Moral Fool

 

Columbia University Press blog carries an article on Professor of Philosophy, Hans-Georg Moeller, professor at Macau University. I am interested in Moeller for his support of amorality over morality, and I will type out what interests me from this interviewer (unnamed) that interviews Moeller, and comment on copied content. The interview was published on 6/12/2009. The article is titled: “Interview with Hans-Georg Moeller; Author of The Moral Fool.

 

Can morality become a dangerous pathology?”

 

My response: A morality can become a dangerous pathology in two ways. First, if it is an altruisti-collectivist morality, in the hands of fanatics, especially if the population involved is immersed in a totalitarian empire, the dictator or Party elite can crate gulags and killing fieds in the name of their cherished ideals.

 

Second, when a morality is converted into a fetishized abstraction, a holy cause, then great evil can and will be done in the name of growing the cause, by any means, no matter the price, no matter how low into cruelty and darkness, the followers need to sink to win and grow the cause.

 

Of course, any morality can become a dangerous pathology—but it is less likely to become such than a code of immorality (the worst and most corruptible) or a code of amorality (not as corruptible as a code of immorality).

 

Yes, any ideal, abstraction or cause can be radically, transmogrified into a holy cause, and it and its adherents then become or could become aggressively intolerant towards sinners, dissidents, unbelievers, and non-followers of the beloved cult in question. Holy war, violence, and coercion are ways of bringing mob terror and state terror to bear, foisted off onto the citizens by the backers of this holy cause. These perpetrators of the malicious, terrifying acts are committed against resistant audiences, be they innocent or sinful.

 

And any set of values, be they a morality, an immorality, or an amorality, can be converted to a fetishized, worshipped abstraction, and any abstraction, once radicalized and fanatical, is filled with haters and tyrants, and it is now wicked, no matter how noble sounding are its tenets that such cruel practices of enforcement are justified as being the means to forcing all to live by the vaunted tenets proclaimed.

 

This is when and how wickedness and radicalized ideology pervert morality, but this scenario, where moralities can go bad, is no defense or support for the rejection of morality by amoralists, such as Moeller is likely to raise below, against advocating a moral code.

 

People are born depraved, with intelligence and agency, without benevolent instincts to make the socialized and cooperative. Without a moral code, rules, commandments, and training, with clear, verbalized, identified ethical distinctions between right and wrong applied and taught to the young, evil will soon swamp any people on earth.

 

Without the ethics of moderation, plus egoism, with the objective value judgements emanating from them given a people, and sanctioned, a people cannot live well in a peaceful, civil society and prosper.

 

Moeller below is going to offer amorality as a substitute for providing a people with a moral code, but that necessarily leads to wickedness and vice. Where the children of darkness openly parade their immorality as the law of the land and the social agenda, then all is lost.

 

Interviewer (I after this): “In his new book, The Moral Fool: A Case for Amorality, Hans-Georg Moeller critiques the ethical ‘fanaticism’ of Western moralists, such as Immanuel Kant, John Rawls, and the utilitarians. Moeller points out the absurd fundamentalisms and impracticable prescriptions arising from definitions of good. Instead he advances a theory of ‘moral foolishness’ extracted from the ‘amoral’ philosophers of East Asia and such thinkers as Ludwig Wittgenstein. The moral fool doesn’t understand why ethics are necessarily good, and he isn’t convinced that the moral perspective is always possible. In this way he is like most people, and Moeller defends this foolishness against ethical pathologies that support the death penalty, just wars, and even Jerry Springer’s crude moral theater.

 

Here is an interview with Hans-Georg Moeller about his new book:”

 

My response: There are two sources of tragedy that blight moral progress among humans. First, egoism and individualism are good, and altruism and collectivism are bad, but most peoples on earth, and most religions do not accept this. Altruistic moralities are the norm. People are born altruistic, group-oriented and group-live, so their bad natures are rewarded in action by a cruel, immoral, and amoral code of selflessness and groupism that keeps people from advancing.

 

The second source of moral tragedy arises out of unwitting ignorance; even these brilliant moralists or amoralists like Moeller do not know how to set up the moral dilemma. Since they know there is a problem but do not know how to frame it, the solutions they offer, fail to work. I think Mavellonialism can work better to define the problem. Right definitional problem clarification will lead to the best moral answer: moderate, Mavellonialist, rational egoism.

 

Moeller has learned from Eastern religion, metaphysics and ethics that there is something very special about moderation. He seems to understand that the good is moderate and the bad is fanatical, ideological, and pathological. From there he gets it inversely incorrect.

 

He seems to discount Westerners as more corrupt and Easterners as morally ideal by living primarily as moral fools. Easterners are pure collectivists, so their ethics will prize the group over the individual, so such ethos is a moral code of altruism-collectivism, not some amoral code that does not label people, their character, their motives, their actions as good or evil. Such terms capture truth but the refusal to linguistically judge, label and attribute does not help people know what is good or bad, who is good or bad, and what to do and what to avoid accordingly.

 

The moral agent uses reason, language, words, and judgment rendered to provide a masterful moral perspective to guide his behavior. He does not assume that labels are always accurate, or unable to change with personal self-reform, or that good people spread their morality with the sword.

 

Morality is a moral stance between amorality, no values assigned, and immorality or championing stated values of cruelty and malevolence openly.

 

I: “Q: What is wrong with morality?

 

Han-Georg Moeller (HGM after this): “People assume morality is a good thing. It is generally believed that a moral person is somehow better than a person who is not moral and that a society which holds moral values in high esteem is better than one which does not. I do not think this is the case—and that is what the whole book is about. It is about pointing out the ‘sick’ aspect of morality, about the ‘pathology of morality,’ so to speak. I think that morality does not deserve to be valued as much as it is today.”

