Christianity and science are opposed....but only in the same sense as that which my thumb and forefinger are opposed - and between them I can grasp everything.

Sir William Bragg - Nobel Prize for Physics (1915)

Harry wrote:Well, I am told, gender is a human construct as well. That's how norms work.

This appears to be one of those concepts where the historical meaning of the concept has gone through mitosis. We have our physical gender, then our psychological gender. At least, that is how the argument appears to me. Physical gender is not a human construct. Psychological gender doesn't appear to be either. There is something physiological that orientates our sexual preference.

But I am still working on the question of whether an "intersubjective" conceptual structure (e.g. the rule of law, or the value of money) should be classified as closer to objective than to subjective.

I agree that there is a greyscale area of intersubjectivity between what's objective and subjective. We have what's subjective, individually so - then we have what's subjective, but appears to be culture-free. For example, morals that are found in historical societies all across the globe. Moral emotions, and perhaps color recognition have a foothold in this quasi-objectivity, but are classically considered subjective. As long as definitions are agreed upon, propositions can be intersubjective. Much of the field of psychology is appearing to be intersubjective.

When you dissect most concepts, they can be laid out on something of a spectrum. Take "experiencing color" for example, which isn't necessarily even considered intersubjective:
-There is a more objective and scientific side to our color recognition that has to do with cones and frequencies and stimulated brain regions.
-Then there is an intersubjective area, where the physiological experience of color has commonalities towards preference - certain shades of pink have deep roots in human connection, shades of red
are tied to anger/viscera/fear(seeing blood). Shades of green/blue are tied to nature and relaxation.
-Then there is a more purely subjective area where we each have our favorite colors for experiential reasons.

I am trying to imagine what such a third party perspective might be. I'm glad you recognize that the concept of things being meaningful is itself meaningful, in the sense of acting as relational glue.

Any conversation of this sort must pin down a much more precise conceptual definition of what we mean by meaning. I think it's an umbrella term, and as conversations go deeper, the term is replaced by other more surgical terms. There's the sense where meaning is simply clerical - the definition of a term. Then there's the emotional aspect, where an urn on a windowsill elicits deep memories of a lost loved one. Or more philosophical - where analogies find deeper association with some wisdom we learned earlier in life. There are many types of relational glues.

So, I am willing to grant that "meaning" is inherently subjective, in the sense that no externally verifiable facts determine it, if you agree that it can be discussed on the basis of common experience, and functions as a useful concept in social situations (which I think you already agreed to).

I can agree to that, yeah. It's an interesting topic too.

Doesn't that just demonstrate the inappropriateness of an objective framework for the questions at issue?

Not at all. I think all questions should start from an objective framework. To me, the objective framework is the outer circle, the framework within which everything else exists. Of course, it's a dead horse now since there's nothing much to discuss from an objective framework - the conversation must move inward. But I think probing the boundaries is never a fruitless exercise.

When I was young, maybe 10 or 11, I spent long nights laying awake trying to imagine what the edge of the universe looked like. Needless to say my mind went in circles, and stretched a bit, and went in more circles. I explored different ways infinity would play out, then try to imagine what was beyond. I eventually resigned to the idea that the edge was simply the outer realm of everything, and if I grew to know more, it would move accordingly.

I think having a comprehensive personal epistemology is the same. You need to reference everything objectively first, then work your way inward to the guts of an idea, then back out again. The concepts will stitch together through this process, and the boundaries become a bit clearer(or muddier, if you uncover some personal ignorance).

When we are making decisions in tandem with a life partner, for example, we all know that "empathy" is not enough. Yes, it is valuable in keeping us from losing our temper, but we are usually willing to risk a little bruised ego on the part of our partner (as for ourselves) by making inconvenient observations and urging hard truths. So if we have a framework for thinking about morality and meaning, we can do a little better than just "not doing harm" in figuring out how to proceed.

I'm not saying we use these as if they're tools. I also don't believe we must agree to lead a moral life in order to have a discussion concerning morality. I think I understand morality a bit differently than you.

There is the cultural side to morality, then our set of moral emotions. These are two sides of the same coin, and it's an extremely complex causal web.

Moral emotions are a part of us from birth, yet amplified through being raised. Left to a culture free-upbringing amongst a tribe with no language, we would still act morally within our tribe due to our moral emotions. That's not an absolute statement, since there will be slip-ups here and there, but it all depends on how sway our moral emotions have over us. Sometimes, we need to make a mistake and feel the horrible burden of embarrassment to not commit the same immoral act. Some people appear to lack certain moral emotions, so there are outliers.

