Christian Doctrines I: Original Sin - Physics, Economics and Morality
I've come to understand that original sin, the Christian religious doctrine, describes various systematic "wrongs" with the world, which make us conclude that it is a fallen world.
On the physical level, the problem described seems to be the second law of thermodynamics - the entropic tendency of all closed physical systems towards energy dissipation, and the destruction of all structure and order given sufficient time - the asymmetry that exists regarding the probability of decreasing entropy compared to the probability of increasing entropy. Ultimately the second law of thermodynamics practically guarantees that the Universe will fizzle out of existence, thereby illustrating that the punishment of sin is death.
On the social and economic level, original sin seems to describe the mechanism in virtue of which, that which is increasing the fitness of the individual, turns out to decrease the fitness of the collective. For example, promiscuity, both of a sexual and economic nature, may enhance the fitness of the individual, but if everyone becomes promiscuous, then there will be a decrease in the overall fitness of the species. Original sin in this case illustrates that advantages to the individuals are not passed on as advantages to the species, but quite the contrary, as disadvantages - and further, that ultimately, the individuals are more likely, given their nature, to take actions which will increase individual fitness but decrease collective fitness. Thus "free markets" ultimately break - there is an invisible hand which leads them to breaking - capitalism, as well as all other forms of political and economic organisation, are inherently unstable. There is no absolute - no communism which will escape from sin. In this manner, the punishment of sin will again be death, and death will be unavoidable. This is also known in economic circles as the prisoner's dilemma - scenarios where individual pursuit of self-interest ultimately leads to collectively sub-optimal outcomes. Thus, equilibrium in economics does not optimise for collectively optimal solutions.
And of course, in moral matters, original sin illustrates the tendency of doing evil, all the while knowing what the good thing to do is. As St. Paul writes "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, that I do". This means forfeiting long-term good, and reason in favor of irrationality and short-term, ephemeral goods. Biologically it seems that there is a statistical tendency to prefer the pleasure that can be had now, rather than the greater pleasure that can be had in the long-run. And one may be aware of this - and yet still do evil, because it is the will that is corrupted, which also corrupts the mind. And thus, the punishment of sin ultimately again is death and suffering (the loss of happiness). Thus immorality does lead to destruction, and virtue is its own reward.
(This is part of a series of threads regarding re-interpretation of religious doctrines. For a long time I could not understand the meaning of these doctrines - I did not agree with them, because the words simply did not speak to me - I just did not understand the meaning of the words. But now, hopefully, the explanations above inject new meaning in those words).
On the physical level, the problem described seems to be the second law of thermodynamics - the entropic tendency of all closed physical systems towards energy dissipation, and the destruction of all structure and order given sufficient time - the asymmetry that exists regarding the probability of decreasing entropy compared to the probability of increasing entropy. Ultimately the second law of thermodynamics practically guarantees that the Universe will fizzle out of existence, thereby illustrating that the punishment of sin is death.
On the social and economic level, original sin seems to describe the mechanism in virtue of which, that which is increasing the fitness of the individual, turns out to decrease the fitness of the collective. For example, promiscuity, both of a sexual and economic nature, may enhance the fitness of the individual, but if everyone becomes promiscuous, then there will be a decrease in the overall fitness of the species. Original sin in this case illustrates that advantages to the individuals are not passed on as advantages to the species, but quite the contrary, as disadvantages - and further, that ultimately, the individuals are more likely, given their nature, to take actions which will increase individual fitness but decrease collective fitness. Thus "free markets" ultimately break - there is an invisible hand which leads them to breaking - capitalism, as well as all other forms of political and economic organisation, are inherently unstable. There is no absolute - no communism which will escape from sin. In this manner, the punishment of sin will again be death, and death will be unavoidable. This is also known in economic circles as the prisoner's dilemma - scenarios where individual pursuit of self-interest ultimately leads to collectively sub-optimal outcomes. Thus, equilibrium in economics does not optimise for collectively optimal solutions.
And of course, in moral matters, original sin illustrates the tendency of doing evil, all the while knowing what the good thing to do is. As St. Paul writes "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, that I do". This means forfeiting long-term good, and reason in favor of irrationality and short-term, ephemeral goods. Biologically it seems that there is a statistical tendency to prefer the pleasure that can be had now, rather than the greater pleasure that can be had in the long-run. And one may be aware of this - and yet still do evil, because it is the will that is corrupted, which also corrupts the mind. And thus, the punishment of sin ultimately again is death and suffering (the loss of happiness). Thus immorality does lead to destruction, and virtue is its own reward.
(This is part of a series of threads regarding re-interpretation of religious doctrines. For a long time I could not understand the meaning of these doctrines - I did not agree with them, because the words simply did not speak to me - I just did not understand the meaning of the words. But now, hopefully, the explanations above inject new meaning in those words).
Comments (60)
What is evil and how does it have to do with short-term pleasure? Most would say murder, genocide, rape, purposely hurting people, and such is evil, but that does not necessarily correlate with indulging in short-term pleasure. If you allude to sex (with self or others), which almost all Church Fathers and "Saint" Paul were fixated on and essentially "alluding" to with sin it seems, then besides STDs, this does not seem in the evil category or even a short-term loss unless it is accompanied by feelings of remorse or shame which may be a cultural, personal psychological, or personal biological thing- again both not equating to what is normally deemed "evil".
If we are talking about something like drugs- certainly the destruction that comes from the underground drug economy leads to evil. However, the personal consumption of drugs, starts out with the general human tendency towards boredom, and the pleasurable or altered state of the drug becomes an addiction. Addiction could be said to be an "evil" because it can consume a life and cause it to think of nothing else. However, a condition like addiction does not seem to fall under evil in the conventional sense of the word either.
Also, a bigger point, at what time is it good then to indulge? The short term is forfeited to the long term, but usually with the goal to eventually cash in on all those original forfeits. You invest and wait to see it grow and reap the rewards. The emphasis being that you will eventually reap the rewards.