 

My response: I assume that morality is a good thing for each agent and for society—especially if it is growing out of a religion of moderate, temperate worshipers of a benevolent deity, a religious community that adopt egoist morality as their primary code, and supplement it with considerations from altruism as their secondary moral code. Altruist ethics among group-livers is better than no morality but it is not ideal or progressive. And, any moral code is better than none, but the majority of people have to live by it and practice what they preach.

 

I think morality needs to be emphasized once more since moral decay has sunk in so deep in the West and in America.

 

I: “Q: What is morality?

 

HGM: I think it is a way of thinking and talking about people, groups of people, actions, and events in terms of good or bad. Once we talk or think morally, we create a distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ our values will seem good to us and others who do not share them will seem ‘bad’ or even ‘evil.’ This can create a lot of problems, both socially and individually. In wartime, for instance, moral talk and moral thought may flourish. Likewise, thinking of people around us in a moral way is rather stressful and will create a lot of tensions. Imagine a family in which moral values dominate everything else, including the affection family members feel for each other: life in such a family will probably be quite miserable and thus somehow ‘sick.’ In short, I argue that a high degree of moral language and a highly moral mindset is not an indicator of the ‘health’ of a person or society, but, to the contrary, a worrisome symptom of tension and uneasiness.”

 

My response: Honest, accurate labels of good or bad apply mostly to individuals not groups Western, objective Judeo-Christian morality generally is individual and apply to the individual. This objective morality applies to the character, motives and behavior of any person from any nation, and it is based on their merit, how they are actually conducting themselves, nothing else, and the labler is trying to be as impartial, fair and accurate every time he applies a label to someone, based on how they act good or bad, in comparison and contrast to his value system.

 

Where group rights, group identity, and group values hold sway, these rival moralities are more likely to subjective, relative, and fanatically held by their adherents and fanatically, sickly, or sinfully lived among their own people and as exported to neighboring tribes or nations.

 

We make moral judgements and apply moral terms linguistically and these labels, and the abstractions they reflect do correspond to reality and human behavior, so they are what makes humans as well as they are, and the failure, to use ethical abstractions and terms to define, describe and prescribe concerning our  own or the neighbors’ behavior, is a sick failure to introduced moral sensibility to everyone, so all are sickened by the low level of moral intelligence among a people.

 

I: “Q: What is a ‘Moral Fool?’

HGM: The ‘Moral Fool’ is a figure that I take from Asian philosophy, from Daoism and Zen Buddhism in particular. As opposed to the moral heroes from Greek antiquity up to today’s Hollywood films, the Moral Fool is an entirely average person. He or she, like most of us most of the time, simply does not immediately conceive of the people he or she meets or the situation he or she encounters in moral terms. Even though morality has such prestige in our society today, in most of our dealings we function quite well and are able to more or less enjoy our lives without the necessity to make moral judgments. Rather than seeing anything wrong with this, I think it is a paradoxical amoral virtue. I do not argue for immorality, but, as much as possible, for moral abstinence, I argue for amorality, not for immorality. In many situations, amoral approaches may work more effectively and less pathologically than morality, for example, law in a courtroom and the aforementioned affection in a family. These are two important antidotes against morality that we already make frequent use of. In fact, I think people do already act as moral fools most of the time. And I think there’s nothing wrong with this and that society—and philosophy—should embrace it.”

 

My response: Jordan Peterson wants each agent to self-realize and be as virtuous as he dare be, as truthful and articulate as he can be, as he or she plays the moral hero in her own life adventure, and slays the dragon and gets the treasure. The treasure is then shared with the community, so the noble, heroic egoist develops himself ethically by aiming high, and his soul benefits in the next world. By these efforts, he helps reduce needless suffering for the community at this time for his neighbors and community, thus fulfilling his altruist instincts and serving the common weal.

 

If there are few or no moral heroes in the East, on average, because the moral standard for all is to be an amoral moral fool rather than a moral hero that stands out and apart from the herd, then collectivism is the ethos of individual, community, tribe, or nation. That is an immoral standard.

 

One thing Jordan Peterson and others point out, is that without objective standards, individuality, free will and meaning in their lives—as the Postmodernist Marxist are promoting for Western youth, people will fill their lives with fetishized abstractions, holy causes, and wicked mass movements built on fallacious but passionately believed values. Such pathological, ideologically revered abstractions sicken a people, and it is a straight line from there to settle for being moral fools just accepting whatever the government or village elders lay on them.

 

Moeller may be making to strong, legitimate criticisms of Western moral thinking. First, if moral or religious believers, wear their ethical or religious values on their sleeve in some artificial, exhibitionistic role playing and virtual signaling for public consumption and approval, such extroverted displays of self-righteous strutting that they are God’s elite on earth—this automatically makes them immoral. People need to be humble, modest, and not mouthy and opinionated about how they see others in comparison to themselves, this is what God commands.

God wants them to have moral values, and live them, but not to play-act them for manipulation and display in public—that is insulting to the audience, phony and dishonest.

 

Moeller is also right if urging that if someone was to be an Eastern or Western moral hero, he should do it as a moral fool in his everyday life, in his dealings with other people, living as an average person that works, lives, and cleans his own house and mows his own yard.

