Why I believe in God

In this post I want to give reasons for believing in God. This post is prompted by comments from my friend Bennion in a previous post. I will first provide reasons for believing in God that I do not accept. Then I will give some reasons why I do believe in God.

Reasons for believing in God that I do not accept
 1. I do not believe in God as a matter of some scientific hypothesis. Some atheists ask for evidence for the "God Hypothesis". I don't like that phrase because it implies that the believer is supposed to make some scientific claim about why there is a God. I don't believe that one comes to know God by looking around and finding gaps in our scientific knowledge, and then invoking God as an explanation for those gaps. That is not the right way to think about reasons for believing in God. I think the right way to think about knowing God is to think about how one knows that they love their spouse. I don't have a "Wife Hypothesis" to explain why I experience my wife's existence.

2. I do not believe in intelligent design arguments for the existence of God. Although I believe that there is probably some intelligent influence in the process of evolution, I do not think that influence can be proven scientifically. There are some well thought out philosophical arguments that involve intelligent design, and I do not think they are all as bad as naturalists claim they are. However, I still do not find them convincing enough to count them as evidence for believing in God.

3. I do not believe in any of the traditional theistic philosophical arguments for God. For instance, I do not believe in the ontological argument or any cosmological argument for the existence of God. Concerning these arguments, one famous LDS philosopher, Truman Madsen, once said,

Many of you will encounter, if you haven't, traditional rational arguments for the existence of God. They are all of them afflicted with fallacies. They presuppose in the premises what they claim to demonstrate in the conclusion. And, further, they presuppose in their premises something about the very nature of God.

4. I do not believe that belief without evidence is an appropriate reason for believing in God. Atheists often claim that faith is just belief without evidence, or it is just a way to protect a weak hypothesis. I do not accept these mischaracterizations of faith. Faith is belief with evidence. As Orson Pratt, an early apostle of the LDS church said,

"Faith or belief is the result of evidence presented to the mind. Without evidence, the mind cannot have faith in anything...As evidence precedes faith, the latter should be weak or strong in proportion to the weakness or strength of the evidence … The weakness or strength of faith will, therefore, in all cases, be in proportion to the weakness or strength of the impressions, produced upon the mind by evidence."

Reasons for believing in God that I accept
 I believe that there are several reasons for believing in God. I could tell many personal stories, but I will just give one story or example per reason.

1. I believe in God because of personal experiences There are several simple experiences that give me reason to believe that there is loving Heavenly Father looking out for me. One time my mother and I were driving home from Lake Tahoe and our van was stuck in the mud. I don't know exactly where we were, but I remember there were a lot of trees around. We were far away from help at a time when people did not have cell phones. We tried for a long time to get out of the mud by driving back and forth. Finally, we prayed for help, tried again, and immediately got out of the mud and travelled home safely.

2. I believe in God based on answers to prayer When I was around 18, I read the book of Mormon and prayed to know if it was true. I had an overwhelming powerful experience that confirmed to me that it was a true. I have had similar experiences, but that time it was particularly powerful and it has stayed with me throughout my life.

3. I believe in God because of revelation.There have been times in my life when I have received powerful insights similar to my experience when I prayed about the book of Mormon. What was unique about these experiences is that I wasn't praying or asking for the insights that I received. Due to the personal nature of some of these experiences (there are at least 2 that I remember clearly), I would rather not share the specific stories that relate to this reason. I will simply convey that I arrived at some conclusions about secular issues through spiritual means. Only after those experiences did I learn of secular evidence for those conclusions.

4. I believe in the testimony of witnesses I believe Joseph Smith's testimony that he did in fact see God and Jesus Christ. In Joseph's own words, 

I had actually seen a light, and in the midst of that light I saw two Personages, and they did in reality speak to me...I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it."I believe in the testimony of the living apostles and prophets that have a special witness of the living Christ.

5. I believe that the Book of Mormon provides evidence for Joseph Smith's story.The Book of Mormon is an incredible book. It is evidence that anyone can read and examine. It is available for anyone to scrutinize and many have tried. If one is sincere and open to truth, I believe they will be truly moved by its contents. I think that it is impossible that Joseph Smith could have made it all up.

6. Many other reasonsThere are dozens of other reasons for my belief in God including intuition, pragmatic considerations, logical consistency, and other personal experiences.

Concluding remarks
 In most cases, people cannot choose their convictions. For example, if I offered to give you $1000 if you could believe that you were 20 feet tall, you would not be able to do it. When I examine my beliefs and convictions, I find that I do believe in God. The fact that we do not choose our convictions does not mean we can never change our beliefs over time. Nor does certainty imply incorrigibility. For example, I changed my mind about the theory of evolution after sincerely considering the evidence. I have documented that experience here.

In writing these reasons for believing in God, I know that I am opening myself up to scrutiny. I often consider the possibility that God does not exist and I am open to the possibility that I could be mistaken about my beliefs. Many skeptics will think that many of these arguments are easy targets and perhaps not even worth addressing. Since most of the books I read are written by atheists (that is just the nature of philosophy), I encounter many arguments against my belief in God. I consider those arguments carefully and sincerely. After examining and scrutinizing those arguments, I find intellectually and spiritually satisfying responses and I find that I still believe in a loving, personal Heavenly Father and the truthfulness of His gospel.

I want to end this post by recommending reading the testimony of one of my philosophy professors at BYU. You can find a link to her testimony here.

Theism, Atheism, and Mormonism

Mindy

In the 1990s cartoon show Animaniacs, there was a carefree toddler character named Mindy. She would often annoy other characters by repeatedly asking "Why?" until the characters became flustered and gave up trying to answer. She was annoying because she wasn't asking "why?" to gain understanding, but because she enjoyed pushing people's buttons. Unlike Mindy, genuinely curious people ask "why?" to arrive at an explanation. To explain something is to show why certain effects follow from certain causes. If we ask why enough, we will eventually arrive at an explanation that does not have any explanation itself. It seems all explanations bottom out in some cause that itself did not have a cause. Some have referred to this final explanation as the uncaused causer. "Who or what is the uncaused causer?" is the same question as "Where do all explanations end?" Atheism gives one answer, Traditional theism gives another. Mormonism seems to give an answer that is a hybrid of both atheism and traditional theism.

Volitional vs. Non-volitional explanations
There are two ways to answer the question, "Where do explanations end?" Traditional theists such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe that all explanations end in a volitional explanation. I am using the word "volition" to refer to that which is caused by some being or agent.

Atheists, on the other hand, believe in a non-volitional explanation. Explanations end in something like the laws of physics, or nature in general, (or even just gravity according to Stephen Hawking). Some atheists say that they simply don't know how to explain existence in general, but still hold that no volitional being could be the uncaused cause of the universe.

For example, if we ask the question "why is the sky blue?". We will come to some explanation that describes the behavior of lightwaves when they interact with particles in the atmosphere. After we come to that explanation we can ask, "Why do lightwaves behave that way?" Describing the laws of quantum electrodynamics might constitute an explanation for that question, but then we could just ask, "why are the laws of quantum electrodynamics like that?" An atheist will answer that nature is just that way and that is where explanations end. A traditional theist would answer that God created the laws that way and that is where explanations end.

Where do explanations end for Mormon theology?
According to Mormon theology, some explanations end in non-volitional causes and some explanations end in volitional causes. How can this be? Mormon theology agrees with both Aristotle and Plato who argued that the world always existed and that God organized the world out of pre-existing unorganized matter. That pre-existing matter was not created out of nothing. It has no cause. It has always existed and therefore has no explanation. On this point, Mormon theology agrees with the belief of most atheists.

The first prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith, taught that God did not and in fact could not create the universe:

God had materials to organize the world out of chaos—chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end. (King Follett Discourse)

According to the LDS scholar Sterling McMurrin who wrote Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion:

“It is a basic article of Mormon theology that God is related to a world environment for the being of which he is not the ultimate ground and by which he therefore is in some sense conditioned. This means that God is a being among beings rather than being as such or the ground of being, and that he is therefore finite rather than absolute.” (Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion)

Orson Pratt who was an early Mormon church leader wrote:

“God [in LDS thought] is described in non-absolutistic terms as a being who is conditioned by and related to the world of which he is a part and which, because it is not ultimately his creation, is not absolutely under his dominion … God’s environment is the physical universe, the minds and selves which exist but are not identified with him, the principles under which reality is structured, and perhaps even the value absolutes which govern the divine will,”

“There are some things that cannot be performed, although we had the power of working great and mighty miracles; indeed, the great God Himself who has power to control the heavens over our heads, and the earth upon which we stand has NOT the power to do that which would be naturally impossible, or in opposition to the great, necessary, and fundamental truths of nature, which are eternally unalterable, and cannot be otherwise than they are,” (JD 3:300).

There are many other quotes that confirm the Mormon belief that these explanations do not end in God, but instead end in the elements and principles of nature. No volitional being did or could have created them.