"Virtue is its own reward" does not seem to be saying much to me. Pleasure seems to be the reward of "virtues". If you want to get good at something, patience, fortitude and such may be the way to get there, but the "reward" seems to be the pleasure of mastering something and feeling or seeing the result.
Evil is self or other destructive behavior. It has to do with short-term pleasure because to have short term pleasure (in this context) means to sacrifice long term pleasure. By definition in this case. Whatsoever pleasure you can imagine which does not sacrifice future pleasure is by this definition a long-term pleasure.
Quoting schopenhauer1
According to the definitions above it does, since what qualifies as short term pleasure is precisely that which prevents one from enjoying a greater good in the future. Thus it is evil because it does harm to one's own soul.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sex in the wrong circumstances (outside of a committed relationship) is evil as it harms the one who engages in it as it leads to them to: 1. sacrifice their capacity for developing intimacy with someone in the future, 2. fail to achieve the natural purpose of sex (intimacy and/or reproduction), 3. treat another human being as a means to an end, and thus objectify them, taking the dignity they rightfully deserve away.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Addiction is harmful to the flourishing of the organism, and is therefore evil. Addiction does not promote flourishing.
Quoting schopenhauer1
At no point. Indulgence is always bad. What is good is skillful (as Buddhists would say) living. This whole idea of cashing in is part of the problem. There is no cashing in. The focus is on living a good life, which means growing and developing one's self and doing good for self and others. You're cashing in at all times. Going for short-term pleasures is being short-sighted and creating future trouble for yourself, thus, paradoxically, not cashing in. The virtuous man is the only one who cashes in, and he cashes in every moment.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Sure. Paradoxically, the only man who ever gets real, lasting pleasure is the virtuous man, and this is the ultimate Socratic irony.
The idyllic utopia from which we fell is the atemporal and eternal. The world is fallen only when we compare it to the world sub specie aeternitatis - thus, man's fall into time (and hence into death), is the effect of original sin. But, alas - there is still spirit in man, not only flesh, and thus not everything has fallen into time - something still remains which is eternal - otherwise there would be no truth but Cioran. As Spinoza has said, sometimes we feel that we are eternal; or as Wittgenstein has said, eternity is not to be found in time's infinity, but rather in the eternity of the present moment; life knows no end, the same way our visual field knows no end.
The reason why we must presuppose an idyllic utopia from which a fall occurs is the following (this was by the way going to be the next topic I was going to post; why is this world fallen?): in this world, life is destroyed by death, health is destroyed by illness, order is destroyed by entropy. The ontological status of this world is one in which evil triumphs over good, ultimately. However - death, illness, entropy - all of them logically presuppose life, health and order. Thus, life is logically anterior to death and must necessarily be so. No death can be conceived in the absence of life. For this reason, we know that sub specie aeternitatis, life triumphs over death as it is prior to it. Only sub specie durationis does death overcome life, and so, we call this world, sub specie durationis, fallen, because the ontological status of good and evil are inverted compared to the world sub specie aeternitatis.
It's the fear of the finite, the fear of death, the inability to accept life is sub specie durationis and that we, as existing states, are outside the infinite. It's a mockery of Spinoza's insight into sub specie durationis and sub specie aeternitatis, a confusing of the latter for the former because one cannot accept the finite nature of life.
Orignal sin doesn't merely point out the wrongness of finite life. It mistakenly proposes we are worthless because of it, that it means we must be something other than ourselves, something other than finite. God ceases to be the immanent expression of the world (i.e. the infinite) and is mistaken for a life, a utopia, which has never existed and never will. It forms a delusion about our life (that be can be infinite) and worth (that the world is worthless, without the immanent expression of God) with which we try to fill the whole in our heart.
But it never really works because we are finite. We cannot escape ourselves, even when we throw our efforts into projects, such as ideology and empires which remain others. Ten years? Fifty years? One hundred and twenty years? Three hundred years? A millennia? It is never enough. In every case, the result is dissatisfaction because it is still finite and so ends in every case. When we wish to be infinite, the hole in are heart never closes because we want something that we never are. We become stuck on the treadmill of desire, desperately insisting the maintenance of life (the afterlife) and a whole host of fictions (nations, empires, duty, etc.,etc.) into to perpetuity, without actually paying attention to the communities of the world, what matters to them or how our polices would actual affect them (you would have us invading Iraq for empire building ).
We become drunk on enacting power on others for to achieve the infinite (e.g. salvation, the never-ending empire, the utopia, punishing "moral decay, etc.,etc.") which never does what we say. Instead of sacrifice for the community, it the throwing of people on the altar for a present delusion of infinite life, so a certain group of people can FEEL like they will be infinite, that they will achieve transcendence from the finite world and their fear of it, even though nothing of the sort occurs.
Where do I say this. Please quote instead of assuming some notions that I have never stated nor agreed with. I don't understand why you like to imagine things about what I'm saying instead of actually look at what I've written. You say I have a trouble with accepting the finite nature of man, and I say you have a trouble with accepting what I wrote, and prefer instead to create an imagination of it...
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Nope, original sin states that that is precisely what will happen.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
That's not part of the doctrine of original sin - quite the contrary, as I have stated very clearly, the punishment for sin is death, and this is inescapable as I have illustrated. Therefore there is no delusion that we can ever escape from it. Original sin states quite the contrary.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Nope, we run to something other merely because it exists - it is real, and it is a part of ourselves. If we neglected that part, then that would be the equivalent of neglecting part of our being. Kierkegaard wrote extensively on this - on the need for man to balance the finite and the infinite within him, on the fact that man is a contradiction, holding both finite and infinite within him, yadda yadda yadda...
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No the spirit never escapes from the world sub specie durationis because it simply never is part of the world sub specie durationis. I don't know what happens after death - I can't imagine either that there is feeling or that there isn't feeling. Those categories, as far as I'm concerned, no longer apply, except perhaps metaphorically.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Part of ourselves - namely our bodies - are outside of the infinite. But our souls and minds never are.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Re-read Book V of the Ethics. Spinoza is clear about this: "V.P23: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal". It's ironic that YOU are the one talking about mocking Spinoza's insights...
