Good Is Real

In the last post, “Evil Is Real,” I linked to a video about Operation Underground Railroad, the organization founded by Tim Ballard that rescues children from human trafficking. If you followed that link, you found that there are several additional connected documentaries. In the second one, "Finding Light in the Darkness," Ballard recounts the story of finding two young children in Haiti, a brother and sister, and his story of adopting them.

Tim Ballard, of Operation Underground Railroad
screen shot from "Finding Light in the Darkness"

I heard him tell this story in person a couple of years ago, in a setting where he was fully able to express his religious beliefs, and how that is key to the story. Much of that also comes through in this documentary.

He met the two children, and they were on his mind the following night, when he was coming down from the adrenaline rush, after the arrests of the perpetrators were made and the children were safe. Usually when he would feel these strong emotions, he would pray to have relief from them, so that he would be able to carry on with the work. If you get too emotionally attached to every child in every raid, you can’t move on and focus on the job that needs to be done. This time, however, the prayers didn’t bring relief. The feelings intensified. He ended up calling his wife in the middle of the night, and telling her what he was going through.

She said, “You want to adopt those children!” which was beyond any thought he had formed. They had six kids of their own already. Adopting children was a crazy idea. No, he just wanted relief, but he couldn’t get it. Would she come and help him? She said, no, she didn’t need to come. She also felt like they should adopt the children, and he just needed to start the paperwork.

It took four years to accomplish that task. Most of the first year was spent trying to locate them. Because he was a foreigner, not from Haiti, he was not allowed to know where they had been sent; he was just assured that they were safe.

There were many trips back to Haiti, preparing for and performing other missions. Each time he continued his search for these children, but he couldn’t find them. There was one person in the government who could override the rule preventing him from getting the information he needed, and he had tried unsuccessfully several times to meet with her. There was one last day. He asked his wife to gather the children to be on their knees praying for him at an exact hour, when he would enter the government building hoping to get the information he needed.

The part of the Ballard family that went to Haiti to pick up
the adopted brother and sister are about to introduce them
to the rest of the family.
screen shot from "Finding Light in Darkness"

He and a friend arrived slightly early. Tim waited before entering, because he wanted to be sure his timing coincided with the family’s prayer. Then he went through the gate and bumped into a woman on her way out. Because of the timing, he said, “Who are you?” It turned out she was one of the rare English speakers he could have bumped into. When he told her what he was trying to do, she asked the name of the children. He told her, and she started jumping up and down and saying, “Praise Jesus!” over and over. So he joined her in that. And then he asked what she was praising Jesus for.

She ran an orphanage; it was one of several that the children from the raid so many months before had been sent to. The brother and sister had been sent to her orphanage; she had them. It was well across town. She was only in this government building to handle some paperwork that day. And if he had come in a minute earlier or later, they would not have run into each other.

To Tim Ballard, this was a direct and obvious answer to prayer. That’s a much more reasonable explanation than that it was just an odd coincidence.

I’m telling this story, because I’ve been listening to the debate between Jordan Peterson and atheist Sam Harris, from this past June. Jordan Peterson’s view of religion comes at it from an evolutionary psychologist’s point of view. It’s interesting, but it’s cerebral in its approach to what is transcendent of the intellect and reason. Sam Harris’s view is that religion is actually harmful, and the better approach to finding the best way to live a life would be to use pure reason.

Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris debate, Bret Weinstein moderates
screen shot from here

Peterson is often reticent to give a direct answer to whether he believes in God, because he doesn’t like all the attachments to the answer that other people make. But he does say he lives his life as though there is a God, and that he has evidences that lead him to believe that is the right way. But as a scientist, more so in this discussion than in some others I’ve heard, he talks about religion as the metaphorical stories making up religion that lead us to lead better lives.

What Harris takes from that is that metaphors, or stories, are just fiction, even if sometimes they are useful; you can’t trust a fiction for guidance to truth, because you know it's fiction. Also, he believes the dogma that surround religions are harmful and evil.

Harris’s view negates the religious point of view because of an a priori premise that religion is about belief in something pretend, an invisible being who doesn’t exist.

But he fails utterly to grasp the experiential evidence such as Tim Ballard’s story. Ballard’s story is dramatic, and clearly shows God’s hand. And he has a number of other stories—many involving his wife and her uncanny ability to follow promptings that she knows are from God, and that lead to important good outcomes for the children and the family and others. My personal stories may be less dramatic or convincing for others, but they are no less real for me.

I’m also not satisfied with Peterson’s explanation. It starts with an assumption about evolutionary science that I don’t totally buy into. In fact, I start with my belief in God, which is a truth that I believe I have received enough evidence for. And while I do not know how God went about creating us as the fully formed intelligent, self-aware beings that we are, I use the evolutionary science more as a metaphor to describe that some things, and some creatures, are simple and others complex—rather than as a map of how one thing progressed from another, which we don’t actually know.

I do think there’s something to the idea that archetypal stories are metaphors we use to understand things that are true. But my religious experience leads me to believe that God often uses metaphor and symbolism in stories that are also factually true. It would have been a stronger response to Harris’s arguments to say that God is not only metaphorically factual, but actually factual, and Harris' personal lack of evidence does not negate the personal evidence of billions of other humans.

