Miracles – Can We Believe Them?

Lucas Mix – GTU alum, university chaplain, and astrobiologist – has a new post over at his weblog that is worth a read if you have ever wondered about miracles. I’ll just give a quote and let you read the rest:

For good and ill, the clockwork metaphor of Newton and Descartes is no longer familiar, so start with something you know:  video games.

Let us say that God is video game developer.  She codes for a massive multiplayer environment that we will call the World…

With that beginning, we can talk about the modes of interaction our developer has with the program.

A)     She wrote the program: Creation.  Pretty straightforward.

B)      She maintains the program, not only by keeping the server running, but by patching, allocating memory, and making upgrades.  Christians call this “sustaining” or continual creation.

C)      She might act as a player, taking on an avatar and playing by the rules everyone else plays by… Indeed, this is quite close to what most Christians believe of Jesus Christ…

I’m sympathetic towards this metaphor too, as are a whole bunch of atheists who call it “the simulation hypothesis” (which I’ve talked about here), and yet still call themselves atheist (can’t quite figure that one out). Read the rest at Lucas’s Weblog.

As for me, on the question of divine action, ever since I’ve been a Christian I’ve figured that accepting the creation of the world is a pretty big miracle right there. Everything else is minor by comparison. So, like Lucas, when it comes to miracles, I say “no big deal” for God, just a “big deal” for us.

Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Taken Alive: A Moral Victory

Good job to the Boston Police Department!

Taking Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alive is a very good thing. I don’t know if he was wearing a suicide bomb, but given his and his brother’s blatant disregard for human life (and reports that his brother was wearing one) I wouldn’t be surprised. And in that case the BPD did a huge job – they not only saved the lives of any other innocent victims Tsarnaev might have killed, they saved his life too.

The best possible outcome is still, then, possible – Tsarnaev might say he is sorry. It might not happen, but if it does we should rejoice because that would deflate the terrorist cause; he would be acknowledging that he and his cause were wrong. And that is a powerful witness to keep others away from it. And it would help restore Tsarnaev’s own humanity – he needs to have his sense of right and wrong corrected. It will also show that moral behavior on our part pays off.

When Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan it was only a half-victory for the USA, as I noted at the time. We not only acted outside the law, but we denied him the ability to apologize. That would have been the ultimate victory – the apology of our foremost enemy – and we lost it by killing him. We denied ourselves the opportunity for a moral victory. And as we continue our “War on Terror” we continue to deny ourselves the opportunity for this highest victory.

No matter how unlikely the apology is, we still need to give our enemy that chance. It is not only better for them, it is better for us. Even though distorted towards vice, they are human too. Because in a deep way treating one’s enemy as a human denies the dichotomy of “us” and “them.” It makes us all “us.”

If we deny the humanity of our enemy, we reinforce their denial of ours.  The only way to end this war is by mutual respect or total annihilation, and as I said before, we aren’t going to choose the second path. So we better get started on the path to the first.

In this act of good law enforcement, the BPD respected the humanity of someone who attacked us as an enemy. We need more of this behavior towards those who call themselves our enemies. So once again, good job Boston PD. When BPD officers (and I hesitate to bring it up, but it is the truth and we should never shy away from it) brutalized the peaceful Occupy Boston protesters that was a low-point, but today you have show us the better way.

Let this be a formative moment for our nation, to direct us to defend justice with compassion and respect even for those who deny it to us. We need the moral high ground, not only for the sake of our enemies, not only for the sake of those watching, but for our sake, for us, to keep us human.

And on that note I will end with a link to a story from World War Two. It is a must-read, about a German pilot sparing an American B-17, but I’ll just excerpt one quote.

“People think of the rules of war primarily as a way to protect innocent civilians from being victims of atrocities,” she says. “In a much more profound sense, the rules are there to protect the people doing the actual fighting.”

The code is designed to prevent soldiers from becoming monsters.”