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
It doesn't point out the wrongness of finite life.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Neither does it state this.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
"In Him we move and have our being"
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
This assumption is wrong. You have just not discovered the infinite part of man. We are BOTH finite and infinite.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Spinoza's words :) . Spinoza stated that "we feel and know that we are eternal" in the note to proposition 23 quoted earlier.
In logical expression, yes (though our bodies are infinite there too). Not in life. Our minds aren't distinct form our bodies in the sense that former is finite and the latter infinite (you are regressing into the mind-body dualism Spinoza dispels here). This is an outright textual example of your refusal to accept the finite. You speak of if the indestructible nature of logical expression were the existing mind of a person. As if the feeling one was infinite actually qualified as part of a person existing for eternity.
Another example of not accepting the finite nature of man. Here you propose there is an infinite part of man such that it produces a contradiction. This is not true. Such a contradiction is impossible. No state of man is infinite.
There is plenty of feeling the infinite, being aware of logical expression, but these are not existing states of ourselves. We are all finite. Sometimes we are finite states which are the sensing of the infinite. The supposed contradiction is an illusion created by us not distinguishing between sub specie aeternitatis (logical expression) and sub specie durationis (the existing state which is a sense of logical expression).
If you want to describe it like that sure, but that means is incoherent to refer to it as our existing mind.
I never contested original sin stated that there was inescapable evil in the world. My point is it considered the world worthless because of that. It is the fear of existing in world in which there is at least some evil that cannot be escaped. Worthlessness is part of the doctrine of original sin.
Rather than noting the presence of inescapable evil (sin) and the stating that such a world is nevertheless worthwhile, it proclaims the world with evil is completely worthless, such that things need to be infinite to matter.
More like: "With the being of the world (including us), He moves (i.e. the infinite expressed by the finite), " if we are being careful in our language to avoid the equivocation of the finite with the infinite. The world is not a subset of the infinite as your quote might imply if read the wrong way.
Good to know haha!
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
It is impossible that this is Spinoza's meaning for the following reason. If it was his meaning, then he would not state "the mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body", which implies that the body CAN BE and IS absolutely destroyed.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
You are misunderstanding. Is Aristotle's hylomorphism dualistic? Absolutely not. The soul is the form of the body. The soul does not exist physically without the body. And yet, the soul is eternal and lives after death. Not because of a dualistic break between the two, but rather because the soul is an activity, which still remains as an activity even after death when it isn't instantiated in the physical realm anymore. Spinoza is similar.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
"We feel AND KNOW that we are eternal"
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Proof?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
How come?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No, it merely states that it is the infinite which ultimately gives value to this world - in fact this world (the finite) cannot exist without the infinite, which must always be presupposed. It's strange you say this when the Christian position is clearly that this world is good - that God's creation is good, despite its fallenness.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
But God is in this case logically prior to the world. The world can't exist without God, but God could (logically) exist without the world. Sub specie aeternitatis, even according to Spinoza, is the ONLY reality, and sub specie durationis is the illusion (in accordance to Hegel's acosmistic reading of Spinoza at least).
That's nonsensical. God is timeless. The infinite cannot be prior or afterwards. It only IS. God doesn't exist, as God is not finite. Logic is not a presupposition that enables existence. It's always true (the infinite) and runs concurrently with world the exists on its own terms (the finite).
Indeed, with respect to the infinite, only sub specie aeternitatis is reality. The only reality which doesn't change, die or move on is sub specie aeternitatis. No matter how much each moment of my life might seem to be an endless, it's not. We are not of this reality. Here, we are the illusion. In the infinite, none of us matter, none of us exist, none of us were ever there at all. None of us will ever be there no matter what happens (even an immortal life is only transfinite; it has a beginning and a possible end).
Yeah... only because of the divine. Take away God and it's all worthless, despite the fact it changes not one thing occurs in the finite world. For the Christian, the world is worthless because it is fallen. God then rescues it.
No, that's just what many people think, confusing the logical expression they sense fort her own existence. It's false. We aren't eternal. As existing state we have not always been. We start and end.
Because it doesn't accept the fallen world (in Christian terms, "the Godless" ) as good. It posits it must be destroyed, that it needs the being of God to save it, because it supposes the world doesn't matter without the divine (and the stuff which usually goes along with that, such as afterlife, judgement, retribution, etc., etc. ).
Logical expression works as a "soul"; it something the world (including bodies) do, but it doesn't exist. It not the existing body. Since it is infinite (logical) rather than finite (existing) it does remain after death, but that's because it was never in instantiated in the physical realm at all. The activity was always logical, even when is person was living.
Again, we see trying to make the finite into the infinite. You insist despite the obvious contradiction, that the soul was initially apart of the body, a state of the existing state of the world, a finite thing which passed into existence, which somehow changed and altered with time. Here the problem is not the soul as activity, but that you read it as the existence of man.
I said the infinite is logically prior. The infinite isn't logic btw - logic is merely a tool of the understanding.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
You cannot take away God under the Christian view. It's simply a logical contradiction to think a world without God given the Christian system. So your point is moot.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
It's what Spinoza thinks :) He wrote it. So it seems that you are the one mocking his insight. I think that in a certain sense, we have always been.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
These terms are incoherent under the Christian worldview. A world without a God is like a triangle without sides!
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
The activity (the soul) has effects in the physical world. For example the capacity for thought would be such an effect.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I insist that the soul's existence goes on before and after the body. Man is both soul and body. Only a part of man is eternal according to philosophy (according to Christianity, the body will be eternal too).
I know that. My point is it an oxymoron. Logic is timeless. To say it is prior or afterwards is incoherent. you are applying finite terms to the infinite.
No, it's your misreading of Spinoza, where you misread the infinite as existence. We are in a certain sense, logical expression, always infinite. We even mean before we exist. Even things which never exist have their meaning (all those possible worlds we might talk about). You are confusing this with existence.
There's that dualism again. Thought is a existing state. It is finite. Our thought emerge, pass on and result in changes to existing states. It's not the soul.