Harris uses the most heinous elements of some religions to claim that religions in general are bad: human sacrifice, genocide of infidels, execution of apostates. My hypothesis is that these are corruptions of religion. They do not honor a God who created us and loves and cares for us. Nor do they honor life, family, truth, or property. Such religions lack the necessities of civilization.

So what Harris is referring to isn’t religious truth; it’s a distortion, a corruption—which implies that there was something whole that they are distortions and corruptions from.

Moreover, he looks at reason as the source for truth and goodness. This fails to notice a couple of things. For one thing, reasoning, or logic, only works if you start with the right assumption. One example provided in the PragerU video "Where Do Good and Evil Come From?" (included below) is that criminals plan a heist using reason. Reason helps them carry out a successful theft without it causing them to realize the wrongness of the theft. So, in order for reason to lead to moral truth, it needs to start with a moral assumption.

From the PragerU video
"Where Do Good and Evil Come From?"
presented by Peter Kreet,
Professor of Philosophy at Boston College

Where can reason get that? It gets it from a milieu of morality. It’s logical to see that dealing honestly and truthfully with others is morally good, if you live in a society where that is normal. If you live in a society where master have their slaves serve them, and that is all you’ve known, it is logically reasonable to see that as the right way, and perfectly moral—which most of the societies on earth have done. That reasoning doesn’t make it morally true. But true religion—which tells us humans are created by God and have a divine nature—tells us that enslaving a human being is morally wrong.

In other words, Harris believes he gets to moral truth through reason, when he’s really benefiting from living in a civilization with a religious moral legacy.

Peter Kreet lists and refutes the various sources for
moral truth proposed by atheists,

There’s a hypothetical question Peterson and Harris consider: If you were to do an experiment in which you take a religious people to settle one isolated frontier, and reasoning atheists to settle another completely separate isolated frontier, which society would more likely become a thriving civilization? Harris believes it’s obvious the reasoning one will do better.

But it isn’t obvious. And history tells us that atheistic societies (which all the socialist/communist ones are) are much more likely to savagely massacre huge portions of the population. What he’s assuming is that he’ll take the reasoning of people who already benefit from the experience of living in civilized societies—which are based on moral principles—and carry on with everyone being moral simply because the good outcomes are rational.

Good doesn’t come from nothing. In fact, good itself is a moral judgment. If that judgment is based on current reasoning, it can change, depending on how individuals or groups think at a given time. There’s no moral absolute there, because there’s no source of absolute moral good, or moral truth.

You only get that if there is a transcendent source. As Professor Kreet says in the video:

Just as a design suggests a designer, moral commands suggest a moral commander. Moral Laws must come from a moral lawgiver.

Well, that sounds pretty much like what we know as God.

The consequence of this argument is that whenever you appeal to morality you are appealing to God whether you know it or not; you’re talking about something religious, even if you think you’re an atheist.

That’s similar to what I’ve heard Jordan Peterson say elsewhere, in a Q&A after a lecture:

Everything you act out is predicated on your implicit axioms. The system of implicit axioms that you hold as primary is your religious belief system. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an atheist or not. That’s just surface noise….

It doesn’t necessarily have to do with your voluntarily articulated statements about whether or not you believe in something like a transcendent deity. So, what you act out is much more what you are than what you say about yourself. And what the hell do you know about what you believe, anyways?

We know that evil is real, because we experience it. We also know that good exists, because we experience it. We know these things and act on them, even before we know how to identify and articulate our beliefs.

So good is real. And that means God is real—the source and definer of ultimate good. If that is so, then we are better off living our lives in search of God’s truth, gaining experience with Him, and from Him. You don’t get that by experimenting with living a life that excludes God; you get that by seeking Him, through study, faith, and practice at choosing good even when bad is easier and possibly appears more rational.

God has a better view. And civilizations thrive when enough people within them live God’s guiding principles, as articulated in the Ten Commandments: honor God, life, family, truth, and property.

How to Have a Good Life

There are certain facts of life that are true: Life is hard. Bad things happen, even to good people. And how we face what happens to us matters, if we’re going to have a good life.

But it is possible to have a good life. So the question is, how?

That’s a big question. It’s probably one of those simple but difficult things. But I thought we’d do a little exploring of that big question today.

Some years ago we had a discussion with a thinker, one of a few mentors we’ve known, who was talking about the younger work force these days. He said something surprising that stuck with me. Those game players, the somewhat geeky ones who play games—what they really want, our friend told us, was to be the hero. To do something meaningful. If they couldn’t find that in real life, at least they could live it in the pretend world of a game. And that made them rather impatient with work in the real world that didn’t seem heroic enough.

I was reminded of this, doing what has become a common evening pastime: listening to Jordan Peterson interviews. There are hundreds of hours’ worth, so I’m just scratching the surface, but I think I’ve watched/listened to enough to qualify as a student of his, informally. Anyway, he talks about mythology, and stories, quite often. In one interview, posted a couple of weeks ago, he and host Richard Fidler on ABC Radio (in Australia) were talking about stories and their purpose: 

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from the interview

Stories map out how to live. And the question then becomes, well, what’s the story that maps out the proper way to live. And that story would have to contain a description of the environment, right? Just like a map has to map out the territory. The story would have to contain a description of the environment. And then it would have to contain a description of your role in the environment.

