Free will to love God, or free will from a loving God?

Dear Mr. Supposed Philosopher:

I recently read your article concerning Rob Bell's error about God and free will, and now I have a question for you. Would you agree that God's love is based on the free will he has granted us; or, on the other hand, do you agree that free will was given to us to demonstrate our love towards God?

I look upon you as very religious, and I thought a man of your deep piety could choose wisely in this conundrum.

Signed -

-- Choosy Mutha

Dear Muthalooker:

You've asked me to chose between two arguments which, from your post, seem to be as follows:

ARG. #1:
1. God gave us (created entities) free will
2. A creator giving a created entity its own free will entails the creator loves that entity.
3. Thus, God loves us.

ARG. #2:
1. God gave us (created entities) free will.
2. A creator giving a created entity its own free will entails a duty to love that creator.
3. Thus, we should love God.

First, there is nothing here that says I'm logically forced to choose one or the other argument. Indeed, since they both share their first premises, and since the conclusions of both are not controversial among Christians, then I'm not immediately worried about which conclusion is "right"--i.e., theologically responsible to hold.

Next, however, I caution that there are problems with premise #2 in BOTH arguments, since they are both open to a kind of counterexample disconnecting freewill and love.

Consider this thought experiment. It seems we humans are eventually going to construct artificially intelligent entities. Suppose we figured out not only the deep mystery of how physical brains can exhibit the property of consciousness (That was easy!), but also of how they maintain free will (No problem!).  And, as is often the case, once we got the science down, the technology was not far behind--we then build a freewill agent.

Per ARG #1, does that mean since we gave a created, artificial entity a free will, we love it? Hardly. We might simply be using it for some ends--asteroid mining, or troop moral on Mars station 7, perhaps; and, we have every intention to throw it away or "deactivate" (= kill) it when we are done with it for the assigned task. Granted, it might be unethical what we've done, but I'm merely showing a counterexample seems available to premise 2 in ARG #1.[i]

ARG #2 fares somewhat better, I think; but, even here a problem arises. Again, on supposition that we somehow build a freewill agent, must we acknowledge a duty toward it? Talk of duty is one option for a systematic ethic. But it might turn out that we're mistaken about duties--there just are no such things. Maybe there are consequences and social contracts between agents, but some free-floating, esoteric relation known as "duty" is just an old-fashioned, mistaken concept from human cultures past. Thus, your second argument works only if one believes there is such a thing as duty. There is some controversy about this in ethics, so unless we get clear on that, it looks like ARG #2's strength can't be resolved.

Overall, then, ARG #1, seems unsound; and ARG #2 is convincing only to those who think there is some special "force" or relationship independent of human preference called duty.

O.

References

[image] "Consequentialism: It's Duty Free (ethics) Tee Shirt" Zazzle.com (Accessed 6/9/11)

[i] Compare in the Old Testament where God uses Job's horrible suffering as an end (among others) to teach Satan a lesson. The Bible seems to indicate God uses people as means-to-ends quite regularly.

Rob Bell's error about God and free will

Bell's new book has the goods to make it an important work for thinking Christians to consider, but it has an unacceptable position about how God, free will, and love are related.

0. Although there are many good things in Bell's book, I won't take time here to list those. But there is one particular issue on which I think the good Reverend is in error. Apparently, others are bewitched by his position too. First, let me review where this position is, and then show how it can go wrong. Last, I'll make a case for why he (and others of piety) should have a change of mind on the matter.

1. Here's a relevant quote which showcases the worrisome position at hand:

“God has to respect our freedom to choose to the very end,” Bell argues, “even at the risk of relationship itself. If at any point God overrides, co-ops, or hijacks the human heart, robbing us the freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is” (103-104). Therefore, “love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us,” says Bell. “We can have all the hell we want” (113).

I think the key premise (KP) where he and others make a mistake is this one:

KP = If at any point God overrides, co-ops, or hijacks the human heart, robbing us the freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is.

2. Sentences of the type KP are called "conditionals." To show that a conditional is incorrect, one must show how the first part can be true while the second part is false.

2.1 Take this conditional, for example: "If an Okie is a preacher, then s/he drives a Mercedes." Part one is "An Okie is a preacher" And part two is "S/he drives a Mercedes." Now then--can I find an Okie who's a preacher, and who DOESN'T drive a Mercedes? Yes, I can. I are one. So's all the preachers I know around here; why, even the District Superintendent just drives a Buick! Thus, this particular conditional about Okies, preachers, and Mercedes can't be correct, since the first part could be true while the second part's false.

