Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2022 5:11:11 GMT
Chapter 26 - Does God help?
Job asks - Does God help the weak? Does God teach the unwise?
*The Nature of God*
A lot of theological logic falls under black and white thinking. Either the successful are righteous and the poor lack virtue, or the successful are corrupt and the poor are righteous victims. Job seems to be trying to transcend the dichotomous thinking and get straight to the heart of the matter. What is the nature of God? What does he care about? Does he care about those who struggle? Does he care about those who are confused?
*Faith Requires Knowledge of God's Nature*
In Joseph Smith's Lectures on Faith, he elucidates his perspective on the fundamental elements of true faith. Lectures on Faith - Section 3: "Let us here observe, that three things are necesÂsary, in order that any rational and intelligent being may exercise faith in God unto life and salvation. First, The idea that he actually exists. Secondly, A correct idea of his character, perfecÂtions and attributes. Thirdly, An actual knowledge that the course of life which he is pursuing, is according to his will." I thought this was an unusually profound notion for Joseph Smith to communicate. The idea of faith requires an understanding of what exactly you are to believe in.
*Psychological Nature of God*
I like how Akira the Don synthesizes Jordan Peterson's naturalistic definition of God into a music video [16]. The transcript is as follows - "So there's a line in the New Testament where Christ says that no one comes to the Father except through him. Which is a hell of a thing for anyone to say. I am the way and the truth and the life. That's another one. Here's the idea. Its as if there's a spirit at the bottom of things that is involved in bringing to being of everything. People talk about evolution as a random process, but that's not true. The mutations are random, but the selection mechanisms are not random. What are the selection mechanisms? Human females are very sexually selective. That's why you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. So the male failure rate for reproduction is twice that of the female. How is it that males succeed differentially? Females reject. They reject on the basis of what? Well its something like competence. How is competence defined? Well men put themselves in hierarchies and they vote on each other's competence. Let's say you follow the best leader into battle. Then you don't die. Like, he might get all the women, but you don't die. So at least your still in the game. And it might be the same if you're following the greatest hunter. And the greatest hunter wouldn't be the person who was the best at bringing down game, it would be the person who was best at bringing down game, and sharing it, and organizing the next hunt, and all of that. What that means to some degree is that there's a spirit of masculinity shaping the entire structure of human evolutionary history. That's what that means. Its the spirit of positive masculinity that manifests itself across epochal ages - millions of years perhaps. And it actually has shaped our consciousness - actually! Its like the essential spirit of all the great men who defined what greatness constituted - that's a spirit. Well that's a purely biological explanation. That's God. God is the highest value in the hierarchy of values. That's God. God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness across time. That's God. God is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men. That's God. God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and truth. But there's another possibility too which is that that's actually reflective of a deeper metaphysical reality that has to do with the nature of consciousness itself. I think that's true. I believe the biological case and I believe the biologically reductive case. But I don't think that exhausts it. There's a metaphysical layer underneath that that the biology is a genuine reflection of. And that's the macrocosm above and the microcosm below. We are really reflective, including in our consciousness, of something about the structure of reality itself. And that might involve whatever it is that God is. Well that's God. God is the future to which we make sacrifices. That's God. God is the voice of conscience. That's God. God is the source of judgement and mercy and guilt. That's God. God is what calls and what responds in the eternal call to adventure. That's God."
*God of Evolution*
Jordan Peterson seems to posit a God of evolution, where the forces of evolution are equated to God. Certain virtues promote successful evolution, so the process of evolution is guiding us towards these higher principles. The forces of evolution require us to care about our survival and our relationship to others in order to survive together. This means God is a force of nature that motivates us to help the course of evolution. This force of nature inspires our psychology and morality. Jordan seems to take this natural force a step further and thinks it operates at a supernatural layer as well.
*Is Evolution Good?*
G. E. Moore coined the naturalistic fallacy as the fallacy for when you assume that that which is natural is also good. Jordan Peterson seems to be walking on a shaky foundation when he makes this assumption - which is probably inspired from the assumption found in the Biblical creation story when God claims that that which has been created is good. Of course, pertinent to this question is the definition of goodness itself.