The cultural side are the moral guidelines we're taught to follow. Some do not need to be taught, and empathy alone is enough. Others need to be taught and emphasized, especially in how we should treat members of our out-group. I think for everyone, being raised in a way that promotes prosocial behavior and discourages antisocial behavior also helps.

The part of this puzzle I'm currently pondering is where exactly parenting fits in. I mean this from the context of causation. There is something intersubjective to us that we have the desire to teach moral lessons. But my gut tells me it's only part of the story. Sometimes a hard lesson causes pain, and the need to teach this lesson overrides the empathy we have toward our offspring to keep them from harm. Where does this fleeting desire for "developing" others come from? Your comment on giving hard advice to a spouse is closely related to this, I think.

A key issue in debate on religion, in my view, is that the scientific worldview sees destiny in terms of human decision, whereas the fundamentalist view sets aside human ability in favour of faith in God, for example with reliance on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. That intellectual gulf is a primary cause of the moral divide between modern secular reason and traditional religious faith.

Progressive Christians find themselves caught between these conflicting attitudes as they try to reconcile belief in God with respect for science. Derision of science leads to modern thought having no time for religion, making it hard for a scientific attitude to faith to formulate a coherent position. Until religion can reform to recognise that our planetary dominion requires conscious moral stewardship, through scientific knowledge, faith will continue to be viewed as immoral. That change is happening, but far too slowly.

The reason why atheists appear to misrepresent religion from the believer's viewpoint is that when atheists scratch the surface of a believer who claims to be rational, they so often find an enduring commitment to irrational fantasy. So there is a gap of trust.

There is plenty of reason to believe destiny is in human hands. Barring an act of God like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, the future of our planet will be determined by human decisions, especially whether we continue to cook the earth through CO2 emissions or decide to shift to a sustainable future.

Some might claim a distinction between the scientific method and the scientific moral worldview that our destiny is in our hands. However, the entire modern project of scientific enlightenment is based on the union between method and morality, recognising human ability to construct our future.

We now stand at a cusp in history. Unless we reclaim the vitality of the enlightenment belief in human ability, it is hard to see how civilization can avoid the risks of collapse and conflict.

That is not to denigrate the essence of religion. It does however mean that believers should exercise more humility about the literal meaning of traditional myths such as the existence of God and Jesus, seeing how these beliefs deflect focus from scientific evidence as the basis of knowledge. At the same time, science needs more humility about the extent to which religious mythology meets deeply felt psychological needs.

Interbane wrote:

Harry wrote:Well, I am told, gender is a human construct as well. That's how norms work.

We have our physical gender, then our psychological gender. At least, that is how the argument appears to me. Physical gender is not a human construct. Psychological gender doesn't appear to be either. There is something physiological that orientates our sexual preference.

Well, some of that I agree with. Physical gender (e.g. sex) corresponds to a binary that covers most people, (but can be, to some extent, changed). And there are intersex people who are not either male or female. The whole process of genetic determination doesn't always go according to our reasonable expectations of it.

But psychological gender (e.g. gender) is just loaded with social notions. Some of these are based on typical patterns (men are physically stronger, men are taller, women prefer pink frilly things) but as soon as those are made into norms we begin to learn that they don't make good binaries at all. Some are just horse manure, generated by a pattern of exploitation and oppression and its effort to maintain male privilege (women are too emotional to work in a professional job, women are indecisive, yaada, yaada.) When these are made into norms, we have a lie and a perpetuation of oppression.

That's why I said that gender, like meaning, is a social construct which works by reference to objective facts. Of course, some references are more legitimate than others.

Interbane wrote: We have what's subjective, individually so - then we have what's subjective, but appears to be culture-free. For example, morals that are found in historical societies all across the globe. Moral emotions, and perhaps color recognition have a foothold in this quasi-objectivity, but are classically considered subjective. As long as definitions are agreed upon, propositions can be intersubjective.

I like your exploration of the shades or degrees of subjectivity and objectivity. I am not too happy with the criterion of definitions being agreed on. Precisely because people sometimes make specious claims for moral values, knowing that they are not just in a quest for moral truth but are also discussing social norms that will affect their own social standing, we need to agree on the basic conceptual framework and then can proceed to rule some views illegitimate.

