What Jonestown can teach us

The truly honest will never shy from questions.


The truly rich (in character) will rarely speak of money.

The truly helpful will never speak of the help they give to others.

The truly powerful (in character) will have no need nor desire to ask for your loyalty.

The truly loving will never ask for your love.

I will list out below the strategies with which Rev. Jones manipulated and eventually murdered his followers. Maintain a rational level of skepticism and apply critical thought to every facet of your life.

Jim Jones started with promising beginnings and was the champion of multiculturalism in a racist era.

Upon his church’s growing popularity, he targeted the recruitment of the dispossessed, the young and impressionable, the old and the needy.

Followers gave their earnings to the church and began working for the church to support the many functions of the church. With no financial independence of their own, they became locked into the church.

He carried out psychic healing scams to earn the trust of his followers.

He transferred the moral authority/ focus of faith upon himself soon after.

Next, he put forth tests of loyalty in order to hone their confidence in their faith (in him) and weed out possible dissenters.

The church held entire families in and familial bonds prevented followers from leaving.

He isolated them geographically. Mentally, he engineered the removal of external influences and achieved monopoly of influence by bombarding them with his narrative (which his followers had to accept without question).

He had a team of loyal lieutenants who had a hidden cache of weapons. These people then went on to murder congressman Leo Ryan and forced the followers to ingest poison.

Be responsible in the public sphere as a critical thinker

 When in doubt, critically examine.

This is an external process which should be open to criticism from rational counter-agruments and draws in more sources of information for you to make a more rational decision thereafter.

I highly advocate against praying to alleviate or doubt which is internal and therefore devoid of other rational counter-arguments which would serve as test of validity for one's stand. It also does not draw upon any new sources of information. Thus these two limitations would hinder the progression towards making a more rational decision.

 

And I was quite appalled by this. You can call me an intellectual prune if you want but my logic is that since his 'personal' view which now is the public sphere, it should be presented without at least some degree of evidential support. Al...most all the claims that he makes are entirely unsupported and therefore presenting it in a schematically logical pattern gives it the false image of critical thought. And if his personal views are shared in the public sphere and if he is highly aware of the fact that he has a 'following' and an ability to influence, then it is his academic responsibility as a critical thinker to provide at least some degree of evidential support as to why he reached his personal view. So that anyone who may be influenced by his personal view has the equal academic responsibility as a critical thinker to examine the logic which culminated in his view and decide whether or not to be influenced. This will reduce the probability that anyone take his public 'private' view to inform their own position without first critically examining it.

Warm and fuzzy but Oxymoronic

Though the logic on this quote is warm and fuzzy on a first read, it fails in critical logic and theological grounding on subsequent readings. The God in question is the Christian God and it is omnibenevolent. It wants the best for mankind. It is also omnipotent. All that happens to anyone is within its control. An omnibenevolent being would never visit any physical or psychological pain on us (his creation out of love) for the sake of us knowing it as a healer, comforter and ultimately just as proof of its existence. Why does it need us to know its existence if it is omipotent? Why inflict pain upon us if it ultimate wish for us is love? Being omnibenevolent, it should possess selfless love and want what is best for us regardless of its own being. So the above line of logic is oxymoronic.

Secondly, if we interpreted the pain, sadness and imperfection in life as a test, then it makes more sense. But still,the logic fails given that an omnibenevolent being would never cause any pain....test or not. 

 

So the applicable logic then stands is that the God in question may be omnipotent and may be using the sadness, pain and imperfection in life as a test for us to hone our physical, emotional and mental strength by applying a utilitarian system of benevolence.

Adam Deen......morality without God.....

Full article here: http://www.adamdeen.com/updates/whats-new/270-are-morals-real-without-god


In summary, a non-theistic moral realism is false by virtue of the fact that moral facts cannot be successfully established and that irrealist view cannot maintain a genuine notion of morality. What logically follows is therefore moral nihilism. Given that nihilism is true, it implies that morality does not exist and that our use of the vocabulary and structures of cognitive enquiry are a mere mask. This reality hides the fact that moral judgments are nothing other than the expression of personal preference or socially imposed rules without God as the locus and paradigm of morality.






