Gary's Corner

[Gary Childress]

Of course. People can act any way they choose, so long as it's within the realm of their personal possibilities. That can be good, bad or indifferent. But what they can't always do is explain why they are morally obligated to do some actions, or avoid others. They can't always substantiate their choices, in other words.


This is exactly what has tended to happen in the West. Those who have become secular have continued on a sort of "auto-pilot" of cultural habits. They've just kept doing much of what they were doing when the West was, at least nominally, "Christian" in its ethics.

But then, a problem has appeared: what happens when the secularist starts to believe his own secularism? What happens when an Atheist or agnostic decides that his Atheism or his agnosticism should not just be a matter of private conviction, but should actually inform his own moral practices? What happens when the secularist finds reasons to doubt some element of Judeo-Christian morality, and begins to ask himself, "Why should I be bound by a code derived from something I simply no longer believe in?"

And this is what is now happening in the West. More and more, secular society is testing the limits of its inherited, Christian-cultural moral suppositions, deciding they are not relevant to secular ethics or secular social policy, and abandoning them for something else. For some, this passes for a kind of "liberation." Others decry it as a "decline," as a fall-away from morality. But nobody doubts that it's changing.

However, if secular society is to be established and survive, it really needs some compass points to direct its social policy, it's laws, its judicial system, it's social protocols, and its morality on a personal scale. Otherwise, how shall a secular society make good laws and policies, or a secular person assure himself of his moral rightness? How shall we choose our way, if we have no common moral compass? Don't we all want to think of ourselves as good people, and our society as progressing toward the good? How can we do that, if our own beliefs offer us no account whatsoever of "the Good"?

So now you have the plight of current secular society. It's without that common moral compass. Anything could be "right" or "wrong," or nothing at all be either. Secularism does not contain any of that kind of information, and it substantiates no morality ahead of any other.

So just how is secular society supposed to continue and cohere, absent any common moral compass? The common compass of the Christian past is decaying, in secular thought; what will replace it? Nobody knows. Nobody, it seems, can say.

Why is it that Buddhism doesn't seem to have a requirement to believe in God or have commandments, but practicing Buddhists seem to be pretty good about conducting themselves in civil ways in society?

What's your basis for that assessment? I know that some pretty awful things have been going on in Myanmar. Which Buddhist society do you think can teach the West how to be moral? Can you give an example?

The basis for my assessment is that not all Buddhist societies are anarchies where people murder each other on a regular basis. Some are very successful and probably no more violent than the way the West treated native peoples during the colonial period. Why is it that not all Buddhist societies are choas and disaster? Shouldn't they all be if they don't believe in God or have commandments? Can you give an explanation for that seeming divergence?

[Immanuel Can]

Why is it that Buddhism doesn't seem to have a requirement to believe in God or have commandments, but practicing Buddhists seem to be pretty good about conducting themselves in civil ways in society?

What's your basis for that assessment? I know that some pretty awful things have been going on in Myanmar. Which Buddhist society do you think can teach the West how to be moral? Can you give an example?

The basis for my assessment is that not all Buddhist societies are anarchies where people murder each other on a regular basis. Some are very successful and probably no more violent than the way the West treated native peoples during the colonial period.

Nice assumption. But it's notably lacking in any specifics at all.

Now, can you give me an example? Where is there a society running on Buddhist ethical principles, one that can teach the secular West what it needs to know?

[Gary Childress]

What's your basis for that assessment? I know that some pretty awful things have been going on in Myanmar. Which Buddhist society do you think can teach the West how to be moral? Can you give an example?

The basis for my assessment is that not all Buddhist societies are anarchies where people murder each other on a regular basis. Some are very successful and probably no more violent than the way the West treated native peoples during the colonial period.

Nice assumption. But it's notably lacking in any specifics at all.

Now, can you give me an example? Where is there a society running on Buddhist ethical principles, one that can teach the secular West what it needs to know?

According to your theory, no Buddhist societies should have any ethical principles at all. Is that the case? I'm not aware of that being the case. Is Nepal (for one example) chaotic and violent? And if it is not the case that all Buddhist societies are unruly, violent (or otherwise behave themselves), then where are those societies that aren't in chaotic violence getting their civility from? What's causing it?

[Immanuel Can]

The basis for my assessment is that not all Buddhist societies are anarchies where people murder each other on a regular basis. Some are very successful and probably no more violent than the way the West treated native peoples during the colonial period.

Nice assumption. But it's notably lacking in any specifics at all.

Now, can you give me an example? Where is there a society running on Buddhist ethical principles, one that can teach the secular West what it needs to know?

According to your theory,

I didn't offer you a "theory." I asked you for your specifics. Which society is going to teach the West the ethical principles it's losing? Nepal?

