Bruce Charlton's Notions

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I've just finished a very close and careful re-read of McMurrin's book on Mormon Theology, which I first read, more swiftly, four years ago.

I would strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in theology of any type.

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In order to understand and explain what is different about Mormonism - which he knows from the inside having grown-up in an established Mormon family living in the heartland - McMurrin performs a masterly summary of the metaphysical, philosophical and theological history relevant to Judaism and Christianity.

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Yet this is not a work of apologetics; because although McMurrin never left the LDS church, was on excellent terms with many of its senior figures, and has very positive attitudes towards Mormonism - he was in fact a multiple heretic voicing many strong criticisms, and someone who came close to being formally excommunicated before some very senior figures of the CJCLDS stepped-in and put a stop to the proceedings, and such figures (including some Presidents of the church) continued to protect him through the rest of his career and life.

As an adult academic, McMurrin was, indeed, explicitly an agnostic; and also unusual in being politically a Democrat of the Liberal type and serving at a senior level in the Kennedy administration.

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All this is marginal - what is important is that McMurrin is extremely intelligent, well read and (most important) has thoroughly thought-through all the metaphysical, philosophical and theological perspectives he describes - as well as being able to place them in historical context. 

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I am hesitant to try and explain briefly and in my own words what kind of conclusions McMurrin reaches; but they are absolutely fascinating, and reveal that Joseph Smith was a creative theologian of the first rank; since the theology of Mormonism solves several of the perennial problems of Christian theology in a - mostly - coherent fashion; and had advantages of inculcating a more positive, active, engaged and indeed happy mind-set than preceding theologies.

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Daily blogging has been driven by my need to sort-out certain themes (inititially this was political correctness) - but at present there are none (or none suitable for blogging, at any rate).

Also, various lines of evidence suggest that the degree of interest in this blog seems to have peaked a while back, and be on a downslope.

Therefore it seems appropriate that I move to intermittent, not daily, blogging unless or until I again become gripped by 'a problem'.

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Yesterday I heard (in private) of yet another example of an eminent scientist who spent several years trying to educate Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), on the assumption that he was a well-meaning but misguided individual who would be pleased if his mistakes were corrected - and whose public influence could then be brought to bear on behalf of truth rather than error.

Even just from people whom I have personally known, this activity of 'Educating Stevie' seems to have been something of a cottage industry among the more rigorous scientists and philosophers - Gould's daily post must have been a deluge of careful, friendly letters and offprints from major scholars earnestly pointing-out sources of better evidence by which he could correct his work.

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How Gould must have sniggered, and rubbed his hands with delight at the thought of all that brain power being wasted in futile argument based on the false assumption that Gould was making honest mistakes - instead of engaging in deceitful propaganda.

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Because of course Gould never corrected his errors, never engaged his friendly critics, continued to make false assertions, to ignore conclusive evidence and to use emotional manipulation and moral blackmail instead of logic.

SJG was indeed skillful and industrious in service to evil  - specifically to lies; and like all effective evil this was mixed with good; lies embedded in truths; vicious venom coated with smooth and pleasant prose - precisely in order that it could be influential.

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Gould would engage in utterly unfair, go-for-the-jugular, character-smearing and reputation-assassination - but was himself exempted from tough attacks.

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Why was this? I would say that one reason was that Gould was a man of the extreme Left, a Marxist - and his critics were men of the moderate Left - socialists, Liberals, Democrats, Labour party supporters - thus they were all on the same side.

The lying, incompetent Gould was therefore indulgently treated by the academic community as if he were an over-enthusiastic, impatient but fundamentally good-hearted teenager - and the adults were patiently waiting for him to grow-up and be sensible and reasonable.

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The reality that Gould was deliberately wicked, strategically lying by seeding public discourse with self-serving errors, assassinating the characters of good men, encouraging the worst kind of mob thinking and blind self-righteousness... this reality seems to have been excluded from consideration on principle. Perhaps the critics actually denied - in the face of common sense and experience - that evil people exist? Or maybe they assumed such people existed only on the Right? But no matter how many times Gould ignored corrections, and re-printed and re-printed his lies in the face of overwhelming refutations, he was given another chance, and another.

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The lesson I draw from this is that Leftism goes deeper and further than most people realize, and includes a much wider range of people - such that it is literally unthinkable for a prestigious and influential academic to abandon Leftism - because then there would be no place for them to inhabit.

To not-be of the Left, to be truly of the Reactionary Right (which includes being primarily religious) is to be professionally and publicly isolated in the world of today.

Yet unless you inhabit the Right, it cannot be thought that someone like Gould might genuinely be motivated by a desire to harm, including the desire to divert, annoy and waste the time of those better than himself in non-reality-based and futile attempts to argue.

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When reasonable people, rigorous academics, claim that SJG, and his like, are well-intentioned but misguided, and deserve education rather than robust rejection, they are actually revealing not that the Leftist destroyers have good motivations but that they themselves, the rigorous academics, share the motivations of the subversive Marxists.

I am sorry to say this, but it is accurate: wickedly motivated lying Leftists get a free pass or kid gloves treatment because those who police them are merely dilute versions of the same type.

So the 'academic police', the 'good guys' are themselves wickedly motivated (Leftists), just as wickedly motivated as those they purport to regulate; and the argument between Gould and his critics is merely a matter of ends and means: the critics agree with Gould's goals, they merely quibble over his blatantly dishonest means. No wonder they never got truly angry with him, never treated him with the toughness he so abundantly deserved.

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The phenomenon of Stephen Jay Gould is evidence of the sheer extent of corruption in science, academia and elite culture - a corruption based on shared Leftism trumping - in practice - considerations of truth; and so very extensive that it is hard to perceive an edge, hard to perceive anyone powerful or influential who is truly exempt.

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Q - What do you want?

A - I come to bring you the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Q - Yeah, I know all that stuff. Look, why are you telling me this? You Christians are a nuisance - why can't you leave us alone?