For sure, but we aren't talking about what makes sense to a Christian or whether they pose the worthless, Godless, universe is true. Rather, we are talking about what Christians think about the Godless universe. Whether they believe the Godless universe is true is beside the point. What's important is what they are saying about the world if it was Godless and how that ties worth to the presence of God.
This point is anything but moot. My attack on original sin is not premised on the idea Christian's think the world is worthless, but rather on the idea it is worthless if there is no God. The presence of absence of God isn't even relevant to this point.
I'm not saying logic is prior to anything. The infinite however is logically prior to the finite. That's what I've said, which is different.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Well what do you think of a triangle if it didn't have any sides? That's exactly what the Christian thinks about the world if it was Godless. Simple. Just because you can list a string of words and put a question mark at the end does not mean that the question makes sense within a certain system of thought.
According to you, the body is also eternal. Spinoza clearly shows that only parts of the mind are eternal, and not the body. It's again you who are denying what is written plainly on the paper.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes our thought - noun. What I'm talking about is the activity of thinking - the process.
That's saying the infinite is present before the finite, Agustino. Finite terms. It's nonsense if you are talking about the infinite.
For sure... but that's been my point all along: that under original sin our world on it own, without the existing infinite, in-itself, is worthless and doesn't make sense. You've been the one asserting this isn't true.
That's not what I said. The meaning of the body, it logical expression, is eternal. Spinoza shows the difference between meaning and existence, which are, in many cases, is referred to "body" and "mind" historically.
I know you are referring to the activity of thinking. But's that your confusion. It doesn't exist. In the sense you are talking about, the meaning of "thinking," as opposed to any individuals thoughts, there is no finite state and no casual relationship.
It had to backfire, because the story of Adam's and Eve's fall reads like the typical fairy tale: "Here's the deal: You can go everywhere you want in the forest, but you MUST NEVER STEP INTO THE GROVE OF SACRED ASH TREES." So our hapless hero and heroine wander about the forest, and sure enough they come to the grove of sacred ash trees. In the middle of the grove is a fountain of sparkling water (it's naturally carbonated--Perrier--) and the heroine suddenly is terribly thirsty and must MUST have a sip of the water. She carries on hysterically until the hero says, "OK I'll get you a drink of water." What a bitch, he thinks. As soon as he steps into the circle of sacred ash trees he turns into a stag, and runs away.
Maybe, after much folderol, he will be turned back into a hero and maybe they will live happily ever after. Or maybe he decides stags are better company than hysterical maidens.
Adam and eve stay human, but the deal they get in life soon turns shitty after they eat the fruit. God, in place of the witch, says "I told you not to do it, and you did it anyway. Now you have to be punished -- otherwise, what kind of limp-wristed fairy tale would this be? Out, Out, Out. Raus! Raus!
And forever after it's been one damned thing after another for the children of Adam.
Yes but not in the temporal sense of before. I can also say that the infinite is bigger than the finite. Bigger is a finite term. Does that mean that my assertion is now false? It's a category error? I don't believe so. It's possibly to compare the infinite with the finite, what is not possible is to compare infinite with infinite, that's when comparison terms break.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No what you are saying misses the point simply because it is impossible to judge something that is incoherent. It is impossible to judge or say anything about a triangle without sides. Likewise, under the Christian worldview, it is impossible to judge or say anything about a Godless world.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Why do you think Spinoza means meaning by body, and existence by mind?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Rather it is that which makes any thought possible in the first place. It is a ground of possibility.
Quoting Wosret
More a literalist interpretation than I prefer, but interesting.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Hah this was a funny re-telling!
This is an inconsistent claim from one who argued so tenaciously against the rational justifiably of any generalized inductive inferences not so long ago!
I still maintain that position. But I did say that it is justified based on custom (and NOT that it is unjustified pure and simple). If we take a larger view of reason, and include custom in it, rather than merely deductive reasoning, then we can say that inductive inferences are also the result of reason (although negatively so - there simply is no reason to question these inductive inferences).
The issue runs deeper than merely thinking that the infinite runs prior to the finite. It goes to the how of how much you respect God as real in (acosmist terms). How you speak about God treats God as a as a possibility, such that we might be born into a world in which God (in acosmist terms) might or not be real. You hold our existence to ransom based on the idea of the presence infinite over the absence of infinite, as if it were possible for the infinite to be or not be. You are still running in fear with belief in the godless world. You haven’t realised that God (in acosmist terms) is real and necessary, such there is no possibility of the godless reality, making the supposed issue, whether or not God is true, entirely moot. The very question is nonsensical.
Confusion of the infinite and finite isn’t just a shallow statement that places the infinite in time, it’s one which fundamentally misunderstands the infinite and it relationship to possibility. It creates the illusion of the meaningless (godless) world which then people try to fill in with various imaginings. God gets treated as an action, a state, one possible outcome, which must be inserted into the world for it to mean, for God to be true (i.e. “the saviour”). In the relevant terms, the Christian world is godless, for it denies God is real (in acosmist terms) and suppose God is illusion for God is a possible (finite) outcome of the world which acts, causes and changes finite states. It is the ultimate category error which denies the infinite then tries to use the finite to paper over the nonsensical gap that denial leaves.
Spinoza's split between thought and extension is not between the existing minds and bodies, but a logical distinction between that which is present to mind (meaning) and that which is existing (states of the world, bodies, existing thoughts). It's the difference that the mind/body split has been trying to grasp and failing for its entire history. The meaning (infinite) which we access every time we think and the various states of the world we observe or know about. It's how Spinoza dispenses with the mind/body problem. The infinities of mind are given with the finites of body, removing any need to give priority to either, and so eliminating the "hard problem" and the question of "where does meaning come from?" Since meaning is infinite and unchanging, it never had a beginning or end, it came from nowhere and can go nowhere. All meaning is necessary. It given by definition, with all the finite states which are given in themselves (as opposed to by the infinite).
