Came here from Astral Codex Ten. I’m non-religious but after reading other writers was already fairly convinced that original sin is a helpful frame. That said, this is a good framing for why, and one I think I could use to decent effect if someone I was talking to expressed that original sin was a bad frame. Glad I read this!
Where did you find that alien story? Did you make it up, or did you read it somewhere? Is it copyright by somebody? I'd like to expand it into a short story, but I don't want to step on anybody's toes.
Oh, it's mine. You can use it, but maybe with a credit and the understanding that I might eventually use it again myself - like if I even wrote a book of short stories or something.
As an atheist and former Christian, my morality didn't change at all when I left, except for the things I thought of as "God's morality" instead of as "my morality" (e.g. "no sex before marriage").
And some basic ideas I had learned about morality, such as the "golden rule", made just as much sense outside the church context (interestingly, I had never even heard of the "platinum rule" until after I left, and I think I heard it from an atheistic source like ACX or LessWrong.)
One extremely important principle to me is that, just as I have feelings, so too do other people. While I can only feel my own pain, the pain of others is just as real and just as bad. Thus I should avoid creating pain for others for the same reason I avoid creating pain for myself: pain is bad.
Another extremely important principle is that society works much better if people strive to act morally. Shoplifters raise prices for everyone, and force stores to spend more on security and security guards, which in turn also raises prices; at the same time, more must be spent on cops and courts and lawyers, which raises taxes. Nobody wants that.
And, since my life can be just as good if I generally act morally, I will act morally. And you can see that none of these ideas depend on a God. Humans have an inbuilt sense of right, wrong, caring, compassion, fairness, and justice, and writers of all stripes tap into that.
Granted, I don't know how you'd teach an atheist the moral firmness/absolutism that I strove for as a Christian - I did my best never to lie, for example - but, hell, even most Christians don't manage that.
I was taught to give 10% of my income to the Church. At once point as my faith waned, I gave 20%: 10% to the church and 10% to charity, to hedge my bets. I tithed 10% to show God I was willing to be faithful to Him as I waited for signs He was real; I gave 10% to charity so that if the church was false, I would still be doing something good. Obviously, God did not bite; instead I found clear evidence that my church was false, so today I am a GWWC signatory.
Resident Contrarian, dear friend. As a Jewish person, this article made me think of the passage in the Torah that calls Jews to be "a light to the nations." I've had my doubts about that passage, in the vein of "is this just some dumb bronze age book saying I'm inherently better for a tribe I was born into? Does it have no value in an age where most nations are monotheistic?" The way I reconciled the command to myself was this: Some of the lights we see around us are genuine, like the sun. They create and shed brightness for those around them. Others are like the moon: they reflect the brightness of those around them. Similarly, some people strive to be morally better than they were yesterday, and do as much good as they can, while others strive to be as good as their neighbors, no worse than anyone else is, more or less. The more of the first type of person we have in the world, the better the world becomes. The more of the second type of person we have in the world, the more it becomes a "race to the bottom," as people merely reflect each other's morality. The command "be a light to the nations" says to be the first type of person, not the second.
Now, this will also sound like religious bragging, and far worse than yours, so let me add a couple big caveats here. The first is that the commandment is universalizable. The commandment may be in a Jewish holy book, but if everyone strives to be a light rather than a reflection, that is absolutely better than if only Jewish people do. There is nothing about Jews being commanded to be a light that means non-Jews can't or shouldn't. A light is good independently of how many lights are in the room. It's a reflection that depends on the quality of others. The second caveat is that most Jews absolutely fail at this commandment. Being born Jewish doesn't make someone inherently better at being a light to the nations than anyone else, it just makes them more obligated to. And thinking you're inherently better (Jews or anyone) is a good way to stop getting better and start becoming worse.