If it happened, it happened two thousand years ago. If Jesus had really saved me from sin and death, why do I need to know about it? I'm saved already! What difference could knowing about it make?

A - That's a good question! (Pause...)

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If the world was without sin and you were without sin, then I think you may be right. You probably would not need to know about Jesus to be saved by him. You could just live then die and collect your salvation.

But in a world of sin you would probably, for various reasons, fail to collect.

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Q - Ha! Why would anyone fail to collect salvation, especially when they didn't have to work for it?

A - I'm glad to hear you say that - hold onto it! But the answer is that, by the time you die you might have decided that you don't need salvation, or that salvation is evil because God is evil - or you may be too interested in something else...

At any rate, by the time they die many people apparently don't want salvation - they don't want to live with God in Heaven.

So, if you don't want, you don't collect; and when you are offered salvation, ready made, work-done - like a wrapped package - you reject it.

To prevent that is why I need to tell you what happened 2000 years ago.

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Q - But what am I supposed to do with this Good News?

A - Believe it. Really believe it. Regard it as reality. Live by it. Recognize that you were lost but now are found. Trust this reality - hold onto it. Cling to it exactly like a small child holds onto the fact of their Father's love, come what may. Reconize that you are never alone nor bereft.

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Q - Yeah, yeah - but I need to know what to do, how to plan my life, what choices to make. Being saved is all or nothing, by the sound of it - I only have one choice to make. Suppose I am saved and know it. What then?

A - Have you heard of theosis?

Q - I'm not sure...

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A - Salvation is binary: all or nothing: Heaven or Hell: Living with Christ, or rejecting Christ. Okay, so you are saved - but saved to what? That to which we are saved is determined by our choices. It's a hierarchy.

You understand? Salvation is binary, but the destination is multiple: Heaven has 'many mansions'. Theosis is about earning your place in Heaven, your position, your 'job' if you like...

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Q - I still don't get why I need to know this!

A - You don't, if you are a child; but you do if you are not.

A child does not know it has a mother and father, or that that they love him. A child simply trusts...

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Q - (Interrupting) But I'm not a child.

A - Exactly!

A child is saved - a child would not reject the salvation that Christ has won for him - a child wants to live with God in Heaven in that celestial family.

An innocent child simply trusts, loves, accepts... but an adult needs to know.

That's what makes him an adult. Innocence is beautiful and innocence is sufficient; but once the question has been asked, there is no going back.

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Q - So if children are better than adults, why did I grow-up?

A - You mean why did God make you like you are? Well, an innocent child is intrinsically better and sure of salvation, but an adult is potentially better - it's theosis again.

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Q - Ummm...

A - Look - things are more complicated for adults than children - but not that much more complicated. We can understand life in terms of families, of Fathers and Mothers and their children.

Family life is a the form of reality in miniature - and although earthly families are flawed, we can easily imagine them perfected.

In fact, we must know heavenly perfection otherwise we wouldn't realize that all earthly copies were flawed!

Q - Yes, I've read CS Lewis too...

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A - Shut up and listen!

Salvation happens because we are God's children, theosis is growing-up and taking-on a role - in essence Father or Mother.

Put crudely, children don't need a 'job', they don't need to work; but grown-ups do.

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A child does not need to make plans and strategies, life is binary; but to grow-up is precisely to make choices on the basis of priorities, and make priorities on the basis of reality.

God loves his children as children, and if they get no further then that is fine; but God wants his children to grow-up - which is a very hard and hazardous business.

Is that so difficult to understand about God? - All loving parents have the same attitude to their own children.

That is why you need to know.

(A - Stunned silence...)  

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Something I think I perceive widely throughout society, and used to feel myself when an atheist - and still it comes-back at times, is that:

1. Because there is no God (who knows everything), then

2. Life is a matter of impressions, hype and spin - there is nothing deeper than the impression I make on others: and upon myself. Therefore

3. If I do anything bad, then it is not really bad if other people don't know about it, and

4. If I don't know about it then I cannot be blamed for it.

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So, it apparently follows that... anything I can't remember, I can't be blamed for; anything that happened without planning I can't be blamed for; anything I do on the basis of intense 'overwhelming' emotion I can't be blamed for; anything I do unthinkingly simply because other people are doing it I can't be blamed for; anything I do that was encouraged by my upbringing, I can't be blamed for - and the same applies to anything I do in reaction against my upbringing; anything I do on the basis of those more powerful, famous, prestigious, better informed, cleverer... I can't be blamed for. And so on.

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At the end of this line is a particularly nasty kind of faux-humility that denies the ability to choose; as the justification for making short-term, selfish, irrational choices.

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There is no subject which generates more confusion than that of 'free will' - this ought to warn us that the whole discourse is wrongly framed.

The reality of free will, or agency, is not a matter of empirical knowledge, experience, not susceptible to scientific investigation...

That we can and do choose is simply an assumption which we must make in order to make sense.

Everything we say and do is based on this assumption - it cannot coherently be denied - nor can agency be limited in its scope. By trying to set limits to our own responsibility we simply end up talking evil nonsense. 

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Once the subject of free will has been raised, often by a call to take responsibility; we find that we must (even tho' we know not how) be responsible for all our choices - starting with whether we live or die. Everything we think or do must involve agency.

But this insight immediately generates a sense of vast and intolerable weight of sin, due to the multiplicity of wicked choices we have made and will continue to make; an insight from which we are desperate to flee.

And modernity, with its inbuilt denial of the reality of God, flees into nonsense, paradox, distraction: obliteration of the insight.

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To be coherent, to avoid nihilism - which is the (incoherent) denial of the reality of reality; we must therefore build our world-view around the reality of agency - free will must sit at its heart.

Responsibility is all or nothing; therefore it must be all.

Only if this is understood can we understand the nature of life, including the problem of pain and evil - that we live in a universe in which free will is primary, that this world is a place for free will, that the nature of humans is as entities with free will, that the vital course of history (and the future) - the meaning of life - is a product of free will.

