Blog Review: Formulalessness, 2019 - 2023

I have often written things in a sort of diaristic way, not knowing how they would appear to me until I finished and re-read them for the first time. This blog has been a diary of my thinking. I feel as though I've been approaching the end, or an end, of my blog (for instance, not writing too much since fall of 2022). So, I've been engaging in behaviors of summarizing and wrapping up, and included in that, I've been re-reading my blog.

I re-read the whole thing up to the present post, except I didn't finish reading the Feeling of Value notes (1, 2), because simply to read them was too philosophical for me, and as I've mentioned, I'm trying to abstain from philosophy until October 2024. (Reading notes requires trying to figure out what I was saying, and trying to evaluate what I was saying turns into philosophy, according to me.)

Certain things stood out as things to come back to someday. Maybe re-reading the Feeling of Value notes and the Lukas Gloor sequence on moral anti-realism, plus other sources, to do a better job of talking about moral realism / anti-realism. Also, maybe writing a clearer presentation of the arguments implicit in my review of X-Risk by Thomas Moynihan. Occasionally, people find my blog through the Feeling of Value and X-Risk reviews, and what I have to offer isn't too user-friendly.

Generally, I could go back and try to improve past posts, and maybe make a few books out of them. Perhaps one for effective altruists.

Another thought is to use my wiki [January 2024: which I took down] as a place to write clearer versions of many of these posts, or to break down their ideas and recombine them in different ways that suit the subject matter better than my sometimes arbitrary lumpings of them. Then I could make a book or books based on the wiki.

There were times my present self (reviewing the blog) wished my past self had been clearer, argued better, or wrote more fleshed-out posts. I suppose that if I were a professional writer, I might have evaluated myself sooner than after four years as I'm doing now. I got into writing this blog just to put my notes online (at least, that's mainly what I did), and once the habit got going, I guess I didn't question what the product would be.

What niche does the blog fill? I would say that if you are a Christian interested in futurism, it takes you a certain way into the topic of Christianity-and-futurism. If you are a futurist, it shows a vision of a particular kind of theistic/Christian input into how the future should go. I don't know what my actual readers get out of it -- maybe something else. Blogs often are really all about their themes, their vibe, and a few of their memorable ideas. I do think that this blog has a vibe to it, and that's an undercurrent of it, that there's a spiritual world that connects to our everyday experience, and a spirit that breathes through us, which is imaged by the writing. Some themes of this blog are openmindedness, trust, truth, reason, and ethical theism (not a complete list).

If I'm thinking hopefully, I think this blog communicates a unique vision of how to be a Christian, or a Christian-like theist, a new religion or set of religions that helps deal with the divisions (progressive/conservative, secular/religious, perhaps Christian/non-Christian) and lack of motivation that keep people from God, and keep society locked into conflict and ineffectiveness.

Writing the blog served me. I started the blog (in early 2019) because it felt like time to write a blog. The fact that I had been reading Slate Star Codex since fall of 2016 was in the background of that decision. In early 2019, I was experiencing a mental breakdown (which lasted about three years at full strength and then diminishing to now), which largely was caused by others' indifference and hostility, lack of support and poisonous support. Having something to focus on other than the memories of the people who caused the mental breakdown, and the thoughts of despair they put in me, was helpful and gave me a direction forward.

Reviewing the blog from start to finish eventually started resembling, to me, reading any number of my diaristic works from 2015 - 2018 (most of the books found here). Those books emerged from me as a flow of writing, expressing something subtextual through their wholes. I think the same could be said of this blog, although to me at least the subtextual note is fainter. Both those old books and this blog have an aesthetic of "formulalessness".

MSL's Relationship to Christianity

Reading New Wine for the End Times makes me think again about the Bible in more depth. This makes think I should write about MSL's relationship to Christianity.

One way for me to look at this question is to look at myself, as someone with some kind of relationship to both MSL and Christianity.

I was raised in a moderate church, probably "theologically conservative" but moderate in tone. I think I'm reacting to that, and assuming that, a lot of the time. I think the flaws of progressive and conservative Christianity are the flaws of "Los Angeles" while the flaws of moderate Christianity are those of "San Diego". In other words, moderate Christianity seems nicer than the other two and thus is more likely to have a serious but unexamined problem with it. MSL and New Wine Christianity call for excellence, while I think both being basically moderate in other respects. Hopefully that call for excellence makes up for the danger of complacency within moderate belief systems.

I had a significant, highly negative experience with a progressive Christian (this blog comes out of that experience, to some extent). I don't want to assume the worst of all of progressive Christianity because of what I went through, but I can't assume that all progressive Christians are different than the person that caused my negative experience.

Progressive Christianity has an epistemic openness and a willingness to question. I find this aspect of it trustworthy (assuming it is really willing to consider things that are or could be coded "conservative"). What I don't find trustworthy is its emphasis on ethical humanism to the exclusion of ethical theism. Perhaps it sounds good for God to serve humanity, and for humans to serve humanity. Then who serves God? Or are humans the highest end of both God and humans? It sounds like we are making ourselves the center of the universe.

A progressive Christian might look at that last paragraph and think "so you're basically on the side of the conservative Christians". I think conservative Christians (at their best) do try to put God at the center of the universe and not put humans there. But conservative Christianity isn't always good. I think there are (at least) two kinds of conservatives: the kind who like to say "no" to other people, and the kind who value things so much that they try to protect them from other people. "Liberals" (the generous and free) have straightforward human desires. They think (often) that all conservatism is of the "say no to other people" kind, and they feel entitled to their straightforward human desires and think of conservatives as people who are unfair and want power over other people, this power which is proven by their ability to say "no" to them and restrict their straightforward human desires. They (seemingly) do not think that any conservatism is of the "there is something valuable, perhaps delicate, which must be protected from harm". I don't like saying "no" to people, so in that sense, I am a liberal (or, maybe I should say, I am not an "invalidating conservative"). But I also think there are things that are valuable, to be protected from harm, which are not part of what most (or most liberal) people think are "canonical, established straightforward human desires". In that sense I am a "protective" or "sensitive" conservative.

If a man has "straightforward human desires" for a woman, and she says "no", is she invalidating him? Or is she protecting something? He might think that her "sensitivities" (maybe her religion which she calls on to justify her desire to not have sex until marriage?) is a scam when all she really wants is to say "no" to him, to humiliate him and have power over him by keeping him from his natural desires. She has to invalidate him in order to protect herself, but her goal is to protect something, a good or a value which he does not respect. I think it likely that at least some of the time women do try to humiliate men and have power over them. (They really are the "invalidating conservatives".) But often (most of the time?) they are protecting something from the man. (They are really "protective" or "sensitive" conservatives.)

I think that conservatives reading this post would think that they were protective or sensitive conservatives, and generally I would agree with them. The "will-to-invalidate" is also in conservatives, some of the same who are at other times protective or sensitive, others who are only invalidating, with no concern for protecting.

Some progressive Christians might assume that I'm really a front for invalidating conservatism. That's not my intention. But I am not sure that I've made a case in my writing so far which forcefully establishes my actual intention. (Maybe I have, maybe not.) However, I think a truth-seeking progressive Christian should consider the possibility that maybe there is something to protect which they don't already recognize as being worth protecting, which conservative Christians (in this case correctly) think is worth protecting. Maybe my writing is a scam, maybe it's not. If it's not, what then?

A conservative Christian may then think "so you're a conservative Christian, like us". I think that there's something to that. However, I don't believe the Bible is necessarily inerrant. I am not committed to the Bible primarily as my foundation for my faith in God. Nor am I committed to the church (the existing body of people who identify as Christians, or the culture of those people) in the same capacity. This is a radical difference ("radical" as "at the roots") from conservative Christianity as I understand it. Basically, I think that the idea of proving the existence of God through reason (MSL) is the kind of thing that would be undertaken by a rationalistic person, and if successful, would take weight off of the Bible and the church, if they were less reliable than it. So here we see MSL making me "epistemically progressive" or "epistemically liberal", which seemingly disqualifies me from being a conservative Christian (I think it's pretty fair to say it does disqualify me from being what we normally call a conservative Christian).

So far my blog has not had any pushback from conservative Christians, but that may well change. I do not have the mental resources to try to deal with huge texts like the Bible, or with history, or with reams of peoples' arguments one way or the other. (At least not now.) But I will discuss a little bit why I think the way I do about the Bible and the church, and at least if there are objections try to put them on my wiki [January 2024: replaced by this.] so that I (or someone else, perhaps) can address them someday. (My mental exhaustion may be another thing I have more in common with progressive Christians than conservative Christians.)

I can think of one major reason to doubt that everything in the Bible necessarily comes from God, which is that it (even its Jesus (Matthew 24:34)) expected the end of the world to come soon. But it didn't. Maybe we can dig in and say "well, there's a sense in which the world did end" or "the words that make us think Jesus expected it soon can be interpreted differently" or even "God changed his mind because maybe things were going better/worse than he expected". If I were committed to the Bible, I would choose one of those, or some other similar thing, to believe. But if uncommitted, I would think about how the early Christians thought one thing was going to happen, and it didn't, and say "well, there might be some sense in which the words that gave them that expectation are trustworthy, but it might also be the case that they were misguided by expectations that didn't come from God, and maybe the rest of the Bible is a mixture of good guidance and misguidance. Or maybe there are things that Jesus said that are accurately conveyed by the Gospels, but the end-times beliefs weren't among them".

