Thanks for your replies, guys.

It is true that from a purely naturalistic perspective, objective morals cannot be proven. In this vein, I was more interested in describing how religions came to be and how they work, than I was interested in trying to morally justify their existence.

It is true that I look at things from the perspective of Abrahamic religions, but I don't think the main idea that religions can evolve is wrong if there are some religions that don't originate in the idea of sky father.

It sounds like that Dunbar Number is consistent with my guess about the role of religion in forming larger societies. I don't think I had heard of him before, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that other smart people thought of ideas before I did.

I guess the social cost of cannibalism is less if it takes place in very specific circumstances. I don't think the sacrifice of Jesus is like regular cannibalism in social cost because it is a unique circumstance that is not at all transferable to other people. Although, I have heard that the ancient Romans were grossed out by the practice.

As for human sacrifice, we don't have it anymore, do we? One might consider this circumstantial evidence that the practice is not as adaptive as more modern cultural practices.

I meant "beneficial" in the evolutionary sense, in that it aids with survival and reproduction. That's why I followed up with, " ...or else people would either quit believing in it, or the believers would die out." It was not a moral argument.

(re: "common" therefore "beneficial"? like e.g. poor hygiene, bigotry, sex/child abuse, theft/fraud, bullshit/lies, ignorance, superstitions, scapegoating, conspiracy theories, war, poverty, etc) — 180 Proof

I have opinions about why all those things happen, but fully addressing all of them would take a very long time. I will mention a couple things, however. "Ignorance" is the default state, so, it isn't something that needs to be actively maintained. Same for "poverty". "Bigotry" could be beneficial in the evolutionary sense if it harms rival groups more than the in-group. Theft and lies are beneficial for the individual for short-term material benefit, but these behaviors are contrary to the health of the social body, which is why we see the behavior in individuals, but the behaviors tends to be discouraged publicly. In short, one way or another, all these behaviors are good at existing, which is why we see them. Or, in the case of sexual or child abuse, perhaps these behaviors are unhealthy expressions of desires that can at other times be healthy (such as the desire to reproduce, or for social dominance).

The general consensus among Christians is that the resurrection is the good news. If that's not it, then most Christians are mistaken.

If you want to use words the way that other people use them, then I think you have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead to be a Christian, because that's what other Christians believe.

I personally love the teachings of Jesus and find them to be applicable in life, and this does not directly depend on what happened 2000 years ago. So, I could say that I try to follow Jesus, even if I don't have strong faith about the supernatural aspects.

"Christ" has a specific religious meaning. I think it means something like "savior". So, if you don't believe that Jesus saved you from something, then it makes no sense to call one's self a "Christian".

That is an interesting post. I've never thought about it that way before. But is there necessarily a contradiction in existence being evil? I usually think of "is" and "ought" as being separate, so there wouldn't seem to be a contradiction in this case for existence to be evil. However, if "objective" as you're talking about it means that there is an "ought" which is necessarily also an "is", then I suppose there can be an inherent contradiction. If I'm understanding it right, then maybe you have to more clearly define what "objective" means for the proof to hold.

Like if there were a mathematical proof "A" that proof "A" does not exist, then I agree that would be a contradiction. But if there isn't necessarily any correlation between existence and goodness, then I don't think it follows that if a mathematical proof of goodness could exist, that that proof would necessarily be good.

I have a hard time understanding what you mean because you throw out all these terms and I don't know what the terms mean. I had to look up, "Res ipsa loquitur", for instance. And throwing out those terms isn't really an argument unless the person you're speaking to already understands exactly what you mean by those terms, and they understand how you mean to apply them.

wow it sounds like you had almost the exact same idea as me years ago

You asked me to reply to comments that you had previously made.

I don't think I entirely understood the comment about pandeism. It looks like you were arguing that we are all a dream in the mind of God, and it was somehow connected to physics. I suppose I already liked to imagine that God was something like a programmer and that we are the programmed world. I suppose that's very similar to being in the mind of God.

If you define God as the unmoved mover, however, then it does not make sense to say that "everything" is God, in the same way that it would be wrong to say that the world of Minecraft "is" the developer(s) who made it.

I've looked into Spinoza briefly before and it seemed to me that his ideas on God were similar to mine. But it made more sense to me to think using my own brain than to copy what someone else thought.

It's very rare that I meet someone who seems to understand everything I say and mostly agree on everything. When you mostly agree, it's hard to find things to talk about though.

I think in principle, it's probably impossible for us to find a theory of everything. This is because of Geodel's theorem, which if I understand correctly, says that a mathematical system cannot be both complete and consistent. That means for any consistent theory, there will be things that are true but can't be proven. Anything based on logic or math (including science) ought to also be affected by Geodel's theorem.

I think in the case of science, we probably err on the side of inconsistency. This is because for any given phenomena, we can come up for an explanation for it. But we might not have worked out all the implications of our explanations. An example of a historical inconsistency was that in Maxwell's equations, you can derive the speed of light irrespective of reference frame, but according to the physics of the time, the speed of anything ought to depend on reference frame. A current possible contradiction could be relativity and quantum mechanics (relativity is smooth and deterministic, and quantum mechanics is not). I'm not saying that science is all wrong and I'm smarter than all the physicists in the world. I can't point at exactly where the contradiction is, but based off Goedel's theorem, it's probably there somewhere.

Going back to God, if there is such a thing as a necessary premise or a first premise which is complete in itself and from which we can derive everything else, then it breaks Geodel's theorem (or is altogether outside the bounds of human logic). But if there is no such thing, and Geodel's theorem holds for all things whatsoever, then does that indicate that reality itself is incomplete or inconsistent? It is rather unsettling. It is another indication that it is beyond our power to know the ultimate truths.

I was imagining that Flannel Jesus was going to keep attacking my premises, and realized that my reasons for coming up with this philosophy were very subjective.

At one time I was really trying to be a Christian, but was frustrated by a couple things. One frustration was that there didn't seem to be any evidence to me that I was actually in a relationship with God. Another was that adhering to one tradition or another opened one's self up to having literal interpretations of Bible passages being disproven by science. And a general life frustration was that many things did not seem to be going my way. So, this philosophy answers these problems by not requiring for there to be any covenant with God, not being offensive to my intellect (such as by asking me to believe something that seemed contrary to scientific evidence), and by helping me find meaning even when my personal goals were failing.

Since we cannot observe values with our eyes, in a certain sense, all of our moral systems are just made-up. This is probably why it can be nigh impossible to bring another person around to your way of thinking in the religious/moral sphere. A person with different experiences or temperament could not be influenced by my philosophy the same way I am. I think it is a good thing to explicitly spell our one's moral assumptions as I have done, because at least this is honest. It think the new atheist types that just attack everything are unaware of what the foundation of their values is. They can poke holes in other people's beliefs, but they are not self-aware enough to even know that they have moral beliefs of their own which others could theoretically poke holes in, if they were to formulate their beliefs.

I haven't read all the replies yet, so I don't know if somebody else has said the same thing. The idea that you could replace any principle with an anti-principle was new to me, and it seems true. Although, I have for a long time thought that the principles in moral systems were arbitrarily asserted, I thought that was just unavoidable. I don't know if it can really work to build a moral system off experience, since we only have experience of particulars. We can say, "I liked this particular event and I didn't like this other particular event," but as soon as we say, "I like events that are similar to this event," then we have entered into an abstraction and thus a principle.

I am not sure I understood everything. Maybe you should have given examples to illustrate your points.

