Month: March 2023

Here’s the link to this article.

(Contradiction)

Note: At this point, my hard-working little laptop computer died for good. Fortunately, I had backups of my finished work (chapters 1 through 6 and the Appendices), and work-in-process (chapter 7). However, all of my references and my collection of notes covering subsequent chapters, painstakingly gathered over four months, were lost. I will combine into a single essay the chapters remaining after this one.

This chapter of Why I Believe is probably the strongest one in the book. Dr. Kennedy does a decent job describing various moral systems, and he makes a fairly good case, with only a few glaring weaknesses, for the moral system offered by Christianity. He is right to criticize Christians for failing to bother their heads with an understanding of various moral philosophies, including their own. I would recommend a study of diverse philosophies to anyone, especially nonbelievers, for such a study provides firm ground to stand on when confronted by the onslaughts of fanatical religious zealots.

The chapter.

Kennedy gives adequate, if brief, descriptions of some of the prevalent ethical systems, but his interpretation of them leaves something to be desired. He rails against astrology and behavioristic psychology as being deterministic systems, without realizing that his own ethical system includes an omniscient god, which arguably makes his system deterministic by setting up God as an outside controlling force, trivializing the free will Kennedy venerates. In his description of the teleological ethical system (which emphasizes the goodness of the end result of an action) Kennedy blames evolutionary thought on a Christian giving Darwin a geology book (implying, essentially, that learning science is somehow evil). Evolutionary thought was prevalent before Darwin, and his conclusions were based on evidence collected during his voyages, not from a geology book. Kennedy also shows he misunderstands situational ethics with his example that equates a motive of love with a casual affair calculated to improve the emotional well-being of a lonely woman.

I was happy to see that Kennedy seems to hold a low opinion of altruism, a practice which many Christians believe should be an integral part of their lives. He rightfully recognizes altruism, which is seeking the good of others through self-sacrifice, as a basis for communism and socialism. Nevertheless, Christians practice altruism because this was also an element of the teachings of Jesus. Altruism is a basis of many religions, including Christianity. It is an evil system embodying the concept of human sacrifice. The altruistic ethics of giving value through sacrifice contradict the moral ethics of providing value to others through productivity.

Having touched upon different ethical systems, Kennedy then gives the reader three flawed items of cautionary advice, which I will address here:

1. Speculative, rationalistic systems reject revelation and base the weight of their support upon the conceptions of the human mind. Therefore, their limitations should be obvious at once.

My response to this is, “Revelational systems reject reason, and base the weight of their support upon divine enlightenment from some mythical being. Therefore, their limitations should be obvious at once.”

What else is there besides the human mind, if we are unconvinced of God’s existence? Morality results from objective reasoning that determines whether a given thing is either inherently good for the conscious human organism or inherently bad for the conscious human organism. A truly complete rational system automatically takes into account the universal interconnecting relationships between all humans in their social organism to arrive at mutually beneficial ethical decisions.

2. Rationalist systems are all man-centered. God is banished from his universe and has no right to tell his creations what to do.

That sounds like a Good Thing to me. Besides, rationalist systems don’t “banish” God anywhere. How can you banish something which is either nonexistent or irrelevant?

3. All human ethical systems are willful rebellion against the Almighty God.

This is redundant. Again, one cannot rebel against something whose existence is questionable or irrelevant.

Kennedy also divides, wrongly, the whole matter of ethics into two groups: speculative and revelational. He completely ignores objective ethics. The philosophy of Objectivism, conceived by Ayn Rand, is a strict, logical, moral system that gives meaning and fulfillment to the lives of many people, meeting all human needs without requiring a god, and without the internal contradictions and conflicts associated with religious systems. Much literature has been written by and about Ayn Rand and Objectivism. For a rewarding background study of this philosophy, read one of her novels, notably the literary classic Atlas Shrugged.

Morality.