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We need to understand that the only coherent way to frame the problem of responsibility is directed towards an awareness of life as a field for the operation of free will.

The core, essential, real history of things (whether we know the details, or not) is the consequence of agencies. 

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Justin Welby -  Archbishop of Canterbury

Walter the Softy from the Beano

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Some people seem to suppose that misleading others by cunningly-chosen words is not as bad as an outright untruth; but surely deliberate misleading is a multiply-compounded lie: first you lie by misdirection, then you lie about the fact that you were lying, then you lie to deny that this is exactly what you were knowingly doing as part of a plan to be able to deny the lie.

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Furthermore, since this type of calculated deception is itself nowadays admired as managerial competence - even quadruple lying is celebrated as wisdom...

This constituting yet further evidence that we are living in times are quite extraordinary depravity.

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Move along now.

Repent? Nothing to repent here, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Hurry-up, move along...

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In 2005 I co-wrote a commentary which argued that the medical research bubble was about to burst:

The continual and uninterrupted expansion of medical research funding is generally assumed to be a permanent feature of modern societies, but this expectation may turn-out to be mistaken. Sciences tend to go through boom and bust phases. Twentieth century physics is an example where huge increases in funding followed an era of scientific breakthroughs. Speculative over-expansion led to diminishing returns on investment then a collapse in funding. We predict that medicine will follow the same trajectory. After prolonged over-funding of the ‘basic-to-applied’ model of clinical innovation, and a progressive shift towards Big Science organization, medical research has become increasingly inefficient and ineffective. Although incremental improvements to existing treatment strategies continue, the rate of significant therapeutic breakthroughs has been declining for three decades. Medical science now requires rationalization and modernization. From this perspective, the current level of medical research funding looks like a bubble due to burst.

http://www.hedweb.com/bgcharlton/funding.html

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Well: It didn't happen.

The bubble continues.

Why did I get it so very wrong?

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Simple really. I assumed that because medical research has become increasingly inefficient and ineffective and the rate of significant therapeutic breakthroughs has been declining then people would stop wasting money, time and resources on doing it.

I assumed, that is, there was some kind of relationship between being funded to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars per year and actually achieving something.

How mistaken I was.

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The point I missed was that the tenfold expansion in medical research funding and medical research personnel over recent decades meant not that this implied that this vast conglomeration of useless parasites would be cut - but exactly the opposite: that they now form a special interest group so large and so wealthy and so influential that it is impossible to cut them.

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Well - ah ken noo... +

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+ Reference to traditional Scottish joke - God's response to the tormented sinners in Hell who cried out 'Lord, we didnae ken!' [we didn't know] was: 'Well, ye ken noo'. [you know now...] 

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/at-what-precise-point-did-hobbit-sequel.html

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In reading The History of Middle Earth, and the early drafts of Lord of the Rings, there are some 'cold sweat moments' when you realize how horribly wrong it all might have gone - or perhaps it is just that a genius needs to make mistakes en route to a masterpiece.

Many of these relate to the character called Trotter - a friend of Gandalf whom the hobbits met at the Prancing Pony in Bree and who guides them to Rivendell.

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Trotter eventually became the noble Numenorean heir to the throne of Gondor and Arnor we know as Aragorn - but he began as a brown skinned hobbit who wore wooden shoes.

The wooden shoes - whose clopping sound on the road explains the nickname of 'trotter' - seem (for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom) to have been taken by Tolkien as an immovable necessity to the story, and he expended considerable ingenuity in devising explanations for why a hobbit should be wearing clogs...

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These matters come to a head in the draft chapter for the Council of Elrond (page 401 of The Return of the Shadow - volume 6 of The History of Middle Earth) :

Gandalf spoke long, making clear to those who did not already know the tale in full the ancient history of the Ring, and the reasons why the Dark Lord so greatly desired it.

Bilbo then gave  an account of the finding of the Ring in the cave of the Misty Mountains, and Trotter described his search for Gollum that he had made with Gandalf's help, and told of his perilous adventures in Mordor. 

Thus it was that Frodo learned how Trotter had tracked Gollum as he wandered southwards, through Fangorn Forest, and past the Dead Marshes, until he had himself been caught and imprisoned by the Dark Lord.

'Ever since I have worn shoes,' said Trotter with a shudder, and though he said no more Frodo knew he had been tortured and his feet hurt in some way...  

[Reference 20]

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Well, all this is bad. After all this build-up about the clogs we get the phrase 'Hurt in some way...

Lame, one might say. 

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But worse is yet to come.

The real, twenty-four carat cold sweat moment comes in Reference 20, where Christopher Tolkien reveals:

My father bracketed the passage from 'Ever since I have worn shoes' to 'hurt in some way', and wrote in the margin (with a query) that it should be revealed later that Trotter had wooden feet.

Go back and read that last sentence again...

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Clogs would have been bad enough; but instead of the noble Aragorn, we very nearly had a mahogany-footed halfling.


Phew! (Wipes brow with large spotted handkerchief.)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 - Born in Boston and lived in Concord Massachusetts.

Joseph Smith 1805-1844 - Born in Vermont, raised in upstate New York.

I haven't blogged much about him, but I am - or was - something of an expert on Ralph Waldo Emerson and his circle, especially Thoreau - having read... some hundreds of books? on the subject.

By contrast, I have only recently read about Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism); and it took me quite a while before I suddenly realized that they were almost exactly the same age and lived in the same region of Greater New England.

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Despite this, in most senses the two men were about as different as could be, and inhabited extremely different worlds.

Emerson was upper class, highly educated and widely read, literate and an extraordinarily powerful preacher/ lecturer; while JS was none of these.

Emerson's world was intensely cultivated and inhabited by famous intellectuals and artists; JS's world was raw, violent, in near turmoil - I was particularly struck by the continual, daily - almost hourly - possibility and actuality of unrestrained 'vigilante' mob violence.