I don't know if this is relevant here, but your post reminded me of a difference between people theorized by the MBTI. It says that some people see the past as a series of concrete events, and the present as an abstraction of what could happen right now (Si + Ne). Other people see the past as an abstraction of the general trend of what happened, and the present as the concrete of what is right here right now (Ni + Se). Your discussion of how we experience a chain of events reminded me of Si (introverted sensing), which although true, is not my default conception of the world (being an INTJ with lead Ni). I have a general sense of what I like and don't like, sometimes without remembering most of the specific instances that led me to those preferences. I don't know if this is true, but imagining a moral system built off experience makes me imagine my wife, who is an ISTJ. She, for instance, had the experience that her dad's car was from 2005 and it broke down a lot, so she is convinced that we can never own a car as old as 2005 (rather than abstracting out the general rule that old cars require more maintenance). As another example, many of the men she met in her life who had beards were dirty hobos, and thus she hates beards and expects me to shave. This seems silly to me, but shaving my beard seems like a small compromise to make for an otherwise easy-going wife.

Thanks for your kind words.

There are other possible choices.
4. Causation is not a valid, or at least not the only valid, way of thinking about how the universe works. This is mainstream philosophical position.
5. The universe is eternal. It's always been here and always will be. It never began and was never caused. — T Clark

4 is a valid alternative, although it does mean that logic/science would not work to describe uncausal things.

5 seems to me to be the same as 2. If the universe is infinitely old and one thing causes another, then that is an infinite regression of causes. Although an infinite regression of causes isn't necessarily limited by time. For instance, if there were an infinitely old universe with fixed laws of physics, you could still ask, "Where did the laws of physics come from?" If the laws of physics don't come from anything, then I guess they would be God (the uncaused cause).

What you say may be true for deductive logic, but not for inductive. Inductive logics job, if you want to look at it that way, is to generate premises for deductive logic to work on. — T Clark

I think inductive logic can argue for plausibility, but it can't prove unique truth.

I love the world. I can't believe how wonderful it is. Seems like you feel something similar. There are many people here on the forum and in the world who have a much sourer take. They are unlikely to find your approach useful. — T Clark

Actually, I developed this philosophy to counter my natural sourness. I think it has helped. Changing one's thoughts really can change one's emotional state. I can tell myself (and believe it) that even if I don't feel grateful right now, there is cause to be grateful, so that not feeling it is a problem with me and not with the world .

I forgive you. I may have been overly emotional to criticism because this idea is important to me.

I think this is where I got the idea of mocking from, "I don't give a shit if you wipe your ass with it"

I am aware that I can't prove that it is the way I spelled out here. I did mention that I can't prove that there is a creator God (although that's a plausible possibility), and that finding utility in creation being personal might come merely from the fact that humans are hardwired to be social. So, pointing out that things might not be as I suppose doesn't seem to really be proving anything, it's just rejecting the premises. I suppose I have to concede that even if there is a creator God, then there is the possibility that the purpose of creation is utterly unknown to us.

I suppose the only thing that is strictly implied by God creating the world is that God thought it was good (or else why would he create it?) I suppose it's technically a possibility that God thinking something is good has no bearing on whether we think it's good, but in this case, it's hard to imagine what possible basis for morality could exist at all. I don't even think that this idea of a possible conflict between God's desires and ours runs entirely counter to the train of thought in the original post, because I was talking near the end about how God sees beauty in things that are far outside the scope of my own personal desires. I suppose a moral presupposition here is that it is good to submit ourselves to God's way of valuing things, but the alternative would mean hating existence, which does not seem very pleasant.

I suppose I think the utility of this worldview is that it is a minimalistic explanation for existence which is consistent with our experience that simultaneously provides a metaphysical framework for valuing existence for its own sake.

All morality depends on arbitrary assertions, since we cannot directly observe values. I do not think you could come up with a moral system which did not take SOMETHING for granted. So, I did not find it very useful to point out that my assumptions might not be true. The only constructive thing that could come from that is forcing me to more concretely spell out my assumptions. I suppose I thought that the original assumptions were that there is a creator God and that we can learn how he values existence by observing existence, and you pointed out that this only makes sense if we care about what God thinks.

The fact that you are arguing about this makes me think that you didn't read past the paragraph that you quoted. The idea is that everything exists for it's own sake, which is the impression you get from nature, since it seems to exist without a known greater purpose. I suppose it's possible that it exists with a purpose utterly unknown to us, but in that case, the philosophy is pointless. The point of deism here is a foil for finding beauty and meaning in life. I suppose you could simply assert that every existing thing is beautiful without reference to God, but a creator God provides a plausible metaphysical explanation for why everything is intrinsically beautiful. I am wondering whether I'm wasting my time though, since it seems like you're just looking for the first thing you can mock without even trying to understand the whole idea. Yes, it's entirely true that the idea has unjustifiable premises, and if you reject the premises, then the whole idea makes no sense. But every idea is like that. I do think this idea has some merit though, in that it is at least consistent with observation, and it provides a metaphysical framework for a moral system.

Well, you can interpret the moral implications however you want. However, it seems intuitive that just as an engineer has a special right to say what his widget is for, or an artist has a special right to say what is painting represents, so likewise would a creator God have a special right to say what his creation is for. But I suppose if you want to say that you'll use the widget for whatever you like, or interpret the painting however you like, even quite contrary to the creator's intentions, then there is nothing stopping you.

If you want just a yes/no answer, then I'll say, "No"

I don't really disagree strongly with anything you said. it's hard for me to say much when I agree because there is really nothing to argue about.

I would argue that we are already halfway to communism. Having a central bank and public schooling are communist tenants. Private property rights are also being eroded by things like the eviction moratorium during covid. It could get worse in the future.

I think libertarians are closest to the original idea of the USA. But I think the USA was de facto Christian when it was built. The separation of church and state was made when the choices were basically Catholic and different kinds of Protestantism, and was made to avoid bickering between Christian denominations (I think they didn't want anything like the 30 years war happening in the USA). However, the people at the time had broadly Christian values, even if they didn't explicitly write them into law. So, I don't see the the Christian fundamentalists as being entirely contrary to the original spirit of the USA, even if they are contrary to the letter of the law.

As for abolishing political parties, I think it sounds good in theory, but it's not going to happen practically. I suppose my original discussion was also entirely theoretical.

Western civilization is founded on INDIVIDUAL freedom and responsibility. The idea of reparations makes no sense unless you view justice on a racial rather than an individual level. Entertaining this idea means that you totally disbelieve in western values.

I would argue that a civilization is founded upon common moral ideas. Since your moral ideas are outside the western view, that would make you a barbarian from the point of view of westerners like myself.

Reparations also could not be implemented without theft. So, you are advocating for theft. And you are advocating for theft from me, because I am a white person. It is extremely ugly to try to convince the potential victim of a robbery that you are morally justified in robbing him.

Welfare is bad for its recipients. It makes them dependent. Black families were doing better back in the 1970s before the welfare programs started to really take off. More of them were married in stable families and had jobs. There was less gang sh*t and looting. A common thing that happens in poor communities is that the mothers realize they can get more money from the government if they're single, so they kick the dad out of the home to get the money. Then the children grow up messed up because there was no father in the home.

Blacks are already receiving welfare. If I understand correctly, because of the welfare state, only White men and Asian men as groups pay net taxes. All other groups are net drains on the tax base because of welfare. So, they have ALREADY been receiving reparations (and I'm not happy about it).

Now suppose I were forced to see people in terms of their race rather than as individuals, because the rest of my society forced it on me. Why should I fight for the enemy team? I might sooner be in favor of reintroducing segregation/slavery than of reparations.

This idea also shows a complete lack of historical knowledge. Most slaves in history were white. Or more specifically, a lot of them were slavs. I might be wrong on this, but I think the word "slav" and "slave" might be related, because of how common it was for slavs to be taken as slaves by muslims. Vikings sometimes sailed down the Volga river to kidnap slavs and sell them to muslims in Baghdad. Do the Scandinavians and Muslims owe Russia reparations?

The muslims on the Barbary coast also sometimes kidnapped whites all across the Mediterranean. I suppose most of the descendants of these slaves are still mixed into the muslim population. Do the muslims owe themselves reparations?

In the black slave trade, African kings kidnapped their own people to sell them to Jewish traders, who then sold them again to white American plantation owners. Do the Jews and Africans still living in Africa owe black Americans reparations?