 

It is delightful that someone should self-realize as a moral hero, spiritually or ethically or both, but he must not live like a twisted, ethically diseased Hollywood celebrity, whose weird, exhibitionistic, constantly stated case that he is naturally superior to the masses, a

self-consciously exceptional person to be incessantly, endlessly adulated and bowed down to.

 

Moral normalcy is living like the average nobody going about his daily life while reaching for the starts. This is how a moral hero is not ensnared by his own newspaper clippings and flattering press releases. He must be exceptional, but does not become a virtuous, fake role-player for headlines and accolades, but just does his hero bit quietly as he goes about this daily life. He lives his spiritual and ethical heroic exceptionalism by doing it quietly and without displayed passion, theater, and melodrama. He does it calmly and efficiently without raising a fuss; he does not talk about it but does it. He does not take himself too seriously, whether praised or scorned by the public.

 

I: “Q: Can you give some concrete examples for how morality can be ‘sick?’

 

HGM: Yes, I think moral ‘sickness’ is different in different societies. In my book, I focus on moral pathologies in today’s ‘Western’ countries like USA, Canada and Europe. The most obvious example, which I alluded to already, is war rhetoric. How could mass support for the ‘war on terror’ and obedience to the government—against actual facts and reason—be produced? Mainly through an intense use of moral language and the creation of moral outrage against an ‘evil’ foe. It is a very common strategy to stir up mass moral hysteria in war times . . .”

 

I: “Q: Didn’t a lot of things in society get better because of moral engagement, the civil right movement, for instance?

 

HGM: I discuss this in detail in my book, and my view is this: Yes, moral awareness and moral activism has played a historical role in improving the situation of oppressed groups such as African Americans or women. However, the civil rights movement are called civil rights movements for a reason. What is much more important for these groups than being morally emancipated is to get certain rights that they lack. Just look at the current debate about gay rights in the U.S.A. In every single state where there was a popular referendum on gay marriage it was defeated by the ‘moral majority.’ Minorities will always have a hard time achieving moral esteem, but in a society where there is not only a separation between religion and the state but also a separation between morality and the law minorities might win some important legal victories.”

 

My response: Moeller wants legal decisions to gain moral and legal rights for minorities and gays. Most of us are Christians in America, and we did not think gay marriage was a legal, moral, constitutional, or religiously grounded (approved of by the good deities), but activist judges invented a right to legal marriage for gays federally from the top down, overruling states’ rights and the will of the people that voted on this issue. Immorality was forced onto our nation by the Progressive deep state and their secular agenda. They were and are elitist,fanatics using Presidential decree, activist judges and unelected public bureaucrats legislating law without being elected, ignoring the wishes of the people, and imposing unwelcome unpopular laws and customs upon a reluctant, resistant population. That is creeping authoritarianism and there is nothing moral about that.

 

 

I: “Q: What about efforts of so many philosophical and religious thinkers to find out what is good and to distinguish it from what is evil?

 

HGM: Interestingly, enough, there have always been a number of philosophers who were highly suspicious of ethics: Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, for example. I follow these thinkers rather than the like of Kant or contemporary ethical theorists who believe they are able to identify what is ‘really’ good. The attempt to define criteria for moral goodness has often ended in grotesque failures. I cite a number of examples of ‘shocking’ or ridiculous ethical demands by some of the great heroes of today’s academic ethics, such as Kant’s moral defense of murdering ‘illegitimate’ children or Bentham’s ‘scientific’ suggestion of measuring weightlifting abilities in order to establish people’s strength for tolerating pain so that the moral quality of certain policies that might inflict pain on them could be objectively assessed. I argue that the history of ‘philosophical’ ethics accounts for not much more than a series of unwarranted academic presumptions.”

 

My response: there are ethical practices and scientific suggestions that are horrifying, but we must not throw out the baby with the bath water. Objective ethics are useful, needed by people, and should be utilized for the good of individual children, and to save society.

 

HGM is a supportive of ethical relativism of some skeptical kind, but I fear his  ethics amount to nihilism for a people without ethical values are a people that will live in hell on earth.

 

 

 

The Talk

 

On 10/23/2023, Jordan Peterson interviewed primatologist Robert Sapolsky. I took notes on the interview and will respond where necessary or relevant. The title of the interview, Psychologist Talks To Top Primatologist, The Jordan Peterson Podcast. 

 

This introduction was provided for the interview: “Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down with Neuroendocrinology researcher and author of the upcoming book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky. They discuss how Game Theory applies to human behavior across iterative rounds of play, the unexpected success of the tit-for-tat principle, the role of dopamine in the anticipation ... and reward reinforcement in the future.”

 

Jordan (J after this): “Let’s discuss game theory. Rats show an emergent morality of play. Explain game theory.”

 

My response: It seems that what is emerging in other animals is an emergent morality of play or cooperation, not just competing for power and supremacy, and that  morality of play over war, will have survival value for the species over time.

 

Robert (R after this): “Game theory is not just fun and games. It was the purview of war strategists and was geared for mutually assured destruction. Biologists got a hold of it. Zoologists thought its predictions could come true if based on good hypotheses. There is an intrinsic logic to how animals evolved. Game theory, applied to animals and human beings, demonstrates that there is a logic to our behavior, sculpted by evolutionary exigencies so we know when it is optimal to do X or the opposite of X. There will be necessary constraints on the physiology of an organism.”

 

My response: If thre is a biological logic to how animals evolve, the nomological theory may be constructed that Logos is running through and perhaps writing the laws of nature, those changing and unchanging. This logic could have arisen from matter by accident from nothing by chance, or it could be seen as evidence of God’s logical mind and grammar, or Logos, operating the world.