For similar reasons, morals being held in common across all known societies does not necessarily make them satisfactorily moral. Suppose (I don't know if this is true or not) that all societies believe sex is taboo, that is, that one is not supposed to talk about sex acts. That could be an artifact of all societies having been too unenlightened, and we might decide that we have some idea of the reason for the taboo, and we are going to discard it anyway. That the values it represents are not sufficiently important to outweigh the reasons why people should be able to talk about sex. (It doesn't help that most societies break their taboos at times, having a division in manners between "polite" society and "coarse" behavior).

So I find myself thinking that there are "processes of objectivity" to agree on rules even if there are not "objective rules."

Interbane wrote:Take "experiencing color" for example, which isn't necessarily even considered intersubjective:
-There is a more objective and scientific side to our color recognition that has to do with cones and frequencies and stimulated brain regions.

Yes, some people are "color-blind" on certain dimensions of distinction, and we can rule out their experience of color as being in any sense determinative. Although we do need to be careful that traffic lights don't depend on everyone lacking colorblindness.

Interbane wrote:Any conversation of this sort must pin down a much more precise conceptual definition of what we mean by meaning. I think it's an umbrella term, and as conversations go deeper, the term is replaced by other more surgical terms.

I expect that's right, but in my experience it's a devilishly difficult term to pin down. Broadly, "meaning" is used because we are talking about specific items having general implications. A clue which is meaningful to Sherlock Holmes may be meaningless to the average person, because they cannot make the connections to see the implications.

But then when we get into discussions of values and morals, the idea that something "doesn't matter" is not mainly one of it representing no general rule of interest, but more one of it failing to rise to the degree of importance with which we should concern ourselves. Of course this is in itself a question of the specific having general implications, but along the dimension of "importance" for which "general implications" are themselves given meaning.

The first, objective, "decoding" sense of the term meaning, exemplified by, for example, answering what a particular string of characters "means", is to some extent present in the second sense of the term. To assert that a concept such as "the afterlife" is meaningless is not to say that no one would care about it, but rather that we have no way of constructing a mapping from claims about the nature of the afterlife to evidence that has any intersubjective quality. I don't think it's possible to separate this "mapping to reality" element of meaning, which we could treat as a matter of "decoding", from the "importance" element, to any great degree. The term will always have both elements unless you have very precisely defined the context of use.

Interbane wrote:There are many types of relational glues.

Again, thanks for an interesting and stimulating discussion of this. As I try to make some shift into the world of literature, (from economics), I find that these many types are endlessly fascinating and to some extent elusive.

Interbane wrote:

Harry wrote:Doesn't that just demonstrate the inappropriateness of an objective framework for the questions at issue?

Not at all. I think all questions should start from an objective framework.
I think having a comprehensive personal epistemology is the same. You need to reference everything objectively first, then work your way inward to the guts of an idea, then back out again. The concepts will stitch together through this process, and the boundaries become a bit clearer(or muddier, if you uncover some personal ignorance).

Let's try that on Buber's concept of I/Thou vs. I/It relations. He says that if we regard something (someone, usually) instrumentally, in terms of what it can be used for, or what it does for us, that is an I/It regard. Whereas it is possible to regard it as a self, to whose nature we remain open, and which we therefor treat as an end in itself (or at least, as defining its own ends).

Now, I can already anticipate problems with this dichotomy, but on its face it seems to me to be not only valid but illuminating. Furthermore I have seen, here and there, sketchy neurological evidence that we are really talking about two different pathways in the brain, which are reinforced or inhibited by different issues.

Now the question for your "objective framework" is whether we should look to external reference points to begin to understand, reason about and act on this dichotomy. I can tell you Buber didn't. "I and Thou" is a very difficult book in part because he uses internal experiences almost entirely, in finding his way around. He more or less denies the possibility of using external references to understand the dichotomy. A person can "fake" an I/Thou relation (there are books out there advising men how to fake genuineness with women) but will never experience the inner rewards of operating based on I/Thou.

So probably I am just not really getting how an "objective framework" works with values, but my view so far is that such a framework will get us nowhere in actually achieving the spiritual value of encountering the world non-instrumentally. I can sort of imagine a biofeedback hookup that would tell you when you are "getting it" to relate to someone or something without instrumental values mediating the encounter, but I suspect the reading on your neurons would be confused by the very process in which you are trying to get your internal state to take on a certain quality. That effort would trigger instrumental pathways even as you tried to "get the feeling right" to avoid instrumental pathways.

