Sense and Goodness Without God

by Richard C. Carrier

Many people call their philosophy a “Religion.” But that does not excuse them from their responsibility as philosophers. You either have a coherent, sensible, complete philosophy that is well-supported by all the evidence that humans have yet mustered, or you do not.

“Religion” has become a factory-made commodity, sold off the shelf to the masses, who assume it must be good if it is really old and lots of smarter and better educated people say it’s a good buy (“8 out of 10 experts recommend Christian Brand Salvation!”). People think they can just plug such a goodie into their lives, maybe with a few unskilled adjustments of their own, and never have to think about whether it is well-constructed, well-thought-out, or even true.

I have taken a different approach, and wish to recommend it to everyone. My religion is Philosophy Itself. Every hour that devout believers spend praying, reading scripture, attending sermons and masses, I spend reading, thinking, honing my skill at getting at the truth and rooting out error. I imagine by most standards I have been far more devout than your average churchgoer. For I have spent over an hour every day of my life, since I began my teen years, on this serious task of inquiry and reflection. I am no guru. But I have gotten pretty far. Now, nearing middle-age, I have found myself with that coherent, sensible, complete, evidentially well-supported philosophy of life that I had been looking for. Though I know there is a lot I still don’t know, and many mistakes yet to be corrected, I am always learning. I have spent a long time pulling pieces together, correcting my errors, backing up from dead ends and starting over, making sense of it all. Now I can actually say I have something to say. I might not be right. I might be only partly on target. But at least I gave it as good a try as anyone could.

about as good as any three paragraphs in a book could ever be

If what I say anywhere in this book appears to contradict, directly or indirectly, something else I say here, the principle of interpretive charity should be applied: assume you are misreading the meaning of what I said in each or either case. Whatever interpretation would eliminate the contradiction and produce agreement is probably correct. So you are encouraged in every problem that may trouble you to find that interpretation. If all attempts at this fail, and you cannot but see a contradiction remaining, you should write to me about this at once, for the manner of my expression may need expansion or correction in a future edition to remove the difficulty, or I might really have goofed up and need to correct a mistake. I am most easily found by email (naturalism@secular.org) but any regular mail sent to my publisher will eventually find my door.

Naturalism at secular dot org. Damn.

Philosophy is therefore no idle pastime, but a serious business, fundamental to our lives. It should be our first if not our only religion: a religion wherein worship is replaced with curiosity, devotion with diligence, holiness with sincerity, ritual with study, and scripture with the whole world and the whole of human learning.

If there is no way, even in theory, to tell that this world is not what it seems, then it is meaningless to claim that this world is not what it seems.

As might be apparent, whereas the truth of wishes depends on there actually being a desire for the thing wished for, the ‘truth’ of commands, like stipulations, is inherent in the statement itself. This shows that stipulations and commands do not actually make claims to fact of the sort that we bother calling “true” or “false” because there is no way they can ever be false in our usual understanding. Rather, they can only be fulfilled or unfulfilled—or more fundamentally, they can be meaningful or meaningless:

So what do I believe establishes a belief as warranted? If it is produced by any causal process that is substantially truth-selective (for example, any process that generates a feeling of confidence that is in proportion to probably genuine realities), then a belief has warrant.

Note that I reject outright Plantinga’s gratuitous claim that “proper” function is necessary for warrant. To the contrary, any truth-finding function that is functioning will suffice. The word “proper” has no business in any formulation of the criteria of warrant.

the more data we have to ground our conclusions, the farther up the ladder we find ourselves. Thus, mathematics is just perfected science; science, perfected experience; experience, perfected history; and history, perfected attention to experts; while plausible inference is what we are left with when we have none of those things.

Hm! And hm.

It is reasonable to predict that an accurate method, a method that leads significantly more often than not to the discovery of genuinely true and false propositions, will exhibit two particular features, which an inaccurate method will not exhibit: predictive success and convergent accumulation of consistent results.

On the other hand, if the demon were really this consistent in giving us results, through which we satisfy our every goal and desire, there would hardly be any intelligible difference between what we call “reality” and the world the demon is inventing for us. As noted in II.2.1.2 (“Meaning, Reality, and Illusion”), such a construct would be reality, in every sense of the word we normally use.

But if the demon has such a complete game plan already in place, or is so adept at inventing one at any given moment, then there would again be no practical difference between this “truth” and a truth that was just “there.” We could even keep talking of ‘Metaphysical Naturalism’ as the best description of the demon-made world and its contents.

Likewise, there are certainly other physical “laws” besides those we know—which may even permit things beyond our imagining, things we would otherwise call miraculous, just as a tribal shaman would call a jumbo jet’s flight—but these would be no different than the laws we already know: brute properties of the universe that describe how its dimensions and materials manifest and behave.