However, I have found the Bible to be very helpful in my own life, trusting it as though it is true, at least as I understood it (i.e., reflecting what parts of it said, as it "plainly" or "naively" appeared to me). I think that the basic project of the Bible is the same as that of MSL, and that MSL is a continuation of it (though some conservative Christians might disagree). This increases my credence that the parts of the Bible that I don't trust might be trustworthy anyway. Sometimes perhaps that causes me to re-evaluate what I don't trust, so that I do trust it, but it does not make me trust everything in the Bible, and I am not certain everything in the Bible is true.

I believe in the Jesus of the spiritual world. The Bible is an introduction to this Jesus, but there is a world in which the spirits live. Occult people "dial up" the spirit of Saturn (the god? the planet? both in one being?) and there is a whole world of spirits, one of whom is Jesus. (The Bible as it lives in our imaginations and memory is the Bible in the imaginal world, which is an access point to the world of spirits.) In my experience, this spirit is to be trusted. But is this spirit 100% the same as the man described in the Bible? I don't know. Does this spirit lend enough credence to the many things in the Bible to validate them all? I wouldn't assume so.

One argument for founding a person's faith on the church is that Christianity has to have a lot to do with the Bible (even progressive Christians seem to care about what the Bible says in some sense). Where did the Bible come from? The individual texts came (it is believed) from the Holy Spirit through human writers. But the church are the ones who canonized the Bible (selected the texts to go in it). We assume that the church was guided by the Holy Spirit when they did that. And the church are the ones who preserved and transmitted the Bible through time. So without the church, there would be no Bible.

Does that mean that we are beholden to the church? What exactly goes into the word "church"? If you don't go to "church", are you a bad Christian, or simply not a Christian? I think the church "wants" (it's a culture more than a conscious individual) you to go to church. Is that what God wants? Is church-centricness a cousin to progressive humanism? (Putting the focus on people rather than God.) Well, if the church is divinely inspired (a presupposition for the Bible to be divinely inspired, we think) then maybe the church is a source of authority in itself and individual Christians must submit to it. But if MSL is valid, then it takes the epistemic burden off of the church. The Bible gains credence because it resembles MSL (a publicly verifiable source of credence) and because its Jesus in some way is the same as the Jesus of the spirit world (a non-publicly verifiable source of credence, unless we all get in conscious contact with that world). The church gains credence to the extent that it is aligned with MSL's God.

Because of my experiences with the spirit world, and the confirmation from MSL, I think I trust in Jesus enough for me to be considered a Christian. But that spirit, and MSL, are the only points on which I'm significantly committed, and the Bible, and the culture that flows from it, I'm not so committed to. Not everything that is socially (or perhaps even Biblically) "church" is in tune with MSL and the Jesus of the spirit world (i.e., instead it takes Satan's side rather than Jesus' side, in Satan's war against God and God's creatures.)

(My example doesn't have to be normative for all people interested in MSL. But I mention it because it's something concrete that I know about, and maybe it provides some guidance.)

So at this point, maybe it seems like I have struck blows for the side of "uncertainty" (a "progressive Christian" thing), so does that leave me really being progressive? I think that uncertainty could lead to a practical liberalism (where we don't know anything, so we default to our natural appetites for guidance), but it could also lead to a practical protective conservatism (where we don't know anything, so we consider the things to protect in every different likely scenario and try to figure out how best to manage the task of protecting things).

So far I've mostly talked from a Christian perspective. But I think that MSL does lend credence (or may; I haven't studied this myself) to non-Christian religions (a progressive Christian thing to say?). I don't think that any religion other than a basically Biblical Christianity (a New Wine Christianity) could be the most compatible with MSL, so the Bible would be most-recommended by it for the purposes of seeking God's preferences (a conservative Christian thing to say?). (But I suppose there might be some obscure religion somewhere that does better. In many ways that obscure religion that I hypothesize would have to be a form of Christianity, but perhaps using different terminology.)

We want to obey God, and so we search for his preferences, for wherever they might be: in reason, nature, and in holy books. We focus first on obeying God in the ways that we are most certain: what MSL recommends. Then, when we have time, we implement the less-certain obediences which are found only in the Bible (or perhaps other holy books). (This motion toward obedience is a typically conservative thing.)

The process of seeking ways to obey God, in the uncertain space of holy books, suggests an intellectual project: To seek what to obey (to come to prefer, act, and trust) from sources that may indicate what God wants -- uncertain obedience. Since we are not sure whether these ideas are from God or not, we consider the possibility that they are not from God, possibly even from Satan. Can we implement these "obediences" to what God may want in such a way that we minimize the damage caused in case they are from Satan, and maximize the good resulting, whether they are from Satan or from God?

(Given this project, why not look everywhere there are old values and revive or preserve them (to undo cultural Moloch), using the same metric of "how do we implement this to maximally serve God and minimally serve Satan?". Perhaps some old values are not compatible with God, but even with them, how much can be salvaged?)

The Unpardonable Sin; Satanic Miracles; Love and Trust de Re

I re-read New Wine for the End Times recently, which serves as a reminder of what kinds of New Wine teachings are in the Bible. The New Wine component of MSL can be illuminated by New Wine for the End Times.

One teaching is that of the "unpardonable sin", which is "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit". What does this mean, and should we expect that teaching to be true if all we believe is MSL and not the Bible?

Apparently, according to Philip Brown (author of New Wine for the End Times), it's when you see the miracles that attest to Jesus being the Messiah but you deny to yourself what you see. You say it's from Satan rather than from God. (This from Ch. 7 of the book. Ch. 8, which I read after drafting this, is also on the subject, but didn't change my views as expressed in here. (10th ed. of the book.)).

What Brown says seems like a reasonable inference from the Bible. But does the Bible make sense in this area?

Here's one Biblical passage, for reference (Matthew 12:18-32):

12:18 "Behold, my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my Spirit on him. He will proclaim justice to the nations. 12:19 He will not strive, nor shout; neither will anyone hear his voice in the streets. 12:20 He won't break a bruised reed. He won't quench a smoking flax, until he leads justice to victory. 12:21 In his name, the nations will hope." 12:22 Then one possessed by a demon, blind and mute, was brought to him and he healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw. 12:23 All the multitudes were amazed, and said, "Can this be the son of David?" 12:24 But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, "This man does not cast out demons, except by Beelzebul, the prince of the demons."

12:25 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. 12:26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? 12:27 If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your children cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 12:28 But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you. 12:29 Or how can one enter into the house of the strong man, and plunder his goods, unless he first bind the strong man? Then he will plunder his house.

12:30 "He who is not with me is against me, and he who doesn't gather with me, scatters. 12:31 Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven men. 12:32 Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, neither in this age, nor in that which is to come.

If I saw a miracle, why would I be sure it was from God, or the particular God that is Jesus? Jesus seems confident that Satan couldn't, or wouldn't, drive out demons. But that seems like something I would expect Satan to be able to do (he's the leader of demons) and would want to do (it could be useful in deceiving people). I would say, from an MSL perspective, that we should be cautious in assuming miracles are always done by good beings.

However, being confident that a miracle is from Satan also seems like a bad idea. Satan can use the belief in Satan to deceive people. I think the Jewish religious leaders described in the Gospels were not being rational if they were sure that Jesus' miracles were from Satan. So if they were confident he wasn't doing God's work, they were choosing to see reality a certain way, rather than what was there. That choice could have been made because they wanted to reject Jesus, a priori, and did not want to see the moral fact that he was a good person, doing God's work. (Seeing a moral fact can call for a change in heart.) An enmity against God, whoever he really is, taken far enough, leads a person to reject God permanently. This is a concern in MSL. (Being the enemy of anyone or anything is dangerous if God reminds you too much of them, or turns out to remind you too much of them, or in some other way by being an enemy of them, you become an enemy of God.)

Probably we should lean toward thinking God was behind a miracle if it did something that as far as we can tell favors God's interests. Maybe it makes sense to assume that such a miracle is from God unless we have a good reason to think otherwise. Did the Jewish religious leaders have a good reason to think otherwise? If not, then they should have ascribed Jesus' miracles to God, and trusted Jesus. However, it is reasonable to be cautious in trusting a miracle-worker and only tentatively ascribe miracles to God, watchful for signs that the miracle-worker actually isn't working for God.

