Post

Friday Fun Thread for November 10, 2023

126 comments - 3751 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

ISRAEL GAZA MEGATHREAD IV

235 comments - 12014 thread views 1yr ago by Jim (text post)

Transnational Thursdays 25

26 comments - 1635 thread views 1yr ago by Soriek (text post)

ACT: Hardball Questions For The Next Debate

33 comments - 2438 thread views 1yr ago by naraburns nihil supernum (astralcodexten.com)

Wellness Wednesday for November 8, 2023

194 comments - 3051 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

1591 comments - 28302 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1591

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Shaming.
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Recruiting for a cause.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 5, 2023

372 comments - 4917 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

What did you learn from leaked documents?

35 comments - 4139 thread views 1yr ago by god_from_celegans (text post) Edited 1yr ago

Some preliminary thoughts on meditation and its effects

6 comments - 1345 thread views 1yr ago by practical_romantic (text post)

Friday Fun Thread for November 3, 2023

74 comments - 2611 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Transnational Thursdays 24

22 comments - 1463 thread views 1yr ago by Soriek (text post)

Quality Contributions Report for October 2023

19 comments - 4895 thread views 1yr ago by naraburns nihil supernum (text post)

The Motte Moddes: HighSpace (November 2023)

3 comments - 1024 thread views 1yr ago by ArjinFerman Tinfoil Gigachad (image post) Edited 1yr ago

The goal of this thread is to coordinate development on our project codenamed HighSpace - a mod for Freespace 2 that will be a mashup between it and High Fleet. A description of how the mechanics of the two games could be combined is available in the first thread.

Who we have

@FCfromSSC - 2D/3D artist
@Southkraut, @RenOS, @netstack - Interstellar Warfare Consultants
Me - developer

Who we need

The more the merrier, you are free to join in any capacity you wish! I can already identify a few distinct tasks for each position that we could split the work into

developers: “mission” code, “strategic” system map code
artists: 2D (user interface), 3D (space ships, weapons explosions)
writers: worldbuilding/lore, quests, characters
testers: the way the any program works always makes sense to the developer, so feedback from people who aren't me is always appreciated. This is a pretty easy way to get involved, though it does require an initial investment of buying Freespace2, at least until we manage to turn it into a proper total conversion, and use only our content.

A small note if you want to contribute:

Don't be afraid to ask questions however small, or silly you might find them. This is literally one of the primary functions this thread has. The Hard Light documentation is... there... but it's not great, and between that, the peculiarities of LUA, the FS2 scripting API, RocketLib, and other parts of FS2 modding, it really might not be obvious how to resolve issues you run into. I might not be able to answer all questions, but I've dabbled in all these things, so there's good chances I might be able to help.

What we have

An official Highspace Github Org and Repository
An official Highspace Wiki
Even more concept art for ships, curtesy of @FCfromSSC:

A proof of concenpt for “strategic” system map we jump into on start of the campaign. It contains a friendly ship and 2 enemy ships, you can chose where to move / which enemy ship to attack.
A “tactical” RTS-like in-mission view where you can give commands to your ships.
A somewhat actual-game-like workflow. Attacking a ship launches a mission where the two ships are pitted against each other. If you win, the current health of your ship is saved, and you can launch the second attack. If you clean up the map you are greeted with a “You Win” message, or “You Lose” if you lose your ship.

Updates

This has been quite a productive month! FC exported a few stripped down models to the Freespace native format, and after tinkering with game data, and the resulting files we managed to import them to the game:

On the development front we now have:

Orbital movement of ships. Orbits are automatically calculated based on your distance, and the orbited body's mass.
Ships can get caught in the orbit of another body
Real time conventional and subspace movement.
Collision detection with planets.

On that, I was also experimenting with calculating any collisions with the plotted course, but this might be a bit of dead-end. Currently you set the destination relative to the body you'll end up orbiting, rather than in absolute coordinates, and that makes the usefullness of showing these potential collisions to the user questionable. The code might still be useful for the AI to plot the optimal course so I'll hold on to it for now.