In summary, a non-theistic moral realism is false by virtue of the fact that moral facts cannot be successfully established and that irrealist view cannot maintain a genuine notion of morality. ->

Firstly, the non-theistic moral realism view that moral facts can be established is increasingly supported by evolutionary psychology and animal behavioralist studies of our highly social cousins in the animal kingdom. Therefore, he cannot argue that it is false unless he debunks the accumulative research and findings in the above field.

Secondly in a more serious mistake in critical thought, by equating non-theistic moral realism with the irrealist view is to commit an error in equivocation with regard to concepts thereby rendering his entire argument unsound because of its untrue premises.



What logically follows is therefore moral nihilism. ->

Logically follows? Moral nihilism is the opposite of moral realism! Has there been overwhelming evidence that non-theistic morally realist societies will degenerate into morally nihilistic societies with high probability? This bridging process is unproven by any tests of logic or evidence in reality. So this bridging process should contain an ‘If’. But it does not and instead tries to pass off as a modus ponens which it cannot be without any test of validity.



Given that nihilism is true, it implies that morality does not exist and that our use of the vocabulary and structures of cognitive enquiry are a mere mask. ->

Without establishing the validity of his previous statement, he goes on to state another two “truths”.



This reality hides the fact that moral judgments are nothing other than the expression of personal preference or socially imposed rules without God as the locus and paradigm of morality. ->

This predicate is only ‘true’ if the premise of the subject started out true and that is highly debatable. The validity of the alternative that he puts forth is not explained here but in the statement below.



Traditionally morality was grounded in God. God was the transcendental grounding for objective morality. God provided the transcendental vantage point in order to escape the subjective, partial personal preference based views concerning morality. ->

Firstly, he commits an error of ad verecundiam. Tradition does not automatically pass for rational authority until it has been examined. Tradition can give us clues to tested modes of operation but we still have to critically examine its basis. Just because “God was the transcendental grounding for objective morality.” does not mean that it still “must be”.

Secondly if he pushes for an argument that since God was (a factual statement), therefore God should “still be”, then he is committing an “is-ought” fallacy and is deriving a positive value (prescriptive statement) for God still being from a fact.

Should we fully trust scientific "authority" and accept their findings and/or statements?

Should we fully trust scientific "authority" and accept their findings and/or statements?
NO! We should never trust anyone or organisation without first examining its argument.

Science has permeated almost every facet of our modern life. Our daily processes and activities are dominated by scientific apllications and theories. We cannot escape it even if we tried. And as science pushes its frontiers more and more beyond the testing abilities of our technology, we find ourselves confronted with theories that challenge our previously held thinking or even our systems of wishful thinking. So how can we trust what scientists at the cutting edges of scientific pursuit put forth?

1) The first issue is one of ad verecundiam. Is the scientist qualified to comment in that particular field? This is fairly straightforward.

2) The seond issue are the "high barriers to entry" in scientific pursuits: these barriers to entry are HIGH indeed. Why? How many of us even understand how a fan works? This is because our modern understandings of scientific applications and theories have greatly advanced and are far beyond the understandings of the general public. This then leaves us with the fear and problem of not being able to analyse the validity of their findings and leaves the scientists to engage in putting out unchecked theories.

Read and study beyond your needs. Try to keep up with scientific developments. Do so in a progressive manner. There are many great communicators of scientific theories who go to all lengths to package complex theories in palatable explanations.

Ask questions and examine scientific journals whereby scientists cross-examine and conduct each oher's experiments. This is the process of falsification.

3) Beware of scientists who make “is-ought” statements. Scientific findings focus on facts. These are “is” statements. When scientists make conclusive value (ought) judgments from facts, they commit the “is-ought” fallacy. Facts can inform value judgments but cannot conclusively decide value-driven judgments or actions. We should not allow ourselves to accept conclusive value judgments from scientists because of factual findings. I provide an example: “Abortions are unnatural in nature, no animal except humans perform abortions. Therefore abortions are wrong and we should not perform abortions.”