If we take Jesus to be authoritative in everything he said (and believe that the Bible is so accurate in reporting what he said that its words are authoritative as a result), and assume that he literally meant what he said here about "a house divided against itself will not stand", then perhaps we conclude that Jesus knew something about the strange nature of demons, how they don't do strategic things like letting evil people cast them out for deceptive purposes. We might imagine demonic miracles happening (as in Midnight Mass, which I know through this video), but actually, they don't happen. All miracles advance the kingdom of God. Maybe they just happen in bad contexts, are deceptive experiential truths. All miracle-workers are from God -- somehow or other, even if they further horror and evil. Or maybe Midnight Mass is fictional to the point that there just aren't miracle-workers in real life who bear such bad fruit as the priest character's miracle-working. Bad miracle-workers in real life are all frauds who fake their miracles. No actual miracles are done by bad miracle-workers.

I don't know enough to say on this issue. Perhaps as a Christian I should bias myself against calling miracle-workers bad. Certainly if I have no reason to think that they are really working for Satan. But I think without assuming that Jesus is authoritative and literally meant what he said (maybe instead he meant "generally Satan doesn't drive out Satan and if you think he's doing that here, you have been ignoring my character and the quality/spirit of my teachings which indicate that this isn't what's going on here"), the "MSLian" should assume that Satan can drive out Satan, and possibly perform other miracles, although they (Satan) would prefer not to, generally, since they don't like benefiting humans. (I use "they" as both singular and plural since "Satan" could be a collective of demons that is coherently led by one of them.)

Aren't we surrounded by miracles? Some laugh at the simplicity of people who see the world that way, but perhaps the simple see reality closer to what it really is, unjaded. What about the miracle of an argument that comes to a valid conclusion and is true in all relevant contexts? Perhaps the one that proves the existence of God would be a miracle, a noetic rather than sensory miracle. People "see but do not see" both what is in the sensory world and in the noetic world.

Brown thinks that when we see God work in undeniable ways, we are forced to either follow God or reject God. (More specifically in Brown's words, follow Christ or reject Christ.) My thoughts: To know God (to really know God) is to love God, or at least to be strongly called to love God. To see God is to be called to love God. When Satan's deceptions are taken away (all the noetic padding we have to protect us from seeing God), we are stuck with God and our hearts, and if our hearts aren't well-trained, we have a higher likelihood of choosing to reject God rather than love God in that decisive moment.

So we have to be protected from God -- this makes some sense from an MSL perspective. Does this mean that I shouldn't try to prove the existence of God? MSL does not spell out everything about God. It is intentionally incomplete, pointing toward what goes beyond public reason (we can only come to fully know God through our own individual experience, following intellectual conscience rather than what can be argued and established publicly). It sort of does, but doesn't fully, preach Jesus. When it talks about God, does it talk about Jesus? I think in a sense (if Jesus is God) then it must (de re), but at the same time, in another sense, even if he is, it doesn't (de dicto), or doesn't narrow down its "Son" person to being the Jesus of the Bible. So the reader of MSL can turn away from believing in Jesus, as such. Also people who only believe in the Metaphysical Organism, or Speaker, may stop before trying to apply the arguments of legitimism. There is room for people to be irrational (assuming that belief in God is the correct conclusion to rational thinking). Irrationality is not ideal, but it's better than hardening. There is the irrationality that leads to hardening or just is hardening, and there is the irrationality that protects against hardening.

So I would say that in trying to convey the truth, we should be respectful, notably, not forceful (nor, by the way, be any other disrespects, like malicious, lazy, or merciless). A forceful conveyer of beliefs can push another person to build a wall of Satanic deception to protect that other person from God. I'm not sure it's likely or possible to force someone to meet God through words (maybe only miracles like Jesus' can force people to meet God?) but the defense mechanism of believing Satanic deceptions protects people from committing the unpardonable sin, and that defense mechanism, or the beliefs formed as a result of that mechanism, can themselves become part of the spiritual calculus that hardens inside them, creating an obstacle to them coming to love God fully.

From Jesus' example, it does seem like it's better to not be sure, rather than deciding to go all in on a theory that rejects the possibility that someone is from God or is good. There are different kinds of unsureness. "Skepticism" may be loaded against believing that someone is from God. Perhaps a "skeptic" has really already decided that someone is not from God, although on the surface they are openminded. There is an unsureness that effectively ignores that the possibilities might each be real, versus one that effectively assumes that each of them might be real. The latter is safer than the former, since it does not close itself to the possibility that the person in question is from God. (One skepticism/doubting/unsureness closes the discussion, but the other seeks to keep investigating.)

So openmindedness is a virtue that can save you from destruction in hell. Wicked people (those who have sold themselves out to opposing God) can be virulently, irrationally committed to their point of view. Some of them manipulate, intimidate, and deceive openminded people, seemingly because they are deeply sure that they are doing the right thing by doing so. Those that they pressure with non-truth-aligned psychological tactics are thus tempted to closedmindedness. We need to have a definition to what we believe in order to resist lies, but that in itself can set us up to not believing the truth. This is a two-step scam of Satan -- we don't believe the lies that are blatant, and hateful to us (step one of the attack), but we do believe the lie that is closer to the truth, which resists the blatant lie more strongly in the psychological/social battlegrounds than if we are really being rational / openminded (step two of the attack).

If this makes sense so far, it doesn't address the idea of "unpardonable". Why can't God forgive this sin of completely selling ourselves out to being his enemy? Maybe "unpardonable" is a shorthand to communicate with us, but the "longhand" is "if you do this sin, you will have destroyed your own ability to repent, so while God could technically forgive you, he will still have to destroy you"? This would make sense in MSL. The unpardonable sin (hardening) is a choice you make at a discrete moment in time. Maybe it is the last in a series of choices to not see what you see and you don't fully realize what you're doing to yourself, as you go down a progression. (I think the previous sentence goes against things I've said before, so I should try resolve this as I go through my old blog posts.) You do this thing, and there is no pardon for it -- you will not seek pardon for it.

(If you love the truth, you will desire in your heart to see what you see. If there is at least a little bit of this desire, God can work with it to restore you to whatever level of love of truth that you need to be saved. If you are concerned about being out of tune with reality, if at least you consciously think you are, or try to think you are, then you have at least a little bit of the love of truth in you. Perhaps if you don't care, then you don't have it in you.)

What about people who are like Judas? Judas felt remorse for what he did to Jesus. But (Brown argues), Judas committed the unpardonable sin, by so knowingly becoming Jesus' enemy. I'm not sure what I think on this subject. I don't think from an MSL point of view that Judas could have committed the unpardonable sin unless he wasn't really repentant, though very remorseful.

(Judas felt remorse, then killed himself. Did he really repent? Maybe so, maybe no. Remorsefulness and regret are one thing, and repentance is another. Judas did not seem to have hope in himself becoming acceptable, and that lack of hope can prevent repentance.)

I've been undecided in MSL on the role of justice. Is it a primitive of reality? Or is it something socially-constructed? If the former, then maybe we have to pay for our sins, unless there is some way they can be forgiven. For us to be saved, all of our sins must be forgivable -- but perhaps there is an exception for the unpardonable sin of selling yourself out completely to being God's enemy? The Biblical explanation for why it's unpardonable is that it involves crucifying Jesus again. One sacrifice covers all sins, and that's the last sacrifice, so there's no more sacrifice if you break your covenant with God, where he says your sins are forgiven if you trust his Son.

I'm not sure what I would assume in MSL, given justice as a primitive. I have written before about how the "Son" of Legitimacy might have to die for everyone's sins (very much like some theories of the Christian Atonement). I've written before that it would make sense to only have the "Son" die once (see Legitimism Without Atonement). One innocent death balances out all sins, but a second innocent death makes the world unjust again. If the "Son" only dies once, does his death cover the sin of rejecting God intentionally? I think so. If somehow that sin weren't covered by the first death, another death could be arranged. But, a person who completely and irrevocably rejects God is not going to be saved even if they are forgiven. They will have to be destroyed in hell. They might be punished for their sins (the hellish part of being destroyed) as a deterrent to people rejecting God, although those sins would be forgiven (the deeds themselves would not be traumatic/irritating/offending/angering to God because of the restoration of justice by the "Son"'s death, but the action of punishing would still be performed for the greater good) (See Is Eternal Conscious Torment Compatible with MSLN?).

Practically speaking, what's the important thing here, that God does or doesn't forgive, or that we do or do not reject him? Sometimes God is much more powerful than we are. He decides what the world looks like, whom we meet, what ideas we encounter, what our brains are like, etc. (There are other actors influencing that as well, but God is the greatest determiner of things.) However, we are the rulers of our own hearts. We can choose to reject God or follow God, and in this we are the ones who have power over God, forcing him to live with the consequences of our decisions.

Whether rejecting God completely and irrevocably (closing our minds to what we really see so that we can no longer be anti-tempted, knowingly calling good things evil so that we don't have to trust God, or whatever else might effectively accomplish that rejection) is pardonable or not by God, is almost a red herring. What is clear, and of greatest practical consequence, is that our effective rejection of God condemns us to destruction.