(There is probably no clearer way of explaining "grace" in which one is acting for the direct motivation rather than for some secondary goal that it helps achieve. It's very much akin to "You've got to sing like you don't need the money, love like you've never been hurt, you got to dance like there's nobody watching, it's got to come from the heart if you want it to work," which Google tells me was written by Kathy Mattea.)

Interbane wrote:I'm not saying we use these as if they're tools.

I think you are referring here to, e.g. empathy, as one of "these". It is somewhat important to distinguish between the internal influences, such as empathy, and the external rewards and punishments which everyone sort of agrees are "tools". But there are also methods, exemplified most clearly by "restorative justice" whose entire methodology depends on shifting from the criminal seeing the whole matter instrumentally, in terms of such questions as "how do I fake remorse for the parole board?", to seeing the matter, well, intersubjectively, by taking on board the experience of the victim and their loved ones. Biofeedback might help, but it's usually more a matter of getting to imagine themselves in the other person's situation. We have to, from some points of view, confuse our concepts by imagining our self as the other. Of course for the mystics, this is not confusion but clarification.

Interbane wrote:I also don't believe we must agree to lead a moral life in order to have a discussion concerning morality. I think I understand morality a bit differently than you.

I wonder if you have understood my point. Suppose we have a "village council" and the oldest says, "I think decisions should be made by the person who is oldest," and the one with the most land says, "I think decisions should be made by the one with the most land", and on and on through the best musician and the one who can solve math puzzles the fastest, and so forth. It is impossible to get anywhere with the discussion because they are each trying, in the current parlance, to "weaponize" the arrangements for power.

I don't argue that one must agree to abide by all rules of morality in order to have a useful discussion about morality (I fail on this matter myself, for example) but rather that we have to be able to agree that the subject matter is how we should live (not whose values will be given power, which is a subtle but crucial distinction.)

Interbane wrote:There is the cultural side to morality, then our set of moral emotions. These are two sides of the same coin, and it's an extremely complex causal web.

The connections are very complex, but the essential quality of "good will" or "good faith" is apparently rather simple. A person who goes through life trying to pretend to act in good faith will eventually surrender and just quit trying to be manipulative. Surely something like that is involved when a young person "internalizes" the rules.

All the rest, as to whether authenticity or politeness is more important, for example, or whether caution or courage are more important, those are all just instantiations of the general case. We can have a lot of fun debating them, and learn a lot when someone who is in genuine complete moral confusion is elected to leadership, but the essential thing is to understand the nature of the exercise as non-instrumental: I/Thou, not I/It.

Interbane wrote:Moral emotions are a part of us from birth, yet amplified through being raised. Left to a culture free-upbringing amongst a tribe with no language, we would still act morally within our tribe due to our moral emotions.

Probably somewhat morally. It's very difficult to set up a test. All homo sapiens have language. When psychologists investigate moral development they mainly use moral reasoning: how does the child explain why things are wrong or right. It's not clear that moral emotions grow up, although there are differentiation processes that allow teenagers to distinguish more complex emotions such as jealousy, spite, pride, and disgust from simpler emotions.

Interbane wrote:Sometimes, we need to make a mistake and feel the horrible burden of embarrassment to not commit the same immoral act.

Embarrassment, shame, guilt, not exactly the same but some version of that probably reinforces the lesson. I remember at 14 or 15 deciding to kick a friend whose foot was having "pins and needles" from having gone to sleep. Still not sure why I thought this experiment would be interesting, but I felt very bad (and very stupid) afterward.

Interbane wrote: Some people appear to lack certain moral emotions, so there are outliers.

This is an area of ongoing research. There is some debate over whether psychopaths are damaged individuals whose condition could have been prevented or individuals who naturally lack something the rest of us naturally have. Oddly, the evidence points to both - that high and prolonged stress can lead to the condition that occurs somewhat naturally in some people, and that intensive work with people in this situation can make progress (though they seem to still have an impairment in the best case. Maybe a bit like autism but affecting empathy rather than general ability to process social cues.)

Interbane wrote:The cultural side are the moral guidelines we're taught to follow. Some do not need to be taught, and empathy alone is enough. Others need to be taught and emphasized, especially in how we should treat members of our out-group. I think for everyone, being raised in a way that promotes prosocial behavior and discourages antisocial behavior also helps.

I'm not sure it's all about out-groups, though surely that matters. I think status has a lot to do with it, and children naturally have antennas that are sensitive to status clues. You can't help but pick that up as a white person living in Africa, where there is a certain amount of resentment but a lot of deference, because you can be assumed to have much more money than the average person around you.