2.2. So now, could KP be shown incorrect just like the above Okie example? Yes, yes it can. Part one is, "God overrides [...] us the freedom to chose." And part two is "God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is." Now then, can I find a case where God overrides freedom, but where God HASN'T violated the fundamental essence of what love even is?" Yes, I can. Here's how:

3. Right now I'm about to grab one of two Reese's Peanut Cutter cups from the orange package in front of me. I could use my left hand, or my right. Happily, God is subtle and knows that even a falling sparrow can greatly affect future states of affairs. Stipulate outright that God co-ops, or hijacks my human heart, robbing me the freedom to eat a Reese with my left hand (forcing, thus, my right hand to do it). Furthermore, God did so with the foresight to greatly subvert, or even outright eliminate, the high-probability risk of a busload of kids plowing into my car five days hence, killing us all. In this case God has NOT "violated the fundamental essence of what love even is." Not for me--I'm glad God did it! Not for the kids, or their parents, or their friends--they're glad God did it! God's overriding my left-handed will shows he loves me, them, and all related parties. God's motive is loving; God's outcome is good. Indeed, all parties praise him for making this tiny, imperceptible over-ride on just one sub-component of my will.

4. In conclusion, then, KP is incorrect (first part can be true, while second part false.) That's why Bell and others that think along similar lines are in error about God when they claim, "If at any point God overrides, co-ops, or hijacks the human heart, robbing us the freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is." Indeed, one should ask God daily to override those little, throw-away sub-actions that one could care less about. Yes, I want to eat that Reese cup, oh Lord; hijack not that choice. Yet, whether by my left hand or right--not my will, but Thine alone.

O.

REFERENCES

[ * ] Rob Bell "Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived" HarperOne (March 15, 2011)

On Ethics after the Theocide of God

Dear Mr. Supposedly Pious Philosopher:

So I can't remember for sure in which class I heard this -- It could have been in Ethics -- but I remember someone mentioning "Euthyphro's Problem" in the course of a discussion, at one point. It was described by asking, "Is it good because God said so, or did God say so because it is good?" The implication of this is, I take it, that if a particular action is only good because God said so, then we are left with a risk of arbitrary morality, subject to the whims of God. If, on the other hand, we say that God decreed that we should do X because X really is good, then we find God subject to some Higher Force, maybe akin to the Platonic "good," which is likeunto there being a second, impersonal God that the personal One always has to reference.  That seems a very unsatisfying theological assertion for a pious monotheist!

Obviously, I'm writing about this, since the dilemma has kind of stuck with me.  Equally obvious is that if professors are discussing this dilemma in their classes, thousands of years after Euthyphro's death, then the dilemma has likely not been solved to everyone's satisfaction.  So, everybody's stuck with it. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to find some answer that makes sense (at least to me;) and, as you're clearly a pious philosopher, I'd like to run a tentative theory by you on this matter for your analysis.

The thought that occurs to me--mostly from listening to other people who've had fewer real jobs, but more time and education with which to think about these things--is that the dilemma may be based on a false dichotomy. It assumes that there are two things: "God," and "good." How does the dilemma hold up if the following is true: "God = good"? If we turn it from a greater than/less than statement into an equality, then it seems to me like the problem doesn't get any traction.  Why so?  Because if "God = good", then something that is in line with God's will is necessarily in line with good as well.  It is comparable to this--that the concept behind the word "One" and the concept behind the symbol "1" is the same concept, right? So, "One = 1", and necessarily couldn't' be otherwise.  Stll, my theory might be too simplistic. I worry that I might be missing something.

Signed,

Good-n-Godly, more or less.


Dear G.-n.-G:

You ask, "If 'God = good', then something that is in line with God's will should necessarily be in line with good as well, right?"  As I see it, this remark is equivalent to just restating the old, "God says it's so; thus, it's good" position from the Euthyphro. (And you were correct in your historical observation--that the dilemma hasn't been solved.)  Unlike you, however, I tend to think that "God = good" is not the same kind of claim as is "One = 1." 

