Sunday, March 22, 2009
Reading God's Book
In this post, I merely want to note the point that the existence of an omnipotent being who created the structure of reality--and who moreover is reputed to have an actual personality and enjoys interacting with humans--well that's by far the most important aspect of your belief system. How you answer that question fundamentally influences what kind of life you will lead.
So I fully grant that I may be making a horrendous mistake by saying I "believe in Jesus." Fair enough.
However, I think that I think about this issue more than most atheists. That doesn't make me right, obviously. But it does mean that those (atheists and believers alike) who spend all their "philosophical" time tracing out the implications of their answer to that big question, are putting the cart before the horse. For example, if it turns out that there was a God, then the implications of evolutionary biology wouldn't be so awesome. The strictly positive statements would still be true, of course, but they could no longer really say, "There is no 'purpose' or 'goal' behind evolution." That would be easily seen as a bold conjecture on their part, because it would mean they were sure the (known) God was not acting slyly through some undetected mechanism to influence evolution, if only from establishing the initial state of the universe juuuuuust right.
And as I say, the danger holds for the evangelicals, too. It would be disastrous to structure your life around this one guy, if it turned out he was a fraud (or insane). So I encourage Christians reading this to think more deeply about why they believe. A true believer should relish this task, not shrink from it for fear of what he might realize. (Because of this, I don't worry that my son might become an atheist--maybe just to spite me. That's fine, I was an atheist too for a few years. The LORD can deal with that sort of thing. He's fairly clever, and that whole omnipotence thing doesn't trip Him up either.)
Last point: If you do want to ponder the implications of the possible existence of (the Christian) God, then you're in luck: He allegedly wrote a book, all about Himself. They call it the Holy Bible (a fairly presumptuous title, eh? Who is this guy, some kind of guru?) They market it as a history book, but it just as well could have been sold as an autobiography: God: My Years With the Talking Monkeys.
So I fully grant that I may be making a horrendous mistake by saying I "believe in Jesus." Fair enough.
However, I think that I think about this issue more than most atheists. That doesn't make me right, obviously. But it does mean that those (atheists and believers alike) who spend all their "philosophical" time tracing out the implications of their answer to that big question, are putting the cart before the horse. For example, if it turns out that there was a God, then the implications of evolutionary biology wouldn't be so awesome. The strictly positive statements would still be true, of course, but they could no longer really say, "There is no 'purpose' or 'goal' behind evolution." That would be easily seen as a bold conjecture on their part, because it would mean they were sure the (known) God was not acting slyly through some undetected mechanism to influence evolution, if only from establishing the initial state of the universe juuuuuust right.
And as I say, the danger holds for the evangelicals, too. It would be disastrous to structure your life around this one guy, if it turned out he was a fraud (or insane). So I encourage Christians reading this to think more deeply about why they believe. A true believer should relish this task, not shrink from it for fear of what he might realize. (Because of this, I don't worry that my son might become an atheist--maybe just to spite me. That's fine, I was an atheist too for a few years. The LORD can deal with that sort of thing. He's fairly clever, and that whole omnipotence thing doesn't trip Him up either.)
Last point: If you do want to ponder the implications of the possible existence of (the Christian) God, then you're in luck: He allegedly wrote a book, all about Himself. They call it the Holy Bible (a fairly presumptuous title, eh? Who is this guy, some kind of guru?) They market it as a history book, but it just as well could have been sold as an autobiography: God: My Years With the Talking Monkeys.
Comments:
Great post! Let me just say that I find it a great encouragement that some like you has risen to your level of success and yet is still able to affirm belief in Christianity.
# posted by 
: March 22, 2009 at 6:33 PM
: March 22, 2009 at 6:33 PM 
Loved this post. As a Christian in college surrounded by other belief systems (yes neoclassical economics is a belief system, haha) it is actually a welcome challenge to defend why i believe what i believe (indecently, same goes with defending Austrian theory in my public choice).
If something is right, then it should not scare us when it is challenged, just as it does not scare me when 2+2=4 is challenged.
If the thing we believe is indeed proved wrong (i bite my tongue using the word "proved"), we should be happy to be corrected.
Side note: Dr. Murphy, I originally read your two essays on Market Anarchy in sheer disbelief at how Utopian it sounded, then i realized how much more Utopian "the state" is! I am beginning to be a firm believer in Anarcho-capitalism now (especially after reading Hans Hoppe, You, and Rothbard). Thank you for being so bold as to defy the very necessity of the state, and thank you for doing so in an intelligent manner. Also, thank you for being unashamed of your faith in Christ. I cannot tell you how comforting it is having a Christian/Austrian economist fighting the same fight I'm about to enter.