 

J: “Those constraints will be reflective of its environmental predictions a priori, and match something here in reality. We can analyze the context within which behavior occurs connect to physiology.

The context of behavior is the mere requital of immediate needs. There is reciprocal action in social space between many individuals, many of whom are repeated interactions and crucial if the individuals in a group are not just to gratify the self—they have others to consider. Iterated needs over a vast expanse of time in a complicated social environment."

 

R: “The shadow of the future is a phrase to cover this.”

 

J: “We cannot predict the future, but we can approximate, and we act today seeing the future; the higher the functions of the brain develop, the more we will not just gratify ourselves today, but sacrifice today for future need. The individual must constrain his anger and impulses to gain future possibilities.

Game theory reveals that we suppressed our immediate gratification for long term anticipation. What do you think? Is it your immediate wants and needs that need care, but that does not meet your long term needs for you. You are an iterated community of selves over time. You will have ups and downs over time so treat others well, a community across time.”

 

R: “If humans or animals will do it, all will thrive. “

 

My response: These two scientists seem to apply game theory as a theory that suggests, based in research and science, that ancient creatures and humans learned to cooperate because it had survival value for each creature and person while alive, and for the community, as a whole, in each generation.

This seems to offer altruistic-collectivist ethics as what helped humans survive, and that seems likely, though today, with advanced technological society, making egoist-individual ethics are ethos, I propose, increases our well-being and survival value, though animals will still be altruistic communities.

 

J: “The ethical obligation to the self is the same as the obligation to other people, and that leads to altruism.”

 

R: “Scratch the surface of any altruist out there and you will find an egoist, but people decide it is in their own best interest to engage in self-constraint, and be forward-thinking and pro-society; it is self-interested in the long run to practice the Golden Rule. You can play top-lobster game theory or cooperate for the species to survive. Utilitarianism is not a bad ethic in the long run.”

 

My response: I want the ethics for individuals and the community to be egoism-altruism and that is in the best interest of the individual and for society, in the short run, and in the long run.

 

J: “Short-term utilitarianism versus long-term utilitarianism will produce conflict, so strong negotiation is required.

Explain tit-for-tat iterated game competition.”

 

R: “Tit-for-tat: if we not see someone again, we could stab them in the back and come out ahead. If we see them repeatedly it is better to cooperate.

It is the prisoner’s dilemma: to cooperate or stab each other in the back; if both cooperate, both get the rewards. If both stab each other, both are punished.

Back-stabbers may win the battle, but cooperators win the war. Evolution sculpted tit-for-tat for all sorts of species. Bats cooperate—feeding tit-for-tat, a social contract.

Tit-for-tat hits a wrinkle if there is a signal error, and one side stabs the other side by accident, but you did not a signal error. If cooperate and trust, will believe that it was just a signal error.”

 

J: “We play multiple iterations of multiple iterated games with many people at the same time, so virtualization makes glitches more dangerous. Face to face contact signal error has less damage, because the signal error is stopped quickly.

Psychopaths manipulate virtualization to victimize with one-off exchanges, no replication tracking, and can’t track the reputation of tetrad types in the virtual world.”

 

R: “We can modify tit-for-tat so can tell if the offense was backstabbing or a signal error, so go from lateral to vertical exchanges to see if it ends signal errors, and then practice forgiveness of offender.”

 

J: “Shared culture is an abstract multicultural game. If someone dislikes foreigners, cultural games dictate only trust neighbors that are individuated, not trust an outsider, a chaotic barbarian. If many share the culture, then are incentivized to play the games.

The default is 2 year-olds do not cooperate, a Hobbesian world of competition, not shared games. If we have a whole society of cheaters and backstabbers, how to get cooperative games if 2 foreign groups play but simple trade games on the borders, and some have faith that if they cooperate and take a risk, the other side will reciprocate, and then build cooperation.”

 

R: “Backstabbers get to cooperate with cooperators and all gain.”

 

J: “God tells Abraham to accept the covenant and I make Jews plentiful on the earth. The covenant between Yahweh and Abraham is a cooperative, tit-for-tat motif. If the Hebrews cooperate with Yahweh and each other, and stick to it, over time the future would be bright for their descendants.

The higher order sacrificial principle helps survival, to sacrifice the present to a future in an optimized manner. They can do this through use of game theory, the structure of iterated game theory. The structure of iterated game theory introduces an emergent reality modeled in computers and can be generalized to all people, an underlying ethos of iterated interactions.

This cooperative pattern becomes a cultural ethos and matches the arrival the frontal cortex, for using long-term strategies to govern short-term exigencies. Religion maps this sacrifice of the present to the future good by adaptive strategies. We have dopamine rewards triggering delayed gratification.”

 

R: “With religions, some are appealing, so if join it or other religions, there are great rewards if you stick it out. Frontal cortex favors religions of retention over religions of recruitment. Dopamine that triggers long-term thinking has predicting potency of a positive system. Cortical maturity is for delayed gratification for future, deferred by larger gratification.”

 

J: “Cain and Able were the first humans, so they had to work, and work is sacrificial, one is not doing what one wants to because one is doing what one has to, for the sake of family—it is a communal gift. The sacrificial urge and the emergence of pre-frontal cortex all at the same time.”

 

R: “Our neurochemistry is just like that in animals with a different outcome; animals are just about today, but we can sacrifice for 6 generations out. Is this an afterlife? Delay gratification for afterlife, or for children’s betterment, a cleaner world, more peaceful, etc.”

 

My response: Delaying gratification for 6 generations out may be a form of immortality and secular afterlife for secularists and atheists but making things better for future generations in this world, though laudable, should not conflict with rewards sought in the next world for our immortal souls.

