Spinoza was wrong.
There, I said it.
And he was also right.
In saying that God was the only entity with truly free will, Spinoza was lessening the importance of human life and individual choices. He was lessening the importance of our existence. Granted, he had a somewhat different idea about what “free will” actually was--one that was tied up in his hard determinism.
He said that the only being that was truly free was one unlimited and undetermined by outside forces. All of us puny humans are shaped, limited, and determined by everyone and everything around us. Therefore--according to Spinoza--we aren’t free. It’s not just that our decisions are shaped by our surroundings, they depend on them. (The fact that I can decide what to eat for lunch is determined by my biology: I have a stomach, not chlorophyll.)
Spinoza’s basic definition of God was that God was everything that existed. Since God can be acted upon by no “outside” forces (like biological evolution has acted on us), God’s decisions are truly free in a way ours can never be.
Although I disagree with his consignment of our freedom to choose, I don't disagree with him saying that we are constrained by, and part of, a deterministic universe. In fact, I think determinism is what makes choice possible at all.
First off, let’s just dispense with the idea of “free will.” Truly “free” will simply doesn’t exist, at least not for us (though maybe for Spinoza’s God it does). We cannot will ourselves to grow wings, jump off a building, and soar away into the sunset. But we can choose, based on who and what we are, and the type of world we live in--so when I fail to sprout wings and make a smear on the pavement below, I'm responsible for the poor judgment and that rather bad choice.
Spinoza, meet Fichte. (Don’t you wish sometimes that great historical figures actually could meet? Think about the party that would happen, if only we could get Socrates and Ben Franklin together!)
Recall that cool definition of self that Fichte liked: I am created, in a way, by everyone and everything around me. It’s a negative definition--not value-negative, but more like the negative space inside a cup, which defines the shape of the water inside.
Our choices depend on the world around us. They’re created by the world around us. (So far the hard determinist is still with me...) But if the world around us didn’t exist, we would have no choices to make. There would be no consequences. There would be nothing for us to style “free will.”
Spinoza was no fatalist, though. He left that to a guy named Leibniz.
Leibniz came up with this really weird brand of fatalism in which everything in the outer world was scripted to happen in thus and such a way, our internal reactions were also scripted to happen in thus and such a way, and the two completely separate realities were set in motion at exactly the same "time" (kind of like two chains of dominoes that fall at the same rate but never interact). Gravity and the banana peel were scripted to be there, and my experience of falling down was scripted to be there--but the reason the two seemed to interact was that the outer "cause" and the inner "experience" were pre-written to happen at the same moment.
And then, because that wasn’t enough, he essentially created an infinity of universes when he created what he called “monads.” This is one of the more confusing philosophical critters out there, but I’ll give it a shot.
A monad is kind of like a unit of experience. Not an “I went to the grocery store” unit of experience, but the “I” in the experience. Everything is full of monads--full of first-person (so to speak) experiences. The table really does experience being a table. There are an infinity of monads in the universe, with different forms of monads having more or less experience (what we might call intelligence). Each cell in our body is a monad, but all our body monads are ruled by a soul monad, which naturally experiences more than a single cell can.
The greatest monad on the hierarchy is God, which experiences all things at once.
On a “Wow!” note, Leibniz anticipated quantum physics and string theory when he invented an early version of the holographic principle. Each monad contains all the information that the entire universe does--but it can only access a little of it, because each monad is essentially a point of view. The holographic principle (which mainly has to do with black holes and information loss) says kind of the same thing--each quantum packet contains all the information in the universe, creating an effect kind of like that of a traditional hologram, in which a two-dimensional surface looks like a three-dimensional picture.
Leibniz’s fatalism (an even harder fatalism than traditional eschatology) comes about when he says that a monad’s experience coincides with what happens in the world--but that the two are completely unconnected. Where Paley’s God was a grand watchmaker, Leibniz’s God was a domino setter.
But both Leibniz and Spinoza shorted the importance of choice when they declared it essentially nonexistent (for humans, anyway).
Determinism allows for spontaneity--as weird as that sounds. A cause could have several possible effects, but not all of these effects necessarily happen. Take the utter weirdness of quantum physics, where either the particles are "deciding" (so to speak) which path to take, or they're just taking all possible paths and creating alternate universes along the way!
In a way, we're like those quantum particles. We decide which path we'll take. But there wouldn't be a path to take if that path (bear with my shoddy metaphors) wasn't stable enough to take us down it. If cause-and-effect didn't happen, choice would have no consequence. The freedom to choose has to have a framework to happen in, just like we have to have bodies in order to act, just like we have to have an outer environment in order to have an internal existence.
A deterministic universe makes choice possible. I’m not saying that such a universe was created specifically as a framework for human choice-ridden lives; I’m simply trying to say that choice and determinism aren’t opposed at all. We can choose to be better people, though we often fail--and because we can choose, we're responsible for our choices, and for the consequences that come out of them.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Self? Awareness?
One of the basic differences between living and non-living matter is that living matter has the ability to replicate itself. Some biologists think this ability to replicate is the beginning of something like life (although as I understand it, simple things like viruses may not qualify as living).
Another important difference between life and non-life is awareness.
Fichte's concept of self goes something like this: "The 'I' posits itself." For those of us who don't speak Fichtese, this means something like an awareness of "me" and "not me."