Probably some of the lighter-skinned blacks in America got that way because one of their distant ancestors was r*ped by their white owner. So, they are descended both from slaves and slave owners. Do they owe themselves reparations?

The population gets thoroughly mixed over a long period of time, so that probably everybody had slave and slave-owning ancestors if you go back to the Bronze Age. Does everybody owe themselves reparations?

There are also some whites who never owned slaves or had colonial empires (at least not since the Bronze Age). Finland never had a colonial empire. And so far as I'm aware, my ancestors were Americans who settled in Kansas (a free state), and some of the more recent immigrants came from England and the Czech Republic. So, it's likely that none of them owned a black slave. Even if a person is guilty for the sins of his ancestors, I don't think my ancestors committed this particular sin. And none of the Fins did.

I believe when the idea of reparations comes from black people, it is grab for power and money. When it comes from a white person, it probably means that he still feels guilty about original sin, but isn't a Christian anymore, so that he finds some other BS to feel guilty about other than Adam eating that apple.

I read your post. It sounds like you are offering your own political model rather than addressing much of anything I wrote. I might read the wiki page on systems science. I'd never heard of it before your post.

Then the model is fatally flawed. Consider any real-life human being. Does he or she really only need or want one singular function from their society? Or in their life? — Vera Mont

If having axes make a model flawed, then all models are flawed. It sounds like you're describing 3 disconnected points rather than a triangle with an area.

I don't really disagree with anything you said, so I don't have much to say in reply. I do think that most political opinions are cultural. I do not think my distaste for communism comes from being an American. I know from history that communist states are tyrannical, I think I understand conceptually why that is, and history shows that communism and food are bitter enemies. I am not for sure why those who are similar seem to fight more.

I believe the state's primary purpose is to use force to limit freedom of action in zero sum games. "Zero sum games" here mean stuff like murder and theft. If someone steals from me, I lose and he wins, so it's a zero sum game. If I go to work and help my boss make money and he gives some of it to me, then we both win, so that's not a zero-sum game, and the state doesn't need to be involved. I would much rather have a state that is zealous in punishing criminals than not have one, because otherwise I'd have to protect myself and my property against every other person by my own violence.

For most things, I think the free market does a better job than the state, because the people involved know what they are doing and they care about it. The state, on the other hand, does not know the details of people's lives and doesn't care. However, when it comes to crime, the person I'm dealing with actively wishes me harm. In that case, I'd prefer the indifference and incompetence of the state over deliberate malice any day.

So, I believe that the survival of a half-decent state is much better for the people than anarchy. Anarchy means that murder and theft go unpunished. I suppose from the point of view of "rights", taxation is questionable, even if it goes towards good ends, because it's involuntary. But it is hard to imagine a system of justice that would work with voluntary donations.

It makes sense to me that anything which imperfectly replicates itself will be subject to Darwinian evolution. In that case, cultures and governments do evolve. They are just imperfectly replicated generation after generation through tradition rather than through genes. From a Darwinian perspective, you'd expect that if the state were entirely useless and stupid, that any people who lived without a state would prosper and their way of life would spread, so that states would not be common anymore. States are ubiquitous, however, so from the evolutionary perspective, you'd expect that they serve some necessary function, even if you didn't know what it was.

It makes sense to me that the smallest self sustaining unit of humanity is the tribe. I'd define "tribe" here as a group of people who work and breed together. An individual is not self-sustaining because all men are mortal (making all of your own food/clothes/shelter/tools would also be very difficult). So you might see the "state" (or any governing body down to a local tribal chief) as the organizational body of the tribe. Without a government, the tribe would behave randomly because it is a sum of loose individuals. If there is ever a situation where it would be beneficial for the group to work together for a common goal, then a government would be useful. I am aware that sometimes governments are very bad and are worse than individuals behaving randomly without guidance.

From your post, it seems like you are firmly in the "freedom" camp.

"TFM" means "Turd Flinging Monkey". That's what he calls himself. He has been banished from most platforms because he says sexist things. I like to listen to him because I think he is smart and he makes me think about things. I thought the political trichotomy model he presented (I don't think he invented it) was better than the more common one, but I couldn't find anyone else who talked about.

I like the 2nd amendment too. I think it's not useful though if people don't have discernment about when to use it. IMO, the first red line that was crossed that was worth rebelling over was the creation of the federal reserve in 1913, and there have been many more red lines crossed since then. So, I tend to think of the US Republic as being in the past tense.

Yea maybe my word choice wasn't the best. I guess I think emotions provide the motivation for thinking, but I suppose a thinking process can work just fine once it gets going without further emotional input.

I happen to believe that the functionally unified, normative, goal-oriented organization of living systems is what consciousness is in its most primordial sense, so what distinguishes humans and higher animals from simpler ones isn’t an all-or-nothing capacity of consciousness, but a matter of degree. Neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio assert that there can be no consciousness without emotion. It has also been suggested that there can be no emotion without consciousness, that unconscious affect is a non-sequitor. — Joshs

I agree with this. I thought of consciousness as just being, "having a model of the self," and this can clearly occur in degrees. And as I said before, it seems to me that reason and emotion are inseparable in their operation.

Consciously thinking about what things we ought to consider good and bad is the point of this discussion. Because of the arbitrariness of value-assertion, using an external guide as a rule (such as a religious tradition) can be very helpful.
— Brendan Golledge

Are you particularly concerned by what we use as an external guide? Isn't this itself arbitrary too? We can pick secular humanism, a political ideology or fundamentalist Islam. How do we know which oughts and ought nots within a system are useful or 'correct'. Seems we have to step outside of the external guide to make an assessment.

Where we obtain our oughts from is itself a curious thing - it appears to be contingent and may have nothing to do with right or wrong (in a more transcendent sense), just perceptions of right or wrong. Isn't it the case that oughts and ought nots are located in the contingent system of values we gain through culture and experience? Some of these might coalesce into a system of sorts. Isn't morality essentially an intersubjective agreement, with many outliers and willing transgressors? — Tom Storm

I am very happy to talk about this. But based on the reception to my previous posts, I thought I'd wait for someone to bring it up rather than write a book in my original post.

I like Christian morality a lot. I think the early Christians and Jews were maybe the most interested in righteous living of any people ever. The primary area where I would disagree with them is that I don't believe in an afterlife, so that I do not like the suicidal altruism prescribed in Christianity.

I thought a lot about how I could create a moral system. It is hard when you don't have faith in the literal truth of religious stories because you can't prove your morals to another person. However, I think I have found a semi-objective basis for morality.

One observation is that it appears that only living beings have the experience of "good" and "bad". So, we can conclude that the only moral judgments that can have any effect on the material world are behavioral prescriptions for living beings. For instance, asserting that elliptical orbits are good/bad would be useless. But telling people that murder is bad is likely to have an effect on the murder rate.

Also, it is a logical truism that a moral system (or any other thing) which would destroy itself will not survive very long. So, if we want our moral system to not be in vain, then our moral system must be good at multiplying and preserving itself. This likely includes multiplying and preserving the people who believe in it, since moral systems cannot exist outside of believers.

It also seems true that, all else being equal, feeling good is better than feeling bad. Feeling good about doing good also encourages you to do more of it.

So, if we want our morals to have an effect on the world and be long-lasting, then we should have a moral system that prescribes behavior for living beings that is effective at perpetuating the morals that they believe in, and which they enjoy doing.

Purely individualistic morals are not sustainable in human societies (however appealing they may be emotionally), because all men are mortal. The individualistic morality that a person holds will die with him. The only morals that can be passed down from generation to generation are those that perpetuate the survival of the tribe that believes in them.

I like to think of these as, "God's morals," because whatever we think morality ought to be, these are probably the morals that WILL BE.

Of course, this is not a complete morality. I think it is a good basis for a morality though. It is objective whether a thing (such as yourself) exists or does not exist. So, that is a good foundation. On many particular moral issues, I try to work through what I think makes sense, and often find that I come to similar conclusions as traditional moralities. One would expect that traditional moralities are good at surviving if you think that the history of moral development in culture is an evolutionary process.