4) Every human being has a slant. And this slant may inform their findings. However, we cannot entirely discount a scientist's findings because of their background. This would be committing an error of ad hominem. We should examine the soundness of the argument first. If it is sound, the hypothesis still stands despite the scientist’s background. If it is unsound for various reasons, we may have clues from their background on why particular “errors” or suppression of evidence was committed.

Deconstructing the religious argument using cosmological constants

Abel: Our cosmological constants show signs of the universe being fine-tuned for life.

Cain: And so?

Abel: God is responsible for this fine-tuning.

Cain: How do you know?

Abel: Because our holy book says that God created the universe so he set the cosmological constants to allow for life to occur.

Cain: Even if your holy book says so, how do you know that it is God?

Abel: It has to be God. Who else has the ability to do so?

Cain: Ok maybe it is God but who’s God?

Abel: Of course, it is our God. Only our telling of God is correct.
Fallacies in critical thought

1) Is our universe really fine-tuned for life? (As much as the universe seems fine-tuned for life, it also seems fine-tuned to deny life. By assuming that our universe is fine-tuned for life, this fallacy is “Begging the question”.)

2) Are cosmological constants really fine-tuned? (This commits the problem of Ad Ignoratium. We do not know for certain if cosmological constants are fine-tuned. For now, we can ony say that cosmological constants seems fine-tuned for life.)

3) God is responsible for this fine-tuning. (This is an unfalsifiable statement: the existence of God and its hand in the setting of the cosmological constants cannot be falsified.)

4) Because our holy book says that God created the universe so he set the cosmological constants to allow for life to occur. (this is circular reasoning)

5) Cain: Ok maybe it is God but who’s God? (this is a good question to prevent equivocation. There are many conceptions of God.)


6) Abel: Of course, it is our God.
    Abel: Only our telling of God is correct. (this is unfalsifiable. No religion has proven its concept of God to be truer than others.)



Ultimately, the entire argument is not sound because it lacks (1) validity and (2) a true premise and commits many other fallacies in reasoning as shown above.

I shall examine my stand

I shall examine my stand (I am a naturalist and function morally as a humanist) as according to the 12 virtues of rationality,

Curiosity (you really need to know) -> Yes! I do!


relinquishment (give it up if it is false) -> I will be more than happy to. On the issue of morality, if  God/s convincedly spoke to us about its existence, it would be great for me to know that there is an afterlife and rewards for morality and then we would also have an objective morality with which to operate from. This may hopefully unite more of us too. This would also reduce a lot of the heartache and philosophical disputes that we have. Then again in the darker conceptions of such a happening, I can imagine that some groups would be convinced that the God/s were truly God/s and not acknowledge them and even seek to destroy them (given that they do not wish to live under their fixed system of morality and absolute authority).

lightness (you must have no fixed position before deciding on an issue. if not, you are a 'lawyer' and not a 'judge') -> my position has changed quite a bit along this journey as I have been more informed. I have not had a fixed position and am still in the process of ultimately deciding. I was once a believer in the supernatural due to a lack of scientific knowledge and family background. Later, I studied religions more in depth and seeked to find commonalities in morality. Then I realised that some religions clashed with each other for the truth of God. I was still convinced that we had souls and that there was something uniquely special about humans. I then went through an existentialist patch and came out better with the understanding that although nothing definite was currently dictating a meaning for my life, I could dictate one for myself. Then I had to decide what that was. Through grief and disappointments, I realised something. That on a cosmic scale, I was not all that special and thus it was arrogant for me to consider myself too much. I should then be concerned more about others rather than myself. But I still held the conviction that mankind was special. So I wanted to study all I could about mankind's origins and nature. From anatomy, anthroplogy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, biochemistry, astrophysics, biology and philosophy, I realised the beauty of it all. We were special! This was because we were connected with every other living creature and we are fortunate to be alive and part of this biological experience. And that this meant that my humanist morality should seek to uphold this special experience with our fellow humans (even though others may not think as I do with regard to the conclusions of the hard sciences as they may believe in other systems to inform their conclusions because this was secondary to their biological experience: life)