Very simple life forms can tell this difference: amoebas prey on paramecia, for example--but they don't eat their own organelles. On the other hand, the organelles (like mitochondria) in our own cells are thought to have evolved from once separate single-celled critters that the ancestors of our cells tried to eat. Instead of digestion, though, cooperation and symbiosis took place.
In short, this sort of awareness of "me" vs. "not me" is vital (literally) for life to survive. It's one of the early bases for what we call consciousness. Even organisms we don't tend to think of as "aware" have very rudimentary "senses" (for lack of a better word). A flower follows the path of the sun; tree roots will burst through metal and ceramic pipes to get to the water inside; some jellyfish can seek out their prey, despite their lack of eyes. This isn't woo-woo stuff like ESP, it's simply a sort of awareness that depends on sensory systems or reactions that humans don't have.
A rock, on the other hand, doesn't need this sort of awareness. It doesn't consume or reproduce, so it doesn't need to tell the difference between itself and everything else. The same is true of everything from atoms to galaxies. Non-living matter has no biological need for self-awareness.
But here's where it gets spooky: From the "observer effect" and "entanglement" of quantum physics, all the way up to the "emergent consciousness" idea (which I'll admit to being in love with), something like awareness has been postulated as happening in non-living systems.
Here we go back to Fichte's concept of self. Self, to Fichte, is defined by everything that isn't it. In a way, my I-ness would not exist without an environment, other creatures, and other people around me. I'm limited by "what I am not," which means that "what I am not" defines me. Without an outside, there would be no inside; without objective reality, there would be no subjective experience.
For pantheists like Spinoza and the early Stoics, this division is both essential and illusory. Although our minds are brief, personal experiences of life, our ability to reason is a very small, very limited part of the divine Mind or Logos.
In a way, consciousness causes the sense of separation--because it's the awareness of inner versus outer existence—that religion has always tried to overcome. But that separation is what creates us. Everything depends on everything else: we eat, we breathe, we live in the world, connected to everything. We feel separated from what defines us as ourselves.
Fichte’s student and partner-in-crime, Schelling, took this relationship and ran with it. Because Shelling had moral problems with Spinoza’s hard determinism (for good reason), he rearranged pantheism into something vital and alive, using Fichte’s idea of self.
For Schelling, the “I” experienced a subjective life within a larger objective existence. Using Fichte’s positing trick, he showed that subjective experience also limits objective existence. Subjective and objective were two sides of the same coin, in the same way that Spinoza’s Mind and Matter were.
Humans aren't unique in their self-awareness (the standard test being whether an animal can recognize itself in a mirror), but we are pretty special. And we have something that goes beyond just self-awareness--we have an awareness of our self-awareness. (Like our other qualities, this isn't a difference of kind, but of degree.) Because of this dual awareness, we can make judgments about ourselves, our friends, and the world we live in.
One of these possible judgments is what, exactly, constitutes "me."
The usual (surface) concept of self is simply my body and my mind. Dig a little deeper, though, and "me" turns out to include my home and family, my friends, even my job. These are all things that, like Fichte's positing I, help define a self. They belong, not necessarily in the inner circle (so to speak) of self-hood, but in a close second circle.
Add on a third, wider circle, and even the world I live in is a part of my self. I have no direct control over this part of my "self"--but I certainly wouldn't be "me" if I lived on Mars, for instance.
(Even people I hate have helped shape who I am. So I must include them in another--hopefully very thin--circle around my inner self.)
And finally, the universe as a whole: neither I, nor my home, nor my friends and family, nor anything that defines me in any way, would exist without the Earth, the sun, the galaxy, the universe. This is the final, outermost circle, with a circumference of infinity. This is the Self my little piece of self inhabits, the great "I Am" that shapes, determines, and limits my tiny posited "I."
Another important difference between life and non-life is awareness.
Fichte's concept of self goes something like this: "The 'I' posits itself." For those of us who don't speak Fichtese, this means something like an awareness of "me" and "not me."
Very simple life forms can tell this difference: amoebas prey on paramecia, for example--but they don't eat their own organelles. On the other hand, the organelles (like mitochondria) in our own cells are thought to have evolved from once separate single-celled critters that the ancestors of our cells tried to eat. Instead of digestion, though, cooperation and symbiosis took place.
In short, this sort of awareness of "me" vs. "not me" is vital (literally) for life to survive. It's one of the early bases for what we call consciousness. Even organisms we don't tend to think of as "aware" have very rudimentary "senses" (for lack of a better word). A flower follows the path of the sun; tree roots will burst through metal and ceramic pipes to get to the water inside; some jellyfish can seek out their prey, despite their lack of eyes. This isn't woo-woo stuff like ESP, it's simply a sort of awareness that depends on sensory systems or reactions that humans don't have.
A rock, on the other hand, doesn't need this sort of awareness. It doesn't consume or reproduce, so it doesn't need to tell the difference between itself and everything else. The same is true of everything from atoms to galaxies. Non-living matter has no biological need for self-awareness.
But here's where it gets spooky: From the "observer effect" and "entanglement" of quantum physics, all the way up to the "emergent consciousness" idea (which I'll admit to being in love with), something like awareness has been postulated as happening in non-living systems.