Thus, it makes no sense to claim the infinite as a ground for possibility. It's necessary. Possibility is not made by anything. God is never in doubt such that it makes sense to say: "Well, the presence of the infinite constitutes the ground which allows us to have possible finite states as opposed to not." Any finite state is, by definition, possible. To argue something has to come in (God, the infinite) to insert possibility into a world without it, or which might not have any, is incoherent.
How strange you are, now you're saying exactly what I've been saying. I entirely agree with you, and in fact have told you that it is a mistake to treat God as a possibility (the way you did when you asked me to consider whether a godless world is worthless). -> No doubt that now you'll go on saying that in fact I don't agree with you, and on we'll go :D
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I disagree with your interpretation of the Christian worldview. I think Aquinas would also disagree, as well as a few other theologians.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree with everything, except the second half of the last sentence. The finite is the expression of the infinite and DOES NOT have independence from the infinite.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes it is necessary. That is exactly what a ground of possibility means. The ground of possibility is itself not possible, it is necessary, just the same way that that which makes vision possible (the eye) is necessarily not present in the field of vision (well, except when you look in the mirror, but you get the point).
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree!
Yes it is necessary. That is exactly what a ground of possibility means. The ground of possibility is itself not possible, it is necessary, just the same way that that which makes vision possible (the eye) is necessarily not present in the field of vision (well, except when you look in the mirror, but you get the point).[/quote]
The ground of possibility assumes that something must come in an act as the foundation for the emergence of possibility. It takes possibility to be a finite state which must be created out of the infinite, rather than being necessary itself.
I know you think you agree, but your disagreement amounts to the outright denial of acosmism. You subsume the infinite back into the illusion of the finite, arguing it to be responsible for the emergence of possibility.
The eye is never what makes vision possible. Vision is possible at any point. Logically, any moment might have an experience of seeing. It just takes that state itself.
Eyes are just finite states which are causal of some actual instances of vision. Logically, any other state might play a similar casual role in the emergence of vision. There might even be the presence of experiences of seeing all on their own (i.e. without any specific causal relationship to an information receiver, such as an eye). This remains the case even when its only eyes which are causing experiences of vision. The thing about a possibility is that it doesn't need to actual to be true.
Nope, not must come in. Rather it inevitably and necessarily always is there.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
It is necessary itself, but only because it emanates from the divine.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I actually am not sure about this point. Some things may appear logically coherent/possible if we think lightly about them, and don't imagine it clearly and distinctly with the entire surrounding context.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Again, I am not sure about this.
The Fall is rather more human-specific than this thread allows.
As far as I know, at least in Orthodox Christianity, the fall of man is the fall of creation as well. Remember that in the Garden of Eden, there was no death (hence no thermodynamics). I don't even think the story refers to anything we can conceptualise except negatively (apophatically) compared to this life.
Maybe but I think it's what most forms of Christianity profess.
Quoting unenlightened
I have a few qualms with this essentially Buddhist/Humean idea. The Orthodox Christian idea is that, after death, ALL souls (even those which go to hell) are re-united with God, wherein they move and have their being. Those who hate God will perceive it as hell, those who love God will perceive it as heaven. The individuality (soul) of each remains. Now of course, ultimately, only God exists. But, we human beings, are not (fully) God. We cannot exist as infinite, and must therefore exist only as finite. In no way do we therefore avoid death by losing our self-identification - it would be like saying one avoids death by committing suicide, or by being already dead. We cannot be held to even exist as human beings without our self identification. What value does any of this have to US? None. How can we even be held to fall, when we don't even exist yet? Not to have self-identification for humans simply means not to exist.
Quoting unenlightened
Why is an arrow of time logically necessary for freedom? Freedom could be time-less.
A rock or a tree manages to exist without self-identification. I'm not sure if you are claiming this as tautological, a defining characteristic, in which case I have no problem - to be human is to have fallen. Or if you want to say that it is necessary in some way to ensoulment, in which case I'll just go quiet and let you pontificate.
Quoting Agustino
No time, no change; no change, no freedom.
A rock is not, by most account, a living being. A tree has no self-consciousness, and hence, of course, there is no self-identification. To be human means to be self-aware first and foremost, which necessarily implies self identification does it not? However, self-identification does not imply egoism, greed, lust, unbridled desire, etc. I agree that ego is the problem. But I disagree if you take the ego to be the entirety of the individual self :) . I also would state that one must love self, before loving others and that indeed, ultimately love of self just is love of others. A man with a fully developed self, is, after me, enlightened. Such a man would not shy away from dying if they must to save their loved ones for example, BUT they would still retain a sense of self. It is THEM sacrificing for their beloved, not anyone else, and they freely choose this because their good has inter-meshed with the good of the beloved.
Quoting unenlightened
Well, concieve if you can of a human being who does not have a self. Ask yourself, what it means for such a human to exist? Concieve also, how such an existence can satisfy the nature of man.
Quoting unenlightened
This is wrong. The absence of entropy does NOT entail the absence of time. It's just the absence of an arrow of time. If there was no entropy, for example, I could dissolve a cube of sugar in a cup of coffee, and then reverse the process and get the sugar back out exactly as I put it in. It wouldn't mean that there is no time, only that processes are reversible - they are not necessarily headed in a certain direction (ie no arrow of time, or many different arrows of time, always changing)!
There is no problem with such a conception. Indeed it happens to most people to forget themselves from time to time. Self is a habit of thought.
Quoting Agustino
Well now you're just making shit up with neither physics, the bible, nor normal use of language to support you. What happened to 'Freedom could be time-less.'? Now it could be Dr Who's timey-wimey.
What is the difference between forgetting yourself and being unconscious for example? Clearly, when you are, for example, dead drunk, you are unconscious - you no longer know who you are, or even that you are. What is the difference between this, and forgetting yourself in the context of being really engaged in, for example, watching a flower? Clearly, to a certain extent you are conscious and self-aware when you watch the flower, even though you are completely at one with your activity? Is this not so?
Quoting unenlightened
I meant time-less in the context I had written it. Namely time-less meaning without forward moving time, without an arrow of time. To witness:
Quoting Agustino
My apologies if this confused you - I can see how it could. English is not my first language. But my point still remains. Freedom does not require an arrow of time. Do you disagree with this? If so, why?
