truth sources

Truth can come from many different sources. One group of sources, here to be referred to as "personal", is connected to oneself. This group includes personal experience, reason, intuition, and so forth. Other sources clearly fall into another group, here to be referred to as "extrapersonal", which is truth sources outside oneself. Individual truths from any of the sources in either group is potentially suspect. So is each truth source as a whole. However, speaking in general, the personal truth sources are less questionable than the extrapersonal truth sources.

The point is, someone else, who says one truth is "supported by the evidence" and that a second truth is "unsupported by any evidence", is an extrapersonal truth source to the listener. Moreover, the speaker is probably referring to one of his or her own extrapersonal truth sources, who in turn were referring to yet other extrapersonal truth sources, etc. This mesh of extrapersonal truth sources all referring to and trusting one another, here to be referred to as a "hive", has a more complicated value compared to other truth sources. Is a hive of five people referring to mere extrapersonal truth sources more trustworthy than one person who refers to a personal truth source? What if the one person's personal truth source is likely biased?

Someone in a hive may vehemently state a truth because it comes from the hive. He or she may also speak of evidence, when the "evidence" is purely extrapersonal yet reinforced by the hive--a refined version of hearsay and rumor. "Look at our hive. We all think the same way about this topic. If you disagree, you're ignoring the evidence, which is attested to by everyone in the hive." "Evidence" which came from some other source, which was passed on from some other source, which was passed on from other source, etc., is hive thinking masquerading as a personal truth source. Regard it as such.

"why a Holy God?"

Objections to Christianity (and similar belief systems) fall into two broad categories: objections against the existence of God, and objections against a particular conception of God. One of the objections in the second category, roughly summarized as "why a Holy God?", has many expressions. "Why would the master and creator of the universe care about what tiny humans do?" "How likely is it that an all-powerful, all-knowing Force is constrained by merely human morality?" "What does matter matter to an eternal Spirit?"

Any answers to this objection will probably be insufficient to convince the objector, especially one who doesn't believe in God at all. Nevertheless, the Christian has some reasons to remain unfazed by it.

• Given that God is all-knowing, all-seeing, etc., is it really any more unbelievable that God is intimately aware of all aspects of creation? When someone can lift twenty pounds, what's questionable about positing that same person's ability to lift ten pounds? Ultimate awareness is ultimate awareness. Magnificence in the large includes, not precludes, interaction in the small. Put another way: assuming God can care about anything in the universe, why can't it be true that God cares about everything? God's plans may operate on the grandest scale, yet those plans can have roles for the tiniest participants.
  
• Given that God is the creator of the universe, the more surprising outcome would be not caring about his creation. Is it more reasonable to suppose that God went "through the bother" of all that creating without actually caring about the result, or that affection for the creation motivated the act? It's certainly possible to think of God as winding up the universe like a timepiece, then leaving it alone to proceed without any further attention (smart people have really thought this). But if God is sentient and has somewhat comparable motivations to human creators, clearly God wanted the universe to happen--God had a strong interest in it dating from its inception. That interest probably continues.
  
• The idea of a hard separation between the natural and the supernatural may not be well-supported by Christianity. Miracles presume that the supernatural can work in and with the natural. Sanctification is another recurrent indication. How can the notion of holy objects like a temple, an ark of the covenant, and so on be reconciled to a gap between God and creation? Saying that God's holiness, if it exists, has nothing to do with the universe, ignores or conflicts with the Christian accounts of how the supernatural hallows the natural. Assuming that a divide from the supernatural implies a divide from holiness also may be equating all supernatural beings with holiness, which is again not well-supported by Christianity's picture of the real demonic.
  
• Moreover, the distinction between matter and spirit hits closer to "home" in the concept of the human soul. The body and soul must have some connection for the soul to matter; how can the seat of free will even be the seat of free will if it has no effect on the movements of the body? Just as the soul can interact with the body, so can God interact with the universe.
  