Today we did not become monsters. That might sound like a hollow hurrah, but it is not just a negative, it is much more than that.

Instead we became humans.

“I Will Wait For You”: The Meaning and Morality of Waiting

A few months ago an interesting synchronicity occurred which caught my attention. Two pieces of popular culture both mentioned the idea of waiting, in highly idealized terms.  The first (that I noticed) was Mumford and Sons song “I Will Wait for You.”

The second was the trailer for the movie “Cloud Atlas.” At minute 5:10 Frobisher speaks (via letter) to Sixsmith, saying that he believes there is a better place after death, and that he will be there waiting for him.

(Yes, I know I said I was going to review the movie “Cloud Atlas” and I never did. But the trailer was better than the movie and I couldn’t bring myself to say all that needed to be said about the movie; so the trailer and the book review will have to do.)

What is so interesting about waiting that two pieces of popular culture would both mention it in such lyrical terms? What deeper truth is being pursued when both mention the idea of waiting?

The quick answer (do wait for the longer one) is that we live in a society that hates to wait. We rush, rush, rush and never encourage restraint from immediate gratification and indulgence. Advertising is all about getting you to act NOW, before your judgment and virtue can act to keep you on track. We want it all now, now, now. Anything worth waiting for is lost. This habituates us towards vice, and it is ubiquitous – everywhere, all the time.

The messages of waiting provided by Mumford and Sons and “Cloud Atlas” are therefore very counter-cultural, and stand out all the more because of it. But there are even deeper ideas at play here too. And this leads to the longer answer.

Responding to the Murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School

Several posts on the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings have come out, and I just want to share some here.

Why do teachers protect their students during a shooting? Because they care deeply about their students.

We see it again at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and we stand in awe of this courage and commitment to young lives. What is it that compelled principal Dawn Hochsprung to charge the shooter who threatened her school and kids? What prompted teacher Victoria Soto to position herself before a huddle of students, making herself the shooter’s target?

During the Virginia Tech massacre, Holocaust survivor and engineering professor Liviu Librescu gave his life while his students escaped, blocking the door with his body, while he was shot through the door. Many Sandy Hook teachers acted similarly. Let their heroism be remembered.

Gun control is a pro-life issue, by the way. I have heard people claim otherwise. Fr. James Martin:

Gun control is a religious issue. It is just as much of what many religious people call a “life issue” or a “pro-life issue,” as is abortion, euthanasia or the death penalty (all of which I oppose), and programs that provide the poor with the same access to basic human needs as the wealthy (which I am for). There is a “consistent ethic of life” that views all these issues as linked, because they are.

More on the idolatry of guns:

BACK IN 1990, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued this warning: “The religious community must … take seriously the risk of idolatry that could result from an unwarranted fascination with guns, which overlooks or ignores the social consequences of their misuse.” Two decades later, about 660,000 more Americans have been killed by guns, with a million more injured.

Yes, 660,000 dead in 22 years. That’s a Civil War scale death toll, and we call it normal. One million since 1968. The British paper The Telegraph comments:

The statistics are even more heart-breaking when applied to the young. The slaughter of children by gunfire in the United States is 25 times the rate of the 20 next largest industrial countries in the world combined. If you add them all up, since the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968, well over a million Americans, children and adults, have been shot to death, and even now 80 people die in this manner every day. The terrible slaughter on Friday is not as unusual as it should be.

And what about other nations without firearms, are they not plagued by illegal guns with no-one able to stop them? How about Japan? In 2006, they had only two firearms deaths. Two. In 2008 the US had 12,000.

Of the world’s 23 “rich” countries, the U.S. gun-related murder rate is almost 20 times that of the other 22. With almost one privately owned firearm per person, America’s ownership rate is the highest in the world; tribal-conflict-torn Yemen is ranked second, with a rate about half of America’s.

But what about the country at the other end of the spectrum? What is the role of guns in Japan, the developed world’s least firearm-filled nation and perhaps its strictest controller? In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two, and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally.