As an interesting endeavor, consider again what it means to say that "God = good." If the atheists happen to be right, that there is no God, it would follow on the "God = good" view that there would be no good either; but, that seems a bit too radical.  Maybe a thought experiment could help clarify things:

Suppose God appeared to me in a vision and said he's going to make himself cease to exist, and thought I, the truly pious philosopher, should be among the few to know.  God then proceeds to (somehow and quite miraculously) off Himself. Poof! Now the atheists really are correct, sadly. What would then follow for my Ethics?

I wouldn't change my strong commitment to, say, not hunting children with rifles for sport, even though there is now no such thing as an absolutely transcendental moral standard against such. It's just that I'd say what was good earlier (w/ God) and what is good now (w/o God) could be the same, but the motivation for my doing good can no longer be about pleasing God, but only about not compromising my own moral intuitions, one's that a lot of people around me share, and ones which protect me from psychological trauma.

What 'good' now means (after the big Theocide event, of course) is tied to the objectivity of what a shared community does (or would) affirm of their intuitions, and not about what a divine affirms of His will, knowledge, preferences, design specs., etc.  So, as to "Is it good because God said so, or did God say so because it is good?" I can't say.  But the "God = good" view doesn't seem to advance the analysis.



REFERENCES

[image] Aaron Wolf "Day and Nite" (Accessed Oct 16 2010)

[ * ] A quick synopsis of Plato's Euthyphro can be found here.

[ * ] An analytic overview of the Euthyphro dilemma can be found here.

Contemplating the Mind of God (Pt. 2 of 2)

0. { Podcast this essay } I had earlier been talking about the mind of God, and how it was dis-analogous to our mind, if for no other reason than God's mind is not constrained by the processing structures of an evolutionarily formed brain. But there are other kinds of questions which are interesting about God's mind. How does the mind of God parse the objects in our world? Can God observe the way things are with (at least) the empirical objectivity that humans do? Does even God suffer from biases? I would like to take a moment to address such questions.

1. Consider the case of the duck-rabbit diagram made popular by the philosopher Wittgenstein. We look at the duck rabbit diagram, and think perhaps it represents a duck or perhaps it represents a rabbit, but our observation allows our minds to consider both options.

Now if one were raised on a rabbit farm in Nevada, worked a lifetime at that farm, and had little to no exposure to ducks, then it seems highly likely one would report seeing a drawing of a rabbit. (And vice-versa for one raised on a duck farm in Oregon.) The reason people can be expected to make such different assessments of the duck-rabbit drawing is because what they see in conjunction with what they know conditions how they interpret their observations. Or, in a phrase, their theory with which they conceive the world informs how they perceive the world.

2. Does God have a theory of the world which informs how God perceives the world? Traditionally, it is said of God that of the facts there are, God knows these facts. Humans are laden with theories of the world because they are ignorant of some (actually most) facts of the world; thus, humans form systems of interconnected hypotheses of the world (i.e., theories) which are successful to guide action and thought. Yet God's stance on assessing the world is unlike ours, God being not ignorant of any facts. Therefore, the argument might go, God is cognitively impenetrable[1] as regards any interpretive biases operating on God's beliefs; i.e., God's experience does not bias God towards (or away) from either affirming or denying facts about the world. There is no need, for God does not have mere beliefs about the alleged state of the world, God has knowledge of any and all facts about the world. Of things that are true, God knows them as such; and of things that are false, God knows them as such. Beliefs are something finite creatures have, not God. Or so it might appear. But I think that line of thinking is wrong. Let me explain why I think this.

Just as, on a traditional view, God's holiness supports the claim that God is love; so too that God's mind is cognitively impenetrable by bias supports the traditional claim that God is Truth. However, a caveat is in order, for there are other attributes associated with God besides love and truth, since God might consider states of affairs which are not factual, but which would be or might be logically, or even physically possible. This caveat, I think, is where a certain amount of bias must appear in the mind of God. I now move to show why.

3. If humans have something akin to what's called libertarian free will,[2] and God considers future states of affairs which hypothetically might obtain upon the exercise of that human freewill, then God's views would obtain a theory-ladenness. If human volition allows for extremely complex hypothetical states of affairs, and if such states of affairs are not facts about the world, then God's consideration of human freewill introduces a likewise complex theory-ladenness to how God perceives at least one part of the world - namely those parts which have bodies controlled by free agents (in this case, humans.) At this time, humans appear to be creatures with libertarian free will. Furthermore, even ranting molinists,[3] much less open theist and process theology thinkers, hold that God considers hypothetical states of affairs as regarding human choice. (That is, God thinks about what we might do.) Therefore, God must have a theory-ladenness to his perception after all.