However, according to most accounts of Mormon theology, volitional beings (spirits or intelligences) also were not created. All volitional beings are coeternal with the elements that have always existed. According to Joseph Smith:

I might with boldness proclaim from the house-tops that God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself. Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. It is a spirit from age to age, and there is no creation about it. All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement. (King Follett Discourse)

If volitional beings are also uncreated, then their actions cannot themselves be reduced to non-volitional causes. Volition is simply part of uncreated nature. Therefore, some explanations end in the choices of volitional beings. For example, when we ask why a painting of the sky is blue, it is not satisfactory to appeal to the laws of  quantum electrodynamics. Any explanation for why a painting is blue must account for the intentions of the painter who organized the paints on the canvas. The painting is blue because of the laws of nature AND because of the intentions of the painter. In Mormon theology, the answer to the question "where did matter come from?" ends in a non-volitional explanation. And, the answer to the question "why was matter organized in a certain way" can end in a volitional explanation. Concerning the latter question, God organized the pre-existing matter that we experience on this earth to fulfill His eternal purposes. On this point, Mormon theology sides more with theism than atheism.

Conclusion
Traditional theists believe that all explanations end with a volitional being such as God. Atheists believe that all explanations end in non-volitional causes. Mormon theology is a hybrid belief system that asserts that some explanations end in God and some do not. Because of these beliefs, members of the Mormon church are in a good position to resolve many contentions between atheism and traditional theism.

Stephen Hawking, Gravity, and God

When people claim there is a conflict between science and religion, they are often referring to some alleged conflict between the theory of evolution and a belief in a designer God. Sometimes an argument is put forward that is supposed to show a conflict between the laws of physics and a belief in God. Stephen Hawking puts forth such an argument in his 2010 book The Grand Design. His arguments makes several philosophical mistakes that ought be addressed.

Part 1: Hawking, Gravity, and God
In The Grand Design Stephen Hawking along with his co-author Leonard Mlodinow put forth a controversial candidate for a theory of everything called M-theory. The bulk of the book is spent explaining this theory which is really just a collection of various theories that try to explain the universe. In the book, Hawking and Mlodinow conclude “because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing” (pg 180). Anyone with a little training in philosophy can immediately identify the self-contradictory nature of this claim. If we say that X creates Y, then we are already presupposing the existence of X in order to account for the existence of Y. In the first part of the above quote, Hawkings is presupposing the existence of gravity (X) to explain the existence of the universe (Y). Therefore the universe is not created from nothing, it is created from gravity.

Hawking then piles another contradiction on top of his first. In the second part of the above quote, he asserts that, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing." If we say that X creates X we already pressupose the existence of X in order to account for the existence of X. This also is logically incoherent. If any scientific theory makes such as obvious error, then that theory ought to be revised or abandoned. 

Throughout his book, Hawking suggests that there is no God because the laws of physics explain the existence of the universe. He writes, “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.” (pg 180). But how then does Hawking explain the existence of his metaphorical "blue touch paper" that set the universe going? How does Hawking explain the existence of gravity in the first place? He doesn't! He simply presupposes that it exists. Hawking does not know how to explain gravity. To him that is simply where explanations come to an end.

Then why is he so confident in suggesting that God does not exist? Perhaps he has this argument in mind:

Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is a God who chose to create the universe that way. It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God. (pg 172)

This is the same argument that Richard Dawkins put forward in The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion. I offered a rebuttal to that argument in my previous post. Hawking and Dawkins seem to suggest that using God as an explanation for the universe is somehow invalid because it cannot explain the existence of God himself. But if that is true then Hawking's argument is also invalid. One can equally use Hawking's argument against him. Below is Hawking's same quote but I replaced the word God with Gravity:

Some would claim the answer to these questions is that there is Gravity which created the universe that way. It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is Gravity, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who or what created Gravity.

Believing that all explanations end in gravity is not logically incoherent nor is it intellectually unacceptable. But, believing that all explanations end in God is likewise NOT logically incoherent nor intellectual unacceptable. Certain beliefs about gravity (like the one mentioned above) or certain beliefs about God may be shown to be fallacious, but the general belief that all explanations end somewhere is not. What is intellectually unacceptable is pretending that one's scientific conclusions show that God does not exist.

Part 2: Hawking, Scientists, and Philosophy
 Hawking's logical errors can be explained by his ignorance of philosophy. In the beginning of The Grand Design Hawking lays out some questions about reality including the question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" Referring to these questions, Hawking writes, “Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. It has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly in physics. As a result scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” (pg 5)

The irony of this statement is not only that Hawking uses philosophical arguments throughout his whole book, but that the statement "philosophy is dead" is itself a philosophical proposition. Hawking cannot be making a scientific claim here. He is making a metaphysical claim about science. Therefore even when Hawking is trying to dismiss philosophy, he is contradicting himself. I agree with the philosopher Daniel Dennett who said, "There is no such thing as philosophy-free science; there is only science whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination.” (Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea)

Scientists like Dawkins and Hawking hurt scientific progress when they mingle their own philosophical assumptions with science. Their philosophical pronouncements cause confusion because it gives lay people the false impression that they must choose between God or science when the clash really exists between the scientist's philosophical assumptions and God.

Rebutting Richard Dawkin's Argument Against Theism

The purpose of this post is to give a rebuttal to one atheist argument against theism. This argument was suggested by Richard Dawkins in the book The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design and in the book The God Delusion. The argument was also repeated by my friend Bennion in the comments of my previous post. The argument goes something like this: Any attempt to explain the astonishing variety of life by a hypothesis involving design is misguided because any being able to create life would itself have to be just as complex. In other words, one cannot explain life by invoking a designer or creator, because that does not explain the life of the creator. In The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins puts it this way:

Organized complexity is the thing that we are having difficulty in explaining. Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating machine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity…. But of course any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein machine must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself… To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.

Bennion echoed a similar point:

If you posit, for example, that life was created by God, that doesn’t solve the problem at all because you haven’t explained how God came to exist, and that problem is far bigger than how life came to exist, because God is so much more complicated than a simple chain of self-replicating chemicals.

I will offer rebuttals for this argument from the perspectives of traditional Christianity and LDS theology (Mormonism).

Point 1
Dawkins' argument makes the mistake of trying to discredit one explanation for a particular manifestation of life by saying that it doesn't give an ultimate explanation of life in general. Alvin Plantinga illustrates this point with the following thought experiment.

Suppose we land on an alien planet orbiting a distant star and discover some machine-like objects that look and work just like a 1941 Allis Chalmers tractor; our leader says “there must be intelligent beings on this planet—look at those tractors.” A sophomore philosophy student on the expedition objects: “Hey, hold on a minute! You have explained nothing at all! Any intelligent life that designed those tractors would have to be at least as complex as they are!” No doubt we’d tell him a little learning is a dangerous thing and advise him to take the next rocket ship home and enroll in another philosophy course or two.

The point is that the leader was not trying to give an ultimate explanation of organized complexity. He was only trying to explain one particular manifestation of it—the tractors. In this context it is perfectly reasonable to explain one manifestation of organized complexity with another. Similarly theists are not trying to give an ultimate explanation for all organized complexity (including God) when they invoke God as an explanation for organized complexity.

Point 2
Well, what about that ultimate explanation? Wouldn't Dawkins' argument apply to a theist's ultimate explanation of God? What is the explanation for God?

There are certain questions that are simply incoherent to ask. For instance the question, "What is the proof for rationality?" This question is incoherent because any argument for rationality must already presupposes rationality. One cannot say that science proves that rationality is valid because science already uses rationality to assimilate evidence and come to conclusions. Also, the question, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" is incoherent because all explanations already presuppose that something exists. All explanations end in existence. There just can't be any explanation for it. It just is.

Similarly, the question "What explains an eternal being?" is an incoherent question. If God exists then there couldn't be any ultimate explanation for God because God is an eternal being. Atheists likewise don't have any explanation for elementary particles or the laws of nature. They must simply take it for granted that all explanations eventually bottom out in brute facts. The God hypothesis does not explain the existence of God, and naturalistic physicalism does not explain the laws of physics.

Point 3
Dawkins' argument is circular because it assumes what it is trying to prove. Dawkins simply starts with the assumption that nature is the way he thinks it is, then tries to show that nature is the way he thinks it is. He assumes that nature is such that any being that exists would have to be created according to the physical laws as he sees them. Then he uses that assumption to show that any explanation for life cannot invoke God since God would have had to be created according to the physical laws as Dawkins sees them.

Dawkins' argument does not apply to theists because he arbitrarily assumes that God is created. Therefore, theists do not believe in the God that Dawkins is calling into question. His argument does not apply.

Conclusion
In this blog post, I have attempted to rebut one of Dawkins' primary arguments against God. I have argued that it confuses an explanation for a particular manifestation for life with an explanation for an ultimate explanation of all life (including God). I argued that Dawkins' argument is trying to address a question that is not coherent. And I have argued that Dawkins' argument is circular.

Richard Dawkins' laments the fact that roughly 40% of Americans do not believe in evolution. I share this concern since it seems to me that the science behind evolution is quite solid and has been useful making medical advances and understanding the history of our beautiful planet. When I personally study about evolution and the variety of life, I feel a sense of awe at the beauty and wonder of nature. Sometimes, I feel closer to God when I study the theory of evolution. So I am concerned that many American's are missing out on this understanding and experience.

Dawkins is a wonderful biologist. I have read his book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution several times. I own the audiobook and the hardcover. I highly recommend it. Dawkins' descriptions of orchids, bats, moths, and fish are just a delight to read.