I have no idea how I would react to the "pull the lever and be alone for 1000 years" scenario, but I do have a bit of an idea how I would react to similar scenarios. At one point, I heard an atheist arguing against a Christian, and he said "if the gospels are true, then all Jesus gave up was his weekend." Now, I don't believe that Jesus was a divine being, but I have been a full 24 hours without either food or water. If someone were to come to me at the end of that day and say "go another 48 hours for the sake of all souls everywhere," I know I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm just not strong enough. I also wouldn't tell anyone, because I think I know some people who are actual good people and would totally take that offer, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for the pain of a good person. So essentially, I would doom the world.
Anyway, I hope I haven't offended everyone's religion too much (though realistically, I probably have). Just offering my religious perspective on this article. And I hope Jews, non-Jews, and everyone reading this goes out and acts like a light to the nations. Be better than me, the asshole who would doom the world.
I think the Jewish perspective as put out by you is interesting here. I broadly agree that the world is a better place when everyone is working to make it so; I also agree that, say, Christians aren't any inherently better at making the world a nicer place than other people. I think what advantages either group has come down to incentives and structure.
The studies I've liked more on "why do Christians get better outcomes on X" usually tend to boil down to either them feeling like they are being watched by God (incentives!) or the rules-set creating feedback (I help a friend out of obligation, friend helps me in repayment/obligation, eventually building a relationship where both of us want to help absent obligation). That doesn't make Christians better baseline-people in any way, but it might make better outcomes nonetheless.
I'm a little different from you in terms of viewpoints, because in my theology doing good has both practical results and eternal significance/consequence; the good actions of an atheist catch the former but not the latter. So within that system it's a net good for humanity if they are good, but not 1:1 with, say, a Christian doing good with a mind to reflecting well on their God.
On the Jesus' long weekend idea: There's this part in Sun Tzu's art of war where someone is telling a story about how a general gets down off his horse with the men and sucks puss from one of their boils, and the boil-haver's mother sees this and goes "oh, hell, that general got my husband to march to his death, and now my kid will do so too, such is the loyalty-producing effect of his boil-sucking".
The reason that story works is there's an inherent understanding that the general does not have to suck boils, that this is something gross the men might do for each other, but he's doing something extra by going down to their level. When you get into a religious mindset, the difference between general/boil sucking is much smaller than god/earth living + crucifixion. So even before we get into the ideas of, like, him being a real person subject to real hurts and experiencing life as a real man would, there's a pretty big difference there already.
If you are looking to convince atheists, I would lean towards Aristotle, or better, Adam Smith discussing Aristotle in Theory of Moral Sentiments https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/asw-edition (Part VI I believe). He discusses the idea that moral behavior must be worked at to become second nature, to become who we are. I think this lines up very well with your continuous improvement model.
I'll definitely look at the link in a bit. I think it's a little different from your description, because I think at least how you described it it makes good a little non-situational, if that makes sense. From the religious side, I think part of why the New Testament is so vague on the how is because one of the limitations of having a list of good things is that you get through checking all the boxes, and it makes sense to stop.
I think I ideally want to be the kind of person who, like, has a fitness goal and meets it and then looks for the next thing that makes them lose their breath. So sort of the same thing, but I really, really want progression/growth to be part of the mindset if that makes sense.
From Smith's point of view (I know him a lot better than Aristotle) he is of the opinion that one has to exercise the virtues, in part because it is difficult to recognize what is the virtuous thing to do in each specific case, and in part because it is often difficult to exert the self command to actually do it when you are aflame with the passions. Seeing yourself from the outside as an impartial spectator takes a lot of practice to do fairly and quickly.
In theory you could continuously improve your fairness, wisdom, justice in how you judge and behave, seeing all with the even handed benevolence of the better class of deity. In practice, Smith points out that our actual ability to do good things for other people is very limited by our being mere humans, yet points out that we and those close to us are knowable, within our ability to care for, and are part of the great machine that our moral duty drives us to care for. So, you know, don't get crazy and do the best you can for the people that are close to you and you can do the best for.
