Evil

 

Jordan Peterson is a genius and incredibly knowledgeable, but, one of his finest insights is that one does not know God or believe in God, unless one is as morally good as one can be. No matter what deity we worship, or how we profess that we are saved and love Jesus, and surrender our lives to Jesus (more or less, we Christians should so conduct and so profess), God will hold it against us if we are not as ethical as we can be.

 

God loves goodness and the good person and hates evil (but not evildoers) and is upset with the conduct of evildoers. We too are to hate evil and fight it in our generation with our whole hearts and our whole souls.

 

Three caveats:

 

!. We must fight evil out there openly and upfront, but the best way to do that is, concurrently, to be personally as ethical as we can be, personally, and this can be our greatest moral contribution to God and to the race. If 50 million adults in America would self-realize and dedicated themselves and their lives to one of the good deities that they worship, American would be a country sought by all refugees, a land of prosperity, decency, law and order, peace, and happiness.

 

2. We must make altruist-collectivist ethics our minority moral emphasis and move away from ethics in the context of group identity. We must give top billing to egoist-indivudalist ethics as the major moral emphasis, within the framework of individual identity.

 

3 We want to be passionate but not fanatical and intolerant of misidentified, or over-identified groups of sinners. We do not want to take up the sword or have the government torture or imprison sinners, collective or individual, in the name of moral policing. Right is not advanced by human rights violations against evildoers on earth.

 

Our moral mission, is, then to hate evil and love good, and work to expand goodness in our hearts and then in the community.

Paradox

 

I copied out 9 pages of entry from the Wikipedia entry on Omnipotence paradox, and this information was downloaded on 11/26/2023. I will take note on what interests me and comment on it.

 

Wikipedia (W after this): “The omnipotence paradox is a family of paradoxes that arise from some understandings of the term omnipotent. The paradox, arises, for example if one assumes that an omnipotent being has no limits and is capable of creating any outcome, even a logically contradictory one such as creating a square circle.”

 

My response: God is all-powerful or nearly all-powerful in growing the cosmos, operating the cosmos, and spreading love and goodness across the universe, but this in no way implies that God will create square circles, or advocate contradictory statements or conditions (There are exceptions that are real and wholesome but these dialetheisms are uncommon, if true, legitimate and to be taken seriously.), or promote evil. These negative introductions of spiritual evil, or chaotic, system-destroying elements are from Satan and his minions, so such detracting behaviors would not agree with God’s all-powerfulness, for these elements are about reducing, distorting and gutting God’s agency in the world. Those offering the omnipotence paradox could be intellectually curious, but some of these atheological foes of God are seeking to smear and trap God’s good name, by forcing God to adopt these negative elements, which do not belong to God, or the paradox does not apply to God.

 

The omnipotence paradox is not about God at all, but it reveals that it is about De’s enemies, their intentions, their motives, their natures.

 

These introduced negative elements of reality are introduced by the Dark Couple and are physical manifestations of the wicked, cruel power of powerlessness, the energy field coming from Satan and Lera, and it is their power center.

 

When the trickster posing the omnipotence paradox is associating these negative elements with God, it is obvious that these negative elements contradict all the God says, is and does, but they are not from God but from De’s enemies. These contradictions are no reflection on God’s goodness and nature, and they are rooted in powerlessness (using one’s energy to hurt the self and others) or hatred. Power and powerfulness, especially when we are referring to good deities, is the energy the use lovingly to bolster themselves and others.

 

W: “Atheological arguments based on the omnipotence paradox are sometimes described as evidence for countering theism. Other possible resolutions to the paradox hinge on the definition of omnipotence applied and the nature of God regarding this application and whether omnipotence is directed towards God Himself or outward toward his external surroundings.”

 

My response: Omnipotence or near-omnipotence apply to God and De’s external surrounding because De created the world, making something out of nothing (nothing existed prior to Creation), or chaotic energy and mass became--after the creation--something, ordered energy, mass and life.

 

W: “The omnipotence paradox has medieval origins, dating at least from the 10^th century, when Saadia Gaon responded to the question of whether God’s omnipotence extended to logical absurdities . . . a predecessor version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to deny himself.”

 

My response: God has not much to do with logical absurdities or draping Deself in these negative elements, which would be denying Deself, which God will not do. God probably could do but will not, for assuming such attributes would be the opposite of being powerful and divinely good, and would in effect weaken God and De’s ministrations.

 

W: “ . . . A related issue is whether the concept of ‘logically possible’ is different for a world in which omnipotence exists than a world in which omnipotence exists.”

 

My response: God made the world, but the world likely existed before God as Fate or the One. The Dark Couple and the Evil Spirits have their home, hell, and portions of Creation where they rule supreme or near to it, so absurd atheologies might be logically possible or metaphysically possible in those realms where God does not live or does not rule, but this does not make God lack perfection or near perfection or omnipotency or near omnipotency. The family of omnipotence paradoxes are used by God’s skeptical, postmodernist enemies as rhetorical weapons to undermine God’s ominipotence. These critics may believe their rhetorical attacks or not (just an effective weapon against God to seed uncertainty in the minds of people and believers) but these paradoxes are not related to God, and tell us little about God’s nature, perfect and omnipotent.

 

W: “Types of omnipotence: Augustine of Hippo in his City of God writes ‘God is called omnipotent on account of His doing what he wills’ and thus proposes the definition that ‘Y is omnipotent’ means ‘If Y wishes to do X the Y can and does X’.”

 

My response: God is omnipotent on account of De doing what De wills, and if he wished to do X, he can and does X; I agree with this and this seems self-evident. Could there be a hint here that no one is able successfully or is powerful enough to black God’s willing something, for very long, or completely. That is how I read Augustine’s definition of divine omnipotency.

 

W: “The notion of omnipotence can also be applied to an entity in different ways. As essentially omnipotent being is an entity that can be omnipotent for a termporary period of time, and then becomes non-omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox can be applied to each type of being differently.”

 

My response: Theologians and metaphysicians could make something of this. I would regard God omnipotency as an essential trait all the time, and that God would not have many or any accidental traits.  I maintain that God is omnipotent, but there are some evil, destructive or contradictory, meaningless things that De will not will to do; producing omnipotence paradoxes to make God look silly and limited, because God refuses to act in aforementioned ways, is a hostile ploy by the godless and unscrupulous to force God’s hand, something that God will never respond to by taking the bait. God will not act counter to De’s nature, because De loves Deself, and does not engage in self-abuse which is self-hatred—nor will God want to play these nasty word game being peddled for centuries by his vicious, lying foes.