If something is right, then it should not scare us when it is challenged, just as it does not scare me when 2+2=4 is challenged.
If the thing we believe is indeed proved wrong (i bite my tongue using the word "proved"), we should be happy to be corrected.
Side note: Dr. Murphy, I originally read your two essays on Market Anarchy in sheer disbelief at how Utopian it sounded, then i realized how much more Utopian "the state" is! I am beginning to be a firm believer in Anarcho-capitalism now (especially after reading Hans Hoppe, You, and Rothbard). Thank you for being so bold as to defy the very necessity of the state, and thank you for doing so in an intelligent manner. Also, thank you for being unashamed of your faith in Christ. I cannot tell you how comforting it is having a Christian/Austrian economist fighting the same fight I'm about to enter.
re: level of success & still affirm.
Could it be because it might get you placed on a terrorist list nowadays? Your co-workers might shun & ridicule you or fail to give you the same level of respect?
Just a thought.
There seems to be a large number of people who can look at a house and say there are no such things as carpenters. To them, those who believe in such things must be crazy and or a risk. Potential sabateours, even with lack of reason for thinking so.
P.S.
I know I'm wayy out of my league in here. I hope my (inappropriate?) laymans comments are not unwelcome - esp. my bad spelling.
Could it be because it might get you placed on a terrorist list nowadays? Your co-workers might shun & ridicule you or fail to give you the same level of respect?
Just a thought.
There seems to be a large number of people who can look at a house and say there are no such things as carpenters. To them, those who believe in such things must be crazy and or a risk. Potential sabateours, even with lack of reason for thinking so.
P.S.
I know I'm wayy out of my league in here. I hope my (inappropriate?) laymans comments are not unwelcome - esp. my bad spelling.
# posted by : March 23, 2009 at 9:04 AM
: March 23, 2009 at 9:04 AM
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Anon, don't be worried about posting. Most of us here (including myself) are not as smart as we think.
I know exactly what you're getting at, Mr. Murphy.
The problem with the Darwinian evolutionists isn't that they take their theory too seriously, it's that they don't take it seriously enough. That is, we can see a glaringly obvious trend in the development of evolution. Now, according to their view of natural selection, we can't attribute a "goal" to this blatantly obvious trend, since we are supposed to regard it as undirected. Yet at some point within this clear trend, it behooves us to seriously inquire as to what the ultimate state of this supposedly "undirected" evolution might be. Yet such questions have been--overwhelmingly in the main--avoided by the Darwinians.
All the practical fields of inquiry of mankind predict the same end-point ("practical" here in the sense of where the rubber meets the road, i.e., regarding life's actual usage of this knowledge; as opposed to, say, pure mathematics, which strictly speaking doesn't have anything to say about anything in this world, until and unless it is applied to solving some problem of this world).
In veridical economics (i.e., Austrian economics), there is the central notion of lengthening the structure of production, i.e., the accumulation of higher modes of capital production in time (in other words, the increase in wealth in a society; or, rather, how that increase comes about).
In the technology sector, we have Moore's Law, which isn't any type of actual physical law, but is indeed simply a repercussion of the economic Austrian School concept of lengthening the structure of production.
In ethics we see Yeshua Ha'Mashiach coming onto the scene. Now his message has been largely ignored in preference to the ignorance and lethal error of this world, because humanity at large is the proverbial chimpanzee that has been given a loaded gun to play with; that is, mankind is still at a very primitive and barbaric level in this regard. But even though humanity has largely ignored his one Command, it still has been forced into paying lip-service to his teaching (even among those who actively reject him). So humanity has been pulled up to a higher level, despite its base inclination. Yes, humanity is still very flawed in this regard, but at least now its rulers have to give lip-service that what they're doing is for the best interest of everyone in some supposedly lofty and humanitarian goal. So despite the mass-slaughters of the past century, and the even worse slaughters that are to come, humanity is quite unlikely to have even reached this chimpanzee-playing-with-a-loaded-gun level if it had not been for that sense of morality imbued by Yeshua.
The history of mindkind is the history of coming out of a condition of extremely ignorant fallacy into lesser states of ignorance, with some massively gruesome setbacks along the way (all of them perpetrated by government).