(e.g. Shortly after he founded the Mormon Church, JS was severely beaten, tarred and feathered by a mob; and his castration was planned, he was stripped and tied to a board but at the last moment the doctor brought along for the purpose could not bring himself to do it. Emerson only encountered any such things in the pre-Civil War heights of anti-abolitionism.)

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Even in economic terms there was a stark contrast - Emerson's world was one of considerable security (by world historical standards) and for his early decades there was near zero poverty in Concord (Emerson was astonished by the poverty and depravity he saw in the much richer and more powerful cities of England); while Smith was himself poor, often hungry and lacking basic necessities; surrounded by poverty - families were continually uprooting and seeking subsistence, 'borrowing, begging etc.

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So much for the differences. Yet the similarities in terms of magnitude of international spiritual/ religious influence are striking.

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Emerson came from a Ministerial Calvinist (Puritan) background which moves through Unitarianism into Deist transcendentalism, and then a non-supernaturalist spiritualism focused on subjective sensations.

Thus Emerson, and his 'disciple' Thoreau, are spiritual and indeed lineal fathers of that vast modern phenomenon of Liberal New Age spirituality which dominate modern 'religious' seeking and expression

Emerson's spiritual influence was extremely large in scale, but diffuse in effect and tailing-off into mere entertainment and distraction.

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Joseph Smith has been hardly less successful in terms of influence, leaving the only Western form of Christianity that has retained its devoutness, grown rapidly in size by winning converts and above replacement fertility, and has thriven among the educated and successful.

However the nature of influence was very different in each instance.

Smith's influence was numerically much less than Emerson's; but was spiritually much more concentrated and powerful - objectively transforming the lives of his followers. 

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(As a side point, both Emerson and Smith had famous disciples: Henry David Thoreau and Brigham Young - who both provided a form of influence that was clearer and simpler and therefore more easily transmitted than the master's original doctrines.)

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The US has been, since the early 1800s, the creative centre for new movements in Western religion - and Emerson and Joseph Smith were perhaps the most important of enduring influences. The very difference between their legacies is remarkable: Emerson having been assimilated into the mainstream mass media expressions of 'mind, body and spirit', self-help and esteem boosting; while JS's remains focused, hard-edged, tough and private.

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So, what would each think of the other, and who would me most pleased with how things had turned-out?

I think Joseph Smith would have been satisfied, probably delighted, with his legacy church; while Emerson would have been utterly appalled at how transcendentalism had turned-out.

Transcendentalism turned-out exactly the way that Emerson's most vehement critics at Harvard and among the Calvinists and stricter Unitarians said that it would turn-out - except even worse: a chaos of irrationalist emotional subjectivity which justifies anything, or nothing.

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Emerson's legacy includes not just the shallow, selfish and self-indulgent spiritual seekers of today, but Nietzsche and his various spawn.

I suspect that if Emerson could have forseen how things would have turned-out; he would have recognized and repented his error, and returned to some orthodox form of Christianity (perhaps Roman Catholicism).

And what a difference that might have made - to have America's first and most influential literary-philosophical genius on the side of tradition instead of progressivism...

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It seems very probable that general intelligence (or 'genotypic IQ') has declined by more than one standard deviation since late Victorian times, and presumably even more since about 1800 when the Industrial Revolution began to become obvious and these changes probably began.

http://iqpersonalitygenius.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/the-over-promoted-society.html

But what was the cause?

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Using reaction time data, the decline in genotypic IQ is of-the-order of 1.5 IQ points per decade - that is about 15 points in a century - or one standard deviation.

(This rough estimate of the size and rate of decline in 'g' has been replicated by a more sophisticated and completely different - as-yet unpublished - analysis of reaction time trends that I have seen.)

In other words, the average Englishman from about 1900 would be in roughly the top 15 percent of the population in 2000 - and the difference would be even larger if we went back further towards 1800.

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These numbers are not intended to be precise - indeed real precision (in the sense of exact accuracy) is not available in IQ studies for many reasons to do with the difficulties of truly random and sufficiently large population sampling; and the fact the IQ points are not on a 'ratio scale' but are derived from putting a population sample into rank order on the basis of (usually) one-off testing.

But anyway, I think that a decline of 1.5 IQ points per decade is probably too fast to be due purely to the effect on gene frequencies of differential fertility between people of different intelligence levels.

No doubt the measured decline is substantially to do with the fact that higher intelligence is correlated with lower fertility; but within this, I think there must be at least two explanations operating at the same time.

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Differential fertility would lead to a decline in intelligence - let's say - by a reduction in the proportion of high IQ genes in the population.

This happens mostly because since the Industrial Revolution almost-all children that are born will survive; so reproductive success becomes almost-purely a matter of fertility; and the most intelligent sectors of the population are the least fertile, and less fertile with each generation; until eventually (i.e. for the past several decades) the most intelligent people are sub-fertile, below two offspring per woman - so that the genes which make them most intelligent will decline with each generation - first declining as a proportion of the gene pool, and then declining in absolute prevalence. 

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My suggestion is that the additional mechanism of decline in intelligence is the opposite of the above: an increase in the proportion of low IQ genes in the population.

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There is, I suggest, a difference between high IQ and low IQ genes.

High IQ genes have (presumably) been selected for in the past because they increased intelligence, and thereby (under ancestral - especially medieval - conditions) increased reproductive success.

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But low IQ genes are spontaneously occurring deleterious mutations. These were not 'selected for'; rather it was a matter that selection failed to eliminate them.

In technical terms, the mechanism for low IQ genes is mutation-selection balance.

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The idea is that before the Industrial Revolution, individuals with a higher mutational load had lower-than-average reproductive success due to very high (near total) childhood mortality rates among those of lowest intelligence.

But after the Industrial Revolution got going, and mortality rates declined for the least intelligent so that even the poorest families usually raised several-to-many children, then there was a double-whammy dysgenic effect: a reduced proportion of high IQ genes with each generation (due to progressively lowering fertility among the higher IQ) and also an increasing accumulation of IQ-damaging deleterious mutations with each generation.