But what price freedom? Don’t we need all these guns to protect us from government tyranny? If one is that paranoid, one should consider that perhaps widespread gun ownership is exactly what the tyrannical powers want right now. A population in fear. A population without trust, fragmented. No Second-Amendment-mandated militias organized to “save” you. Yes, if you are one of those types, you have already been had.

Gun rights advocates also argue that guns provide the ultimate insurance of our freedom, in so far as they are the final deterrent against encroaching centralized government, and an executive branch run amok with power… I have often suspected, however, that contrary to holding centralized authority in check, broad individual gun ownership gives the powers-that-be exactly what they want.

After all, a population of privately armed citizens is one that is increasingly fragmented, and vulnerable as a result. Private gun ownership invites retreat into extreme individualism — I heard numerous calls for homeschooling in the wake of the Newtown shootings — and nourishes the illusion that I can be my own police, or military, as the case may be. The N.R.A. would have each of us steeled for impending government aggression, but it goes without saying that individually armed citizens are no match for government force. The N.R.A. argues against that interpretation of the Second Amendment that privileges armed militias over individuals, and yet it seems clear that armed militias, at least in theory, would provide a superior check on autocratic government.

But ultimately, this is about some kind of freedom, right? People want guns.

“How could we have let this happen?”

It is a horrible question because the answer is so simple. Make it easy for people to get guns and things like this will happen.

Children will continue to pay for a freedom their elders enjoy.

This matter is our choice.  We have unwittingly, collectively, chosen something horrible.  But we can choose again and choose better. We do not have to live like this.

I pray that we as a nation find the strength to make a better choice. Deuteronomy 30:19:

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live.

Amen.

—

If you contributed one of the links, thank you.

Child Sacrifice at the Altar of the Gun God

The Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut is one of the most horrific spree killings we have had in our nation, ever. And none of them seem to ever have any effect on our lax national gun laws. There are many other problems at stake here too, such as care for the mentally ill, media violence, media sensationalization of spree killers, and so on. But the gun aspect of this is obvious. It just happens over and over again. Predictable. Expected. Routine.

Why then do we never seem to take measures to stop future massacres?

I have no answer, I just have a comparison.

The Hebrew Scriptures have a recurrent theme of child sacrifice. Child sacrifice was something the Hebrew’s neighboring tribes did; these were the behaviors of Moloch and Baal worshippers. Child sacrifice was NOT something God wanted of his people, as is made clear over and over again in many and various ways.

We have accepted child sacrifice in our culture, and one of the idols we have chosen is the gun. In our culture we idolize guns and we implicitly recognize these periodic mass-murders and daily gun violence as an acceptable side-effect of our mania for power and violence.

This is horribly wrong, and only a true believer in the gun god can’t see the connection. Nicholas Kristof reported (h/t Charlie Camosy) that the NRA commented that the school attack in China, with a knife, shows that it’s not just a gun problem. But NONE of those children died. Still absolutely horrible! But alive. Only the true believer in the gun god cannot see the connection.

Other countries do not have this problem; this is an American gun-cult problem.

Are guns really a cult? Guns freed us from Britain and “tamed” the Wild West (by murdering the natives). Guns protect the righteous from evil (so it is said). People get an emotional high from practicing the faith (gun shops, shooting ranges, and gun shows). And the Second Amendment is the Holy Writ.

We have a cult with an origin myth and glorious history, practical good consequences (for some), collective effervescent feelings, and a religious text.

This is, needless to say, a religion of death. No matter how it is wrapped in patriotism and righteousness, if your first instinct after a mass shooting is to declare that guns are not the problem you are a true believer in the gun god. Please find a better god.

I am otherwise at a loss for words, so to close I am just going to post three links.

Two from CatholicMoralTheology.com, from Charlie Camosy and Dana Dillon.

Garry Wills says much the same as I do here, but more eloquently. I wrote this before reading his, but I guess this idea’s time has come. Maybe that means we can finally begin to purge ourselves of this demonic faith.