Here we go back to Fichte's concept of self. Self, to Fichte, is defined by everything that isn't it. In a way, my I-ness would not exist without an environment, other creatures, and other people around me. I'm limited by "what I am not," which means that "what I am not" defines me. Without an outside, there would be no inside; without objective reality, there would be no subjective experience.
For pantheists like Spinoza and the early Stoics, this division is both essential and illusory. Although our minds are brief, personal experiences of life, our ability to reason is a very small, very limited part of the divine Mind or Logos.
In a way, consciousness causes the sense of separation--because it's the awareness of inner versus outer existence—that religion has always tried to overcome. But that separation is what creates us. Everything depends on everything else: we eat, we breathe, we live in the world, connected to everything. We feel separated from what defines us as ourselves.
Fichte’s student and partner-in-crime, Schelling, took this relationship and ran with it. Because Shelling had moral problems with Spinoza’s hard determinism (for good reason), he rearranged pantheism into something vital and alive, using Fichte’s idea of self.
For Schelling, the “I” experienced a subjective life within a larger objective existence. Using Fichte’s positing trick, he showed that subjective experience also limits objective existence. Subjective and objective were two sides of the same coin, in the same way that Spinoza’s Mind and Matter were.
Humans aren't unique in their self-awareness (the standard test being whether an animal can recognize itself in a mirror), but we are pretty special. And we have something that goes beyond just self-awareness--we have an awareness of our self-awareness. (Like our other qualities, this isn't a difference of kind, but of degree.) Because of this dual awareness, we can make judgments about ourselves, our friends, and the world we live in.
One of these possible judgments is what, exactly, constitutes "me."
The usual (surface) concept of self is simply my body and my mind. Dig a little deeper, though, and "me" turns out to include my home and family, my friends, even my job. These are all things that, like Fichte's positing I, help define a self. They belong, not necessarily in the inner circle (so to speak) of self-hood, but in a close second circle.
Add on a third, wider circle, and even the world I live in is a part of my self. I have no direct control over this part of my "self"--but I certainly wouldn't be "me" if I lived on Mars, for instance.
(Even people I hate have helped shape who I am. So I must include them in another--hopefully very thin--circle around my inner self.)
And finally, the universe as a whole: neither I, nor my home, nor my friends and family, nor anything that defines me in any way, would exist without the Earth, the sun, the galaxy, the universe. This is the final, outermost circle, with a circumference of infinity. This is the Self my little piece of self inhabits, the great "I Am" that shapes, determines, and limits my tiny posited "I."
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Pantheism and Panpsychism
Pantheism, if you've just joined us, is the doctrine that everything in existence--all of reality--forms a unified, divine Being. God is nature, God is existence, God is reality.
Panpsychism is the doctrine that mind is an inherent characteristic of reality. Animism, pantheism, panentheism, and transcendentalism are all systems that may include panpsychism.
Panpsychism can be a sort of "top-down" theory in which the universe unfolds from a "world soul." For instance, Spinoza's panpsychism is a sort of dualistic monism in which Mind and Matter are two sides of the same coin--two aspects of the same infinite, universal Being, and therefore both parts of how the universe came to exist. Spinoza was a sort of materialist panpsychist.
Panpsychism can also be an emergent process in which the basic particles from which reality is built have some sort of conscious awareness. Gottfried Liebniz described a world formed, not by one Substance, but by an infinite number of substances, which he called "monads." Each monad could be described as a "point of view," rather than a mode or attribute; thus the world was a collection of ideas, rather than bare physical matter. Each monad had "holographic" properties: each bit contained not only its own point of view, but all the information in the entirety of reality. An individual human soul was a monad: although we contain all the universe, we're only conscious of our little piece of it.
P.A. Zizzi's "Emergent Consciousness" (or "Big Wow"--I like that one!) combines these top-down/bottom-up theories. The early universe, she says, achieved consciousness in a brief time between inflationary periods, when the "laws of nature" became set--possibly as a result of this "conscious event." Because of this early consciousness, the very nature of the universe had the necessity of consciousness embedded in it (a variation of the anthropic principle). So the emergence of biological consciousness become possible (or even inevitable) because of this early "conscious event."
Many of the names associated with panpsychism, like Spinoza or Whitehead, were also associated with pantheism or panentheism. The two systems agree very easily. In Spinozan pantheism especially, Mind is an intrinsic aspect of Reality, of God. Mind and Matter are indistinguishable except for viewpoint: God is reality; God has an aspect of infinite Mind; Matter can be seen as the ideas of Mind; Mind can be seen as the orderliness of Matter.
Pantheism doesn't necessarily entail panpsychism, or vice versa. But they're very friendly neighbors.
Panpsychism is the doctrine that mind is an inherent characteristic of reality. Animism, pantheism, panentheism, and transcendentalism are all systems that may include panpsychism.
Panpsychism can be a sort of "top-down" theory in which the universe unfolds from a "world soul." For instance, Spinoza's panpsychism is a sort of dualistic monism in which Mind and Matter are two sides of the same coin--two aspects of the same infinite, universal Being, and therefore both parts of how the universe came to exist. Spinoza was a sort of materialist panpsychist.