evenness (you must not argue for one side.... you are the judge and not a hypothesis) -> I must seek to be more even. I think that as of late, I have become more of  "lawyer" for naturalism as I find their arguments more compelling and with evidential backing. I have found the arguments for supernaturalism often tainted with greed, hypocrisy and inter-faith bickering. I need to think more about this virtue and decide how best to be more even.

argument (you do not have to end with a balanced judgment. let reality be the test) -> thus far, reality is swinging in favor of naturalism. and given that reality does not yet accord a supernatural realm, then humanism is the most moderate and tenable position of morality to me.

empiricism (observe and predict. Do not ask which beliefs to profess, but which experiences to anticipate) -> I totally agree. I am a reality-based individual both in fight, moral and cognitive philosophy. Facts are testable in which experiences can be anticipated and observable with accuate prediction and therefore explanation.

simplicity (When you profess a huge belief with many details, each additional detail is another chance for the belief to be wrong. Each specification adds to your burden) -> Occam's razor. Just like in many facets of life, I go with the dictum "less is more", "smooth is fast" and "K.I.S.S"

humility (Who are most humble? Those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans) -> I do not confess to be correct. Nor do I confess to be the only one who is correct. I will guard against the possibility of the folly of my own ways by equally granting others the freedom to expression and thought. Moreover, no one system is privileged and all are open to critical analysis.

perfectionism (The more errors you correct in yourself, the more you notice) -> I must strive more in this area.

precision (the evidence which is more useful is the one which has exposed itself to a stricter test) -> science and human experiences has proven thus far that most supernatural claims are not useful with experiments and tests (even challenges by skeptics such as Randi) which can be replicated for confirmation.

scholarship (study for as long and as much as you need) -> reading and learning more each day and loving it!

the void. (to embrace and live a life of rationality in which all qualities should be striven for in equal importance with one another to achieve the utmost rationality) -> I must truly understand this. I admit to currently not understanding/ being able to imagine the full meaning of this virtue and in the future, I will aim for this. :)

More interesting information on morality (from moral psychology and neuroscience)

Kohlberg and rationalist moral psychology argue that moral judgment and behavior are driven by conscious reasoning.

The competing humean school counterpois...es that moral judgments result from unconscious and automatic response and moral reasoning amounts to post-hoc rationalizations. Haidt brings forth the example of “moral dumbfounding” where people exhibit strong moral convictions they find difficult to justify. Our divided self is like a rider on the back of an elephant and we give far too much importance to the rider.

Greene seeks to synthesize rationalist and humean perspectives. Moral thinking combines emotional responses and rational constructions and reconstructions as shaped by biological and cultural forces. Most of us feel a strict obligation to save a nearby drowning child but no comparable obligation to save faraway sick and starving children through charitable donations and we care far more about identifiable victims than statistical deaths. We respond emotionally to ‘what is up close and personal” and such responses can conflict with what we conclude when we reason impersonally.



Neuroscience studies with the data from brain-imaging show that cognitive psychological processes can compete with emotional responses to drive people to approve of personally harmful moral violations, primarily when there is a strong consequentialist rationale for doing so.



Secondly, brain imaging studies have also shown that we often make decisions neurologically before consciously being aware of our decisions thus validating the above claims that emotive triggers



This is a reminder that issues of morality
1) are culturally subjective and we must be conscious of our own methodological biasedness.
2) originate from issues of emotion and thus when we deal in moral judgment, we must best "check our emotions at the door" to avoid irrationality in judgment.
3) must rightfully suspect our own "rationality" as it could be mere justifications. We must thus allow for debate and consensus from multiple perspectives to decide on issues of grave moral consequences.