And so, the mythological landscape is something like this: It’s good and evil at the level of the individual. That’s the hero and the adversary. Everyone has to contend with that. The darkness and goodness in yourself, and in other individuals. Everyone contends with that. So it’s a universal truth.

And then, how is that individual encompassed within society? And society is the wise king and the tyrant. And it’s always the wise king and the tyrant. It’s both. Now, some societies are almost all tyrant, and some societies tilt quite nicely towards wise king. But, even if you grow up in a relatively benevolent society like ours, you’re still crushed by the mob into a certain conformity. And there’s a lot of pain and wastage that goes along with that. Now there’s benefits.

And then the last element of the mythological landscape is the terror and creative potential of nature. Well, that’s the mythological landscape. And a meaningful story guides you through that.

And he adds a minute later,

Well, if you get in a car without a map, you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. What good is that? All there is then is confusion and pain. So, yeah, the story is life. The story is, well, it’s the story of Rule 1[i]: Stand up straight with your shoulders back. Stand up and confront the catastrophe of existence. Voluntarily. Move forward. Under your load. Discover new things. Share them with the people around you. Life is a call to adventure. And everything’s at stake. That’s the thing. It’s an all in game. So you might as well play it that way.

OK, so, stories are going to help. We want to have meaning in our life: logos. Victor Frankl faced the horrors of the concentration camp by finding meaning. Logotherapy, he called it. He wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, that if you have meaning, a higher purpose for your life, then you’re more likely to survive, and be able to move on afterward.

There’s something about recognizing the dialectic of good and evil, realizing your potential to go either way, and then make the conscious choice to choose the good. That’s even necessary, Dr. Peterson says, when you face malevolence (evil). This is his approach to PTSD:

If you’re a naïve person, and you encounter [malevolence] in someone else, or in yourself, it will produce post-traumatic stress disorder. Because post-traumatic stress disorder occurs when people are touched by evil. That’s not how it’s normally described clinically, because academics—I would say people in general—don’t really like to grapple with that sort of reality. But if you talk to military personnel who have post-traumatic stress disorder, and you start talking to them about a dialectic between good and evil, they’re instantly on board for that. They need a dialectic of good and evil to recover from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Bad stuff does happen. Some people experience worse things than others. But there are things we can choose to do to improve the chances of living a good life.

In another Jordan Peterson interview, this one published this past Saturday, with Roaming Millennial, Peterson says the key is simply the truth: 

Dr. Jordan Peterson
screen shot from the interview

You have to speak the truth, and listen to the people that are criticizing you so that you can improve the manner in which you’re formulating your arguments.

That’s the way to live. And, look, here’s why: As the religious sages have insisted throughout the ages, life is suffering. There’s no way around it. Because human beings are limited and vulnerable, and the universe is a very large place. You’re destined to suffer.

And so, then, you might say, well, what defenses do you have against that? And one is the armor of ideology, and rightness. But the other is the shield of truth. You know, just like in Sleeping Beauty, when the prince goes off to have combat with the dragon. And truth elevates your life. And enriches it.

He suggests an exercise to find out whether you’re speaking the truth:

This is, I think, one of the most useful psychological exercises that anyone could ever do. So, start with the assumption that many of the things you say and think aren’t yours, and that you don’t believe them. They’re just things that you’ve picked up for one reason or another as you’ve walked through life, and you’ve brandished them like markers of your status. But they’re not really you. Because, what’s really you is hard to figure out. So you have to start from that assumption.

Then start listening to what you say. And feeling what you say as well. And here’s the rule; it’s a very simple thing to try: Pay attention to whether the thing you say makes you feel stronger or weaker. If it makes you feel stronger, then you can keep saying it, but if it makes you feel weaker, then you should stop saying it. Stop saying it right away. And see if you can reformulate your words so that when you restate them, that feeling of integrity and strength reappears. And you can feel it, really, down the middle of your body

And, because, what happens if you’re saying something that is untrue is that you dissociate to some degree. A part of you agrees with it, and a part of you doesn’t. It’s like you’re splitting your psyche.

That’s interesting. I’m thinking about that, and trying to reconcile whether someone insisting, forcefully, and certainly, that what they say is right when I know it’s wrong—are they feeling the strength, or the split? I’m going to have to observe that for a while, and maybe only ever know for myself. But I do know, for me, I understand what the wholeness of truth feels like, and that’s why I seek it.

He’s certainly right that it takes paying attention. And he goes on to offer ways for people to figure out what they want, what a “heavenly” life would look like, as opposed to a “hellish” life they could certainly create; as he puts it, “how horrible your life could be if you let all your bad habits and foolishnesses and deceits get out of hand.” The program is at a website called SelfAuthoring.com. That program is having good effect on people in universities, lowering dropout rates by as much as 40% in a semester. Pretty effective.

I haven’t used his program, but I’ve been doing similar exercises in a couple of books: Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, and Find Your Why, by Simon Sinek, with David Mead and Peter Docker.

The point is, it’s possible to choose the best possible life, in a world where things go wrong and bad stuff happens—if you don’t give up, if you don’t give in to nihilism or cynicism—if you figure out what a good life means for you, as a person you really care about (because you have to care about yourself, and some people haven’t had much practice doing that).