Panpsychism can also be an emergent process in which the basic particles from which reality is built have some sort of conscious awareness. Gottfried Liebniz described a world formed, not by one Substance, but by an infinite number of substances, which he called "monads." Each monad could be described as a "point of view," rather than a mode or attribute; thus the world was a collection of ideas, rather than bare physical matter. Each monad had "holographic" properties: each bit contained not only its own point of view, but all the information in the entirety of reality. An individual human soul was a monad: although we contain all the universe, we're only conscious of our little piece of it.
P.A. Zizzi's "Emergent Consciousness" (or "Big Wow"--I like that one!) combines these top-down/bottom-up theories. The early universe, she says, achieved consciousness in a brief time between inflationary periods, when the "laws of nature" became set--possibly as a result of this "conscious event." Because of this early consciousness, the very nature of the universe had the necessity of consciousness embedded in it (a variation of the anthropic principle). So the emergence of biological consciousness become possible (or even inevitable) because of this early "conscious event."
Many of the names associated with panpsychism, like Spinoza or Whitehead, were also associated with pantheism or panentheism. The two systems agree very easily. In Spinozan pantheism especially, Mind is an intrinsic aspect of Reality, of God. Mind and Matter are indistinguishable except for viewpoint: God is reality; God has an aspect of infinite Mind; Matter can be seen as the ideas of Mind; Mind can be seen as the orderliness of Matter.
Pantheism doesn't necessarily entail panpsychism, or vice versa. But they're very friendly neighbors.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Immanence and Transcendence vs. Pantheism
First, some definitions:
Immanence: This isn't a misspelling of "imminence," though the two words are related. "Imminent" means close by or about to happen. "Immanent" refers to the idea that God is always nearby. An immanent God is one that inhabits the world, intervenes in history and human life, and is always with us. The theological system that most often includes immanence is "panentheism" (two doors down from pantheism). Most versions of traditional theism, including some flavors of paganism, are panentheistic and talk about an immanent God/gods, deity which is somehow part of the universe.
Transcendence: This idea talks about God being partly or wholly separate from the universe, human life, and history. Most traditional theistic systems also include an aspect of transcendence. Deism* is one of the only common theistic traditions to view God as entirely transcendent: God created the world--wound the clock, so to speak--and then left it to run on its own.
Most versions of traditional theism operate under a combination of immanence and transcendence. God exists outside the universe, but he also moves and acts within it.
And now, the catch:
These terms don't apply the same way--if at all--in pantheism.
Oddly enough, you really can't say that God is immanent in the world, in a pantheistic system. Being present in something implies that the presence is not the same as the thing. I occupy my house, but my being and the house's being aren't the same thing. God also does not intervene in events, for the same reason. God is history, God is the world, God is everything and everyone living. The existence of God and the existence of the universe are one and the same thing.
Nor can you say, in pantheism, that God transcends the universe (or else your system is no longer pantheistic!). But you can't say that God doesn't intervene in the world, either, since the pantheistic God is existence. That would be like saying I have nothing to do with my little toe.
On the surface, these two terms would seem to apply perfectly to pantheism. God is fully immanent, of course!--except that implies that God is substantially different from the universe. And there is that feeling of religious awe that "transcendence" often means, though this is a transcendence (of sorts) of human emotion, rather than of divine Being. Both ideas are originally based around the biblical God of Western belief. Trying to fit them into pantheism is rather like expecting a python to wear a football jersey.
---------------
* This is where I go on a short American history spiel and say that both Jefferson and Franklin were deists, and that although both were theists, neither believed in the divinity of Jesus. They fell under the "deism" umbrella, not just in their belief that Jesus was simply a very good man, but in denying that God intervened in human history (other than by inspiring prophets like Jesus). Jefferson, in fact, rewrote the Gospels in a way, by cutting out all the references to miracles, including the virgin birth and the resurrection. He published it as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, though these days it's often simply called The Jefferson Bible.
Washington may have also been a deist, though he never came out about specific beliefs. (Some of his presidential speeches were written by Alexander Hamilton, a thoroughgoing Christian, which only confuses things more.) The one thing we can say about Washington was that, when pressed about giving props to Christ, he would deftly change the subject; and when the priest of his family church told him he was setting a bad example by coming to church yet not taking communion, he simply quit coming to church.
Immanence: This isn't a misspelling of "imminence," though the two words are related. "Imminent" means close by or about to happen. "Immanent" refers to the idea that God is always nearby. An immanent God is one that inhabits the world, intervenes in history and human life, and is always with us. The theological system that most often includes immanence is "panentheism" (two doors down from pantheism). Most versions of traditional theism, including some flavors of paganism, are panentheistic and talk about an immanent God/gods, deity which is somehow part of the universe.
Transcendence: This idea talks about God being partly or wholly separate from the universe, human life, and history. Most traditional theistic systems also include an aspect of transcendence. Deism* is one of the only common theistic traditions to view God as entirely transcendent: God created the world--wound the clock, so to speak--and then left it to run on its own.
Most versions of traditional theism operate under a combination of immanence and transcendence. God exists outside the universe, but he also moves and acts within it.
And now, the catch:
These terms don't apply the same way--if at all--in pantheism.