*Game Theoretical Goodness*
The benefit of linking morality to evolution means you can use game theory to determine what is "good". That which is evolutionarily successful is good. If goodness is limited to mere survival and propagation of the species, then any game theoretical strategy that maximizes the propagation of the genes would be "good". But if you look at it from this angle, it seems absurd to say that any strategy that lets you win the "game" is good - for example, perhaps within evolutionary game theory is a "nuke everyone but your family" Noah's ark style strategy. High risk; high reward. Just because mass murder might win the game (maximize your genetic representation in the future) doesn't mean it is a "good" strategy. "Good" seems inextricably linked to flourishing and the maximization of the greatest wellbeing for the greatest number of creatures, and therefore mass destruction would be immoral.
*Game Theory Punishes Immorality*
But the morally optimistic approach to evolution would be to believe that immoral game strategies have a higher cost than their benefit, or a higher risk than their reward. Nuking everyone can destroy supply chains and create a nuclear winter. It might not be a winning strategy after all. Committing genocide might be a good strategy for reducing genetic competition, but since genocide offends our moral intuitions, neighboring nations are likely to join up and punish you in war for your atrocities.
*Low Reward For Punishing Immorality*
So, a more pessimistic perspective might be - evolution doesn't guide us to the purest morality, it guides us to a morality of "cheat the game as much as you can get away with". So, in a China-like situation, it is purported that China is using genocidal policies to subjugate the Uighurs (yet, in my opinion, it doesn't seem like the evidence for this is very strong though at the moment). As long as China performs genocide in a less noticeable way, performs it indirectly (through forced sterilizations, rape, or arranged marriages), only commits it within their borders, and doesn't aggress other nations at the same time, China gets the benefit of reducing competitive genes within their borders, and the other nations have little evolutionary incentive to punish them since these atrocities don't hurt foreigner genes outside of China.
*Technology Will Punish Immorality*
But then you can say - well a "cheat the game as much as you can get away with" strategy is dependent on "what you can get away with" which is based on our moral intuitions encoded into law, and then our ability to prosecute offenders. The more pure our moral intuitions, the more pure our law, and the more efficient our justice system, the less things people can get away with. And so there is a higher tier claim that our moral intuitions paired with our technological innovations will get better and better at punishing cheaters, and therefore the "cheat as much as you can get away with" evolutionary morality will eventually be constrained by less and less things that you can get away with. And therefore we are destined to evolve a more pure morality.
*Does Evolution Require Predation?*
But then there is the veganism dilemma of evolutionary morality - is it immoral to harm the wellbeing of the creatures you eat? If evolution is guiding us to a more pure morality, and pure morality is based on the wellbeing of creatures, eventually animals come into the equation. If evolution has a teleology for cooperation, why do predators exist? Within one species, you can make the argument that evolution pushes for cooperation since preying on your own species isn't a very efficient game theory strategy. But outside of a species, morality and cooperation seems to play less of an evolutionary role. Interestingly, there seem to be many examples of interspecies cooperation in the animal kingdom. Perhaps interspecies cooperation can be evolutionarily beneficial when symbiotic synergies are able to be had, but predator-prey relations seem destined to stay antagonistic.
*Evolution of Predator-Prey Cooperation*
Is it possible that - if you push evolution to the end of time, predators will eventually evolve to cooperate with other species instead of preying on them? Perhaps a tiger hunting a goat is an inefficient long run evolutionary strategy because the goat doesn't want it's wellbeing to be harmed and will fight back, therefore incurring a percent risk of damage to the tiger. If the tiger can evolve to eat grass or absorb sunlight, then it can avoid the risk and get the same reward. But if every animal evolves plant or herbivore diets and moralities, then they eventually will become competitors for the same food. The planet might become unstable since the ecosystem can't balance itself anymore, all the plants get eaten and the remaining life must rely on photosynthesis or go extinct. If predators are a necessary component to a balanced ecosystem, does that make it moral to ripe apart the bodies of your prey? I am biased to feeling like systemic violence is immoral since it causes suffering, even at the animal level. Is the evolutionary question a choice between existence and morality, and evolution chooses existence? Are we doomed to preying on other creatures for eternal sustenance? Of course humans have the omnivore option, but this is hardly a solution to the entire problem of animal suffering, it only reduces our involvement in it.