While Dawkins is a very good biologist, he is a poor philosopher. Dawkins pretends that his arguments are scientific when they are really philosophical. The subtitle of Dawkins book, The Blind Watchmaker says that the purpose of his book is to show how evolution reveals a universe without design. Dawkins inevitably fails because the theory of evolution has nothing to say about the existence of God or a designer.

I believe that one of the reasons why many people don't believe in evolution is that they are constantly told by the "experts" like Dawkins that evolution shows that God doesn't exist. I think these pronouncements by the atheists like Dawkins are harmful for 3 reasons. (1) They confuse philosophy and science, (2) they cause many well-meaning religious people to close off to scientific claims about evolution, and (3) they cause many well-meaning people to close off to atheists in general—many of whom are quite reasonable and have important things to say. If more theists understood that evolution does not threaten their faith, but can possibly enhance their faith, then more people would embrace the theory of evolution.

Atheism and Evolution

I recently wrote about whether or not the theory of evolution was compatible with Christianity. I argued rather briefly that the theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity. In this post I will try to address the question: Could the theory of evolution be incompatible with atheism?

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga has a very interesting response to this question. He does not argue that evolution is incompatible with every form of atheism. But, he does argue that the theory of evolution is incompatible with certain forms of naturalism commonly assumed by many atheists. I am still not sure if I am fully convinced, but It is a very interesting argument and worth examining. Before one can understand this argument they need a few conceptual tools.

Conditional Probability
The first tool is the idea of conditional probability. Conditional probability is the probability of something happening, given something else. For instance, the probability that a person named Brigham is a Mormon given that he lives in Utah is high. On the other hand, the probability that a person named Mohammed is a Mormon given that he lives in Kuwait is low.

Defeaters for belief
The second conceptual tool is the idea of a defeater. A defeater is a reason for not believing something else. So for example, if I see a spider on the wall of my grandma's house, then I will form the belief that there is a spider on the wall. But if my grandma then says that it is just a halloween decoration, then I have a defeater for my belief that there is a spider on the wall.

There can also be defeaters for other defeaters—defeater defeaters. So for example, if I believed that my grandma might be a bit senile and that it is June, then I have a defeater for the belief that the spider is a halloween decoration. This process could continue with defeater defeater defeaters and so forth.

Definition of naturalism
Naturalism is the view that that there is no God, nor is there anything like God. A person can be an atheist without being a full blown naturalist. Naturalism implies materialism. According to a materialistic view of the human mind, both behavior and beliefs are caused by neural firings in the brain. A materialist believes that consciousness is really just the neuronal firings of the brain.

So with these conceptual tools, one can understand Plantinga's argument.

Premise 1
Beliefs are part of our cognitive faculties along with memory, perception, and rationality. Beliefs are true if they correspond to reality. Beliefs are reliable when they are true most of the time. Perhaps we can say that beliefs have to be true at least 3/4ths of the time to be considered reliable. Now we can use the conditional probability tool. What is the probability that our beliefs would be reliable given evolution and naturalism?

The theory of evolution claims that all species descended from a common ancestor through a processes of descent with modification via natural selection. Natural selection is the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring.

According to a naturalistic conception of evolution, the human brain would have evolved to produce certain survival-enhancing behaviors. If evolution and naturalism were true, then it doesn't matter if beliefs are true or false. All that matters is the behavior. If that is true, then the probability that our beliefs are reliable is at best 50/50. Beliefs could be true, they could be false, it really wouldn't matter given naturalism and evolution. Therefore, the probability that our beliefs are reliable given evolution and naturalism is low.

A year before his death, Charles Darwin expressed this same concern. He wrote:

“With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”

A rather influential atheist philosopher Patricia Churchland has echoed a similar point:

Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive…. . Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.

In summary, the first premise of Plantinga's argument is that the probability of our beliefs being reliable given evolution and naturalism is low. Plantinga summarizes this premise as such: P(R | N&E) is low where "P()" is probability, "R" is the proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable, and "N&E" refers naturalism and evolution.

Premise 2
If one believes premise 1 and she is a naturalist, then she has a defeater for the belief that her beliefs are reliable. Remember that a defeater is a reason not to believe something. That means that a naturalist who also believes in evolution has a reason for believing that her cognitive faculties are not reliable.

Premise 3
If one has a defeater for the belief that beliefs are reliable, then she also has a defeater for any other belief she thinks she has including naturalism and evolution itself. According to Alvin Plantinga:

If you have a defeater for R, you will also have a defeater for any belief you take to be produced by your cognitive faculties, any belief that is a deliverance of your cognitive faculties. But all of your beliefs, as I’m sure you have discovered, are produced by your cognitive faculties. Therefore you have a defeater for any belief you have.

Premise 4
The proposition that naturalism and evolution are both true is a self-defeating proposition. Why? because it creates its own reason not to believe in naturalism and evolution.

Conclusion
Naturalism and evolution cannot be believed at the same time. In other words, if you believe in evolution, then you cannot rationally accept naturalism and vice versa.

Summary
Plantinga's argument does not try to argue that naturalism is false, nor does it try to argue that evolution is false. It simply shows that one cannot rationally believe the theory of evolution and believe in naturalism at the same time. Alvin Plantinga summarizes his whole argument as follows:

(1) P(R | N&E) is low. (2) Anyone who accepts (believes) N&E and sees that P(R/ N&E) is low has a defeater for R. (3) Anyone who has a defeater for R has a defeater for any other belief she thinks she has, including N&E itself. (4) If one who accepts N&E thereby acquires a defeater for N&E, N&E is self-defeating and can’t rationally be accepted. Conclusion: N&E can’t rationally be accepted.

Making the argument even stronger
Earlier in the post I mentioned the idea of a defeater defeater. Could there ever be an argument that defeats the defeater for the belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable? If we can't believe that our cognitive faculties are reliable given evolution and naturalism, then there could never be any other belief that could act as a defeater defeater. That means that a belief in evolution and naturalism creates an undefeated defeater for the belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable.

Concluding remarks
Some people claim that there is a conflict between science and religion. The alleged conflict between science and religion focuses on a superficial conflict between religion and evolution. In my last post on evolution I argued that there is no serious conflict between evolution and religion (at least regarding Christianity). However, according to Alvin Plantinga there is deep conflict between evolution and naturalism. Since biological evolution is a respectable field of science, the conflict really lies between science and naturalism.

If you find this interesting, I highly recommend the book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalismby Alvin Plantinga.

Evolution and Christianity

Is Christianity incompatible with the theory of evolution?

Some people claim that Christianity is incompatible with the theory of evolution. Richard Dawkins—a prominent atheist—said that he lost his faith in God when he learned the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution is not always defined in precisely the same way and the theory contains several different theses. I will attempt to explain the different theses of evolution, and I will argue that there is no inherent conflict between Christianity and evolution. The 4 general theses that constitute the theory of evolution are:

1. The ancient earth thesis

2. The descent with modification thesis

3. The common ancestor thesis

4. The theory of natural selection (aka Darwinism)

If any of these theses are incompatible with Christianity then evolution is not compatible with Christianity. Each thesis must be examined separately, but first I have to define what I mean by Christianity.

Christianity can refer to a wide variety of beliefs and organizations such as the Catholic church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Lutheran Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Adherents of these organizations share a common belief that God exists, that Jesus Christ is divine, and that God played some role in our creation. C.S Lewis refers to Mere Christianity which is what all Christian faiths have in common. Mere Christianity could perhaps be thought of as the intersection of the Christian creeds such as the Nicene Creed, the apostles creed, the Heidelberg Catechism etc.

1. The ancient earth thesis

The first thesis of evolution is that the earth is very, very old. There are several different clocks that scientists can look at to measure the age of the earth. There are various kinds of radioactive decay clocks (such as Potassium argon, Carbon 14, and dozens more), tree ring clocks (which measures widths and thicknesses of tree rings), and molecular clocks (which measure the time when species diverged). When all of these clocks are calibrated to each other, each acts as a stopwatch that measures time from some starting point such as the solidification of molten rock, the death of an animal, the formation of tree rings, or the separation of one species into two. The scientific consensus is that these different clocks all confirm that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old.

Is the ancient earth thesis incompatible with Christianity?
Since the Christian creeds have nothing to say about the age of the earth, there is no conflict between Christianity as defined and this thesis of the theory of evolution. There are some individual sects within Christianity that teach that the earth was created within the past 10,000 year. They teach this because the book of Genesis says that God created the earth in 6 days. This literal interpretation is unnecessary since other parts of the bible use the word day figuratively. (See Genesis 2:17 and Gen 5:5) Christians don't lose anything essential to their faith by abandoning a fundamentalist belief in a 'young' earth.

2. The descent with modification thesis

Parents pass on traits to their children. This process is called heredity. The traits of an organism are expressions of genes. Genes in offspring tend to vary slightly from the genes of the parent. Given enough generations, the descendants of a given species may have very different traits from its ancestors. For example, all dogs from the chihuahua to the great dane are descendants of wolves. We know this through genetic evidence as well as the records of domesticating and breeding dogs. This leads to thesis 3.