In this chapter, Kennedy makes the following incredible declaration: In the Scriptures we have a perfectly balanced ethical system that meets all human needs, and in the Hebrew-Christian tradition, good is inevitably connected with God. These are lies. Human needs do not include, for example, sex with guilt, or the threat of damnation. And for God’s goodness, refer back to the section on God’s moral’s and manners in the commentary on chapter 3. We can look at what Christians call morality, based on the edicts from their God, and then ask “Are the actions of God consistent with the morality that he prescribes?” and we find that the answer is no. The usual argument from Christians is: “We cannot understand why God appears to be inconsistent with his morality, because we are finite beings, incapable of God’s infinite understanding.” This strikes most nonbelievers as a convenient excuse for not having a good retort.

Why assume God has a higher claim to morality? Christians make that leap by assuming he has more knowledge. Let’s examine an analogy. We could assume that Newt Gingrich has more political answers than we do, since he has spent his whole life immersed in politics. We could assume the same of Bill Clinton. Yet, the answers they provide do not match up, and are on occasion wholly contradictory. It therefore falls upon each individual to examine what is truly right and wrong, and not take the word of any one being just because he is a self-described expert. The Bible portrays a God who acted as a moral judge, yet found such things as slavery, racism, genocide, rape, and xenophobia occasionally acceptable. Humanity has since decided otherwise, and in a similar fashion will probably even change God’s mind regarding homosexuals over the next several decades.

If one considers that we seem to have evolved as social creatures, then many of those behavioral norms that Kennedy attributes to Christianity are actually biological imperatives. Imagine how long a social species would survive if its members were free to kill each other at will. Not long! Animals do compete with each other, in limited ways, and within set rules – those who willfully destroy their rivals find themselves ostracized.

It is likely that the capabilities of the human mind actually result from natural selection developing our ability to distinguish others’ intentions, good from bad. Evidence for this can be found in a study (from Scientific American) in which subjects were asked to solve two comparable sets of logic/math problems, one in pure, abstract form and the other within a social context. Guess which ones people found easier? Our brains are designed to solve problems within contexts, especially the social context in which we evolved.

Morality does not have to derive from God. The source of Christian ethics, now as always, is the ethical/moral system of the society in which we live. These values have evolved along with society. They’re simply the rules that have enabled our society to survive. Our comprehension of Revealed Truth guides our reactions and modifications to the Christian ethical system, which is rooted in human nature, society, and history. Except for the possible role as creator of human nature, God is quite unnecessary in this scheme as a “foundation” of morality.

You don’t need religion for a complete ethical system. Ethical values should not rely on belief in mythical beings. The supposition that you must act ethically to please some invisible, unknowable God is a pretty weak basis for “morality,” especially since the supposed God’s moral codes are not only provided indirectly through handed-down legends, but are also of questionable value, considering his behavior as described in the Bible.

In the absence of religion, we form a moral belief system by opening our conscience to the needs and desires of others. A Christian acts according to the demands of his or her deity; a nonreligious person acts out of compassion. Remember the empathy principle? Feel as others feel in response to your actions.

Moral absolutes.

Atheists, humanists, or nonreligious people in general, have ethical systems based on relationships with people. That’s pretty absolute. No one out there will come and save us; we need human solutions to human problems. No mythical being is out there to “love” everyone; we need to care for ourselves.

Take a morality from God. Why act in a particular way? “God said so.” This is morality from authority. Dr. Kennedy believes in moral absolutes, but authority is, of course, relative, not absolute! Stanley Milgram’s experiments demonstrated this quite well. Participants would accept the authority of the “experimenter” and promptly 42% would shock an unwilling “subject” (actually an actor) screaming in pain, pleading to be released and eventually not responding. Those who accept morality from the authority of God, over the connections between them and other human beings, may form immediate followings behind any alternate authorities, because they don’t understand morality and how it relates to other people. So, if the leader of a country says that certain people are sub-human vermin, they follow the leader. Just like God, he must be right. He’s authority.