--

On re-reading, I see that there is a thread in the above that I didn't follow. I said "If I saw a miracle, why would I be sure it was from God, or the particular God that is Jesus?" In Jesus' day, it appears that the spiritual world was seen to be a binary or spectrum with Satan on one side and God on the other. This is more or less the worldview of MSL. MSL gives us (I hope) a fairly high prior belief that God exists and would work in the world, when we encounter apparent spiritual power. But what if you don't believe in the Biblical or MSL worldviews? When you encounter a miracle or a sign from God, you might justifiably not be sure which God, or spiritual being, it's from. Maybe it was Odin, the spirit of Saturn, one of the Dreaming Beings, the God of Islam -- these being spiritual beings that people trust, or have trusted, not to mention all the possible blatantly evil beings. There is an uncountable number of potential ideas about what spiritual power is, if you have no prior belief to ground you.

So in the past, I think I've written something like if your evidence for any one idea of the spiritual world is so low that you could just make up another one with equal rational support, you are not bound to do what that first idea requires of you, since there could easily be an "equal and opposite" idea of what you should do in response to the spiritual world that requires you to do the opposite of what the first one does. Is this how you should approach an apparent miracle, as potentially being explained by anything, and so no practical or fiducial response is required?

Infinities (and thus potential infinities) can be bounded. Of the natural numbers (the whole numbers counting up from 1 (1, 2, 3, ...)), there are an infinite number of odd numbers, and an infinite number of even numbers, but all natural numbers fit in one of those two categories. So the infinities are bounded. Of all the potential gods and spirits we might hypothesize, there are those who are for humans, against humans, or neutral (or we might say that there is a divide that divides the neutral into basically being for humans or being against humans).

And there are only three (or two) kinds of humans, no matter how many humans are born. So we are on the same side as the spiritual beings who are for humans, or against humans, if we are for humans, or against humans. So whatever you think about God's existence, when you see spirits who are working for humans, are you on their side? Do you allow the possibility that a miracle is being done by that spiritual nation or army? Or do you decide that you know that it is not being done by them?

(This is too simple, though. A spirit could be on the side of a certain group of people and not on the side of another. Some humans would prefer a god who favors their group and not another group. But, if we don't know anything else, to see a spirit help one person, I think we should assume that they probably are in favor of all persons, since one person is substantially like all others. Perhaps if you saw someone eating a particular salad, you might think they liked salad in general, with or without some exceptions. This idea could be overturned soon enough, but I think it's a good starting assumption. With spirits doing pro-human miracles, we should be cautiously trusting.)

We have a bias in Western culture against belief in and trust in the supernatural. We are avid consumers of ideas that come through culture, scams though they often are, and even settle on ones that we accept, believe in, and fight for. Why not do the same with supernatural voices? In fact, isn't it the case that many ideas in culture come from "flashes of inspiration"? Isn't it the case that artists feel like something other than them is working through them when they create? A natural reading of this phenomenon is that these accepted modes of being influenced are the tools of spirit beings. So, if we have our favorite bands, philosophers, and intellectual institutions and cultures, why not have our favorite spirits that we listen to? That they are our favorites does not mean they are 100% trustworthy, but we know with ideas, art, and cultures that it is better to trust something than to not trust at all. We trust and even obey our favorite ideas, art, and culture.

If you see a person who is listening to a spirit, does that spirit seem to be for or against humans? You might want to "judge a tree by its fruit". Now, as the Bible points out, people like Abraham and Sarah, and everyone else from Hebrews 11, had hard lives. Could it be the case that the spirit that told Abraham to leave his homeland was a scammer that just wanted him to suffer and make a fool of himself, all in the name of "blessing all the families of the world"? From a Biblical, or MSL, perspective, Abraham was a hero for being that kind of fool. He loved and wanted to participate in what was worth pursuing. But maybe it would have been better for him to not have listened.

Abraham and Sarah were strangers among people who did not share their vision. They probably lived with the indifference of the people around them, grating against them, quenching and starving them. Although I don't think Genesis records this, it's also possible (and likely for people in their situation) that their neighbors were hostile to them. (The experience of the prophets and the early church shows how the descendants of Abraham can experience hostility.) So, if a spirit tells you to do something that is pro-human, isn't that a pro-human spirit? It might not be, it might be some kind of scam to torture good-hearted fools. But who's doing the torture? Isn't it the people (and spirits) who are hostile or indifferent to the pro-human project? Maybe they're the problem, not the spirit that calls a person to the hard life of making things better. It would make a lot of sense for pro-human spirits to call people to fight on their side, but be unable to protect them from all the harm from the fight (if the spirits are not literally omnipotent).

Abraham was able to successfully carry out his small part in obeying the Abrahamic promise. Nothing was keeping him from doing that. Maybe if we live in a dystopia (like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, where individual agency seems to be inevitably crushed by the evil status quo), then someone who hears a spirit calling them to bless the whole world should not listen -- the wisest course of action is to do the little thing that actually can work. I think a lot of people live for some reason as though in an Orwellian nightmare, in this area of their lives, and would not listen to the apparent voice of God. But I think the world we actually live in is not that strictly bounded, and we are still able to plausibly carry out the simple task of abiding by a culture and passing it on to some biological or non-biological descendants (Abraham's task). So for us, as for Abraham, it is rational to pursue the Abrahamic vision, if a voice calls to us furthering it. This doesn't mean our lives will be easy if we listen and follow it, or that we will succeed, but just that it isn't crazy to try.

Why would anti-human spirits call pro-human humans to be more pro-human? It seems like a dangerous gambit. What if the pro-human humans start a religion that is pro-human? It's possible anti-human spirits can scam people with pro-human leadings, but I think our default assumption is that pro-human leadings come from pro-human spirits.

How do we know what is pro-human, or anti-human? There are some things that are clear: dealing with the problems we all recognize, like material poverty. There may be other things that are not so obvious to all of us. Religions (and other antagonists in cultural / axiological disputes) claim to tell us which of the controversial values are actually pro-human, and some of them may be right, and it is worth investigating and potentially trusting what they say. Religions are bundles of values, goals, etc. and some bundle untruths with truths (controversies imply that someone is saying something wrong). But the truth in them probably comes from pro-human spirits, and some of the truth of them is not up for dispute, at least by us (that which aligns with consensus reality). There are certain things that humans can generally know are pro-human (as humans, we have a privileged access to knowing what is pro-human).

If you are really vehement in your rejection of the possibility that pro-human spirits are behind something (especially something that is prima facie good), then you may be closing yourself to the voice of God.

--

Am I in any danger of committing the unpardonable sin? I don't know. This passage in Hebrews relates:

6:4 For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, 6:5 and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, 6:6 and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame.

Maybe I am not, because I haven't tasted "the powers of the age to come" -- or have I? Maybe I have without realizing that was it.

If I reject Christianity, but then repent, does that mean it wasn't the kind of "falling away" that is talked about in this passage? Or is it the case that if I think I repent, I'm not really repenting (in this case "repent" doesn't refer to "a change of my heart" but to something else)?

If I "fall away", does that mean that in doing so I crucify Christ again for myself, or does it mean that in order to do so, I must crucify Christ again for myself? I think that Jesus' blood covers all sins, no matter what. The thing that makes the unpardonable sin unpardonable is that for me to commit it, I have to get in the state of never being willing to ask pardon, of rejecting the forgiveness that comes from Jesus' blood. Jesus doesn't have to be crucified again, in the sense of "dying to cover sins", but he can be crucified again, for someone, when they "despise him to the point of wanting him to die". (Then, despising him so much, they see no value in what he did, and reject his forgiveness.) Am I 100% sure that I interpret things correctly when I believe all this, though?

Should I commit to Christianity out of fear, even though my noetic eyes tell me it might not be true? In that case, I would not be "seeing what I see". Not "seeing what you see" is a risk factor for hardening.

My practical concern is that I find MSL more convincing than the Bible, and yet I have believed in the Bible and had experiences that honestly seem to me to be connected to Jesus specifically, although I am currently not certain if that Jesus was literally the one mentioned in the Bible, or was rather something spoken to me by God because I grew up Christian. I have believed more firmly that they were connected to a being who literally satisfies the Gospels' description of Jesus, but now I am not sure. If I became an MSLian, I might accept the Bible as a guide to preferring, acting, and trusting (including the form of trust that is intellectual belief), out of a sense of generosity toward God, seeking ways to obey him. (The Bible is a likely source of information from God given MSL, because of its resemblance to MSL.) But then, would I have committed the unpardonable sin, by converting away from Christianity to MSL? There is some chance that the Bible is true, in a way that I must accept it in a sort of "conservative" way where I root my belief in its words, rather than rooting them in something outside the Bible. So there would be some chance I had committed the unpardonable sin.

Christians often choose to believe in the Bible more than they can rationally support. (Maybe that's the overwhelming status quo.) When they do so, they choose to obey what the Bible says God wants them to prefer, act, and trust. I don't see how I would be different than them in that. But they would call themselves Christians, and I might not. I think in a sense I would be a Christian, and in a sense I wouldn't be, and that might be enough to have committed the unpardonable sin.

(Taking the name of Jesus is necessary in order to not "fall away"?)