So that (roughly speaking) since the Industrial Revolution, individuals with the greatest mutational load (IQ-harmful genes) have been initially been above-replacement fertile (having on average more than 2 surviving children per woman, for the first time in history perhaps), and also differentially more fertile than those with the least mutational load.

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So that compared with 150 years ago there are a lower proportion (and a lowering absolute amount) of IQ-enhancing genes in the gene pool of England, plus a higher proportion and accumulation of deleterious IQ-damaging mutations.

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And this double-whammy effect is, I think, why the general intelligence has declined so rapidly and so much in England over the past couple of centuries. 

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NOTE: The focus upon accumulation of deleterious genetic mutations due to relaxation of the selection effect of childhood and early adult disease and mortality (which had previously served as a sieve of strongly fitness-reducing mutations) was something I got from Narrow Roads of Gene Land: evolution of sex, Volume Two of WD Hamilton's collected papers. One aspect is that such relaxation of selection is probably unprecedented in human history - indeed, it is possible that recent post-Industrial Revolution conditions may have generated a positive selection in favour of deleterious mutations (amplifying their frequency, at least up to the point when they become fatal or induce sterility). At any rate, the quantitative effect of this process of accumulating deleterious mutations in a population is only imprecisely measurable (I believe); whereas the quantitative effect of differential fertility on differential IQ is pretty well understood, and fairly precise measurements of the effect size are possible. 

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I certainly used to think so - as can be seen from my book of 2000 entitled Psychiatry and the Human Condition, and available at hedweb.com/bgcharlton.

But what is interesting, and perhaps surprising to those not engaged in the field, is that my view was highly unusual.

In other words, most modern intellectuals - and especially the public intellectuals who write in the highbrow media and publish big-selling nonfiction books; and including most scientists and indeed biologists and psychologists - do not believe that natural selection explains 'higher' human faculties such as intelligence, language, consciousness and morality.

Yet these are not religious people; they are indeed atheist, materialist... and (importantly) leftist.

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It is sometimes a little difficult to recognize this, because in fact these people believe in human evolution, in the sense that they believe humans descended from primates etc - yet they do not believe that this evolution was caused by natural selection - yet they do not have any other explanation.

In essence, they believe that the higher human faculties just happened. They are simply brute facts.

And at the same time they believe that these brute facts also carries a behavioural imperative.

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I first was sure about this in listening to an interview with Noam Chomsky, in which the interviewer pushed him hard to explain how it was that humans developed language.

Chomsky was uncomfortable and rather irritated, and eventually came up with a scenario where something like a cosmic ray caused a mutation and human language ability was accomplished at a stroke.

(No wonder Chomsky was uncomfortable, since this is a ridiculous assertion; yet here it was, emanating from the most highly-cited human scientist/ social scientist of the modern era.)

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But similar end points can be reached among most intellectuals who write about intelligence, language, consciousness and morality.

They are sure of only two things about higher human faculties:

1. These phenomena cannot be explained by supernatural agency (because they know that the supernatural does not exist),

and

2. These phenomena cannot - or at any rate should not - be explained by natural selection.

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This is the way of thinking about evolution that comes from Aristotle and which has dominated theoretical biology with people such as Goethe, D'Arcy Thompson, Gregory Bateson, Waddington, Kauffman and the modern chaos complexity theorists - and Sheldrake.

Such thinkers are generally evasive or vague about where these forms come from, or how we know about them - necessarily vague since they exclude any divine role or revelation.

Somehow we know about them and somehow we can recognize them.

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These attributes of humans, these phenomena which are what make humans distinctive, did not evolve but are part of reality.

In particular, morality - by which they mean modern leftist morality as it has emerged in the West in the past three hundred years - is built into reality.

But the same applies to language, consciousness, and intelligence - these are seen as qualitative and 'given'.

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I am pretty sure that most people do not realize, have not noticed, how vague and strange are these bottom-line beliefs of hard-nosed, mainstream intellectuals.

On the whole these beliefs are never stated. On the whole these dominant thinkers are able to evade examination of their own bottom-line convictions by means of articulate and aggressive attacks on those with whom they disagree.

That is to say with Christians (the religious Right) and with sociobiologists/ evolutionary psychologists (the secular Right).

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But it is a remarkable fact of modern intellectual life that public discourse is dominated by a perspective that is defined almost entirely negatively - on the basis of convictions that are mostly unstated, and which when stated are absurd to the point of being self-refuting.

Yet when any person tries to explain human distinctiveness on the basis of stated and explicit convictions - either religious assumptions, or else on the axiomatic assumption that all such phenomena must be explicable by natural selection and the only question is a matter of specific detail - then that person is unrestrainedly attacked, vilified and mocked on the evil ridiculousness of their beliefs...

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The reason behind the dishonest absurdity of mainstream public intellectuals is obvious: these people want leftism to be true, to be part of reality to be a brute fact of human existence; therefore they do not want higher human attributes to have evolved, because that would mean they were accidental and contingent facts; nor do they want human attributes to be divinely given, since that would subordinate leftism to religion.

So they reach this weird, unstated but undeniable position of arguing from the brute facticity of leftist morality - without any possibility of explaining how this can be known to be true, or why it should be true, or how it is true - or even why such brute facts have any influence on human choices (given that other brute facts, such as sexual differences, are denied to have any implications whatsoever for human choice)...

Being underpinned by this swirling maelstrom of evasion and confusion; no surprise, then, that modern intellectual life is in such a sorry state.

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I believe that, ideally, in a Christian society, Church and State should be one, in harmony - as in Byzantium at its best: there should be no autonomous secular realm.

Thus we get State and Churches linked by various mechanisms, more or less closely.

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As long as the State is Christian, or is becoming Christian, this is good; but when the State becomes non-Christian or anti-Christian, it will drag-down the State Church, inevitably.