3. The common ancestor thesis

Brothers and sisters look alike. People of the same race have the same skin color. Looking alike and sharing the same skin color are evidence for biological relationships. Similarly, the bone structures of different species provides evidence of relationships between species. This evidence suggests that different species share common ancestors. There is a mountain of evidence that every living thing is descended from a common ancestor. Perhaps the most powerful evidence is genetic evidence. Genetic evidence is accepted as sufficient to decide court cases. It can also be used to show the family relationships between different species. Given the scientific evidence, it is clear that every organism is a cousin to each other. Not only are we cousins with chimpanzees, but we are cousins with dung beetles and turnips. Here is a detailed phylogenic tree of life on earth.

Are theses 2 and 3 incompatible with Christianity?
Although Christianity teaches that God created us, there doesn't seem to be anything in the major creeds that suggests how God created us. These two theses of evolution and the belief that God created us can be reconciled by believing that God created us through a process of descent with modification from a common ancestor.

4. The theory of natural selection

The theory of natural selection or “Darwinism” is a theory that tries to demonstrate one way of how descent with modification happens. The theory goes something like this: 

1. When an organism has offspring, most of the traits of the parent are passed on to the children.

2. Traits vary within a given population of organisms. Some are tall, short, fast, slow etc.

3. Some traits give organisms a reproductive advantage over other organisms. E.g. Organisms that can avoid danger better than their peers will likely have more offspring compared to their peers.

4. Traits that enhance reproductive advantage are passed on to offspring more often than less effective traits.

For example, Angler fish are deep sea fish that have nasty sharp teeth and a glowing lure attached to their head. This glowing lure is the last thing that many fish see before being gobbled up by the Angler fish. In a given population of Angler fish, some will have brighter lures than others which are better at attracting hungry fish. The Angler fish with brighter lures might tend to survive more often than Angler fish with dimmer lures. The Angler fish with brighter lures will be “naturally selected” to pass on their genetic traits to their children causing modification of the species over time. On an interesting side note, if the lure gets too bright, it could possibly attract larger fish that would just eat the whole Angler fish. Natural Selection could work in the other direction to make the lure a bit dimmer until some economic equilibrium is reached between attracting smaller fish and avoiding larger fish.

There are plenty of examples of natural selection. Many examples have even been observed such as Lenski’s experiments with e. coli.

Is the theory of natural selection incompatible with Christianity?
Natural selection doesn’t appear to conflict with Christianity either. I think there are several possible explanations that could bring the 2 beliefs into harmony. Here are a few suggestions:

1. God could have started the process and let natural selection run its course knowing that man would eventually evolve in the image of God.

2. The whole process started and ended without God’s interference and then God chose an Adam and Eve out of the existing homosapiens and taught them His Gospel—perhaps gave them the ability to understand it as well.

3. God could have directly influenced natural selection. If man can effect natural selection intentionally by altering genes or unintentionally by building wind turbines that kill thousands of birds, then surely God could have selected species quite deliberately to reach the outcomes He intended. Current scientific understanding shows that natural selection is the primary means of evolution, but it doesn’t rule it out as the only means.

4. God could have created Adam and Eve and then Adam and Eve’s children could have mixed with other homosapiens that did evolve from a common ancestor, thus giving us the genetic relationship with other species.

Some of these explanations will be more or less palatable to a Christian based on how literally they tend to translate the Bible. There will certainly be other explanations that are perhaps better or more nuanced; the limits of my own creativity leads me to think that it is something like one of the explanations mentioned above.

Conclusion

I used to think that evolution and Christianity were incompatible. I have briefly documented how my own beliefs evolved here. Christians don’t claim to know exactly how God created us and the “how” of creation is not essential to Mere Christianity. Some might object that the definition of Christianity that I have used is too broad. To answer the question I posed at the beginning, the definition needs to be broad in order to avoid the fallacy of concluding that the theory of evolution is incompatible with all of Christianity because it may be incompatible with some individual sects within Christianity.

The superficial contradictition between Christianity and evolution lies not in the theory of evolution itself but in the philosophical baggage that people attach to evolution or the philosophical baggage that some attach to Christianity. Once one discerns between the actual beliefs and the philosophical add-ons, the conflict between Christianity and evolution dissolves.

Mathematics and Reality

There are 2 main views about the relationship between mathematics and reality. One view states that we can know mathematical truths without any prior experience from reality. The other view states that we cannot know mathematical truths unless we have prior experience with reality. I will argue in favor of the second view. Proponents of the first view might advance an argument like this: “What “prior experience” goes into my knowledge that every natural number is the sum of four squares or the knowledge that every natural number can be uniquely factored into primes?”

Here is my response:

Math is ultimately dependent on direct experience with reality because (1) math is dependent on numbers, (2) numbers are concepts, and (3) concepts are ultimately dependent on perceiving reality.

Reality causes our sensations. A perception is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism. We simply perceive too many objects to remember every individual thing. We mitigate this problem through conceptualizing our perceptions. A concept is cognitive unit of meaning—a symbol that refers to objects in reality. Humans can form concepts because we can recognize similarities and differences among objects in reality. We summarize these similarities or differences through a process of abstraction.

Example: Green is a concept. Green does not exist by itself just floating somewhere in reality. There is no “greenness” that one can point to. But we can see a green mango, a green car, and a green turtle. These each have the property green. Green does not exist apart from green objects, but we can abstract the concept of green and talk about the concept of green independently of objects.

Numbers are the same way. There is no number 5 running naked in the wild. We derive the the concept of 5 by observing 5 fingers, or 5 mangos, or 5 turtles. From these experiences we can create the concept of “5 units”. We also observe that 2 units + 3 units = 5 units. Once we understand the number-concepts and how they integrate together, we can reapply mathematical concepts and rules back on the concepts themselves. Through this process we can gain knowledge without having further experiences. As Wittgenstein said, “From the given, I can construct what is not given.”

The “prior experiences” that lead to the knowledge that every natural number is the sum of four squares is not some experience about natural numbers and squares running around in the wild. The prior experiences were the perceptions in one's youth that led to the creation of concepts of numbers. The prior experiences also include hearing your teachers tell you how to integrate these number-concepts correctly.

This process of integrating concepts concepts directly is simply called reason. Reason is the ability to integrate concepts as derived from the senses. Our sensations are sensations about reality. Therefore, claiming that mathematics is an exercise in pure reason already presupposes necessary experience with reality.

An Introduction to Social Ontology

The purpose of this post is to explain the ontology of social facts to create a foundation for future posts. Ontology is a fancy word that refers to the nature of existence. In other words, I want to explain how social facts come into existence. John Searle is perhaps the most influential living philosopher on the subject of social ontology. John Searle's philosophical project is to try to explain how we get meaningful social facts like the existence of money, elections, marriages, touchdowns, cocktail parties etc. Searle frames his work with the following question:

“"How, if at all, can we reconcile a certain conception of the world as described by physics, chemistry, and the other basic sciences with what we know, or think we know, about ourselves as human beings? How is it possible in a universe consisting entirely of physical particles in fields of force that there can be such things as consciousness, intentionality, free will, language, society, ethics, aesthetics, and political obligations? ... This is the single overriding question in contemporary philosophy."

The following provides the conceptual apparatus for answering such a question:

Mind-independent and mind-dependent facts 
The first conceptual tool necessary to solve the puzzle is the distinction between Mind-Independent facts and Mind-Dependent facts. Mind-independent facts are facts that exist even if all human beings suddenly vanished. These facts include the existence of particles and forces, mountains and rivers, space and time. Mind-Dependent facts on the other hand exist only because they are created by the beliefs of conscious beings. If we go, they go. Mind-Dependent facts include such things as money, elections, marriages, touchdowns, cocktail parties, religious sacraments, lawyers, good and evil etc. So we are concerned primarily with this class of fact. In previous posts, I have called these observer-independent/dependent facts. Sometimes I refer to mind-independent facts as Brute Facts.

mind-indpendent-dependent

Collective recognition
Social facts require human cooperation. Mind-Dependent facts are only facts if everyone collectively recognizes and accepts them as facts. For examples, Barack Obama is president of the united states only because he is collectively recognized as being the president. If people stopped recognizing him as such, then he would cease to be president. Collective recognition does not mean that everyone explicitly supports a given fact, but at a minimum they have to implicitly accept it or go along with it.

Assignment of function
All functions are Mind-Dependent. Functions only exist relative from conscious beings who represent objects as having a certain function.

Both human beings and higher animals can impose functions on objects. For example, a rock by itself doesn't have any function, but in the hands of a monkey it can serve the function of a mallet or hammer. Similarly, a screwdriver has no innate function. It only has the function of a screwdriver because humans assign it that function. In both of these cases, the function is matched with some physical property or shape of the object.

Status functions
Humans are unique in that they have the ability to assign functions to objects or people regardless of the physical structure of that object or person. So for example, we can assign the status of money to a piece of paper, or the status of chairman to an individual. Unlike the screwdriver whose function matches its shape, there is really nothing about the piece of paper that makes it money. Likewise, there is nothing intrinsic about Barack Obama that makes him president either. He is president because everyone collectively recognizes his status. The collective assignment of function to objects results in a Status Function. Status functions cannot exist without collective recognition. Status functions are pervasive. We are basically locked into an invisible system of status functions. How do status functions work in the real world anyhow?