Humanism is not moral relativism

Humanism is NOT moral relativism! Our goals (to promote and uphold human flourishing for as many of our fellow men) and methods (discussion, negotiation and teamwork) will not be compromised.




Why wait for or posit an external source for an objective origin of morality when we can decide one together for ourselves as a species? We are ACCOUNTABLE to each other and our future generations thus we need to be the ones to work together to forge an objective origin of morality. Can we be objective? Yes! We CAN and MUST be impartial to acts of immorality which threaten the well-being of members of our species, our species in general, our humanity and our greater environment.



Why thwart our moral progression as a species with the concept of “objectivity” when we should be more concerned with “universally held” moral values? Nothing and no one can be truly objective. (All are subjective as influenced directly or indirectly through their historical, cultural, political and economic legacies and environment.) We can better achieve ‘objectivity’ by attempting to minimize subjectivity through discovering, upholding and promoting universally held values which aim at inclusiveness and agreement.

The TROLLEY problem

The repeated conduct of Thomson's "Trolley problem" (in its various versions) experiment has shown that an overwhelming majority of people (regardless of political, cultural or religious background) operate ethically based on in-group and out-group considerations and cost-benefit analysis.

Verdict: we are more alike in our moral understandings than we think and we have it in us to operate morally as a species away from our petty constructed differences. This findings also show us that no one group of people are more morally superior to another

David Williams: Conceiving God

Here are some good stuff which I will highlight.


First off, I must say that I love the fact that there is quite a bit of neuroscience!

Preachers of today emphasize the uniqueness of Christianity. There is, however, little in it that was new. Christianity absorbed the 'best in the religions of the time: it was an amalgam. Virgin births, descendants of Gods, rising from the dead were not unique. I argue that Islam is the same and it bridged on the rising tide of the Abrahamic faith and added progressions in ethics (though this was still provincial in its considerations and not perfect as how a truly malevolent and omnipotent God would/could want it to be) and the much touted falsification tests in order to add to its validity.

Williams argues that religion originated independently of the functions that it is frequently said to perform. The functions developed after or as religion came into being for other reasons. These functions that people commonly think religions perform include: fostering group unity, providing peace of mind and explaining puzzling aspects of life.

He goes on to state that religions' unity is divisive of mankind. Any religious entity is created vis-a-vis "others" who exist outside the fold that makes a religious social entity meaningful. if there were no 'others', there could be no recognisable religious group. When people argue that religion holds society together, they mean that it holds their section of society together and then only in specific circumstances. Wide social unity is intrinsically impossible because religion is founded on supposedly revealed knowledge of supernatural realms and beings not on empirically verifiable observations. Thus (and I agree strongly) unity brought by religion is not inclusive in nature and indeed counterproductive to the unity of mankind in general.

Williams has three objections against the 'comfort' that religions accord to its believers in which one I will go into detail here. He denies the positive nature of this 'comfort' that religion can bring is that it can and has been used to shore up oppressive regimes.

Then he puts forth interesting questions: why did God not reveal the absolutely fundamental virtue of compassion, even towards enemies, right at the beginning? Can later ‘revelations’ be said to 'supersede’ earlier ones when they flatly contradict them? In any event, why was progressive revelation necessary?

Now comes the sexy neuroscience bits when Williams goes into explaining religious experiences. Unknown to most of us, human consciousness is constantly shifting and consists of a normal, daily trajectory and an intensified trajectory that leads to overwhelming hallucinations. In medieval times, some methods were intentionally combined to trigger hallucinatory episodes. Such episodes were moulded and accepted by sufferers and religious authorities as messages from God. 6 frequently repeated entoptic forms can be identified (even found in San rock paintings) and are related to altered states of consciousness and such ubiquity among many religious believers of various faith suggests that they are not culturally determined but are wired into our neurology. Believers of all times and faiths have also found ‘proof’ from their dreams, experience vortexes (striate cortex) and flight.