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The clearest example was Russia, which went from being the most devoutly Christian society in the world to the coercive and violently murderous atheism of the the Soviet Union - and when Russia descended into Communism, the State Church was dragged down, and became merely an agent of the State.

(Now the Russian State has become and continues to become more Christianized, the Church is becoming healthier).

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In England the Church of England (headed by the Monarch, who appointed Bishops and approved liturgy) worked pretty well for as long as the State was Christian, but as the State became increasingly anti-Christian and atheist, the Church was inevitably dragged-down.

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Of course, a Church does not have to be a State Church to be dragged down by secularism - the Church of Scotland is not a State Church, but it has been politicized and secularized much the same as the C of E.

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But a higher degree of independence from a secular State does enable a Church to hold-out for longer, and more completely, against secularism. Thus the most devout of religions and of Christian denominations in the modern West, are among the most independent of the State.

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As so often, the best arrangement under the best conditions, is different from the best arrangement under seriously sub-optimal conditions.

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There is a tremendous outpouring of arguments in the public arena, emanating mostly from real Christians, which - taken together - demonstrate that current legislation first to permit, then to enforce, then to impose same sex marriage will (with a very high degree of probability) inflict deep and permanent damage on society.

Yet the legislation proceeds apace.

Why?

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Simple: because the infliction of deep and permanent damage on society is a feature not a bug of this legislation; it is not an unintended by-product but the actual motivational core of the movement.

The more conclusively harm is proven, the more convinced SSM advocates become that the legislation is desirable.

Thus the more that real Christians argue in the public arena, the worse the consequences - because the more powerfully their arguments encourage and energize the forces of darkness.

Argument is not just futile, but counter-productive.

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The only proper response is a clear, plain, simple and uncompromizing statement of refusal - and then courage and endurance to withstand the consequences.

If courage and endurance are lacking, then there is an end of the matter.

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I acknowledge that no man can judge another's soul - but understanding Christianity does require the teaching and understanding of at least the kind of person that Hell was made for.

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One of the problems about modern understanding of Hell is a mistake in providing examples of the kind of person who would be expected to go to Hell: the kind of person for whom Hell was made.

So, the example given is of some spectacular sinner - such as Stalin or Hitler, some serial killer or child murderer.

Without wanting to say that such persons are not destined for Hell, I think it is a serious mistake to use such persons as sure or typical examples of Hell-bound.

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Such examples lead to problems about repentance, since it seems likely from scripture that any sin may be repented, Christ believed-in, and the sinner forgiven

How do we know what happened in the last micro-moments of the life of a spectacular sinners?

We don't. And if un-repented sin is the problem, not sin itself, and since we all are sinners, it is an error to dwell on the magnitude of sin as decisive. 

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What, then, would be the archetypal denizen of Hell?

I think it is reasonably clear from scripture that Hell is not typically for spectacular sinners but for the apostate - for the rejectors of Heaven.

In other words Hell is for the unrepentant; but more specifically for the unrepetant who knows what it is they are not repenting; especially for those who have known Christ's offer of salvation and have rejected it.

This is, I take it, the unforgiveable sin of the Holy Ghost.

Mark 3: 29: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

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This interpretation may, or may not, imply that Hell is a rare outcome for people; but the most important thing is that it clarifies what Hell is primarily for: it is primarily for those Men and Angels who have refused the offer of Heaven - who know of Christ's work, who understand what the offer of salvation is and what it means; and who have chosen to reject it.

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And the thing which induces people to know yet to reject the offer is pride; an insistence upon imposing one's own, personal, system of evaluation upon reality.

It is not that such people actively want Hell as such, but that they deliberately reject Heaven - because Heaven entails chosen subordination of oneself to God, to Reality, to objective Truth.

It is in this sense that Hell is chosen.

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Therefore, in explaining Hell (especially to children or simple folk) the surest example of a sinner destined for Hell is the once-real-Christian who has 'lost his faith' or whose faith has become a matter of his own will: a person more much like the apostate 'liberal' religious leaders of many major Christian denominations than like the spectacular doers of evil.

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And this view of Hell as a chosen rejection of Christ and of Heaven, makes clear the exceptional state of sin and peril of our civilization; since the continual propaganda for inversion of the good is making more and more of the kind of people who imagine they have 'seen through' the conventional, repressive pretensions of traditional (which they term sexist, patriarchal, racist etc) concepts of virtue, truth and beauty.

The kind of person who would make the astonishing step of choosing Hell is the kind of person who believes that what their parents and ancestors believed was good is actually evil - what was regarded as wicked is virtuous, that standards of beauty change and reverse so ugliness is art, and that 'reality' is not really-real but is a social construct - malleable in an open-ended fashion.

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In the past, almost everybody - including spectacular sinners - would have wanted what Christ offered.

They may not have believed in the reality of the offer, they may not have believed the identity of Christ, they may have been unable to live in accordance with the commandments - but they would not have chosen to refuse the offer of resurrection and eternal life in Heaven if or when it was put to them as a real possibility.

Once they knew the truth of the situation, after death and beyond the veil, they would repent and believe and attain salvation.  

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Yet, the modern intellectual elite is replete with people who would refuse the offer of salvation and eternal life - even if or when they knew it to be true! Because, by their warped evaluations, truth is evil.

And they have apparently succeeded in seducing many of the Western population to embrace their evaluations.

Such people know good from evil; and they prefer and promote evil - on the basis that everyone in human history and almost everyone alive now (outside of the Left/ Liberal enclaves of The West) has always been wrong about everything important - including matters of common sense and universal experience.

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The socially-dominant Leftist doctrines of inversion of the good are therefore probably the most effective tool ever devised for inducing a world view from which it seem right to choose Hell over Heaven, despite knowing the facts.

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I have, and it seems I am stuck with this for good or ill, a scientist's idea of Truth.