 

J: “The dopamine reward to reinforce our anticipation of a future reward, a way of anticipating that future.”

 

R: “With dopamine reward when I hit the lever and a treat comes out, then I anticipate a reward and hit the lever and get the reward, so I have agency.”

 

J: “Agency: I have mastery. I have behavioral competences that match environmental demands that is like being on sacred ground—you know what to do there."

 

R: “Then experimenter alters the experiment by introducing the illogical and vulnerable into the system, it seemed so logical but has become illogical. The light goes on, the dopamine kicks in, the rat hits the lever, get the reward, and all is predictable, and he gets his reward.

Now the light goes on, the rat gets the dopamine push, hits the lever, and only gets a reward 50% of the time. The rat feels uncertainty, triggering more dopamine, and tries to figure out how to make the game predictable. He has been manipulated and tricked, receiving only partial rewards, even though he now becomes addicted to dopamine, making his situation worse as he keeps pushing the lever.”

 

J: “The hero in mythology goes into unchartered territory and masters it and gains treasure, and distributes wealth to the whole community. If reality cuts his rewards, he feels the rush of more dopamine will risk yet another try in unchartered waters for greater reward.”

 

J: “If he keeps trying, he will get the reward. The dopamine reward is to pursue an infinite landscape of future possibilities. Life is a series of games, and you are a winner if people want to play with you, cooperating.”

 

R: “If people can opt out, they avoid your dopamine-triggered long-term goals; if they refuse to work with others, not cooperating or reciprocating, they get a reputation for not sharing, and they isolate themselves. Where in small towns, and all is an open book, you must reciprocate.

In anonymous big cities you do not have to reciprocate. Ironically, if are extra generous, you will be punished for being too generous, and making others look bad.”

 

J: “If you break the rules, you get punished. That is predictable. If you are virtuous and punished, that is hell. If you are encouraged for being creative, generous, and natural, people like that.

Limbic responses and the frontal cortex provide us with lots of rewards with varied game interests to reward us.”

 

R: “The danger is to wider and wider and resort to resetting more dopamine hits with more and more games, and endless pleasure and rewards, so the player becomes jaded and bored. Today’s satiation is tomorrows unhappiness, and pushes the impetus to discover new landscapes of reward. Consciousness is not for satiation, so the player could fall asleep to be renewed to explore and expand. Yesterday successes not enough so invent tomorrow, poetry and new technology.”

 

My response: Reward and pleasure only work if when merited and not constant or cheaply dished out. Most of the time we should be motivated by doing our job or duty out of obligation, and though meriting constant reward, we motivate ourselves, not just for accolades—more stable approach in the long run.

The ambition to keep inventing and creating can be from a sense of duty and habit, as well as being bombarded with constant rewards until one is jaded and no longer motivated to move outward and upward.

 

J: “The path of maximum adventure is better than the path of infant satiation. The abstract sense of meta-satiation, never satisfied, is in the hunt, the forward-seeking, keep-reaching goals and going higher is the pleasure the happiness of pursuit. If one does not have a positive adventure, one will follow a bad, pathological one.”

 

My response: If we do not maverize, we will find wicked substitutes, and make the world worse off than if we were never born.

 

J: “God is all-knowing, all-loving, all-seeing; what does God lack? Limitation. God needs humans to create totality. Limitation has advantages that totality lack. Creativity is enhanced by arbitrary limitations. Limitation keeps us happy. Limitation makes us more creative.”

 

My response: This paragraph is profound. That Absolute, Perfect God without limits would need humans to create totality. I know that it is true and somehow connected to the law of moderation, and this is not to suggest that God is imperfect or lacking. No, God wrote the law of moderation, so De would know in advance and mandate in advance that creating humans with our limits and mortality and sinfulness, that these traits would make us valuable to God in some way, and somehow complete the universe. If we can be moral and creative, then we will be a blessing to God and make a real contribution to people, the nature of reality and to the world itself.

 

I recall reading someplace in Eric Hoffer that freedom and creativity abound most magnificently where restrictions occur, natural or legal, and this line of thinking is close to what Jordan is providing here for the reader to mull over.

 

When Mark Levin writes about ordered liberty, this same vein of thinking emerges, that a creative, good life cannot flourish under deterministic or totalitarian constraint, nor under elements of complete licentiousness and lawlessness.

 

Craing Biddle

 

On 2/18/21, Dennis Prager, in Ep. 174 of his Fireside Chat series, interviewed, Craig Biddle author and director of Objective Standard Institute. Craig is sharp and an eloquent but sensible advocate of Ayn Rand philosophy. I took notes on this 81-minute video and will comment where necessary.

 

The title of this Ep. Was: “A Dialogue: About God and Ayn Rand. What is the source of morality? Atheist and founder of The Objective Art Institute, Craig Biddle, joins Dennis this week to discuss Objectivism, God and where they disagree. Enjoy.”

 

Dennis (D) after this: “Craig and I disagree on God’s existence and morality. Craig is the best exponent there is on Ayn Rand, so if I want an opponent’s view, I want the best available for my audience.

 

We have in common in more important than what divides us. We are both crazy about liberty. I prefer an atheist that loves liberty over a believer in God that does not. I seek clarity over agreement, and it is more important to be clear than to win. See where we differ.”

 

My response: Dennis is correct. God favors liberty over tyranny, so the atheist loving tyranny is closer to God than a believer that seek big government and tyranny. As always, clarity is vital.