• The seeming arbitrariness of the ultimate, divine God working according to the same morality as people is less stark after considering two points central to normal Christian doctrine. First, human morality's source is divine morality. God is good not only because that's God's nature, but also because the human concept of good originates from God. God acts justly not only because that's God's nature, but also because the human concept of justice originates from God. God shows mercy not only because that's God's nature, but also because the human concept of mercy originates from God. Second, human beings have been created in the "image" of God. Exactly what this refers to is mysterious. However, one of the common interpretations is that God created humans to have minds and souls that reflect (to a small degree) God's mind, and to share some of the same motivations and moral concerns. Humans were for fellowship with God. The point is that God doesn't resemble us through us imagining God; we resemble God through God purposefully creating us to do so.
  
• The objection against a holy God derives some of its vigor from the perception that attributing human-directed holiness to God is like placing constraints on the one entity which should have none. This perception is too hasty. God's concern for the world doesn't eliminate the possibility of concern for the universe, or other worlds. In the same way, God's concern for humanity doesn't eliminate the possibility of concern for other creatures, or the world itself. We have the moral laws for people, since God has communicated to us. Laws and holiness for others may exist, too (angels, etc.?), but we don't need those. God's holiness has been shown and demonstrated to us, and God is not reduced.
  
• A final reason, maybe the most important, why Christians think God cares about the actions of individual people, is (almost laughably) simple: God loves. Part of love is desiring that the beloved excels. Another part of love is desiring the beloved's safety and happiness. One narrow definition of holiness is functioning as it should. The intent of human holiness is to produce the outcomes planned for humanity in the beginning. Love and holiness are linked in God. God desires to impart this combination to people, for the benefit of all.
  

responsibility, innate goodness, and influences

Someone's opinion of who bears the Burden of Responsibility is a telling indicator of his or her outlook on life. When a person's moral Quality is deficient and therefore leads to deplorable actions, who should receive the ultimate blame? Should it be the person, or the way the person was nurtured? Should it be the person, or the irresistible compulsions within that person? Should it be the person, or the horrible situation thrust onto that person such that he or she had no other practical course? If more moderately apportioning blame in pieces, then where should the greatest piece of blame be placed? In short, is the person performing the action obligated or not to take responsibility, because of the influences that affect that person?

Clearly, Christianity and many other common belief systems that believe in divine judgment strongly lean toward the personal responsibility camp. (Divine mercy is also important, but the need for mercy emphasizes rather than minimizes the gravity of the judgment.) Maintaining the concept of ultimate personal responsibility is less common for secular belief systems that don't strictly believe in the objective existence of Good with a capital G or Judgment with a capital J. Secular belief systems have a deeper difficulty, too, which stems from not believing in the mere possibility of transcendent human identity, consciousness, and decisions. If humans are nothing more than materials, fundamentally speaking, then "making choices" is no more than a class of physical phenomena. Separating out "human choice" from the influences on that choice is as futile in the secular point of view as attempting to separate out the path of a terrestrial projectile from the influence of the world's gravity! Thus, the inherent difficulty of obtaining the necessary data and theories is the only barrier to creating a "moral calculus" that can compute what someone's decisions will be from the state of the matter that makes up him or her. The decision's influences are the decision.

Given that a completely secular point of view leads to that conclusion, then it's also apparent that the secular point of view has no basis for the notion of "innate" universal human morality. When a self-admitted, completely secular person tries to assert that people are "basically good", his or her perspective constrains that assertion to really mean any of several possibilities:

• People are basically good because people are basically raised to be good, perhaps through a process of "society evolution" in which societies that don't instill "basic goodness" self-destruct or are crowded out by prosperous societies that do. This is the "nurture" way to believe in secular basic goodness.
  
• People are basically good because of the usual genetic evolution. That is, people whose genes don't include "basic goodness" self-destruct (not producing offspring) or are crowded out by people whose genes do. This is the "nature" way to believe in secular basic goodness.
• People are basically good because over time, as people mature, they discover that "basic goodness" is the most economic, cost-effective way to achieve their desires when interacting with others. This is the "economic" or "game theory" way to believe in secular basic goodness.

Those possibilities are by no means self-evidently true or supported by most of the actual historical evidence of humanity. Someone who wants to exclude supernatural reality but still believe people are "inherently good" is ignorant, misinformed, or deluded (I'm not too hesitant to apply those terms when they don't hesitate to apply those terms to me). As pieces of matter, people can only be neutral, or be good in the same fashion that rocks or bears can be good. The question of what characterizes a "blank slate" tabula rasa person is close to meaningless in a secular context. In the Christian context, the innate soul of a person mirrors God's capabilities of rationality and morality, is always free to choose regardless of material influences, but is prone to an evil elevation of itself.

