because of our own cultural bias. Especially if it is done from an ignorant standpoint.
Surprisingly, both ‘no pork’ and ‘no homosexuality’, issue from the same, dare I say, reason.
So, the Jewish context is taken from the Torah or the first part (pentateuch - five books) of the Old Testament. Within the creation scenario, you may remember, that humans are made in the image of God and also something about the outcome from mankind’s reasoning not to enjoy God’s provision and his close fellowship. Consequentially, this marred human nature and its ability to reflect the image of God.
Firstly, for the Jew, the Law highlighted this broken relationship. The Ten Commandments were a sampling of the basic characteristics (ethic) of our relationships with God and each other. Rather than helping Jews re-establish a pure relationship with God, the Law, in fact added to the problem. They kept breaking them. The food laws symbolically reflected the broken relationship by highlighting the differences in various animals’ natural feeding habits, designating them ‘clean’ or ‘unclean’. Pigs were not the only ‘unclean’ animals. The food laws (along with others) were also a reminder to the Jew that God was the creator of all things, and that everything is spiritual. By the way, Jews did not eat pigs in the desert, they had the Law and they ate manna and quail.
Secondly, homosexuality, for the Jew is not ‘unclean’ symbolically, as in the food laws, but is ‘unclean’ by its natural form which does not reflect the image of Elohim (God) by which the complementary man and woman relationship was set. It had nothing to do with the notion that if homosexuality became normal, that the Jewish population would fade away! Middle eastern families from any era, are known for being rather extended.
Jesus, by his life mission (death and resurrection), the symbolic food laws no longer reflected the ’state-of-the-nation’ in regards to mankind and God. Through Jesus, Elohim had begun the recreation of the relationship, including with each other and creation.
Since Christianity is based within a Jewish context, the issues ‘no pork’ and ‘no homosexuality’ have discontinuity and continuity.
Not sure of your idea of reason vs religion (also morality vs dogma). It appears draws the same bow as creation vs evolution.
Reason isn’t neutral. Hitler reasoned. Mother Theresa reasoned. They were from the same culture, religion and era. Though somehow the results were significantly different.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
No need for snideness. I was expressing my own opinions only and prefaced both of them with ‘believe’ and ’suspect’ to let you know that this was not set in stone.
However, you haven’t really done anything to change my opinions on either of these topics because all you’ve done is expressed a beliefs of your own. But willing to change I am, given evidence.
You seem to be saying that God made up a lot of these laws for the sole purpose of tripping people up? Or have I misunderstood you here?
No.
I suspect (there goes that word again) that you might be using the word ‘reason’ in the context of the process that a human individual goes through in order to perform actions. I was talking about reason in the context of ‘reasonable’ or the back-and-forth that a reasonable conversation entails. I don’t think that Hitler encouraged debate on his views (and for that matter neither did Mother Theresa - who, if I can drop a name here, I have had the dubious privilege to have worked for in Calcutta).
March 25th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
“Mother Theresa - who, if I can drop a name here, I have had the dubious privilege to have worked for in Calcutta…”
Wow. It doesn’t sound like you’re kidding. What, may I ask, makes you call it a ‘dubious privilege’???
-d-
March 25th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I didn’t agree with the way they/she dealt with family planning issues. The place where I worked was where people would go to die and I felt it was also needlessly strict. I ended up working in a sidewalk clinic called “Jack’s Clinic” that didn’t have the hangups of Catholicism in the end.
I was quite young at the time and didn’t really have a full comprehension of all of the issues but with that said I’d probably still hold a reasonably similar opinion.
While I admire anyone who works with the sick and dying I like it best when this work is done without the agenda so often found in religious missions.
March 25th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Thanks for sharing that. Interesting stuff.
-d-
March 25th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Sorry, Damian, if I unintentionally came across as being derogatory of your opinions. But I have a genuine query regarding the basis of your opinions regarding the original motivations for Jewish and Christians morality. I still don’t have any real understanding of the basis for which the you gave those opinions.
As far as my own beliefs are concerned, I would submit, that like your own beliefs, they are established on significant thinking, reading, and discussion with others of whom, may or may not necessarily agree with the what or the way I have expressed those beliefs.
As to evidence. What sort of evidence are you after? Maybe the Jewish records as evidence as to what and why they believed?