I have come up with several parallel moral rules which seem to be consistent.

One is that the above discussion seems to lead to enlightened self-interest.
I am a body -- so taking care of my health is good
I am a mind -- so learning things and otherwise using my mind is good
I am a "heart" -- so seeking after the good is good
I am a cell in a social body -- so trying to do good to my social unit (in-so-far as they are not pursuing useless and self-destructive things) is good
I am a "child of god"/"part of the universe" -- so if I think I've found some other objective meaning to my life, then it's good to do that too

Here are some rules for life that I think are the best I've come up with so far:
1. Think continually on what is good.
2. Test your ideas. Try to prove yourself wrong.
3. Do your best, and try to be content with this.

I could write a whole other post on why I like these rules. One feature of these 3 rules is that they don't posit final answers, but only ask you to seek them. It is not a coincidence that I chose these 3, because the metaphysics I came up with a few years ago says that all human experience can be decomposed into values, reason, and sensory experience. So the 3 rules engage these 3 areas.

Recently I came up with these a hierarchy of values:
1. Love truth
2. Try to survive (also help your social unit).
Later (3?) All else being equal, try to feel good

Trying to survive seems like an objective first value, because it's not possible for you to do anything else if you are dead. But I think it is hard to survive if you don't know the truth, so truth can come even earlier because it is a prerequisite. And feeling good comes last, because it's obviously good to feel good, but I don't like tricking one's self in deceitful ways into feeling good. One could argue that maybe feeling good is the 3rd value, because apart from surviving, what values you choose are kind of arbitrary (like whether you'd rather go to the movies or play a game). So, I'm not certain, but maybe nothing is in between surviving and feeling good.


A thought experiment I had a few years ago which I like is, "What's the worst that can possibly happen, and how does that compare to real life?" The worst thing I could think of at the time was that a meteor hit the Earth and killed all life. I thought, "Would Earth then be evil?" I thought that Mars has no life (so far as we know), and we don't consider it to be evil, so Earth would probably not be evil either. I thought that if the worst I can think of is not evil, then real life must be net good.

It seems to be possible to say that any positively existing thing is good, and bad is only the loss of good. For instance, we usually feel pain when our health is deteriorating. But we have to have health before we can lose it. And we typically consider murder to be bad because it takes away from the positive goodness of the life of a man. So, life is good, because God can't take anything from you that he didn't give you first.

I suppose if there were an everlasting hell where people were tortured horribly and arbitrarily forever, then that would be bad. But this is not possible in a naturalistic mindset.

I'm not aware that these ideas have a name. One name I considered giving it was, "existence philosophy".

One fun thing about the arbitrariness of value assertion is that you can assert almost anything and it will become true. For instance, I could assert, "The sky is beautiful, and seeing it is already enough to make the day worth it," and if I believe it, it will be true (at least to me). This only works though for value assertions which make no false claims about material reality. Something which I think is common in modern morality is that people tell themselves, "It is good that people are equal." I do not believe that material equality between people actually exists. So people who take this as a moral precept get offended by people who try to tell them how the world really works. I could assert to myself now, "It is very good that I have shared these ideas. If other people read them and think about them, then they are also doing good." I already feel a bit better.

Sometimes value assertion doesn't work. Like if I really wanted to do something else that I wasn't able to do (like maybe if I was single and didn't want to be), then telling yourself stuff which you don't really believe (like that I'm happy with my current life circumstances) won't work. In this case, you need to either work to improve your life circumstances (which is never 100% within your control), or do some serious introspection about what I really want out of life and why (which is always at least a little bit within your control). But if something really seems to be good, it seems to me that it's better to at least try, even if it doesn't work. Effort towards doing the good always seems praiseworthy.

Emotions developed early in our species evolutionary history and parts of the brain involved in emotions are located in more "primitive" areas, i.e. in the pre-cortex. In that context, what does "values are the root of our emotional experience" even mean? To over-simplify, the emotions were there first. They are part of the foundation of our thinking and were there long before consciousness. — T Clark

(Value) + (Perceived event related to that value) -> emotion

I will try to give a new example from recent experience. My wife hates it when I have holes in my clothes, and I don't care. She values how I appear to other people, and I don't. Offense is the feeling of hating facts. So, when she sees that I have holes in my clothes, she becomes offended. I see the holes, but I have no emotional response because I don't care how other people perceive me. Likewise, if my wife did not see the holes, then she would not be offended (she doesn't perceive the relevant event).

To use an old example, if you thought that somebody had stolen your money, then you'd probably be angry. This is because you (probably) care about money, and anger is the feeling that comes when you are aware that somebody is attacking something you care about. If you realized that instead you had just lost the money (change of perceived event), then you'd probably be sad rather than angry. Likewise, if you decided that you didn't care about the money (change of value), then you would not have an emotional reaction to losing it.

I think in lower animals, good = pleasure and bad = pain. However, humans, as I said in the original post, can invent all manner of good and bad separate from our immediate material needs. Love of money is an example. A wild man who grew up without the concept of money would probably have no emotional reaction (other than maybe curiosity) at being given paper bills or having them taken away.

Edit: So, to more directly answer the quote. I agree that emotions have been there for a long time, but I am arguing that values are how they operate. The most typical value assertion is that pleasure = good and pain = bad, but that humans can choose other values (although they often don't do this consciously).

There is so much to reply to, I don't know if I can get to all of it.

It all comes down to "why do anything?". Once you go through the dialectic, it leads to questioning procreation and survival. And rightfully, it questions modern secular philosophies like hedonism, "economics as religion", and existentialism. This doesn't mean to then turn to the warm embrace of religion. That is a falsehood as well.

However, the universality of some religious ideas (the One, Nirvana, etc.) can counteract the absurdity of minutia-mongering. If you JUST figured out how that transmission works, you would be a better person, more useful. If you JUST figured out how to start an innovative X, more useful. If you JUST figured out how to solve the meaning and essence of words (philosophy of language debates), or the best physics model (theoretical physics debates), or know the intricate details of any subject, you will be edified with your knowledge. You will be BETTER, you will be USEFUL. QUESTION ALL OF THIS THINKING, whether you think minutia-mongering is more USEFUL, makes you BETTER, or you think MEANING comes from delving deeper into the minutia of a topic at hand you think is important.

As for the "religious experience", people generally seem to mean "flow states" or "meditative psychological states". These are ways to preoccupy the chatter of the restless mind. — schopenhauer1

As for the first paragraph, it seems to me that all values are arbitrarily asserted. So you have to arbitrarily decide whether life is worth living, and then go from there. I have decided that it is worth living.

It seems like the second paragraph is how we often get stuck looking for the "next thing".

I'm aware that religious experience often is associated with alternative states of mind, which I think are still important. I am more concerned with changing the general/usual state of mind.

Sounds like a fairly conservative take on good. I am uncertain what 'good' means and how it can be identified. The only thing I can say is that to cause suffering deliberately would appear to be bad. Does it follow that to prevent suffering is good?

Aren't all human choices motivated by wanting to feel satisfied in some way, regardless of whether it involves pleasure or pain? Isn't that why we have the idea of psychological egoism? Even when people act in ways that appear to be self-sacrificing or aimed at benefiting others, they are actually motivated by the pursuit of personal satisfaction, whether it be through direct pleasure, the avoidance of guilt, or the fulfilment of a sense of duty.

Doing good to satisfy a philosophy or please a god would ultimately seem to be a pursuit of personal pleasure. Do you think one can transcend self-interest? — Tom Storm

First paragraph. I think values are arbitrarily asserted. Although in a state of nature, before a person has developed much, it seems like good is associated with pleasure and bad is associated with pain. However, humans can learn to associate good and bad with almost anything as adults. Consciously thinking about what things we ought to consider good and bad is the point of this discussion. Because of the arbitrariness of value-assertion, using an external guide as a rule (such as a religious tradition) can be very helpful.