It depends how you are understanding 'conscious' of course. Some folk take conscious and self-conscious to be identical. But the way I understand it is that a cat, say, is fully conscious but unselfconscious; thus it is innocent in its selfcenteredness because it lacks the knowledge of good and evil. Whereas humans 'ought to know better'. I don't think this is all that heretical. Having that knowledge, the path to ending or transcending self-consciousness is steep - one has to do better. But I think one has glimpses of paradise regained from time to time.
Quoting Agustino
I do, but I am not dogmatic about what is possible beyond this world. Do you agree that freedom requires the possibility of change? If so, then I would say it requires at least one dimension of time, distinguished from space by its arrow. That is to say, my freedom comprises something undecided , yet, that I decide. If my decision does not stick because I can go back and un-decide, then it does not seem that that adds to my freedom, but undermines it; my decisions are no longer decisive.
Tentatively speaking, yes, although it is an indirect requirement, in-so-far as freedom necessitates action to manifest itself and action necessitates change.
Quoting unenlightened
Does time need a FIXED arrow to distinguish itself from space? Doesn't time distinguish itself from space merely by being something different, namely time?
Quoting unenlightened
Agreed.
Quoting unenlightened
Agreed. Yes, I follow what you mean. I'm just wondering now. What if you could undo somethings, but not others? Having no fixed arrow of time doesn't necessarily entail that there is no arrow at all or that you can decide every single time how to change the arrow does it?
Quoting unenlightened
Okay I agree. It is innocent in its selfcenterdness, but there nevertheless is a selfcenterdness about it no? Also what do you mean by it "lacks knowledge of good and evil"? How do you define good and evil in this scenario?
Quoting unenlightened
I will tentatively agree with this, waiting for you to clarify the above points.
Also, I may add this question: where does this leave morality then? Can the enlightened person do anything? Is anything they do moral? (I would certainly disagree with that for example - because very often I hear this argument - namely that because someone is enlightened, their actions can hurt those who are not enlightened because they do not understand, or they are too attached to their egos, and in such a case, somehow, the enlightened person is never morally responsible for the pain they cause or the pain is otherwise justified by this - for example, your favorite man J. Krishnamurti and his behavior towards Rosalind and Rajagopal).
Then it would never of us, Agustino. We are not timeless. We begin, change and end. To say freedom is timeless is to put its expression outside humanity an the existing world. How could I be free to be anything or make decisions if freedom is not an expression of changing states? Moreover, how does freedom even make sense in the context of a necessary, unchanging infinite? Such an infinite has no freedom, for it is never subject to change; it never has responsibility for its presence as an existing state.
We can't undo anything that's done. When a decision is taken or an event occurs, it constitutes that moment in the "arrow of time." Sometimes we can "go back" in the sense of changing the world back to a similar state. One can glue the broken vase back together, but that does't undo the vase was broken.
To be part of the changing world entails the absence of a fixed arrow because there is never some necessary state everything is heading towards. It's always being made as it goes by the specific changes which occur. Not only is no pre-existing arrow of history which one "shifts," but the path of events is made with every single decision and event. Whether or not I turned on the computer this morning made the arrow of history, it was what defined whether the computer existed in an on or off state this morning.
Suggesting we change the arrow doesn't make sense, for there was no arrow defined for that moment until the decision was made. This is the meaning of freedom, time, entropy and the finite. Change and emergence of different states. To be infinite, to be necessary (rather than possible), to be unchanging, is to be outside existing states.
First of all, this whole paragraph could have been avoided if you had read this:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
We're talking of a hypothetical scenario there, which has nothing to do with our actual world :/ You are completely mis-interpreting everything, absolutely everything in this last post of yours, it's hardly worth refuting at this point.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
There is a fixed arrow of time, towards increasing entropy, I don't understand what nonsense you are peddling here.
No matter what we do, there are some problems we can't overcome, some problems we don't fix because we choose to help someone else or pursue or our interests, creating a schism between what we understand to be a good world and the one we live in.
In our self-awareness of how we make the world, we see how we have not made it perfect or virtuous as it might be, and it gnaws away our sense of value about the finite. We consider ourselves and our world fallen, to the point where it is not worth anything, where it deserves to be cast into the fiery pit for eternity, for merely having this "limited" which did not produce the perfect outcome.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I disagree with this conclusion. I think original sin serves to remind us that control over the world is not in our power - we should rather focus on our characters, and even there, control is often outside of our control.
Which is constituted by various events as they occur.
Do you not realise how this renders your "hypothetical" with the exact problem I described? How are you going to get humans outside the fixed arrow of time towards towards increasing entropy, such that they can have this "timeless freedom" where there is no change or movement in time? Even "hypothetically" humans can't ever express such freedom. It's a contradiction. We are always finite states stuck on the ever running treadmill of time.
I never claimed they could have timeless freedom with such a meaning as you use it here. I simply held that "before the fall" (if we can even talk of such a time), the world did not have an arrow of time towards ever increasing entropy. But nevertheless, change was possible, just that the arrow of time wasn't fixed. Again this is metaphorical and we are exiting the scope of the doctrine of original sin. The doctrine simply accounts for how the world is - for the fact it has a fixed arrow of time towards ever increasing entropy. However, alternative worlds can be imagined, where no such permanently fixed arrow of time exists.
That's funny; I seem to remember arguing against your position that inductively inferred beliefs are never rational, that, on the contrary, they are rational insofar as they are based on all we have to go on, namely the regularity of our experiences, and the consequent existential fact that we have no good reason to doubt such things as, for example, the sun will rise tomorrow or that entropy is a universal principle, and I also seem to remember you persisting to disagree with these arguments, that you are now appearing to put forward yourself.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with changing your mind, but you should be prepared to admit it...
I go even further than that: we are frequently in control of many external circumstances too, as the decisions we take affect the world.
