How to Leave Democracy and why the current trends of biological relativism matter

Google  is “a microcosm of America" in what it allows--or rather disallows. After public pressure, the company fired an employee because of expressing his view on a open company forum that biology could have an effect on why there are more men coders than women. Now the tech giant allows moderators to remove employees from open forums, and this will include any views that biology is related to sex. They can talk about sexual expression on these company forums and other political issues, but they cannot suggest that biology is related to sex. That would be grounds for firing--consider James Demore.

Biology has no relation to sex--that's the only claim tolerated so that bias is prevented. Our society is afraid of limiting identity, so it imposes these restrictions. It's not that some new evidence or proof exists, but the heart of the government--"we the people"--has come to sympathize with new causes that defy traditional mores [and epistemology].

Everyone needs to acknowledge it is inappropriately offensive to suggest that sex is in any way connected to or limited by biology. Company clubs routinely meet to discuss religious texts, and multiple texts suggest biology has to do with marriage and/or sex. What are your options? You can disagree with the religious text. But if you agree, there are legal grounds for your dismissal, right? All employees [in these companies] who do not follow federal standards will be weeded out by this system.

Really, the system seems compassionate and protective and perhaps this is because individual feelings are protected [the right to self-determinism I think the UN is calling it] by this relativism. At the end of the day, this new system removes any objective or transcendent basis for how we relate to others--at least with regards to sex--and this allows for more rapid societal change. The society takes the role of shaping itself, and becomes it's own authority, contra conservative views of God, biology, etc. Properly, such a system is called socialism--the society defines everything.

But socialism cannot elevate everyone to be an authority, since there're are contradictions in points of view. So socialism has to be the power of some people over others, preferably for their good. But contradictions--inherent to relativistic morality--are sure to still appear, and that's when I think things will really get bad. I doubt those shouting down free speech--a somewhat related topic--will non-violently allow their freedoms to be taken, even though people with a spiritual worldview will have more restraint. Those who then try to restore democracy may lack the virtue and grace required to birth it.

In an age of globalism, the chaotic swirl of intermingling cultures should leave us looking for broad cultural idea trends and systems--as well as their consequences. The right to self determinism manifests itself one way in our country, but it's an international movement. It may be that the significance of the present cultural moment can only be directly apprehended by supercomputers, daemons, and God. But we have a responsibility to consider what will occur when the pattern observed at Google takes the place of Highest power in the land. Please consider.




Afterthoughts: One Google employee discussion reportedly resulted in a commitment to find a way to undermine religious communities with regards to their view on transgenderism, so Google discussion may be related to creation of California AB2943. The bill's first reference in Section II pits transcendent "telic" values against "sexual and affectional needs and desires"--saying that the only valid way of resolving any tension is by denying the transcendent values. (See Pacific Justice letter on AB2943 for analysis.) Religious conservatives are identified as those who would cause this tension by supporting transcendent values. There's some pragmatic genius apparent by appending this undermining of religious values to a consumer fraud bill.

Afterthought: Companies need to respond to legal threats, but how do they prevent themselves from being bullied by mass groupthink with inconsistent morals?

Who builds your house? (National Day of Prayer is May 3)

As we prepare for National Day of Prayer, please consider, what makes for a lasting and united house? (This year's NDoP theme is Unity)

The same foundation brings prosperity for every house, whether we’re talking about a family, a church, or a nation. What foundation could naturally be the source of all good, you ask? :)

Let’s find out by looking at the start of Psalm 127, A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon.

Unless the LORD builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

When building a “house” for myself, how many times have I been pridefully demanding, unnecessarily stressed, or noticeably unrestful apart from God? On my own, I know not the way of blessedness, and struggle aimlessly against it. I miss the mark (sin).
As Christ would say, consider the ravens! They aren’t all stressed out storing up their 401Ks, fulfilling their duties to their young, or soaring the friendly skies.
These are their benefits of living in their identity--the nature that God gave them. 

So we too need to know that we have a loving heavenly Father. This Dad—the Great King—extends amnesty and deepest friendship to all rebels who will lay down their arms and stop fighting him. Sinners can be reconciled to a holy God. Because God’s identity is unwavering and sure, we can have solidarity in our identity! He’s the foundation of it all*, no?

Where else can we turn?** I know Christ has the words of eternal life.
Should we trust in tanks or bombs? Harsh words or human diplomacy? Perhaps our livestock and economy? The folly of entrusting one’s life and blessedness to such things is well documented.