 

God is all-powerful in the sense of power that is creative, loving and constructive, but there are some competing destructive powers (the powers of powerlessness and hatred utilized by evil spirits) that God will not ever or often wield. If that limit or self-limiting discipline that God stands by is considered evidence of his lack of omnipotency, his critics seem to be correct, but they are not: that unholy kind of power has force in the world, but it grows wickedness and hurt, and that lack for God is a power that De will not latch onto and wield. God is omnipotent regarding loving and creating, but the powers of powerlessness owned and administered by demonic forces does not make God be assessed as not all powerful due to De’s reluctance to enjoy using destructive hateful energy in the world.

 

It is so that in certain eras, or in certain geographical areas of the universe, that there are zones of supremacy administered from time to time by Evil Spirits. Can God be all-good and omnipotent, and yet there are domains of the universe at this time, where evil is ascendant? I think my cosmology of the coexistence of evil and omnipotent God  in one universe is a consistent description of reality. How it works and why it is set up that way is tough to answer but what is, is.

 

It may be that a working definition of God’s omnipotency is that De reigns and remains true to Deself and De’s people, all the while evil is allowed to exist and conquer large parts of the cosmos. Who knows what the truth about these ultimate issues are for sure, but Fate is the core to answering these dilemmas and understanding what Fate is about is way beyond my pay grade.

 

W: “In addition, some philosophers have considered the assumption that a being is either omnipotent or non-omnipotent to be a false dilemma, as it neglects the possibility of varying degrees of omnipotence. Some modern approaches to the problem have involved semantic debates over whether language—and therefore philosophy—can meaningfully address the concept of omnipotency itself.”

 

My response: This paragraph I like. God is all-powerful or extremely powerful, and my theology of moderation is suggesting that God is mostly powerful is likely true. I also maintain that the omnipotence paradox applies to God—at least in need to be addressed for clarification pursposes--whether De is all-powerful or nearly all-powerful. For example, God is all powerful and yet evil exists in the world, and God is not the author of it. And it seems likely that understanding what omnipotency means and how the omnipotence paradox works are both very tricky and daunting for humans to ponder.

 

W: “Proposed answers—Omnipotence does not mean breaking the laws of logic.

 

A common response from Christian philosophers, such as Norman Geisler or William Lane Craig, is that the paradox assumes the wrong definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything at all but, rather, he can do anything possible according to his nature. The distinction is important. He cannot, for instance, make 1 + 1= 3. Likewise, God cannot make a being greater than himself because he is, by definition, the greatest possible being. God is limited in his actions to his nature. The Bible, in passages such as Hebrews 6:18, says it is ‘impossible for God to lie.’

 

A good example of a modern defender of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes. Essentially, Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation of a being’s omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a ‘task’ is termed by him a ‘pseudo-task’ as it is self-contradictory and inherently nonsense. Harry Frankfurt—following from Descartes—has responded to this solution with a proposal of his own: that God can create a stone impossible to lift and also lift said stone:

 

‘For why should God not be able to perform the task in question? To be sure, it is a task—the task of lifting a stone that he cannot lift—whose description is self-contradictory. But if God is supposedly capable of performing one task whose description is self-contradictory—that of creating the problematic stone in the first place—why should He not be supposedly capable of performing another another—that of lifting the stone? After all, is there any greater trick in performing two logically impossible tasks that there is performing one?’”

 

My response: I agree with the Christian answers to the omnipotence paradox, and Mavrodes is correct that if God performed even one logically impossible task—which De cannot and will not due, or rarely—De might as well proceed forward.

 

W: “If a being is accidentally omnipotent, it can resolve the paradox by creating a stone it cannot lift, thereby becoming non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises the question, however, of whether  the being was ever truly omnipotent, or just capable of great power. On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.”

 

My response: Accidental omnipotency solves the paradox but it seems to assert that God never was or never was permanently omnipotent, and that I cannot accept. This idea of accidental omnipotency seems more applicable to the lesser good deities, or to angels, the Good Spirits.

 

W: “If a being is essentially omnipotent, then it can also resolve the paradox. The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further the omnipotent being can do what it is logically impossible—just like the accidentally omnipotent—and have no limitations except for the inability to become omnipotent. The omnipotent being cannot create a stone it cannot lift.”

 

My response: This paragraph is important. This paragraph offers to resolve the paradox by asserting omnipotent God cannot become omnipotent so De cannot do a logically impossible task that makes De non-omnipotent, namely making a stone that God cannot lift.

 

The thinker here seems to separate out two categories of logically impossible tasks, those that God can do which are in accordance with God’s remaining true to God’s nature, De’s omnipotency, and the prohibited logically impossible task, those that render God non-omnipotent.

 

I would identify with the logically impossible tasks that God could undertake—that do not conflict with the maintenance by God of God’s essential omnipoetncy—as dialetheistic, moderate acts, logically impossible, as those few true contradictions that God can undertake, but are also logically and ontologically consistent with God’s omnipotent nature. This might occur, for example, when God works a miracle that flouts normally operating natural law.

 

W: “The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone because its power is equal to itself—thus removing the omnipotence, for than can be only one omnipotent being, but it nevertheless retains its omnipotence. The solution works even with definition 2—as long as we also know the being is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so. However, it is possible for non-omnipotent beings to compromise their own powers, which presents the paradox that non-omnipotent beings  can do something (to themselves) which an essentially omnipotent being cannot do (to itself). This was essentially the position that Augustine of Hippo took in his The City of God::

 

‘For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what he wills not, for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.’

 

Thus Augustine argued that God cannot do anything or create any situation that would, in effect, make God not God.

 

My response: I like Augustine.

 

W: “God and logic:

 

Although the most common translation of the noun ‘Logos’ is ‘Word’ other translations have been used. Gordon Clark (1902-1985), A Calvinist theologian and expert on pre-Socratic philosophy, famously translated Logos as ‘Logic’: ‘In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic, was with God and the Logic was God.’ He meant to imply by this translation that the laws of logic were derived from God and formed part of Creation, and were therefore not a secular principle imposed on the Christian world view.

 

God obeys the laws of logic because God is eternally logical in the same way that God does not perform evil actions because God is eternally good. So, God, by nature logical and unable to violate the laws of logic, cannot make a boulder so heavy he cannot lift it because that would violate the law of non contradiction by creating an immovable object and an unstoppable force.”

 

My response: If God is Logic or Word or Logos, God made and abides by the laws of logic—most of the time I assert as a metaphysical moderate—then De cannot create an omnipotence paradox that violates the law of noncontradiction. Once in a while, God can logically and materially do a task that violates the law of noncontradiction, while remaining consistent overall and omnipotent over all.