And this is what make original sin laughable as analysis of our ethics and worth of the world. It removes ethical responsibility from our immediate actions. We have no worth in our own moral life because we can't make the world perfect. No matter what we do, the world occupies the same fallen state. Why does it matter if I do good in my own life? Myself and the world are still fallen to the point of absolute worthlessness. The fact that actions are finite becomes lost.
We lose perspective on what matters in the context of of any action. Instead of worrying about whether a finite action we take will make the world better or worse (or both), we obsess it it all terrible because we can't act to make the world perfect. Your reading of the Stoics is still carrying this mistake here.
We should never aim for "perfect" because we don't have the power to create it, even in our own lives. The very idea of "perfection" is dubious because it entails the obliteration of anything that doesn't meet a precise standard. I mean what are you going to do with all those immoral promiscuous people? Would you wipe them out or lock them up to save society form their immorality if you had the power? Lock them out of economic means and social relationships to serve as an example for everyone else? The underside of perfection is genocide: the value those who don't meet a standard deserve to be obliterated.
But that's a contradiction. Our character is part of the world. The actions we have control over are not separate to the world. Control of the world is frequently in our power. Original sin drags us away from our own responsibility for the finite. It turns away from the actions we are responsible for, distracting us with lamenting the world is not perfect. We become so obsessed with "perfection" and how it is not being met, that we forget ethical responsibility to ourselves and others in the finite moments of our lives.
I did say in that thread, in the beginning of it (http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/213/on-wittgensteins-quietism-and-the-possibility-of-philosophical-certainty/p1) that reason requires custom in order to be able to make inductive inferences, and I maintained that they are not valid because of reason, but because of custom. Custom is the arbiter in this case. And I still maintain the same thing, (although you are right that my position has become more elaborate) because we learn to reason by following customs. From the previous thread:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
So yes. The regularity of our experiences is something we arrive at by custom, not by reason, and therefore everything that follows from it is not justified by pure reason alone. If you want to merge the two and call them reason then I am okay with that, because it's just the way what we actually call reason develops. It develops through custom. We learn to reason through tradition.
What I did not maintain is that we should not believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because it is not justified by pure reason. That @John I surely did not maintain. So I don't see your point. I do believe in the second law of thermodynamics. Just as I claimed in that thread that I do believe in inductive inferences. I merely disagreed on the cause of belief in inductive inferences, not whether we should or should not believe them. In fact, nor do I hold that belief in induction is irrational, rather it is pre-rational.
You are talking about a time "before the fall" though. The story itself does so too. Upon the eating form the Tree of Knowledge , humans and/or the world become fallen. A change. A fixed arrow of time where the world changes from not fallen to fallen. This is a contradiction with a "timeless world" of freedom. The world before the fall was always progressing to the change of the fall.
Sure, you can imagine a world where time doesn't progress but undergoes change, but it doesn't make sense. Your "metaphor" is nonsense. It only serves as an expression of meanings in your head, not as any analysis of a world as it might exist.
Firstly, I wouldn't agree that the regularity of our experience is something that "we arrive at (purely) by custom". To argue that would be to claim that our experiences are entirely constructed by custom (i.e. culture).
Also, in our previous exchange I certainly didn't claim that inductive reason is equivalent to deductive reason, wherein the conclusion follows from the premises. Most of the time, when we say we have reason to believe something it is not because what we say we have reason to believe is a logical entailment, but because we have no reason not to believe (and thus more reason to believe than not to believe), that what has been regularly observed will continue to be observed in the future. Of course this does not mean that we may be certain by any means.
By custom and experience. Not by reason.
Quoting John
Yes, all that I claim(ed) is that inductive reasoning cannot be rationally justified. Rather it is justified by experience and custom.
Quoting John
It's a habit John, which is useful to us - which seems to reflect the world. That's why it is derived by custom and experience. It SEEMS to reflect the operations of the world.
I think that's where we diverge Agustino, I think the regularity of experience, and indeed custom itself are, at least partially, always already matters of reason. I certainly don't have a narrow conception of reason as being nothing but 'deductive logic'.
Quoting Agustino
Here again we diverge: I would say it does "reflect the operations of the world" or at least it reflects the operations of all the things we have observed.
We don't start out by reasoning, reasoning is a faculty we gradually build up, which helps pull us out of our initial ignorance. Custom and traditions are what allows us to learn to reason - to become rational beings. There have been cases historically - of people growing amongst animals - those people did not have language, nor were they rational, or open to rational deliberation of any kind. Reason is something that is community built, although, once built, it achieves independence from the community/custom to a certain degree (and this is where I partly disagree with Hume).
Quoting John
Yes it does. But there's a difference between stating the world IS like this, and the world appears like this. I say the world appears like this, although I am also quite close to certainty that it is like this.
As soon as we start to recognize differences, similarities and regularities, reason is already well in operation. Of course none of this is possible (or at least can be demonstrated to be possible) in the absence of language. Rationality consists in weighing things up, making generalizations and reasoning about them and, of course giving reasons for actions and beliefs. Conceptualization itself is a function of reason.
There is a logical difference between stating that the world is like this and stating that the world appears like this. But that's just like saying there is a logical difference between saying that the sun appears to rise each day and saying that the sun rises each day. I think it's a difference that makes no difference. There is no coherent way of saying that things by and large appear to be regular, but that they might not 'really' be regular.
I don't want to speculate how God could have created things differently or has done in a wider universe that we might call heaven/hell. In this world, freedom is built in by the openness of the future and our participation in its unfolding form. Now I don't think that God created the garden of Eden as another world with different rules.
So I take the story of the fall not to be about God literally punishing man for disobedience by deliberately fucking up His own creation.
Quoting Agustino
Animals can be self-centered, and they can be loving and nurturing; what I think they do not do is reflect on what they do or on what happens by way of counterfactuals. They do not consider what they might have done, or ought to have done, or ought to do or ought not to do. They participate in the freedom of the universe with consciousness, but not with self-consciousness. The counterfactuals of could be, will be, ought to be and was constitute the psychological 'world' to which we have exiled ourselves. Thus animals do not have regret or shame, and their lives, though finite, are psychologically timeless. They live in the present and so there is no death in their life, though there is an end. I don't know if this clarifies my thinking at all?