 

D: “Do you hope you are right that there isn’t a God?”

 

Craig (C after this): “I have not pondered that. I hope there is not a God because if God exists it eliminates some of the important things about life. If God exists, and is omnipotent and omniscient, that eliminates free will, which I believe in.”

 

My response: I think God is close to being all-powerful and all-knowing, but God built De’s own free will into humans, so by not interfering with humans with their big brains and agency, God is faithful to De’s promise to the world to abide by De’s principle of non-interference if human choices. God cannot and would not interfere, and this is not connected to what God has the power to do or foresee, for those are separate issues from allowing free choice and chance, the jokers in the cosmic deck of outcomes, so God’s omniscience and omni-potency do not invalidate human free will.

 

I think the other reason that Craig does not want to believe in God, is the fear by a secular humanist that, if God is present, there will be much less opportunity for humans to self-realize. I think God encourages, rewards and even mandates that we self-realize, rather than suppressing human freedom and achievement by existing and being on the scene.

 

Craig seems to believe that there can only be human free will if God does not exist.

 

D: “Only if there is a God is there free will. Michael Sherman of Skeptic magazine wrote that he wants to see people in an afterlife, so that, based on their free will, evil people can be judged.”

 

C: “There is no evidence of an afterlife, of heaven or suffering in hell. In this life we should be just, treat people well as they deserve to be treated, and treat good people well. Evil people should be punished.”

 

D: “Craig, are you a materialist?”

 

C: “No, I believe in consciousness and matter. Existence and consciousness both exist. Consciousness is real. Maybe an emergent consciousness is not just neurons and physical; it is real though we do not know what consciousness is, just as gravity exists though we cannot explain gravity. Consciousness and existence are both axiomatic, the foundation of all knowledge. Both existence and consciousness exist.”

 

My response: Craig and Ayn Rand are both not just materialists but also see human consciousness emergent enough in smart humans, where they can reason, act, and choose their own course and then do it.

 

Unlike Dennis and religious believers, Craig does not accept that consciousness is not just a biological brain but is a spiritual soul, the inner seat of human consciousness.

 

 

D: “Right. Is consciousness a product of physical existence?”

 

C: “Yes, but it is not the same as physical existence. Consciousness could have come into existence from physical matter.”

 

D: “Why isn’t that an argument for a Creator?”

 

My response: Dennis is suggesting that the Creator made the world and matter, so if consciousness arose out of matter, it could lead to the introduction of spiritual consciousness into reality.

 

C: “Consciousness and a creator are not the same thing. With the idea of a Creator is the idea that at one time there was not existence, and the Creator’s consciousness created existence. But existence has always been here, so it is quite speculative to posit a Creator.

 

Aristotle objected to explaining reality by reference to another dimension (Forms); that is too complicated, so if seek Form to justify Forms to justify forms, then we have an infinite regress.”

 

D: “You only get an infinite regress is the Creator creating is not eternal.”

 

My response: Dennis is offering that everlasting Creator is the foundation of existence, making infinite regress a non-issue.

 

C: “Existence is primary, and it is eternal. The universe is not in time, time is in the universe. The universe has always existed (not created) and time is a measure of motion in the universe. Take Big Bang theory: something had to exist to explode into, and something had to exist to expand into. We can’t get something from nothing, or expansion into nothing.”

 

D: “I agree. You can’t get something from nothing; something always existed.

 

Let us discuss free will. If we are only matter and matter drove consciousness, and if all I am is from genes and the physical environment, there is no free will. Only if you believe in the soul can you believe in a free will. If I am physical, everything is determined by my genetics, neurons, and environment. Where am I in this equation if there is no soul?”

 

C: “Good question. Ayn Rand posits that we have existence, consciousness and that involves free will. We can do anything at any time with no restrictions.

 

 The locus of free will is the ability to focus your mind or not, to use mental exertion to understand the world or stop completely. Free will is the individual deciding to think or not and introspectively this is observable. Our reasoning is a lot; we can regulate. It is not a robust free will and my values constrain me to some degree.”

 

My response: In sleepy, non-enlightened, unaware average nonindividuators—the majority of humanity—the free will is not robust, but it will become far more robust should the agent elect to maverize over a number of years.

 

D: “People have the free will to violate their values and do so all the time. To deny free will is to insist there is nothing non-material that defines me—I am just a product of determining forces—there is no self. Do you condemn bad people or criminals?”

 

My response: each is born with a weak free will, some good in them and an atrophied sense of self, but a sense of self nonetheless. If there is no self, there is no individuality, no free will, no conscience, no one to blame for evil personal behavior.

 

C: “Yes, I condemn the bad and the criminal. I am different from most atheists like Same Harris that asserts that there is no self.

 

There is a self in the integration of your mind and body.”

 

D: “If I took 1,000 atheists and 1,000 churchgoers off the street which group is more pro-liberty?”

C: “More churchgoers believe in liberty.”

 

D: “That is intellectual honesty. How do you explain that?”

 

C: “Ayn Rand is new, only around since the 50s. Secular philosophy before that were bad; the Germans were awful, pro-tyranny. They introduce us to the Frankfurt school, to socialism, to Communism.

 

Atheists don’t believe in God and that is a negative stance. They have no positive story to share. By contrast, Randian thought offers a rich, positive morality that undergirds liberty. This positive story is the secular, atheist view that supports liberty, individual rights, American values.”

 

My response: Like Randian secular values are not as objective as Prager’s Judeo-Christian objective values (monotheistic ethics), but it is very impressive and useful, nonetheless, and Prager and Christian conservatives can learn a lot about egoism from Randian rational egoism.