This means that while I regard Truth as a transcendental entity - that ultimate Truth is eternal, permanent, objective - I regard the Truth that we can know in a broad-brush fashion: when stated as something that is as broadly correct or broadly wrong (details to be worked-out, if possible, at some later point).

So when it comes to theology, I am, compared with most people, unfazed by detailed error - because this is something I expect with all Truths, because this is always the case in scientific theories.

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To believe that a scientific theory is True is certainly-not to believe that every microscopic detail of it is True; it is, on the contrary (almost contrary) to believe that it is basically true, but to accept that all Truths will have errors of detail - and indeed these errors are what get worked-on by many scientists.

Sometimes they turn out not to be errors, and very occasionally this leads to a revision of the theory - other times the appearance of error was the result of some kind of misunderstanding, or problem with an observation, or problem with expression... or else they just don't get sorted-out (maybe in future, when theories are better or technology is better they will get sorted out?).

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So, in science, Truth is real, objective, consistent etc; but the Truth that I can know as a scientist is not like this.

Rather, Truth is the best among rival theories, Truth is single and objective and self-consistent but Truth that I can perceive is (or contains the) subjective; is not eternal, not self-consistent etc.

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I feel just the same about theology. Theology is not primary reality - it is the science of 'God' - of religion, of Christianity - it is a second order kind of thing.

Theology is never coherent, consistent etc - none of the Christian theologies are without significant problems in detail.

To me it is very obvious, undeniable, that all and every one of the Christian theologies are wrong, in detail, to some extent - but how could they be otherwise? Theology is not 'revealed' by God but made by man from what God reveals and also from other ingredients and using man-made methods. 

Theology, like science, is therefore a work-in-progress; and choosing the 'correct' theology, like science, is a matter of choosing the best among flawed theories.

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All theologies are incorrect in detail - and some are incorrect in broad brush terms as well (useless, wrong, misleading); and therefore it is a matter of judgement (discernment) about which theology/ theory is best overall (which in turn depends on the purpose in hand).

(But although all theories are wrong in detail; scientific theories that are basically-wrong do not work in more obvious and immediate and damaging ways than theories that are basically-right - that is the importance of knowing which is best - and the importance of distinguishing between broad brush truth and detailed error.)

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We ought not to build Christianity from theology; any more than science is built from theories;  theories come from science, not the other way about and the same for theology with respect to Christianity.

Or, at least, that is how I seem to perceive things, perhaps because of my scientific education - and can't seem to shake it off.

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I simply cannot regard theology is primary, nor can I see good reasons why I ought to regard theology as primary, nor could I choose which denomination was 'best' primarily on the basis of theological coherence.

Each theology is a theory.

I perceive that theology is necessary, yet each theology is flawed in detail (and some of these details are more important than others - as revealed by whether the theories of theology work in practice); and each theology is always wrong - but some theologies are better than others.

However, this evaluation of 'better' does not come from within theology, is not a matter of coherence - but the judgement of 'better' must (as in science) come from that which is the primary well-spring of Christianity: a matter of the heart, I suppose; working upon experience and knowledge of how theology comes-out in practice...

Just as with science, the test of theology is how it works-out; but the measure of 'works-out' is, of course, qualitatively different from the measure of validity in science. 

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NOTE: My conversion to Christianity (from an unstable mixture of secular materialism with New Age subjectivism) was precisely on the basis that although I did not believe (nor did I understand) all the specific details of Christianity; I perceived that it was a better 'theory of everything' than the one I already had. - including that it worked better in practice. Since I became a Christian understood a lot more of it, and believed more of it; but the process has never approached completion nor do I expect it ever shall in this life. 

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Why on earth do people assume, by default, that the leader of a political party represents that party, that he has any real interest in the well-being of the party - or indeed that the leader of any institution is trying to do his best for that institution?

A leader can promote himself as the primary objective, or 'his' organization. But parasitic behaviour is the norm, not the exception.

Often it will pay them, now or at some point in the future, to promote themselves at the expense of the group.

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This is especially a problem with young leaders who have been parachuted into the organization, and are expecting a limited term of leadership; and therefore need to plan their career beyond the current organization.

Typically, they will operate such as to get as much as possible for themselves from the organization.

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What leaders want for themselves, and what they take from the organization, depends on the person - money, status, power or sex are the usual.

But in some instances (and these can be the most damaging) it is self-esteem: the organization will then serve as an agency for fueling the leader's own sense of moral superiority.

The results of self-esteem maximizing behaviour may appear irrational; but inside the leader's head, he is taking the lead role in a psychodrama demonstrative of his own moral integrity and superiority.

*

Self-esteem is protean and insatiable and thrives on change.

The leader who is a self-esteem seeker is much more difficult to control, and much more likely to destroy the organization, than a leader who is merely trying to make money for themselves.

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Such moral parasitism on the part of the leadership seems almost like the norm in much of the public administration, education, NGOs, the mass media, the legal system, and progressive politics.

If it is such a big problem, then why is the question not addressed at all?

Why does evaluation of potential leaders focus exclusively on 1. their 'qualifications' and 2. what they say they intend to do (their 'policies') - and ignore completely whether this particular person has any deep, genuine and personally-motivating identification with the organization they are supposed to lead?

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This is a matter of loyalty.

If leaders don't have loyalty to that which they lead (and loyalty comes from within,  is spontaneously expressed, and imposes-itself - loyalty is not something which can be imposed on a leader from without)... if they are not loyal then leaders will be parasites - and once they are leaders it will be all-but impossible to stop them running the organization, or the country, for their own personal benefit.

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But what is that 'personal benefit'?

In a society dominated by Leftism in the form of political correctness, we must be aware that 'personal benefit' is not always, nor even usually, financial.

The commonest and worst form of corruption among the modern leadership class is moral parasitism.

The typical modern leader is driven by primarily by the imperative of self-esteem-maximization as enacted in the symbolic and subjective arena of their own minds, and evaluated by their internal representations of equality, diversity, pacifism, inclusion and all the rest of it...

Meanwhile, reality is crumbling into chaos.    