 

 

 

 

W: “This raises the question, similar to the Euthyphro Dilemma, of where this law of logic, which God is bound to obey, comes from. According to these theologians (Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig), this law is not a law above God that he assents to, but, rather, logic is an eternal part of God’s nature, like his omniscience and omnibenevolence.”

 

 W: “Paradox is meaningless: the question is sophistry . . .”

 

My response: Epistemological pessimists and those that use fallacious arguments to deceive theists might come up with a line of reasoning that gets to convoluted, that the whole debated seems muddled—perhaps purposely made that way—and without importance, and these criticisms are not far off the mark.

 

Do we even have the concepts, semantics, real-world referents, and language to conduct the debate about the ultimate puzzles like the omnipotence paradox? I think we do but there is room for doubt too. Such puzzles are worth delving into, but, we also know enough to believe and know that God is just, true and loving, and, is either all-powerful or extremely powerful, while generally living by the laws of nature and logic written the God in De’s Logos’ creator phase.

 

 

 

 

Paradox

 

11/27/2023: I have been studying the Omnipotence paradox, and I came across online a column entitled, Problems with the Omnipotence paradox; it was asked 7 years, 6 months ago and was Modified 7 months ago; it has been viewed 8k times. I will quote from it where pertinent and comment on content. This source is interesting, not exhaustive or considered authoritative.

 

“From Wikipedia:

 

The omnipotence paradox is a family of semantic paradoxes that explores what is meant by ‘omnipotence.’ If an omnipotent being is able to perform any action, then it should be able to create a task that it is unable to perform. Hence, this being cannot perform all actions (i.e., it is not omnipotent), a logical contradiction.”

 

My response: Fate is all-powerful and all-powerless at the same time so Fate could draw a round square while following laws of logic and illogic, the laws of consistency and contradiction, what exists and can’t exist, and create and destroy with omnipotence and limited potency.

 

God the Father and God the Mother are near all-powerful and little all-powerless so refusing to or being unable to participate in contradictory acts that make De contradictory or nonexistent is consistent with God’s goodness, logic, truth-abiding and potency.

 

The above characterization of the omnipotence paradox, on the part of the author, seems well stated. If God could perform any action, then God should be able to create a task that De cannot perform. If God could perform such an action, De would not be omnipotent. If God could perform such an action, God would not be omnipotent. This is a logical contradiction, so either God is not all-powerful, or what is contradictory is absurd, false and does not exist, so God is absurd, false, and does not exist.

 

It is understandable that atheists, skeptics, and doubters would love to throw out this challenge to theists, but theists have some credible refutations. God is all-powerful and engaging in the creation of self-contradictory, self-destroying actions and illogical thinking are efforts that are or align with being powerless, senseless or even non-existent, and such efforts would not be about being powerful at all, so God would not engage in such efforts, be limited in power by such efforts, or associated with such self-destruction and foolishness.

 

Other refutations include God does not deny Deself, and God’s rational spirit or intelligence (Logos) was applied by God to the world to make matter and energy into cosmos and even living beings, so the laws that govern nature are an extension of God’s internal, self-governing rules of existence that are consistent, necessary, eternal and just, and this positive power is all-powerful but follows lines of existing, thinking and acting that conform to how De expects Deself and everyone else to exist and operate. Paradoxical and self-contradictory games are not about God or apply to God at all, even though the tricksters seek to trap God and fail.

 

God does not violate the laws of object. God’s logic occasionally may seem to contradict the rules of logic as humanly understood, but divine logic could be consistent, true, existent, and operational without humans understanding it, so if what God is doing occasionally seems contradictory or paradoxical in some cases, when it is not.

 

Theists might also exhort believers and skeptics alike that why God does what De does, and what it signifies is not comprehensible to us at this time—or perhaps ever—so we must accept that God is trustworthy and giving it to us straight, based on faith, not argument or evidence.

 

Wikipedia (W after this): “The paradox of the stone: Could an omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that even he could not lift it.

 

I posit that: ‘Creating a boulder that one can’t lift’ isn’t a logically inconsistent demand. Humans do it all the time (make stuff that they cannot lift). This argument actually shows how omnipotence is logically inconsistent.”

 

My response: The moderate in me would object that God could make a stone that God could not lift, and then, afterwards could lift it, as a dialetheistic reality (an occasional true contradiction, or as a miraculous, divine suspension of even God being limited by De’s own natural law for some noble but rare, exceptional reason. In the main God would not make a rock that De could not lift, and because De would not create it and then lift it, though De conceivably could, because this would tear the cosmos apart unnecessarily for the rules governing the cosmos cannot be flouted by God, or made exception of too often, or all cosmos will collapse and that is what God is working hard to avoid, and that is what the Devil wants to accelerate.

 

The Devil and his followers bait God with the Omnipotence Paradox to beguile doubting theists into accepting atheism, abandoning discredited God, or if God did create a stone that De could not lift and then lift it—not as a rare miracle, but as an angry overreaction to the Devil and skeptics goading De to do what De could but should not do, this overreaction by God-which would never occur—would grow hell or chaos on earth, and reduce heaven and cosmos on earth.

 

The Devil pushes chaos and destruction, and God advances cosmos and construction, so this whole self-contradictory verbal game about the rock is a game that God refuses to engage in because it is playing De’s enemy’s game. God’s creative power is all-powerful but that is the power of powerful building and Satan’s destructive power is all-powerless, a type of power that God opposes and fights but there is power there nonetheless unrelated to God.

 

So now I kick the whole game upstairs to Fate or the One where Fe is all-powerful and all-powerless at the same time and what that means and how it shakes out is beyond me to characterize it intelligibly with words.

 

W: “I used it in many forums but the general counter-arguments I get claim that this is not a logically consistent argument. The most clearly worded counter-argument I got is as follows:

 

If God is omnipotent, then there is no boulder that cannot be lifted by him. If God is omnipotent, he can create anything. You’re not disproving omnipotence, you’re disproving the possibility of such a boulder existing. Something that can both exist, and therefore be lifted by God by definition, and its un-liftability by God are in direct conflict with each other.”

 

My response: God can create anything, if in the rare dialetheistic or miracle categories, but, ordinarily God cannot create anything because De refuses to create anything that defies the laws of logic governing God’s Logos or rational energy that keeps the world ticking.

 

W: “Creating/Building  something that one can’t lift isn’t logically impossible. It becomes logically impossible only when considering God, doesn’t it?  . . . What is the conclusion one should draw from this argument—Omnipotence can’t exist . . . TL;DR.”