However it may seem, Christian scholarship is not set in stone, but like any other area of human study is always in state of flux. But, also, as with other spheres of knowledge, there are certain ideas and paradigms that are relatively fixed, from which other understandings hang. All of which must stand the test of scrutiny. Even within Christian thinking there are paradigm shifts. One example, would be the shift away from a cosmological Heaven-Earth-Hell, three tier universe to a ‘bi-dimensional omniverse’, where Heaven and Earth are merged, but separated, from our point of view, by events of time and revelation (understanding).
God making up laws to trip up humanity is a definite misreading of the situation. People were already tripping up themselves without any assist from God. The Laws are a sampling of the major relational dysfunctions that humanity already was experiencing. It was a reminder to say, here is where you should already know you’re going wrong. They aren’t arbitrary laws made up just to spoil any ‘fun’ that an individual may have at the expense of another.
My allusion to creation vs evolution in regards to reason vs religion, is referring to the apparent exclusion of one of the other, as though it was an either-or situation.
I guess I am fortunate not coming from an overtly authoritarian era or church system. However, even within the supposedly Free West and Secular Era, there are definite persuasions on reason as seductive as in any previous era.
The picture of Hitler and Mother Theresa was to illustrate, that even when two significant personalities from the same culture, era and religion can express quite different moral standards. Both, no doubt, came to their own conclusions about reality from personal reasoning. Whether or not we facilitate debate or are reasonable, there are in the background, premises underpinning any particular opinion expressed. Maybe the best way we can understand another’s reason for believing certain things is to observe their actions and listen to what they said, not to impose certain presuppositions of our own.
Brave lad for having worked for Mother Theresa. Your experience, I suspect, may illustrate the points above, where you judged her work from your own perspective, despite her intention to do good within a pressured, complex and distressing social situation.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:59 am
When I read sections of the OT like Leviticus 19 and I see the mixture of horticultural, hygiene and ritualistic laws it certainly looks to me like these are simply societal practices that had been enshrined as commands from a god that could have occurred in any religious culture at a similar state of development.
Take a read of that chapter yourself. I’d like you get an understanding from you as to why you think it more likely that the creator of the universe would bother to dictate these mundane rules to Moses than the possibility that someone had simply used god as a kind of official ’stamp’ to ensure people followed what they thought were good societal practices.
My reason for leaning toward the latter explanation is that I don’t believe that there is a god in the first place but even when I did I struggled with passages like these when I used my common sense.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
My understanding of the Law, is that it came to Moses as an encapsulated revelation, but would not have necessarily been new to Moses. If you like, it was a reiteration of a pre-existing understanding of God’s law. To treat it as ‘out-of-the-blue’ with no context, is to misunderstand how and by what means the entire scriptural text came into being.
This marks it considerably different from something like the Qur’an, which according the Mohammed was recited to him in Arabic, by the angel Gabriel.
Jewish understanding of the source of scripture is that it came from God, through all of life’s experiences which were regarded as shaped by God. Jewish understanding of human nature, and creation in general, was that it all came from God. All things are spiritual. Hence many of the laws may seem to have naturalistic derivations, as though they could stand on their own without any reference to any god. But the Jews understood life (natural, personal and societal) from the beginning, as things were set up and developed, as being derived from God.
The fact that other people had similar laws would not be surprising to them, (nor should it to us) as they, according to the Torah and archaeology, had shared histories and origins.
The contrast of Jewish behaviour was that their relationship (however rocky) was with a single God not gods. There is enough evidence from ancient times to suggest that ancient religion degenerated from a single supreme God into a host of smaller subservient or opposing gods. Although this God, who is creator and sustainer of all, is described as single (monotheistic), Elohim (plural) is how this relational God is portrayed in the Torah.
If we do not understand or accept a Jewish understanding of the Law and how it is underpinned on a relationship of God, each other and creation, we do indeed end up with arbitrary laws that seem entirely out of context for any future era but its own. It is not difficult to see when these laws are neglected any society runs up against whole waves of societal difficulties. Current legislation struggles to keep at bay the multifaceted ways people continue to live ‘unholy’ lives, inflicting pain and despair on countless victims.
Having just re-read the passage you directed me to, I must confess I am at a loss to see how irrelevant these laws are. They cover issues literally, from head to toe, in relation to how we are to regulate our behaviour (morality) in respect to our relationship with God, each other and creation. Interestingly, they cover, quite practically, every aspect of life with which our current global community struggles.