4. From such theory-ladenness, God loses some of God's objectivity about future state of affairs. After all, God regularly is not an arbiter between competing hypothetical, future states of affairs. (We are the arbiter when we think, and then decide how to exercise our will.) So God does not know and cannot be objective in saying what THE future would be, even if God could assess the odds of our various choices as coming to be our acts. Thus, one can draw an overall conclusion about bias in God: As the duck-rabbit diagram can be assessed in more than one way; so too, the world, as it is, can be assessed in more than one -- indeed, in a multitude of ways, all of them compatible with the plethora of freewill options we face, each option itself assessed but never known even within the very mind of God.

REFERENCES

[1] Something is 'cognitively impenetrable' just when it functions without revealing its own information to the outside world, and when its internal structure is not affected by what's external to it. A cognitively impenetrable system is like a black box where you know the inputs and outputs, but that's it.) The term originates from Jerry Fodor in The Modularity of Mind, Cambridge, (MA: MIT Press/A Bradford Book, 1983), but the definition here is my ugly paraphrase.

[2] For a discussion of what is the libertarian view of freewill, see "Compatibilism" and also "Incompatibilism" Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Accessed 5/24/2008)

[3] A 'Molinist' thinks one can have both a completely sovereign, controlling everything God, and a libertarian freewill agent in the same reality. I consider this a sad case of wishful thinking. An accessible discussion of this malfunction can be found here: "Molinism" Theopedia (Accessed, 5/24/2008)

O.

"God's action" odds can't be determined

{ Podcast this essay } Suppose a pious person were trying to assess whether God would do something -- i.e. that they wanted to calculate the odds that God would act in one way as compared to some other way. Stipulate that there is a God, and that God's attributes are close to what the Abrahamic religions claim (monotheistic, inter-personal, righteous, etc.)

Assessing the probability that God would act in certain ways would be impossible on standard methods of assessing odds. Why? Because there is no control variable that can be levied on God's acts. For example, we don't have another universe with like conditions where God does something else instead of what God (allegedly or even observably) did. Nor do we have this type of thing, God, where another token of that type of thing does something else. (Note the type/token distinction.)

Take a more inane experiment. Imagine we run ants through a maze, noting the odds of them completing the maze in some time limit. In some cases, we carefully paint over their tiny eyes. But in other cases we leave some of the ants' eyes functioning. Here we have a type of thing, Ant, where two collections of tokens of that type of thing (i.e. ants in set #1, ants in set #2) are tested under the same conditions.

Contrast the ant case with the God case. On a monotheistic view, we don't have multiple tokens of God to assess, and neither do we have at our disposal observations of whole separate universes in order to test the one token of God that there is.

One might be able to talk about what one expects God to do, but this would be about our psychological dispositions, not about justification for expecting some event to occur (or not) in the world. This goes under the title, subjectivist probability, and is summarized as follows:

Theories which analyze probability in terms of beliefs or attitudes rather than anything in the world itself. For one theory, associated mainly with Bruno De Finetti (1906-1985), the degree of probability of something is the degree of the speaker's belief, measured by his betting behavior, but subject to the constraint that his bets must be 'coherent'; that is, he must not bet in such a way as to lose whatever happens (sometimes called 'having a Dutch book made against one'). This constraint still leaves probabilities dependent on the vagaries of individual attitudes, unless we substitute those of 'the rational man' - but that takes us away from subjectivism. Others, notably Stephen Edelston Toulmin (1922-), offer a speech act theory whereby to call something probable is to assert it, though only tentatively. This may well apply to some uses of 'probably', but hardly to all [....][1]

This is the best a person of faith can expect, but this type of calculation would not be convincing to otherwise uncommitted third parties regarding whether or not God acted.


REFERENCES

[1] "Subjectivist Theories of Probability" The Philosophy Professor (Accesed 12/24/2007)

O.