Dr. Peterson is talking about living a life that builds your character:

That’s the problem with being a materialist. You know, you think that you collect all these things around you, and that that’s going to protect you from the suffering that’s intrinsic to life. That isn’t what protects you. It’s your character that protects you. If you have your character intact, you can sleep at night with a good conscience, and you can take on the burdens of the day the next morning. And you can live without recrimination or regret. There’s nothing better than that.

It's almost as if he’s saying, the way to have a good life is to choose good and fight evil, in yourself and all around you. Become the good guy, by choice. Become the hero, by consistent practice and effort.

Yes, it did turn out to be one of those simple but difficult things. But worth it.

It probably doesn’t hurt to add that religion has been leading us to develop character all along. As the Ten Commandments tell us, love God—the source and definition of good. And honor life, family, property ownership, and honesty. And a further step is to love others as you love yourself—which requires starting with loving care for yourself.

---

[i] Referring to his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, here.

The Virtue Signaling Religion

Back around the beginning of this century, Gordon B. Hinckley, our beloved prophet at the time, wrote a book titled Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes. The “Standing for Something” part refers to a saying: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

I own the book, but I
got the image here

The book is about our need to return from the secularization of our culture. In the introduction he says,

People who carry in their hearts a strong conviction concerning the living reality of the Almighty and their accountability to Him for what they do with their lives are far less likely to become enmeshed in problems that inevitably weaken society. The loss of this conviction, the almost total secularizing of our public attitudes, has been largely responsible for the terrible social illnesses now running rampant among us (p. xix).

I think there’s a connection between this loss of God and a movement toward a whole long list of alternative “virtues” that don’t qualify as ultimately good, because ultimate good is defined by God. In short, when people stop relying on God, they fall for all kinds of substitutes.

People like to be able to think well of themselves. A traditional way of measuring your own goodness has been through religion. And that has been effective. Religious people tend to think about things bigger than themselves, related to pleasing God and effecting good for the rest of the human family. This leads to stronger intact families, celebrating life and protecting the lives of others, honesty, respect of property ownership, service, sharing, helping, kindness, and other things we typically think of as virtuous.

People who fail to believe in God still want to think well of themselves, but they don’t have the same source of guidance. They may still adhere to many of the behaviors in the above list. Or their secular religion might come up with another whole list of “virtues.”

They might shun some of the traditional virtues—particularly sexual purity. And then, in an effort to let those around them know that they have reason to think well of themselves, they do outward behaviors to signal their perceived virtue. They virtue signal. To themselves as much as to others.

And along with virtue-signaling, they might also shame anyone who doesn’t join them in their “religious” behavior. 

That’s where we have problems. It’s hard to find common ground when one person is shaming another—either direction. Sometimes these very people shove their beliefs down the throats of everyone around them while shouting, “Stop shoving your beliefs down our throats.” And they do this completely without self-awareness.

People might not be aware these days of some ancient history patterns. We think we’ve grown beyond the pagan, or the superstitious. But some of the virtues being signaled today are the same, with some wording differences and technological updates, as ancient pagan practices.

We can categorize some of these anti-religion’s tenets.

Worship of Environment and Animals above Human Life

I wrote this last year, after the US stepped away from the Paris Accords:

Climatism (not climate-related science, but the thing you’re not allowed to question) looks to me like a pagan religion. The sacrifices being required of us in the essentially vain hope that such sacrifices will appease the climate gods look eerily similar to throwing people into the volcano. It might make people feel like they have some control over something out of their power, but it doesn’t actually affect an eruption—and it’s really bad for the ones who get thrown into the volcano.

Are there reasons to be concerned about clean atmosphere and water? Of course. We’re better off with clean air and water. But the more advanced technologically a country gets—much of that from fossil fuels—the better air and water quality. In fact, we have made so much progress that way that there was a sudden shift from worrying about carbon monoxide to worrying about the very natural and positive carbon dioxide.

Should we be concerned because of climate models? Maybe, but they’ve been so consistently wrong so far that changing our entire lifestyle seems extreme.

And saving water is a good idea, especially if you’re in a drought area, because getting enough potable water for a large population is a challenge. But, the world is not running out of water. I saw a documentary in the IMAX theater of a museum once that showed a very dry part of the US, and talked about the worry of running out of water. I was puzzled, because they didn’t say “here”; they said it as though the world is losing water.

But, if you were taught the water cycle in grade school, then you know that water from the atmosphere comes down as rain, and makes its way into groundwater or into streams and rivers that eventually flow into the ocean. When something wet dries, that water goes into the atmosphere. And sun shining on lakes and oceans causes water to evaporate into the atmosphere. That’s how it gets there to come down as rain or snow. And the cycle goes on.

Water molecules are made up of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom. Those are elements. They don’t disappear. Even if you disconnect the hydrogen and oxygen, you don’t lose them; they stay here as part of our earth, and they can be reconnected. (“Sciencing” was used in the novel The Martian, about an astronaut trapped on Mars, explaining how to “make” water.)

Example of virtue signaling found here

Should we be concerned because of climate models? Maybe, but they’ve been so consistently wrong so far that changing our entire lifestyle seems extreme.

Another aspect of ancient pagan religions is to honor animals above humans. No other species would sacrifice its entire species out of guilt that its existence fails to always positively impact some other species. Species are designed to perpetuate themselves. It isn’t virtuous to feel guilty for being human; it’s unnatural and ungrateful.