We know that modeling is very important for moral development, as it is for all complex activities. If your parents model that life is conflictual and you can't trust others, you will learn to process information through that lens. Confirmation bias will heavily reinforce it. If your parents model that you can get satisfaction by fooling people above you and kicking people below you, you are likely to learn to process information through that lens. And if your parents model that we recieve satisfaction by seeing others succeed, you will process through that lens.

Interbane wrote:The part of this puzzle I'm currently pondering is where exactly parenting fits in. I mean this from the context of causation. There is something intersubjective to us that we have the desire to teach moral lessons. But my gut tells me it's only part of the story. Sometimes a hard lesson causes pain, and the need to teach this lesson overrides the empathy we have toward our offspring to keep them from harm. Where does this fleeting desire for "developing" others come from? Your comment on giving hard advice to a spouse is closely related to this, I think.

I'm not sure I have much to add to this interesting set of questions. I seem to discuss moral principles with my (now grown) children in somewhat the same way I talk about influences on musicians: A is connected to B, and C is connected to D. This may be partly because I long ago
decided that modeling was the main way they would learn the key lessons, so I never imagined I could "talk them into" behaving morally (especially not on a "do as I say, not as I do" basis).

The occasional warning, or "how's that working out for you?" sarcasm seems to be enough to satisfy my sense that I should remain morally engaged with them. For the rest, the message is usually more like "I don't think I would do that" with moral reasons given sometimes, and practical reasons other times. They are adults, so it's always clear that they can make their own choices. When they were children, it was more "You may not do that," with reasons given if asked.

Harry wrote:For similar reasons, morals being held in common across all known societies does not necessarily make them satisfactorily moral.

Of course not, our collectively agreed upon moral codes advance with knowledge.

What is morality useful for? I think it is useful for maximizing human flourishing within the current environment while respecting the sanctity of the individual. Of course "flourishing" is one of those umbrella terms that could use some exploration, but I think it fits. We want to flourish as individuals and also as a collective.

The variable in the definition is the environment. In desert societies, it is immoral to waste water. On moon colonies, it could likewise(some time in the far future), be immoral to waste air.

So morality changes with knowledge and changes depending on the environment. Not moral emotions, but the moral codes.

Let's try that on Buber's concept of I/Thou vs. I/It relations.

I'm not familiar with this. Does Buber present it as a dichotomous necker cube, where you either see things one way or the other, but not both? This philosophy sounds unnecessarily confusing to understanding the world around us, but perhaps it could be a great perspective by which to live a life for some people. Usually such philosophies are cloudy simply because they're an attempt to harmonize the philosopher's worldview with a god. I've seen many thorough(and convincing) philosophies that are very taxing on the brain, and the reason is usually to harmonize an educated worldview with a theistic one. With enough examination, there are always cracks that are larger than if you anchor your philosophy to something more objective from the outset. When you start with the objective and work inward, the cracks are unknowns rather than logical conundrums.

I think you are referring here to, e.g. empathy, as one of "these". It is somewhat important to distinguish between the internal influences, such as empathy, and the external rewards and punishments which everyone sort of agrees are "tools".

In most of what I wrote, I was referring to the internals, including reward and aversion mechanisms. I forget the list, but elation, pride, embarrassment, and shame are on it. As you respond and I read more, I think my original response was off the mark. I think I'm still referring to things from a more meta perspective.

I don't argue that one must agree to abide by all rules of morality in order to have a useful discussion about morality (I fail on this matter myself, for example) but rather that we have to be able to agree that the subject matter is how we should live (not whose values will be given power, which is a subtle but crucial distinction.)

If I understand you correctly, I still don't agree. But it depends on exactly what you mean. We don't need to agree on anything to discuss the phenomenon of morality - ie how it plays out between societies/people in the real world(step back and analyze what actually happens). Which is what I assume we're doing.

When you zoom in from that point and discuss the moral CODE by which we live, then you're absolutely right. But I'm not as interested in that topic. I'm more interested in the meta-conversation, about why it is we create the codes in the first place, and our physiological mechanisms that influence them to abide by them. Why we create moral codes in the first place is intersubjective, and as I mentioned before appears to change with knowledge and environment.

Don’t you think we have an inbuilt morality? One which isn’t learned?

We can choose to ignore it through fear or cowardice or laziness. But I think we all know what’s right. A sociopath cannot empathise with others’ feelings but he doesn’t go around torturing and slaying his fellows.