The problem as posed is too simple. As it is, all I have to do is decide upon the instant to windmill slam that button; the problem of what to do with myself for the millennium succeeding that moment remains, but is a separate problem to be solved upon its immanence - most likely by going insane, but the point is that whatever solution is to be found is to be found in its own time, which will be ample.
The car trip I think better illustrates the question, because while inertia does help keep you going once you're going, in that circumstance the effort to achieve the altruistic outcome must be sustained over many hours, rather than little more than the span of a single quick thought.
I had thought about putting in an amendum - something like "if you think this problem is easy and something most people would do, then consider if once a year you had access for ten seconds to a button that would let you out of the room; how many years do you think you'd have? The utility math still hasn't changed".
I do agree that "jumping into the cold pool" effects make this easier, but I'd still be surprised if a majority of people managed to bring themselves to hit the button, especially if the alien took his time explaining the situation.
By contrast, I think the car trip is much easier. I love riding to the rescue! I'll take a friend to urgent care any time of day or night, with pleasure. But I bet the mass of humanity wouldn't even know or celebrate my name after I spent 1000 years in a room by myself. Boo.
If you do it because you want to be celebrated, what happens when people cease to celebrate the right thing, and favor a wrong thing instead? Are you the same
person when everyone is looking, as when no one is?
(My analysis proceeds from a somewhat more secular perspective than yours, I grant, and that may materially contribute to the difference we see with the alien scientist problem. But I do think, per your point about the value of the act being in its price, the car trip example still outweighs; while the cost in suffering one pays to save humanity in the first example is objectively greater, the act itself and the consequent suffering remain separate in a way that does seem substantive. You can still just, y'know, not think about it until after, if you want.)
Came here from Astral Codex Ten. I’m non-religious but after reading other writers was already fairly convinced that original sin is a helpful frame. That said, this is a good framing for why, and one I think I could use to decent effect if someone I was talking to expressed that original sin was a bad frame. Glad I read this!
Thank you! I'm glad you came by and I appreciate the nice words; as always, I'm glad it didn't turn out terrible.
Where did you find that alien story? Did you make it up, or did you read it somewhere? Is it copyright by somebody? I'd like to expand it into a short story, but I don't want to step on anybody's toes.
Oh, it's mine. You can use it, but maybe with a credit and the understanding that I might eventually use it again myself - like if I even wrote a book of short stories or something.
Sure thing. I'll put in a link to you if I finish and publish it.
As an atheist and former Christian, my morality didn't change at all when I left, except for the things I thought of as "God's morality" instead of as "my morality" (e.g. "no sex before marriage").
And some basic ideas I had learned about morality, such as the "golden rule", made just as much sense outside the church context (interestingly, I had never even heard of the "platinum rule" until after I left, and I think I heard it from an atheistic source like ACX or LessWrong.)
One extremely important principle to me is that, just as I have feelings, so too do other people. While I can only feel my own pain, the pain of others is just as real and just as bad. Thus I should avoid creating pain for others for the same reason I avoid creating pain for myself: pain is bad.
Another extremely important principle is that society works much better if people strive to act morally. Shoplifters raise prices for everyone, and force stores to spend more on security and security guards, which in turn also raises prices; at the same time, more must be spent on cops and courts and lawyers, which raises taxes. Nobody wants that.
And, since my life can be just as good if I generally act morally, I will act morally. And you can see that none of these ideas depend on a God. Humans have an inbuilt sense of right, wrong, caring, compassion, fairness, and justice, and writers of all stripes tap into that.
Granted, I don't know how you'd teach an atheist the moral firmness/absolutism that I strove for as a Christian - I did my best never to lie, for example - but, hell, even most Christians don't manage that.
I was taught to give 10% of my income to the Church. At once point as my faith waned, I gave 20%: 10% to the church and 10% to charity, to hedge my bets. I tithed 10% to show God I was willing to be faithful to Him as I waited for signs He was real; I gave 10% to charity so that if the church was false, I would still be doing something good. Obviously, God did not bite; instead I found clear evidence that my church was false, so today I am a GWWC signatory.