 

My response: God being Omnipotent and not being able to draw a round square are both true and both consistent, because God obeys the laws of logic, almost all the time.

 

Would it be God’s plan to be all-powerful and yet create a boulder that he could not lift. No, but he could and might on rare occasions to bring the universe back into harmony and balance. God’s unwillingness or inability to make such a rock is consistent with being the Author of the laws of logic (God’s omnipotency is instantiated as the divinely formulated  rational principle/Logos/or laws of logic at work, and contradictory logic or creations would be examples of the lack of potency or evil, malevolent destruction of cosmos, so that has nothing to do with God, and this posed paradox is a blasphemous semantical and rhetorical trap for God by God’s enemies that De will just ignore and sidestep as a non-issue requiring no divine response.

 

The stone paradox is that if God cannot make the stone too heavy for De to lift, he is not omnipotent, or if De creates it, then De cannot lift it, so De is still not omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox is not a way of proving De is not omnipotent, true, logical or existent as an eternally present, necessary Being. God is omnipotent but accepting an invitation to play contradictory and self-contradictory games is inconsistent with God’s omnipotent posture, so God will decline all such spurious challenges.

Slime

 

In 1951 Eric Hoffer published his classic nonfiction book, The True Believer, Thought on the Nature of Mass Movements.

 

I am going to write out his two quotes in the Preface of the book and comment on them.

 

Hoffer (H after this): “Man would fain be great and sees that he is little; would fain be happy and see that he is miserable; would fain be perfect and see that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment where he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against the truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults. –Pascal, Pensees”

 

My response: This is so well written and dark. Pascal is no believer in human goodness. We role play that we are great, happy, perfect, loved and esteemed, when in fact we are insignificant mediocrities without merit or respect, living lives of quiet despair, quite flawed and sinful, self-hating and other-hating, treated with and self-treating the self with contempt. The truth is so brutal and painful for fragile, marginal humans to deal with, that we flee into illusion (group-living, and nonindividuating), and there, without self-respect or any willingness or effort to face what we are and struggle to clean up the mess we personally are, we hide in the pack in utter self-loathing, and our hatred festers, producing in us the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable. If this was not hatred enough, then we hate the truth more than anything, and will do anything to truth-tellers that seek to remind us of our hopelessly spoiled life. We cannot accept blame or condemnation for our choice to escape from freedom.

 

Hoffer is notifying the reader that people are not basically good, and their natural psychic state is sick, insane, and unpleasant, making them feel quite miserable, if they do not address it. When such collectivized, unhappy, and unhinged people are grouped, and when these masses of self-loathing, group-living, nonindividuators are uprooted from the cultural narrative that kept them asleep and fairly stable, they seek any passing holy cause to hitch their fallen star to, and as purely obedient myrmidons serving their witch doctor and ism without hesitation or concern. They are willing, eager Islamists, Nazis, Communists, or chauvinistic nationalists from that point onward.

 

H: “And slime they had for mortar. –Genesis 11.”

 

My response: These masses of unhappy, desperate, stampeded people. They are the slime that the demagogues, commissars, men of action and gurus enlist the make the mortar of the mass movement being unleashed upon abused humanity in need of no further assaults.

 

If we can embrace truth and face how rotten we are naturally, and yet not despair, we work hard to clean up our act and make the world right, or to serve God willingly, even joyfully, then we can transcend our sordid nasty, natural selves in our incipient state of existing and find happiness, meaning, love and fulfillment here on earth. I think Hoffer was amazed to discover that the capitalist system, the championing here of individualism, self-esteem, the belief that the individual is sovereign, liberty, opportunity, and happiness pursued in this constitutional republic (America) had accidentally made America into the best country ever, a near-paradise on earth, to be enjoyed but not transformed into a Latin American banana republic.

Free Will Considerations

 

I have written elsewhere that a free will means free to choose which action to put in motion, but it is not freedom of action, that nothing is blocking you from implementing or carrying out your plan. Liberty is when you enjoy freedom of action, where no tyrant obviates your ideas on how to live.

 

I also talk about what motive you should select of your own free will. Your motive can be self-interest or unselfishness, or other-interest or selfishness.

 

If you are self-interested because what you are doing will be in the best interests of yourself and others.

 

If you are other interested, what you will be doing is not in the best interest either or yourself or others.

 

You are not only free to select your motive, but you are free to choose what course to follow, or what specific action to select, based in your free will.

 

It then would seem that if you live as a fanatic, a non-individuator or a young teenager, ordinarily your free will is muted and not much relied upon, and you mostly will be compelled by inner and outer forces working on you, and both your motives, and the selecting of a range of actions to best meet that motive, are not selected by you.

Tribal Society

 

I was thinking that history may aid us in favoring individualism over collectivism.

 

When I grew up in the 70s, we thought of the pre-historical tribal culture, perhaps 100,00 years old as a natural utopia for noble savages, leading lives of communal ownership, plenty, ease, cooperation, peace and sharing.

 

It would seem, in the 5,000 years of individualism, or as glimmers of it begin to momentarily erupt, that technology and innovation grew as individualism grew.

 

How about moral advancement? I just read last year that some expert noted that the rate of murder and violent death (likely inter-tribal rivalry and war) among ancient peoples were many times the rate today.

 

I think Jordan Peterson was the source of this last tidbit, which, if proven, would indicate the rise of individualism over the millennia leads not only to technological advancement and increased knowledge, but to moral progress to, leading to democracy, constitutional republicanism and advancing to high civilization.

Big Bang Theories

 

 

The late Frank Pastore narrated a Prager U video, named Does God Exist. It was posted 3/30/2015. I took notes on the excellent video and will comment on its content.

 

Pastore (P after this): “For 27 years I was an atheist. I thought that anyone who believed in God was stupid, naïve, uneducated, gullible. Or into the gig for money, sex, or power. Religion is just a psychological crutch for intellectual weaklings.”

 

My response: Many atheists assume that it is weak and wimpy to depend on God to face the world, but God exists, and the good deities are energy fields of spiritual goodness that radiates out to our souls if we invite such wholesome incoming input. I would argue that life is suffering and hard enough, so some spiritual energy entering one’s soul gives one something to be cheered over, and that is not stupid or wimpy, but exciting and inspirational.

 

P: “Why I changed my mind. My Christian teammates on the Cincinnati Reds challenged me. I read some religious books, critiqued them,

 

 and shared them with the guys. Atheism was the only answer for anyone not deceived by fantasy, fiction, and mythology. Atheism is for someone who wants to base their beliefs and values upon evidence and argument, not emotion and tradition.”