Oddly enough, you really can't say that God is immanent in the world, in a pantheistic system. Being present in something implies that the presence is not the same as the thing. I occupy my house, but my being and the house's being aren't the same thing. God also does not intervene in events, for the same reason. God is history, God is the world, God is everything and everyone living. The existence of God and the existence of the universe are one and the same thing.
Nor can you say, in pantheism, that God transcends the universe (or else your system is no longer pantheistic!). But you can't say that God doesn't intervene in the world, either, since the pantheistic God is existence. That would be like saying I have nothing to do with my little toe.
On the surface, these two terms would seem to apply perfectly to pantheism. God is fully immanent, of course!--except that implies that God is substantially different from the universe. And there is that feeling of religious awe that "transcendence" often means, though this is a transcendence (of sorts) of human emotion, rather than of divine Being. Both ideas are originally based around the biblical God of Western belief. Trying to fit them into pantheism is rather like expecting a python to wear a football jersey.
---------------
* This is where I go on a short American history spiel and say that both Jefferson and Franklin were deists, and that although both were theists, neither believed in the divinity of Jesus. They fell under the "deism" umbrella, not just in their belief that Jesus was simply a very good man, but in denying that God intervened in human history (other than by inspiring prophets like Jesus). Jefferson, in fact, rewrote the Gospels in a way, by cutting out all the references to miracles, including the virgin birth and the resurrection. He published it as The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, though these days it's often simply called The Jefferson Bible.
Washington may have also been a deist, though he never came out about specific beliefs. (Some of his presidential speeches were written by Alexander Hamilton, a thoroughgoing Christian, which only confuses things more.) The one thing we can say about Washington was that, when pressed about giving props to Christ, he would deftly change the subject; and when the priest of his family church told him he was setting a bad example by coming to church yet not taking communion, he simply quit coming to church.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Eschatology vs. Free Will
There's a problem here, like the old saying in math class about apples and oranges. Eschatology is one of those ridiculously complicated words that mean something fairly simple: the belief in and philosophy around the end of the world, or where history is headed. (Okay, so maybe not so simple.)
Something about the human psyche demands an end-of-the-world story. Most major civilizations around the world had stories about what would happen, how the world would end, and what kind of world would come after. A lot of them held that the world was destroyed and recreated, over and over again, in a timeless cycle, based on how degraded or evil humanity had become; a new Earth would then be created, with a shiny new humanity ready to inhabit it.
Christianity's no different. From the hardest fundamentalist to the loosest liberal, many if not most Christians have a religious expectation of a Second Coming, a New Jerusalem. It might be literal, as in the Left Behind series; or it might be a metaphoric story about the hope that history is tending towards the perfection of humanity. Either way, history is being guided by a divine hand to some distinct future goal.
That means that every choice we make, for good or for ill, must lead to that final heavenly goal. There is no way around it. There is no possibility of escaping the last days, whether they come next week or two million years from now. History will play out in such a way that everything winds up for the best. The end of the story has already been written.
But if we already know (approximately) how history will turn out, where does that leave free will?
Here, have some time travel:
Suppose you want to go back in time and assassinate Hitler. Unfortunately, even time travel must follow physics. Once you've gone back in time, you must have always gone back in time, which means that the situation that caused you to go back in time has just become a done deal. In other words, when you go back in time, you've predetermined the future. (Maybe someone tried to go back in time to assassinate Hitler, which is why no one was ever able to assassinate him...)
This also goes into the "omniscience" of a personal God. If God knows everything that's going to happen, therefore the future is predetermined. There's a little wiggle room here, since this predestination is only from God's point of view; from our puny human point of view, we still have yet to make the choices God knows we're going to make. (So the apples become oranges in another dimension?)
Either way, though, if history has a set ending, then our free will is either an illusion, or a farce. If God influences our choices to lead to history's happy ending, then free will is a lie. If, on the other hand, God influences nature and physics (all those miracles in the Exodus story, for example) to shape history around our choices, then free will is useless.
[There's an entire subtopic about the horror of "miracles," but that can wait.]
All this is tied up, in most traditional versions of theism, with the idea that God will come swooping in to save the day. (And if you know why "swooping is bad," you get a cookie!) Or the millennium. Or all of human history. It's out of our hands. Which is nice, because now we don't have to take responsibility for each other or for the rest of the planet. God will do it for us--probably by inspiring us to do his holy work, but hey--we just have to wait for that inspiration to strike.
Do away with the eschatology. There is no set ending. It's entirely possible that we will be responsible for our own extinction. It's also entirely possible that we will learn to manage our resources and get along with each other and with the natural world around us. Either way, it's our responsibility now, because there is no promised land except the one we make for ourselves.
Something about the human psyche demands an end-of-the-world story. Most major civilizations around the world had stories about what would happen, how the world would end, and what kind of world would come after. A lot of them held that the world was destroyed and recreated, over and over again, in a timeless cycle, based on how degraded or evil humanity had become; a new Earth would then be created, with a shiny new humanity ready to inhabit it.
Christianity's no different. From the hardest fundamentalist to the loosest liberal, many if not most Christians have a religious expectation of a Second Coming, a New Jerusalem. It might be literal, as in the Left Behind series; or it might be a metaphoric story about the hope that history is tending towards the perfection of humanity. Either way, history is being guided by a divine hand to some distinct future goal.