The Problem of Evil God Butchery

{ Podcast this essay } This kind of puts a new spin on the classic problem of evil. Occasionally, the Bible advocates some good old fashion God butchery:

According to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), when God called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back to the land of their forefathers, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite clans who were living in the land (Deut. 7.1-2; Deut. 20.16-18). The destruction was to be complete: every man, woman, and child was to be killed. The book of Joshua tells the story of Israel’s carrying out God’s command in city after city throughout Canaan.[1]

Tough call by God, unless you happened to hate the people you're killing, even if not also the individuals in particular. This kind of tribe vs. tribe mentality seems to be the default mode of operating in ancient history, though the fragmentation of postmodern culture into self-selected sects of interest might simply re-define the tribe for contemporary humans. Bad things could happen once again. (Maybe geeks will decide to kill off athletes, or Windows owners vs. Apple owners, etc.) It's been argued that genocide has a biological basis, but this is a very controversial claim:

Geneticists now have produced not only fat mice, who lack a protein that tells them when to stop eating, but also hyperaggressive mice who kill and rape without inhibition. These mice lack a neurotransmitter that normally turns off attack behavior in response to signals of surrender. What are these deranged mice, other than a demonstration of raw gene power? We cannot ignore human aggression -- or what animal research can tell us about it. Despite all efforts to control it, aggression is unlikely to go away. In recent years, we have seen that atrocities can still arise in almost any corner of the world, from the Khmer Rouge in Southeast Asia, to the Hutus and the Tutsis in Africa, to the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia. Could it be that genocide -- rather than being a German aberration, as Lorenz's opponents were wont to imply -- is a universal human potential? The realization that this may be the case is eroding confidence in purely cultural perspectives on violence and warfare.[2]

Oddly, it would appear that advance genetic therapy might have cured those wandering Hebrews of their inclination to kill. Suppose a mad (?) scientist dropped a gene-altering virus into strategic freshwater supplies the world over. Furthermore, suppose that a gene modification is made which takes away the genocide disposition. Maybe there would still be murder -- i.e., hating and then killing of someone whom you thinks deserves it. But maybe there would no longer be racial bias -- i.e., prejudice, and hatred along skin-color/morphology lines. Perhaps as a result of the mad scientist's actions we would look at people of other "races" with as much notice as we give to people with varying hair-color within our own "race."


REFERENCES

[image] no title. Swimming Downstream blog (Accessed 12/09/2007)

[1] "Subject: Slaughter of the Canaanites" www.reasonablefaith.org (Accessed 12/09/2007)

[2] Frans B.M. de Waal "The Biological Basis of Behavior" The Chronicle of Higher Education June 14, 1996. (Accessed 12/09/07)



O.

Getting Genetic Treatment for My God Problem

{ Audio of this essay @ 11min @ 1.3MB } There is a controversial position about religion, which runs as follows:

“[S]ome human beings bear a gene which gives them a predisposition to episodes interpreted by some as religious revelation.... the God gene (Vmat2), is not an encoding for the belief in God itself but a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated, by some, with the presence of God or other mystic experiences, or more specifically spirituality as a state of mind.”[1]

The main proponent of this view is none other than geneticist Dr. Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.[2] Hamer has multiple publications in heavyweight scientific journals,[3] and a full pedigree as a well-trained scientist making claims within his field of expertise; thus, his studies correlating human behavior – in this case religious behavior – with genetic profiles cannot be easily dismissed as uninformed quackery.

I would like to give a quick over-view of two positions which share similarities to Hamer's claim -- namely, from Sigmund Freud and from Ludwig Feuerbach. After this, I would like to develop a thought experiment that builds on the assumption that Dr. Hamer got it right.

I

Note well that a position like Hamer's is not exactly a new take on explaining religion, but merely the latest instance of a more general program which says that religion is sufficiently explained by some other naturalistic phenomena. A couple of examples can be adduced from history.

1. In Sigmund Freud's time religion was explained in terms of his (now passe, if not outright dismissed) theory of psychology:

“When the growing individual finds that he is destined to remain a child for ever, that he can never do without protection against strange superior powers, he lends those powers the features belonging to the figure of his father.” [4]

God is an idealized father figure for humans, providing psychological security against the travails of life's troubles. Indeed, God is constructed in man’s own image, inversely from what orthodox Christian theology teaches; and, stands as the “ultimate wish-fulfillment”[4] of human desire for a loving father.

2. A more interesting variety of naturalistic explanation can be found in Ludwig Feuerbach. On his view, God is an idealization of that singularly special trait of humans: consciousness. As he writes, “God is the idea of the species as an individual…freed from all limits which exist in the consciousness and feeling of the individual … . (GW V:268f; EC 153)”[5] So God is less seen as a simple abstraction from a family father to a heavenly father, but as a more erudite abstraction from an attribute shared by all humans to some singular entity having the attribute unto perfection -- again, the magic attribute in question is consciousness. (I should add that since what consciousness comes to is anything but clear, it is hardly surprising that it is likewise anything but clear what Feuerbach 's position comes to.)