Let’s look at a few moral absolutes that don’t require religion. These are things I consider to be black-and-white absolutes. Everyone has unique values, but certain basic actions never change in terms of rightness or wrongness; they do not vary according to opinion, personality, age, or culture. Objectively good or bad actions are definable in absolute terms; other actions cannot be judged as good or bad because they are determined by individual personal preferences or feelings. As with actions, objective morals are also independent of anyone’s opinions or proclamations. They are not created nor determined by anyone. It is important to remember that a person’s feelings, lifestyle, desires, and needs can vary greatly without altering that person’s character. Objective, natural moral absolutes exist according to the following criteria:

• A chosen action that is objectively good for the human organism is morally good or right.
• A chose action that is objectively bad for the human organism is morally bad or wrong.

Note that “human organism” does not necessarily equate to “self.” This is important. These criteria lead to the following basic moral absolutes:

• Honesty and Truth. Conscious striving for self-honesty, uncompromising loyalty to truth, integrating honesty into one’s life for knowing truth and reality, are essential for human well-being, happiness, and prosperity (for individuals and society). Pragmatic compromise, evasion of truth (for example, acceptance of dogma), and parasitical laziness are immoral.
• Self-Esteem. Productive and creative actions that increase effectiveness in dealing with reality are moral essentials to the self-esteem of an individual. Nonproductive actions that diminish this effectiveness, and diminish the use of one’s mind (for example, as with blind faith or narcotics usage), are immoral.
• Individual Rights. Recognition of the inalienable right each individual has to his or her life and property, is moral. Actions that violate the life or plunder the property of others are immoral.
• Refusal To Sacrifice. Sacrifice, the basis of altruism, occurs when a value is diminished or destroyed for a lesser value or nonvalue. Refusal to sacrifice is life-enhancing, and morally right. “Noble” sacrifice for a “higher” cause or no cause is morally wrong.
• Prohibiting Use of Force. Prohibition of the initiation or threat of force, coercion, or fraud against any individual for any reason is the foundation of morality. Note that actions of self-defense or protection do not qualify as the initiation or threat of force. Use of force (especially by governments or religions) against individuals, especially if the result serves the social “good” or a “higher” cause, is immoral.
• Ends do not justify means. This is true especially with respect to the use of force. All moral actions are based on principles prohibiting initiatory force, threat of force, coercion, or fraud as a means to accomplish ends, no matter how noble. On the other hand, pragmatic use of force or coercion, violation or sacrifice of individual rights for the “good” of society for “noble” ends, is immoral.

Throughout human history, ethical systems based on religions have been oriented against some or all of these absolute moral principles. Many find that adhering to these principles requires liberating oneself from religious binds by casting religious dogmas out from one’s life.

The Bible does not present a highly advanced moral code. In fact, despite positive aspects, it presents a primitive, crude, suspicious, sexist moral code that is becoming, to the dismay of fundamentalists, ignored more and more in modern society, and for good reasons. Perhaps this ethical system suited people in Biblical times; but they were mistaken. Sexism, racism, slavery, genocide, and superstition are always immoral tools with which to run a society. We’ve had the benefit of history and fine examples of poorly-run societies (the rise of Christianity coincided with the decay of the Roman empire, Christianity reached its peak of power in the Dark Ages, and today we see religion-controlled governments, like Iran, floundering with unhappy and disturbed populations); we should know better than to follow a failed moral code.

Conclusion.

In my view, faith constipates the mind. It restrains people from much cerebral activity they might otherwise be capable of. You don’t need a God for an ethical system. In the end, the answer is simple: You should be good because it is good to be so.

Here’s the link to this article.

(Non Sequitur)

After that long analysis of the chapter on creationism, I need a rest! Fortunately, the next two chapters in Why I Believe can be reviewed relatively quickly.

The chapter on Heaven begins by first trying to establish the immortality of the human soul. Let me say that I personally do not reject the idea of a human soul. In science, absence of evidence can be, in many cases, evidence of absence. However, the existence of souls is a question not addressed by science. Therefore I have found no convincing reason to deny the existence of my soul. Indeed, I acknowledge evidence for it. I realize that such evidence is not observable by experiment. Neither is it repeatable in the scientific sense, but the observation of such evidence is certainly repeated, consistently and many times over, by independent observers, a fact which I cannot dismiss.