In contrast to death--and its root: sin--in the world, Christ says “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) So let’s humbly seek him and build on the only firm foundation, even Christ, so that we might not be ashamed in his Presence. Agreed?! :) 

-- Daniel



End notes:
*Evil is just the corruption of good. Therefore, since God makes the good and we can corrupt it, God is still the foundation for every complete thing!

** Some trust that humanity will learn to transcend itself. We might be lured to trust technology instead of God since it promises to make you a new person. Technology allows us to make decisions that previously only God and chance could make, designer babies, etc. But as CS Lewis points out in The Abolition of Man and That Hideous Strength, every new advance over human nature makes us both the conqueror and the conquered. Power over human nature really just means the power of some people over others. I think the real implications of people trying to redesign humanity will only be evident if we seek to understand humanity as integrated relational wholes, morally corrupted but made in the image of God. If any nation—however great—swerves from the path of truth by ignoring key aspects of human nature, still the proverb will apply: ‘the way of the false… is hard’ (Pr 13:15). So let’s “be salt and light” for the good of all. (See Matthew 5:13-16, 1 Cor 12:7, John 15:5)

Chaos and Contradiction: Applying Personal Relativism to Everyone

Why does defining identity in terms of personal human autonomy conflict with traditional rights to life, freedom, and happiness? Because transcendent human rights are definite, whereas autonomy implies the ability to contradict or reshape human identity arbitrarily, at least for oneself. 

It is popularly thought that everyone singly has the right to determine everything about themselves for themselves. This view seems benign and commonsensical, because this complete autonomy is applied to oneself. I’d like to present a couple reasons this view is nonsense and unsafe. 

Is it possible that a person be wrong about her view of her own identity? Is the person who thinks herself a potato just as true as someone who thinks herself a person? Self-evidently not, but Identity defined solely in terms of autonomy doesn’t allow the possibility that a person can be wrong about herself. 

Furthermore, how can a person live in a society with other people if there really is no generally understood reality about who people are and how they should be treated? Would you treat this hypothetical woman as a potato or vegetable even if she considers herself that way? The maxim of finding identity through one’s constant self-definition (autonomy) quickly imposes itself on others if it were to be lived out. 

This autonomy assumes relativism, which quickly self-refutes. Relativism says whatever each says about herself is true. Relativism, however, is one of the claims people make about themselves. Relativism–by nature of being a claim about reality–claims to apply to everyone. Hence, if truth is limited to the individual, then relativism ceases to be a theory about reality, and self-refutes. It cannot possibly be true.

Additionally, personal relativism also leads to inherent contradictions. The views that “Woman 1 is a human” and “Woman 2 is a potato,” are both true self-views if personal relativism is true. But there is a contradiction, given that both women have the same [human] nature, and given that humans and potatoes have a different nature. Therefore, personal relativism is false. Merely acting that a falsehood is true does not change the consequences. 

But there’s the rub. What happens when people try to enforce personal relativism? Contradiction will naturally result, so if further pressure is applied, some people’s views will be enforced but not others’. The prevailing view will not be oriented toward truth. The prevailing view will be disoriented. The enforcement of personal relativism would intensify the chaos by creating “noise” that would distract from reality and blur what would otherwise be obviously true. 

If the chaos could be extended to enough youth and pre youth, perhaps the chaos--which would normally be obvious to the next generation--could perpetuate or even grow in new unpredictable ways through generations. So even though relativism remains false and people would retain their human nature, that nature would be in tension with the way people train themselves through thinking and practice.  

 It seems so innocent and commonsensical to think that no one should be allowed to interfere with the way others self identify. It seems so much like respect and many would call it tolerance. But in reality it assumes relativism and is self refuting. People who try to force everyone not to interfere with the way others self identify interfere with the way others self identify. Those who try to enforce relativism do the very things they say not to do. Relativists cannot do otherwise.


__________________

Additional Notes:

 + When I speak of nature being in tension with our training, nature is assumed to be separate from the trained perceptions in the individual, similar to how a computer virus doesn’t eliminate the nature of the computer even if it leaves the software torn to pieces. + It seems like many today pursue a vision of creating a new human nature, and relativism opens the door for genetic experimentation on half humans, new human species, etc. Should we pursue this or do we already have enough information to focus our efforts elsewhere? Perhaps an idea worth exploring is whether any deprivation could properly be considered a new “nature”. This seems logical if goodness [inherently] is fullness of being. If this is true, as I’ve heard argued before, then it will be impossible for humanity to create a new [human-like] nature by these means. If we don’t consider philosophy, many will probably infer no limit to scientific advances--since they haven’t properly considered categories--and support horrific research abominations in the name of science. 