So, if you’ve been virtue signaling in one of the following ways, you might want to ask yourself how you know what you do is virtuous. And then, if you can’t explain it so clearly, logically, and unemotionally to a nonbeliever that you convert with persuasion, maybe you’d better stop the shaming as well:

·         Feeling panicked about global warming.

·         Driving a Prius or other electric status vehicle.

·         Pushing for alternative energy sources—except not nuclear.

·         Eating vegetarian or vegan, not just for your health, but because you believe your species has no right to eat other species.

   

Sexual Depravity and Human Sacrifice

Related to valuing other species above humans also shows up as human sacrifice in pagan, savage societies. Certainly we ought to be beyond that. And yet that is a pretty good description of abortion.

Some ancient societies do away with the old and infirm. That is what euthanasia is.

Savage societies typically fail to honor monogamy. This leads to a lot of social failures we’ve known about for a long time, as described by Vico and Unwin. (I’ve written a fuller discussion here.)

A side issue related to failing on monogamy is the spread of what have always been considered deviant behaviors: homosexuality and gender confusion. Finding better ways to treat people with these issues has to be a more humane approach. But tolerating and embracing deviancy isn’t enlightened; it’s very old and very pagan.

So, if you’ve been approving of the following things in an attempt to virtue signal, you might also want to ask yourself how you know what you do is virtuous. And again, if you can’t explain your reasoning so clearly, logically, and unemotionally to a nonbeliever that you convert with persuasion, maybe you’d better stop the shaming as well:

·         Alternative sexual lifestyles

·         Promiscuity

·         Homosexuality

·         Same-sex “marriage”

·         Transgenderism

·         Sexual freedom (promiscuity) for minors

·         Abortion

o   Favoring government funding and approval

o   Refusing any limits to abortion

·         Divorce for any reason

·         Benefits to couples whether married or not

·         Pro-masculinity for women

·         Anti-masculinity for men

Ruler as God

Another tactic of ancient potentates—kings, emperors, pharaohs, etc.—was to replace the people’s religion, setting themselves up as god incarnate, or perhaps an idol that they create as the object of the ruler's new religion. Then the people had to be loyal to him or be prosecuted (and usually executed) for heresy. The people were instructed to bow down to their god/ruler, pay him whatever assessment he charged, and then he, their god/ruler, would look on them favorably.

I don’t know if the ancient king who set up a fiery furnace for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego offered amenities that some “subjects” expect of their government today. Life was brutal, so maybe just less imposed brutality was enough to buy their subjects’ worship. But today, in exchange for “worship” of the government/ruler, people speak as though government is doing the divvying out of good things so that the “subjects” can be absolved from needing to give.

So it becomes something virtue-signalers do when they “take care of the poor and less fortunate” by having government confiscate wealth from some to give to others. And they feel charitable doing this—even though it was coerced, and therefore not charitable giving by them or anyone else.

And anyone who even mentions that government interference actually makes things worse (look at welfare recipients since the War on Poverty began in the 1960s) is shamed as cold and hateful—even if that person is personally giving a tithe and more in actual charity and the virtue-signaling shamer has given nothing.

As we say here at the Spherical Model pretty often, 

If the government wants to implement something beyond the proper role of government, not only will government fail to achieve the stated goals; it will likely do exactly opposite of the stated goal.

So, if you’ve been approving of the following things in an attempt to virtue signal—you’re getting the idea—ask yourself how you know what you do is virtuous. And once again, if you can’t explain your reasoning so clearly, logically, and unemotionally to a nonbeliever that you convert with persuasion, maybe you’d better stop the shaming as well:

·         Socialism

·         Anti-capitalism

·         More government regulation

·         Infringing on First Amendment rights: religion, speech, assembly,

·         Gun control

·         Welfare unrelated to work or ways to get off welfare

·         Ignore or reimagine the Constitution

·         Public school monopoly of education

·         Socialized medicine

The list could go on. The point is that our disagreements go deep—as deep as religious beliefs. If we are ever to have peace, we need to learn to respect people with different beliefs, stop assigning them epithets—racist, homophobic, transphobic, hateful, bigoted, science denier, etc.—simply for not following a new, unpersuasive list of virtues.

And if we want more civilization and less savagery, we need a religious people who recognize virtue in honoring God, life, family, truth,and property.

Speak the Truth and Play Fair

How would it be if we lived in a place, a culture, where people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor? Where people live in peace with other people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear? Where there’s a thriving economy, where poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise?

How would that be? Good? That’s what we call Civilization, here at the Spherical Model. I’ve been describing Civilization and how to get there for a while. And I’m on the lookout for ways of explaining it—or other people who are explaining it too, in their ways.

I’ve been listening to enough Jordan Peterson lectures  lately to feel like I’m actually one of his students. [I wrote about him here and here.] And I’ve been collecting a few things that connect with my purpose here of bringing us northward on the sphere toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

He has a book—12 Rulesfor Life: An Antidote to Chaos—which I think I’ll have to go ahead and read, since it’s reportedly not the same as what is in his various lectures and interviews. But there’s a chapter in the book, Rule 6, which he says is: "Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world."