"my reality is more real than yours"

In the spirit of the entry about reality disagreements, permit me to provide the service of reminding everybody that claiming a belief system's level of correctness based on its level of "reality" is talking in circles. One's belief system is an important factor in what one's overall concept of reality is.

Someone can't prove a set of propositions, like the content of a belief system, to be true without: 1) assuming the truth of one or more statements in the set (known as axioms), or 2) building on a true statement independent from and external to the set. The nature of reality is part of a belief system. Using a belief system's notion of ultimate reality to try to prove that belief system is ridiculous! It's comparable to a Christian claiming God exists because the Bible proves it (since the Bible's authority is grounded in God's existence, its authority can't logically prove God's existence on its own).

The next time someone says "reality has a ____ bias", ignore it for the snide hooey it is.

real disagreements about real things

Statements that correspond to reality are true, and statements that don't are false. I suppose most people would agree. Truth is objective.

Hence, who has more respect for truth: someone who acknowledges, perhaps even embraces, that disagreements about the truth imply that someone is wrong, or someone who would rather believe in a fluid and subjective "truth" for the magical result that everybody disagrees but nobody is wrong? When our irreconcilable ideas conflict, yet remain simultaneously true, the "truth" of those ideas means something entirely different than "corresponding to reality". And the consequence is our ideas being neither right nor wrong. What is the value of being "right" about the truth, while the opposite "wrong" ideas are also true?

A common objection is that "spiritual" truth is different in quality from "material" truth, so various spiritual "perspectives" can be right; this is the "all ways lead to God" mentality. It works in the abstract. Just picture the Higher Power as having diverse manifestations and every person having the inborn capability to connect to that Higher Power with diverse techniques. Unfortunately, it falls apart almost immediately when the "ways" and the "God" (gods?) are substituted with much different definitions by different people, such that it's nonsensical to keep thinking everybody's talking about the same stuff. If one person's god is named Larry, and the way to please Larry is to live soberly, but another person's god is named Curly, and the way to please Curly is to engage in revelry, how ridiculous is it to say that 1) either way will please either god, or merely 2) Larry and the Curly are the same god? (Don't even consider the savage god Moe who's pleased by the harming of infidels!) "Spiritual" truth must be similar to "material" truth in order for "truth" to have a consistent basis. Christianity opponents use an eerie echo of this same argument when they state that the content of Christianity (and, to be fair, every other religion) should be subject to scientific methods. They say that Christianity has no scientific proof. They and the Christians are alike in saying that Truth is Truth. Christians simply believe in a broader range of sources of Truth.

Alternatively, someone can compromise and harmonize spiritual disagreements by diplomatically asserting that everyone is partially right. Unfortunately, this too falls apart as soon as someone asks the follow-up question, "partially right about what?" Partially right indicates the state of being an approximation of reality. Isn't this meaningless unless the reality is known? Someone can't approximate what doesn't exist, and someone surely can't approximate anything at all without acknowledging the approximation to possibly be very weak. The point is, to say that everyone is partially right is to conceive a right ideal which partially matches what everyone thinks. That right ideal is the definitive truth, so we are back to saying that Truth is something in particular.

Don't minimize disagreements by pretending the disagreements don't exist or don't matter. Disagreements don't arise by accident, and each of the disagreeing parties has a stake in being right. To pretend otherwise is as presumptuous or arbitrary as those in the disagreement.

a musical contradiction

Regardless of genre specifics, musical forms have long been criticized for being inherently unacceptable or at least unsuitable. For just as long, the defenders of each musical form have had a defense: notes, beats, chords, and instruments have no inherent meaning. In short, musical forms should be evaluated and enjoyed apart from lyrics, content, and context.

So be it. However, if someone uses that defense for a musical form, isn't it contradictory to then show automatic disdain for "Christian-ized" works in that musical form? If your musical form is really innocent fun because lyrics, content, and context don't matter, how can Christian lyrics or content or context change your opinion of a work in that musical form?