Constitutive rules
There are 2 types of rules—regulative rules and constitutive rules. Regulative rules regulate preexisting forms of behavior. For example, the rule to drive on the right side of the road is a regulative rule. On the other hand, constitutive rules don't regulate antecedently existing forms of behavior, they create the very possibility of the behavior that they regulate. Take the example of Chess, the rules of chess create the very possibility for the existence of chess. Without the constitutive rule, there would be no chess moves to regulate at all. Regulative rules regulate activities that could exist independently of rules. But, constitutive rules regulate activities that are dependent on the rules for their existence. Status functions exist only relative to a system of constitutive rules.

The constitutive rules of status functions have the structure "X counts as Y in context C". For example, this piece of paper(X) counts as $1(Y) in the United States(context C). Barack Obama(X) counts as the president(Y) of the United States(C). Such and such a move(X) counts as a legal knight move(Y) in the game of chess(C). The fascinating feature of this structure is that it can iterate upward indefinitely where the "Y" term from a lower level can constitute an "X" term at a higher level. For example:

Such and such a noise(X1) counts as a sentence(Y1) in English. Such and such an english sentence(Y1=X2) can count as making a promise(Y2) Uttering such and such a promise(Y2=X3) counts as undertaking a marriage contract(Y3).

This iterative feature can be illustrated with the lowest level at the bottom as such:

iteration

Summary so far
 So far I have explained that social facts are collectively recognized status functions. These status functions are created by the constitutive rule "X counts as Y in context C". This rule can iteratate upward indefinitely. Another feature of status functions is that they almost never exist alone. They always exist as part of a much larger systems of constitutive rules. Status functions ultimately bottom out in brute facts that are Mind-Independent. For example, is assigned to some physical brute fact such as a piece of gold, or a piece of paper or a magnetic trace on a computer disc.

Exceptions
There are some exceptions to the constitutive rule "X counts as Y". Sometimes we can just create a "Y". One example is the corporation. To create a corporation we just say we are creating a corporation. There is no brute fact "X" that is the corporation. It isn't the building of the business or the businessmen. This ingenious social fact allows people to make money while being protected from losses.

The role of language
Language is essential to the existence of status functions. You can imagine a tribe that a had language but didn't have money, or private property, or governments, but you can't imagine having money and governments without language.

Language is a system of constitutive rules and is necessary for the creation of status functions. As I wrote in a previous post, there are 5 and only 5 things you can do with language. Here, I just want to talk about one of the things one can do with language called "Declarations". Declarations are speech acts that change reality by representing reality as being so changed. A rough test to see if something is a declaration is if you can add the word “hereby” in front of it as in “I hereby declare war.” Examples of declarations include “this meeting is adjourned”, “I now pronounce you husband and wife” and,”This note is legal tender for all debts public and private”. Status functions are language-dependent. Social facts exist because we use language to declare that they exist.

Status functions have power!
Status functions are the glue that hold society together because they have power. According to John Searle:

Without exception, the status functions carry what I call “deontic powers.” That is, they carry rights, duties, obligations, requirements, permissions, authorizations, entitlements, and so on. I introduce the expression “deontic powers” to cover all of these, both the positive deontic powers (e.g., when I have a right) and the negative deontic powers (e.g., when I have an obligation),

The status function of money entitles me to buy goods. The status function of President of the United States authorizes the president to give certain orders. The president is also put under an obligation to uphold the constitution. Some deontic powers are conditional. For instance, in some states a voter can vote for a political candidate only upon the condition that the voter is registered for the party of that candidate.

Desire-independent reasons for action
Status functions can lock into human rationality by providing desire-independent reasons to acting in a certain way. These reasons are created by the deontic powers of status functions. For example, the president has reasons for upholding the constitution regardless of whether he wants to or not because he has the status function of being the president. Employees have an obligation to come into work even when he/she doesn't feel like it. The status function of husband provides the man reasons to act differently than his initial inclinations—to be faithful, and to protect his family and so forth.

Summary
To summarize, the ontology of social facts come from the collective recognition of status functions which are created through constitutive rules. These constitutive rules usually have the logical form "X counts as Y in context C" and are created by speech acts called "Declarations". Since I have learned about status functions, reading the news has been fascinating because I can see the world in terms of status functions. In future posts I plan to apply this way of analyzing social ontology to the subjects of human rights and religious institutions.

Human Rights Part 1

This is part one in a series of posts on human rights. The concept of human rights touches everyone even though it is sometimes an ambiguous concept that is poorly justified. Since it is so foundational, we should really examine it closely. The following are some common beliefs about human rights.

Belief 1—Human rights come from God or nature
 Some believe that rights do not come from law, but they are God-given or come from nature. Because they are not given by any man they cannot be taken away. This is the meaning behind the phrase unalienable rights.

Belief 2—Human rights don't actually exist.
Some argue that human rights don't actually exist. Jeremy Bentham who founded utilitarianism and influenced John Stuart Mill held this view. He said,

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense: for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle.

Belief 3—Human rights come from social contracts and law.
 The social contract argument says that rights come a social contract that citizens make with their governments. Citizens consent—either implicitly or explicitly to surrender some of their freedoms in exchange for a protection of other rights.

In the upcoming posts, I will write about my own beliefs about rights and how they are, or perhaps are not, justified.

Politics and the Limitations of Reality

The purpose of this post is to explain how political goals are limited by reality. Reality Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. When we talk of reality, we are talking of a real world that exists independently of anyone's thoughts and experiences. We call certain propositions "facts" if they corresponds to reality.

Categorizing Reality Although there is only one reality, there are broadly speaking 2 ways to categorize reality. The first category relates to facts that are observer-independent such as the existence of particles, forces, mountains, and galaxies. I will refer to these phenomenon as Brute Facts. Brute facts exist regardless of what anyone thinks or believes. The second category is often more interesting and more complex. It relates to facts that are observer-dependent such as the existence of money, marriages, elections, and cocktail parties. I will refer to these facts as institutional facts. Institutional facts only exist insofar as they are represented as existing by human beings. (I briefly began to explain how institutional facts are created here). The fact that Barack Obama is president of the United States is an objective fact even though there is nothing intrinsic about Obama that makes it the case that he is president. Obama is simply president because everyone believes that he is the president. If someone were to say that Obama was not the president, he/she would simply be mistaken. The following chart visualizes various types of brute facts and institutional facts.

categorizing-reality

The Limitations of Reality Political goals are limited by reality. For instance, one cannot create something out of nothing. One must work with the materials available. If Howard Roark plans to build a skyscraper, he is limited by the brute facts of reality. He must understand the structural limitations of load-bearing beams, the effects of temperature on the contraction and expansion of the building, and various geological limitations, etc. Understanding how Roark is limited by institutional facts is a bit more complicated. He limited by whether he can find investors, he is limited by environmental laws, by zoning restrictions, by various city ordinances and other building codes, by the aesthetic tastes of the investors and by others in the immediate community. For example, the city of Charleston, South Carolina has extremely strict building codes that are meant to preserve the historical appearance of the city. Howard Roark could not build a skyscraper in Charleston, not because of any brute fact of reality, but because he is limited by what is institutionally "given". How do the limitations of reality apply to political goals?

Politics Politics, roughly defined, is the art of running government and state affairs. Politics deals with decisions made within a social context. When one desires to achieve a political goal such improving education, or increasing prosperity and human well-being, they essentially desire to change reality. This does not mean that they are trying to change the brute facts such as the existence of forces and particles. It means that they are trying to change social reality—or in other words the observer-dependent aspects of reality. The chances of success in achieving a political goal are increased when reality—both physical (observer-independent) and social (observer-dependent)—are understood.

Political goals are limited by brute facts It is a brute fact of reality that some social goals are impossible. The most basic brute limitations are resources and time. For example, a social goal to give everyone everything they want is impossible because resources are limited. This is called scarcity. Another basic brute fact is the limitation of time. Time is not free. The value of time is whatever alternative opportunities must be foregone in order to use it for a particular purpose. Spending 3 hours watching television costs the couch potato 3 hours that he could have worked and earned money. This is called opportunity cost. Everything has a resource cost and a time cost. Those 2 costs combined equals the total cost of every human activity.

Another vitally important brute fact to understand is human nature. The existence of consciousness itself is a brute fact and conscious beings have a "brute" nature. Human nature is a product of biological evolution. As such human beings are born with innate tendencies. We tend to be mostly self-interested but we can sometimes be cooperative as well. We have strong responses to honor and shame. Men and women vary in their respective natures. Men are more aggressive and women are more nurturing and social. We have free will to choose, but we do not have the power to choose the consequences of our actions. All of these aspects of human nature are observer-independent.

Political goals are limited by institutional facts Institutional facts are dependent on human agreement for their existence. They also ultimately rest upon or bottom out in the brute facts. For example, the institutional fact of money exists only because everyone agrees that it exists, but the status of money is always assigned to some physical brute fact such as a piece of gold, or a piece of paper or a magnetic trace on a computer disc. Once we have institutional facts we can examine how they limit political goals.  Since they are dependent on human agreement and recognition for their existence, political goals are limited by whether or not people agree to recognize a given institutional fact. if you are trying to change social reality and you do not have enough people in agreement, you will fail in your political goals. Institutional facts are like habits. The older the institutional fact, the more difficult it is to change it.