 

D: “I wish you well. As I said, I am closer to the atheist-loving-liberty than to the churchgoer seeking to grow the state and is anti-civil liberties.

 

The track record of most atheists is bad.”

 

C: It is horrible.”

 

My response: I must jump in here and explain this to the reader for here is a critical juncture. Both Dennis and Prager are associating by implication that morally vicious atheists are backers of ideologies that gave us 100 million dead noncombatants in the 20^th century. I think Craig would attribute it to ideology, totalitarianism, collectivism, and evil altruist ethics. I think Dennis would attribute the atheist record of wicked track record as attributable to their being secular, without God, wisdom, or good moral values.

 

I would say Craig is right that radical ideology (true-believers and their mass movement on the march), totalitarian big government, uncompromising idealism, collectivism, and evil altruist ethics is what made the atheists have such an evil record. He should add that their lack of sacred trust in God, with God’s wisdom, and positive moral values rendered them far more evil than they needed to be.

 

Dennis would add that big government, collectivism, radical ideology, and fanaticism would make the 20^th century atheists very evil, but he is an altruist, so he regards altruism and kindness and egoism as evil, so he would miss having the proper ethics to fight the hyper-altruistic failed ethics of the egoists.

 

I would add my moderate egoist ethics and theory of self-realizing to the good attributes offered by both Dennis and Craig to counter the horrible track record of the atheists.

 

D: “There are some good atheists and some bad churchgoers, but the global moral record of atheists is awful. I am an ethical monotheist. God wants us to be ethical, and His revelation is the Ten Commandments. If we lived by these, it would be a good world.

 

I had issues with my parents but not major issues. But my training in God and the Bible helped me honor my father and mother. Where there is no religion, there is no morality, then one just follows one’s emotions. Who is likely to be moral, an atheist or believer?”

 

C: “Atheists just don’t believe in God. I don’t represent atheists or secularists as immoral. I represent Randians with an objective morality. We use observation and reason, and justice is one of our principles. People are judged by what they say and do and treated accordingly.

 

My father is an Episcopalian minister, a good man. I honor him because he is a good man, not because he is my father.  Be moral not because God says so but because it is your self-interest, so act moral. If you parent is a monster, do not honor him. That is rare but it happens.”

 

My response: We should be moral because God commands it of us, and because it is in our self-interest to be liked and loved and have friends for being decent to people here, and to be able to get to heaven, having been a good person while alive (need faith too of course to get to heaven).

 

D: “Honor your parents even if you can’t love them. Totalitarian regimes: their first step is to sever parental authority. Parental authority is one of the great bulwarks against cults and authoritarianism.”

 

C: “Honor parents because it is the thing to do, not because they are wonderful.”

 

D: “If adults kids voted for Biden and their parents voted for Trump, the kids often disowned them. If right-wing adult kids voted for Trump, and their parents voted for Biden, those kids did not disown their parents, not severing relationships with them. Atheism caused this.”

C: “It is not about atheism but about politics.”

 

My response: Craig is right that bad politics, not just atheism cause Biden voters to disown their Trump-voting parents. Leftism is cultural Marxism, a radical, ideology, an active American mass movement on the march, and the fanatical members of this ideology turn ruthless, vicious, cruel, and completely intolerant of those that dissent. Dennis is right, but these other causal factors must be identified openly, so we can oppose them actively and defeat them.

 

C: “The Left wants to destroy America. 100 years of Progressive education in school and 50 years of Postmodernist education in college have got us in trouble.

 

Parental authority is a bulwark against socialism, but individualism is the greatest bulwark against socialism. People need to be reasonable, use their rational minds, and parents and kids should treat each other as individuals.”

 

D: “I did not say that parental authority was the only bulwark against socialism but was a bulwark. I love individualism. The Bible says we are all made in God’s image, and when that dies, you get a herd morality.

 

Now to murder.”

 

My response: Dennis and most Jews and Christians are altruists, so that he admits that with religion, we are made in God’s image and that results in individualism, whereas when religion dies we get a herd morality, we are getting Prager close to admitting that egoist morality has a role to play in all good faiths, but he is not yet at that point.

 

D: “If there is no God, then murder is not wrong. The Catholic Church converted all of Europe to Christianity by the sword and by persuasion. The Germanic tribes were the hardest to convert for they hated the line that they could not kill. They were warriors implicitly in favor of Darwinian (they did not know Darwin) ruthless survival of the fittest as warriors that kill, we just follow nature. They needed an Absolute Moral Order telling them not to kill so they could come to accept it, because if there is no God and no absolute moral order, then it is not wrong to kill.”

 

My response: I like Dennis take about objective religious moral code guiding us, but I cannot—nor can anyone else—prove or give evidence, for certain, that it exists or that we can access it or make its principles humanly intelligible in clear language—I am probably certain that his moral code exists and is available to us, but that is as far as I can go, but I like what Dennis offers and we need to live by it—it is the best we got.

 

C: “Observation and reason are demonstrative, not revelation and faith. To be objective morally, we need a standard of value. You, Dennis, believe that God’s will is the standard of value to work to. My objective standard is not God’s will.

 

I have no evidence of God existing, and even if God existed, God’s will is still not my objective standard because it is just someone’s consciousness (That consciousness is subjective, some subject telling us what to do.) commanding dos and don’ts.

 

Rand’s objective standard is the value of life on earth as the objective value, the factual requirements of human life on earth.  Because we are rational animals, our means of survival is the use of our reasoning mind to get by in the world.