However, I think Kennedy’s fails to justify his reasons for believing in an immortal soul, and he fails to support his opinion about what happens after death. He presents rationales for the idea of an immortal soul based on science, nature, and the universal longing of mankind for eternity. I’ll go over these points briefly.

First, the thermodynamics argument Kennedy presents is a non sequitur, meaning that the conclusion he draws is not logically connected with his premise. The First Law of Thermodynamics, which says energy and matter can be transformed from one to the other, but not created nor destroyed, says nothing about the human spirit. That law is still just as valid if humans had no soul. Then, consciousness would simply be the manifestation of all electrical and chemical processes in the body operating harmoniously, which ceases when the physical body dies (and the body’s matter then gets converted to energy as it is consumed).

Second, in his analogy from nature, where Kennedy quotes William Jennings Bryan, he gives us another non sequitur. The facts that “cold and pulseless” seeds grow into living plants, or that rosebushes whither in autumn and then recover in spring, say nothing about death. Those facts relate to reproduction and metabolic changes in living physical organisms, not dying.

Third, in considering a universal longing for eternity as evidence for the existence of an immortal soul Kennedy presents still another non sequitur. One could as easily argue that a universal longing for eternity, combined with a subconscious fear that no soul exists, is the reason all creatures embody the desire to reproduce and thus continue their existence the only way possible.

Despite his use of more appeals to questionable authority, reference to Scripture (for which he has so far not established a record of reliability), irrelevant poetry quotations, and the idea that what the majority believes must be true, Kennedy does point out that some elegant philosophical arguments have been put forward throughout human history for the existence of an eternal soul. Having “established” human immortality, he then writes about dying. This is where he really stumbles.

In particular, Kennedy cites the excellent and fascinating book Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody, Jr. (Kennedy refers to him as “Dr.” although Moody wrote his book before getting his doctoral degree – which indicates another attempt on Kennedy’s part to appear more authoritative). The book is a collection of accounts of people who had been pronounced dead but returned to consciousness. To provide evidence of Heaven’s existence, Kennedy, adhering to his practice in other chapters, takes great care to select only those pieces of evidence which conform to his preconceptions while ignoring everything else. Look at what Moody wrote at the end of the book in his “Questions” chapter:

Through all of my research, however, I have not heard a single reference to a heaven or a hell or anything like the customary picture to which we are exposed in this society. Indeed, many persons have stressed how unlike their experiences were to what they had been led to expect in the course of their religious training. One woman who “died” reported: “I had always heard that when you die, you see both heaven and hell, but I didn’t see either one.” Another lady who had an out-of-body experience after severe injuries said, “The strange thing was that I had always been taught in my religious upbringing that the minute you died you would be right at these beautiful gates, pearly gates. But there I was hovering around my own physical body, and that was it! I was just baffled.” Furthermore, in quite a few instances reports have come from persons who had no religious beliefs or training at all prior to their experiences, and their descriptions do not seem to differ in content from people who had quite strong religious beliefs.[1]

Moody also does not rule out psychological or neurological explanations for the accounts he recorded. For example, the physical and chemical effects of blood loss to neurons in the brain are the same from one brain to the next, so it is not unreasonable to expect people to experience similar hallucinations from such a trauma.

Dr. Kennedy, however, doggedly interprets all life-after-death accounts to support his belief not only in the soul, but in the existence of Heaven and Hell. He imagines that the only alternative is the cessation of existence, which he regards as unthinkable. He doesn’t offer any reason whatsoever why we shouldn’t believe, for instance, in reincarnation as a possibility for the soul’s future. Moody wrote:

Not one of the cases I have looked into is in any way indicative to me that reincarnation occurs. However, it is important to bear in mind that not one of them rules out reincarnation, either. If reincarnation does occur, it seems likely that an interlude in some other realm would occur between the time of separation from the old body and the entry into the new one. Accordingly, the technique of interviewing people who come back from close calls with death would not be the proper mode for studying reincarnation, anyway.[2]

Keep in mind that personal death experiences show no evidence Heaven, Hell, or reincarnation. However, outside of these experiences, one finds substantially more evidence supporting the idea of reincarnation than for the concepts of Heaven and Hell, even if one ignores the deep personal revelations experienced by individuals like Carlos Castañeda and Shirley MacLaine. The Tibetan Book of the Dead not only recounts with remarkable accuracy the stages of near-death encounters (in agreement with Moody’s observations), but it also says that reincarnation does occur. Naturally, Kennedy neglects to mention anything about it. He suggests that the idea of an immortal soul is valid because so many people believe it (the argumentum ad numerum fallacy) -then, by his own flawed logic, the concept of reincarnation has validity also.