Unlike Chaotic Inflation, Smolin’s ‘selection theory’ requires one completely ad hoc assumption: a new physical law. This is still fewer than the many ad hoc assumptions required for a god theory, involving numerous new laws governing his many amazing powers and properties, and countless maneuverings to explain, or explain away, all the strange evidence we actually have.

The bottom line? Most of this universe—by far—serves the function of producing and sustaining countless numbers of black holes. We are, by comparison, like a lone flea stuck in a fleeting bubble of air at the bottom of the ocean, lucky even to be alive, soon to expire (unless we take matters into our own hands), gazing in awe at the millions of Big Fish who swim the vast and deadly sea with natural ease. Which would make more sense? That Neptune created that sea for the flea? Or for the Big Fish? After all, a flea may have adapted himself to the dog, yet the fact remains: the master only intends to feed the dog.

The theory that our universe had a mindless physical cause perfectly predicts the universe we observe: a dispassionate, mechanical, mindless, physical cosmos. It makes complete sense of why we are made of frail matter, why life developed through a long and messy process of evolution, why the universe is so big and old, why we can never find any good evidence of supernatural beings or events, and so on. Since this is a plausible, comprehensible explanation for the universe, until we discover some evidence that challenges it, there is no need to resort to any alternative.

Of course, someone might instead ask how the multiverse just happened to be orderly enough to produce complex universes, and ultimately life. But the same question could be asked of God, too. How did he just happen to be so well ordered and conveniently gifted as to produce our rich, complicated cosmos, complete with intelligent life and every good thing? We would be no less “lucky” to have such a god than to have a multiverse. Indeed, we would have to be far luckier, because a god is far more convenient, and—assuming he’s a nice guy and everything—far better for us.

But if this is so, if past and future are just two parts of the same whole, William Craig has asked, then why do we experience the future with anticipation or dread, and the past with nostalgia or regret? The answer is simple: because we have no knowledge of the future, and so react to it differently than we do to our past, which we do know. Our ‘anticipation’ and ‘dread’ are emotional responses to ignorance, a reaction to our time-based perspective: we can’t see over the next hill on the road. On the other hand, ‘nostalgia’ and ‘regret’ are emotional responses to knowledge, a reaction to what we can see on the time axis, which is our past.

was Craig really being that silly? Was it just a moment of rhetoric?

As we shall see, for example, ‘responsibility’, both moral and legal, actually requires determinism. For if determinism were not true, then our actions and choices would not necessarily be caused by who we are. And what “we” (as a set of personality traits, memories, and so on) did not cause, we cannot logically be blamed or praised for. On the other hand, if determinism is true, then our actions and choices, those that have in fact been caused by us—and not by, for instance, our bodies without the involvement of our “selves” (our minds, our thoughts, our personalities)—are necessarily caused by who we are, and thus “we” can always be blamed or praised for them.

Hmmmm.

If I have a desire to actually shoot someone, a desire that is sufficient to override all other desires which urge me against it—a necessary cause of any willful choice to shoot—why would I not shoot? If Moreland appeals to moral shame or guilt or fear, then he is appealing to a desire. But that is a cause, and that cannot be his special “something.” Likewise, if he appeals to my character, knowledge of God or moral laws, to reasons not to shoot, or any such thing, then he is still appealing to causes. So what is left that could “cause” me not to shoot? Moreland is saying, in effect, that there is some uncaused power in me that can cause me not to shoot—for no reason whatever.

Moreland might respond that we usually have a reason to do and not to do something, and which reason we follow is caused purely by “something” in us, something that is not a reason, nor anything else like desires or knowledge or circumstances. But if the ultimate reason for my doing something is not a reason, then rational action is impossible, for no rational calculation can then be the cause of what I do. Only something purely non-rational is the ultimate necessary cause on Moreland’s theory, something uncaused by our knowledge, our reason, even our character. That would be terrible if it were true—far from rescuing responsibility, it destroys it.

Imagine how you would feel, having learned that it is nothing but the result of unpredictable randomness whether you kill your wife or not at this very moment. Shocking, yes? Imagine that you refrain from killing, but could step into a time machine, run the universe back a million times, and watch yourself again each time, and then saw that sometimes you killed and sometimes you didn’t, even though each time all the circumstances, including your thoughts, desires, character, everything, were the same. There would be no rhyme or reason to why you did one or the other. It would be a mere shake of the dice. This is the nightmare of a world that Moreland’s theory describes.

More importantly, time behaves differently than space, since in our universe it has become a symmetry-breaking extension (see section III.3.6, “Time and the Multiverse”). In fact, that is what makes time “time” instead of just another dimension of space. Conscious beings could only ever arise in such universes, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in one. Indeed, things may well be different in other universes, but life won’t exist in them.

So what is this stuff? What is energy made of? That is the biggest question now being studied. But all viable theories are converging on the same conclusion: energy appears to be an oscillation of some sort, a movement back and forth in space-time (and possibly other dimensions as well). It is like a ripple, a wave, in space-time itself. And that means energy, and hence all forms of it including matter, is simply the result of geometry. In other words, space-time arranged, rippled, in a certain way is energy, and hence also matter.