You can't have it both ways. Either your musical style is blameless and harmless because factors extraneous to the music are irrelevant, or Christians performing your musical style are patently ridiculous because the actual music is only a part of the total musical experience. Choose.

Worldview Fragment: middling morality

Worldview fragment: one or more related ideas/viewpoints that can (and often do) serve as a component or flavor in a complete worldview held by some specific individual. The "fragment" term is not intended to be a subtle insult, but to accurately reflect the reality that the fragment is 1) not necessarily an actual, comprehensive worldview, and 2) could likely coexist with a variety of other fragments within some individual's worldview. A puzzle piece isn't worthless because it's a puzzle piece.

The entry on False Amorality made the point that almost everyone has some morality, no matter how slight, exotic, or implicit. This statement will be met with zero shock both by practicing Christians and by anyone who vocally supports opposite ideas. However, it will be ignored or puzzled-over by the swath of people who see themselves not only as separate from the Christian or anti-Christian sides, but separate from any and all "inflexible, simplistic, dogmatic" sides. That is if they can be prevailed upon to (care enough to) express an opinion at all. They may "beg the question morally" when faced with a decision, refusing to trouble themselves with the underlying principles. When pressed, they will appeal to no moral authority beyond common-sense and personal conscience, or just say that everyone in the world should be respectful and nice to each other.

"Respectful" and "nice" are altogether worthier virtues than usually acknowledged, but even the actions and attitudes that these two entail aren't the same to all people. Is being "nice" just not hurting others intentionally, or is it actively helping them? What precise degree of sacrifice, whether time or money or effort, does "nice" demarcate? Similar questions plague "respectful". Is it respectful to always be formal until given permission otherwise, or to be informal and transparent so others feel welcome and at ease? How respectful must one be to one's opponents, and how should it be expressed? Moreover, how does one answer the charge of subcultures and counter-cultures, that insincere niceness and respectfulness are phony, even hypocritical?

"Common-sense" morality generally avoids extremes, because common-sense refers to the knowledge people have learned out of habitual exposure to everyday life and society. Unless someone has been habitually exposed to extreme morality, naturally they won't include it in common-sense. But it's also true that the common-sense morality absorbed by a spoiled rich person probably differs from the common-sense morality absorbed by a middle-class person, and both probably differ from the common-sense morality absorbed by a desperately-poor person. Common-sense morality varies by culture too. Each culture has its own moral blindnesses.

In the same way, an individual's common-sense will contain contradictory moral concepts as a result of the many shades of experiences which have shaped the individual over time. The opposite influences will press him or her to approach a tipsy middle ground of morality, a middling morality. This middle ground is characterized by someone believing in something, but only under certain conditions. The conditions enable him or her to simultaneously pick up moral notions from drastically different perspectives yet expect to combine them.

Middling morality is the expected outcome of someone drifting through a sea of ideas but clinging to none in the attempt to be "balanced" and "good enough". The prevalence of middling morality is in large part also what makes its content feel acceptable--just don't rock the boat, and everyone will get along swimmingly. Middling morality's top goal is to lead its practitioner down the road of greatest comfort. To determine what important causes to work on, what social ills to remedy, all one must do is select the ones that are most highly publicized and trendy. The point at which to apply the brakes to doing good is the point of great inconvenience or discomfort. Then ward off guilt by saying that "extreme" goodness is for the "saints" of the world (those freaks!). Similar tactics hold for fun activities: only weirdos would try to fool themselves into thinking through the wisdom of an activity instead of the pleasure it elicits. Doubly so for "immoral" activities that don't hurt anyone.

People who live by middling morality are fond of using hypocrisy as a shield against anyone who has professed a real commitment to living morally. "You say you're living a Good Life? What about this human shortcoming? Looks like it'd be more honest if you lived like me." In actuality, this charge of hypocrisy is empty, because it isn't backed by more than a cardboard cutout of moral superiority. It's better to set a high standard and fail, then to take the approach of middling morality, in which sincere goodness isn't even claimed and attempted. Middling morality is ordinary. It's prone to fads. It barely affects the world (or planet, if you prefer) at all because no deep sacrifice is involved. Middling morality's goodness, as well as its badness, is the true phony. Charges of hypocrisy are laughable from someone who plays at morality.