Brute facts about political institutional facts It so happens that there are brute facts about social reality. Institutional facts exist because people agree that they exist. But there are observer-independent results and consequence that do not arise from forces and particles or anything like that, but they arise from human transactions alone. Recessions fit this description.

Recessions are a social phenomenon and they would not exist unless people existed. But recessions do not exist simply because people believe that they exist. They are separate from things like marriages and money which only exist because they are represented as existing. If no one believed it was a recession, it would still be a recession. Whereas in the case of the existence of presidents and cocktail parties, if no one ever believed that they existed, they would never exist. The existence of recessions are brute facts that are discovered even though they are consequences of institutional facts such as buying and selling goods and services. Business cycles are brute limitations on political goals. We cannot create a good economy just by believing and agreeing to have a good economy. We have to recognize that there are some consequences that are independent of anyone's beliefs and intentions that occur because of human transactions.

Inflation is also a brute fact about social reality. The book The Ascent of Money by financial economist Niall Ferguson describes the inflation of 16th century Spain. "They dug up so much silver [in the new world]...that the metal itself dramatically declined in value—that is to say, in its purchasing power with respect to other goods." This inflation was not intended,  but it led to Spain's economic and imperial decline.

Summary I have tried to broadly describe the concepts of reality as it applies to a specific type of institutional change—namely political change. There are 2 categories of reality—brute facts and institutional facts. Political goals are best achieved when one understands and accepts the limitations of reality.

Is it rational to vote for third-party candidates?

The purpose of this post is to answer the question: "Is it rational to vote for third party candidates?" Let me first define the words I am using. By "rational" I simply mean choosing the wisely among alternatives. A rational person weighs the various options (calculates ratios) and chooses the option the he/she thinks will do the most good. A rational person aligns their actions with their goals. By "third-party candidate" I am simply referring to a candidate that is not one of the major two parties in the United States—namely Democrat and Republican.

I want to go through a series of thought experiments to try to answer the question of this post.

Scenario 1
 Let's say that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are the only 2 candidates on the ballot. Let's say that between the two candidates, a Romney presidency is 100% aligned with my goals and an Obama presidency is 0% aligned with my goals. (Saying that Romney is 100% aligned with my goals is the same thing as saying that I agree with everything that he says.) In this scenario, it is rational to vote for Romney.

rational-choice-is-romney

Scenario 2
Now let's say that Romney is 1% aligned with my goals and Obama is 2% aligned. Since Obama is more aligned with my goals, it would now be rational to vote for Obama.

rational-choice-is-obama

Scenario 3
 Now let's add a third-party candidate. The candidates are Romney, Obama, and Jesus (insert perfect candidate of your choice here). Let's say Jesus is 100% aligned with my goals, Romney-50, Obama 49. Let's also stipulate that they all have an equal chance of winning. In this case it is rational to vote for Jesus.

rational-choice-is-jesus

Scenario 4
 Now lets take the same example—Jesus-100, Romney-50, Obama-49. But Jesus happens to have no reasonable chance of winning an election. But, Romney and Obama have fairly equal chances of winning. What is the rational thing to do? As I defined in the beginning "rational" means choosing the best option among alternatives. Because Jesus has no chance of winning, I believe that it is rational to vote for Romney over Jesus. Why? Because although Jesus would do the most good, the good that Jesus would do if he were elected doesn't matter. It is simply not part of reality. A vote for Romney in this case would do more good in the world than a vote for Jesus.

rational-choice-is-romney-2

Conclusion If scenario 3 was representative of the situations that we find ourselves in, then it would be rational to vote for a third party candidate. However, in my lifetime there has never been a third party candidate that has had a chance of winning. Every election that I can remember resembles scenario 4 and there is no evidence that we will depart from scenario 4 anytime soon. Therefore, under normal circumstance, I believe it is irrational to vote for third-party candidates, because that decision will not be aligned with the goals of the voter. Voting for the most electable candidate that you agree with is the best way to influence politics in a direction that you one think is best.

ANTICIPATING OBJECTIONS

The "Vote on Principle" Objection
 Some object by saying that one should vote "on principle" or similarly people should vote "their conscience". I am not really sure what this means, but I think it means that everyone should vote for the person with whom they agree the most whether or not they have a chance for winning. If we apply this principle consistently, then it means that since everyone agrees with themselves the most, they should write in their own names and vote for themselves. This is absurd so perhaps the "vote on principle" advocates mean something like vote for whoever you agree with the most that is a running candidate. But this approach assumes that one can do more good if they vote for someone that is a running candidate even if they agree with that candidate less than they agree with themselves. If that really is the assumption, then it only seems logical to apply it more broadly as I have to vote for someone that will do more good by being elected.

In my opinion, I am voting on principle. The principle I am using is rationality. I want to do the most good among the alternatives available. My conscience leads me to try to do the most good possible.

The "Lesser of 2 Evils" Objection
Some object that I am just settling for the "lesser evil". I might agree with this argument if we were voting between Hitler and Pol Pot, but I don't think that picture matches reality. I think that framing the issue this way is categorical. Anyone judging the candidates to be evil presumes the omniscience of God. The decision making process is not categorical, but incremental—meaning that there are costs and benefits that need to be examined and weighed for each candidate. In other words, the choice between candidates is a choice between 'more good or less good' given the trade-offs inherent in the voting process. In other words, it is pointless to argue what should happen in a perfect world. Instead, we should focus on what can be done in the world that we find ourselves in. If we compare our current situation with the perfect world, then everything will seem evil to us. To get a clear picture, we must compare where we are now, with where we have been.

The "Send a message" objection
 Some say that you should vote for the candidate you agree with most to send a message. I admit that in some rare circumstances this may be a rational strategy. For instance, let's say that there are only 2 candidates, Romney and Obama. I agree more with Romney, but he has no chance of winning. In that case I would still vote for Romney because sending a message is the best I can do in that situation.

rational-to-send-a-message

But most of the time when people say they are sending a message, I think they are really just treating elections as an occasion to vent their emotions, rather than as a process to pick someone into whose hands to place the fate of the nation.

The "They are all the same anyway" objection
 Some claim that the major party candidates are all the same and therefore they should vote for some third-party. This claim strikes me as very ignorant. Anyone who is aware of the voting patterns between Democrats and Republicans know that they very rarely vote similarly on any piece of legislation. Perhaps more important, the president has the power to select supreme court justices that can serve for several decades. With very few exceptions, the type of judge that a democrat will select is much different than the type of judge that a republican will select. Saying that one does not like either candidate is not equivalent to saying that they are all the same. We must do our homework and select which electable candidate will do the most good.

The "people will wake up" objection
Some argue that we should let the worst candidate win so that "people will wake up". The problem with this argument is that people don't "wake up". The worst candidate ends up electing judges that sit on the bench for decades that make matters even worse over the long run.

Reality and the uses of language

In my last post I talked about the distinction between "word to world" direction of fit and the "world to word" direction of fit. Word to world means that our words match the way the world is in reality. World to word means that the world changes to match our words. (Fig 1). This distinction seems necessary to understanding how language relates to reality.

I understood these concepts best when learning about the different ways that language can be used. This post will state and analyze the various uses of language. The philosopher John Searle argues that there are 5 and only 5 ways that language can be used. There are Assertives, Directives, Commissives, Expressives, and Declarations. These uses of language are called speech acts. 

Assertives 

Assertives are utterances intended to tell you how things are in the world. They are representations of reality. An assertive is a speech act that commits the speaker to the truth of a proposition. Assertives are either true or false and have the world-to-word direction of fit. Assertives refer to statements, descriptions, classifications, explanations, and clarifications.

Examples of assertive speech acts include:

• Socrates is bald

• 2 * 2 * 2 = 8

• All men are mortal

• Donald Trump is the president of the United States

Directives

These are attempts by the speaker to try to get the hearer to do something. Correct uses of directives must always refer to future voluntary acts. It would be nonsense to tell someone to do something in the past or to do something that is impossible. Directives are not true or false like assertives, but they are obeyed or disobeyed. Directives include orders, commands, requests and refer to pleading, begging, praying, insisting, and suggesting. Directives have the word-to-world direction of fit.

Examples of directive speech acts include: 

• Please bless my family

• Go to your room

• Pass the salt

• vote for me

Commissives

Commissives commit a speaker to some future voluntary action. Commissives reveal the intention of the speaker. It would be nonsense to say I promise to come and see you but I don't intend to see you. Commissives refer to vows, threats, pledges, guarantees, contracts, promises, covenants, and oaths. An offer is also a commissive but it only commits the speaker to some action upon the condition of the offer being accepted. Like directives, commissives also have the word-to-world direction of fit.

Examples of commissive speech acts include:

• I promise to exercise every day

• I now covenant with thee

• I solemnly swear to tell the truth

• I'll be there at 10 o'clock

• I'll give you 5 dollars for the watch

Some commissives are not promises to an individual but just a commissives in general such as

• I Pledge of Allegiance to flag

• We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor

Expressives

Expressives reveal the speaker's attitudes and emotions towards a particular proposition. Expressives include thanking, apologizing, congratulating, and welcoming. The direction of fit doesn't apply to expressives because the direction is presupposed. John Searle calls this the Presup direction of fit. In the case of "thank you for giving me the money" for instance, it is presupposed that the speaker did receive money from the hearer.