Dr. Jordan Peterson with Patrick Coffin
screen shot from the interview

Dr. Peterson waxes philosophical, often. And it’s hard to distill down for brief reference here. But, in an interview with Patrick Coffin, he starts with the idea that good and evil exist. In reference to PTSD patients, he says:

If you have PTSD, it’s because you’ve been touched by malevolence in one way or another. You need to reorganize your thinking along lines that are fundamentally religious. You need to start seeing the world as a battleground between good and evil—which is what it is, in the most real sense.

So, as a clinical psychologist, he says, in order to heal from a particular disorder, you need a religious viewpoint. I’ve been saying, in order to have a civilized society, you need to have a religious people. No one gets forced, but civilization requires a critical mass of people who live the rules required for civilization. There are answers that have to do with choosing right over wrong.

image from here

There’s another speech, in The Netherlands, where Dr. Peterson is referring in a way to immigration issues, but he spends a lot of time building a framework about two things: fair play and truth. In the fair play section, he talks about a study of rat behavior, where the rats learn that, in order to keep being able to play, you need to play fair—abide by the rules—so that others will want to continue to play with you. Even rats know that.

And then he deals with the truth section, which I’ll cover a little more in a minute. But he has this conclusion:

Now, I didn’t know what to say about immigration when I decided to do this talk, but I don’t think it matters, because there are many complex things that can be said about immigration and many of the problems that face us.

But there’s a meta-question, which is not, How do you solve a difficult question? But, How do you solve the set of all possible difficult questions? And the answer to that is quite straightforward: Speak the truth, and play fair. And that works.

And so I’ve been communicating that as diligently as I can for the last three decades, predicated on my observation that we got some things right, that we should do better with it even. And that, if we transformed ourselves, each and every one, into better people, predicated on the observation of that core identity, that we would then become collectively the sort of people who could probably solve any problem that was put to them, no matter what its magnitude.

In civilization, the smallest social unit is the family. You get a good family by being good individuals working together. So you can see it happen on that small level. As I say in the Civilization section of the Spherical Model,

As long as families are allowed to live among themselves (children are under the care of their own parents), it is possible to have a civilized society that is just one family in size. Then, if that family can find additional similarly civilized families to associate with, their society grows. If it could grow to the size of a village or township, all the better.

So you start with yourself, and then your family. And, as more people do that, society is transformed in remarkably positive ways—and become able to solve, eventually, any problem.

In the Patrick Coffin interview, Dr. Peterson says this need to change is actually an optimistic thing. He begins by laying out the story from Genesis of Cain killing his brother Abel. He makes the case, first, for Cain’s line of reasoning:

Being [the way things are in this world] is tragic, being is touched by malevolence. It’s, Why not develop resentment and hatred for it and do everything to extract revenge? Revenge against God, because that’s really what it is— It’s like that in the Cain and Abel story. In fact, it’s exactly like that. And the answer is something like, That’s cowardly. Something like that. And the other answer is, All that does is make everything that you’re hypothetically objecting to worse.

And so, if you take the immoral stance and say, Well, the horror of the world has made me bitter, resentful, murderous, and genocidal; isn’t it no wonder? Well, you can’t logically conclude that you should act in the way that is certain to do nothing but multiply that beyond comprehension.

And so, there’s a call to truth in there, and responsibility, as an antidote to resentment.

He adds, “It’s also an optimistic viewpoint, because, maybe you can change yourself. It is possible. Maybe that will work.”

How do you do it? What is it you actually need to do in order to change yourself, to do the moral thing? He says, “Stop doing things that you know to be wrong. That’s a good start.” He has been challenging people to do a 30-day challenge, to not say anything for a month that you believe to be untrue. Just do it, as an experiment, and see what happens.

And here’s the philosophical underpinning of the experiment:

So there’s this idea; there’s a deep Christian idea—and it’s deeper than Christianity even—but it’s a deep Christian idea. But, the being that is brought into being by truthful speech is good. It’s like the moral of the first few chapters of Genesis, right? If you use the Logos to bring order into being, that’s truthful speech—then the being that emerges is good. It’s like, that’s a hypothesis. Maybe it’s true. Maybe if we told the truth and induct the good, then being would transform itself around us into something increasingly less tragic and certainly less malevolent.

There’s more about that truth telling, going back to The Netherlands speech:

The Logos is the deepest idea of the West. And it means something like: clear, competent, truthful, communicative endeavor.

So there’s an idea in Genesis that that’s the spirit that God used to bring forth order from chaos at the beginning of time. When God employed the Logos to extract order out of chaos, He extracted habitable order and then pronounced that it was good.

And, at the same time, when God made human beings, He pronounced them made in the image of God, which means that human beings have the capacity—that Logos-like capacity—to speak habitable order into being out of chaotic potential.

And the deep idea is that, if you do that truthfully, then what you bring forth is good.

What is it a society needs, in order to become a civilization? Religious people (bringing non-religious people along with them) who honor God,family, life, property, and truth. That’s a condensation of the Ten Commandments. Dr. Peterson simplifies it even further into “speak the truth and play fair.”

Or, we could say, Always do the right thing. Always knowing what the right thing is might be a challenge for most of us mortals. But there is an ultimate Good, and the source is God. Otherwise it’s all opinion. But we know, if we train ourselves to tell the truth—especially to ourselves—and then we act in the best way we know, even when it’s hard, that is going to be good enough to transform society, as he says, “into something increasingly less tragic and certainly less malevolent.”

