Truth Or Solidarity?

[chefranden]

I'm reading David Sloan Wilson's Evolution For Everyone. His thesis is that Evolutionary theory is not merely about origins, but should be used to understand human behavior as well.

 

If his idea is right and I mostly think it is it would seem to me that human values that can or do conflict with one another would be weighted according to their overall survival effect.

 

Since humans were selected for a social niche as a main survival strategy, those behaviors that contributed to solidarity would be primary values. Since truth can easily conflict with group solidarity and yet is useful for group survival it must be a secondary value. Truth is valuable enough to retain, but not valuable enough to pursue above group solidarity. A truth that threatens to dissolve the greater group must be denied or at least softened. This is why we can get a schizophrenic relationship with truth like that expressed among fundamentalists.

 

Back when I was still in the fundamentalist mode, I did an extensive word study on truth in scripture and found that truth as "fact" was rarely the idea of truth in the bible. The idea of truth in the bible is mostly about faithfulness or loyalty and keeping a relationship agreement against all odds. This is an old use of truth as in, "He was a good man and true," or "Be true to your school". The Hebrew hesed or chesed is most often translated as truth or true in the King James and the second translation of hesed in KJV is covenant. It would be better for our understanding to translate hesed as faithfulness or loyalty.

 

This may explain the over reaction of Americans about 9/11. The real threat was perceived by most as a threat to the Nation as a group. The treat wasn't the death and destruction that resulted from this relatively anemic attack. Americans put up with a great deal of death and destruction in their lives with hardly a fuss. Our use of fossil fuel engines kills many many times more of us than terrorism ever has or ever will, yet no one has seriously suggested a war on driving let alone start one.

 

If truth were a major value rather than a secondary value, whistle blowers would have rock star status instead of being treated like dogs, and traitors.

 

As I look back on 17 years of being out of the Church I have to admit that facts about religion and Christianity played second fiddle in my deconversion. As a Christian I didn't examine the facts fairly until I lost the feeling of solidarity with the church. If that loss had not happened, I'm pretty sure I'd still be a mightily confused church going Christian, like SOIL for those of you who remember him.

 

I would have said that I always held the truth (reality) in highest esteem and believed it. As soon as I started studying the Scripture in depth in bible college the contradictions just poured out. That troubled me some, but not enough. I loved the church and the church loved me. It was the probing of these questions later on that helped break the feeling of solidarity, not because of the facts but because people withdrew from me little by little until I was no longer in the group. Like a whistle blower I made the mistake of using inconvenient facts in an attempt to improve the group.

 

Anyway I think that truth fairs poorly because it is not really the primary value we hold it to be.

[MathGeek]

I read that, chefranden, and I got to thinking. What exactly is truth?

 

Despite that humorous bit, I've always believed truth to be relative to context. There surely is an objective truth like when it comes to doing an action and telling some falsehood about it. When it comes to more existential ideas like God and Justice, the answers are much more perplexing and daunting to uncover.

 

The idea of how truth is a secondary human value is very true in my mind, and all it takes is reading some dissident literature. I also think what plays into this line of thinking is how much that truth means to you at the moment. For example, US troops massacred innocent civilians at My Lai during the Vietnam Conflict. Yeah, it sucks but then I move on with my life because it never affected me directly, only peripherally in terms of international politics and national image. I equate this to the idea of contradiction: contradictions are only given weight by those who think it matter. Tell me that a Christian will not find a contradiction between the rancid prick deity in the Old Testament and the newer, softer version that litters the pages of the NT.

 

Great write up, I hope my thoughts make any sense.

[MathGeek]

Challenge to Christians...and a question to the Ex-Christians out there...

 

Does every worldview have to deal with how values and ethics are formed? Were they given to us by some moral lawgiver or did they appear by chance?

 

What about purpose? Does every worldview automatically assign a purpose to your life if you adopt that worldview? Does adopting a so-called "naturalist" worldview make ethical choices arbitrarily and ultimately somehow screws up the decision-making abilities and even the conscience of the actor who adopts the naturalist worldview?