New subject:

Here's what I think you should do, Gary.

Rick has told us that this forum's days are numbered. He wants to sell it, but you and I pretty much know that won't happen. Nobody will pay for it...partly because they can't use the PN name, and especially because anybody can start up their own site for next to nothing. But that means you and I have a very short window between now and then. (I'm guessing the forum probably doesn't survive the end of the summer, or thereabouts.)

So what that means is that in a short time, I disappear. You and I never see each other, until you meet God.

So here's what I do, if I were you. I'd take a moment, and I'd think, "Is there anything I need to talk about with IC before we are out of each other's lives forever." I'd take a day or two, maybe...really give it some thought. And rather than wasting my time on petty bickering about things I don't care about, I'd pick something that actually mattered to me. If I had a question, I'd ask it. If there was something I needed to say, I'd say it.

In a week, I'm off the grid. How much more time we have after that, neither you nor I know.

Because this show is closing down. And whatever I can do for you, it won't be there much longer.

Is there anything?

[Gary Childress]

Nice assumption. But it's notably lacking in any specifics at all.

Now, can you give me an example? Where is there a society running on Buddhist ethical principles, one that can teach the secular West what it needs to know?

According to your theory,

I didn't offer you a "theory." I asked you for your specifics. Which society is going to teach the West the ethical principles it's losing? Nepal?

So, it is not your belief, then, that without religions that believe in God, other societies would have no moral principles. Correct? Because if it is your belief that without religions that believe in God, human beings would have no moral principles, then people in Buddhist societies couldn't have "objective" morals that they could share with each other. Make sense?

New subject:

Here's what I think you should do, Gary.

Rick has told us that this forum's days are numbered. He wants to sell it, but you and I pretty much know that won't happen. Nobody will pay for it...partly because they can't use the PN name, and especially because anybody can start up their own site for next to nothing. But that means you and I have a very short window between now and then. (I'm guessing the forum probably doesn't survive the end of the summer, or thereabouts.)

So what that means is that in a short time, I disappear. You and I never see each other, until you meet God.

So here's what I do, if I were you. I'd take a moment, and I'd think, "Is there anything I need to talk about with IC before we are out of each other's lives forever." I'd take a day or two, maybe...really give it some thought. And rather than wasting my time on petty bickering about things I don't care about, I'd pick something that actually mattered to me. If I had a question, I'd ask it. If there was something I needed to say, I'd say it.

In a week, I'm off the grid. How much more time we have after that, neither you nor I know.

Because this show is closing down. And whatever I can do for you, it won't be there much longer.

Is there anything?

So you "don't care about" whether your belief is true or not that atheists can't have universally binding morals, as religions that believe in the existence of a God seem to? You'll spend the rest of your days assuming that they can't and run around telling everyone you meet that if they're atheists, then their moral beliefs can't be shared with others without falling apart. Is that correct?

And what do you mean by "you're off the grid in a week?" If something bad is happening in your life, then I'm truly sorry to hear it and wish you the best. If such is the case and you find yourself in a bind, my best advice, if you require assistance, is to seek public or community assistance because wealthy profiteers will rarely hand out any assistance unless they're levied taxes for it or unless you cast aside your dignity and beg or grovel for it.

[Immanuel Can]

According to your theory,

I didn't offer you a "theory." I asked you for your specifics. Which society is going to teach the West the ethical principles it's losing? Nepal?

So, it is not your belief, then, that without religions that believe in God, other societies would have no moral principles. Correct?

I didn't say. Because that's a bit of a red herring. But I'll answer it now.

Every religion grounds its ethics in its basic beliefs about God. Ironically, so does secularism -- it grounds its sense of what ethics can be in its conviction there is no Basis for morality, no God to indicate what morality would even be, or that it could be real. So religious or irreligious, in relation to ethics, we're all doing the same.

However, there's a difference, obviously. Secularism can ground no ethics, because it's basic beliefs provide no grounds for one. Rather, secularism, taken seriously, would convince us that any appeal to ethics was deception and tomfoolery -- "nonsense on stilts," as it has been called. Secularly, we have no reason at all to feel obligated to even one ethical precept. (Fortunately, in practice, most secularists don't behave secularly in regard to ethics. Instead, they take something like basic Judeo-Christian values as givens, and carry on from there. But logically, they would not do this -- if they were being logical. Thank God, most are not.)

But religions all imply particular ethics. And those who believe in those religions sincerely may sincerely believe they're being ethical, even when they do things that are, in your and my view, highly unethical. That is to say, the religious belief forms the foundation, and the ethics is built on top of that. Secularism offers no foundation, but religions do.