We don’t all need to agree on what is moral or ethical. Some things are just wrong even if the majority of people persuade themselves it’s OK. I’m thinking of factory farming. Growing animals as though they are cabbages for human consumption is an example. Keeping them in inhumane conditions.
Just one example. People who work in such industries become brutalised and don’t care, but they must know it is wrong. Cruel is cruel whether one acknowledges it or not.

Penelope wrote:Don’t you think we have an inbuilt morality? One which isn’t learned?

We can choose to ignore it through fear or cowardice or laziness. But I think we all know what’s right. A sociopath cannot empathise with others’ feelings but he doesn’t go around torturing and slaying his fellows.

Other than our moral emotions, no. Those moral emotions are the inbuilt morality you're talking about. A sociopath plays the game of life, and getting stuck in jail is a quick way to lose. They conform to society even though they only possess fleeting emotions.

Penelope wrote:We don’t all need to agree on what is moral or ethical. Some things are just wrong even if the majority of people persuade themselves it’s OK. I’m thinking of factory farming. Growing animals as though they are cabbages for human consumption is an example. Keeping them in inhumane conditions.
Just one example. People who work in such industries become brutalised and don’t care, but they must know it is wrong. Cruel is cruel whether one acknowledges it or not.

I think agreement is important if we're talking about developing our moral codes. We need to have some sort of consensus, even if it isn't 100%. As our knowledge grows and our environment changes, there are newborn immoral acts that surface. Sometimes it takes decades for the moral argument to win through. Where money is concerned, I don't think the moral high ground matters, even if most of us agree.

Robert Tulip wrote:A key issue in debate on religion, in my view, is that the scientific worldview sees destiny in terms of human decision, whereas the fundamentalist view sets aside human ability in favour of faith in God, for example with reliance on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. That intellectual gulf is a primary cause of the moral divide between modern secular reason and traditional religious faith.

I find this paragraph to be nigh unto incoherent. The more I try to sort it out, the more I find myself in strong disagreement with the premises, categories and implications.

First, as to whether destiny is found in human decision or supernatural intervention. There is considerable irony in this formulation. The average fundamentalist thinks it matters critically whether you are faithful to your spouse, abuse your employees or uphold standards of honesty. Thus human decision influences not only other people in this world, but the fate of your eternal soul in the next.

By contrast, you will find intellectuals arguing that it doesn't matter whether you vote because the outcome will not be decided by your vote. And they will argue that you should promote the interest of your stockholders, even if that means deceiving the public and suborning the political process, because that's what professionals do. Hired to do a job, you do it, whether or not it is corrupt.

Belief in the second coming, in most practice, is a belief that "all will be revealed." That those who are getting away with stuff will, Enron-style, meet with a day of reckoning. This may be formulated in supernatural terms, but in practice it is an expression of "they won't keep getting away with it."

There is a moral divide between these two worldviews, for sure. But I don't think it's the one you thought you were talking about.

There is an intellectual divide, as well. And that's the one you are attempting to paint in moral terms. I do think there are several moral dimensions to it. But if you start with the premise that the moral failing involved in, say, creationism, is the key to understanding that intellectual divide, you will still be lost in the woods after trying to follow that thread.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's fine to confront believers about the moral cowardice involved in claiming the Second Coming is the answer to climate change. But until the conversation gets down to the factual issues, the divide will remain. And so there needs to be as much understanding and sympathy in the confrontation as there is self-righteousness and judgment.

Robert Tulip wrote:Progressive Christians find themselves caught between these conflicting attitudes as they try to reconcile belief in God with respect for science. Derision of science leads to modern thought having no time for religion, making it hard for a scientific attitude to faith to formulate a coherent position.

I think Progressive Christians feel that the inability to communicate is a problem, but not for our effort to reconcile belief in God with respect for science. I think to most of us it would be disrespect to God to disrespect scientific facts.

Modern thought may have no time for religion, but religion has never had its primary appeal from "thought". We who are religious intend to carry on with our program, having faith that rescue comes from overcoming the isolating force of fear with the joyful life of enlightenment.

Robert Tulip wrote:Until religion can reform to recognise that our planetary dominion requires conscious moral stewardship, through scientific knowledge, faith will continue to be viewed as immoral. That change is happening, but far too slowly.