 

Rand’s view is human life, and its requirements are the objective standard of human value.”

 

My response: As a moderate ethicist, I would combine Rand’s standard of human life as the objective moral standard, and God’s command to love our neighbor as oneself and to love God and obey the Ten Commandments. I would add my moderate egoist values to this, of course.

 

C: “So against this standard, we can say what is objectively good or bad. We can say why freedom is objectively good because the human needs freedom in order to live and prosper and act on his judgment to produce and trade goods voluntarily to mutual benefit.

 

That we must be free is not an opinion but a demonstrable fact. A right is the recognition to live: a human being must act in this way—he must be free to live as he will.”

 

D: “All that is your opinion, and that freedom is important, that a full life is important—these are not absolutes; I love your opinions.”

 

My response: both Dennis and Craig believe that only objective morality (knowable, usable, identifiable, principles, practical to use on earth) will give people the good values that people require to live good lives. Both assert that their personal kind of objective ethics (Randianism for Craig and ethical monotheism for Dennis) is the only game in town, and what the other guy is offering is mere subjective opinion. Dennis says this explicitly, but Craig implies it.

 

C: “I make the argument that Randianism is objectively correct. Rand held that here morality is the worked-out proof of what the Founding Fathers said in the Declaration of Independence. What they implied in the Declaration of Independence was the right to life, liberty, independence and property rights.

 

Rand says you have a right to these rights, and it is morally correct to pursue them. We are to use reason, logic, and observation to prove this moral system an objective standard of value.

 

Take the right to life: the right to life is self-evident or promised by the Creator? You have a right to life in your moral self-interest to pursue this. On a deeper level life is the objective standard of value.

 

Why life is the reason we can pursue value (we are alive) and is the only reason we need to pursue value in order to stay alive. A rock is not alive, not able to pursue value. To experience that living is a value a necessity, this fact makes life the standard of value.

 

We need to pursue values in order to stay alive. Life makes values possible, and life is the only thing that makes values necessary. Liberty: we must be alive in order to think.”

 

D: “Your leap of faith to protect life is commendable but it is still a leap of faith, not objective. Non-believers choose death.

 

Another aspect: Pragmatically, who produces fewer murderers, those who say life ends at death, or those who punish murderers after death (Who will murder less, atheists or believers?).”

 

C: “If people fear punishment after death, they will less likely kill. But Jews do not believe in hell.”

 

D: “We do believe in hell. There is Jewish believe in reward and punishment after death.”

 

C: “If people believe in hell, then will behave. If they have no belief in the afterlife, be nihilistic, and do whatever you want and misbehave.

 

An alternative moral motivator would be to offer happiness: you can’t act anyway you want and be happy, be productive, have good relationships, be worthy to have good friends. Happiness is attached to life as the standard of value.

 

Personal happiness is the moral of life. It is a science. What are your psychological and biological needs. What is happiness? Rand defines happiness as a state of consciousness that arises from achieving your values.”

 

My response: I like this last sentence and agree with it.

 

C: “Those values must be non-contradictory, not at war in our souls, but harmony. Follow the Ten Commandments because that is in your self-interest, not because of the commandment to obey God.”

 

D: “In society, there used to be secular communities like the Kiwanis, the Rotary, bowling clubs and so forth. Now those are gone, and the only community associations that meet weekly anymore are the Jewish and Christian churches.

 

There are no weekly atheist meetings, are there?”

 

C: “No, but there are community clubs are good if have life-serving values, and not all religious communities have life-serving values.”

 

D: “You state that there is no evidence of God’s existing. That seems odd to me. There is no proof that God exists, but there is evidence that God exists. Which do you mean?”

 

C: “Both are true: there is no proof or evidence of God’s existence.”

 

My response: I have not had time to research these claims, but I would assume that there is proof and evidence of God’s existence, but none that are necessarily true and irrefutable.

 

D: “Evidence that humans came from rocks requires a bigger leap of faith than does a belief in God. DNA is intelligence, information comes from intelligence. The world is too complex to have come about on its own.

 

Charles Krauthammer said atheism is absurd because everything came from nothing.”

 

C: “This is the fallacy of ignorance: we know not where life came from, ergo the God exists argument from ignorance is suggested.”

 

D: “Science answers how, and religion answers why.”

 

C: “Does existence have a beginning. Does it need it?”

 

Question from online audience about many denominations as evidence that there is no God because people have hundreds of conflicting, contradictory doctrines about God’s nature and purpose:

 

D: “Multiplicity of faiths are not a sign of no God. People always have multiple opinions about everything, just pick the opinion that makes the most sense to you.”

 

C: “If there is no God, it is claimed that anything goes. I would counter that if we have faith, anything goes, leading to religious terrorism.”

 

My response: Lack of belief in God and the decline of religious practice does lead to moral decay in society, and secular society and no belief in God or religious observance will lead to more decay, deeper, faster and more damaging than under most faiths.

 

Still, the main danger is whether a secular creed or a religious denomination are converted by their prophets and exponents into holy causes, and the passionate followers are frenzied, true-believing, full-fledged fanatics in service of this radicalized ideology—whether secular or religions—this is when hell of earth is about to be unleashed.

 

D: “What do atheists think of abortion? Would you allow abortion up to the 9^th month?”

 

 

C: “Yes. Faith is a means of knowledge, but rights are individual and legally protected in a legal context. Fetuses are internal to a woman’s body, so they are not social yet, not granted individual rights, so there are no rights for the unborn, only for the mother. Once born, every human has a right to live.”

 

D: “Why not just go with eugenics? Non-religious people have no moral systems.”