 

My response: Millions of people have had the religious craving for meaning and purpose for tens of thousands of years. I doubt that the hunger for spiritual fulfillment is just a psychological crutch: it must be an actual craving to fill a metaphysical inner void, a spiritual seeking after deities out there beckoning to seekers. Can such a persistence, ancient, primordial, near universal human drive just be a need for a secular, cultural narrative?

 

Still, arguments for theism or atheism, or evidence in support of either view are welcome and worth attending to, but I would be remiss if I did not alert the reader to that fact that, while I believe deeply, I know that we are so small and so parochial on this little planet, that our sweeping remarks for or against the existence of God seem premature and half-baked. I am not a religious skeptic, or even agnostic, but I invite people to be cautious concerning religious generalizations for evidence or arguments supporting God’s existence are still provisional.

 

P: “Simply put, I set out to disprove theism which I thought would not take very long. I ran into some difficulties along the way. Things like Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas. What I became aware of was Four Big Bang Theories to be accounted for, not just one.

 

The First Big Bang theory is well known: why something rather than nothing—Pop and then there was something. Matter and space come into existence in a cosmological flash about 16 billion years ago. No gradual development, no transition of forms. Just a binary flip of the switch—now you don’t see it, and now you do metaphysically. Fine, I want to follow the evidence wherever it leads to the truth.

 

First, however, astrophysicists say the first Big Bang gave us only a handful of fundamental elements. It would take billions of years for the nuclear furnaces of trillions of stars to yield 118 elements on the periodic table.

 

The First Big Bang only yields matter and energy but does not address the origin of life. How do you get life from non-life? Abiogenesis: we life or something from nothing. How does that work? Where is the evidence? You are going to need another something from nothing leap of faith.”

 

My response: Pastore is clearly stating that the First Big Bang and what he labels the Second Big Bang, or momentous, unexplained, sudden change, to get something from nothing, first matter and energy, and second, life from inorganic matter and energy. He refers to these as leaps of faith lacking evidence. I am no scientist, but his criticism here seems plausible. First, was the cosmological Big Bang, and then we need something like a biological Second Big Bang to get life from non-life. It seems to me like a scientific and metaphysical dead lock, displeasing to both the materialists and materialists, neither side being able to provide evidence or argumentation decisive enough to explain doubtlessly how life came from non-life, and this ambiguity rather than knowing one way or another seems to be the human condition.

 

P: “Life from Non-Life, the biological, Second Big Bang: for all the mind-blowing advances we have made in physics, biology, and chemistry in the past 100 years, we have no clue how to explain life. The closer we look, the wider the chasm.

 

At this point we still only have physics, chemistry and basic biology, matter, energy, and simple life forms. We have no way to account for the great diversity of life forms from plants, animals, and simple bacteria. Nor can we account for the differences between animals and man.

 

We do not have an anthropology at this point, so we are going to need a Third anthropological Big Bang. This was what Darwin was after In His Descent of Man thesis. Now listen, Darwin answered a lot of questions, but he could never answer the core questions: how evolution began? Darwin answered that he had no idea.”

 

My response: It seems as if Pastore is suggesting that the Creator, the Great Uncaused Cause, breathed life into lifeless matter, so then evolution took off from that point of divine intervention in the natural world. Pastore does not explicitly say this, but I think he thought this way, that God as the source of life in the universe provides that Third anthropological Big Bang. This is the leap of faith that we theists make.

 

P: “But hey, we’re still not describing the world that is all around us. A final big bang is going to be required to explain how a mechanistic animal brain can become a self-reflective human mind. Even the lowest life forms have brains and central nervous systems. I mean, how does something like that become the mind of a Michelangelo, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven. Animals don’t appreciate beauty.

 

But the problem is more basic than that. How do you account for free will and introspection, let alone man’s pressing existential drive to ask ‘why?’”

 

My response: Pastore is not speaking of Big Bangs literally, but these are tropes for sudden, momentous, magnificent, transformational, evolutionary transitions that lead first to the rise of life and then intelligent life whose biological, mechanistic body is ruled by its personal ghost in the machine. This immaterial consciousness will direct its body and biological brain to act in alignment with its freely willed choices, to react to its introspections, and to ask questions about everything imaginable.

 

P: “Well, we are going to need some kind of psychological, Fourth Big Bang to account for man’s moral and esthetic sense of why—his search for meaning, significance and purpose. And of course, his appreciation for the true, the good and the beautiful.

 

And you must remember these problems require bang’s sudden, binary pops into existence since there is no evidence for gradual developments in any of these . So, I would like you to have a choice. It’s either faith in these four big bangs of ‘somethings’ to account for something around us, or faith in a Creator God behind it. The next time someone asks you about the Big Bang answer which one: the cosmological, biological, anthropological, or psychological.”

 

My response: My leap of faith if to side with Pastore.

Quick Rule Of Thumb

 

I am an advocate of ethical egoism and moderation if thought, word, and deed, but there is a 2ndary (a quick, rule of thumb moral standard) moral tool I apply to measure if an action is appropriate to do or not, and I do not think this practical rule conflicts with my primary ethical system.

 

Natural suffering is something we can do little about, and we just try to get through it, and we are not responsible for.

 

Unnecessary suffering is what evil is, when we deliberately choose to hurt others or ourselves: these cruel, destructive acts are not only hurtful, but they deeply anger and offend the good deities, and we need and want them on our side.

 

Here is my sensible moral rule: Is how I act, and how we interact, bringing healthy pleasure and happiness to ourselves and others, or are we inflicting and introducing unnecessary pain, suffering and unhappiness to ourselves and others?

 

If doing something increases unnatural, human suffering, and we know that in advance, then we must choose not to act that way.

 

If doing something increases unnatural but uplifting (fabricated by human action) pleasure or happiness and joy in the world, that is the action we should accept.

 

In short, if we are causing pain, we cease that action. If we are making lives better for others or ourselves, that is the route to take.

The Riddle

 

One of the toughest nuts to crack is to explain how humans can enjoy free will if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, or nearly all-powerful or all-knowing.

 

I think that there is an answer to this riddle. Since the Mother and the Father and Jesus are Individuators and Creator deities of immense power and reach, they are law-makers and law-givers applying their divine reason or Logos to raw matter to make cosmos out of chaos. They are free and their wills are free.

 

They made humans too to self-realize and use their powers of free will and reasoned creativity to apply their Logos to making raw reality into cosmos in their limited but wonderful human exertion.