On the whole our current ’state of development’ is really a mirage, as all civilisations are dependent on a strong agricultural economy. As modern society distances itself from that fact through sophistication (fiscal as well as intellectual), it only hobbles itself as witnessed by the disparity in distribution of power and wealth.
March 26th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Nice thoughts, BC,
I too re-read the passage, and had similar thoughts about its relevance.
I predict that Damian will respond with (among other things) pointing us toward ‘nastier’ bits of Torah…
March 26th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I’m not going to go to the nastier bits yet because I still don’t understand how you can view these particular verses as if they were something from the creator of the universe rather than just an assortment of what was considered good advice at the time that was lent authority by attributing them to a god.
Sure, lots of the advice is still relevant (as you would expect if they were societal laws that had been enshrined) but there are some that don’t make sense to me unless they were laws that were mistakenly canonised (as I would expect if, once again, if they didn’t really come from the supreme master of all life but from ordinary people instead).
These make no sense to me (perhaps you have an explanation):
v9 - When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
v19a - Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
v19b - Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
v26 - Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it.
v27 - Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard.
v28 - Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves.
These sound like overly-enshrined horticultural or agricultural matters:
v10 - Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien.
v19 - Do not mate different kinds of animals (does this make mules bad?).
v23 - When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden.
The rest are either societal laws or deal with religious rites (which I’ll ignore for the sake of this discussion).
With the first ones I’ve listed what leads you to the conclusion that god deigned to make these laws - and if he really did why didn’t he give advice that we can see as more practical now such as ‘wash you hands after wiping your arse’ or something to do with immunisation?
With the second batch these certainly sound like the kind of thing a civilisation discovered through trial and error rather than by divine revelation surely?
March 26th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
You ask why didn’t he give more practical advice… It seems to me that many of these commands are too precise for your liking… Am I reading you wrong?
I’m curious, Damian,
I know it’s hard, being an atheist, but what would you expect a God to say to an ancient nomadic tribe?
March 26th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Without going over already trodden ground re how we are, as God’s creation, in one sense, hard wired to portray his pattern for living in the light of Elohim’s scheme of things, the Law, I guess, can be seen from a purely pragmatic perspective. Even, from a pragmatic viewpoint, the utility of the law from the point of view of the participants or observers of the law, is as pragmatic as us evaluating any particular ancient law from a 21st century mindset. (Pragmatism = universal principle).
Much of Jewish scripture was written in couplets, a form of verse that is easier to remember in an oral tradition than our form of standard written prose that we are use to today.
So, v9 and v10 go together. Here we are not to gather all our crops (earnings) exclusively for our own use, but to share freely from the harvest as freely as God has provided for us at that time. Here too, integrity of the relationship between landowner (owner of the crops) and the gleaners is maintained by the fact that the gleaner has also to work for their food. It was not regarded as a handout. Also, a certain amount of fallen fruit is good to return to the ground as food for the trees or vines. vs 23 illustrates this further in relationship to fruit trees’ early years, before the first fruits going to God as creator, then to us in subsequent years when the fruiting tree is strong enough to stand pruning to enhance cropping. Interestingly enough, as late as the 1960’s, during the green revolution with super-crops, this principle was over-ridden with devastating results on the soil condition and poisoning the land with artificial fertilisers. We still have this problem in New Zealand eg dairying.
v19a and 19b The mixing of different cloth and also crops could be evidence of deceit, creating weakness in cloth extending to poor relationships over trading in same. At the same time there is the idea of purity, beauty and strength as a reflection of Elohim’s character. You find that at various points in the text there is reference to ‘be holy as I am holy, says the LORD’ and ‘I am the LORD’.
v26 This is still practised in our abattoirs as fresh meat is tough if it is not hung for a time. Also there is significance in blood being the source of an animal’s life. Treatment of blood is a ’sacred’ thing. Halal is the Muslim equivalent.
v27 and 28 are to do with the pagan religious practices of death and mourning, where shaving the head and cutting the body was a sign of hopelessness and submission to death, especially to do with symbols of gods of death and the afterworld. For the Jew, the understanding of death was that it was a terminal event, but Elohim took all into care until the ‘Day of the LORD’, resurrection and judgement (putting things to rights ie justice).
v19 No it doesn’t make mules bad (morally!?) but it does make them infertile, which is not the natural pattern for reproduction. Again it is also a picture relating to purity as opposed to deceit.