This is because of minkind's coming out of an animalistic mental state into states of higher degrees of reason. While non-human animals don't appear to hold much fallacious mental content, this is due to apparently not being able to form very much in the way of abstract mental concepts. When the faculty of sapient reasoning and language skills comes into being, this allows forming ideas on a wide range of subjects, but in mankind's history many of those ideas were quite destructively erroneous, with no small amount of that error still with us today (such as Marxism).
Such applies to religious knowledge, as well. For example, the Torah is itself quite evil in many places (such as requiring any Israelite picking up twigs on a Sabbath to be stoned to death: see Numbers 15:32-36; Exodus 31:12-17; 35:1-3). Again, this has to do with mankind's evolution from fallacious ignorance into knowledge: early Judaism is a derivation from prior paganism. Indeed, some forms of human sacrifice for purely religious purposes were retained within Pentateuch Judaism, i.e., Judaic human-sacrifice rituals can actually be found in the Torah and early Nevi'im books, supposedly sanctified by God (viz., Judges 11:29-40; Leviticus 27:28,29; Exodus 13:1,2; 13:11-16; 22:29,30), though most of it was, thankfully, eventually set aside. But then, the actual prophets (principally from Isaiah on) and Yeshua Ha'Mashiach spoke out against much of the supposed Law of Moses, and a number of them were murdered by the Israeli priestcraft for doing so. (For examples of this rejection just regarding the Torah laws on animal sacrifice, see Psalms 40:6-8; Isaiah 1:11-14; Jeremiah 7:21,22; 8:8; Hosea 6:6; Amos 5:21,22; Hebrews 10:4-7.)
The above matters bring up another issue. The teachings of Yeshua Ha'Mashiach's ministry itself necessitates the involvement of a super-intelligence, since it is so spectacularly advanced beyond that age, and indeed this age: as mankind to this date is of a barbaric and primitive nature, and still a long way (morally speaking) from catching up with him. For more on that, see my below article:
James Redford, "Jesus Is an Anarchist," Social Science Research Network (SSRN), March 19, 2009 (originally published at Anti-State.com on December 19, 2001) http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761
The following is the abstract from the above article:
""
ABSTRACT: The teachings and actions of Jesus Christ (Yeshua Ha'Mashiach) and the apostles recorded in the New Testament are analyzed in regard to their ethical and political philosophy, with analysis of context vis-á-vis the Old Testament (Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible) being given. From this analysis, it is shown that Jesus is a libertarian anarchist, i.e., a consistent voluntaryist. The implications this has for the world are profound, and the ramifications of Jesus's anarchism to Christians' attitudes toward government (the state) and its actions are explicated.
""
Albert Einstein said that "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" (see Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.)
And here is what Einstein wrote regarding Christianity in his book The World as I See It (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), pp. 111-112:
""
If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.
It is the duty of every man of good will to strive steadfastly in his own little world to make this teaching of pure humanity a living force, so far as he can. If he makes an honest attempt in this direction without being crushed and trampled under foot by his contemporaries, he may consider himself and the community to which he belongs lucky.
""
So authentic Christianity (i.e., the doctrine taught by Yeshua Ha'Mashiach), according to Einstein, is "capable of curing all the social ills of humanity." It's hard to fathom a stronger endorsement than that bold and clear statement.
In the immediately previous quote of Einstein, he is quite careful to seperate the message preached by Jesus Christ and the Prophets (i.e., the Latter Prophets of the Nevi'im books from Isaiah onward) from that of the Torah, which indeed is filled with much irrationality (much of it derived from earlier pagan practices). But then Jesus Christ and the Prophets spoke out against the irrational aspects of the Torah, and a number of them were murdered by the Israeli priestcraft for doing so. Such was not lost on Einstein, which is why he is careful in the above to specify which aspects of the Bible he finds to be in conformance with the truth.
Unfortunately, the inversion of that organization popularly calling itself the Christian church occured with the pagan Roman government's takeover of said group under Constantine I, himself a lifelong pagan, bloodthirsty tyrant, and unrepentant murderer of his eldest son Crispus and his wife Fausta, to say nothing of all the plebeians he murdered. Since that time, the organizations commonly calling themselves "Christian" have typically acted in the role of intellectual bodyguards of the state, and hence have been hostilely opposed to actually applying Jesus Christ's teachings, since said teachings are incompatible with government and its frequent activities (e.g., taxes, war, the inversion of genuine moral understanding, the sowing of needless discord and strife among the populace [i.e., divide and rule], etc.).
