See an important and exciting Update Below.
Oh, dear. Now the atheist boys at Salon are claiming that the recent calculations of game theory, surrounding the "prisoner's dilemma" knock the stuffings out of Jesus. They claim that the calculations of that branch of mathematics confirms that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Which, since they are so interested in chronological priority, would seem to be a rather bizarre move in this particular game. Having read a few things online, I'm not entirely convinced that the simplistic set up of the game and the calculations is really useful to address the teachings of the Jewish tradition, which is not about any artificial set up of such a simplistic scenario but one in which real people are living in the real world with a far fuller range of motivations and interests and in a far richer context of personal and impersonal relationships. But, for the purpose of the brawl, I'll pretend to entertain the idea.
They make the typical atheist mistake of believing that God couldn't have anything to do with mathematics, that mathematics is, somehow, safe atheist territory where God can't get in. But, luckily, whoever it was who composed the first line in Genesis blows them out of the water. If God created the heavens and the Earth, if God is the Creator of of all things visible and invisible, as they say in one version of The Creed, then, of course, you'd expect to find confirmation of something that important if you can work it out mathematically. While I'd never make that claim, unless forced to, that reluctance would be based in the kind of "tidiness of mind" that Eddington talked about, not any logical or moral objections.
I daresay that most of you are by no means reluctant to accept the scientific epic of the Creation, holding it perhaps as more to the glory of God than the traditional story. Perhaps you would prefer to tone down certain harshnesses of expression, to emphasise the forethought of the Creator in the events which I have called accidents. I would not venture to say that those who are eager to sanctify, as it were, the revelations of science by accepting them as new insight into the divine power are wrong. But this attitude is liable to grate a little on the scientific mind, forcing its free spirit of inquiry into one predetermined mode of expression; and I do not think that the harmonising of the scientific and the religious outlook on experience is assisted that way. Perhaps our feeling on this point can be explained by a comparison . A business man may believe that the hand of Providence is behind his commercial undertakings as it is behind all vicissitudes of his life; but he would be aghast at the suggestion that Providence should be entered as an asset in his balance sheet. I think it is not irreligion but a tidiness of mind, which rebels against the idea of permeating scientific research with a religious implication.
Science and the Unseen World
I am not above pointing out that in this case it would appear to be mathematicians who are mixing math with religion, claiming to have confirmed the logical validity of a moral commandment that human history has shown to be anything but a matter of the most persuasive obviousness. People, even those who claim to believe that it is a command of God in the Torah (Leviticus 19:18) or of Jesus in the Second Testament, even those people have had the hardest of times living up to this, one of the simplest and yet hardest of teachings. That it took mathematics up until the very late 20th century to confirm a teaching that extends back into the Jewish tradition in written form many centuries before the Common Era certainly doesn't discredit the insight of the prophets who knew that intuitively. No more than that it took cosmology until the early 20th century to get to that beginning of Genesis mentioned above, and it was a priest-physicist who came up with that one, too.
And, most ironically of all, it is the atheists who claim that mathematics confirming that most unobvious and difficult of religious teachings, somehow, confirms their debunking of the religious figures who taught that. I think the untidiness of mind that represents is more than some philosophical maid service could clean up. Perhaps they would like to address the many atheists of the past two centuries who have denied the truth that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, as so many of them have, Nietzche, Haeckel, Rand, ... Because they are the ones debunked by mathematics if they really have proven the validity of the religious teaching in question.
Update: It just occurred to me that, now that the atheists are claiming that the truth of that particular commandment has been proven to the level of mathematical certainty, that we can now expect atheists, en masse to begin successfully applying the fruits of reason and science in their own lives. We can look forward to them proving the superiority of atheist-materialist ideology to that religion which has taught the commandment for thousands of years to such mixed success, though, I would claim, far more success than the denial of its validity would be in reforming the lives of those who heard the words of the Torah, Rabbi Hillel and Jesus. Now we can see the real test of the atheist devotion to logic, mathematics and reason.
Aren't you just waiting with baited breath to see the atheists acting as if they believed that they should do unto others as they would have done unto them? I mean, we can look forward to them ditching the double standards favoring atheists that they have always insisted on. Only, I wouldn't hold your breath TOO long.
I'm not sure I can fit this into a comment, but I'm going to try.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the critique of Christianity here (and that's all it is; it's not about "religion," it's about an interpretation of Christian doctrine) is that it is based on a misplaced fallacy arising from Romanticism: that only that which is original, is true.
The general argument is: if it can be known from human reasoning/experience, it cannot be of God, because all that is of God must be sui generis or it is not "original" to God; because God is good, and only that which is original is good. You can see the error arising from Romanticism there, I think.
Romanticism taught us to place a premium on both the individual, and on "original" thinking. That which is "unique" is more true than that which is familiar, if only because it is new. Now, the general excuse for this is that, if humans can think it, it didn't come from outside humanity, so it must not have a metaphysical origin, so God is debunked. The problem with that reasoning is: if humans can't think it, how can they ever know it? And since when did Judaism, or Christianity for that matter, assert that all the comes from God is only true because it is original to God?
What comes from God is true and correct and worthy to be acknowledged as such because it comes from God. It is a confessional statement, just as the story of Genesis is a confessional statement (it confesses the relationship of God to all that is; but that's another discussion). Christians and Jews don't acknowledge the truth of God's word because it is original to God and so impossible for humans to know otherwise; they acknowledge its truth and value because it comes from God.
If it was impossible for humans to know, what good would it be? If it can be known (discovered, or revealed; there's a world of difference in the epistemologies there, and the distinctions are valid, not spurious) from other means, well and good. That it should be known is more important than how it is known (admittedly, there are branches of Christianity that don't agree with me here; but I disagree with them, so we're even).
Originality is not a verification of truth, nor even a measure of merit. And it certainly doesn't establish anything about the content or value of the statement in question. So, as you say, if mathematics has finally established the value of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," then, Welcome to the Party! Mathematics is not (as assumed by this example being presented as a counter to Christianity) the voice of God (or the Universe) or an access path to absolute truth (your Platonic Good cannot displace my Abrahamic God). Mathematics is just another language; and if it took over 20 centuries to say what we've been saying for all that time, what is that to brag about?
Adding: wasn't that played as the basic insight of game theory's origin in "A Beautiful Mind"? That cooperation works better than competition?
ReplyDeleteI remember watching that scene again recently and thinking: "Really? This is news to you?" And wondering, not for the first time, how many times we had to reinvent the wheel. I mean, I trust game theory is a bit more than that, and it was only a movie; but still, I wonder....
Sometimes I think Asimov's "Nightfall," where all knowledge is lost and has to be painstakingly reconstructed from scratch, or the discovery in the "Matrix" films that humanity has established "Zion" at least 6 different times, but never kept the knowledge of it over to the next time Zion is re-started, to be a metaphor of our times. Perhaps you are right, and this is a new "Dark Age" in which we imagine all we know is all we need to know, and we are too benighted to recognize even our own ignorance.
Although, as the Matrix films suggest, we guess at it from time to time....