Funny you mentioned ‘washing of hands’ and ablutions. Both these are quite high in other parts of the Law, both ritually and practically. Apparently, while in the desert, the Jews had to be reminded not to defecate directly outside their tents but to designate a place for latrines. This could well have been the inspiration for cleaning up the cities of Europe during the reformation and in Post-Enlightenment times, even as late as Victorian times. Even now the battle goes on for a clean and safe environment.
All of which from the Jewish OT point of view, illustrates how mankind is tied into the principles for living as confirmed and revealed by God to the Prophets. You may call it naturally discovered, but surely that too is a function of being human which is part of us being in the image of Elohim (God in relational terms, Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Even within that relationship there is creativity in terms of Elohim sustaining all aspects of the universe.
Phew!
March 27th, 2008 at 6:48 am
You’ve used two different words here; ‘practical’ and ‘precise’. These laws appear to me to be exactly what humans would make up if they were wanting to enshrine the common sense of the time and not some genuine wisdom from a god who knows everything. And, yes, if the all-wise creator of the universe was going to speak to people I’d really expect something a little more earth-shattering (and useful) than these mundane rules which seem to be the kind of things that spring up in many other cultures without the aid of divine revelation.
Great explanations BC. But, as I mentioned in the paragraph above, these ‘Laws’ still have all the appearance of human-authorship to me. You say that the verses are written in couplets. Verse 19 says “Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.”. You interpreted the first bit of this as a biological/breeding issue but the other two as trading deception issues. Is this not merely a twisting of your interpretations?
In another conversation we’ve had Dale, we briefly talked about what we’d expect an alien civilisation would leave behind as a message. If someone were making claims that aliens had left behind these ‘laws’ would you find them compelling evidence for the existence of aliens? If not, then why would you think that almighty God did? Is it perhaps because you’ve first accepted that whenever it says that “God said” in this book that it must be true?
March 27th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Damian, from a Christian perspective of mine the way I figure it to be is that God being the Creator of the Universe has every right to do what He wishes with His creation. I’m sure you do the same thing with the things you own. It’s that simple.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:39 am
Uknown, thank you for taking an interest in this conversation.
I have an issue with what you’ve just done though and I’m going to use an analogy to show you why I object to your comment.
Imagine that you are having a conversation with a friend about the pros and cons of using whole milk vs trim milk in baking. You’re getting down to the nitty-gritty of the benefits of the milk solids and how they might add to the flavour of the cake and someone joins in the conversation with the statement “Trim milk is waaaay better because… just because”. This new person hasn’t really added anything to the conversation at all - no new information here, nothing that can be verified.
Saying that “God can do anything he wants” hasn’t added anything to what we’ve been discussing. I’m fully aware that if there is a god who’s all-powerful that it would be able to do anything it wants and I’m sure BC and Dale do too. We’ve been talking about whether we think that a certain event in history deserves to be attributed to a god or to humans.
You are more than welcome to contribute but please take some time to read through the arguments and before you decide to add a comment think about how this comment might add to the conversation.
If you want to be involved please take some time to read the passage that I linked to and then imagine that some other religion (say, the Hindus) had made claims that they had similar laws that were divinely revealed - would you think that their claims were valid?
March 27th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Good stuff people.
Damian, it sounds as though you’re still thinking of inspiration in a Qu’ran-style, dictation mode. As BC pointed out (2nd paragraph, comment 27), the ‘giving of the Law’ to Moses need not be understood at all that way. I’m not sure what kind of ‘earth-shattering’ content you’re thinking should have been given, but my feeling is that what they were given was very practical, specific and just what they needed to not only survive as a tribe, but also to preserve relationship with others…
The Jewish picture is not of a God who is mostly detached from the world and just occasionally shouts some ‘earth-shattering’ bits of advice, but rather a God who is intimately and constantly involved through what we would all every-day ‘natural’ things. Things like common sense - even the common sense that other peoples of the time had. Things like ‘wisdom’ (i.e. proverbs) that ‘bubbles up’, as it were, from the real, basic and normal life experience of humanity. So yes, the Law was seen (like lots of other things) as from God, but it also very much was ‘from’ Moses - ‘the Law of Moses says’ or ‘Moses says’ etc.