+ Perhaps the noise that disables people from hearing truth is reminiscent of what some poets talk about regarding the noise of hell versus the harmony of heaven.

+ Respect and tolerance are only worth talking about if they exist as positive virtues, but virtues don’t have any definite existence in a relativistic world. They can’t because there’s nowhere for moral objectivity to fit in, if everything is self-determined. Nothing could objectively answer the question, why prefer respect and tolerance to disrespect and intolerance?

Why Hell?

Why hell? 

The following is a response is written in conversational style and is meant to start not stop conversation on this important subject.

A Friend’s question, slightly reworded: 

Why would God send someone to hell where there is eternal suffering and not just make them cease to exist? Would God send a good person to hell just because they believe in a different religion?

My response: 

Do you mind if i ask you a few questions? Trust me, I'm going to come back to your question.

Do you consider yourself a good person? Have you lied? Stolen? God says that if you look with lust you have committed adultery in your heart. Have you looked at someone in lust? If you’ve admitted to these things, by your own admission you're a lying, thieving adulterer at heart. Do you think you'd be innocent or guilty of these things on Judgment day?

It’s important to realize that we’re not an unbiased party when answering this question. And if we’re on the same page about our guilt before a morally perfect standard, we can move on to the deeper issue of what hell is and how people get there.

God never sends good people to hell. But are there any good people? Or have people as a whole followed their own paths of wrongdoing, rather than the Creator who gave them life? The Bible says no, none are good (Rom 6:23, Is 53:6, Rom 3:10-12) and your natural wages when you leave the good path (sin) is death.

How can you have life apart from the source of life? (‎Colossians 1:16-17, John 1:3)

When you flee the light, why are you surprised you have darkness?  That is the nature of hell (1 John 1:5, Matthew 8:12, 22:13, and 25:30).


Sometimes --a lot of times-- we don't know exactly why God does what he does. (I don’t know all the motives for why most humans do what they do.) But we can be sure of God’s character. So don’t be surprised if we are unable to come up with a mathematical proof of why God sends evil people to eternal punishment. It’s possible to know that something is true without knowing exactly why. Nevertheless, consider the following moral reasoning:

It is offense to let guilty people go free without punishment, because it ignores the offense. We could let all murders go free, but it would effectively diminish the value of their victims. It would seek to suppress the evil of the crime without warrant.

But God gives people value by the image of God put on our nature. So asking God to not punish sinners is asking God to say evil is nothing and deny himself, that is, deny his good character. God cannot do this.


When people get punished, do you think they'll continue to have sinful intents, thoughts, and motives? The horror is that people will continue sinning in hell. Those sins would then need more punishment, and it's likely they should actually be punished more. Only God can judge our thoughts, but the implications are serious. If you are in a sinful state, you will keep on deserving more and more punishment. You will never get out, and your deserved punishment will only grow not lessen. That is what it means to be lost.

Ultimately, Jesus is why I believe in a hell. He clearly teaches it (Luke 16:26). People are thrown into Hades and Hades moved to the Lake of fire, where the smoke of their active torment goes up forever and ever (Rev 14:11).

Seek God while there is time (Psalms 2:12). If you have a broken nature that seeks darkness rather than light, how will you ever escape the darkness?  God is pure joy (1 Tim 1:11). People who love evil reject God--presumably on their own volition. As far as I can tell, people choose to “reign in hell rather than serve in heaven.”

While this is not a full critique of universalism or annihilationism, I hope that these meditations can provide a framework for seriously considering human lostness and the implications for eternity.




Food for thought:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
“All get what they want; they do not always like it.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

Virtue Ethics and Neural Nets: Mental Models of Rising Suicide Rates and the Decline of Human Flourishing

The following is a response to the WSJ presentation"Why ‘Deaths of Despair’ May Be a Warning Sign for America" considering the causes of rise of the suicide rate in America between 1996 and 2016, which significantly surpasses Europe.


Are we really that different than Anna Karenina? Pretty much all American culture is like Tolstoy’s aristocracy and none like Tolstoy’s peasants. We try to find life’s purpose within sensual gratification, temporal conquest, and social standing, instead of acknowledging objective [external] purpose--for example living a simple peasant life constrained by family, nature, and virtue.