*Better For Animals to Not Have Been Born*
But then the veganism argument provides another moral dilemma - what amount of suffering denotes a life of net-negative value to the creature? What amount of suffering meets the criteria of "better to not have been born"? The vegan argument seems to be, we should not participate in factory farms because they cause animal suffering. But factory farms are not the only source of suffering. Animals suffer plenty in the wild. Safety is a large part of animal joy (freedom from anxiety). Perhaps an animal in the wild has more joy (freedom of movement) but also more suffering (anxiety). I'm ignorant about factory farms, but in a humane farm, a human putting an animal to death in a humane way seems preferable to being ripped apart by a wolf, or starving to death in the bitter cold of winter. There might be an argument to say that at the level of the individual creature, factory farms cause more suffering than life in the wild, but I am biased to thinking that suffering on a humane farm would be preferable to suffering in the wild. Yet, the vegan argument seems to be against both types of human-caused suffering.
*Veganism to Anti-Natalism*
Absent human involvement, these animals would not be born. Humans largely subsidize and protect the existence of farm animals. So the way I see it, there seems to be a slippery slope between the veganism argument and the anti-natalist argument - the idea that humans should not be born, because average human suffering is greater than average human joy. The vegan deontological ethic seems to be that we have a duty to not cause animals harm, no matter what the consequence. If bringing an animal into the world means we cause any harm to that animal, then we can never justify bringing any animal into the world, even human children.
*Utilitarian Solution to Veganism*
Converting the vegan ethic from a deontological one to a utilitarian one seems to be the moral pathway that doesn't negate the meaning of life itself. Instead of saying no suffering at all, and therefore no life at all, the utilitarian ethic measures the joy against the suffering. If humans can provide a better life for animals that the wild provides, then perhaps it is justifiable, even if at the end we still eat them.
*Technological Solution to Veganism*
But at the end of the day, giving an animal a life of minimal suffering and not eating them seems morality superior to minimal suffering and eating them. Will evolution ever guide us to that end? Can we ever escape the laws of entropy that cause these cycles of carnage? Perhaps with advanced technology we can grow meat in labs and mitigate our impact on animal suffering? Perhaps with advanced technology we can eventually evolve was to absorb non-biological energy types? Or are we destined to pillage planet after planet for resources, always destroying as we grow like a virus in the universe?
Can we trust evolution? Or is it secretly guiding us to hell? I think this is a question I will continue to ponder for decades to come.
NEXT: Chapter 27 - Maintains innocence
Job asks - Does God help the weak? Does God teach the unwise?
*The Nature of God*
A lot of theological logic falls under black and white thinking. Either the successful are righteous and the poor lack virtue, or the successful are corrupt and the poor are righteous victims. Job seems to be trying to transcend the dichotomous thinking and get straight to the heart of the matter. What is the nature of God? What does he care about? Does he care about those who struggle? Does he care about those who are confused?
*Faith Requires Knowledge of God's Nature*
In Joseph Smith's Lectures on Faith, he elucidates his perspective on the fundamental elements of true faith. Lectures on Faith - Section 3: "Let us here observe, that three things are necesÂsary, in order that any rational and intelligent being may exercise faith in God unto life and salvation. First, The idea that he actually exists. Secondly, A correct idea of his character, perfecÂtions and attributes. Thirdly, An actual knowledge that the course of life which he is pursuing, is according to his will." I thought this was an unusually profound notion for Joseph Smith to communicate. The idea of faith requires an understanding of what exactly you are to believe in.
*Psychological Nature of God*
I like how Akira the Don synthesizes Jordan Peterson's naturalistic definition of God into a music video [16]. The transcript is as follows - "So there's a line in the New Testament where Christ says that no one comes to the Father except through him. Which is a hell of a thing for anyone to say. I am the way and the truth and the life. That's another one. Here's the idea. Its as if there's a spirit at the bottom of things that is involved in bringing to being of everything. People talk about evolution as a random process, but that's not true. The mutations are random, but the selection mechanisms are not random. What are the selection mechanisms? Human females are very sexually selective. That's why you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors. So the male failure rate for reproduction is twice that of the female. How is it that males succeed differentially? Females reject. They reject on the basis of what? Well its something like competence. How is competence defined? Well men put themselves in hierarchies and they vote on each other's competence. Let's say you follow the best leader into battle. Then you don't die. Like, he might get all the women, but you don't die. So at least your still in the game. And it might be the same if you're following the greatest hunter. And the greatest hunter wouldn't be the person who was the best at bringing down game, it would be the person who was best at bringing down game, and sharing it, and organizing the next hunt, and all of that. What that means to some degree is that there's a spirit of masculinity shaping the entire structure of human evolutionary history. That's what that means. Its the spirit of positive masculinity that manifests itself across epochal ages - millions of years perhaps. And it actually has shaped our consciousness - actually! Its like the essential spirit of all the great men who defined what greatness constituted - that's a spirit. Well that's a purely biological explanation. That's God. God is the highest value in the hierarchy of values. That's God. God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness across time. That's God. God is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men. That's God. God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and truth. But there's another possibility too which is that that's actually reflective of a deeper metaphysical reality that has to do with the nature of consciousness itself. I think that's true. I believe the biological case and I believe the biologically reductive case. But I don't think that exhausts it. There's a metaphysical layer underneath that that the biology is a genuine reflection of. And that's the macrocosm above and the microcosm below. We are really reflective, including in our consciousness, of something about the structure of reality itself. And that might involve whatever it is that God is. Well that's God. God is the future to which we make sacrifices. That's God. God is the voice of conscience. That's God. God is the source of judgement and mercy and guilt. That's God. God is what calls and what responds in the eternal call to adventure. That's God."