The alien question is more parallel to a deist god, who –like a visiting, intervening alien– comes down, visits and intervenes, and then heads off again to their galaxy. The alien or deist god, then would have to ‘leave their mark’ in terms of a non-natural or ‘wierd’ thing for us to know they’d been there. Not the Jewish view at all. All nature in it’s entirety (things understood and things not understood) ’speak’ of the Creator…
March 27th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Not sure what you mean by ‘twisting of your interpretations?’
If you mean I’ve imposed an inconsistent meaning over the original meaning, then quite possible. However, the meaning of each part of the couplet doesn’t necessarily have to be the same. In fact, complementary meanings, rather than opposing meanings, are in fact, a poet’s tool for highlighting an overall meaning. Maybe comparable to the technique of a composer using complementary or discordant notes to capture the interest of the listener’s ear and thereby heightening the aesthetic or meaning of a piece of music.
Your third comment touches on the subject of how do we know what is true. For us in a post-enlightenment culture, the only significant way to know something is true, is to have knowledge of some event and being able to recreate that event to verify that it wasn’t a one-off and that is consistent with already established ideas. Less significantly, further knowledge is available through the personal experience of a single, one-off event that nobody in the future can recreate or verify by such a method.
Quite obviously scientific methodology falls into the first category. However, a significant amount of human knowledge falls into the second. This is where of events of history remain. Unfortunately, history can be manipulated a great deal. Much of that interpretation and manipulation is a result of the interpreter’s mindset. If you place great emphasis to the first category, without qualification, and transfer that paradigm to the second, you will no doubt discount anything that doesn’t fit within the first. So, accounts of a god creating, or miracles etc are exorcised from any historical account that contains such events. This process has been done by scholars such as Bultmann, Tillich, Jesus Seminar, existentialists etc.
The unfortunate thing about this is that very often the overall gist or ‘message’ of ancient accounts is lost, and we end up with a disjointed and dessicated document, which would be incomprehensible to the original writers as it is to future readers.
Even so, a significant number of verifiable, scientific disciplines can be brought to bear on historical events, particularly the study of ancient texts and culture. In recent decades, a great deal of 1st century Middle Eastern textual and culture discoveries have been of great assistance in renegotiating much of what earlier textual criticism discounted.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Dale, I’ve heard you mention this “Jewish view of God” quite often (is this something from Wright?). Would you care to give me a quick overview of this for me? And perhaps deal with the incidents in the Bible where God is decidedly ‘thundery’.
Also, I think you’ve mistaken Deism for something else. From what I’ve read of it it’s closer to your style of belief (where God is an ever-present force in nature) than the shout-and-run version you mentioned.
BC, I hear what you are saying about contrast and poetry and music but I still fail to see how you’ve managed to come to the conclusion that one bit was talking about animal genetics whereas the other two were about honest trading practices.
Maybe we’re coming from such different angles that it’s impossible to see where the other is coming from. On the surface I see a series of verses that are plain old common sense (with some understandable human flaws) that have had the words “God said” attached to the front and you seem to be having to make some pretty convoluted arguments to justify how God was involved. Do you believe that it is possible that if somewhere in the Bible it says that “God said” that God might not have said it? Or is this option off the table for you?
If this option is off the table then perhaps it will be helpful to examine another religion (like I mentioned to Uknown) and see if the logic you are using still holds. If a Hindu were to say to you that Ganesha had decreed that they not breed two different kinds of animals and not to mix two kinds of seeds in a field or two different kinds of cloth what would your reaction be? Would it be that you think it far more likely that someone had enshrined good old common sense and attributed it to Ganesha? Or would this seem to you to be something you’d expect Ganesha to get involved in?
March 27th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I’ve never heard of Deism described in terms of a god being an ‘ever-present force in nature’. That sounds more like pantheism. The deistic framework would underlie the worldviews of many diverse beliefs. Some Deists (of the more philosophical variety) would attribute very few things to the ‘god’, like our ability to reason, perhaps some fuzzy involvement in the creation of the universe, but not any on-going involvment or guidance… On the other hand, many Christians for example, imagine what may be described as a very active deist god - intervening not once every few centuries, but quite often pulling levers and flicking switches at various moments (presumably in ‘response’ to peoples’ prayers).
