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Thank you National government!
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Saith Einstein.
Science is Amoral in the sense that it works for whosoever employs her… without regard of the Righteousness or Wickedness of her Employer’s cause …
That is why Ethics are more essential than Technology.
As Einstein said… “Moral Teachers (like Jesus) are more important than Physicists”
And as the man who understood the horrific global implications if the Nazi’s should have time enough to get command of the power or the Atom…. He would know!
Ironically It was Hitler’s Immoral Anti-Semitism which caused Einstein to quit Germany and emigrate to America….
Poetic Justice!
It’s been a while, but tomorrow night The New Inklings meet again! The time is 7 pm. The place is the Downtown House Bar and Cafe at the Downtown Backpackers, corner of Bunny Street and Waterloo Quay, Wellington.
We discuss philosophy (mainly) and theology. You’re welcome to join us, provided that you are (1) irenic, and (2) rational. If you don’t know what it means to be irenic, Google is your friend. If you don’t know what it means to be rational, well … tomorrow night’s discussion topic is for you!
the nature of rationality and what a commitment to Reason entails
So I thought I’d jot down a few recent thoughts … and start a series of posts … on this fundamentally important to everything topic.
Here’s my all-time favourite Ayn Rand quote.
To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality.
I used to love to brandish this one at Ayn Rand’s hypocritical followers. I say ‘used to’ because it’s just dawned on me that Rand got it completely wrong! (Yet again! Wotta surprise!)
To arrive at a contradiction is NOT to confess an error in one’s thinking. To arrive at a contradiction is the strongest confirmation possible that there is NO error in one’s thinking!
And to maintain a contradiction is NOT to abdicate one’s mind nor to evict oneself from the realm of reality. At least, not in the short-term, probably not in the medium-term and possibly not even in the long-term! NOT to maintain a contradiction, in the short-term at least, would be irrational in the utmost extreme!
I really don’t know why I didn’t see this sooner … perhaps you don’t see it yet, so I’ll explain.
The simplest example of a contradiction is a proposition and its negation. P and not-P. Two propositions are contradictory, or inconsistent, if they cannot both be true. Three propositions are mutually contradictory, or form an inconsistent triad, if they cannot all be true. Four propositions that cannot all be true form an inconsistent tetrad. And so on and so forth.
None but the completely insane ever believes P and not-P. But believing A, B and C, where A, B and C cannot all be true? This is a commonplace. But most people who believe A, B and C don’t notice the inconsistency. A and B don’t contradict. B and C don’t contradict. C and A don’t contradict. It’s the mutual inconsistency that gives rise to the contradiction. To arrive at the contradiction you actually have to have some logical nous. You have to be able to recognise that
(P1) A
(P2) B
Therefore, (C) not-C
is a deductively valid argument. So to arrive at a contradiction is actually to confirm that you have at least a basic grasp of logic! Which most people don’t.
So you’ve arrived at a contradiction. You believe A, B and C and you are cognizant of the contradiction. You know your beliefs can’t all be true. You know that (at least) one of them has to go. But which one? You’d better sit down and try to figure that one out. But you don’t want to reject the wrong belief. So, in the meanwhile, you’ll maintain the contradiction. Take your time. It’s the rational thing to do.
For an entertaining exercise, name the third person of the Unholy Trinity.
Who is it? Mini-Me? Fat Bastard? Frau Farbissina? Or … ?
Brian Leftow on “One Person Christology” is Glenn Peoples’ latest blog post.
How can a Chalcedonian Christology avoid ending up with Christ being two people? If the divine logos (the second person of the Trinity) combined with a fully functioning human body and soul (which some people take to be the ingredients of a human being), that is surely two people and not one, right?
Commenter Nathan thinks it would be an entertaining exercise “to try and define Logos and Human as classes, and then try and bring them together to get incarnate Jesus.” He adds, “but ultimately it won’t work.”
Class, superclass, subclass, interface, implementation, instantiation, inheritance—these are all concepts in object-oriented programming (OOP). Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that represents things in the real world as objects with attributes (“properties”) and abilities (“methods”). In software development, object-oriented programming is the one true way. But in theology?
The theology question of the day is not
How can God be three persons?
but the closely related
How can the Incarnate Christ be only one?