In the experimental technique of hypnotic regression, a subject under hypnosis is made to go back to successively earlier times in life. When told to go back beyond the earliest present-life experiences, many subjects tell stories about previous lives in earlier times and different places. Some of these stories can be checked, and have turned out to be amazingly accurate, even when it is definitely established that the subject could not have known about the events, people, and places described so accurately. Many impressive and well-documented cases of hypnotic regression exist (see, for example, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation by Ian Stevenson, MD).

Another body of evidence for reincarnation comes from documented accounts of young children who, when they learn to talk, report knowledge of relationships to other families in distant places, with uncanny accuracy. I remember one case where a young girl described her memories as an elderly man in a tiny rural English community. She was able to describe the man’s relatives and friends (many of whom still lived), and details of the town. She eventually had a reunion with her “previous” friends and family, who welcomed her as the spirit of the man they knew. Reincarnation, as one explanation, appears more reasonable than Christian interpretations of such cases, because it requires only that the soul exist without having to introduce other entities like God and the Devil. Occam’s Razor! Of course, one might also argue that not requiring the existence of a soul results in the simplest explanations.

Still more evidence for reincarnation, although more indirect, comes from accounts of the deceased communicating with loved ones, a phenomenon known as After Death Communication, or ADC. This is direct and spontaneous communication that does not include a third party like a psychic or a medium. ADC experiences are fairly common, discussed freely in many other parts of the world; anthropologists run across them often.[3]

I recall one case where a Christian mother lost her teenage son in a drunk-driving accident in which he was a passenger. For a while afterward, she could hold conversations with him, and he told her things about his other friend in the accident which she did not know but which were later confirmed, as well as where in the wrecked car to find his class ring, which the police could not find. He reported that neither he nor anyone else he met in his realm knew anything about a “god” as described by many religions, and told her he was deciding where to go for his next life, saying that even other planets were possible options.

Kennedy refers to probably the best-known author on this subject, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, MD, who spent much of her career helping the dying. She now lives in the desert of Arizona, where she moved after surviving a religious-motivated attack on her house in Virginia following statements she made about life-after-death experiences. Now isn’t it ironic that churches also teach the doctrine of life after death? Why do so many fundamentalists become irate about ADCs? The reason is that they believe the devil speaks through all people who have those experiences. These misguided Christians believe anything not Christianity is evil. But why then do people become better people (many of whom are Christian) after ADC experiences? Perhaps some Christians should re-think their worldview.

Regarding Hell as Christians define it, I notice that the concept is often used as a threat against non-Christians. This tactic is nothing more than a variant of Pascal’s wager, which was refuted several different ways near the end of my commentary on chapter 3. Besides, I find that the threat has scant Biblical backing. Hell, in the medieval sense of fire and brimstone, is described primarily in the dream of Revelations. The literal concept of it probably got started in the Middle Ages when the Church wanted to keep the population under their control, toeing their line. Paul mentions God using flaming fire to take vengeance on unbelievers, although we don’t know where he got this concept (from the author of Revelations, perhaps?). In any case, it’s hard to take Revelations seriously when it claims the events described will “shortly come to pass” (1:1). The events in the dream have not come to pass, least of all “shortly,” even after nearly 2,000 years.

The main point here is, regardless of what you believe, there is much corroborating evidence for alternatives to the Heaven/Hell dichotomy. Heaven and Hell, in the original sense, may be interpreted simply as allegories for what one might experience in future lives. Or, of course, we might simply just cease to exist when we die. The issue is not settled, in my opinion. Soon enough I will know anyway, so I don’t fret about it.[4]