The Jewish view is perhaps best expressed in terms of relationship. Creator-Creation. There is a distinction, yes (instead of the tree being God - or vice versa, the tree ’speaks’ of the Creator), nor is there complete separation or dis-interest (instead of the creator ‘leaving the creation alone’ as it were, the Creator upholds and sustains the creation - though not manipulating it). The Judeo/Christian does not hesitate to say that it is not ‘nature’ but God the Creator who, as it were, breathes life into the sails of the Creation. “He feeds the ravens when they call to Him.”
I’m not sure how far down this rabbit-hole you want to go, Damian, but eventually you get to the question of the presence of evil in a world created and sustained by a sovereign, always active God. Theodicy…
Anything you want to add to this, BC?
March 27th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The problem of evil can be left for another conversation altogether. I still haven’t got a very good sense of where you are coming from with regard to the Jewish view of God though. Especially with how it contrasts to the overt thunderings in the Bible.
From the little that you’ve described it sounds like you are saying that the Jewish view is that nature is very much a part of God (or is closely linked in some way) and that God is not a kind of separate entity who appears from time to time? How does this relate to the burning bush and the storm cloud events? They certainly appear to be a ‘Jewish view’ of God but they seem to be treating God as a booming voice who appears suddenly and then goes away.
I’m genuinely interested.
March 27th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
From you Dale:
And from Wikipedia:
I don’t really know of all the -ism options out there but Deism doesn’t sound right in this context. Never mind - it’s semantics and I get where you are coming from.
March 27th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Damian, I was responding to your comment, “Is it perhaps because you’ve first accepted that whenever it says that “God said” in this book that it must be true?” I know that comment wasn’t directed towards me but you made me think of God speaking things into existence and His sovereignty. As far as your concern about the laws of the Old Testament. The way I understand it is that God was setting aside a holy group of people for the coming of His son Jesus. I don’t know the mind of God so I’m sure there were other significant reasons for it but that being the main reason.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
I don’t know if you’re interested but there is a good lecture that Dr. Ravi Zaharias gives on youtube.com. It’s called “The Loss of Truth and The Crumbling Moral Foundation.”
March 27th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Damian,
Yes, the basic Deist picture is of a god who is for the most part uninvolved. Different pictures would have different levels of involvement…
Uknown,
1. Your genuine intentions and concern probably speak louder than my would-be intellectual explanations…
2. Indeed, the New Testament authors saw Jesus as the climactic fulfillment of all that had gone before, but there is indeed some basic, anthropological, covenantally monotheistic (and yes, significant) reasons for the Law. I’m not wanting to put words in your mouth, but just warn against the “it-was-all-so-jesus-could-come” train of thought…
3. And the Ravi Zacharias video probably won’t mean much to Damian either?
4. See point number 1 again…
-d-
March 27th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Well, I guess the most I can do right now is offer Damian and everyone else genuine concern. I’m still learning. Thanks Dale for the advice. I really appreciate it.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Sorry about any convolutions, but the aim is to try and pull in as many threads that have a bearing on understanding the Jewish view of God (Elohim) as a relational being, as opposed to Elohim being an enigmatic life force or a pantheistic interpretation of natural events having a life of its own. This then has a bearing on the nature of the law, which, when bits, often taken in isolation may talk about animal husbandry or manufacturing cloth, are pulled together by the overarching theme of purity of relationships that can be degraded by deceitful actions.
Interesting that what you call plain old common sense, you see is different from what God maybe trying to tell us through our plain old common sense. It seems to be a matter of perspective rather than the intrinsic value of any particular commandment. Common sense, from a Jewish point of view, would be from God (as all things are). The fact that it seems easy for us to think them as just so-so, doesn’t diminish their value or that God doesn’t need to remind us of them. As you may appreciate this common sense could well do with a far bit of ‘thundering from of high’.
As to that aspect, much of the ‘thundering from on high’ comes as a natural consequence of breaking the Law. Scripture maintains that all the ills of the world stem from such disobedience. When seen as common sense or bound into natural processes, the Law is integral with life.
What God says, as reiterated in the text of the Law, again relates back to the relationship the Jewish people had with God. When it says ‘God Said’ I doubt if it means that there was an audible voice and dictation took place. As I alluded to with Moses, most of what became the Law was already known. This is mentioned several times in the Old and New Testament. Somewhere previously, ‘canonised’ was mentioned. This basically means that scripture became the measure (canon) by which life is judged.