There are many paradigms and mental models that can be proposed regarding depression, but you might consider one of the oldest—virtue ethics—and a newer one—neural nets.

Virtue ethics would say happiness and peace are not the same as happy sensations. Instead, there is a right way of living that results in holistic well-being, and positive sensations are a result. ‘Shalom’ and Aristotle’s concept of happiness are examples of virtue ethics. On the other hand, American culture is permeated with pragmatism—to an extent that perhaps even Ben Franklin might not recognize as profitable—and we seek happy sensations without regard to how it is come by. It may be that we have missed the foundation for the thing we are seeking. Even worse, our regular practice [of pragmatism] denies that there is a foundation. What I see a lot today is pragmatism directed by “follow your heart.” This emotional pragmatism causes us to live as if there is no objective foundation to happiness or purpose in life. It’s really a form of self-idolatry. Emotional pragmatism can be practiced tacitly by religious believers or consistently by secular sceptics and hedonists. Is the hard-working academic or partying/cheating academic to be preferred if they get the same score? I don’t think emotional pragmatism enables us to make the right choice.

Neural nets offer another paradigm for understanding human flourishing and the lack thereof. The brain is a neural net and it is clearly linked to human flourishing. Human attempts to mimic the brain in computer neural nets--though computationally and structurally inferior—seems to offer a natural analogy into how the brain converges on a coherent solution, instead of outputting chaos. It actually can take a bit of work to get a computer neural net to converge in a desired way. Initial conditions, internal structure, and test data selection are critical. An engineer might select relevant input data to train a simple neural net, but you may also need to provide a corresponding “answer key”. The net will become trained with that data. One way a neural net can be trained wrong is by providing the wrong answers… or by selecting an irrelevant set of data for the desired output. “‘Garbage in—garbage out’ is an old saying.” More advanced neural nets can be programmed to naturally sort data, without being trained by a provided answer key. In these cases, the internal structure is what helps sort the data, and for a new problem, the search for a solution will likely be non-trivial and require expertise. If a network ignores the test data but emphasizes internal products, you may get a fancy geometric pattern, but you won’t get the desired function or meaningful information (patterns have low amounts of information, etc.). Now for the analogy, which really is more of a mental model I find useful. People seem to be not merely a neural net, but a network of neural nets. We accept the ideas of others as inputs to what we ourselves think about. Even more than ideas, we see behavior (research mirror neurons) and are trained by it. We are trained in positive as well as negative ways. According to attachment theory, attachment to a primary parent (and thus humanity) occurs (or does not occur) primarily at a certain stage in the brain’s sophisticated development. Sexual abuse enters into a person’s perception of themselves, and trains them in negative ways, i.e. ways not leading to a coherent, harmonious, and “flourishing” output. Now it is self-evident that people can actively shape the focus of their thoughts, as we on more than one occasion find ourselves deciding what to think about. We are not passive agents, not perpetually asking why “now why did I think about that?” So as active agents who require inputs from other people—considering all we’ve learned about neural nets—how is America deciding to shape its network of neural nets? I think America is leading a movement against the natural family, against natural identity (grounded in nature instead of choice), and against the constraints of objective virtue. Each of these three individually has large ramifications for a set of neural nets, though their exact effect (on average) is hard to specify. Together, I would expect to see more neural nets [in the borader American ‘network’] exhibit signs of chaos, instead of some nominal level of coherent convergence. Without needed input from family, attachment issues and lesser evils may result in the brain’s neural net. Without the constraints caused by acknowledging objective identity, a neural net may amplify noise within themselves and seemingly could make a person feel ungrounded. Without acknowledging that objective virtue exists, nothing prevents wrong data sets from being selected without distinction or conscience. Increased probability of chaos would result. (As a side note, social media may have an effect on the culture by what it excludes, even more than what it introduces, and I do not mean to imply that all the influence of social tools are bad.) So a basic understanding of neural nets and human psychology may suggest that chaos will result from radical movements that distract from, minimize, or oppose objective realities like family, identity, and virtue.

Why don’t we read Anna K in schools? ;)

Final thought--If there is a real human teleology external to us, training our gaze to identify purpose inside may frustrate our basic human functioning, as we search from object-to-object as our fancy changes. If someone claims to justify her own existence, then she has denied herself the foundation for her pursuit of meaning, and I think it’s only a matter of time and logical consistency before she comes to think her life meaningless. So then, as humans, we must be willing to search for meaning and existence outside ourselves, which is an exciting and terrifying responsibility.