That means that every choice we make, for good or for ill, must lead to that final heavenly goal. There is no way around it. There is no possibility of escaping the last days, whether they come next week or two million years from now. History will play out in such a way that everything winds up for the best. The end of the story has already been written.
But if we already know (approximately) how history will turn out, where does that leave free will?
Here, have some time travel:
Suppose you want to go back in time and assassinate Hitler. Unfortunately, even time travel must follow physics. Once you've gone back in time, you must have always gone back in time, which means that the situation that caused you to go back in time has just become a done deal. In other words, when you go back in time, you've predetermined the future. (Maybe someone tried to go back in time to assassinate Hitler, which is why no one was ever able to assassinate him...)
This also goes into the "omniscience" of a personal God. If God knows everything that's going to happen, therefore the future is predetermined. There's a little wiggle room here, since this predestination is only from God's point of view; from our puny human point of view, we still have yet to make the choices God knows we're going to make. (So the apples become oranges in another dimension?)
Either way, though, if history has a set ending, then our free will is either an illusion, or a farce. If God influences our choices to lead to history's happy ending, then free will is a lie. If, on the other hand, God influences nature and physics (all those miracles in the Exodus story, for example) to shape history around our choices, then free will is useless.
[There's an entire subtopic about the horror of "miracles," but that can wait.]
All this is tied up, in most traditional versions of theism, with the idea that God will come swooping in to save the day. (And if you know why "swooping is bad," you get a cookie!) Or the millennium. Or all of human history. It's out of our hands. Which is nice, because now we don't have to take responsibility for each other or for the rest of the planet. God will do it for us--probably by inspiring us to do his holy work, but hey--we just have to wait for that inspiration to strike.
Do away with the eschatology. There is no set ending. It's entirely possible that we will be responsible for our own extinction. It's also entirely possible that we will learn to manage our resources and get along with each other and with the natural world around us. Either way, it's our responsibility now, because there is no promised land except the one we make for ourselves.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Problems in Personal Theism
Traditional Western theism rests on a couple distinct principles: First, God is a Person; in other words, God is something like you and me, but infinitely greater. Second, God is external to the universe/the world/creation. This varies, as some strains have God both within and outside of, a sort of one-foot-in-each-existence sort of thing; but all traditional forms of personal theism have a God which transcends the universe.
These two basic ideas create a whole mess of problems. The problem of evil is fairly easy to tackle, especially since it's so popular these days. God as defined as a Person has the qualities of Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Omnibenevolence--God is viewed as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. So how can evil exist? All kind of theodicies have been created to solve this unsolvable problem, the most distasteful of which implies that the terrible things which happen to us are for our own good. Another argument is that God, being good, created the best possible universe in which free will could be found. I've never found any adequate explanation for the paradoxes of human nature, within personal theism. (Original sin, or "it's our fault" is not adequate!) Evil exists because of a basic flaw in the universe, which can be traced to human nature, which was created by--oh, wait.
A more palatable explanation for evil is that it's an intrinsic part of the universe--there's no getting around it--but that God is part of the universe, and therefore suffers with us. This comes from process theology, a type of panentheism, which is a close cousin of pantheism. (The major difference between pantheism and panentheism is that the latter still views God as personal, and in some way transcendent.)
Now bring in that "personal" part. A person has moral views, has aesthetic tastes, has emotions like love or anger. Therefore a personal God would have infinitely greater views, tastes, emotions. And we, his creations, had better figure them out.
The argument against a personal God is, very simply, a moral one. Socrates was quoted as questioning whether something was good because God declared it to be so, or if God declared something good because it always had been.
If the former is correct--something is good because God declares it to be so--then absolutism is the ultimate form of relativism. There is nothing truly good or evil, only what God's opinion, God's culture (if you will) declares to be true. God could always change his mind, and then where would we be?
But if the latter is true--God declares something good because it is good, from all eternity--then God is an abomination. Any God worth the name should be willing and able to prevent torture, murder, rape. The fact that he could prevent these things but doesn't--or might save some and leave others to their fates--means that God (if he's not a divine weakling) is both capricious, and complicit in these evil acts. If goodness is absolute, then even God must obey. But he obviously doesn't.
No matter which of these is taken as true, we're left hanging on divine whim.
The second principle--that God is external--is simpler to deal with, from a metaphysical standpoint. Oddly enough (being the basis of the majority of personal theism) a perfect pantheistic ontology is found in Exodus: "I am that I am." Spinoza rephrased this with his arguments concerning God and Substance. The pantheistic view simply says that God is existence. Everything which exists is a part of God. Nothing can exist outside of existence--because then it wouldn't be "existence." The very concept of "existence" denies the possibility of anything external to it. Even if a heaven is postulated, it must still be part of existence. Bring in alternate "planes of existence" or "modes of being," it's still all part of a single, unified Existence.
The philosophy of pantheism is, quite simply, based on the essence and nature of existence. There is and can be nothing but existence. There is and can be nothing but God.
This also avoids the two major problems with personal theism. Because evil is part of existence, it's also part of God. Once we acknowledge God as amoral (not immoral), and once we acknowledge God as impersonal, we are released from the fear and threat of suffering being the commandment or whimsy of a divine father. Because evil and suffering take place naturally, we're free to deal with them ourselves, to the best of our ability.