The properties of water, in fact, would now be entirely predictable even if we had never seen water before: for all we need to know is the structure and behavior of all the particles that go into creating water molecules, and from that alone we can derive what behaviors that molecule will exhibit, such as its boiling point or even its color.

The virtual reality presented to him in the simulator corresponds to a real universe. In fact, he could fly a real airplane connected to the simulator, without ever looking out of a real window. This is basically just what a brain does. Simple brains, like those in worms, only perform simple calculations in real-time (“move toward light”), but as brains evolved in complexity they developed the ability to simulate reality altogether. Cats, for instance, dream of hunting prey, and all indications are that they probably don’t know they are dreaming. For instance, when the brain-functions that cut off muscular motion during sleep are numbed, dreaming cats actually move about a cage, stalking imaginary creatures. Thus, the cat’s dream probably presents itself as a wholly “veridical” experience: the cat actually sees, hears, smells imaginary prey, and reacts accordingly.

!!!

A “thought experiment” only works, only produces correct conclusions, when you actually do what the experiment asks of you. But when we do this, we do not arrive at these two conclusions after all. For example, for a Chinese man to have a conversation with the room so convincing he would be sure he was speaking to a real person who understood him, the rulebook in that room would have to be capable of some remarkable things. First, it would have to be able to be changed: the room would have to be able to remember things the Chinese man said, and what the room itself said, and adjust future responses accordingly. Thus, the rulebook would not be static, but constantly changing itself, and growing ever larger, even though doing so according to its own rules. Second, not only would it thus accumulate knowledge, it would be accumulating knowledge about itself, for future use in its conversation (to answer questions like “How do you feel?” or “What’s the difference between you and me?”). Third, the rulebook would have to contain something equivalent to desires, or else it would not exhibit curiosity, nor any capacity for active learning, and such omissions would be inhuman. So, built into the rules would have to be a hierarchy of simulated interests, for instance things the room would “want” to ask or say to the man outside in the course of any conversation, as well as things it would not want to. Fourth, and related to this, would be creativity: the rulebook would have to have s...

!!!!! Very well-done.

This leads us to the next conclusion. Once we realize there is someone in the room who understands the Chinese conversation—the rulebook, our AI—someone who is merely being supplied with energy by another man (whose role in the room is equivalent to the human circulatory system, dumbly supplying the brain with the energy and chemicals necessary to function), the second conclusion also falls. The only way to make a machine that can truly replicate human understanding is to make a machine that has human understanding. In other words, to be such a thing and to be a simulation of it are one and the same, with no logical or empirical difference between them.

Other than consciousness (but he's getting to that).

To imagine ourselves examining anything, we have to imagine ourselves as existing first. Thus, there is no logical way we could directly comprehend what it would be like to be a process, except the very way we experience being a process: as a coherent observer of a self.

There are literally hundreds of different examples, ranging from every sensory or perceptual power known, to almost every sort of emotion, reasoning power, and personality trait known. This body of evidence collectively demonstrates that the loss of any area of the brain always results in the loss of what that area did, and when you add up all the things these brain areas do, you have the entire gamut of a human mind. Consequently, if destroying parts of a brain destroy parts of a mind, then destroying all the parts of a brain will destroy the whole mind, destroying you.

The evidence for mind-body physicalism has been corroborated in laboratories and scientific field studies thousands and thousands of times in countless ways and is in fact the only evidence any reputable science has ever turned up or ever sees in regular medical practice. Indeed, the evidence has converged from numerous different directions on the same conclusion. In contrast, the evidence against mind-body physicalism is purely anecdotal, almost always ambiguous, and has often been shown to be outright fraudulent.

Likewise, “seeing” gods or deceased relatives is one of the most common forms of hallucination on record. Since many NDE’s involve meeting living relatives in heaven (an obvious impossibility), not to mention even stranger persons (like Elvis), hallucination is the best explanation.

In short, there is no trustworthy evidence against mind-brain physicalism. Notably, even religious scholars are beginning to concede this. Christian editors Warren Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, in Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (1998), declare, “We have written from the perspective that views soul as a functional capacity of a complex physical organism, rather than a separate spiritual essence that somehow inhabits a body. We have adopted this position because we believe it is the best way to incorporate and reconcile all the various sources of available data” (xiii).

!!!

What is worth loving? The potential of humanity, the power of reason, the comfort of another’s love, the pursuit of knowledge and truth, the beauty and joy of human experience, and the nearly unlimited power of the human will to endure almost any hardship or solve almost any problem. And that is just the short list. How many wonderful people do we know, or could we know if we sought them out, who are worth loving—loving merely for the fact that we wished there were more of them in the world, and the fact that they give us a reason to live?

!!!!!!!!