The reform has already happened within Progressive Christianity. You will find zero congregations who identify as Progressive who do not think climate change is a critical problem that needs to be dealt with immediately. The Catholic Church has also endorsed climate action. So what we are really talking about with "faith will continue to be viewed as immoral" is the counterculture of ignorance: the tribal clinging to traditional claims and understandings and hierarchies in the face of modernity's intellectual challenge.

It is a bit frustrating for Progressive Christians to have the language of faith be absconded by the supernaturalists to the point where people with intellectual self-respect set up their own little tribal resistance to understanding the world. The anti-theist fundamentalists have become their own counterculture of ignorance. And self-righteously proud of it, and defensive about having the problems pointed out.

Robert Tulip wrote:The reason why atheists appear to misrepresent religion from the believer's viewpoint is that when atheists scratch the surface of a believer who claims to be rational, they so often find an enduring commitment to irrational fantasy. So there is a gap of trust.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. The rationality of "it doesn't matter if you vote" and the rationality of "the point is not to avoid doing wrong, the point is to avoid getting caught," are somehow considered trustworthy (if somewhat distasteful) while the irrationality of "your soul will be judged after you die" and "quantum mechanics shows that everything is connected to everything else" are considered untrustworthy. I would think ordinary experience with people would demonstrate that gaps between worldviews can be bridged by good will, even though the gaps will remain, while simply overriding those who disagree with us will turn the gaps into real grounds for distrust.

Robert Tulip wrote:There is plenty of reason to believe destiny is in human hands. Barring an act of God like the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, the future of our planet will be determined by human decisions, especially whether we continue to cook the earth through CO2 emissions or decide to shift to a sustainable future.

Some might claim a distinction between the scientific method and the scientific moral worldview that our destiny is in our hands. However, the entire modern project of scientific enlightenment is based on the union between method and morality, recognising human ability to construct our future.

Well, even if it was unenlightened morally, there would be no way to avoid human responsibility for our future. I think scientific knowledge cuts both ways, and I see no reason why I should infer any moral enlightenment on behalf of Cambridge Analytica just because they respect factuality.

On the other hand I am learning to be skeptical of those who feel themselves to be morally superior to religious people because the religious people cling to old worldviews. It's a confusion of categories, and the more I have probed it the more I have found modernists to be invested in the confusion. Again, a sort of tribalism is at work, in which inconvenient issues are dismissed and the quest for status within the group takes precedence over an honest evaluation of the moral issues.

Robert Tulip wrote:We now stand at a cusp in history. Unless we reclaim the vitality of the enlightenment belief in human ability, it is hard to see how civilization can avoid the risks of collapse and conflict.

I hope you recognize that this would probably sound, to the average truck driver, like you think if scientists are not given charge of matters, civilization is going to end. You might be right, but I think we can go much further in the direction of persuasion, and not open with ultimatum talk.

Robert Tulip wrote:That is not to denigrate the essence of religion. It does however mean that believers should exercise more humility about the literal meaning of traditional myths such as the existence of God and Jesus, seeing how these beliefs deflect focus from scientific evidence as the basis of knowledge. At the same time, science needs more humility about the extent to which religious mythology meets deeply felt psychological needs.

And I think the greatest degree of responsibility for these issues falls on Progressive Christians. We have a much greater chance of persuading fundamentalists of the problems with literalism than scientists do. And if scientists are going to exercise even enough humility to talk about their own personal views about values, rather than "all of modern educated society" and suchlike, they need to be acquainted with more sophisticated and insightful ways of processing religious symbolism.

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:A key issue in debate on religion, in my view, is that the scientific worldview sees destiny in terms of human decision, whereas the fundamentalist view sets aside human ability in favour of faith in God, for example with reliance on the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. That intellectual gulf is a primary cause of the moral divide between modern secular reason and traditional religious faith.

I find this paragraph to be nigh unto incoherent. The more I try to sort it out, the more I find myself in strong disagreement with the premises, categories and implications.

Thanks Harry, if I can clarify, I was talking about the actual destiny of our planet, as governed by scientific knowledge, not the destiny of our souls as imagined in religious mythology.

I agree with you that believers see free will as decisive to eternal life. They think our choice of faith determines our fate in heaven or hell. But that is an imaginative supernatural construction, not a real destiny, as far as any reasonable evidence indicates.

If we think instead about the future destiny of our planet, the trajectory of life on earth, religion involves a level of fatalism and a deflection of evidence. Such religious attitudes about personal destiny are entirely rejected by the scientific confidence that humanity can understand and manage nature. The Islamic concept of “inshallah” or “God willing” is an extreme form of such deflecting fatalism, as is the fundamentalist Christian idea that we should do nothing to manage the planetary climate for reasons of piety.