Typically, advocates of religion have claimed that positions like Freud's, Feuerbach's and other so-called naturalistic reformulations of religion are merely consistent with God's subtle revelations of God's self to humanity, and are hardly threatening arguments: Yes -- God is indeed like a father, and this would be one way of seeing (understanding) his role (by analogy) in human affairs; thus, Freud has merely identified this particular aspect of God's revelation. Likewise, Yes -- God is indeed a perfect exemplar of consciousness, hence Feuerbach has merely deduced this attribute of God from careful philosophical speculation. In God's prevenient grace at the design and creation of the world, God has built-in, so to speak, evidence of himself.

The same kind of deflective reasoning can be applied to the God-gene hypothesis. On the assumption that God has designed the world such that natural biological processes bring about self-aware agents, it need be no surprise that the very gene-design which allows consciousness has the advantage of “pointing toward” the existence of God. Or so religious advocates could claim.

So the Freud, Feuerbach , and Hamer cases can indeed be explained away with the handy theologizing, but the convenience of such theologizing also makes the pious view indefeasible – which is to say amassing further information would not be able to falsify or verify such theologizing:

“Falsifiability is “the most fundamental rule of evidential reasoning” and requires that “it must be possible to conceive of evidence that would prove the claim false.”[6] If nothing conceivable could disprove a claim, evidence wouldn’t matter and the claim is meaningless, logically impossible. Such claims are devoid of content, useless; emotional, but not factual.”[7]

In this instance, all that earlier deflective theologizing ends up taking any such evidence as supportive, for one can always posit that God subtly pre-designed the system such that our genes bear witness to our brains that we are children of God.

II

Defeasibility issues aside, stipulate for purposes of philosophizing that Hamer got it right: that my genome is structured such that I cannot help but to interpret my first-person experiences as God experiences. Perhaps when I hear gospel music[8] on the radio, I immediately want to contemplate what the nature of a superbly loving, universal mind would be like. Again, when I'm at work, in the pharmaceutical laboratory, I see the intricacy of cells and viri, and I cannot but help my believing that some grand designer has put this world together. Gothic Cathedrals[9] make me ponder the esoteric beauty of the Roman tradition. Amish carriages allure me towards the basic truths of living a simple life when deeply embedded in a tight-knit community.[10] On and on it goes.

One day, I decide that such religious motifs in my consciousness are taking time away from the practical affairs of life. Over the course of my day, I've noted two, sometimes even three hours (when I try to total them) are spent thinking along purely religious lines; and never, of course, as a pre-planned part of my daily routine. It's just happening. I need help. I need genetic therapy.

Genetic therapy obtains when

a 'normal' gene is inserted into the genome to replace an 'abnormal,' disease-causing gene. A carrier molecule called a vector must be used to deliver the therapeutic gene to the patient's target cells. Currently, the most common vector is a virus that has been genetically altered to carry normal human DNA. Viruses have evolved a way of encapsulating and delivering their genes to human cells in a pathogenic manner. Scientists have tried to take advantage of this capability and manipulate the virus genome to remove disease-causing genes and insert therapeutic genes.[11]

Having heard about the big money the US government spent on sequencing the human genome, I immediately take advantage of online information, and learn the following particulars about the process:

Target cells such as the patient's liver or lung cells are infected with the viral vector. The vector then unloads its genetic material containing the therapeutic human gene into the target cell. The generation of a functional protein product from the therapeutic gene restores the target cell to a normal state.[11]

Yes, that's the treatment for me! Ultimately, I decide to retain one Dr. William French Anderson, former director of the Gene Therapy Laboratories at the University of Southern California (USC) -- a man with a very shady past, a terribly tarnished reputation,[12] and an extraordinary amount of technical know-how. He needs the money; I need the procedure.

We reach an agreement.

In and out of his secret lab, after a few days of the flu (from the viral vector), and with a large transfer from Guinea's West Africa Conakry Bank to a private account in Mexico, I'm duly on my way.

Admittedly, there were a few days of worrying afterwards. I was not sure whether I was thinking about God (which meant all my money and time was wasted), or whether I was, in good second-order fashion, thinking about my thinking about God (which meant I was merely pondering memories, not having new on-going religious thoughts as a result of my consciousness doing its normal routine).