Examples of expressive speech acts include:

• Thank you for giving me the money

• congratulations on marrying a libertarian

• I apologize for stepping on your face".

Other types of expressives use the subjunctive or optative mood such as:

• would that the politicians were more righteous

• if only it rained more often."

Bearing religious testimony can be an expressive such as in the phrase

• I believe in God".

In that case it isn't necessarily the purpose to assert that God exists or get the congregation to do something but to simply express one's own conviction or faith.

Declarations

Declarations are the most interesting type of speech act, because they are the foundation for human society. Declarations are utterances that change the world by representing it as being so changed. A rough test to see if something is a declaration is if you can add the word "hereby" in front of it as in "I hereby declare war on your country." Declarations have a double direction of fit.

Examples of declaration speech acts include:

• this meeting is adjourned

• I now pronounce you husband and wife

• This note is legal tender for all debts public and private".

More than one category can be applied to a single speech act. For example the utterance, "I promise to come and see you," is both a commissive and a declaration because it is committing the speaker to a future action and it is making the utterance a promise by declaring it to be a promise. Understanding these categories of speech acts is necessary to understanding how language relates to reality.

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Language and Reality

The relationship between language and reality can be expressed by the phrase "direction of fit". There are 2 directions of fit. The first direction is more intuitive to grasp—language can reflect reality. This is has been called the word-to-world direction of fit meaning that the words match the world. For example, when we say, "there is a cat on the mat," or, "Socrates is bald," we are using words to match a certain state of affairs in the world. This use of language creates propositions which can be true if they correspond to reality or false if they do not correspond to reality.

The second direction of fit is more interesting. And that is when we use language to change reality. This has been called the world-to-word direction of fit because the world is made to match the words. For example, when I am in a meeting and say, this meeting is adjourned, I am making it the fact that meeting is really adjourned in reality by representing the meeting as being so adjourned. Similarly, when an authorized religious official says, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," he is changing reality by representing reality as being so changed.

It is important to keep in mind the distinction between observer-independent facts and observer-dependent facts. When I say that language can change reality, I do not mean that words can change the observer-independent facts of reality. Words can only change reality insofar as they relates to observer-dependent facts such as cocktail parties and marriage.

In my next post I will introduce the categories of different uses of language and give many different examples.

Objectivity, Subjectivity & Social Reality

There is much confusion surrounding the concepts of objectivity and subjectivity. Basically defined, objectivity refers to that which is the same for everyone while subjectivity refers to that which is different for everyone. In the book, Making the Social World: The Structure of Human Civilization, the famous philosopher John Searle poses a fascinating question related to objectivity, subjectivity, and social reality:

How is it possible that we can have factual objective knowledge of a reality that is created by subjective opinions? One of the reasons I find that questions so fascinating is that it is part of a much larger question: How can we give an account of ourselves, with our peculiar human traits - as mindful, rational, speech-act performing, free-will having, social, political human beings - in a world that we know independently consist of mindless, meaningless, physical particles? How can we account for our social and mental existence in a realm of brute physical facts? 

One part of the answer is giving a better understanding of the concepts of objectivity and subjectivity. One of Searle’s favorite examples is money which provides a concrete example to solve the paradox:

One reason why the concepts of objectivity and subjectivity are so misunderstood is that there is ambiguity between different senses of each of these terms. There is an epistemic sense and there is an ontological sense for each term. “Epistemic” simply means relating to claims or knowledge more generally. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. “Ontological” means pertaining to entities. Ontology is the study of existence. The question of social facts seems paradoxical because the objective/subjective distinction doesn't account for ontological and epistemic dimensions. Here is a diagram that spells out these distinctions:

In the first row of the above diagram, there are epistemically subjective beliefs. We call these opinions because there is no fact behind those beliefs that make it the same for everyone. Some people like Rembrandt better, some like Rubens better. On the left side, we have the proposition that Rembrandt was born in 1606. This is an epistemically objective claim because, unlike epistemically subjective beliefs, there is a fact of the matter that makes epistemically objective propositions true for everyone. When an epistemically objective proposition accurately reflects reality, we say that it is “true”. This is the correspondence theory of truth.

In the second row of the diagram, there is the ontological dimension. On the bottom right, we have facts or entities that exist independently of what anyone thinks or beliefs. These include mountains, molecules, tectonic plates, events, etc. The fact that Rembrandt was born in 1606 is an objective event that happened regardless of whether people believe such a fact. The bottom left quadrant is the most interesting. Here we have ontologically subjective entities such as consciousness itself which include our beliefs, emotions, intentions, pains, tickles, etc.

Going back to our example of money, the above distinctions clarify that the proposition that “certain pieces of paper are money” is an epistemically objective claim. But that fact that it is money comes from our ontologically subjective beliefs.

This is not the whole story of money of course, but it does dissolve the paradox of how you can get objectivity from subjectivity. A more complete account of how things like money come from our subjective beliefs would include an explanation of the conditions that are necessary to create ontologically objective facts. These conditions include language, collective intentionality, and status functions to name a few. The existence of language reveals certain features of consciousness such as collective intentionality. Collective intentionality roughly refers to the collective agreement. Status functions are the assignments we make where we assign a purpose to objects and events. In the case of money, we assign certain pieces of paper the function of money and it works because of our collective recognition of this fact. For a more complete explanation, please see my post on social ontology.

The above distinctions are not only useful in understanding social facts such as money, marriage, political appointments, and cocktail parties, but they are useful in dispelling some common misconceptions about science. For example, some people think that because science is “objective” and consciousness is “subjective” that there cannot be a science of consciousness. But this is making the same fallacy of ambiguity that was mentioned earlier. There can indeed be an epistemically objective science about a domain that is ontologically subjective—such as consciousness for example.

There are other misunderstandings about objectivity, such as the belief that objectivity is an illusion because people subjectivity experience the world in different ways. This post provides a foundation to address this error which I plan on address in future posts.

An LDS view on the nature of God's laws (part 2)

This is a continuation of my last post. I started the recent string of posts with a distinction between observer-independent (OI) facts and observer-relative (OR) facts.These words probably cause more confusion than clarity. Unfortunately I have not yet thought of better terms to describe my thoughts. I will try to use them very carefully. Reviewing my post on these terms is recommended.

After the last post I received this thoughtful comment from my friend:

“If God’s laws are observer-relative, then He is not subject to them, but rather created them. If He created them, He should be able to determine the consequences of breaking those laws.”

To respond to this comment let me clarify again the way I am using the terms observer-independent and observer-relative. The fact that conscious agents exist is an observer-independent fact. Also, the fact that social norms can cause an increase or decrease in happiness among conscious agents is an observer-independent fact. For instance, conscious agents do not actually decide what makes them happy in reality. (This is a whole other conversation that I would rather address in a later post.)

I will come around to tying this back into the comment above. Please bear with me. Let me use another example. Money is created by conscious agents. It is an observer-relative (OR) creation. However, the fact that money decreases transaction costs among conscious agents is an observer-independent (OI) fact. Conscious agents cannot decide whether or not money decreases transaction costs.

Let us imagine that (within an LDS context) that God’s laws did not exist. According to the LDS view, consequences for our actions would still exist. Those consequences are (OI). God cannot choose those consequences. He has no power over them. But he institutes (OR) laws to help us avoid (OI) consequences.

Let me invoke 2 metaphors that I hope will clarify this point.

The Hot Stove Metaphor—In reality, my daughter would burn her hand if she touched a hot stove. I institute the household law—“Thou shalt not touch hot stoves.” I cannot choose the consequences, but my (OR) law is instituted within the framework of the laws of reality(OI).

The Dangerous Street Metaphor— Children who play in the street are likely to get hit by moving vehicles. Therefore I institute the household law—“Thou shalt not play in the street lest I execute punishment by grounding.” In this case, I did choose the (OR) punishment, but it was only to protect my daughter from (OI) consequences of which I have no control.

In the Hot Stove metaphor, I did not set a punishment for breaking the law. The blessing for obeying my law was not getting burned by the hot stove. I could have changed my law because it was (OR). But, I had no control over the (OI) consequences. I believe that the majority of God's laws reflect the principles in the Hot Stove metaphor. God does not actively set the punishment, he lets us learn from reality ourselves if we choose to disobey.

In the Dangerous Street metaphor, I did set an (OR) punishment for breaking my law because I wanted to give my daughter extra disincentive against playing in the street. I could have chosen a different punishment such as removing all of the marshmallow shapes from her Lucky Charms cereal. Some of God's laws are instituted as such. According to LDS theology, every spirit willingly agreed to these laws and conditions in a pre-mortal existence.

Another quick point before I conclude. The purpose of God's laws are to help us learn and progress to become like Him. Human beings learn differently based on different social contexts. If adjusting or changing a law would help us learn better based on a certain social context, then it would make sense to adjust the law to fulfill a higher purpose. For example, the Law of Moses was customized for the ancient Israelites to help them learn in their own way, but eventually the Law of Moses was replaced with a higher law. Likewise a law against drinking was not necessary at the time of Jesus. This law was "given for a principle with promise, adapted to the capacity of the weak and the weakest of all saints" (D&C 89:3)  So in within social contexts laws must change and evolve to fulfill their purpose. God will not give us a law that we are not ready for because it would condemn us more than it would help us.

