that no one reads these posts, so I can be completely honest in a way that would be difficult otherwise. I have mentioned comprehensive doctrines in a previous post. As I've implied, I don't say religion, because other doctrines, political doctrines, can become in themselves comprehensive. Indeed, if one reads Isaiah Berlin, much of the convulsion of the 20th century can be laid at the feet of two comprehensive political doctrines, Nazism and Communism. Religion, however, is having a resurgence of sorts, as the most dangerous of comprehensive doctrines, the terrorist threat aligned with the so-called radical Islam being the most obvious (at least from a typical American point of view) but it has released in response a resurgence of our own versions of radical Christian fundamentalism represented by the seriousness with which we are taking one Ted Cruz as a viable candidate for the office of president.
Having said this, I should probably come out of the closet as an atheist. There is no God, particularly no creator God, and the truth revealed in the scriptures is a human truth, no more or less viable than the truth revealed in the quartos of Shakespeare or the novels of Faulkner. I won't make a religion of atheism, and take up the banner of atheism, but I will assert, along with Christopher Hitchens that "religion poisons everything" though I would expand the thought and say "any comprehensive doctrine poison everything." Any comprehensive doctrine, to remain comprehensive, must revert to dogma -- that is to say, it must insist on its truth to the exclusion of all other truths. When confronted with the anomalous, that which doesn't quite fit the revealed truth (like modern cosmology and the Darwinian account of origins) it must insist on the three monkeys. It must "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil" -- that is to say again, it must insist on a willful ignorance. Here, "insist" might be too milk toast a word, but we can see the "insistence" in some of the most cruel treatment of those who cannot quite bend their will to the ignorance.
The difficulty is, at one level, simple credulousness. I don't doubt that there are those who sincerely believe, for example, that Joseph Smith received the word of God on Golden Tablets. It requires of me, however, a credulousness, a faith, that I cannot quite muster. In principle, there's nothing very different from this and receiving the word of God from a burning bush. My response is something along the line of "really? You believe that? Moreover, you believe that, if I don't believe as well, that I am in one way or another damned?" There are elements of every "faith" that are simply beyond any credibility.
At another level, though, the difficulty is philosophical. I revert to a Popperian argument, and simply point out that "revealed truth" is not, by definition, falsifiable and consequently is immutable. We haven't, in other words, updated the book of Genesis as revealed to Moses and replaced it with the understanding revealed by modern cosmology. We are stuck with the account of Genesis as the one, and the only permissible, truth. The major religions have all tap danced around this question, but all attempts to square religion with science end up reducing the former to a human document, a set of metaphors and parables, no different in kind that the tales Asimov. They are a monumental waste of intellectual energy. The other response, covering one's eyes and plugging one's ears, ignoring the evidence and all the while insisting that others too ignore the evidence on pain of damnation, is more dangerous. If the willfully ignorant were content with my eternal damnation, I could be fine. Everyone is entitled to their own swaths of ignorance, because no one can know all, apparently even God, if the book of Genesis is the best he could do as a cosmology. The willfully ignorant are, however, never content with the thought of my eternal damnation, but must make the damnation temporal and jump start the punishment for apostasy right here and right now.
I am what might be called a moral rationalist. There are certain assumptions. The first assumption is that we are, as a species and as individuals, less unique than we might wish we were. We are, however, somewhat "self-contained" within our consciousness. For example, if I whack my thumb with a hammer, it is painful in a direct and indubitable way. I might play philosophical games, and claim the pain was only an illusion, but I am unlikely to test that hypothesis with another whack of the hammer. If I see another whack his thumb with a hammer, I don't feel the pain in the same direct and indubitable way, but I can assume it is as painful to him as it was to me. I assume a simple empathy. Don't, however, equate morality with simple empathy. The whole notion of torture depends upon simple empathy. If I am attempting to bend another's will to my own with torture, I am operating from the same basis of simple empathy. I do not feel the pain, but I assume that the one being tortured does, in fact, feel the pain and it is being inflicted on him to achieve some end. Personal morality enters the picture when we say something like -- "I don't like it when I feel excruciating pain, therefore I will not inflict excruciating pain on others." Civil morality enters the picture when we say something like -- "I don't like it when I feel excruciating pain, therefore we will pass a law prohibiting one from inflicting excruciating pain on others." It is, in effect, the golden rule and the elevation of the golden rule to a categorical imperative. Civil morality and the categorical imperative always implies a duty to others -- the duty in this case to abide by the law and NOT inflict torture on others. I don't need a religion to command either personal or civic morality. I do, however, need a government to enforce the latter.
The second assumption is evolutionary. This is where it becomes a bit more technical and philosophical proper. I do not believe that "nature" is teleological. I do not believe, in other words, that nature exists for a purpose or as part of some grand design. I do not believe there is a cosmicomic, a once and for all answer to the question "why?" As I've implied in previous posts, there is localized "purpose" or "intentionality," but it is always, in principle, limited to a particular "system." More on this tomorrow ...
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