[MathGeek]

Continued...

 

When you assume evil, is there good?

When you assume their is good, is there a moral law?

When you assume their is a moral law, is there a moral lawgiver?

 

So, obversely, if there is no moral lawgiver, there is no moral law.

If there is no moral law, then there is no good.

If there is no good, then there is no evil.

If there is neither, then one is trying disprove the reality of God.

 

Yet, somehow, culture manages to thrive despite the conundrums that arrives involving ethics and justice and despite the facts that the system has no conscience and some people are unfairly burned because of it. By and large, how does this secular (non-religious) system of right and best work?

 

All of these questions and assumption come from a lecture by Ravi Zacharias, one of the only Christian apologists I will listen to.

[Neon Genesis]

Continued...

 

When you assume evil, is there good?

Why assume that good and evil are always black and white absolutes? In the real world, good and evil are not always clearly defined and are often subjective rather than objective. What about situations where you must make a choice between a greater "evil" and a lesser "evil"?

 

When you assume their is good, is there a moral law?

As before, that is making the assumption that what is good and what is moral is objective and not subjective.

 

When you assume their is a moral law, is there a moral lawgiver?

Why should we assume that morals are given by somebody else and not made by the person who follows them? Even if we assume that there is a moral lawgiver like God, God clearly has his own moral values yet who gave him moral law? If God can create his own morals without having had them given to him by somebody else, then if God does not exist, can't humans do the same?

 

So, obversely, if there is no moral lawgiver, there is no moral law.

Again, that's making the assumption that laws are indeed given, not made, and fails to explain where the moral lawgiver's morals came from if morals must be given.

 

If there is no moral law, then there is no good.

Why should we assume that moral laws created goodness and that it wasn't the other way around, that moral laws were created as a result of our goodness?

 

[if there is no good, then there is no evil

Again, you would have to prove that good and evil are objective facts, not subjective concepts.

 

If there is neither, then one is trying disprove the reality of God.

That's making several assumptions without any evidence to prove it, 1), that the bible is true and God is indeed good, 2)that the bible is true and God is concerned with the behavior of humanity, 3)that morals are given, not made.

 

Yet, somehow, culture manages to thrive despite the conundrums that arrives involving ethics and justice and despite the facts that the system has no conscience and some people are unfairly burned because of it.

If God exists and he doesn't receive his morals from someone else, then why can't we ask the same question about God and his morals?

 

how does this secular (non-religious) system of right and best work?

Common sense?

[Neon Genesis]

Challenge to Christians...and a question to the Ex-Christians out there...

 

Does every worldview have to deal with how values and ethics are formed?

Possible dumb question, but what do you mean by this?

 

Were they given to us by some moral lawgiver or did they appear by chance?

Why are these the only two options for the explaination behind the existence of morals? Can't have morals evolved as a necessity for our species' survival rather than a chance?

 

What about purpose? Does every worldview automatically assign a purpose to your life if you adopt that worldview?

Do world views assign a purpose to us or does the purpose we make for ourselves create our world view?

 

Does adopting a so-called "naturalist" worldview make ethical choices arbitrarily and ultimately somehow screws up the decision-making abilities and even the conscience of the actor who adopts the naturalist worldview?

Why does adopting a naturalist world view mean that we no longer have responsibilities and can do whatever we want? If adopting a naturalist world view screws up our conscience, then why do Christians continue to commit crimes if the religious world view is supposed to prevent our conscience from being screwed up? If there was a difference of our ability to make decisions with our conscience between those who adopt a religious world view and those who adopt a naturalist world view, then why is there no difference between the lives of Christians and the lives of unbelievers? In fact, why does it seem like countries that adopt a secular world view over a religious one like Japan where only 1% of the nation is Christian, have lower crime rates than the nations who profess to be "Christian" nations?

[Ouroboros]

It seems like I always get into trouble when I talk about ethics/values/morals etc... so I'll leave this one alone!