Ah, Grantchester. First two seasons were so good, went downhill after the priest left.
Wait, what's a Grantchester? I was talking about Father Brown.
I can assure you Father Brown is all priest, all the time, live on stage.
Never heard of Father Brown. Was talking about this: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3747572/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
I'll have to check it out - I also recommend Father Brown if you can find it. Very cozy stuff.
Resident Contrarian, dear friend. As a Jewish person, this article made me think of the passage in the Torah that calls Jews to be "a light to the nations." I've had my doubts about that passage, in the vein of "is this just some dumb bronze age book saying I'm inherently better for a tribe I was born into? Does it have no value in an age where most nations are monotheistic?" The way I reconciled the command to myself was this: Some of the lights we see around us are genuine, like the sun. They create and shed brightness for those around them. Others are like the moon: they reflect the brightness of those around them. Similarly, some people strive to be morally better than they were yesterday, and do as much good as they can, while others strive to be as good as their neighbors, no worse than anyone else is, more or less. The more of the first type of person we have in the world, the better the world becomes. The more of the second type of person we have in the world, the more it becomes a "race to the bottom," as people merely reflect each other's morality. The command "be a light to the nations" says to be the first type of person, not the second.
Now, this will also sound like religious bragging, and far worse than yours, so let me add a couple big caveats here. The first is that the commandment is universalizable. The commandment may be in a Jewish holy book, but if everyone strives to be a light rather than a reflection, that is absolutely better than if only Jewish people do. There is nothing about Jews being commanded to be a light that means non-Jews can't or shouldn't. A light is good independently of how many lights are in the room. It's a reflection that depends on the quality of others. The second caveat is that most Jews absolutely fail at this commandment. Being born Jewish doesn't make someone inherently better at being a light to the nations than anyone else, it just makes them more obligated to. And thinking you're inherently better (Jews or anyone) is a good way to stop getting better and start becoming worse.
I have no idea how I would react to the "pull the lever and be alone for 1000 years" scenario, but I do have a bit of an idea how I would react to similar scenarios. At one point, I heard an atheist arguing against a Christian, and he said "if the gospels are true, then all Jesus gave up was his weekend." Now, I don't believe that Jesus was a divine being, but I have been a full 24 hours without either food or water. If someone were to come to me at the end of that day and say "go another 48 hours for the sake of all souls everywhere," I know I wouldn't be able to do it. I'm just not strong enough. I also wouldn't tell anyone, because I think I know some people who are actual good people and would totally take that offer, and I wouldn't want to be responsible for the pain of a good person. So essentially, I would doom the world.
Anyway, I hope I haven't offended everyone's religion too much (though realistically, I probably have). Just offering my religious perspective on this article. And I hope Jews, non-Jews, and everyone reading this goes out and acts like a light to the nations. Be better than me, the asshole who would doom the world.
I think the Jewish perspective as put out by you is interesting here. I broadly agree that the world is a better place when everyone is working to make it so; I also agree that, say, Christians aren't any inherently better at making the world a nicer place than other people. I think what advantages either group has come down to incentives and structure.
The studies I've liked more on "why do Christians get better outcomes on X" usually tend to boil down to either them feeling like they are being watched by God (incentives!) or the rules-set creating feedback (I help a friend out of obligation, friend helps me in repayment/obligation, eventually building a relationship where both of us want to help absent obligation). That doesn't make Christians better baseline-people in any way, but it might make better outcomes nonetheless.
I'm a little different from you in terms of viewpoints, because in my theology doing good has both practical results and eternal significance/consequence; the good actions of an atheist catch the former but not the latter. So within that system it's a net good for humanity if they are good, but not 1:1 with, say, a Christian doing good with a mind to reflecting well on their God.
On the Jesus' long weekend idea: There's this part in Sun Tzu's art of war where someone is telling a story about how a general gets down off his horse with the men and sucks puss from one of their boils, and the boil-haver's mother sees this and goes "oh, hell, that general got my husband to march to his death, and now my kid will do so too, such is the loyalty-producing effect of his boil-sucking".