An MSLian believes in the "Son", the person of Legitimacy who bears the burden of finite life, and MSL leads us to think that the Son has particular attributes beyond what MSL specifies (since a person requires more than a few sentences to adequately be described). Could this Son be the Jesus of the Bible? Certainly. So an MSLian who loves and trusts the Son may be loving and trusting Jesus -- only if Jesus actually exists, though. They love and trust Jesus de re, and even de dicto. They can say (de dicto) they love and trust the Son, whoever and whatever he really is, which refers to Jesus -- if Jesus really exists. (By existing, he would fit the description of the Son.)

In that case, the Christian may choose to know less about Jesus (or acknowledge their lack of knowledge) as they identify more as an MSLian, while still being as committed as ever to the person of Jesus.

Would a Muslim object to trying to love and trust the Jesus that actually exists? (I'm not sure, but I'm guessing at least one might not -- the Muslim thinks Jesus is merely a prophet, the Christian that he is God, but the Jesus that actually exists, the way he turns out to be, who can reject?) In that case, if Jesus is God (and has the other important attributes from the Gospels) such a Muslim would have begun to be a Christian, without leaving Islam.

An atheist seeking (and trusting) the truth (the pattern of belief that is trustworthy, including what it points to) could seek and trust whatever the truth will turn out to be, and thus would begin to be a Christian, while still being an atheist.

This is a beautiful thought, and might resolve the issue -- as long as we seek the truth, and seek God as he will turn out to be, we will be okay.

There might be a simpler resolution to my dilemma, which is to say that if something other than me causes me to no longer believe as firmly in the Bible as I once did or sometimes do, then it is not I who fall away. When I see what hadn't been shown to me before (the defeater that lowers my credence in the Bible), or I see what I already should have acknowledged (a gap in my knowledge), then I see what I see, and it is something other than me that determines my reduced level of credence.

--

In MSL, Legitimacy must value what is valuable, and try to keep it existing forever. We are valuable. It is only by our power (by our free will) that we fail to exist forever. Legitimacy (God) must forgive us if there is a way. But we can "sin an unpardonable sin" by cutting off our own ability to repent and be open to God's forgiveness.

I believe I should believe in the Bible (to the extent that I should) through MSL. I also believe that I should believe in at least part of it (I don't know 100% which parts) through the connection that Jesus (the literal God or the imaginal/noetic being) has with spiritual warfare (those on Jesus' side can be trusted, and those against Jesus cannot be). If MSL says something clearly, it is true, and I adjust my interpretation of the Bible to be in harmony with it, especially where the Bible is perhaps lacking in fleshed-out detail, as I think is the case with the unpardonable sin. I think the interpretation that the unpardonable sin inherently involves the sinner cutting off their willingness to repent, and involves their permanent effective rejection of God's forgiveness through Jesus' sacrifice, is not incompatible with the Bible. That would be MSL's way of reading things, and MSL I find intellectually trustworthy. So then the question is, is MSL true?

--

On this important topic, I think it's worth it to "keep score". Why is it that someone contemplating leaving Christianity (not relying on the Bible primarily, not identifying as a Christian) for MSL would not be at risk of committing the unpardonable sin? Can I give a more organized list of reasons?

1. MSL says that God, by his nature as Legitimacy, has to validate that which is valid, and thus preserve everything that is good forever. The only thing that can get in the way of that is a person's free will. We generally do not make final decisions to reject God. Each of us can make that final decision to reject God at some point. But we would know we had done so, and be unable to (that is, unwilling to) undo that decision, forever. So if we are concerned about maybe having committed the unpardonable sin, we can try repenting. If we are still able to intend to change (and a "mere" conscious belief that we intend counts as something) then we have not committed the unpardonable sin. If Jesus is God (and MSL is valid), then all of the above applies.

2. If anyone loves and trusts the truth or God or God's Son (i.e., MSL's Son) as it/he/he really is, then they have not fallen away from whatever reality is behind our beliefs in the truth/God/God's Son. If Jesus exists, he is the truth/God/God's Son, and our beliefs in the truth/God/God's Son ultimately connect to him. If he does not exist, there is no problem.

(What about the name of Jesus? Christianity claims that Jesus is God and the truth. So if we are theists (those who seek to love and trust the God who actually is, actually turns out to be) or aletheists (those who seek to trust trustworthy beliefs (and ultimately, that which those beliefs point to)) then we take the name of Jesus ("God" and "the truth"), if he exists.)

3. Jesus' blood covers all sins. The unpardonable sin is already pardoned. We can reject that forgiveness, but that rejection is only final if we stop wanting to repent, permanently. So if we leave Christianity, for the sake of truth, we can be brought back to Christianity by better understanding. If we leave it out of enmity with God, if that enmity is not complete and final, then we can be brought back.

--

I think those three reasons make sense. Do I 100% know that they are valid? I guess I could have at least a little bit of doubt. (Similar to how I have my reasons to not believe in eternal conscious torment based on MSL, but I can't say for 100% certain that MSL is correct and thus excludes all possible reasons to believe in eternal conscious torment that are out there.)

I have to face the possibility that I could be condemned due to my rejection of Jesus (by diminishing my allegiance to Christianity, or something like that). What do I do with that thought? Suppose I am condemned due to my rejection of Christianity. God's goodness is not diminished. (I imagine some Calvinists may have gone down similar mental paths.) I don't see why I should not work for what is good, for God, even if I don't get to experience the benefits of goodness myself (or only a lifetime's worth, instead of an eternity's worth). Why should I not love and trust God? I can generously love God, even if I have lost my salvation.

It is ethically called-for to preserve your eternal life -- it's what God would want. But if it's too late to do that, there is still a lot of work to do to help others.

--

26 September 2023:

I found a fragment of a blog post that is relevant to this topic:

I think one of the strongest Biblical objections to my writing is the end of Revelation (ch. 21 - 22), where very explicitly it says (21:4) "Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more. The first things have passed away."

22:19 is a very strong statement: "If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book." Is it the case that if I say that I have reason to think that God would mourn the lost, and that we would mourn in order to be in tune with God, that I have "taken away from the words of the book of this prophecy"? It's possible that Revelation is a vision, and thus we should not take it literally. It doesn't take away from the words of a book of poetry to read its symbolism as symbolism. Revelation is an image of a particular kind of life story: going through the cross and then living in peace and rest (like Frodo across the sea?), no longer struggling, having "overcome" like in 1 John. There can be a moment in life like the end of Revelation. And then we decide whether to return to earth to continue God's work, or remain in heavenly retirement.

One reason to think that, if Revelation is inerrant, it must have been symbolic, would be to look at 22:10-11:

22:10 He said to me, "Don't seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand. 22:11 He who acts unjustly, let him act unjustly still. He who is filthy, let him be filthy still. He who is righteous, let him do righteousness still. He who is holy, let him be holy still."

If the time was literally at hand (i.e., the end of the world was coming in a matter of weeks or months), then this advice might make some sense. But if we take this advice literally, over centuries (the distance from the writing of Revelation to now) then we would cause, occasion, allow, etc. massive amounts of spiritual harm. Or if this is not advice, but rather a kind of blessing/curse (a powerful word that makes things so), then the fact that the unjust, over the centuries, sometimes have stopped acting unjustly, and those who were filthy, sometimes no longer are, counts against it being something God literally enacted.

I think that Revelation is either not inerrant (may contain errors), or not to be taken literally in every respect. I do think that it may be an important source of truths from God. In cases where common sense sufficiently strongly rules out it being literally (or inerrantly) true, we should go with common sense. But, as with the idea that the Millennium lasts 1,000 years, if there is no obvious problem, it's wise to consider the possibility that the text is literally true.

If Revelation has errors, should we take them as truth because Revelation threatens us with not having eternal life for "taking away from the words of the prophecy"? They aren't true, no matter how much we heed the threat. Are the errors in a prophecy really prophecy? They might be false prophecy. The prophecy worth heeding and protecting is whatever is true. So then, there is no danger in "taking away from" (failing to heed?) the errors in Revelation, if they exist, and we only need observe the true parts. Would God want us to heed the words of false prophecy?

Should texts have the ability to intimidate us into believing them? Any text that is more than a certain percent trustworthy will seem compelling to us. Then, if it says "If you take away a single word from this, you lose out on eternal life", do we have to accept that and everything else in the text? Even if the text was produced by the Library of Babel and contains some questionable content (literally "questionable", things we would ordinary reject but which we can plausibly accept given the right amount of glory given them).

The possibility of mischief through this kind of channel (some spiritual beings moving someone to write a text which then gains a kind of perennial power over people, enshrining error) seems real to me.

(It could be the case that "taking away from the words of the prophecy" is really about "not corrupting the manuscripts that transmit Revelation".)

--

Keeping score: It sounds like there's a curse on people who change the words of Revelation. If this means that you can't deny the truth of anything in Revelation, then maybe I'm in trouble. But Revelation is a vision which you're supposed to take at least somewhat non-literally. Revelation is written as though the world is supposed to end very soon, but it didn't. That's a pretty major error, if it's supposed to be overall literal. Clearly there are elements of it that are not literally true. If there is error somewhere in Revelation, are we really cursed for not believing it? Revelation can have error from a literal perspective, and if it does, it doesn't make sense for us to believe that error. Or, if Revelation has no errors, but its seeming error comes from a misinterpretation, then if it's questionable how to interpret something, whether literally or not, and how to interpret it non-literally, are we also cursed, for getting things wrong? That doesn't make sense. God doesn't want people to lose their salvation.