We must not wait for a second coming or divine rescue from what we've made of the world. This is our responsibility.
These two basic ideas create a whole mess of problems. The problem of evil is fairly easy to tackle, especially since it's so popular these days. God as defined as a Person has the qualities of Omniscience, Omnipotence, and Omnibenevolence--God is viewed as all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. So how can evil exist? All kind of theodicies have been created to solve this unsolvable problem, the most distasteful of which implies that the terrible things which happen to us are for our own good. Another argument is that God, being good, created the best possible universe in which free will could be found. I've never found any adequate explanation for the paradoxes of human nature, within personal theism. (Original sin, or "it's our fault" is not adequate!) Evil exists because of a basic flaw in the universe, which can be traced to human nature, which was created by--oh, wait.
A more palatable explanation for evil is that it's an intrinsic part of the universe--there's no getting around it--but that God is part of the universe, and therefore suffers with us. This comes from process theology, a type of panentheism, which is a close cousin of pantheism. (The major difference between pantheism and panentheism is that the latter still views God as personal, and in some way transcendent.)
Now bring in that "personal" part. A person has moral views, has aesthetic tastes, has emotions like love or anger. Therefore a personal God would have infinitely greater views, tastes, emotions. And we, his creations, had better figure them out.
The argument against a personal God is, very simply, a moral one. Socrates was quoted as questioning whether something was good because God declared it to be so, or if God declared something good because it always had been.
If the former is correct--something is good because God declares it to be so--then absolutism is the ultimate form of relativism. There is nothing truly good or evil, only what God's opinion, God's culture (if you will) declares to be true. God could always change his mind, and then where would we be?
But if the latter is true--God declares something good because it is good, from all eternity--then God is an abomination. Any God worth the name should be willing and able to prevent torture, murder, rape. The fact that he could prevent these things but doesn't--or might save some and leave others to their fates--means that God (if he's not a divine weakling) is both capricious, and complicit in these evil acts. If goodness is absolute, then even God must obey. But he obviously doesn't.
No matter which of these is taken as true, we're left hanging on divine whim.
The second principle--that God is external--is simpler to deal with, from a metaphysical standpoint. Oddly enough (being the basis of the majority of personal theism) a perfect pantheistic ontology is found in Exodus: "I am that I am." Spinoza rephrased this with his arguments concerning God and Substance. The pantheistic view simply says that God is existence. Everything which exists is a part of God. Nothing can exist outside of existence--because then it wouldn't be "existence." The very concept of "existence" denies the possibility of anything external to it. Even if a heaven is postulated, it must still be part of existence. Bring in alternate "planes of existence" or "modes of being," it's still all part of a single, unified Existence.
The philosophy of pantheism is, quite simply, based on the essence and nature of existence. There is and can be nothing but existence. There is and can be nothing but God.
This also avoids the two major problems with personal theism. Because evil is part of existence, it's also part of God. Once we acknowledge God as amoral (not immoral), and once we acknowledge God as impersonal, we are released from the fear and threat of suffering being the commandment or whimsy of a divine father. Because evil and suffering take place naturally, we're free to deal with them ourselves, to the best of our ability.
We must not wait for a second coming or divine rescue from what we've made of the world. This is our responsibility.
Monday, March 22, 2010
I [heart] metaphysics!
Here, have an ontological argument from Spinoza's Ethics:
Proposition 11. God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.
Demonstration. If this be denied, conceive, if it be possible, that God does not exist. Then it follows that His essence does not involve existence. But this is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists. Q.E.D.
For newbies, an ontological argument is taken to be a statement purporting to "prove" the existence of God. (Think of a geometrical "proof" and you've got the idea.) And on some level, that's exactly what it is. But the other purpose for the ontological argument is that it serves as the foundation for a specific theology. It's the statement of a worldview, usually with God at the center.
The basis of Spinoza's theology is not God's existence; it's that God is existence. The proof of God's existence is that existence, well, exists. At the same time, it's a statement about the divine nature of existence.
***
One of the basic premises of pantheism, especially as constructed by the Stoics, is that one of God's attributes (even the main one, depending on who you ask) is Reason. Justin Martyr, a Stoic of the Christian tradition, decided that since Christ was the embodiment of Logos, anyone who ruled their life through the use of Reason was a good Christian. This even included pre-Christian philosophers like Heraclitus and Socrates. (A popular theory among Jewish and Christian philosophers of the time was that the early Greeks had somehow gotten their hands on the Torah, and that's why Greek philosophy made so much sense!)
Spinoza developed this further by explaining (in his usual convoluted way) that Reason and reality are just two sides of the same coin.
From part 2 of the Ethics:
Proposition 7. the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
... [E]verything which can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance pertains entirely to the one sole substance only, and consequently that substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute and now under that. Thus, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing expressed in two different ways ... .
[Gesundheit.]
Spinoza, of course, lived shortly after Descartes, who (in)famously decided that mind and body were completely separate--thus creating a paradox that philosophy wasted hundreds of years trying to solve (a guy named Malebranche, for instance, turned God into a phone switch operator between mind and body). Spinoza's two-sided coin doesn't say that mind and matter coincide, or are connected, or are best buddies. They're the same sentence, spoken in two different languages.