By implementing the Human interface, that’s how! Not sure if serious or trolling? I’m serious. I think everything is software.
(Incoming! Genetic fallacy! “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” you say. “You’re a progr(h)ammer, Richard, so *of course* everything looks like software to you!” Nice try but no chocolate fish. Thales was not a tap.)
I’ll try to elaborate. But there’s a problem. Whereas the procedural paradigm is intuitive, the object-oriented paradigm is counter-intuitive. I started out in the procedural paradigm. Next stop, bitter experience. That’s when I made the paradigm shift. But it wasn’t easy explaining the object-oriented paradigm to myself then, and it won’t be easy explaining it to you now. That’s the problem. But I’ll try to elaborate.
I don’t always determine the meaning of a word by looking at its etymology, but when I do I look at the etymology of the word ‘logic’. The word ‘logic’ derives from the Greek λόγος or Logos, which has no exact translation but means, roughly, “reason, idea, word”. But Logos is the second person of the Trinity. Christ is Logos.
God is the author of the logic of the world, and his son is the expression of this logic.
So says philospher Nicholas F. Gier. Now, what is software but an expression of logic? Think about it.
In the beginning was the Code, and the Code was with God, and the Code was God.
Controversial? Heretical? Or just plain bat-shit crazy? No more so than the Logos Christology of the Gospel of John is any of those things.
A brain (and the body housing it) and a mind (the software running on it) are what constitutes a human person. Christ Incarnate was a human person. He was simultaneously the second person of the Trinity. How come he was not two persons, but just one? Simple. He was running different software. You and I instantiate the class DomesticatedPrimate. Christ Incarnate instantiated the class Logos. Christ is the class Logos. He instantiated himself.
An interface is an abstract class that defines a set of abstract methods. The Human interface is an abstract class that defines what it is to be human in terms of distinctively human attributes and distinctively human abilities. The classes DomesticatedPrimate and Logos have this in common. They both implement the Human interface.
That’s my destructive heresy for today. I’m not teaching it, mind. Just putting it out there.
OOP or Oops!? Be sure to let me know in the comments.
.. .the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.. .
Some Buddhists have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Some Muslims have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
Some Atheists have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
And, even some Christians have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
The question I have is this:-
If these people have genuine fruit of the Spirit then doesn’t that imply that they have the Spirit of God?
Have you considered an egg?
Consider Humpty Dumpty, the world’s most famous egg.
I poached the following passage from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass (1872), where Humpty discusses semantics and pragmatics with Alice.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t – till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!'”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
What an egg-otist! Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased. It’s no wonder Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
A long time ago I was a philosophy student at Otago University. And one exam time I was looking at some past exam papers and came across the following exam question: What is the meaning of a word?
It’s a simple question with a simple answer. The meaning of a word is determined by the conventions that govern its use. This is no mere platitude. It’s philosophical orthodoxy and has been since David Lewis – ranked by his peers as the third most important philosopher of the twentieth century – published Convention: A Philosophical Study (1969). Platitude. Orthodoxy. Truth.
The meaning of a word is determined by the conventions that govern its use.
Alice is right. ‘Glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’. You can’t make words mean so many different things. You can’t make ‘glory’ mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’ on your own, any more than you can determine the next government by casting a single vote. What’s more, one of the conventions that governs the use of the term ‘glory’ is the convention of correcting people when they use the word to mean something else. Our linguistic conventions have a built-in inertia that safeguards our very ability to communicate.
Humpty Dumpty’s semantics was scrambled a long time before he met the same fate.
Sense of Life Objectivists (SOLO) is the world’s foremost forum for disciples of Ayn Rand. Go there and check out the banner at the top-right of every page. Every few page loads it advises
Say what you mean, and mean what you say
It’s good advice. But, SOLO being the hive of hypocrisy that it is, well, you’d hardly expect its delusional denizens to take it, would you? No, you wouldn’t and they don’t.
Recently, I’ve been following (one side of) a conversation on SOLO. An Objectivist said this.
What did you understand I meant by “human (i.e. existential) survival”? Let me tell you, because I think you misinterpreted me. I meant what Ayn Rand meant by it, namely, living in accordance with man’s identity as having the potential to be a heroic being
This has the more general form.