There came a moment, however, went I noted two full days without any religious thoughts at all. (We had a big government audit at the lab.) But then, suddenly, I found myself back at worrying on religious topics; but, this time I realized it was just me obsessing. In time, this re-dwelling of my own thoughts would pass, not unlike what a state trooper experiences after viewing a nasty carweck scene.

I'm cured.

At a very conservative estimate of two-and-a-half hours a day, at 35 more years of life (to assume an average life expectancy of 72 years for good-ol' American me), I've been given an extra 31, 937 hours to live my own life – and those are waking hours. Those are hours to think my own thoughts, to have true autonomy of choice, to live the victorious life free of that horrid malady.

Quite of my own will and with the full backing of modern genetics, to this very day, I can voluntarily praise God for His grace, for giving us science and technology so that I no longer suffer from that terrible religious malady which forced me to involuntarily praise Him in the past.


REFERENCES

[photo] “The God Gene” Neil Hague Gallery

[1] “God Gene” Wikipedia


[2] “Staff Pages, Scientists, Dean H. Hamer, Ph.D.” Center for Cancer Research


[3] “Scientists, Dean H. Hamer, Ph.D., Selected Publications” Center for Cancer Research

[4] Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. Trans. Peter Gay (New York: Norton, 1961), p. 30.

[5] “Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[6] Lett, James. 1990. “A field guide to critical thinking.” Skeptical Inquirer 14(2):153 (winter).

[7] Paul Nickel “Reasoning, Writing and Rare Resources: The Independent Thinker’s Toolbox” Oregonians for Rationality]

[8] “So Gospel.com - #1 Online source for Southern Gospel, Gospel Music, News & Christian Resouces ”

[9] “Gothic Medieval Cathedrals Virtual Tours” New York Carver

[10] “The Amish & The Plain People” PaDutch.com

[11] “Gene Therapy” Human Genome Project Information (US Government Site)

[12] “Gene therapy scientist sentenced to 14 years on sexual abuse charges” People's Daily Online (English Version)


O.

On Happiness, Envy, and Jealousy

Bertrand Russell, a wiley Socratic-like man, whose life was every bit as interesting as his philosophy, once pronounced 10 commandments on being an independent thinker. I won't recount them all here -- though I just might make a commentary of each of them later if the blog-o-babble urge hits me -- but I will consider one which seems a bit troublesome:

“Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”

Now on a surface reading, this is correct, as there might seem to be no time when envy is a productive state of mind, where by envy we mean, “a longing to possess something awarded to or achieved by another.”

Perhaps your friend discovers that a long-lost rich uncle has left him a fortune, but this fact makes you feel bad. Of course the gain is legal and his by civil right of law. Yet to feel badly at the event of your friend's discovering his inheritance is envy.

There might be room for worry here. Take another friend as an example, one who has a current emotive state that is more desirable than the one you have. Is it so bad to long for such an emotive state? Not if the emotive state is sustained by tenuous circumstances, the “fools' paradise” as Russell hedges it. Take it that this other friend has an emotive state of happiness, because s/he has maxed-out all credit cards and mortgaged a house to the hilt for a few, wild months of partying in Vegas. Sooner or later, your friend's happiness, like your friend's money will follow the slogan of that town: “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Such a “happiness” of your friend is hardly enviable.

So too, Russell might mean “jealousy,” which is different. Suppose now it is your cousin that obtains a great inheritance from a hithertofore unknown Uncle. Yet you get nothing, though sharing the very same uncle. If you feel badly upon your cousin gaining something that on your account you more rightly or equally rightly deserve, then this is jealousy.

This emotive state of jealousy would be odd, however, to apply to Russell's dictum. Does one ever more rightly deserve an emotive state? Suppose one person, happy Harry, is born with a slightly higher seritonin uptake disposition to their brain cells. Another, sad Steve, is born with slightly less such seritonin uptake. Does it make sense to claim, “Steve deserves more seritonin, so he can be happy; Steve has been unrightfully denied seritonin.” This seems odd, since one cannot morally blame impersonal, natural forces for the physiological properties we obtain by luck of the draw.

As a summary, envy is wanting someone else's good, one that you believe you don't deserve; while jealousy is wanting someone else's good, one that you believe you do deserve. On this distinction, there does seem to be a worry that one might appropriately envy someone's happiness if that happiness was not gained by tenuous or stupid means. Yet much might ride on just what is meant by happiness, and there is some controversy on the term.