 

Though the major benevolent deities are all-powerful, they can allot say 20 units of power and 30 units of free will to each human to use as they will. These deities likely know the outcome of how each human each time and cumulatively over a lifetime will, but they gave their word not to interfered with humans making their moral choices, so they keep their word and do not deprive us of our power to make decisions.

 

In this way, humans can enjoy and wield free will, and be responsible for their choices of action, and God can see where they will land, but God’s omnipotence and omniscience will not interfere in human zones of free choice and free action undertaken.

Pastore Video

 

Frank Pastore narrated a Prager U video, named, Do We Have Free Will? I took notes on this video that has a posting date of 3/30/2015, though Frank Pastore passed away years earlier. I took notes on this video and will comment on my notes.

 

Pastore (P after this): “Do humans have free will or are our decisions entirely products of chemistry, physics, and genetics? Is there a difference between the brain and the mind? Could a neuroscientist with enough knowledge of our brains know every decision that we will make? The answers cut to the heart of what it means to be human.”

 

My response: I watched recently the 2021 video between Craig Biddle and Dennis Prager, and Prager says we only have free will if God exists (God gave us free will so that we could be free and real, not puppets. God is strong and secure and has no need for sycophants or puppets.).

 

Craig Biddle says we only have free will if God does not exist. If God exists, according to Biddle, and is all-powerful and all-knowing, then we cannot have free will. I think Pastore account is rather compatibilist, though from a Christian perspective, which likely would mirror Prager’s outlook on free will.

 

Pastore seems to say that we are biological machines (Robert Sapolsky, are you listening?) but that there is a ghost in the machine, not a homunculus or little man, but our mind or soul is residing beside or in our brains, so we have free will.

 

P: “In the external or physical world we are all aware of cause and effect. Object A acts on Object B with Force x. We all get that because it applies to just about everything from electrons to athletes.

 

But now consider events in your internal or mental world. What causes your thoughts? Some thoughts have external causes like when we touch something hot—we don’t deliberate, we just automatically pull our hand away from the burner. Our brain has already fired the instructions to do so involuntarily. In some strange sense we did not choose to pull our hand away at all because we did not choose to do that. Our brain did it without consulting us.

 

The second cause of our thoughts are internal causes: we are very anxious about giving a presentation, so we start to sweat and our heart rate goes up.

 

The third causal category of your thoughts is your conscious choices. Say you choose where to go eat. When you introspect about it, do you believe you are the active agent in charge of the process, or that you are a passive recipient of instruction, that you have no choice in the matter—that it is all external forces: environment, genetic, chemical, biological, and neurological?

 

In other words, do you think all your thoughts have external causes beyond your control or do you think you control some if not most of your thoughts? If all you are is a brain or exhaustibly physical system of synapses and neurons, if all you are is a brain, there is no you that is going to make a choice at all. Your thought processes are just a complex series of colliding electron dominoes colliding into each other.

 

This is just physical cause and effect, something that can be physically understood exhaustibly under physics and chemistry. If you are just a brain, there’s no you, an agent that is choosing, deliberating, exercising free will. You would just be a physical machine—a very complex but programmed computer.

 

But if you are something more than a brain, you would be something that has the brain. If you are more than a brain, you will choose an action based on reasons you mulled over. You would choose to think about these things and stop anytime you wanted to.

 

Here we have two different types of things: the immaterial mind (self-awareness, thoughts, spirit) and the material brain. You are the thing that has your brain. You are not the brain.”

 

My response: I approximately agree with Pastore, and we are some sort of compatibilists. Each person is a determined biological machine owned, managed, and directed by an internal immaterial mind.

 

The world is messy, and categories are not clean and sharply drawn. Dualism seems to be the metaphysical reality: that the world is made of body and spirit. So, living in the world and being of the world, each agent is material brain ruled by immaterial mind, and each human is half beast and half angel—that angel can elect to live as a living demon.

 

Such a messy ontological arrangement makes the material monists, and the spiritual monists pull their hair out, for dualism messes with their tidy understanding and way of arranging the world. Sorry, that is how things are in reality.

 

P: “Even if you are the foremost brain expert in the world knowing what’s happening with every electron in the human brain of a patient being operated on,  at this moment the surgeon does not know what is going on in the patient’s mind, and this is what makes the patient human. The surgeon has access to the patient’s brain, but only the patient has access to his mind. This is what makes the patient human and not a machine. Psychology, the study of what it is to be human, is not reducible to physics, biology, and chemistry.

 

Yet materialists, the theory that only physical matter exists, and matter is the only reality, argue that every thought and feeling are totally explained in terms of matter in motion, strictly physical phenomena.

The materialists believe that we are nothing but robots, and that free will is an illusion. Why do they believe this? They know the moment they acknowledge free will exists, that there is an immaterial you beyond the physical mind—that you are not just a brain—there has to be something non-physical that accounts for a non-physical mind.

 

Now when you exercise your free will, you are going to think there must be a Great Mind that accounts for the origin of your mind. But that is your free will as evidence of your free mind.”

 

 

 

 

Distinctions Made

 

We must not just be open to the truth ethically, but the more we want to know what is going on inside ourselves, around us and in the world, the more aware and sensitive we will be about ethical reality about us.

 

We must make ethical distinctions and put those into words which label accurately the character, motives and actions of ourselves and others, and we must be at time willing to announce our conclusions publicly, truthfully, unemotionally, and descriptively, but without favoritism or scapegoating.

 

We are not passing judgment: we are, in our minds, and in the public square, in mode of utter free speech, calling a spade a spade. We must differentiate between what is good and evil in society in our generation, before we can move to lessen evil and promote benevolence.

Necessary

 

It could be that in the universe of the One or Fate, where the Light Couple fight against the Dark Couple, that sentient races like humans, mortal and not very powerful, play a vital role in keeping the universe in balance, or restoring that balance.

 

If the Light Couple and their angels versus the Dark Couple and their demons—though all possess free will—are rather locked-in but unimaginably powerful, opposing kingdoms quarreling over universal rule, with the Light Couple et al coming close being and exemplifying Pure Goodness, and the Dark Couple and their minions coming close to exuding Pure Evil, then the Father and Mother granting free will to humans is a gift of personal and cosmic significance.

 

If humans, born depraved with a spot of goodness in their DNA, can will to maverize and live spiritually and morally good lives, that is a huge personal victory, and might restore the cosmic balance (if enough people become living angels), and even expand the kingdom of the Light Couple.

Maimonides

 

With the attention being given this fall (11/2023) to the book Determined by neuroscientist Robert Sopalsky, who insists that we are biological machines with not free will, it is important to provide arguments in support of free will.