For much more on the above, see by above-cited "Jesus Is an Anarchist" article and the following article:
"A Military Chaplain Repents," an interview of Rev. George B. Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain who blessed the pilots who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, conducted circa 1984, published on the LewRockwell website on April 13, 2007. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/mccarthy5.html
-----
So we see that everything has a point: the Omega Point.
Evolution has a point; sapience has a point; technology has a point; economic advancement has a point; ethics has a point; advancement of knowledge has a point: the Omega Point.
Life, evolution, sapience, ethics, economic advancement, advancement of knowledge and technological advancement have a single point (i.e., ultimate reason for being and ultimate destination): the Omega Point.
For the full details on that point, see my post in the below thread:
"Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?, Part 17," Bob Murphy, Free Advice, March 15, 2009 http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2009/03/why-does-god-let-bad-things-happen-part.html
Or, see the below resource, which concerns Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory and the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE):
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist http://geocities.com/theophysics/
Post a Comment
The problem with the Darwinian evolutionists isn't that they take their theory too seriously, it's that they don't take it seriously enough. That is, we can see a glaringly obvious trend in the development of evolution. Now, according to their view of natural selection, we can't attribute a "goal" to this blatantly obvious trend, since we are supposed to regard it as undirected. Yet at some point within this clear trend, it behooves us to seriously inquire as to what the ultimate state of this supposedly "undirected" evolution might be. Yet such questions have been--overwhelmingly in the main--avoided by the Darwinians.
All the practical fields of inquiry of mankind predict the same end-point ("practical" here in the sense of where the rubber meets the road, i.e., regarding life's actual usage of this knowledge; as opposed to, say, pure mathematics, which strictly speaking doesn't have anything to say about anything in this world, until and unless it is applied to solving some problem of this world).
In veridical economics (i.e., Austrian economics), there is the central notion of lengthening the structure of production, i.e., the accumulation of higher modes of capital production in time (in other words, the increase in wealth in a society; or, rather, how that increase comes about).
In the technology sector, we have Moore's Law, which isn't any type of actual physical law, but is indeed simply a repercussion of the economic Austrian School concept of lengthening the structure of production.
In ethics we see Yeshua Ha'Mashiach coming onto the scene. Now his message has been largely ignored in preference to the ignorance and lethal error of this world, because humanity at large is the proverbial chimpanzee that has been given a loaded gun to play with; that is, mankind is still at a very primitive and barbaric level in this regard. But even though humanity has largely ignored his one Command, it still has been forced into paying lip-service to his teaching (even among those who actively reject him). So humanity has been pulled up to a higher level, despite its base inclination. Yes, humanity is still very flawed in this regard, but at least now its rulers have to give lip-service that what they're doing is for the best interest of everyone in some supposedly lofty and humanitarian goal. So despite the mass-slaughters of the past century, and the even worse slaughters that are to come, humanity is quite unlikely to have even reached this chimpanzee-playing-with-a-loaded-gun level if it had not been for that sense of morality imbued by Yeshua.
The history of mindkind is the history of coming out of a condition of extremely ignorant fallacy into lesser states of ignorance, with some massively gruesome setbacks along the way (all of them perpetrated by government).
This is because of minkind's coming out of an animalistic mental state into states of higher degrees of reason. While non-human animals don't appear to hold much fallacious mental content, this is due to apparently not being able to form very much in the way of abstract mental concepts. When the faculty of sapient reasoning and language skills comes into being, this allows forming ideas on a wide range of subjects, but in mankind's history many of those ideas were quite destructively erroneous, with no small amount of that error still with us today (such as Marxism).
Such applies to religious knowledge, as well. For example, the Torah is itself quite evil in many places (such as requiring any Israelite picking up twigs on a Sabbath to be stoned to death: see Numbers 15:32-36; Exodus 31:12-17; 35:1-3). Again, this has to do with mankind's evolution from fallacious ignorance into knowledge: early Judaism is a derivation from prior paganism. Indeed, some forms of human sacrifice for purely religious purposes were retained within Pentateuch Judaism, i.e., Judaic human-sacrifice rituals can actually be found in the Torah and early Nevi'im books, supposedly sanctified by God (viz., Judges 11:29-40; Leviticus 27:28,29; Exodus 13:1,2; 13:11-16; 22:29,30), though most of it was, thankfully, eventually set aside. But then, the actual prophets (principally from Isaiah on) and Yeshua Ha'Mashiach spoke out against much of the supposed Law of Moses, and a number of them were murdered by the Israeli priestcraft for doing so. (For examples of this rejection just regarding the Torah laws on animal sacrifice, see Psalms 40:6-8; Isaiah 1:11-14; Jeremiah 7:21,22; 8:8; Hosea 6:6; Amos 5:21,22; Hebrews 10:4-7.)