I believe the most common usage of the word happiness is “a state of well-being characterized by emotions of pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction, or the like.” One makes a psychological report when one speaks of happiness.

But there is an older usage, which most philosophers leverage to make a special commentary on certain ideals of humanity. I'm sure Russell is aware of it, and that usage comes from Aristotle:

“Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for self and never for the sake of something else, but honor, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself.”[2] {Book 1, ch7}

Ultimately, Aristotle's phrase that pays makes happiness “an activity of soul in accordance with perfect virtue.”[2]{book 1, ch13}. Of course, no one can have ultimate happiness, since there is no one with perfect virtue – well, one might be inclined to say God could have such ultimate happiness, on the view that God can have perfect virtue. Again, one can have the ideal of happiness only when one can have perfect virtue; and, God is the only being which has such an option. People don't have such virtue; but, occasionally circumstances might present themselves such that so much of life goes well and so much is well chosen that a person can have extended periods of supreme happiness.

Such a state of happiness is indeed as difficult to maintain as it is to find.

REFERENCES

[1] Bertrand Russell, “The Ten commandments” The Independent, June 1965, p.4.

[2]Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics” Book 1

O.

God in the Machine: What Robots Teach us About Humanity and God (Book Review)

Anne Foerst says we must grant personhood to humanoid robots. Is this an act of worship — or sheer hubris?

God in the Machine:
What Robots Teach us About Humanity and God.
Anne Foerst.
New York. Dutton, 2004. 196 pages.
$24.95 paperback.

{ Audio this essay @ 4.5min @ 3.51MB } A 1976 El Camino was my first car, one that I drove all through high school and through my military service. I loved that car. Yet, when I entered it into a summer demolition derby, no one accused me of abuse or neglect — much less torture or murder — when my sputtering, flaming machine finally gave up the ghost.

If Anne Foerst were there, she might have leveled those accusations at me.

In her book titled God in the Machine, Foerst maintains that strong bonds can develop between humans and cars, computers, and other devices. Unfortunately, her focus on these bonds taints the bigger message of what robots can teach us about ourselves and about our relationship to God.

Foerst brings an interesting background to the discussion of robotics and religion — she apparently liked to sneak back and forth between studying Paul Tillich’s systematic theology at Harvard Divinity School and discussing the development of Cog, a famed robot at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology robotics lab. By doing so, she discovered two incongruous cultures: At the divinity school, people were antitechnology and thought her quest to combine theology and artificial intelligence was unnecessary, she said. At MIT, people were suspicious of theologians. This experience helped Foerst develop her rectified view of technology-and-religion in God in the Machine.

The strongest section of the book deals with the Golem tradition from Jewish writings of the 13th and 16th centuries. Golems are helpful servants that can get out of hand if the intention of the human creator is not pure and worshipful of God. The Golem tradition teaches us that we are created creators, and that these artifices — like us — would enter into a system of sin and ambiguity.

The book also has its weaknesses that show the kind of category mistakes theologians can make when confronting advances in cognitive science and AI.

Take, as an example, the issues of bonding and community, which are pivotal concepts used throughout the book. A poignant stance on these can be found on the last page, where Foerst writes: “As we are communal and bond with nonhuman entities, these narratives will necessarily include some nonhuman critters.” Although she never explicitly defines what version of bonding is being invoked, she does think it depends more on emotional settings rather than on abstract human-like qualities.

The problem here is that people can emotionally bond with all sorts of entities that strain the notion of what can be considered part of the community and what cannot. For instance, an early AI program called Eliza had people becoming so dependent on it that the program’s author, famed MIT researcher Joseph Weizenbaum, eventually ended its use. Even Weizenbaum’s secretary would ask him to leave until she had finished sharing her intimate personal matters with the machine. Weizenbaum was rightly concerned by all this — and even more so when people accused him of violating their privacy when he considered recording all interaction with Eliza.

If there is one lesson to be taken from Foerst’s book, it is that we tend to humanize all things we bond with. When Foerst and other like-minded theologians can finally distinguish between what is human (or, more properly a "person") and what is not, they will be able to resolve the skeptics’ new mantra for AI’s relationship to religion: All that glitters is not God’s.

*This review appeared in the May 2006 issue of Science and Theology News.

**image: Peter Menzel Photography.

.O.