What did you think I meant by ‘X’? I meant ‘Y’.
To which I respond, if you meant ‘Y’, why didn’t you find the word or words which actually mean what you meant, and use those instead? To enter into a philosophical discussion is to commit to upholding certain standards of rational debate. It is inexcusable to say ‘X’ when you mean ‘Y’. I know, I’ve done it myself. I’ve said ‘X’ when I meant ‘Y’. And I’ve apologised. There is simply no excuse for not saying what you mean, let alone any entitlement to use words any which way. Why should other participants in the debate have to take time out to establish the meaning of your every utterance? It’s an imposition.
There’s another problem. Words have meanings. Their meanings are determined by the conventions that govern their use. Their meanings are not determined by you on an ad lib basis as you see fit on any given occasion. Consider the case of someone who habitually says ‘X’ but means something else. (In other words, consider an Objectivist.) The Objectivist tells us he actually meant ‘Y’. But what does he mean by ‘Y’? Perhaps by ‘Y’ he means ‘Z’?
This can go two ways. One is an infinite regress of stipulative definitions. The other is a regress that stops when the Objectivist tells you that what *he* actually means is the same as what the *words* he uses actually mean. But if the Objectivist is demonstrably capable of using words to mean what the words mean, as he is in the latter case, he is without excuse for not using words to mean what they actually mean in the first place.
We use words to talk about reality. The constant redefinition of ordinary words that goes on in Objectivist circles has the inevitable consequence that the relations of reference that obtain between words and the world come unstuck.
Ayn Rand described herself as an advocate of reason. I know what ‘reason’ means. I don’t know what Rand meant by ‘reason’ but I know what she didn’t mean. She didn’t mean reason.
I’ve seen the following proposed a number of times…
If there is no God then there is no such thing as good.
…and this common, and rather sad, counter argument…
Atheists can be good therefore there can be good without God.
I say this is a sad argument because it shows that the person didn’t understand the original proposition. And once this counter argument is raised the discussion centres around explaining the original proposition… but that is not what I want to address.
What I have been considering is this:- Can people be good without God? Is it possible to really be good without God?
God’s will is what good is.
For a person to be good they must act according to God’s will.
If a person is acting according to God’s will then they can’t really be said to be without God. Can they?
Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.
The measure of our goodness is the measure of closeness to God.
People can be good to a degree and at the same time deny God but they are still with God (to the degree of their goodness) and He is with them.
We can not be good without God.
Proverbs 20:1
Wine [is] a mocker, strong drink [is] raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.
Romans 13:13
Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.
Galatians 5:19-21
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
1 Corinthians 6:10
Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
Discuss.
The human condition. We’ve all got it.
I’m almost surprised that the human condition didn’t make it into the APA’s recently released DSM-5. The DSM-5 is the is the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The APA is the American Psychiatric Association and the vanguard in the medical profession’s quest to medicalise all aspects of everyday life. If you think I’m being cynical, just read the DSM-5. You’re in it. And so are all your friends. We’re all in it together. The human condition.
What’s that you say? You read the DSM-5 cover to cover and you’re not in it? Sounds diagnostic to me! Clearly, you’re in denial. Denial’s symptomatic of half the mental disorders in the book! So I’m afraid you’re only fooling yourself. But never fear, the APA is here! Here to help you trade denial for acceptance and cold comfort for change. Soon everything will be all right. The struggle will be finished. You’ll win victory over yourself and love the APA.
Are we feeling comfortably numb yet?
I’ve always felt trapped by the human condition. Even to the point of contemplating knocking on the wrong door. But, thank God, I’ve always thought outside the box I’m stuck in, too. And here’s today’s Q&A. What to do about the human condition? There is NO dilemma. Denial or acceptance? A pox on both their houses! There is a third way. Transcendence. Not as in some mystical cop-out. As in break out of the box and set yourself free!
I’ve always wanted to be more God-like. 
Of course, I haven’t always been a Christian but, one way or another, I’ve always been a transhumanist. Christianity is a doctrine of transcendence and the recommended (and only) path. But even if you don’t agree—and I know many of you are averse to “religion”—would you please at least make sure you’re signed up to some other transhumanism? Join me. Otherwise, who let you out? Back in your box!