The reason that story works is there's an inherent understanding that the general does not have to suck boils, that this is something gross the men might do for each other, but he's doing something extra by going down to their level. When you get into a religious mindset, the difference between general/boil sucking is much smaller than god/earth living + crucifixion. So even before we get into the ideas of, like, him being a real person subject to real hurts and experiencing life as a real man would, there's a pretty big difference there already.
If you are looking to convince atheists, I would lean towards Aristotle, or better, Adam Smith discussing Aristotle in Theory of Moral Sentiments https://www.adamsmithworks.org/documents/asw-edition (Part VI I believe). He discusses the idea that moral behavior must be worked at to become second nature, to become who we are. I think this lines up very well with your continuous improvement model.
Thanks for finding the time to write :)
Don't thank me! I've been really shitty!
I'll definitely look at the link in a bit. I think it's a little different from your description, because I think at least how you described it it makes good a little non-situational, if that makes sense. From the religious side, I think part of why the New Testament is so vague on the how is because one of the limitations of having a list of good things is that you get through checking all the boxes, and it makes sense to stop.
I think I ideally want to be the kind of person who, like, has a fitness goal and meets it and then looks for the next thing that makes them lose their breath. So sort of the same thing, but I really, really want progression/growth to be part of the mindset if that makes sense.
From Smith's point of view (I know him a lot better than Aristotle) he is of the opinion that one has to exercise the virtues, in part because it is difficult to recognize what is the virtuous thing to do in each specific case, and in part because it is often difficult to exert the self command to actually do it when you are aflame with the passions. Seeing yourself from the outside as an impartial spectator takes a lot of practice to do fairly and quickly.
In theory you could continuously improve your fairness, wisdom, justice in how you judge and behave, seeing all with the even handed benevolence of the better class of deity. In practice, Smith points out that our actual ability to do good things for other people is very limited by our being mere humans, yet points out that we and those close to us are knowable, within our ability to care for, and are part of the great machine that our moral duty drives us to care for. So, you know, don't get crazy and do the best you can for the people that are close to you and you can do the best for.
The problem as posed is too simple. As it is, all I have to do is decide upon the instant to windmill slam that button; the problem of what to do with myself for the millennium succeeding that moment remains, but is a separate problem to be solved upon its immanence - most likely by going insane, but the point is that whatever solution is to be found is to be found in its own time, which will be ample.
The car trip I think better illustrates the question, because while inertia does help keep you going once you're going, in that circumstance the effort to achieve the altruistic outcome must be sustained over many hours, rather than little more than the span of a single quick thought.
I had thought about putting in an amendum - something like "if you think this problem is easy and something most people would do, then consider if once a year you had access for ten seconds to a button that would let you out of the room; how many years do you think you'd have? The utility math still hasn't changed".
I do agree that "jumping into the cold pool" effects make this easier, but I'd still be surprised if a majority of people managed to bring themselves to hit the button, especially if the alien took his time explaining the situation.
By contrast, I think the car trip is much easier. I love riding to the rescue! I'll take a friend to urgent care any time of day or night, with pleasure. But I bet the mass of humanity wouldn't even know or celebrate my name after I spent 1000 years in a room by myself. Boo.
If you do it because you want to be celebrated, what happens when people cease to celebrate the right thing, and favor a wrong thing instead? Are you the same
person when everyone is looking, as when no one is?
Odds are no. But I don't deny being essentially shitty, or the benefits of consistently trying to be less shitty.
(My analysis proceeds from a somewhat more secular perspective than yours, I grant, and that may materially contribute to the difference we see with the alien scientist problem. But I do think, per your point about the value of the act being in its price, the car trip example still outweighs; while the cost in suffering one pays to save humanity in the first example is objectively greater, the act itself and the consequent suffering remain separate in a way that does seem substantive. You can still just, y'know, not think about it until after, if you want.)