What's next

Fleet info in the System View
Splitting / merging fleets
AI code for System View ships, first for plotting the course, and if time permits for some basic enemy movement as well.

Wellness Wednesday for November 1, 2023

82 comments - 2562 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

A Short Post About Bones, or, Bring Me The Head Of John The Baptist

5 comments - 1472 thread views 1yr ago by FarNearEverywhere (text post) Edited 1yr ago

Inspired by @dovetailing's lovely post on Christianity, let me have the audacity to post on here something I wrote back in 2011 for interested Protestants on a website that I think is now defunct.

Don't anybody blame @dovetailing for this, it's all off my own bat!

To borrow a quote from Chesterton contrasting the suicide and the martyr, and the attitude of Christianity to both (“Orthodoxy”, Chapter V, ‘The Flag of the World’, emphasis mine): “The Christian feeling was furiously for one and furiously against the other: these two things that looked so much alike were at opposite ends of heaven and hell. One man flung away his life; he was so good that his dry bones could heal cities in pestilence. Another man flung away life; he was so bad that his bones would pollute his brethren's. I am not saying this fierceness was right; but why was it so fierce?”

This is a look at why dry bones were and are considered to have a virtue in them that could benefit us (and I’m speaking of virtue both in the conventionally understood sense and the older sense, as when my granny told us ‘there’s great virtue in seawater’ for healing cuts and sores so we should go down and wash any injuries in the sea).

What exactly are relics? You may be interested to know that the Catholic Church classifies them by three kinds:

First-Class Relics: Items directly associated with the events of Christ's life or the physical remains of a saint (a bone, a hair, skull, a limb, etc.).
Second-Class Relics: An item that the saint wore (a shirt, a glove, etc.) Also included is an item that the saint owned or frequently used, for example, a crucifix, rosary, book and so on.
Third-Class Relics: Any object that is touched to a first- or second-class relic. Most third-class relics are small pieces of cloth, but you can touch anything (a rosary beads, a holy picture, and so on) to the first- or second-class relic (and that includes graves and tombs, which is why, for instance, there are customs of taking away clay or pebbles from a saint’s grave for healing or other uses).

Let’s get the lyin’, cheatin’ and stealin’ over with before we move on to the edifyin’. Yes, there were and probably still are a lot of fraudulent relics out there, but it’s too simplistic to dismiss them all as power-crazed clerics inventing fake miracles to enveigle the credulous peasantry and keep them under their thumb for profit and status. An example of this is one that regularly comes up; the liquefying blood of St. Januarius. Briefly, Januarius was a 3rd century bishop of Naples supposed to have been martyred during the persecution of Diocletian. An alleged sample of his blood is kept in a glass ampoule in the cathedral of Naples, where it is brought out for veneration three times a year and undergoes a miraculous liquefaction. His relics are particularly honoured against eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. Scientists and skeptics (the ones who like to spell “sceptic” with a “k” not a “c” to prove how hard-core they are) attribute this to a mediaeval fraud.

Ever heard the term “thixotropic”? It’s why you have to shake the tomato ketchup bottle before the contents will come out. Very simplistically, it’s how a solid(ish) material can become liquid(ish) and flow – and because the bishop tilts and moves the reliquary holding the blood, that is seen as evidence of “thixotropic flow”. The alternate explanation can be found here, where an experiment to replicate the alleged blood was done.

Their view? It’s scientifically reproducible, which means it isn’t a miracle, and is probably a fraud.

Quote from a now-dead link:

Today, a large percentage of the world's population believes that through transubstantiation, bread and wine physically change into the body and blood of the Son of God. Is it not possible that 650 years ago a Neapolitan cleric/alchemist, who might regularly pray to his patron saint, Januarius, accidentally discovered the thixotropic properties of the mixture of molysite and limestone? Might he not believe that the material had taken on the form of the blood of his patron saint? Better to present his discovery as the finding of Januarius's blood and receive acclaim, then present it as the result of an alchemical procedure and receive "no mercy" from Pope John XXII! Furthermore, in 1389, the Duomo of Naples was being built up and many artists from all over Italy were present. The king was then Robert of Anjou, described as an extremely religious person, and a "holy blood relic" was certain to please him.