Quoting Agustino
I won't discuss Krishnamurti here, but my dentist sometimes hurts me because he needs to - I need him to. I think it is sufficiently rare and unfathomable that we do not need to worry about what the enlightened man's relation to morality might be. Jesus overturned the tables in the temple; I will not say that he had an off day, nor that it was a necessary hurt. Rather I will consider his teaching and try and make sense of that as one who is not enlightened.
As Spinoza would gladly tell you about this, there is no opinion more absurd than this. Read his penultimate (I think it is) proposition. Just because you cannot make the world perfect it does not follow that you should make it even more imperfect and fallen. Just because you cannot eat good food for the rest of your life, does not mean that you should prefer to eat poisons when you can eat good food.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Who said we obsess because it is terrible? Is that what I am suggesting? Where?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
We should aim for perfection, even if we miss it, we will land among the stars ;)
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Nope, I wouldn't. Each individual has the freedom to do and behave as they wish so long as they do not bring harm to the larger community (for the simple reason that moral excellence presupposes individual freedom). That individual X is promiscuous isn't a problem to society (it's a problem to himself I would argue, but he has to deal with it - we don't punish people for over-eating, which is also immoral and harmful to themselves). What is a problem is when promiscuity becomes a STANDARD or NORM to society. What I would do is take measures which discourage promiscuity from every becoming a main-stream, majority position. This doesn't mean outlawing it. It means, for example, denying abortions to people who aren't in committed relationships. This contains promiscuity and prevents it from spreading through society. We must protect individual liberties, while not allowing them to undermine the larger society.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Maybe it drags you away from the finite. Maybe it makes you obsessed with how "perfection" is not met. It certainly doesn't have that effect on me.
Exactly.
Quoting John
I agree :D - practically speaking our positions are identical.
Fair enough.
Quoting unenlightened
I agree.
Quoting unenlightened
Again, fair enough.
Quoting unenlightened
Me too, I take it as man being responsible for the so called punishment, not God.
My OP was about the meaning of original sin, not about the meaning of the Fall. I am personally not decided on the meaning of the fall, but your version of what it means has a few advantages in its simplicity, and in the fact that it doesn't require two worlds or a change in the rules governing the world. So thanks for your input, gives me a few things to think about.
Quoting unenlightened
I largely agree.
Quoting unenlightened
Why do you consider regret and shame necessarily psychologically harmful? I can see situations where they are harmful - where they impede living in the present, and keep one stuck thinking about impossibilities, blaming themselves, etc. But I can also see situations where they are helpful. For example, I can regret insulting my mother, but that doesn't mean I blame myself for it, or never forgive myself for doing it, or continuously think how bad a person I must be. It's simply something that allows to orient myself IN THE MOMENT to behave better towards my mother. The fact I regret it motivates me, and orients me towards the good as it were. I can also regret hurting someone who I simply don't have the chance at the moment to behave better towards. For example, I regret leaving my first girlfriend in the way I did. Does that mean I obsess about it and think how bad a person I must be? No, not at all. I never think about it in fact, except for purposes of discussion and teaching, like this one. But it does help me - it helps me to orient myself in the way I behave NOW with people I care about, and also let's me know that I have learned something from my previous mistakes. In fact, I feel more confident because I have learned from my mistakes, and am determining to do better now :) . If I could remedy them, I would. Granted that I can't, then I just learn from them. To regret them, in this circumstance, means simply to realise they were mistakes, and be determined to live better today.
If, on the other hand, I didn't regret them, then I would simply not be willing to admit that they are mistakes, or to learn from them. Not exactly something I would call good.
It's similar with shame. Shame can be both destructive and constructive, it just depends how you use it :) . Indeed, along with Aristotle, I don't believe any of our emotions, even anger, are ALWAYS wrong. They all have a place, and sometimes failing to be angry is a moral failure.
Quoting unenlightened
Oh yes, indeed:
“If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
That's why I claim many times, with Spinoza, that I feel and know that I am eternal (although, unlike TheWillow, I don't feel like this all the time lol).
Quoting unenlightened
Indeed - but the so called harm does you more good than bad in the end. I'm referring to harm which doesn't actually do you any good. I accept your desires not to discuss Krishnamurti here though.
Quoting unenlightened
To what degree is someone enlightened if they are also no moral though? Does it not contradict what we mean to refer to by enlightenment? Surely we don't mean enlightenment to be mere presence of mind and mental strength. There's something more to it - it has to do with compassion, and understanding of others.
Quoting unenlightened
I think it was good he overturned the tables - he was simply doing justice, and justice is good - albeit divine justice, not human.
Quoting unenlightened
Indeed!
That's good; I'm glad we cleared that up. But for the sake of conversation, I hope we may find ourselves disagreeing (or at least appearing to disagree) in the future.
I don't. I would say they are part of a powerful system of thought that has the potential to increase freedom as compared to other animals. Compare it with money - another construction of the mind. Money is a fantastically powerful means of cooperation that connects people right across the world. As a medium of cooperation is is unrivalled, but unfortunately folks get lost in it, and seek to accumulate it, when its use is in the flow. And then it becomes divisive not cooperative.
Human thought in general is a fantastic tool for creative living, but a lousy prison to live in. Think carefully, think hard, but don't let thought be the world, or you become isolated and lonely in your own head.
Then we are in entire agreement on this.
First is the Bible itself. If you are not reading from the original Greek New Testament, then you need to make sure you have a really good local country language translation. I like YLT best but I can read the Greek on my own. YLT is Young's Literal Translation, and I have found it to be quite accurate most of the time. I have found the KJV to be the most inaccurate however.
Second is the Council Of Nicaea. This council imposed Athanasianism on the world, which is completely inconsistent with the Bible.
Third is the modern Christian lore and fads, such as instant born again salvation without good works. Matthew Chapter 25 refutes this modern dogma within Evangelical Protestantism.
Having said all that, I suppose that original guilt is probably some kind of Catholic fantasy.
People will most likely be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam and Eve's "transgression", in my own personal opinion.