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I was suddenly struck by an awareness of the unprecedented extremity of evil among Western leaders - at all levels, but the higher the level the greater average depravity; the fewer exceptions.

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When King Henry II of England had Thomas Becket (Archbishop of Canterbury) killed for reasons of expediency; he was stricken by overwhelming remorse, and performed extravagant penances which served as a public demonstration of his error. It is inconceivable that anything of that sort could happen among today's leadership.

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We are ruled by the Men Without Chests of Lewis or the Hollow Men of Eliot - or the Voldemort types who have deliberately fragmented their souls, or Mouths of Sauron who simply channel evil.

They plot and scheme to subvert, invert and destroy all virtue; they prosecute truth as oppression; and propagandize deliberate, sickening ugliness as the highest aesthetic.

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Yet they are utterly without awareness of their own depravity; regard themselves as the cutting edge of goodness.

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They have constructed a world in which their own planned and systematic promotion of evil counts for nothing against them; and where their restraint from following-through their evil ethic to its extreme conclusions in absolute selfish short-termism seems to them to imply an almost super-human innate virtue+.

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They have all this reflected-back at them in the media world that is their headquarters and which dominates and permeates their lives; a world in which traditional evaluations of truth, beauty and virtue have been abolished except to be inverted: the venom in excluding from this world, suppressing, misrepresenting, punishing the expression of Goodness is by now something extraordinary.

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This is, indeed, the most depraved ruling elite that there ever has been in the history of the world - precisely because it seems so impossible that they could ever come to awareness of their own depravity.

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For such people to repent would, of course, be a truly cataclysmic event in their lives; to perceive the sheer mass of their own efforts on behalf of depravity would be of soul-crushing force; it would be so agonizing that only Christian forgiveness could rescue them from utter despair - yet that was the very first possibility they eliminated, several generations since.

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The absence of nobility from public life; the shallowness of the people; the cowardice both individually and collectively - all these are aspects of this situation: the extreme depravity of our leadership, so extreme that their evil is almost unrecognizable.

These are such pathetic remnants of humans that we barely recognize the possibility of responsible choice - yet we know it is there.

In the vastly inflated balloons of conceit and artifice which are modern leaders; in some corner, hidden away, there is a pathetic whimpering child still capable of agency; and still choosing - day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment - to sustain the monstrous falsity of their empty lives.

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+ There are many examples in the realm of sexual ethics - when multiple serial monogamy is regarded as virtue compared with multiple simultaneous promiscuity; or among the multiply simultaneously promiscuous when being open and 'honest' about infidelity is regarded as virtue compared with concealment; or when multiply simultaneously concealed promiscuity is disciplined by some restraint as regards classes of acceptable partners (age limits, no orgies etc)... Every depraved individual draws a circle around, makes an ethical imperative of, their own limits to depravity - then feels spontaneously self-disciplined, relatively virtuous, superior to (some) others. Mutatis mutandis wrt dishonesty etc. - for instance, there is little to compare with the incredulous moral indignation of the systematically dishonest administrator, manager or journalist whose entire professional life is spent misleading by selection and distortion of the truth - when they are accused of actual lying! 

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C.S Lewis's book Mere Christianity has a reasonable claim to being the most influential book of Christian apologetics of the twentieth century - but the central concept of Mere Christianity has - it seems to me - had very little influence. And I think this is understandable since the idea, once you follow through its implications, is extremely disruptive of traditional Christianity.

*

The advantages of Mere Christianity include:

1. Educational - Christians of different denominations can learn from each other.

2. Strategic alliance - different Christian denominations can legitimately work together to protect and advance Christian interests.

3. Individual motivation - there is genuine flexibility of choice for the Christian seeking among the denominations: he can choose that which best suits his strengths and weaknesses and offers the best chance of salvation and theosis.

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But there are weaknesses as awell:

1. Mere Christianity may weaken denominations - since each is seen 'merely' as oine among many possible paths to salvation or ways of Christian life.

2. Mere Christianity may weaken faith by introducing relativistic thinking - specific do' and don'ts become reduced in force, matters of preference rather than imperatives.

3. Mere Christianity may be anti-mission in the sense that missionary work may become internal, even parasitic; different denominations focused on 'poaching' already-Christian adherents from each other, such that growth in one church is at the expense of decline in another and Christianity as a whole diminishes.

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The main question, of course, is whether the concept of Mere Christianity is actually true. I think it is true, probably; but that truth is apparently not enough to make someone give their loyalty to Mere Christianity rather than to a specific denomination.

Real Christians who are Mere Christians in theory, are often denominational in practice; and those who are genuine Mere Christians, are perhaps just feebler Christians...

*

So the question of Mere Christianity is a crucial one.

If Mere Christianity is true, then ignoring it will certainly lead to disaster; since Christianity will continue to lack any basis for unity.

Real Christians will therefore continue to fight among themselves, with further destruction and fragmentation; already we perceive each fragment too weak to survive alone and in long term decline.

...Until there is nothing left but individual Christian seekers united by a mystical church, disengaged from hollowed-out fake-church bureaucracies; with perhaps some small and scattered real Christian congregations each 'doing their own thing' - but no institutional church.

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But if Mere Christianity is false, and yet becomes adopted as true; then it will assist the destruction of that denomination, or those denominations, which are true.

Because that which is false must be destructive of Truth.

*

Mere Christianity is a concept, therefore, much greater than Lewis supposed at the time he articulated it for the modern world; a time of revival and (compared with now) optimism for Christianity - assuming that the West survived the war.

Well, the West survived the war... but within a decade, Christianity began an historically unprecedented, rapid and (as yet) un-reversed decline in validity, strength and scope. 

Mere Christianity, properly considered, is not an optional add-on to existing Christianity, nor an innocent basis for Christian co-operation; instead Mere Christianity has gradually been revealed as an immense and unavoidable challenge to historical Christianity.

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http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/tolkien-and-lewis-which-was-most.html

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