So for things that we could think up that wouldn’t be consistent with our understanding of God, would reveal our knowledge of who we are, what the world’s about and who and what we thought God is. The problem is we don’t know everything about God, or much else. (You may think . . . mmm that’s a cop out if I ever heard one). If we did know everything, would an all knowable god still be God? Bit of a bummer really, when we often try and pin God down on anything really tricky.
So really, in that light and due to the nature of scripture, its content, subject matter and context, it would be impossible to prove if God said this or that. Except, that the overall picture is consistent.
As far as examining another religion and its claims, the problem is what to measure against. You would have to consider as much of the culture and history you can, to be able to get a handle on the authority of the content within the respective religious texts. Much of what is shared between different religions in their respective moral codes should not be surprising. As you say it’s common sense.
For the Jew (and Christian) however, the greater difference is not so much that scripture is attributed to a deity, but to whom is it attributed. For the Christian and Jew this is inextricably tied into historicity of scripture, whereas in Hinduism it is not. In contrast to the Law of Moses, which was given not only to guide the Jewish people in their relationship with God, but also to highlight their shortcomings (sinfulness), the Hindu moral code intends to guide disciples through karma, to become enlightened to an extent where escape from the cycle of reincarnation enables the disciple to merge finally with the oneness of being. One is world affirming, the other world denying.
Again, sorry about being so convoluted.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Thank you for your excellent and well-considered response BC. That goes a long way toward clearing up why what seems like mundane (and imperfect) ‘rules’ might been seen as being from God.
But now we’re back to the starting point where I see the concept of a god as the unnecessary ingredient in the mix whereas you see it as the all-important underlying theme.
To me, without good evidence, all these occurrences can be best explained as merely human artefacts where things like the mixing of grains or cloths can be seen as the result of human misunderstanding but you see these as interaction between god and man on a very human level and that these bits are mysteries that made sense at the time or are yet to be understood.
So, in response to your question waaaay back in #20, my answer is that I come to my conclusions by way of my common sense and based on a weighing of the evidence I see before me. I believe that to have come to any other conclusion a leap of faith has had to be made at some stage (perhaps as far back as the belief that there is a god in the first place) but that this leap leads to an explanation of the world that isn’t a true one.
I see a vast collection of oddities like the examples I focussed on in Leviticus 19 throughout the Christian religion (and probably others but Christianity is what I know best) but where I see them as oddities you would see them as mysteries or miracles.
Do you think this is a good summary of our differences and a good explanation as to why I made the comments I made about pork seeming to be a health issue rather than a genuine command from a god?
March 28th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Thanks, Damian, for your comments, and yes, your summary is very fair.
To my mind, you naturally see the physical and spiritual as two different perspectives (or at best spheres of reality) about a shared reality. You discount the spiritual perspective on account of the first, being what you can grasp in your physical hand and eye and therefore critical mind. Your basis of belief about the world around you, is taken solely from one portion of the whole, the physical.
As you have already encountered with Dale, others who may accept the physical and spiritual, commonly treat these as divided spheres which is the basic form of dualism; dualism of this basic nature doesn’t exist in the Jewish cosmos. As a Christian, I take my queue for my understanding of reality from that background (as Jesus of Nazareth did), as everything is spiritual, as it gives impulse for knowledge of what, where, who, when etc.
To our modern western minds, the ‘reality’ of which we have some idea, has been developed by a reference framework that enables us to categorise stuff. Although there is nothing wrong in using such a logic (as science does), it would be a fair to say that anything that is verified or proven within that framework, in fact, becomes, as a proven thing or idea, subservient to that framework. And this is the problem we have within that ‘reality’ in relation to being able to prove that a god exists. If a god is the God that is creator of this universe, but not a product or by nature of this universe (the Biblical God), then any reference framework we have in attempting to prove the existence of such a god, would have to extend beyond that god. So when it comes to proving that such a god exists, within a scientific construct, it is not surprising that we can not prove God within such a framework.
You may ask, then, if such a God exists, then surely there would be some manifestation of God’s existence in this physical world. Well, as far as Jewish and Christian understanding goes, the whole of the universe is that evidence. The problem is that we can’t put God in a test tube and see a replication of what happened in the past.
Hence the difference between what scientists do and what historians do. One field of knowledge is based on verifiability by experiment, the other by critical analyses by comparison of cultural relics and textual material that comes to hand.
As far as believing in miracles etc as a leap of faith, the more I learn of what goes on in physics (large and small), I have no trouble accepting those miracles as true events recorded in the Gospels, for instance.