 

I saw one online that I thought I would share; the great Jewish thinker, Maimonides, offered that because God exists, and God set up heaven and hell, God would not bother if humans did not wield free will, and incur moral responsibility for their choices and actions picked by them. This is a theological defense of free will, and I find it appealing.

Determined

 

On 10/23/23, Professor and Amoralist Hans-George Moeller interviewed Professor Robert Sopalsky; the title of this interview was: Determined: Robert Sopalsky on Life Without Free Will. Soplalsky is a well-regarded primatologist and neuroscientist. I took notes on this 55-minute interview and will comment on what I recorded.

 

Robert Sopalsky (R after this): “What we are right now is due to what came before: non-linear . . . this is a deterministic world, but the myth is gibberish that if the world is determined, nothing can change. Change occurs but in a non-linear, additive way.”

 

My response: R is saying that we are biological machines, with no free will. He is a hard-core determinist and incompatibilist. Still, he notes that change is constant, but it is not guided by free will, but by natural law.

 

Hans-Georg Moeller (H after this): “You go against the tide. Jordan Peterson is all about the sovereign individual and his free will.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson is onto something here: human consciousness for me points out that the world is ontologically dualistic: that its two substances are matter and spirit, and humans are part biological machine and part spirit or soul or angel. That might make Peterson and me compatibilist, a roughly middle-of-the-road position between hard determinism and liberatariansim.

 

The soul is that spark of divine consciousness, ceded by the Divine Couple (the Ultimate, free-willing, free-wheeling Individuators that created and live within their universe of ordered liberty) to the sovereign individual and her will is free to make choices and creatively add to or rearrange the cosmic in some substantive, loving, meaningful way, and the way she does this is her choice.

 

H: “Robert here is a biologist, neurologist and anthropologist from Stanford University, and author of a new book about humans having no free will, and the book is called Determined. Human behavior and the intentions that inform it are based on biological and other environmental conditions, controlling the biological, sociological, and psychological realities emerging as complexity. “

 

R: “I argue that we are to understand reality as an emerging complexity not the reigning paradigm of free will. The book has 2 messages: First, people’s behavior is determined. In modern biology we believe humans have much less free will than we think. Indeed, we have no free will at all.”

 

My response: Biologists, usually atheists and monistic materialists, have to argue—Ayn Rand and Craig Biddle are the exception--that we are biological machines without agency. They believe that but they might be calling humans robots because most people, most of the time, keep their heads down, and shuffle along in their packs like herded robots. If you look, act, and talk like a robot, then you would appear to have no free will, but that is humans existing at a very low level of their potential.

 

All the determinists see are that the great majority of people are submissive, low-functioning, crowd creatures whose lives are centered upon group-living, group rights, group-identity: these non-individuating humans, most of whom are guided by altruist-collectivist ethos, are meek, compliant, sparkless conformists  taking baby steps  through their entire lives. These low-functioning, other-determined, conformist, and passive joiners sure look lifeless. Like they are without free will, so these scientists conclude that they are, based upon what they observe with most people every day.

 

But this lowest common-denominator performance by 94% of the population is not the entire human story: it is not our destiny, nor is it all that all people can do. Until we establish a Mavellonialist culture of God-centered self-actualizers with their resplendent, powerful, impressive, high-energy, personally customized, brilliant, original-thinking, novel, creative lives on full display, it could no longer be assumed that people have no agency for the social and cultural Renaissance on steroids will be too present and emergent for dour, pessimistic biologists to seem credible with their claim that we are only puppets, pure and simple.

 

If one is a believer in God and individualism, with the immaterial soul as the source of personal agency, then the people’s en masse display of higher human thinking, behaving, functioning and flourishing will dispel the theory that we lack agency.

 

R: “To believe the compatibilist view, the world is made of atoms or cells but due to magic stuff, we can still have free will though we are biological machines. All those views have fatal flaws when you know enough.

 

Here is the 2^nd meaning of determined: determined in dedicating yourself to a difficult task. But how do we live in a world where no one believes in free will?  Things will be better then, the world more humane if we all believe there is no free will.”

 

H: “Metaphorical turtles or premises all the way down built on a turtle floating in the air, and that is the free will concept, built on an uncaused cause . . .”

 

R; “If we go back a million years, what came before moderns—what we are today is a mechanistic theory.”

 

H: “What went before was not just a linear chain of cause but emerging complexities as you named it.”

 

R: “It was in the last 500 years that we came to know how something worked, breaking it down into its component parts. To understand nature, we sought to understand how the parts worked, then add it all together, and this is reductive knowledge.

 

The modern world view is that disease is no longer caused by demons. But what is going out there is not best understood at that reductive level of knowledge of component parts. If you put enough of these parts together, you get a chaotism. This means that big, complex outcomes provably unpredictable, and we get a cell, a person, a society that cannot be explained or explained by reductive parts theory. It is as deterministic world but not completely understandable at the reductive level.”

 

H: “It is a deterministic world with non-linear, not additive stuff coming out. We can see this emergent complexity or chaotism as where free will is coming out, but it is not. Determinism isn’t operating with predictability; there is determinism but unpredictability.”

 

My response: The unpredictability could be due to an ontological open-endedness consistent with indeterminism, or it will eventually prove deterministic and predictable with advance knowledge and AI technology. At this point both Sapolsky and Prager claim to have evidence of their correctness of their own views, but the case is still open.

 

R: “How will students turn out? We can’t predict their future as individuals, that is too complex to predict, but they are still determined. We can predict broad patterns, not individuals. The complex is unpredictable but not undetermined.”

 

H: “In the second half of the book, you talk about change. Being determined is not the same as no possibility to change.”

 

R: “There are three build blocks used by free-willers: A. If the world is determined nothing can change when one sees that how the world works is mechanistic.

B. If there is no free will, there are no consequences, so people will run amok. No one will be help responsible. Lawlessness will be rampant. There will be no working criminal justice system. If someone is dangerous, we can keep them off the streets without punishing or imprisoning them.

C. The world is made of atoms but there is still free will. This is a false dichotomy. We have attributes that are biological and traits that are not biological. Are these free will—to work hard, to have no natural gifts, to show self-discipline to squander your talents.”

 

H: “We need terminological questions defined. Under the second kind of Robert determinism is the future undetermined unpredictability. To use the word contingency as synonyms depends on previous conditions, but also implies open future from present stat, several possibilities.”

 

R: “Yes, contingency is chance and luck, not choice. Serotonin is triggered and leads to violence, but would only be triggered if the agent was abused as a child.”