In conclusion, yes, God could change the consequences of His laws, but his laws are just because they conform to observer-independent law.

Early LDS views of God and Law

Just 3 months before his death, when his theology and beliefs were most mature, Joseph Smith gave a sermon to 20,000 early Latter-day Saints. The sermon took place shortly after the funeral service of a man named King Follett. That sermon is commonly known as King Follett's Discourse. In this sermon Joseph Smith said,

"God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with Himself, so that they might have one glory upon another, and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence, which is requisite in order to save them in the world of spirits."

What is a law?

I will invoke a distinction made in my last post—the distinction between observer-independent facts and observer-relative facts. There can be observer-independent laws and observer-relative laws . An observer-independent law is a universal law or regularity in nature that exists independently of any conscious being or intelligence. Examples of observer-independent laws include the laws of thermodynamics, the law of non-contradiction, the Pythagorean Theorem, Boyle's law, etc. An observer-relative law refers to rules of conduct and behavior to be enforced by social institutions. Examples include traffic laws, contract law, the law of Moses, etc.

These two uses of the word "law" are very different and using the single word “law” interchangeably can be a source of confusion.

Are the laws instituted by God observer-independent, observer-relative, or both?

Let me reference some of the laws of God from a latter-day saint perspective. In this context, I think "law" and "commandment" are the same. Here is a partial list:

“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. …
“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. …
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. …
“Honour thy father and thy mother. …
“Thou shalt not kill.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery. (The law of chastity)
“Thou shalt not steal.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness. …
“Thou shalt not covet.”
The law of tithing
The law of consecration
Love God
Love thy neighbor
Care for the poor

All of these laws are observer-relative because they only exist because a conscious agent declared them to exist. Observer-relative laws can be adjusted for different social contexts. For example, the law of Moses served a purpose in one social context, but was replaced with a higher law through Christ. But, did God institute any observer-independent laws such as the law of thermodynamics, or the pythagorean theorem? Since God is an observer himself, it would be contradictory to say that God instituted laws that were independent of him. But some might argue that those laws of nature are independent to everyone but God.

All the laws that God has shared with us have been observer-relative laws. There is no reason to believe that God created any laws that appear to humans to be observer-independent.

Furthermore, Joseph Smith taught that God himself cannot transcend any law that is independent of Him. The apostle John A. Widsoe in his book Joseph Smith as a Scientist: A Contribution to Mormon Philosophy wrote:

"The interesting fact about this matter is, naturally, that in this conception of God, Joseph Smith was strictly scientific. He departed from the notion that God is a Being foreign to nature and wholly superior to it. Instead, he taught that God is part of nature, and superior to it only in the sense that the electrician is superior to the current that is transmitted along the wire. The great laws of nature are immutable, and even God cannot transcend them."

These immutable laws are not the laws that God instituted. His laws are observer-relative laws are instituted within the framework of the immutable laws of reality. That means that observer-relative laws are based on observer-independent laws. For instance, the fact that God's observer-relative laws help us grow in knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence is an observer-indepdendent fact. This is a more complex subject which I will address in a later post.

In conclusion, God's laws are observer-relative; they are not observer-independent. Latter-Day Saints can be confident that their beliefs will not conflict with any of the observer-independent laws that can be discovered by science.

Reality and Consciousness

Reality is that which exists. Everything that exists in reality has an identity. Consciousness is the means by which we can identify everything that exists. Existence is identity, consciousness is identification. The process of identification involves conceptualization. We categorize and group things based on their similarities and differences.

There are 2 broad categorizations of things that exist in reality:

(1) The first category is that which is exists independent of consciousness. This includes things like matter, time, forces, and particles. These are observer-independent features of reality. They would still exist even if conscious agents did not. Also, the fact that consciousness exists is an observer-independent fact.

(2) The second category describes everything that is dependent on consciousness for existence. This includes things like the United States of America, money, language, and marriage. These are observer-relative features of reality. They could never exist without conscious agents.

Natural science deals with observer-independent facts. The social sciences deal with observer-relative facts.

This distinction is foundational. I will use this concept to support 2 arguments in upcoming posts. I will explain some things that God can do and cannot do. And, I will explain the difference between eternal laws and temporary laws.

Money—An Origin Story

Money solves a huge problem. As I explained in my last post it is better to specialize and trade, than to try to produce everything alone. Imagine that money does not exist. People simply barter. The word barter means that people simply trade goods for goods without using a medium of exchange. Now imagine that I am a designer and I have appendicitis. I can either die, or I can find a surgeon that is willing to trade design work for an appendectomy. I will likely die before I can ever find such a surgeon. This problem is what economists call the double coincidence of wants problem. Simply defined, if I am in an economy that trades goods for goods, then I have to find somebody that wants what I have and simultaneously has what I want. This is a huge transaction cost. In virtually every known society or culture something called "money" evolves to solve the double coincident want problem. Instead of trading goods for goods individuals trade goods for something that is commonly traded, that everybody wants and then they use that thing to trade. Money is anything that is commonly accepted in trade. Money does not have to be issued by the government to be used as money. In fact there are many government issued monies that people don't commonly accept for trade.

The earliest known form of money was red ochre in Aboriginal Australia. Ancient Mesopotamia traded in wheat. Marco Polo records that spices were used as money in the East. The Herodotus recorded that the ancient Lydians were the first people to use coins for money. Prisoners have been known to use cigarettes as money. The big stones in the picture below was used as money (That money didn't move much but was exchanged often in word only.)

Rai—stone-Money-Micronesia

We could agree on anything to be money—even invisible bits of data. It doesn't matter what we use. It only matters that we commonly accept it. Money is one of the most important inventions of all time. Individual and societal success depends on wise usage of this most valuable invention.

Reason and Emotion

Which has primacy between emotion and reason? What is reason? Reason is the faculty that organizes and integrates facts. What are facts? Facts are propositions that correspond with reality. How do we obtain facts? Through the senses. Therefore reason is the ability to comprehend reality directly through the senses.

What is emotion? An emotion is a response to an object (such as a person, place, or thing) or a proposition as evaluated by the perceiver of the object/proposition. How are emotions created? First, the perceiver, perceives and identifies an object or proposition, and then, he/she evaluates the object/proposition and concludes that the object is good or bad according to his/her values.

Therefore emotion is not a faculty of comprehending reality. Emotions cannot tell us anything about reality. Emotions only reflect what we think—implicitly or explicitly—about reality. If our ideas are true and aligned with our emotions, then emotions can be said to indirectly give us feedback about reality.

process-of-emotion

Example: Some people have a positive response to Barack Obama, and some people have a negative response toward Obama. A child who has never heard of Obama will have no emotional response to him. The difference in responses is due to different ideas and values in the perceiver's minds. The response itself does not give us any direct knowledge of President Obama in reality. It only reflects our cognitive evaluations of him.

example-process-of-emotion

Concepts by themselves may or may not be integrated through the faculty of reason. Concepts and values may be unidentified (subconscious). One can hold an identified, integrated concept and an unidentified inconsistent concept at the same time. Therefore, people can accept contradictions without knowing it.

We often identify "mind" with the process of reason and "heart" with the process of emotion. Conflicts between the mind and heart are conflicts between identified concepts and unidentified concepts that cause automatic emotional responses. Therefore conflicts between the heart and mind are ultimately conflicts between thoughts in mind. Such conflicts cannot be resolved by ignoring reason, they are only resolved by using reason to identify subconscious thoughts and integrating them with concepts as derived from reality.

Therefore, reason (the mind) ultimately has primacy over emotion (the heart).

Reason and Faith

Is there any conflict between reason and faith? According to one epistemological position known as fideism faith is independent of and hostile toward reason. How does fideism define faith? It defines faith as belief without evidence. According to some philosophers such as Kierkegaard, reason cannot fully comprehend God and so one must take a "leap of faith". Martin Luther said, "Reason receives life from faith." Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates concepts as derived from man's senses. The thinkers mentioned above did not categorically reject reason, but they clearly believed that faith has primacy over reason. That means that faith is primary and reason is secondary. There are 2 problems with this way of thinking:

The first problem comes from their definition of faith—"belief without evidence". As I wrote in my last post, this definition is incorrect. I will argue here that it is also dangerous. It is dangerous because any belief without evidence will insulate the believer from feedback from reality. If one holds the view that faith has primacy over reason, then if they must choose between reality and religion, they will choose religion over reality. They will not be able to identify truth when it contradicts with their beliefs. They will be blind and their spiritual and physical growth will be stunted. Islamic theocratic fascism is an extreme demonstration of the consequences of this view. Terrorists commit violent acts that reason would otherwise prevent them from doing.

The second problem is revealed by asking a simple question: How did they come to the conclusion that faith has primacy over reason? The answer is that they used reason. Therefore, they primarily rely on a concept that they regard as secondary. Therefore to say that faith has primacy over reason is self-refuting because they used reason to come to that conclusion.