*God of Evolution*
Jordan Peterson seems to posit a God of evolution, where the forces of evolution are equated to God. Certain virtues promote successful evolution, so the process of evolution is guiding us towards these higher principles. The forces of evolution require us to care about our survival and our relationship to others in order to survive together. This means God is a force of nature that motivates us to help the course of evolution. This force of nature inspires our psychology and morality. Jordan seems to take this natural force a step further and thinks it operates at a supernatural layer as well.
*Is Evolution Good?*
G. E. Moore coined the naturalistic fallacy as the fallacy for when you assume that that which is natural is also good. Jordan Peterson seems to be walking on a shaky foundation when he makes this assumption - which is probably inspired from the assumption found in the Biblical creation story when God claims that that which has been created is good. Of course, pertinent to this question is the definition of goodness itself.
*Game Theoretical Goodness*
The benefit of linking morality to evolution means you can use game theory to determine what is "good". That which is evolutionarily successful is good. If goodness is limited to mere survival and propagation of the species, then any game theoretical strategy that maximizes the propagation of the genes would be "good". But if you look at it from this angle, it seems absurd to say that any strategy that lets you win the "game" is good - for example, perhaps within evolutionary game theory is a "nuke everyone but your family" Noah's ark style strategy. High risk; high reward. Just because mass murder might win the game (maximize your genetic representation in the future) doesn't mean it is a "good" strategy. "Good" seems inextricably linked to flourishing and the maximization of the greatest wellbeing for the greatest number of creatures, and therefore mass destruction would be immoral.
*Game Theory Punishes Immorality*
But the morally optimistic approach to evolution would be to believe that immoral game strategies have a higher cost than their benefit, or a higher risk than their reward. Nuking everyone can destroy supply chains and create a nuclear winter. It might not be a winning strategy after all. Committing genocide might be a good strategy for reducing genetic competition, but since genocide offends our moral intuitions, neighboring nations are likely to join up and punish you in war for your atrocities.
*Low Reward For Punishing Immorality*
So, a more pessimistic perspective might be - evolution doesn't guide us to the purest morality, it guides us to a morality of "cheat the game as much as you can get away with". So, in a China-like situation, it is purported that China is using genocidal policies to subjugate the Uighurs (yet, in my opinion, it doesn't seem like the evidence for this is very strong though at the moment). As long as China performs genocide in a less noticeable way, performs it indirectly (through forced sterilizations, rape, or arranged marriages), only commits it within their borders, and doesn't aggress other nations at the same time, China gets the benefit of reducing competitive genes within their borders, and the other nations have little evolutionary incentive to punish them since these atrocities don't hurt foreigner genes outside of China.
*Technology Will Punish Immorality*
But then you can say - well a "cheat the game as much as you can get away with" strategy is dependent on "what you can get away with" which is based on our moral intuitions encoded into law, and then our ability to prosecute offenders. The more pure our moral intuitions, the more pure our law, and the more efficient our justice system, the less things people can get away with. And so there is a higher tier claim that our moral intuitions paired with our technological innovations will get better and better at punishing cheaters, and therefore the "cheat as much as you can get away with" evolutionary morality will eventually be constrained by less and less things that you can get away with. And therefore we are destined to evolve a more pure morality.