Now, that is not to say every such foundation is equal or true...or genuinely moral, if ethical objectivism exists...which I say it does. I say that when, for example, a religious zealot enters the Bataclan Theatre and throws grenades, he is acting hideously immorally..that his murders are objectively evil. But this is defiant of his belief that he is a "warrior for Allah," and is going to be rewarded with 72 virgins for the same murderous acts. The jihadi has principles he regards as morals, and they are rationalized correctly by his Islamism. He's behaving just as his religion instructs him to do. He sees himself as ethical. And while I condemn his actions and his beliefs, I do not have to accuse him of inconsistency: what he finds in the foundational beliefs of his religion, he is doing. That much is clear.

In that sense, every religion provides an ethics. Secularism does not provide any. Any ethics its adherents take rationally belong to some other belief, not to his own.

New subject:

Here's what I think you should do, Gary.

So you "don't care about" whether your belief is true or not that atheists can't have universally binding morals, as religions that believe in the existence of a God seem to?

Caring has nothing to do with it. I've answered your question above. But it won't help secularism to have an ethics, of course.

You'll spend the rest of your days assuming that they can't and run around telling everyone you meet that if they're atheists, then their moral beliefs can't be shared with others without falling apart. Is that correct?

No, I don't need to tell them. They'll discover it themselves, if they ever take their own Atheism seriously. Nietzsche, Hume, the secular Existentialists, and guys like Margolis...they've all discovered it. But the Atheist-in-the-street has yet to catch up with them, at least in reasoning or consistency.

Remember Nietzsche's "Tale of the Madman"? The madman announces the death of morals; but then he throws his lantern to the ground, and yells,“I have come too early...my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.”

There it is. Nietzsche not only saw it, but knew full well that for a long time yet, Atheists would be too afraid or too unaware to realize it themselves. But it's the truth. And when people so opposed to one another as Nietzsche and I both agree on something, you might want to consider it very seriously. You cannot salve the wound by telling yourself, "He's only saying that because he's a Theist," because Nietzsche certainly isn't. And you probably can't just say Nietzsche was just mistaken, when I and all these other figures -- most of them also Atheists -- can see it, too.

And what do you mean by "you're off the grid in a week?" If something bad is happening in your life, then I'm truly sorry to hear it and wish you the best.

Thank you, Gary. No, I'm fine: I'm just going to be otherwise occupied in a week, and PN won't be my focus for a time.

[Gary Childress]

I can't speak for others, but life has been a miserable experience for me. I thought maybe evolution was a better explanation for a world full of mental illness, hurt, disappointment, loneliness, and endless warring between peoples. No. Some insist that there's a God. What a joke. Mental illness, alienation from my peers. And there's a God for me to ask why the f*** life is such a miserable clusterfuck. It's got to be a joke.

[Walker]

As a student of logic, you'll appreciate that if one can’t speak for others, then logically one can’t accurately judge another’s belief based on one’s own lack of understanding that prevents speaking for the other. Thankfully, calling another’s beliefs a joke is not speaking for them (rather, it speaks against them), so there is a logical consistency to the irrationality of not speaking for others, a process of self-affirmation that enables irrational, dismissive critiques of diminution.

Don't get caught up with calling it right and wrong because everyone does it, until they no longer can.

[Immanuel Can]

I can't speak for others, but life has been a miserable experience for me. I thought maybe evolution was a better explanation for a world full of mental illness, hurt, disappointment, loneliness, and endless warring between peoples. No. Some insist that there's a God. What a joke. Mental illness, alienation from my peers. And there's a God for me to ask why the f*** life is such a miserable clusterfuck. It's got to be a joke.

I'm somewhat acquainted with your struggles already, Gary, because you've spoken of them in some detail. I believe you.

But let me ask this, if I may: what answer to your pain is Evolutionism offering you?

It's telling you that your pain means nothing. It's merely an accidental byproduct of an impersonal process. It's telling you there's no remedy: there's nobody to blame, or be angry at, or to ask questions, and there's no cure. In short, the metamessage of Evolutionism is, "Suck it up, Gary; nobody cares, there are no reasons for pain, and there's nothing you can do about it, since it's ubiquitous, and, since there's no particular solution, you can anticipate it's never going to get better. Just live with it, and stop bothering people."

By contrast, another worldview (let's not name it) is saying to you, "There's a reason for your pain. It's not supposed to be this way. You're right; it shouldn't be. And there are reasons and answers, and Somebody cares, and has done something about it, and it won't always be this way, if you are willing to reach out for it."

Now, since the reasons you give above have purely to do with the problem of your suffering, and not with things like pseudo-science, or philosophical problems, or evidences, or arguments, or even truth per se, and there are two subsequent ways to understand the same pain, two answers being offered you, what is your payoff for choosing the first over the second? I'm not seeing what you get for that choice, or how that first "answer" helps you solve the problem of pain.

So why is it you choose it?