Physicists to Test Simulation Hypothesis (AKA Theism)

Huffington Post UK has a new very brief article stating that physicists at the University of Washington are going to test the simulation hypothesis – the theory that we are all living inside a giant computer simulation.

The simulation hypothesis has become something of a popular idea as of late, boosted by people such as transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom and atheist author Sam Harris.

I am interested in whether the experiment will conclude anything. I have my doubts, just because metaphysical questions like that don’t tend to be  testable in any conclusive way (that being sort of the definition of metaphysics). And no matter what data they do get, there may be better theories to explain it.We can always come up with more ideas why something is the case – data underdetermines theory

From the perspective of theism, the simulation hypothesis could be either problematic or validating. It does imply a “simulation engineer” after all. And that engineer would be “God.” Maybe not the God theists currently believe in, but perhaps it could be. After all, as Sam Harris notes on his blog, if the simulation hypothesis is correct and we gain the same power to produce simulations as the one we are currently inhabiting, then its just a matter of time before some religion creates a simulation which validates its theology. (And I appreciate Harris’s honesty here, admitting that the idea can undercut his own atheist position.)

A rather strange and humorous idea, I think. I wonder what people will think of next?

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: A Philosophical and Ethical Book Review

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell is a spectacular novel. It is a tour-de-force through six stories, each story with its own genre, creating a multigenre whole unlike any work I’ve read before. (There may be other works out there like this, but I don’t know them – I’m an ethicist, not a lit guy – so if you have suggested readings, let me know!)

I picked up this book because I saw the trailer for the movie version by the Wachowskis (of “The Matrix” fame) that is coming out today. I could tell that the story was going to be fascinatingly intricate, and that a movie could not do it justice, so I wanted to read the novel first before seeing the movie. I won’t include the trailer here because it may affect your reading of the story; it did for me (while reading I kept thinking “I wonder who is going to play this character?”). I will review the movie in a few days and include the trailer then.

In this review I am going to try to avoid specific spoilers, however, the generalities of the work will come up and especially what I see as the moral and philosophical core of the work. If you read this review it may spoil the novel for you on that level, so if that concerns you, just go read the book instead, then come back.

But if you want to know anyway, come along. Here’s how we will go: 1) The story itself, its style and composition, 2) Its major themes, 3) Its similarities and differences with a few other works, and a few allusions I picked up, 4) Its movie potential.

My New Article: Teleology and Theology, Aristotle and Cognitive Science

From the abstract:

Recent research in cognitive science has shown that humans innately prefer teleological explanations. Children even go so far as to hypothesize the existence of a deity in order to justify teleological explanations. Aristotle also believed in the importance of teleology for human psychology. This paper investigates the convergence of ideas from the cognitive science of teleology with the Aristotelian understanding of teleology visible in the virtues of techne and wisdom. I argue that Aristotelian psychology and ethics is gaining empirical support, and that this could have important implications for science, philosophy, and theology.

So cut to the chase – what’s the point? Humans evolved to pick up teleology – the purposes of other humans, of tools, and of skilled behaviors. This same sensitivity allows us to ponder the purpose of our own existence and the purpose of the universe as a whole, as well as hypothesize a creator. In other words, this is a major part of what makes us capax Dei – capable of relating to God.

From a theistic perspective this is great – science has shown us part of the religious architecture of our minds, as aspect of what makes us homo religiosus. And equally, from an atheistic perspective this is great; theistically-inclined humans are just misapplying an otherwise perfectly useful cognitive bias – one used to figure out what another human is doing, their purpose, or the purpose of an object – to try to figure out something purposeless, the universe. But notice that the first move is a metaphysical one – the declaration that the universe is purposeful or purposeless. No scientific experiment can tell you the answer to that, it is an assumption, not a conclusion. The data can go either way, depending on the framework it is placed in.