Second paragraph: I know subjectively speaking, I might think to myself, "I'd rather be playing video games, but it would be better for me to do the dishes," and then I will do the dishes. So my subjective experience is that I don't always do what I want. I suppose it could be argued that I get some satisfaction from doing the right thing, or that I really just don't want to feel guilty, or that I don't want to have to eat off a dirty plate later. Or maybe I choose to do the dishes because I know that otherwise my wife would do them, and I want to make things easier on her. It seems to me that if it is possible to think that I am good and therefore I do good things for myself, then it ought to be possible to think that another person is good for their own sake, and to want to do good things for that person (although this kind of thought probably requires some degree of training). It might be possible that if I didn't get some kind of personal satisfaction somewhere deep inside from helping another person, that I wouldn't do it. But my subjective experience is that I can value another person for his/her own sake.

Perhaps this is a problem with considering a monastic life to be conducive to developing psychological insight? Considered from a neuroscientific perspective, a monastic life could be considered to be starving one's brain of the input that comes with interacting with diverse people in diverse situations. It doesn't seem to me like a monastic life would be very conducive to developing robust intuitons regarding human psychology.

To take it back to Christianity, do you think the diversity of people who Jesus is purported to have associated with might have been relevant to Jesus being particularly psychologically insightful? — wonderer1

I actually lived at a monastery once, and it was very useful for learning about myself. I would not have gotten the psychological insight that I have without having been at the monastery. I suppose if I lived my whole life at the monastery, however, without having had experience of the broader world, then I probably would not be as psychologically developed.

If I understand the story of Jesus correctly, he was basically a mature person and ready to do his mission by the time he was 30. Maybe he developed more after that, but it seems like he was mostly already who he was by the time he started ministering.

Well, obviously all of our instincts, desires, and emotions are wired to keep us alive. But it seems to me that the way emotions do that is that they make us try to make ourselves happy. It seems like a common-sense thing that we prefer to be happy rather than sad.
— Brendan Golledge

You make two unrelated statements. First you say the way emotions help keep us alive is to try to make ourselves happy. This is mostly wrong. Then you say that we prefer to be happy than sad, which is generally true, but irrelevant. — T Clark

I don't understand what the problem is. I would assume that most of the stuff that makes us happy would have been useful for our ancestors for staying alive, and that therefore aiming towards happiness is generally useful for our survival. This seems to me to be the same as that we prefer to be happy than sad. Where is the confusion?

Next you argue about instincts/desires/emotions. It seems to me that you are arguing about the definition of words. I realize that if you're talking about how those words are commonly used, then what I said was not right. But when I was talking about instincts/desires/emotions, I was giving definitions that I find useful for the purpose of discussion. They seem to me to be a complete description of the sensations that we feel that encourage us to do one thing or another.

This seems like a very simplistic analysis. More than that - it's presumptuous unless you are a student of religion, which you indicate you are not. — T Clark

I have not studied every single religion in the world in-depth (although I do have a cursory knowledge of Taoism, which you mentioned before). I have studied Christianity a great deal. I even lived at a monastery for a few months.

I disagree with just about everything in this paragraph. — T Clark

Lots of people have told me things like, "What you said is contradictory", or "I disagree", but if they don't provide an argument, then I have no reason to change my mind.

Re Kafka - I suspect that if you don't discover him in your 20's, he may be less affecting. I like The Metamorphosis and The Trial best. — Tom Storm

I think I was made to read, "The Metamorphosis" in high school. I only understood it at the surface level that some dude turned into a bug, and that it was meant to be a horror story. If there was some kind of psychological lesson to be learned from the story, then I missed it.

Considering that psychology is a science
— wonderer1

Hardly. Surely not in the sense he is meaning there: giving explanation to natural events (Zeus and lightning). — Lionino

I don't think there is much knowledge of physical sciences in religion. But I do think that religion is how people understood their psychology. The morals of the people were embedded in their religious stories.

Even though I don't believe in the literal truth of these stories, I am still inspired by them sometimes. The first example that comes to mind is that in Norse mythology, all the gods know ahead of time who they are going to fight in ragnarok, and that they will all die. But they all choose to go fight anyway. This seems inspiring to me. It seems to me to be a good thing that even if things are bad and you know you can't win, it is good to fight anyway. But in real life, we don't have prophecy, so we never really know with certainty that something is hopeless, like the Norse god do.

People are born without instruction manuals. The only instruction manuals are written by other players. So, I think it's no wonder that people got everything mixed up. Ancient people likely didn't have the concepts of "objective" (existing independently of the self) and "subjective" (occurring from within the self), or the idea of the unconscious, so it's no wonder that they got everything all mixed up. Google says that the first occurrence of the word unconscious was only a few hundred years ago. It seems to me that if people didn't even have a word for a thing, then they likely didn't have the concept either. But we have the experience that thoughts and feelings come to us from we know not where. So where did people think that they came from? They thought their spontaneous inner experiences came from gods (like Aphrodite = lust and Ares = anger), or from angels and demons. So, in a certain sense, people really did experience their gods. Modern people just don't believe in their interpretations of their experiences. So, although most religious people don't know this, their religious beliefs are actually how they model their psychology.

The paragraph does seem to be consonant with recent thinking on the relation between affectivity, cognition and values. For instance, enactivist approaches to cognitive psychology insist that cognitive and affective processes are closely interdependent, with affect, emotion and sensation functioning in multiple ways and at multiple levels to situate or attune the context of our conceptual dealings with the world , and that affective tonality is never absent from cognition. As Matthew Ratcliffe puts it, — Joshs

I don't really disagree with anything you said there. What I said was a simplification. I realize that emotions don't occur without a thinking process, or without knowledge of events. I also think that we wouldn't think much without emotions. Without some kind of stimulant like an emotion, our brains would probably just sit there doing nothing like a computer that is not receiving instruction. So in a very simplified sense, our values determine our emotional responses, our emotions determine what we think about, and we select our behavior from our thoughts.

Positivist approaches in psychology were based on the same assumptions concerning human behavior, which is why they excluded ‘unobservable and untestable’ concepts like emotion and cognition from their models. Fortunately, things have changed significantly with respect to what is considered empirically testable for both humans and other animals. — Joshs

Part of the point of my original post was that psychology cannot be studied like a hard science because it is difficult/impossible to observe inner psychological states. I was arguing that people ought to be interested in their own psychology as a real subject of study, even if they have to go it alone. And people like myself who make general claims about psychology have a hard time because we can't easily demonstrate that things are the way we say they are.

All thinking animals (such as birds and mammals) appear to be hardwired to try to improve their emotional state
— Brendan Golledge

Contentious statement. First, there is no way of knowing, or of testing, whether animals have emotional states. ‘Thinking animals’ is also a contentious claim, as what ‘thinking’ implies, and whether animals are capable of it, is vaguely defined and probably untestable. Then the first paragraph glides directly into ‘animals such as ourselves’, when it is precisely self-consciousness, language and abstract thought that differentiates h.sapiens from other organisms. Ergo the argument is based on questionable foundations. — Wayfarer

You said yourself in a later post that it's obvious that dogs have feelings.

When I think about what is actually happening when I feel an emotion, it seems clear that it is impossible for it to occur unless some cognitive process has taken place. Take anger, for instance. It seems to me that anger happens when you realize that some entity is attacking something that you care about. How can you figure this out without using your brain? If you aren't awake and paying attention, then it's impossible to feel angry no matter how people may be trying to hurt you at that moment. This is different than physical sensations like hunger and pain, which occur without your conscious participation. So it seems to me that that thinking and feeling go together. And whereas emotions cannot occur at all without a thinking process, emotions in turn guide the topic of thoughts (such as when you're angry, you're likely to think of ways of hurting the person who made you angry).