[Immanuel Can]

Thomas Hardy's Poem, "Hap."

("Hap" means "chance," as in the word "happenstance" or "happening.")

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Hardy gets it.

If we live in a universe of "chance" (or, to use his words, "Crass Casualty," which he capitalizes, like a title of God), and Time (which he likewise capitalizes to show its sovereignty), and Doom (ibid.), then Hardy sees there's nobody to blame, nobody to be angry with, nothing that can be called unfair or unjust. And worst of all, Hardy realizes what those last two lines are saying: that these impersonal and unseeing ("purblind") and uncaring forces could just as easily have given him the easy, good life he wishes he had had. But he didn't get it. He got the pain.

Now, how is that perspective appealing to you, Gary? Why is that a better choice? Not even Hardy, who was an agnostic-leaning-Atheist, perhaps like yourself, thinks that it's a great way to process your life.

So why process it in that way? What's the payoff for those who choose it?

[Gary Childress]

Thomas Hardy's Poem, "Hap."

("Hap" means "chance," as in the word "happenstance" or "happening.")

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Hardy gets it.

If we live in a universe of "chance" (or, to use his words, "Crass Casualty," which he capitalizes, like a title of God), and Time (which he likewise capitalizes to show its sovereignty), and Doom (ibid.), then Hardy sees there's nobody to blame, nobody to be angry with, nothing that can be called unfair or unjust. And worst of all, Hardy realizes what those last two lines are saying: that these impersonal and unseeing ("purblind") and uncaring forces could just as easily have given him the easy, good life he wishes he had had. But he didn't get it. He got the pain.

Now, how is that perspective appealing to you, Gary? Why is that a better choice? Not even Hardy, who was an agnostic-leaning-Atheist, perhaps like yourself, thinks that it's a great way to process your life.

So why process it in that way? What's the payoff for those who choose it?

If I tell myself God is benevolent. If I tell myself the world is all roses, then is that going to change the fact that neither of those is true? I'll never understand the psychiatric fixation with "thinking positive", as though that changes anything about the world itself.

[Gary Childress]

If the world is predominantly suffering, and God is omniscient and omnipotent, then God has knowingly created a world that is predominantly suffering and knowingly placed us in it. That is little more than deliberately torturing a living being. God is NOT benevolent; God is NOT good. Simple fact. Watching others lie to themselves and trying to pass their delusion on to me is not going to change the facts of life. The facts of life are grim. I'm sorry that others wish to fool themselves and live a lie. If that's what you wish to do, then don't count me in.

[Walker]

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Brilliant economy in the saying, and so true about what folks do until humbled of that hubris.

An inability to accurately second-guess the quality of another's experience does not bode accuracy in second-guessing God.

[Immanuel Can]

Thomas Hardy's Poem, "Hap."

("Hap" means "chance," as in the word "happenstance" or "happening.")

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Hardy gets it.

If we live in a universe of "chance" (or, to use his words, "Crass Casualty," which he capitalizes, like a title of God), and Time (which he likewise capitalizes to show its sovereignty), and Doom (ibid.), then Hardy sees there's nobody to blame, nobody to be angry with, nothing that can be called unfair or unjust. And worst of all, Hardy realizes what those last two lines are saying: that these impersonal and unseeing ("purblind") and uncaring forces could just as easily have given him the easy, good life he wishes he had had. But he didn't get it. He got the pain.

Now, how is that perspective appealing to you, Gary? Why is that a better choice? Not even Hardy, who was an agnostic-leaning-Atheist, perhaps like yourself, thinks that it's a great way to process your life.

So why process it in that way? What's the payoff for those who choose it?

If I tell myself God is benevolent. If I tell myself the world is all roses, then is that going to change the fact that neither of those is true?

Somebody who says the world is "all roses" isn't facing the problem of pain. But both of the answers I'm suggesting do face it, and square on. But the secular one is just a form of denial that proposes you get no sympathy, no solution and no hope. So I'm asking why it appeals to you.

[Immanuel Can]

If the world is predominantly suffering,

It's not. But suffering is a reality in it. The Bible faces that reality squarely. The very oldest of all its books (Job) deals with that question very bluntly, in fact. It's as if God knew it would be the primary question, and prepared explanations from the start.a

God has knowingly created a world that is predominantly suffering and knowingly placed us in it.

I don't know who told you that. It's clearly not the secular version of things: according to that, there's no God to blame. And It's not the way Christians tell the story, either, obviously. So you've fished that out of some strange place.

What convinces you that the world as we now have it is the world as God created it to be? According to Christianity, the world is a fallen place, distant and hostile to God, just as you yourself are being. And it's just a perplexed and miserable as you are. But is that God's fault? Or is that a product of its alienation from it's Creator? The answer's fairly obvious, I would say.