It’s worth trying.

Misguided Search for Meaning, Part II

In Part I we looked at the kind of ideology that shows up when someone searches for meaning without civilization. To review, these are people who:

·         Seek something to give meaning to their lives.

·         Reinterpret what they see in the world to suit their version of reality.

·         Define an extreme version of belief as “good” and all else as “evil.”

·         Believe they are superior and dehumanize anyone not among them.

·         Tolerate no belief outside their orthodoxy.

·         Seek power over anyone not associated with them in full, or annihilation of any who cannot be coerced to submit.

·         Believe that whatever they do is justified.

·         Delight in hating all who believe differently.

These are descriptive of Islamist extremists, such as the Orlando attacker—and similar attacks in Paris, Brussels, Beirut, San Bernardino, Boston, and a growing list of places around the globe. 

But these apply almost exactly to another type of religion. Another religion that wishes to impose its ideology through coercion—although not through annihilation, yet.

I read a couple of articles on the same day last week, and I made some mental connections I hadn’t before.

This is the conclusion of “The First Church of Secularism and Its Sexual Sacraments” by Mary Eberstadt, in National Review: 

The so-called culture war, in other words, has not been conducted by people of religious faith on one side, and people of no faith on the other. It is instead a contest of competing faiths: one in the Good Book, and the other in the more newly written figurative book of secularist orthodoxy about the sexual revolution. In sum, secularist progressivism today is less a political movement than a church.

If that’s true, then we have a state religion, supported by the administration, the media—news and entertainment in large part—education at all levels, some businesses, organizations, and groups, and even some churches. Non-adherents are officially discriminated against, just as our founders wanted to prevent.

They have doctrine—beliefs that they define as moral. And they require adherence. Eberstadt talks about a particular aspect of the religion, which informs much of the rest:

Its fundamental faith is that the sexual revolution—that is, the gradual de-stigmatization of all forms of consenting non-marital sex—has been a boon to all humanity….

The first commandment of this new secularist writ is that no sexual act between consenting adults is wrong. Two corollary imperatives are that whatever contributes to consenting sexual acts is an absolute good, and that anything interfering, or threatening to interfere, with consenting sexual acts is ipso facto wrong.

I predict the “consenting adults” aspect is not permanent; among the discussion is ascribing “consent” to younger and younger children. And “consent” might be redefined in time. But for now, they use the “consenting adult” idea to persuade themselves of their morality.

Sex without consequences or obligations is a basic tenet of the religion—in contrast to Christianity and other civilizing religions—more than most other tenets:

After all, Christians and other social dissidents today aren’t threatened with job loss because of writing in self-published books about the biblical teaching against stealing, say. Military chaplains are not being removed from office and sidelined for quoting from the book of Ruth. No, every act committed against believers in the name of today’s intolerant “tolerance” has a single, common denominator, which is the secularist protection of the perceived prerogatives of the sexual revolution at all costs. The new intolerance is a wholly owned subsidiary of that revolution. No revolution, no new intolerance.

I don’t think this idea that secular progressivism is a church is merely a metaphor. It is too complete.

Another piece I read is “Why Liberals Support Muslims Who Hate Everything They Stand For” by John Hawkins. He uses the word indiscriminateness, which I think we will find useful, even though it’s an awkward, unlovely word.

His piece attempts to explain why refusing to condemn Islamist terror—for fear of incidentally condemning Islam in general—is more important than supporting homosexuals. Because there is a hierarchy, which indiscriminateness explains.

The word is first explained by Evan Sayat in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, whom Hawkins quotes:

They [liberals, or secular progressives] were raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative. That the only way to be moral is to not discriminate between right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse, truth and lies because your act of discrimination—discriminating between these things might just be a reflection of your personal discrimination, your bigotries.

They were raised to believe that indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is the evil of having discriminated. The second bullet point, and this is an essential corollary, is that indiscriminateness of thought does not lead to indiscriminateness of policy. It leads the modern liberal to invariably side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success. Why? Very simply if nothing is to be recognized as better or worse than anything else then success is de facto unjust.

There is no explanation for success if nothing is better than anything else and the greater the success the greater the injustice. Conversely and for the same reason, failure is de facto proof of victimization and the greater the failure, the greater the proof of the victim is, or the greater the victimization.

To a non-adherent to the doctrines of secular progressivism, this is obviously convoluted and wrong. For example:

Why do so many liberals seem to loathe America even though we’re the richest, most successful country in history? Because the very fact that we’re the richest, most successful country in history proves we must be doing something wrong and unfair.

Why do white Americans have to be benefitting from racism and “white privilege?” Because white Americans are a majority in the United States and they’re doing better than most other racial groups.

Just to complete Hawkins’ thought on how this relates to Islamist terror, another quote:

They are unable to admit that among religions, Islam has a unique problem with terrorism, violence and rape. They are not capable of admitting that there is a particular risk to bringing in Muslim immigrants. Even when a Muslim tells everyone he’s killing people because of his religion, liberals can’t acknowledge his motivation because to do so would mean that they’d have to admit Islam has issues.