Oh, and I wasn't thinking of "animals like ourselves" as including a great ability for abstract thought. I was thinking only that they have some capacity to model the world and to feel emotions as a result. It seems obvious to me that all mammals and birds can do this. Reptiles and fish seem to have at least the ability to feel fear and anger. If they didn't, then why would they run/swim away from danger, or why would a crocodile attack things that approach their nests? That they feel fear and anger in a similar manner that we do seems like the most obvious answer.

If human beings prefer to feel happy rather than to feel sad, and if we have the capacity to lie to ourselves, then it seems immediately apparent that we have the problem of lying to ourselves to make ourselves happy. I would think that the main point of disagreement would be how common this is.

Given that there is enormous disagreement about a variety of topics which people have strong opinions about (politics, religion, economics, morality, etc), it seems clear that most people have to be wrong about much of what they believe. If 10 people have conflicting opinions about a subject, then it's clear that it's not possible for more than 1 out of 10 to be right. It is clear that this is the state of affairs for many subjects that people get worked up over. I believe that much of people's false beliefs come from pride, but I admit I have not demonstrated this.

I will give some examples of stuff that I'm guessing may not have been clear.

Starting with how we lie to ourselves: It seems to me that in whatever way a person happens to be gifted, he tends to think that that is the most important thing. For instance, a beautiful woman may think that being beautiful is most important, a smart person may think that being smart is most important (I have done this before), a physically fit person may think that being physically fit is most-important. We tend to elevate whatever we are good at and dismiss whatever we aren't good at.

Much of entertainment involves unconscious deception. It seems to me that fans of spectator sports sometimes get so worked up because they imagine that they actually have some connection to the team involved when they really don't. Video games can give a false sense of accomplishment (I have fallen prey to this). Social media gives a false sense of social validation (I think this is something more common to women). Participating in great and distant causes (like voting for a political party, or giving to a charity to help people in Africa) can be a way of feeling good about ourselves while we neglect the simple and humble things in our own lives that we have much more control over.

I came up with a pride filter once. It seems to me that the only thing that we experience having control over (whether or not free will truly exists) is our choices. So, the only thing it is proper to congratulate ourselves on is that we have made good choices. Self-congratulation about any other thing involves deception, because in reality, anything else good in our lives is outside of our control. It is better in those cases to feel grateful. I tried practicing for a few months rejecting every positive feeling about myself that did not come from choosing to do my best, and it was exhausting. I later decided that it was easier to focus positively on good things than to avoid the bad (as Paul says once in the New Testament).

On the feeling of offense: It seems to me that people can only ever be offended by the truth. If you will tell a beautiful woman, "You're ugly and no man will ever want you," she'll probably pay it no attention. Same as if you told Elon Musk for Bill Gates, "You're a poor stupid loser." So, whenever a person gets offended by an idea, he is admitting that he finds truth in what he is offended by.

It is also possible to be offended by circumstances rather than ideas. For instance, most people probably find flat-Earthism to be ridiculous, and so they aren't offended by the idea. But they may get offended if their kids were to be taught the subject at school.

On harsh pointless judgment: It seems to me that the emotional motivation for harsh judgment is distraction from our own faults. For a truly humble person, if, for instance, he saw a fat smoker on the street, he'd probably notice that those were bad things, and then move onto the next thing without being bothered. Or maybe he'd feel sorry for the guy. However, a person who maybe had a drinking problem (but was a healthy weight and didn't smoke), might see the fat smoker and think, "That guy has no self-control. What a loser." The motivation for this kind of judgement is to distract from one's own faults. I think sometimes you have to judge, such as when you decide whether to work at a certain company or whether to marry a certain person. But in those situations, there is a specific purpose for the judgment. If one judges just for the sake of it, then there's a pretty good chance that whatever you throw at the other person is actually an arrow pointed right back at yourself.

I will quit here because I'm supposed to be working.

I found a lot to disagree with and I think you make many over-broad statements that aren't necessarily consistent with my understanding of ethnology, human psychology and cognitive science, and sociology. I also think your tone is a bit presumptuous - expressing your opinions as fact. — T Clark

I wouldn't be surprised if I made some mistakes. It felt like years ago that my opinions on things developed to the point where there was no name for what I believed, and then I just kept thinking. And then when I try to share my ideas, most people don't engage or are vacuously hostile. So, I have very little other than my own opinions of my ideas as a check on whether they are right or not.

I agree that a lot of human and animal motivation and behavior is hardwired, but I think your take is over-simplistic. As I understand it, animal, including human, behavior doesn't aim at improving their "emotional state." It aims at maintaining the equilibrium of their living systems - homeostasis. Emotions are, among other things, a sign that things are out of balance and a motivation to act. — T Clark

Well, obviously all of our instincts, desires, and emotions are wired to keep us alive. But it seems to me that the way emotions do that is that they make us try to make ourselves happy. It seems like a common-sense thing that we prefer to be happy rather than sad.

I've thought before that instincts appear to be those behaviors which act without thinking (like blinking), desires are from the body but require conscious action to act upon (like hunger), and emotions require conscious thought for both the feeling to occur and to act upon them (like happiness). I spend most of my time focusing on emotions because they are most under our control.

This is confusing. You say you are looking for objective morality, but you also acknowledge that moral values are arbitrary. Perhaps a better word would be "formal" rather than "objective." — T Clark

That word choice may have been better. I suppose I think a morality has to seem "objective" to the believer in order to mean anything, even if in reality there are many conflicting moralities believed in by different people with no way of proving which is right.

If humans are hardwired to lie to themselves to make themselves feel good, then it becomes clear that our opinions are not to be trusted. A great deal of our energy is spent in foolishness, and most of our personal opinions are false.
— Brendan Golledge

Now we get into the part where I agree with some of what you say. My goal in life is to become more self-aware, what you call paying conscious attention to my inner state, and philosophy is one of the ways I pursue that goal. I can't speak with any authority about Buddhism or Christianity, but I question your assertion those two religions are the ones most concerned with that. My personal adult experience is with Taoism, and, as I understand it, it is all about self-awareness. — T Clark

I suppose we are very similar in that respect. I am not an expert on every religion, so I am not surprised if I neglected to mention some other religion which is more inward focused.

It seems clear at least that Christianity is more inward focused than many other religions. Take Islam, for instance. All the commands are outward focused, like professing a belief in Muhammad, taking a pilgrimage, giving to the poor, etc. The two main commandments in Christianity are to love one's neighbor as one's self and to love God with all one's heart. And the 7 deadly sins (I know this is a Catholic thing) are inward orientations of the soul rather than particular actions. And the Jewish commandments are also outward focused (although Jesus said they are aimed at loving God and neighbor). I've seen interviews from 2 different Jews who said for instance that they don't care if people hate Jews; they only care about how people treat Jews. And they said themselves that Judaism is more Earthly focused than Christianity.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
— Franz Kafka — T Clark

I'd never heard that quote before. Maybe I should read Franz Kafka.

When properly understood, I think religion, psychology, and morality are all actually only one subject.
— Brendan Golledge

This doesn't strike me as a particularly true or particularly useful way of looking at things. — T Clark

I believe values (what we care about) are the root of our emotional experience, and our emotions drive what things we think about, and what we think about drives what we do. So, studying the self is really the same as studying values. And that's really the same as morality. And this is also what religion is concerned with.

Oh wow I thought I'd reply to everything during my lunch break, but it looks like there is too much.

I read a book a long time ago called, "The History of God". I remember I liked it a lot at the time, but I can't remember much about it.

I really like Jordan Peterson's Biblical lecture series. But he treats the stories from a psychological standpoint rather than a literal one.

I am confused by the original post. It says it wants to clear up some things before making an argument, and then doesn't seem to make an argument. The follow up post describe strong testimonial evidence. I would guess that the implied argument (which I don't see stated anywhere) is that the abundance of testimonial evidence for life after death is good evidence for life after death?