Overall, given what else I've written in this post on the unpardonable sin, Revelation's curse on those who alter it only makes sense if it's a case of someone irrevocably rejecting God.

Suicide

How does MSLN deal with suicide?

I don't like writing about this subject, because I feel like I'm checking off the boxes of "things that an ethicist is supposed to deal with" or "things that an ethicist is supposed to make a ruling on as though they know anything". In a way, I would rather state the truth and not my rulings, and let my readers come up with their own rulings for themselves, based on their own understanding of the truth.

However, I have some experience with this topic, and perhaps can write to people who are contemplating suicide, or who might again contemplate suicide.

I don't believe that this life matters as much as atheists or some Christians do. This follows from MSLN. I think that our culture (and biology) scam us into thinking it is "the" thing. People make this life into a god, and they worship it by trying to control people so that they also worship that god. Death (at least, the first death) is more like "falling asleep". (The second death, the result of hardening, really is the end, and is something serious.)

Life is a time to be useful, whether through what we do or who or what we are.

I've never made plans to kill myself, but I've had my mind captured so that that action seemed like the default thing to do.

When I've been closer to suicide, I've done different things. I didn't really want to die, because I had things to do still. I also knew that as someone who was against the "life-god", I paradoxically had a greater duty to not kill myself, because people under its rule would automatically discount what I had to say against it, if they found out I had killed myself. I tried a number of different things to avoid killing myself, such as going to therapists (but the therapists were aggressive or manipulative, and not on my side, so I quit going), taking psychiatric medication for my bipolar disorder (a pre-existing, relatively contained condition made worse by the thing that was making me suicidal), exercising, talking to friends, and maybe other things that secular people pursue, to stave off "falling asleep".

I also prayed, and I wish that that always worked, so that I didn't have to do the secular things. That would say that God, and relating to God, were what saved a person, instead of a bundle of coping mechanisms which could contain God, or not, whatever works for you. The "life-god" cruelly smothers the part of people that wants to love God more than life.

Praying did help sometimes, and gave me the gift of having heard from God, on some occasions.

I think that being suicidal (and experiencing other unbearability to a lesser intensity, over a longer period of time) has given me a sense of confidence, through a confrontation with life and death. I am not sure if I learned all the lessons that I can from that time, but one that I might learn is to understand the full nature of love, which loves when times are good and when they are bad. Love is not full-grown except if it has exercised its ability to deal with the desert, when it goes unrewarded for years. It is also not full-grown if it does not pay a cost. Full-grown love has paid a cost that goes beyond what it is willing to pay. So I hope that by resisting death, I was learning to love something.

My temptation is to say that I was learning to love life, but then the life-god wins and I am pinned down on one side, no longer free to go to God. Is it possible to really love God, when life pursues you? I didn't feel like I was learning to love life by resisting death, and maybe I wasn't, and was only learning to love. And if I can be whole-souled, I love God and those whom God loves, and not the clothes we happen to wear.

The love that comes in the desert and is asked too much of does not feel like love. But it is love. Sometimes, what feels like love, is love, a different kind. But sometimes it only feels like love, and is something fake.

Re: Against responsibility, by Ben Hoffman

This is another in my series of posts where I respond to blog posts on here instead of by leaving comments. (See also Hero's Journey vs. Absurdism vs. Ancient Judaism and Re: Empiricism is Silly as an Epistemic Basis, by APXHARD.)

The post this time is Against responsibility (archived here), by Ben Hoffman.

You should probably read it before reading this, if you want to fully understand my response.

My response to "Against responsibility"

I like utilitarianism, but see how it could go wrong. One way to help might be to "price in" values that are threatened by utilitarianism into the values being maximized. (Like adding honesty or not controlling people to our list of values being maximized.) This could make for an awkward, hard to fully grasp, and therefore less useful "moral software", if enough values are added to that. But maybe that's okay. If there's a really high-stakes problem, which we have enough time to work on, our analysis of what to do should be complicated, cautious, and nuanced. Maybe we should use simplifications of moral software when we don't have the time or computational resources to do an indepth analysis. If you need a quick answer to a moral question, maybe use an established deontological principle. (This suggests a role for intentionally improving the supply of deontological principles, and for looking ahead to do moral analysis ahead of time of high stakes things that, once they come up, may not afford a lot of time for that analysis.)

If I had to specify a reward function that's worth pursuing maximally, it would be: "love God". But part of that is being aligned with God's interests, which are very diverse (and include not wanting people to be dishonest or to control other people). You might think that the answer is "maximize salvation of personal beings", and that that is all that God cares about. It is, but (the MSLN approach is), you have to watch out for your own salvation when you go to do altruistic things, because you are a moral patient, part of the world you are trying to help save. Your own salvation depends on you fully coming into tune with God, and your dishonesty or controlling tendencies are an obstacle to that. Also, Satan has a way of using the sinfulness of prominent theistic altruists to make a horror of them and drive people away from God. (Similarly with prominent secular altruists, who are not as closely associated with God, but are associated with other good things.)

I think that practically(/ethically) speaking, we are in a position where virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology are all valid and there are ways all of them call on us. There are times the most ethical way to proceed is to think like a virtue ethicist, other times like a deontologist, other times like a consequentialist.

I think that epistemically speaking, though, reality is finite, countable, aggregable, including what is good, and the good is to be maximized.

Maybe it isn't too hard to count the good. It's just the number of personal beings who can live in heaven, and the thing that makes them fit for heaven is their holiness (how in tune with God they are).

This sounds kind of like evangelical (consequentialist?) metaethics merged with holiness (deontological/virtue ethical?) metaethics. Perhaps that is the characteristically New Wine way of doing things.

--

"Against responsibility" makes me think about my own personality and how it interfaces with effective altruist ideology. I found Singer's Drowning Child Illustration to be awful, true, and powerful. But I don't think I'm really an effective altruist as a result.

I've had that Illustration somewhere in my mind for about 9 years now. At first I was struck by the horror it implied about human beings, as well as by a call for mourning over that, and a drive to move myself. I think these three initial results are spiritually trustworthy and valuable. I was not driven to an exceeding sense of responsibility over the state of the world. I was driven to a sense that my time is not my own, and also that my money is an instrument to be used for good. I think it helped me to develop the sense that I am morally required to do my work.

But, my work is limited, and is not something that I consciously choose. I don't want to claim that I am especially guided by God in what I write (although if I write true things, then I am doing his will), but I do have the sense that I am given most of the materials and motivation for my writing from something/someone outside myself.

I'm not really capable of bending my work according to some kind of ethical formula. That includes expanding it. So, although my work has brought me into stressful situations that were in themselves unsustainable due to the people around me, I don't think I've ever been a true "workaholic". I don't think that my work rules over me or controls me. Instead, it feeds me.

I don't really like competing or controlling, or in general staking my inner life on making the world around me be a certain way. Also, I have a somewhat quiet and weak personality, but also a persistent personality, and on top of that seemingly many constraints on what I am from outside myself, that aren't always socially legible. So in many ways I am who and what I am in a strong way. I think the tendencies and values just mentioned in this paragraph help to blunt or even weaken the force of the EA ideology that is in me both to do good or ill, and (speaking off-the-cuff in this "blog comment") I would say that I don't find myself troubled by the problems discussed in "Against responsibility". But, I have been shaped by EA ideology, and it has helped me to do more good.

I think there is something kind of Buddhist or Taoist in my difficulty in orienting myself to make the world be a certain way, and also somewhat like in the Bhagavad-Gita (detach yourself from the fruits of your action). Maybe I would say in "what I am", I lean Eastern, but in "who I am" or "what I value" or "where I want to go", I lean Jewish or Jewish-descended. And that might describe Jesus. So maybe that mixture of "who" and "what" is a good goal for those who want to follow Jesus.

Apolitical Identity

Originally written October 2020.

[Note: when I use "humanism" and "theism" in this post, I mean the ethical position that favors humans and human interests (especially secular human interests) -- humanism -- and the ethical position that favors God and God's interests -- theism.]

In this presidential election, I have decided to not vote. Along with other abstinent life choices (celibate, vegetarian), I can add "apolitical".

[And in fact I did not vote in that election.]

As Orwellian as it may sound, abstinence is freedom. The freedom that comes from being apolitical is being able to be on everyone's side, or if not that, to refuse to be on the side of anyone who wants to come after someone else. In 2016, I voted for a third party candidate. But, because the third party candidates are coded "blue" or "red" to a large extent anyway, I set myself against the other half of the country. I would like to someday leave my default "blue" environment and be considered trustworthy by people in "red" environments. This might help some with the overall problem of polarization in America. I would like to be listened to by as many different kinds of Christians as possible, and "red" America has a lot of professing Christians.