I’m considering the possibility that “indiscriminateness” is a precursor to the “sex is always good” doctrine. The assumption that recognizing relative goodness is itself bad leads to rejection of good, leaving bad as preferred.

We know that family is the basic unit of civilization—a foundational good. So it isn’t surprising that an orthodoxy that insists on savagery over civilization would glorify the specifics that undermine family.

They believe that sex outside of marriage is always right, when it is always wrong. They believe that marriage is whatever any two (or more) people say it is between them, when it is actually a permanent commitment between a man and a woman, who are biologically capable of reproducing and responsible for raising offspring to adulthood. They claim that a woman doesn’t need a man, even for parenting, ignoring the scientifically proven negatives and growing catastrophic social consequences for a society with more children raised without fathers.

Then comes the coercion: a pizza shop that never services weddings is attacked and temporarily shut down for answering a hypothetical question about whether they supported “gay marriage,” which they answered “heretically.”

image from here

A florist who has always served two particular homosexual customers, and considered them friends, declines servicing their “wedding.” She is prosecuted, not for a crime, but for a refusal to submit to the orthodoxy. Her business is shut down. Her assets are seized. And she is deprived of a way to support herself in her imminent (and now forced) retirement. The punishment may be greater than for actual criminals—rapists, drug dealers, embezzlers. All this even though she committed no crime, never refused service to anyone based on sexual orientation, or even deprived the two from getting the wedding service they wanted, which was readily available at multiple other locations.

Adherents to the secular progressive religion intolerantly suggest she could have just ignored her religion and serviced the “gay marriage,” unaware of their intolerance toward her, while also seemingly unaware that the simple solution was for the homosexual couple to be tolerant and go to another florist.

Similar stories are mounting for bakers, photographers, and even a farming family that used to allow weddings in their barn—where they live with their children upstairs, but were not permitted to say no to a “same-sex marriage” in their own home—unless they shut down their business altogether. They had been willing to allow the celebration elsewhere on the property, just not their home. That wouldn’t satisfy the orthodox. They were therefore deprived of their livelihood, and possibly their home.

Beyond the state-imposed religious position on “same-sex marriage,” and this church’s sacramental ritual of child sacrifice which we call abortion, there are other doctrines that can only be explained in terms of a fanatical coercive religion.

Consider global warming—as it was called when it stopped being called global cooling, recently changed to climate change—defined as, “humans are detrimental to the earth and should be reduced in number and effect” [as long as the religious adherents are not deprived of their goods and conveniences, we might add]. Anyone questioning this doctrine is a “climate change denier,” and already there are calls for not only taking away their rights to work in various fields, but to imprison such heretics (here and here).

Economic policies from the secular progressive faithful always fall on the side of, “take from those who produce and give to those who do not produce,” with the self-congratulation that this is “fair,” which is their way of claiming it is moral to steal if it’s done in the name of their religion.

Gun control has come up loudly since the Orlando shooting—it comes up loudly after every shooting. And it is as perverse as their other doctrines: terrorists, madmen, and violent criminals should not be allowed to indiscriminately mass murder; therefore we should not allow law-abiding citizens to own or purchase guns.

If you’re a thinking person, you recognize the logic failure there; but those of the secular progressive religion do not. They go on faith that keeping law-abiding innocent people from defending their own lives is the way to prevent terrorists and criminals from harming us. Only wild-eyed faith could lead to such a line of thinking. And yet the Democrats in the US Congress are holding a sit-in demonstration on the House floor (literally sitting on the floor), throwing a tantrum to get that outcome, so certain are they that they are acting “morally.”

There are a couple of scriptures that are becoming vividly true applied to our day:

20 ¶Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!—Isaiah 5:20

That seems to describe the secular progressive religion quite accurately. It also describes radical Islam.

This next one is slightly less familiar.

 9 And it came to pass that he said unto me: Look, and behold that great and abominable church, which is the mother of abominations, whose founder is the devil.

 10 And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.

11 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.—1 Nephi 14:9-11

It’s from the Book of Mormon. I wondered at the meaning of the “great and abominable church” while growing up, because I had a limited understanding of the word “church.” For many years now I’ve understood it to be anything outside the gospel of Christ. But I think that isn’t refined enough. There are many good people who are not Christians (and many Christians who are not good Christians). I think that people will be judged on their willingness to do good and be good as best they can understand it. Many such people will recognize God’s truth when invited to see it in this life. Others may not have that chance in this life, but the true Judge will know their hearts and judge them, so we do not have to.

I think it is likely that among Muslims worldwide there are many seekers of good, who do not wish to coerce and bend others to their will—and do not wish to be coerced. But there are not such people among radical Islamists.

I keep hoping there are some seekers of good among adherents to the secular progressive religion, who are merely misguided in their search to be “moral,” and would change if they could see the truth presented clearly. Some have just been indoctrinated—radicalized—through the propaganda surrounding them. Like fish swimming in water, unware of the water because it is everywhere they go.

If there are those, I invite them to learn to love truth, and learn to love people, and tolerate people with differences—and by doing so learn to love the true God.

For those of us who love truth—along with freedom, prosperity, and civilization—we should know we are dealing with radical religionists. We cannot compromise with them. We can try to avoid contention when possible. But we must stand for truth; the alternative is to suffer coercion to succumb to their great and abominable church.