*Does Evolution Require Predation?*
But then there is the veganism dilemma of evolutionary morality - is it immoral to harm the wellbeing of the creatures you eat? If evolution is guiding us to a more pure morality, and pure morality is based on the wellbeing of creatures, eventually animals come into the equation. If evolution has a teleology for cooperation, why do predators exist? Within one species, you can make the argument that evolution pushes for cooperation since preying on your own species isn't a very efficient game theory strategy. But outside of a species, morality and cooperation seems to play less of an evolutionary role. Interestingly, there seem to be many examples of interspecies cooperation in the animal kingdom. Perhaps interspecies cooperation can be evolutionarily beneficial when symbiotic synergies are able to be had, but predator-prey relations seem destined to stay antagonistic.
*Evolution of Predator-Prey Cooperation*
Is it possible that - if you push evolution to the end of time, predators will eventually evolve to cooperate with other species instead of preying on them? Perhaps a tiger hunting a goat is an inefficient long run evolutionary strategy because the goat doesn't want it's wellbeing to be harmed and will fight back, therefore incurring a percent risk of damage to the tiger. If the tiger can evolve to eat grass or absorb sunlight, then it can avoid the risk and get the same reward. But if every animal evolves plant or herbivore diets and moralities, then they eventually will become competitors for the same food. The planet might become unstable since the ecosystem can't balance itself anymore, all the plants get eaten and the remaining life must rely on photosynthesis or go extinct. If predators are a necessary component to a balanced ecosystem, does that make it moral to ripe apart the bodies of your prey? I am biased to feeling like systemic violence is immoral since it causes suffering, even at the animal level. Is the evolutionary question a choice between existence and morality, and evolution chooses existence? Are we doomed to preying on other creatures for eternal sustenance? Of course humans have the omnivore option, but this is hardly a solution to the entire problem of animal suffering, it only reduces our involvement in it.
*Better For Animals to Not Have Been Born*
But then the veganism argument provides another moral dilemma - what amount of suffering denotes a life of net-negative value to the creature? What amount of suffering meets the criteria of "better to not have been born"? The vegan argument seems to be, we should not participate in factory farms because they cause animal suffering. But factory farms are not the only source of suffering. Animals suffer plenty in the wild. Safety is a large part of animal joy (freedom from anxiety). Perhaps an animal in the wild has more joy (freedom of movement) but also more suffering (anxiety). I'm ignorant about factory farms, but in a humane farm, a human putting an animal to death in a humane way seems preferable to being ripped apart by a wolf, or starving to death in the bitter cold of winter. There might be an argument to say that at the level of the individual creature, factory farms cause more suffering than life in the wild, but I am biased to thinking that suffering on a humane farm would be preferable to suffering in the wild. Yet, the vegan argument seems to be against both types of human-caused suffering.
*Veganism to Anti-Natalism*
Absent human involvement, these animals would not be born. Humans largely subsidize and protect the existence of farm animals. So the way I see it, there seems to be a slippery slope between the veganism argument and the anti-natalist argument - the idea that humans should not be born, because average human suffering is greater than average human joy. The vegan deontological ethic seems to be that we have a duty to not cause animals harm, no matter what the consequence. If bringing an animal into the world means we cause any harm to that animal, then we can never justify bringing any animal into the world, even human children.
*Utilitarian Solution to Veganism*
Converting the vegan ethic from a deontological one to a utilitarian one seems to be the moral pathway that doesn't negate the meaning of life itself. Instead of saying no suffering at all, and therefore no life at all, the utilitarian ethic measures the joy against the suffering. If humans can provide a better life for animals that the wild provides, then perhaps it is justifiable, even if at the end we still eat them.
*Technological Solution to Veganism*
But at the end of the day, giving an animal a life of minimal suffering and not eating them seems morality superior to minimal suffering and eating them. Will evolution ever guide us to that end? Can we ever escape the laws of entropy that cause these cycles of carnage? Perhaps with advanced technology we can grow meat in labs and mitigate our impact on animal suffering? Perhaps with advanced technology we can eventually evolve was to absorb non-biological energy types? Or are we destined to pillage planet after planet for resources, always destroying as we grow like a virus in the universe?
Can we trust evolution? Or is it secretly guiding us to hell? I think this is a question I will continue to ponder for decades to come.
NEXT: Chapter 27 - Maintains innocence