The above matters bring up another issue. The teachings of Yeshua Ha'Mashiach's ministry itself necessitates the involvement of a super-intelligence, since it is so spectacularly advanced beyond that age, and indeed this age: as mankind to this date is of a barbaric and primitive nature, and still a long way (morally speaking) from catching up with him. For more on that, see my below article:
James Redford, "Jesus Is an Anarchist," Social Science Research Network (SSRN), March 19, 2009 (originally published at Anti-State.com on December 19, 2001) http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761
The following is the abstract from the above article:
""
ABSTRACT: The teachings and actions of Jesus Christ (Yeshua Ha'Mashiach) and the apostles recorded in the New Testament are analyzed in regard to their ethical and political philosophy, with analysis of context vis-á-vis the Old Testament (Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible) being given. From this analysis, it is shown that Jesus is a libertarian anarchist, i.e., a consistent voluntaryist. The implications this has for the world are profound, and the ramifications of Jesus's anarchism to Christians' attitudes toward government (the state) and its actions are explicated.
""
Albert Einstein said that "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" (see Albert Einstein, Science, Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.)
And here is what Einstein wrote regarding Christianity in his book The World as I See It (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), pp. 111-112:
""
If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity.
It is the duty of every man of good will to strive steadfastly in his own little world to make this teaching of pure humanity a living force, so far as he can. If he makes an honest attempt in this direction without being crushed and trampled under foot by his contemporaries, he may consider himself and the community to which he belongs lucky.
""
So authentic Christianity (i.e., the doctrine taught by Yeshua Ha'Mashiach), according to Einstein, is "capable of curing all the social ills of humanity." It's hard to fathom a stronger endorsement than that bold and clear statement.
In the immediately previous quote of Einstein, he is quite careful to seperate the message preached by Jesus Christ and the Prophets (i.e., the Latter Prophets of the Nevi'im books from Isaiah onward) from that of the Torah, which indeed is filled with much irrationality (much of it derived from earlier pagan practices). But then Jesus Christ and the Prophets spoke out against the irrational aspects of the Torah, and a number of them were murdered by the Israeli priestcraft for doing so. Such was not lost on Einstein, which is why he is careful in the above to specify which aspects of the Bible he finds to be in conformance with the truth.
Unfortunately, the inversion of that organization popularly calling itself the Christian church occured with the pagan Roman government's takeover of said group under Constantine I, himself a lifelong pagan, bloodthirsty tyrant, and unrepentant murderer of his eldest son Crispus and his wife Fausta, to say nothing of all the plebeians he murdered. Since that time, the organizations commonly calling themselves "Christian" have typically acted in the role of intellectual bodyguards of the state, and hence have been hostilely opposed to actually applying Jesus Christ's teachings, since said teachings are incompatible with government and its frequent activities (e.g., taxes, war, the inversion of genuine moral understanding, the sowing of needless discord and strife among the populace [i.e., divide and rule], etc.).
For much more on the above, see by above-cited "Jesus Is an Anarchist" article and the following article:
"A Military Chaplain Repents," an interview of Rev. George B. Zabelka, the Catholic chaplain who blessed the pilots who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by Rev. Emmanuel Charles McCarthy, conducted circa 1984, published on the LewRockwell website on April 13, 2007. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/mccarthy5.html
-----
So we see that everything has a point: the Omega Point.
Evolution has a point; sapience has a point; technology has a point; economic advancement has a point; ethics has a point; advancement of knowledge has a point: the Omega Point.
Life, evolution, sapience, ethics, economic advancement, advancement of knowledge and technological advancement have a single point (i.e., ultimate reason for being and ultimate destination): the Omega Point.
For the full details on that point, see my post in the below thread:
"Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen?, Part 17," Bob Murphy, Free Advice, March 15, 2009 http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2009/03/why-does-god-let-bad-things-happen-part.html
Or, see the below resource, which concerns Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory and the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE):
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist http://geocities.com/theophysics/
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]