The question behind my comment is therefore ‘is the future of the world primarily in the hands of man or the hands of God?’ The answer to that question turns on different concepts of God. The traditional concept of a supernatural intentional entity is seen in religion as overwhelming any human capacity to determine fate.

While a sense that God is a metaphor for cosmic order can mean ultimately God is in control, such processes operate at such a slow timescale as to be largely irrelevant to actual planetary destiny, which is governed by secular politics, and which requires scientific evidence to develop theories about what is good.

Harry Marks wrote: First, as to whether destiny is found in human decision or supernatural intervention. There is considerable irony in this formulation. The average fundamentalist thinks it matters critically whether you are faithful to your spouse, abuse your employees or uphold standards of honesty. Thus human decision influences not only other people in this world, but the fate of your eternal soul in the next.

I am not looking at destiny through the religious prism of going to heaven, but rather the scientific capacity to understand and influence planetary history, which in the era of global warming turns primarily on the ability to regulate the climate.

Much debate between religion and science has turned on the perception that technological mindsets are arrogant and misguided in assuming ability to control nature. Religious concepts of reverence for the presence of the divine within nature, combined with the idea that God is conscious and interventionist, lead to wariness about scientific agendas of control. Such wariness is based on profound critiques of how misguided technological arrogance has destroyed systems that were not understood.

And yet the problem today, after ten thousand years of increasing control of technology over nature, is that unless we apply methods of control to reverse the damage, the risks are immense. Setting aside the technological mindset as a framework for understanding human destiny in the Anthropocene is not a practical option.

Harry Marks wrote: If you start with the premise that the moral failing involved in, say, creationism, is the key to understanding that intellectual divide, you will still be lost in the woods after trying to follow that thread.

Many creationists are kind and caring people, seeing the Bible myths of Adam and Christ as the basis for a life of service and love. The moral failing is not so much in their personal ethics, variable as that may be, but in the ability of the literal Adam/Christ framework to inform political decisions.

My view is that seeing such stories as allegory for actual describable processes should be central to moral reasoning, whereas insisting on their literality degrades and distorts our understanding. Science is a house built upon a rock, while literal religion is a house built upon sand.

Harry Marks wrote: Don't get me wrong. I think it's fine to confront believers about the moral cowardice involved in claiming the Second Coming is the answer to climate change.

An excellent analysis of the Second Coming and climate change is at The Fundamentalists Holding Us Back from a Climate Change Solution.

Some points:
• Biblical literalism—or the belief that the Bible is the word of God —is what's keeping Americans from an agreement to fight climate change.
• People who may think - God intends for the Earth to end like it's written in Revelation anyway, so who am I to intervene?— are incredibly hard to convert to the cause of fighting climate change. Pleas from secular scientists and journalists are going to fall on deaf ears;
• Conservative Christians think, 'If God's in control of everything, he's not gonna make a mess of things,' or 'The world's gonna burn up anyways, so maybe climate change is signifying the end is coming and we should just use it as a warning sign,' or 'What's the point of going overboard to fix this.' And their church pastor is not saying anything about it."
• Ploughing was “the "greatest physic revolution in the history of culture"—the transition from paganism to Christianity. Basically, that's when much of the world went from thinking that we needed to get permission from a tree's guardian spirit if we wanted to cut it down to the belief that everything on earth was there for humans to use as they saw fit. To this day, White's seminal thesis undergirds almost all modern scholarship on why the Judeo-Christian tradition in the West is seemingly at odds with the ecology movement,”
• It takes two to start this fight. So there's been some stuff that goes on in the environmental movement that alienates the evangelicals, and at the same time the evangelicals are doing stuff that's alienated the environmentalists. It's just kind of snowballed.
• The proof of evangelicals' influence is that though there's little evidence Donald Trump himself thinks the Bible is the word of God—or has even read it all that deeply—he has put a number of biblical literalists in his cabinet, giving fundamentalists an enormous amount of power.

Harry Marks wrote: But until the conversation gets down to the factual issues, the divide will remain. And so there needs to be as much understanding and sympathy in the confrontation as there is self-righteousness and judgment.

Is the conversation more about facts or values? As noted above, a conversation about facts is impossible when a person’s values prevent them from engaging. Perhaps the most important conversation in this regard is how a non-literal Christianity can respect values held both by evangelicals and environmentalists.

Thank you Robert. Succinct and edifying post.