Tag Archives: religion

Jun 23 2023

Sufficient Reality

The nature of consciousness is generally considered to be a big mystery. Is it the result of only physical, material processes, or is there something immaterial involved? Many experiments show a strong relationship between material and mental processes and a common viewpoint is that these correlations indicate that the material processes cause the mental processes. In other words, there is an implicit assumption that material processes are sufficient for generating the mind, that nothing else is needed beyond the material.

Of course, it’s well known that correlations do not mean causation – just because two items seem highly related, that does not mean that one must be causing the other. One reason for this is that the same thing can occur when one item is necessary for the system to function, even if it is not sufficient.

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Apr 20 2023

Complex Motives

Discussions of the weakness of religion sometimes end up attempting to address God’s motives with questions that start with an observation about God’s character, then question that observation based on what is seen in the world.

These challenges often take the form of: “Why would a loving God allow…?” or something similar.

The idea being that the characteristic in question, in this case a loving nature, is incompatible with what we see in the world around us.

One of the common responses to this from Christians is essentially that God’s ways are unfathomable to us, so we should not expect to understand why some things happen. However, this approach is often rejected, being seen as something of a copout – avoiding the question altogether rather than addressing it.

However, note how reasonable this answer seems when talking about human behavior. It’s well known that we need to be careful when trying to understand someone else’s motives because there are so many factors we don’t know.

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Feb 23 2023

Seeing Confirmation Bias

Photographers often strive to find new ways of seeing the world. In a sense, this involves looking for new information, which is a healthy way to live. Unfortunately, we tend to avoid this due to our innate tendency for something called “confirmation bias”.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. –Wikipedia

Confirmation bias makes it harder for us to adopt new perspectives, perhaps even to learn new ideas, because we will tend to avoid information that could lead us to change existing beliefs.

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Jan 6 2023

The Science-Faith Debate

There is an ongoing debate about the relationship between science and faith. Many believe that they are incompatible, that they are at “war” with each other. Others contend that they have nothing to do with each other, an idea sometimes expressed by describing them as “non-overlapping magisteria” — the idea that they only apply to unrelated aspects of reality and human experience.

However, an underlying assumption with both views is that we understand the universe well enough to be certain about our assessments. However, what if this isn’t true? What if it’s better to take a more humble position and admit that we cannot make a clear enough assessment, and therefore need to continue exploring the issues?

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Dec 15 2022

Implications of Consciousness


The overall theme of this blog is that we don’t know enough to be certain of metaphysical truths.* Because of that, and the fact that metaphysics deals with things beyond physical reality, we need to think about those topics using tools other than science, and move discussions away from trying to prove one view or another, to comparing differences and explaining our preferences.

A good example of this is our limited understanding of consciousness. Although many believe that consciousness is only a physical phenomenon, that view is by no means universal even among secular researchers. Other possibilities, such as the philosophical idea of panpsychism, have been proposed and seem to be growing in popularity.

Given the diversity of viewpoints among subject matter experts, the only rational position to take is some level of agnosticism regarding this topic. In other words, we need to acknowledge the possibility of immaterial minds even if that’s a viewpoint with which one personally does not agree.

To me, it seems that the possibility of an immaterial mind, whatever that might look like, has significant implications for an overall understanding of reality.

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Nov 23 2022

Dance of the Thorns

Sometimes beautiful forms emerge from collections of harsh things, like this set of prickly weeds. Individually they look thorny, but together they evoke graceful movement.

As I’ve pondered my Christian faith and the reasons that it seems like the best answer to life’s deepest questions, a similar pattern has emerged.

It’s easy to get lost in troubling details when thinking about the faith, where some things seem thorny, difficult to deal with. Apparent contradictions, senseless violence, archaic social values, and historical events like the Crusades, can make the history uncomfortable.

And yet, like the weeds in the picture, these individually uncomfortable things seem to be part of something larger that is beautiful, even graceful.

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Oct 20 2022

Convergence

With so many different viewpoints and sources of information today, how can we best tell when something is true? That’s a big question, but one helpful thing is to notice when separate lines of evidence converge to a consistent answer.

One of the problems with interpreting sources is avoiding confirmation bias. This is when we look for sources that say what we already think. It’s a very common human trait and is largely amplified by social media and today’s biased news sources.

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Aug 25 2022

Finding Meaning

Here’s a famous question: “What is the meaning of life?”

The question captures a basic human yearning for relevance, to know that there is a purpose to our existence.

Some assert that the purpose is what we make it, that we invent it. Others claim that it is the result of searching, something we discover. In the end, the choice between these two views is an individual one.

But another way to look at it is whether purpose and meaning is strictly personal, or whether there is a community aspect to it. Since no one lives completely as an island, it seems that the most complete answer is to be part of a shared purpose, one that allows individual expression but yet is part of something greater.

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Jun 9 2019

Investigating Consciousness

multicolored pebbles on white ceramic bowl

Photo by Steve Johnson on Pexels.com

Imagine you have a bowl full of little chunks of unknown material. You want to determine what sorts of materials are in the bowl so you decide to sample some and analyze it. You gather a sample from the bowl by placing a magnet in it and removing whatever sticks to it. Upon analysis you discover that everything in the sample is made of metal, and so conclude that all the material in the bowl was metal.

Do you see anything wrong with this scenario? Continue reading →

Jan 2 2019

Why Rational Ethics?

There's_no_crying_in_baseball!In searching to understand natural worldviews, one of the things that keeps coming up is the need to develop a system of morals. Ethics is generally part of religious worldviews, but it seems generally accepted that ethics in a natural worldview are developed from reasoning, logic, and some sort of shared values. For example, sentience is often considered valuable, so that particular shared value can form the basis of an ethics.

After looking at several rational, naturalistic approaches to defining values and morals, I’m left wondering about the general approach taken in developing these frameworks. One of the common elements seems to be that they are based on an assumption that the process can be approached as a rational exercise. In other words, given one or more shared values as described earlier, one can then apply some sort of logical or rational reasoning or thought process to develop an ethical framework.

The problem with this is that modern psychology and cognitive science have pretty clearly shown that humans are not generally rational, logical thinkers. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that rational thought plays no role at all, simply that it’s only one of several things that go into our mental processing, especially regarding things like setting values.

Seems like this raises a question: Should we really expect human ethical frameworks to be based on rational thought instead of taking into account all that it means to be human? In other words, why should we expect it to be possible to rationally establish human values and morals when humans themselves are not rational? * Continue reading →