Although I have always identified as a Christian, from around the age of 13 until perhaps a year or two ago, I was trying to move more into secular environments. If you eat secular food enough, you'll get secularism in your bloodstream. I catch myself being something other than Christian quite a bit. I've leaned conservative and liberal at various points in my life, and now I want to be neither conservative nor liberal, but instead simply Christian.

Some Christians (for instance, some Calvinists and Catholics, and perhaps others) want to have a particularly Christian way to order society, sometimes to work for Christian interests in the political system. It's possible that I could endorse a similar view. But I would have to do a study on what the Christian way to order society would be, and the Christian way to try to bring that about, if such a way even exists. This could take me years to bring to a reasonable state of completion, sufficient to cause me to feel like I had genuinely Christian political opinions, and not just secular opinions that I, a Christian, find appealing.

Other Christians, when trying to be Christian about politics, choose to be apolitical. In this way they can at least shed the identities of "Republican" (conservative humanist) or "Democrat" (liberal humanist), and perhaps highlight that they are theists, putting God's interests ahead of autonomous human interests as do the secular humanists. [Secular humanists put autonomous human interests before God's interests.]

Both Republicans (as Republicans) and Democrats (as Democrats) are secular humanists. Secular humanism is seen in how you trust, not just the words you say. So Christians in office, even people who ran trying to appeal to a Christian base, are not necessarily Christians in how they approach reality. You can carry the flag of Christ and act like you don't believe in God, not just by some kind of moral indiscretion, but in the way that you are fearful of things a faithful person wouldn't fear and the way you do not look for the deeper and better things a faithful person would look for. Being apolitical is a chance to get free from secular humanistic thinking and adopt a Christian-only worldview.

However, this apolitical stance comes at a cost, which is having less of a chance to intervene in public affairs. A truly apolitical person might have less of an influence in stopping something like the Third Reich. If Germany was to have some kind of party governing it, one which was successful, filling the role that the Nazi party took on [could/would take on] and thus blocking it from coming to power, it would be run by humanists, not by apolitical theists. And if the church sits by while secular interests dominate the public sphere, that may be worse for both theists and secular people. Currently, politics is all about humanism rather than theism, and maybe that's for the best, even in a Christian society. But the question of "what is human well-being?" is one that we haven't figured out as a society. Christians should be heard in that discussion.

We could say that Christians are more essentially interested in advancing the Kingdom of God. And humanists are more essentially interested in advancing civilization. [A definition of "Kingdom" and "civilization".] If you save your child from a speeding car, he or she will grow up a certain way and will probably spend more of his or her waking life furthering civilization (on the job) than in furthering the Kingdom. The love in your family feeds capitalism, resource extraction, technological and cultural development, and the geopolitical interests of the nation you live in. So even apolitical people are voting, just not in an election.

Politics is all about humanism, at least ostensibly. So I could try, as an apolitical person, to still try to further human well-being, to vote in civilization in various ways, while staying away from identifying with someone I am ultimately not: a warrior for a secular army. I can aspire to be someone whose existence and activities further the interests of both "blue" and "red" people, or people on either side of any other politicized divide, and most importantly, the interests of God.

Having said all this, I do hope that someday I will have gone through the study I mentioned above, of what is the truly Christian way to interact with civilization. If the result of that is that it seems right to vote (I am making political decisions that are really Christian, and I have "malice towards none" / I maintain my independence from political feuds), then I will.

[Implicitly, I'm not rejecting humanism entirely. I could say that humanism follows from theism. Being apolitical enables me to distance myself from some sociologically and psychologically compelling humanistic identities (Republican, Democrat, etc.) which commit me to a version of humanism that tends to exclude theism -- and which also has defects (polarization) in how it pursues even secular humanism.]

--

[It's interesting to read this in October 2021. I don't find the question of polarization to be nearly as salient to me right now. I think that in an election year, like 2020, we are more political than in an off-year. Also maybe 2020 was a particularly vivid year in terms of protests.]

[Identities are partly about how you feel. If you don't find an identity relevant, can you hold it? Maybe not to as great an extent. If there's nothing at stake, can you hold an identity? This is an interesting question to ask of Christians. Do Christians feel like there is anything theistic that is greatly at stake? If so, then they might probably more often hold to the identity of "Christian" deeply and firmly. But if Christians are only concerned with secular concerns (are you healthy? will you live a long physical life on earth?) then they perhaps can't be Christians as deeply and firmly. I would say that not-holding-firmly is itself a threat that raises the stakes, because we are saved by making it 100% of the way to being in tune with God, including valuing what he values on some important level.]

[I haven't relinquished my political identity of apoliticalness, even in an off-year. At least, it's still on the books in terms of how my life is set up. As mentioned here, I chose not to vote in the California gubernatorial recall election in 2021. Identities are fresh when new but are paid for by work over time.]

[This could apply to the Christian identity. Though the feeling might dissipate somewhat, can you work faithfully in accordance with the feelings you used to have? I don't feel that to love apoliticalness is inherently necessary, but I do feel that to love Christianity in some proper form (insofar as doing so is necessary to fully loving God) is inherently necessary, and if I can't feel that way at times, in those times I should at least be open to the time in the past when they were fresh, as well as to the hoped-for near or far futures where they are fresh again. Remaining faithful in the desert is being open to the times of freshness.]

Don't Worry, Work

Sometimes I'm disconnected from the world, but other times I engage. I read what's on Twitter, when I can't seem to find anything else to do. There's something about really thinking about the particulars of what is going on in the world that can put anxiety into a person's body.

I feel like I'm learning something, by reading the feed, and that means I'm accomplishing something. But in reality, the amount of work getting done is small compared to the sense of work getting done.

What can we do to solve the world's problems? We are so helpless. All we can do is read the news and feel the appropriate human feelings. It's the best we can do -- or is it?

It's entirely possible that the world can't be fixed. It will fall apart. It's possible that it can be and it won't. Nobody really knows.

It may be somewhat helpful for us to talk about how we do things. I don't know if the following is something that would help anyone else, but this is how I try to handle these situations of news anxiety. It's a little like Stoicism or the Bhagavad-Gita. It combines two of Jesus' teachings: 1) Don't worry, and 2) work.

Here is my take, which might innovate (for better or worse):

as to 1 -- You have to be willing to die, and to suffer. And to see those you love die, and suffer. And to be willing to assume that civilization will die out -- none of your efforts will come to anything, and everything will be destroyed. It may be difficult and not up to you to feel all that willingness as true, in your body, but you can defy that, you can be yourself and as yourself accept total loss, and it's possible your body will follow. It is easier to bear this if you believe in God -- even the thought that everything will perish is easier to bear if God is real;

-- and as to 2: dispose of your resources as diligently and effectively as you know how (start by disposing of them a little more diligently and effectively). If you can't figure out something to do to deal with "the situation RIGHT NOW", then try to work on solving similar situations 5 years from now, or 10. You can always learn something now that might help you later. Try to think deeply and invent plausible dreams. Work on solving a small problem, even if you can't solve a big one.

How would God judge you? Does God say "They didn't save the world... I'm angry"? Why would we be able to save the world? Maybe we can. But is there a good reason why humans necessarily ought to be able to? However, if the Bible is any indication, God gets angry at us if we don't use our ability to work.

The malaise we feel from the news is fear. Fear is somehow a virtuous thing. But the Bible says, in Proverbs 26:13:

The sluggard says, "There is a lion in the road! A fierce lion roams the streets!"

If responsibility turns into fear ("I need to save the world; I need to know the news") and fear turns into inaction, then responsibility is doing the same job as laziness in keeping us in bondage: perhaps in Proverbs, to the bed; but in our cases, to our screens. And it may be possible that deep inside us sometimes it is laziness, the laziness of following the string of pearls in the feed, fed to us, which causes us to feel so discouraged, so incapable of motion.

Guilt implies hope -- if you hold yourself accountable, you can discover strength.

--

Sometimes it's better to rest than to work. If reading the news is restful, as it can be for some people, then that could be good. Somehow for me, reading the news, or any kind of social media for very long, simultaneously promises me rest and work while giving me neither. A friend of mine says that social media steals your time.

--

I'm writing this [16 January 2021], having trouble sleeping -- somewhat from the news, somewhat from life. When I stop typing, the anxiety comes back in my body. So I try to make the best of my time, by writing. This writing may encourage you -- or likely enough, a future version of me.

Sin, About Us

Sometimes we think that sin is about us, about who we've proved ourselves to be, about how we've messed up, about how we are frauds, about that thing that we did, about us.

Guilt can be self-focused. When guilty, we can forget the people we've harmed. Even in the midst of feeling guilty about what we did to them, we focus on what we did, that one moment, instead of the bigger picture of who they are. And guilt can make us forget any outside reality, outside of that one act we did. It traumatizes and obsesses us, sometimes more than the person we harmed.

Guilt over the seen and vivid can blind us to our responsibility to the persons we can't see, including God.

Position and Rate of Change

Students of calculus or physics know about position and velocity. Velocity is the rate of change of position.

If you have wealth, then where are you going? If you lack, then you move, there is velocity to you. But if you are perfectly satisfied, you don't move. You have no velocity, and so you lack lacking.