I have to say, I really like this paper. I worked on it a long time. The peer reviewers said nice things about it. I could easily spend more time investigating this sort of work, and at some point I most likely will.

But, alas, one of my committee members always counsels me “Go for the deeper problem!” And so the deeper problem from the cognitive science of the virtues, at least from the standpoint of naturalistic ethics, is how to relate science and ethics – or, in more Humean terms, how to get “ought’ from “is.” So that is what I am doing now.

And then the deeper problem after that is how to let that knowledge make a positive difference in the world, both for the individual and everyone. Currently some of my applications are towards environmental ethics, bioethics and technological ethics more generally, and the ethics of space exploration.

All of this is because I want to know how humans ought to relate to technology. Technology is absolutely essential to our humanity. We lack hair (we need clothes) and our digestive systems are inadequate to eat many foods (we need to prepare and cook it). And yet technology can also be extremely dangerous. Human technology has now reached the point where it can begin to alter human nature itself.

To know what to do, we must first know who we are. Identity creates action. And then action creates identity. Transhumanists will argue that our nature is to transcend humanity. And bioconservatives will argue that that is impossible – that no matter what we may become we will always remain human. Natural law yields virtue and vice. What we think humans are will dictate what we think humans should do. We are manipulating creatures – what will we do when we finally come to target ourselves? In this century, we will find out.

-

For more info, see my Academia.edu page.

Is Geoengineering Now Inevitable? Or, Is the Only Solution to a Technological Problem More Technology?

Scaling the Heights of the Scala Naturae (Wikipedia)

Once a year I teach a course at Santa Clara University called “Energy, Climate Change, and Social Justice.” I love teaching it. The premise is to help engineering graduate students learn how to think ethically about the problems generated by global warming, with an eye towards coming up with innovative solutions. We look at conventional and renewable energy sources, vulnerabilities that different areas and people’s of the world face due to global warming, and potential policy solutions to help get the world on track towards carbon neutrality or negativity.

But this year a strange thought continually crossed my mind as I was teaching the course. Is active human control over the climate now inevitable?  A few months ago a friend of mine at another university had expressed to me the wish that humans would not be responsible for the Earth’s environment – not responsible for the climate, not responsible for the weather, not responsible for the deaths and destruction and rising oceans. To him it seemed much better that such events were not blameworthy, that things could just happen and they would not be anyone’s fault. The idea of filing a lawsuit over climate change just seemed very wrong. Shouldn’t there just be some things that no-one is responsible and guilty for? Would that not be a better world?

I was unsure how to respond, but the question remained on my mind. I agree that a world where humans were not responsible for the climate might be a better world, but I’m not sure we can ever go back. Here is my thinking.

Christian/Atheist Turing Test at Unequally Yoked Round 2!

QUICK!!!

Get over to Unequally Yoked and start voting on the next round of Leah Libresco’s Christian/Atheist Turing Test.

Like the real Turing Test, where computers try to pass as human (but no humans try to pass as computers), the idea is for atheists to try to pass as Christians, and Christians to try to pass as atheists. Who knows the other’s worldview better? Who are better liars!? Who will win?

Last year I participated and I did fairly well, convincing both sides I was one of them, coming in 6th ranked for the Christian round (of 15) and 5th ranked for the atheist round (it helps to be pompous, so if you read my answers, keep in mind I was acting – don’t think I’m that big a jerk, please!) Last year was also a Christian blowout, with Christians taking 4 of the top 5 spots for impersonating atheists, and 3 of the top 5 spots for being believably Christian.

Three tests have already been posted, so get over and vote soon! The world needs your skills to judge who is real and who is an impostor.

I find the psychology of the test fascinating, and it is great to see how people attempt not only to fully articulate their own worldview, or that of another, but also what strategies they use in order to appear authentic. The test is also really fun. Last year I was the “boring” atheist. But I think if I were to attempt again I would try to be more extreme; boring got me to be believable, but I want to win!