Unlike in classical theism, Logos doesn't come in to redeem the world; Logos is the world.
Marcus Aurelius says, "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
***
In the Appendix to the first part of his Ethics, Spinoza has this to say:
...[I]t is commonly supposed that all things in nature, like men, work to some end; and indeed it is thought to be certain that God Himself directs all things to some sure end, for it is said that God has made all things for man, and man that he may worship God. ... This is the reason why each man has devised for himself, out of his own brain, a different mode of worshiping God, so that God might love him above others, and direct all nature to the service of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice.
Thus has this prejudice been turned into a superstition and has driven deep roots into the mind--a prejudice which was the reason why everyone has so eagerly tried to discover and explain the final causes of things. The attempt, however, to show that nature does nothing in vain (that is to say, nothing which is not profitable to man), seems to end in showing that nature, the gods, and man are alike mad.
[Pause for three cheers!]
To broaden/deepen/support that, a verse from the Tao te Ching:
Nature is not kind;
It treats all things impartially.
The Sage is not kind,
And treats all people impartially.
Nature is like a bellows,
Empty, yet never ceasing its supply.
The more it moves, the more it yields;
So the sage draws upon experience
And cannot be exhausted.
The most important part of pantheist theology: God is not a Person.
As a last, rather funny note, here's what Spinoza thought about the devil, from his Short Treatise on God:
If the devil is a thing which is entirely opposed to God and has nothing from Him, he is absolutely indistinguishable from the Nothing of which we have already spoken. But, if we suppose with some that the devil is a thinking thing, who neither wills nor does anything whatever that is good, he is certainly most miserable, and if prayers could help him we ought to pray for his conversion.
Proposition 11. God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.
Demonstration. If this be denied, conceive, if it be possible, that God does not exist. Then it follows that His essence does not involve existence. But this is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists. Q.E.D.
For newbies, an ontological argument is taken to be a statement purporting to "prove" the existence of God. (Think of a geometrical "proof" and you've got the idea.) And on some level, that's exactly what it is. But the other purpose for the ontological argument is that it serves as the foundation for a specific theology. It's the statement of a worldview, usually with God at the center.
The basis of Spinoza's theology is not God's existence; it's that God is existence. The proof of God's existence is that existence, well, exists. At the same time, it's a statement about the divine nature of existence.
***
One of the basic premises of pantheism, especially as constructed by the Stoics, is that one of God's attributes (even the main one, depending on who you ask) is Reason. Justin Martyr, a Stoic of the Christian tradition, decided that since Christ was the embodiment of Logos, anyone who ruled their life through the use of Reason was a good Christian. This even included pre-Christian philosophers like Heraclitus and Socrates. (A popular theory among Jewish and Christian philosophers of the time was that the early Greeks had somehow gotten their hands on the Torah, and that's why Greek philosophy made so much sense!)
Spinoza developed this further by explaining (in his usual convoluted way) that Reason and reality are just two sides of the same coin.
From part 2 of the Ethics:
Proposition 7. the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
... [E]verything which can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance pertains entirely to the one sole substance only, and consequently that substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute and now under that. Thus, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing expressed in two different ways ... .
[Gesundheit.]
Spinoza, of course, lived shortly after Descartes, who (in)famously decided that mind and body were completely separate--thus creating a paradox that philosophy wasted hundreds of years trying to solve (a guy named Malebranche, for instance, turned God into a phone switch operator between mind and body). Spinoza's two-sided coin doesn't say that mind and matter coincide, or are connected, or are best buddies. They're the same sentence, spoken in two different languages.
Unlike in classical theism, Logos doesn't come in to redeem the world; Logos is the world.
Marcus Aurelius says, "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
***
In the Appendix to the first part of his Ethics, Spinoza has this to say:
...[I]t is commonly supposed that all things in nature, like men, work to some end; and indeed it is thought to be certain that God Himself directs all things to some sure end, for it is said that God has made all things for man, and man that he may worship God. ... This is the reason why each man has devised for himself, out of his own brain, a different mode of worshiping God, so that God might love him above others, and direct all nature to the service of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice.
Thus has this prejudice been turned into a superstition and has driven deep roots into the mind--a prejudice which was the reason why everyone has so eagerly tried to discover and explain the final causes of things. The attempt, however, to show that nature does nothing in vain (that is to say, nothing which is not profitable to man), seems to end in showing that nature, the gods, and man are alike mad.
[Pause for three cheers!]
To broaden/deepen/support that, a verse from the Tao te Ching:
Nature is not kind;
It treats all things impartially.
The Sage is not kind,
And treats all people impartially.
Nature is like a bellows,
Empty, yet never ceasing its supply.
The more it moves, the more it yields;
So the sage draws upon experience
And cannot be exhausted.
The most important part of pantheist theology: God is not a Person.
As a last, rather funny note, here's what Spinoza thought about the devil, from his Short Treatise on God:
If the devil is a thing which is entirely opposed to God and has nothing from Him, he is absolutely indistinguishable from the Nothing of which we have already spoken. But, if we suppose with some that the devil is a thinking thing, who neither wills nor does anything whatever that is good, he is certainly most miserable, and if prayers could help him we ought to pray for his conversion.
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