If you are perfectly wealthy, you are not attracted to anything or anyone. You are alone on a deeper level.

It matters that you are attracted to something or someone, and it matters to what or to whom you are attracted. Desire is a lack, and part of love is desire, so in order to love, you must be somewhat poor.

Are you poor, or is poverty ruling over you? If you don't eat for 10 hours, is it you who become hungry, or just your stomach? But it is possible for you, the real you, to be oriented toward something, to be attracted, to lack.

Experience Bodies

Epistemic status: provisional.

What is a body? A person has a body -- perhaps a person is a body in the sense that what is truly and always your body is you.

A person can be affected by external things through their body. I can be affected in a powerful way by something striking my body. Also my body responds to my will. As I type, my fingers are mostly faithful to my personal intentions. If my fingers use the "backspace" key, they are more faithful in the end. I can move many parts of my body if I want to. But not all. I can't consciously cause peristalsis, or a heartbeat, for instance.

Loosely, roughly, then, a body is that which is a way for external beings to affect me, and through which I can affect myself, or external beings.

If we consider the world of material objects, the body is that which has arms, legs, hands, and feet, and so on. But if we consider the world of consciousnesses, then everything that I can see can affect me, and I can affect many things in my experience. Thinking simantically, everything that I perceive, I alter (in some sense; to some extent) so that it has the meaning that I see in it. By looking attentively at something, I can make it mean something to me, though what it means is spoken to me in accordance with who I am, by another. So then everything that I, personally, am consciously aware of is part of my body. The physical body has parts that are more, or less, in subjection to my preferences, and so it is with my experiences.

My experience body, then, is the body of all of my experience in a moment. I have it, and it is me, in analogy to how from a materialist point of view, I have a physical body, and am a physical body.

Defend Against Feelings

Some people are stronger than others in who they are. Those people should mourn, on purpose, because they will not be ruled over by their mourning. They will remain themselves even in the presence of negative feelings.

But other people are not as strong in who they are, and feelings can overwhelm them. It might be best for such people to become stronger in who they are, so that they can mourn, can see the honor in the loss of something, can faithfully register that some good is gone, or foregone.

You can feel sad in such a way that it is the sadness that is happening, and you are not really the one being sad. But in that case the sadness rules you and punishes you. So then you try not to open yourself to mourning, for fear of letting the sadness in. In the long run, you might seek some way to become a stronger person, become more personal. In a sense, to become more strong-willed, without even your own will ruling over you. But in the short term, it may be best to defend against sad feelings. Or any other feelings that possess and usurp.

Approach With Courage, Believe in the Existence of Yourself

Who are you, really? What are you responsible for, in any situation? Some people are unable to voluntarily move, except for their eyelids, by which they can communicate -- or some, not even that. What are they responsible for? Who are they? The connection there is "who you are is what you choose". Maybe that's an overly simplistic view of human nature, but I think it at least captures something important, and I tend to want to favor it.

We face limitations due to aging -- we may all face that, either now, or, if we survive, in our future. There are other limitations besides that, which occur with less universality. Are we defined by our limitations? It depends on what we mean by "we". I would say that the paralyzed person is not defined by their paralysis. If they were put in a different body somehow, they would physically act out their personality. The body is accidental, not essential. I can't hold a paralyzed person responsible for not moving -- maybe partially so if they knowingly chose to paralyze themself (a rare occurrence), but even then, they would no longer be able to change their minds after the fact, and would have to live with the decision of their past self, who increasingly would be becoming to them a separate person. Likewise, I can't hold myself 100% responsible for the body or life that I'm stuck with. To an extent, it's not me. Essentially, it's something stuck to me, and to a large extent, other things than my choices are responsible for it.

However, it is more true that the way that I approach life emotionally, with my inner eye, and with my inner will, and the way I choose to think, does express who I am. If I were completely paralyzed, but still myself and still conscious, how I thought about life, and paralysis, would be me, would be an exercise and expression of me being myself. The state of my heart in the present moment is a root responsibility that I am always capable of disposing of properly.

So in this space of minimal limitation, in the world of what I choose to think and how I choose to see, I can express and exercise my heart (the true preferences and intentions within me) by having courage. To approach whatever there is, and whatever limits me, without flippancy, arrogance, impatience, or despair, but rather with courage.

--

Forces like depression and anxiety can seem to be me, and I can feel, in despair, that they are more powerful than me, that I must bow to them. In a sense, perhaps I must. If I must bow to them, how can there be a God? My mind can shut down to the spiritual and intellectual world if I identify so totally with my limitations. I can live in a narrow world, made up of practical concerns and the desire for the luck or therapy for me to not be beset by my psychological problems. If I am so limited, in a world where the only relevant thing is my narrow well-being, and God is not admitted as a person who can address that narrow well-being, of course for me God does not exist. I might say that he exists, or halfway believe it, but on the level of trusting, I do not believe that he exists.

In some way, the sense that I am not myself in the face of mental forces connects with my inability to say "God exists". Perhaps because in order for me to believe in the existence of God, I need to believe in the existence of myself. Myself, a free-willed being, who sees things according to his own lights, and thus is able to see the intellectual and spiritual world, things which are true in themselves, apart from what is forced on me, things which I must find unbearable or attractive in the pragmatic, personal, social, psychological world.

In a natural theology like simantism, it is important that I exist, a person, and that I can relate to what is not-me. From this, there is relationality, and I am not alone. From this, and for other reasons, if I am a person, then the universe can be personal. There is a give-and-take between me and what is not-me that suggests that what is not-me is a person. There is an analogy between myself, who is conscious, and what is not-me, which then might ought to be seen as conscious. If I, a consciousness, choose and cause, then what I experience might ought to also be chosen and caused by a conscious person. For these reasons, I might think that I live in relationality to all that is, and that all that is is a person. But if I am not a person, then maybe it is not.

If I exist, on some level, I am awake, in a way that I am not when I somehow think that I don't exist.

Perhaps too, if I slip below the waves into non-existence, I can no longer relate to God, can no longer really be a moral person or an obedient person, for not being able to be myself, choosing. I can still go through the motions of life -- who wouldn't? I can flow away from unbearability and toward what is attractive, automatically and inevitably. But on a deeper level, I can't relate to God, and on a deeper level, what we can't or don't relate to, doesn't exist to us.

But as long as I can recognize facts, I recognize the fact that I exist.

--

You have real limitations, but if you can remember, you always exist. And then there is always some level on which you can be courageous, given whatever limitations you have.

Broken and Stuck

I used to have a cassette player when I was younger, maybe a little fancy, that had different modes. It could play in reverse, but there were other modes as well. It's been a while since I had it, so I don't remember specifically what they did. I do remember that there were some switches that, after many years of use (or abuse), were either broken, so you could move them without changing anything, or they were jammed to one setting, I can't remember which -- either way, you couldn't affect the cassette player on that dimension. The cassette player was broken and stuck.

Sometimes things become less stable when they're broken. But other times, being broken makes you more stable, by making you stuck. Maturity is (in part) a process of becoming more stable. But it may come through being broken. There can be an emotional meaning to "broken", a sense of being messed-up. But there's also a functional sense. Things just don't work the way they used to.

When do you need to be right? When you have something valuable to say. Nobody is right about everything, but if you're in an environment where people are trying to shut you up, and will use your mistakes as reason to discount you as a voice, overall, and you have something valuable to say, you had better act like you're right about everything. So you gravitate toward being stuck.

Can you forgive people? You need to be on your own side, if you're in an environment where people are trying to shut you up. You can forgive people on some levels. But like the word "listen", there's a stronger and weaker version of the term "forgive". To listen to someone is to really take into account what they're saying, which in some contexts is to act in accordance with what they say, not just be able to make sense of the words they say. To forgive someone can mean, in its stronger form, "to enter into a relationship as close as or closer than the one that was lost". If you do that, there is no doubt that you have forgiven someone. Do all relationships need to be restored? Maybe not. But if there is a good reason to restore a relationship, can you do that? Or are you stuck, unable to let go of your threatenedness?

Can you deal with your own contradictions? In the old days, we would have called these hypocrisies. Being a hypocrite is too much fun for our days. Nowadays, we are self-contradictory, holding contradictory views, and not living out the views we have, out of fatigue and brokenness. We want to move the switch that makes us turn toward consistency, but as it's broken, it moves too easily, disconnected from the mechanism that really changes us on the inside.

Can you convert to a religion or worldview -- to any religion, or any worldview? Can you see things as being true that you didn't see as being true before? On what level? Can you deeply change as a person, even if it is merely to acknowledge the facts? If your will and intellect can't affect the rest of you, because the switches are broken or stuck, then it is not so easy.

Can you hold to a religion or worldview? You may try to stay in tune with your religion / worldview, by repeatedly moving the switches back to "ADHERING". But if the switch is broken, you may not really adhere, no matter how often you get the switch in the right place.

You can feel stuckness in your brain, a physical sense of rigidity. And the broken switches can be felt. For some people, just recognizing that there are these problems can help to fix them.