AC Grayling: Against all Gods

Short and concise. Just the way I like it.

Grayling believes in the right of religion but only in the private sphere and that all religions should be equally open to criticism just as any system of thought is. He strongly condemns proselytising young intellectually defenceless children in faith-based education systems.

He then argues that religions have changed so much in their stances and tenets that a practitioner of before would not recognise the same religion today. This apologetic movement is one which I too observe, which religious people hate to admit and which I ultimately agree with (since they seek to get their values in line with modernity and in turn progress. Though their reason for doing so may be more survivalist than moral in motivation, the outcome is still positive).

I highly agree with his point that atheists should deny the label, "atheists" since they are conforming with the theists' definition of them within their own concocted systems of belief and in turn giving such systems special positions. Why are we not also a-fairists, a-unicornists and agnomists? All Gods and such creatures are equally supernatural. Instead, we are naturalists and theists are supernaturalists.

He also asserts that apparent Islamic and Christian resurgence is actually the very common and often bloody death spasm of religion. This is something which I need to consider more.

Misunderstandings about Humanism

From my readings of Epstein, "Good without God"

Humanism: Our goal is to empower and protect as many humans as possible with the progression of time through rationalization, discussion and concerted action.

Who are humanists? Many if not most of us are humanists. If you are a deist and you strive to do good for other human beings, then you too are a humanist. If you are religious and strive to do good not to reap afterlife rewards, then you too are a humanist. Even the religiously adamant (those who take that their God’s word is objective morality) who have to utilize their rationality in order to interpret and apply God’s word to best serve the issues of the day are humanists in action.

Humanism admits to not having all the answers. Some questions of morality are tricky and will remain so. And we feel that anyone who takes an absolute stand on tricky moral issues may be prone to hasty generalisations. Secondly, we seek to overcome such tricky issues with discussion and concerted actions with the overall goal of human flourishing. We may make mistakes along the way but we will always strive to get better.

This leads us to a related charge that humanism is relativistic. We indeed are not. Our end goal and methods will not be compromised. We also acknowledge that there are fundamental tenets of human flourishing that will not change with time and are in common among systems of morality throughout human experience.

Is humanism species-specific? No. We cannot be truly morally and indeed even biologically flourishing humans if we abuse and neglect our environmental and other biological (who like us feel pain and have the need and desire to flourish).

Humanism is not antagonistic with religion. We are not anti-religious. We are simply a-religious. Our stand is that religious systems have no more an objective morality than one that humans can decide jointly and uphold together. (To assert that God’s laws of morality are objectively superior to a system that we can create on our own, we need to prove the existence of God. The second problem then arises, which God?) Ultimately, we care about humans. God in the concept of good is to us secondary. (Plato’s Euthypro answers this: if that which the God/s love is because it is good, then it is good on its own without it being influenced by God/s loving it) Ultimately, we do not wish to waste/spend time arguing on who is more right in doing good, we seek to work with religious people who wish to promote human flourishing.

We do not believe in forms of the “noble lie” or advocate its use to influence people to involuntarily do good or do good for religious rewards. We seek to produce moral individuals through experiential education.

A superior moral compass from religion & Origins of Rights

More from my reading of Epstein’s “Good without God”, Foot and Thomson’s “Trolley problem” experiments have shown that humans regardless of religious persuasion have responded similarly to the problem. This shows that we can agree on certain things that we don’t want to see happen: we all want to reduce needless human suffering. And above all, this shows that religion does not necessarily provide its people with a superior moral compass.

Rights must exist in order to empower and protect humans. But rights do not come from God, because God does not speak to human beings in a single voice and rights should exist even if there is no God. Then where should rights come from?

Rights do not come from nature, because nature is value-neutral. Rights can however come from biological understandings of pain and suffering.


Rights should not come solely from logic, because there is little consensus about the a priori premises from which rights may be deduced.


Rights do not come from law alone.


Rights come from human experience: we can learn from past mistakes. Rights come from wrongs.