Once I found a youtube channel that posted nothing but testimony of NDE (Near Death Experiences). I listened to the first 13 I heard and wrote down claims (like whether there was hell or not). I don't remember the exact numbers, because it was so long ago, but I remember concluding 2 things. 1. If you assume nothing about an afterlife, other than that it is consistent, then it is possible that 60% of the testimonies I heard could have been true. 2. If you assume Christian theology, then only 25% of the testimonies could have been true.

Some NDE testimonies said that there was a heaven/hell, and others said there was no hell. Some saw Muhammad, and some saw Jesus. One saw God the father as an old man, which is against the theology I was taught because God the father isn't supposed to have a body. So, these are the types of things I looked at when deciding whether or not the testimonies could have been true.

Given the large amount of disagreement on what life after death looks like, I concluded that NDE are subjectively experienced phenomena of a dying brain, rather than of an objective reality.

If I recall correctly, 2/13 of the testimonies claimed to have been able to see things while "dead" which they could not have seen, such as details about the operation that was being performed on them. I have no explanation for how this could have happened, if the testimony is true. Maybe sometimes people make lucky guesses, or maybe they guess in retrospect after they have the information and neglect to tell you that.

I haven't done much research myself and I'm mostly going off testimony of scholars. Based on this, it is nigh impossible that the existence of Jesus was a myth. The wikipedia page on the Historicity of Jesus says, "Virtually all scholars dismiss theories of Jesus's non-existence or regard them as refuted.[note 1] In modern scholarship, the Christ myth theory is a fringe theory and finds virtually no support from scholars." People arguing with me that Jesus is like Spiderman or Harry Potter are just not familiar with the research that has been done on this subject.

So yes, among people who actually know what they are talking about, it's universally accepted that Jesus at least existed and was crucified.

I think I could rewrite the main idea of my original post much more succinctly.

I believe these three things:
1. There are historical elements to the testimony in the New Testament
2. Early Christians were willing to die for their belief in the content of the New Testament
3. Current evidence does not support the faith of the disciples & early Christians (the claims are extraordinary compared to our usual experience, and there is confusion in the church)

Points 1 & 2 would ordinarily lead me to believe the testimony, but point 3 throws everything into confusion.

Coming to these 3 conclusions would take a lot of time and whole books could be written on each point. So, it's not surprising that this post has not made much progress. I could still try to briefly summarize my beliefs in each of these 3.

1. Based on the testimony of scholars, there are many unplanned coincidences within the gospels (which corroborate each other) and geographic knowledge in the New Testament. Also, nonchristian sources agree on some of the main points, such as that Jesus was crucified.

2. I was surfing Wikipedia just now, and I found, "The consensus of scholars dates Matthew and Luke to 80-90 AD", and "Literary analysis of the New Testament texts themselves can be used to date many of the books of the New Testament to the mid-to-late first century. The earliest works of the New Testament are the letters of the Apostle Paul. It can be determined that 1 Thessalonians is likely the earliest of these letters, written around 52 AD."

If Jesus was crucified in 33 AD, then that easily puts the earliest manuscripts within living memory of his crucifixion. This is why I don't believe it was a myth. I think of a myth as a story whose origin is unknown. An event within living memory cannot be a myth, because people are still alive who remember the events.

3. I understand that it was the historical position of the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox that the others were anathematized (and therefore probably damned). All 3 would not agree with the protestants either. So, historically speaking, whoever was right, a large portion of Christian believers were wrong.

There is also the issue that I found inconsistencies in the testimonies of near death experiences (indicating that these experiences were probably psychological in origin rather than divine). And I cannot understand why an omniscient omnipresent omnipotent God interested in a personal relationship would hide himself from sincere seekers.


I attempted to resolve these issues by suggesting that the gospels were based on actual events, but that the disciples were confused and mistakenly believed in miracles which had not actually occurred. I suggested several ways that natural phenomena could have convinced people that there were miracles, but those were of course all speculation.

I also described a psychological interpretation of Jesus' teachings which actually make them sensible advice and verifiable through personal experience.


This interpretation of events explains points 1 - 3, it explains why the Christian story resembles earlier myths (when the disciples were confused, they interpreted their experiences in relation to their prior knowledge), and it explains why so many people historically have found Jesus to be a compelling person (this make no sense if the story was completely made up nonsense).

I suppose the one thing I can conclude for sure is that humans are bad at figuring things out. If it isn't even true that Jesus was a historical person who was crucified, or that his early believers weren't willing to die for him, then that throws all historical knowledge into doubt. It also means that all Christians are very badly mistaken. If his disciples were mistaken (as I believe), then that means that it is sometimes possible for a dozen grown men to be unable to tell whether another man is dead or alive. If the events really did transpire as described, then it still leaves the issue of the confusion within the church, in which large portions of the church did not recognize the other portions. I suppose that does mean for sure that a God who leaves his teachings in the hands of human testimony is not very wise, unless he thinks it's funny to cause confusion.



BTW, I think most events in the Bible were probably at least based on true events. Take this for example, gotten from a quick google search:

"In 1997, William Ryan, Walter Pitman, Petko Dimitrov, and their colleagues first published the Black Sea deluge hypothesis. They proposed that a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater into the Black Sea freshwater lake occurred around 7600 years ago, c. 5600 BC"

For the people living in the area, it probably seemed like the whole world was flooding. The survivors would have given testimony that the whole world had flooded. People who lived far away would never even know that the flood had happened, so they would have not bothered to give testimony that the whole world had not flooded. A long time from then, the testimony that the world had flooded would probably have been widespread and taken to have been a historical reality. Or the story could have been based on any really large catastrophic flood.

Another thing I heard of is that they think they found Sodom and Gomorrah. Apparently, a big asteroid exploded in the air and vaporized everything for miles.

It's likely then that much of the testimony in the Bible is actually based on history, but that the details and the interpretation of what happened are not entirely accurate. But even the interpretations which might not be true are of psychological significance, because the people who lived back then had the same hearts and minds that we do, and they were very concerned with proper living. They were very ignorant on material things, but much of the testimony about what it feels like to be a human and about how to orient one's self properly are still true.

The problem being that we don't know what (if any) events described were real. It might be as simple as a man preached and stories were told about him It's probably safe to say that anything supernatural didn't happen. What mechanism do you have to demonstrate which parts of the NT happened and which parts did not? — Tom Storm

This is in line with the general idea of my main post. I believe that there are historical elements in the NT, but I do not know how much of it is true, or how it happened that nonmiraculous events could have occurred to convince people that they were miraculous. I argued that probably the trivial details which the different gospels agree on are probably true, but that the disciples' excitability and impressionability led them to occasionally see miracles which weren't really there.

So? Spiderman comics are set in New York city - doesn't mean Spiderman is real.

I just don't find the idea that they were entirely fabricated plausible at all.
— Brendan Golledge

Spiderman would be a good comparison to Jesus, if there were people living today who were willing to be put to death for the sake of spiderman. It's not just that the people knew details, but that people from the time period knew details and were willing to die for their testimony regarding the details they provided.

I honestly had never heard of Sai Baba before. I don't think people are claiming that he was uniquely raised from the dead, are they? Or are people willing to die for their belief in his miracles? I guess I'm not surprised that some people believe in miracles that didn't really happen. The existence of people like that today I think might actually support my view that the disciples could have sincerely believed in the miracles of Jesus while being mistaken.

Can you name a single big event from the New Testament that has extra-biblical corroboration - other than some geography and later the claim that there were followers of an itinerant rabbi who had stories? — Tom Storm

I think the least controversial claims regarding Jesus were that he was a historical person, and that he was crucified by Pontius Pilate.

If it's religious fiction, then why did the disciples die for it?
— Brendan Golledge
What apostles died for it? (And, BTW, what "it"? The NT? It doesn't make sense.) — Alkis Piskas

I asked Chat GPT this:

"
Read the following quote:
"If it's religious fiction, then why did the disciples die for it?"

What do you think "it" refers to in this sentence?