 

H: The future is unpredictable with a multiplicity of causes. Turtles all the way down. But is really a tree of turtles, so we are not free through a linear, causal chain. We will not seek causal answers but use conditions to avoid the reductionistic model, use the contingency, conditional context.”

 

R: “ The convergence of two evolutionary lines which mode is convergent is not known but that does not prove it is not deterministic.”

 

H: “Emergent complexity: your model is not an Aristotelian chain of causes., but an autopoiesis.”

 

My response: An autopoiesis is a system that survives by making its own parts, and this does not sound like a linear chain of cause to effect to new cause.

 

H: “We live in different disciplines. Emergent systems or self-organizing stuff: everything is biology and some cultural stuff. Can sociology or psychology be emergent systems?”

 

R: “Jared Diamond describes how empires emerge and collapse, but not by chance. Ecology shapes empire. In southeast China, where in the old days rice farming was done, the village life was very collectivistic so the work got done.

 

In north China where they grow wheat, the farmers were more individualistic, more likely to file patents or get divorced. If you put an obstacle in their path they are more likely to break it then go around it.”

 

My response: Sapolsky is arguing that ecology determines if a people are more communal or individualistic, and note that the individualists are more activistic, creative, more inclined to change things.

 

H: “There is no reductionism here, only biology at the bottom or other causes that condition each other in a circle of influences. These feedback loops or recursive loops are both downstream and upstream.”

 

R: “There is no free will at work here even though there are 1,000 causes.”

 

H:  “Does all this apply to psychological causes—the source of free will?”

 

R: “Among these mutually conditioning causes or turtles are reason, thinking, psychology as causal at higher levels but still materially caused.”

 

My response: To be materially caused, consciousness has no soul, no free will beyond nomological determinist inputs into the agent.

 

H: “This free will you are arguing forcefully against is going against the Western tradition that the mind should be in control, or it is the condition that controls all these other conditions. You are stating the soul can’t be free and only cause because mind or consciousness is only of the these many constantly changing, coequal, emerging conditions conditioning each other. It is illusory to assume one of these conditions like mind can be in control or free like a free will.

 

The flaw of the free will theory is that the mind can do this. This is assuming that there is a spot where spirit, mind or free will can take control of the rest of what constitutes human experience or the person. Do you as a biologist deny that that nexus exists?”

 

R: “If I argue with free-willers and they use the word soul, we shut down. There is no sense talking.to them.’

 

H: “What is your attitude to all the scientific disciplines, each of which has a piece of the pie, and are against free will, but the free willers counter that the skeptic is just from a narrow, local search and so cannot refute the universal free claim.”

 

R: “All disciplines are one together, and will prove together, eventually, and scientifically, there is not free will. It’s all one and there is no where in that arc to shoehorn in a homunculus made of magic stuff.”

 

My response: I think of one’s personal self or identity as one’s brain and emotions, but also it is one’s free, immaterial soul working in the mind alongside the physical, biological brain. It is not magical or a homunculus but the self, the spiritual psyche; it exists, it is there, though we cannot explain how this spiritual psyche interacts with one’s biological brain and body, but the soul operates smoothly in the lives of each person, billions of us, day after day.

 

H: “Yet you argue for change while there is no nexus, no soul, no mental control agent. Thoughts affect social environment and affect biology. People have no free will but can think and that influences social conditions, biology, and influences other turtles. There is mutual conditioning, mutual control, no one way control.”

 

My response: Both Sapolsky and Moller seem to argue for several controlling sources in the mind to lend evidence to no free will, while a free-willing consciousness would be the single control of the self’s choosing which action to take.

 

R: “In the Hotel Rwanda movie the hero saves 1,000 lives during the Rwanda genocide atrocity. One person can make a difference.”

 

H: “A response that is unpredictable, unexpected, and emotional might seem like free will, but who told you that you are free, who conditioned that idea into you. Society favors belief in free will then you can believe it.

 

From the book: We are not captains of our own ship. Our ship never had a captain. There is no free will if not based in self-hood. Self-hood is a construct.”

 

My response: It seems like selfhood or the sense of individualism and agency are identical or synonymous, so the individualist believes in free will, but collectivists like Moeller and Sapolsky do not believe in selfhood or free will or individuality. Note that they seem like Progressives and Jordan Peterson and Dennis Prager are conservatives advocating God, free will and individualism and selfhood.

 

R: “Selfhood is a myth. There is no blueprint; there is no blueprint maker. There is no homunculus blueprint maker in your mind. There is no omnipotent blueprint maker for the universe.

 

Ants are adaptive and optimal and pick new colony sites based on different scout reports. No ant has information about more than one place. No one is in charge to weigh the options and make an executive decision. The right answer or event or decision just emerges.

 

There is no answer for how your brain decides or gets wired—no decider, comparator or captain.”

 

H: “You are going against Western thinking and Jordan Peterson’s sovereign individuality—why even Progressives like free will.”

 

R: “I just did a 3-hour podcast with Peterson that was fun to talk to. Peterson is the epitome of not only do we have agency but even if we didn’t you should not tell people that we do not have agency, because the best we do is as captains, but the captain of our ships is a fantasy—there are not captains.”

 

H:  “You appeal to analytic philosophy but I am a German, continental philosopher . . . Chinese philosophy is not much on the sovereign individual.

 

I like Nietzsche; I would like to quote from the Twilight of The Idols: ‘I fear we won’t get rid of God as long as we believe in grammar.’

 

He is referring to the Subject-Object construct emphasized in Western grammar. This language emphasizes the subject, subjectivity, and agency.

 

For example, it rains is still a subject.

 

We will not get rid of the idea of agency and the concept of the sovereignty of the individual or free will as long as we speak English.”

 

My response: If we get rid of the English language, then we deprive Americans and Westerners of its most prominent language that emphasizes agency, free will and the sovereignty of individualism, all core moral and liberating, axiomatic principles.

 

It seems like Sapolsky and Moeller are anti-Westerners out to overthrow its basic philosophies values and cultures, but that will lead to nihilism and totalitarianism, not the bright utopian future which they anticipate.

 

R: “Very possibly. From Anthro-linguistics we know we think very differently in different languages. The Sapir-Whorf hypotheses has been praised and criticized. One language says a person is right in front of me versus a language that says that person is just down the hill from that tree.”

 

H: “The point I am trying to make is you are fighting an uphill battle. You are fighting the sovereign individual concept, and having to use the English language with words like caused and determined, suing a grammar always implying agency. “

 

R: “It is hard, but we can make the world better once science is accepted once free will and individualism disappear. We will use science to push collectivism.”