ChatGPT
In the context of the quote, "it" likely refers to the beliefs or teachings propagated by religious fiction. The implication is that if the beliefs espoused in religious texts were merely fictional, then it seems unlikely that the disciples (referring to the early followers of the religious figure in question, such as Jesus Christ in Christianity) would have been willing to die for those beliefs. This argument is often used to suggest the sincerity and conviction of the early followers of various religious traditions.
"
^ ChatGPT has better reading comprehension than you.


I am confused by your next quote, because it talks about apostles dying, as if to answer your own question about what apostles died.

If it's entirely fabricated, then why is it universally accepted that Jesus was baptized and crucified?
— Brendan Golledge
Because it is a religion, Brendan. And people who follow a religion believe in whatever that religion says. This does not change the fact religions may be based on fiction. (Most are.) — Alkis Piskas

The source I used was Wikipedia, which last I checked, is not a religious source. I used Wikipedia merely to show that it is the consensus view.

You have not presented any serious argument. Only childish questions. You cannot defend your position. No wonder you are confused, as you say yourself. I tried to give you something to get out of this condusion. — Alkis Piskas

I searched for your name on this page, and read your posts, and I did not find anywhere where you argued about anything I wrote in my original post.

If it's religious fiction, then why did the disciples die for it?

If it's entirely fabricated, then why is it universally accepted that Jesus was baptized and crucified? Your argument is not even consistent with the wiki page on the subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels

The New Testament has a lot of gaps and ungrounded, senseless stories that raise a lot of questions. E.g. According always to NT, when Jesus prayed to God, his disciples were sleeping and there was no one else near. Who has listened to his prayer and recorded it? Totally silly. — Alkis Piskas

The quality of the prose in the NT is totally unrelated to its historicity. The disciples didn't have to know the content of the prayer to know that he was praying. I would presume they assumed he was praying when they were sleeping because he told them that is what he was going to do.

You have not addressed any of the arguments in favor of the historicity of the NT.

I don't know what Paul has to do with my original post, because I was talking about the 4 gospels, and unless I'm mistaken, Paul didn't write those. Even if his physician wrote Luke, that still leaves 3 gospels that weren't written by Paul. The entirety of my argument was based on accounts of events that took place before Paul's conversion, by people who recalled similar details and who had a lot of geographic knowledge of the region. I don't think Paul is very relevant at all to my original argument.

I would say science is much less stable than theology. Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics can all look back and agree on much in St. Augustine, St. Maximus, etc. What science agrees with attempts at scientific theories from the years 400-800? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would argue that modern science didn't even really exist until Isaac Newton, so there is no science from 400-800. Science went from not formally existing at all to putting a man on the moon in less than 300 years. That is very impressive.


If God acted like you think God should act, sure. But if God is truly God couldn't God just autopilot us into all being saints and agreeing? So even if Christianity led to far more consensus than science you could still throw out the same argument, claiming that "if it isn't perfect, it isn't divine."

I was not imagining that God would autopilot us. I was imagining that if the Church were truly being guided by 1 person, that there would be much less confusion. I'm not aware of any human ruler in history whose followers were so confused about what he wanted while he was still alive.

"if it isn't perfect, it isn't divine." Actually, for some things, this is not a bad argument. I can accept that humans trying to follow God's will are imperfect. But I cannot accept it if a church claims that its teachings are infallibly inspired by God, and then even 1 of their doctrines was found to be inconsistent with something they said earlier. If a human was 95% right in everything he said, I would forgive him for being human. But if somebody is claiming inspiration from God and gets 1% wrong, then he is 100% wrong about being infallibly inspired.


Here is what I wrote in my original post:
"Even if I did decide that I believed every word written in the New Testament, I would not know what to do next. What doctrine of salvation would I choose? What would be my relationship to the sacraments? What church organization would I attend? How would I deal with the fact that I'm commanded to pray, but I've never received a tangible answer to prayer from an external entity?"

It is a serious problem for me if I'm trying to follow a God who commanded me to participate in church life, but his church is split into factions, who for most of their history didn't recognize each other as being legitimate. Unless there's some really clear way of figuring out which church is right, then my salvation is in question, even if I believed every word of the gospels. Also, if God is a person trying to have a relationship with me, and he's omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, then why can't he personally reveal himself to me when I'm confused about his will?

Whether people were willing to be martyred for their beliefs (and many of these stories are unlikely to be true) is irrelevant to the truth of those beliefs. Suicide bombers and martyrs to religious or political causes are not uncommon. Hinduism. Buddhism and Islam all have martyrs. So? People do astonishing things for belief, whether true or not. Note also that the early church probably fabricated martyr stories. Candida Moss, a Christian scholar, writes about this in The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom — Tom Storm

It is not surprising to me that people continue to believe things that lots of other people believe. It is more surprising to me that a dozen men were so totally convinced that Jesus had come back from the dead when nobody else did. If their beliefs were caused by peer pressure (as I presume the beliefs of suicide bombers are), then the pressure only came from the original 12 (or 11, depending on how you count Judas & Paul).

I suppose maybe it would be simpler to conclude, "People believe crazy things" and not worry about it more. It just troubled me how those beliefs were formed in the first place without precedent, and how the testimony regarding these beliefs have at least some verifiable historical elements.

A lot of people were talking about Bart Ehrman. I never read him, so I didn't really follow.

People were also arguing about whether Jesus/Peter/Paul actually claimed that Jesus was divine. My argument was that the disciples definitely believed he was divine (or else why die for him?) but I'm not certain that's what Jesu actually meant. Considering the confusion the disciples have about what Jesus meant both before and after the crucifixion, it wouldn't be at all surprising to me that Jesus said some word similar to the words they reported that he said, but that they misunderstood what he actually meant.

It seems like some of the conversation about Ehrman was actually about an argument which is different than the argument I made.

I do not find the arguments that the New Testament was entirely myth convincing at all. They were at least based on real events. I made an argument in my original post about the unplanned coincidences. Apparently, the writers were very familiar with geography too. There are lots of other arguments you could look at which I won't go into. I just don't find the idea that they were entirely fabricated plausible at all.

I googled again for the study on eye-witness accuracy, and found this:

Link: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/testbookje/chapter/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases/

Quote:

"The misinformation effect has been modeled in the laboratory. Researchers had subjects watch a video in pairs. Both subjects sat in front of the same screen, but because they wore differently polarized glasses, they saw two different versions of a video, projected onto a screen. So, although they were both watching the same screen, and believed (quite reasonably) that they were watching the same video, they were actually watching two different versions of the video (Garry, French, Kinzett, & Mori, 2008).

In the video, Eric the electrician is seen wandering through an unoccupied house and helping himself to the contents thereof. A total of eight details were different between the two videos. After watching the videos, the “co-witnesses” worked together on 12 memory test questions. Four of these questions dealt with details that were different in the two versions of the video, so subjects had the chance to influence one another. Then subjects worked individually on 20 additional memory test questions. Eight of these were for details that were different in the two videos. Subjects’ accuracy was highly dependent on whether they had discussed the details previously. Their accuracy for items they had not previously discussed with their co-witness was 79%. But for items that they had discussed, their accuracy dropped markedly, to 34%. That is, subjects allowed their co-witnesses to corrupt their memories for what they had seen."


I recalled (I originally found this info a long time ago), that the stats were 80% and 40%, but the actual numbers were 79% and 34%. I hadn't remembered the detail that the test participants were shown different videos at all. I suppose this is an example of my own memory not being entirely reliable.

If I were speaking from a Hindu context, I probably would have talked about cows. My best guess is that cultures can evolve the same way biological organisms do (the unfit varieties die), and that caring about cows was useful for the people living in India. I've heard an argument that cattle are very important for agriculture in that region, so that a tribe which killed and ate their cows during a famine would not have been able to continue farming next year. So, those who by chance happened to really love their cows flourished and spread out across the whole region.

I do not know if there is some psychological significance to cows being holy, as I believe there is psychological significance to much of Christian teachings. I don't know much about the Hindu religion.