And you know what? That’s fine. Unless the phial is opened and the contents examined (which is unlikely, but not due to fear by the clergy that their hoax will be revealed – sorry, conspiracy theorists! – but more to religious sentiment regarding desecration of a relic) nobody can say for sure one way or the other. It may have been a 13th century fraud (deliberate), it may have been a pious hoax, it may be an honest mistake, it may be the real blood of a martyr. You may be astounded, shocked and surprised to the point of your hair turning white to find out that the Catholic Church does not demand belief in the reality of relics – nope, not even the Shroud of Turin (which is a whole cottage industry on its own) or the Veronica or the Mandylion. If some experiment in the morning proved that the Shroud was indeed a 14th century fake, this does not mean that every Christian in the world would have to say “That proves the Resurrection never happened!” and have to rip up their Bibles. We don’t believe it because we have ‘proof’ in the form of the Shroud; the Shroud is venerated because (a) we believe in the Resurrection beforehand (b) it can be taken as an image of the Crucified Body of Christ, just like all those crucifixes in churches and paintings and hanging around people’s necks, which we use as a symbol and as a focus for prayer.

For myself, the rationalisation of the skeptic (some anonymous alchemist stumbled upon this reaction in an experiment and took it as a divine sign and decided to make fake martyr’s blood and present it to a notably devout King – who we must take, simply on the grounds that he was devout, as being a credulous idiot and not someone who managed to hang on to a throne in a time and place where politics was hot and bloody and therefore by necessity had to have a brain in his head – for the new cathedral, all done in the best possible taste and who also managed to invent a process that would work for six hundred years while he was at it) is just as much an article of his faith as the Neapolitan peasant who looks to the relic as an omen of the coming year.

That’s not to say that every relic should be considered the real deal; Chaucer’s Pardoner is an example of how they knew, back in the 14th century, that there were frauds and cheats going around:

First I pronounce where I come from, and then I show my bulls, one and all, but first the seal of our liege lord the king on my patent. I show that first to secure my body, lest any man, priest, or clerk would be so bold as to disturb me in Christ's holy labours. After that I then proceed with my tales, and show bulls of popes and cardinals and patriarchs and bishops, and I speak a few words in Latin to give a flavour to my preaching and to stir men to devotion. Then I show forth my long glass cases, crammed full of cloths and bones: all the people believe that they are holy relics. I have a shoulder-bone set in brass which came from a holy Jew's sheep.

Apart from deliberate fraud, there was a fierce spirit of emulation, when churches competed with one another as to which had the best and biggest collection of relics, which meant that we get such examples as the three (at least) heads of John the Baptist, as recounted in this Wikipedia article; after the desecration of his shrine by Julian the Apostate, the remaining relics were scattered and several places laid claim to having the ‘real’ head:

John's skull it is located at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Scetes, Egypt, at Gandzasar Monastery's Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, in Nagorno Karabakh, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and San Silvestro in Capite in Rome, and the Residenz Museum in Munich, Germany, (official residence of the Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria from 1385 to 1918). Further heads, no longer available, were once held by the Knights Templar, Amiens Cathedral in France (brought home by Wallon de Sarton from the Fourth Crusade in Constantinople), Antioch in Turkey (fate uncertain), and the parish church at Tenterden in Kent, where it was preserved up until the Reformation.

One of the alleged heads for your edification.

Such competition (what Ellis Peters called in the title of one of her Brother Cadfael mysteries, “A Morbid Taste for Bones”) led to things like the Venetians stealing Santa Claus’s body from Myra in Turkey (or rather, what was left after an expedition from Bari got there first).

You may also have heard or read some form of the jeer about the relics of the True Cross, along the lines that if gathered together, these alleged relics would make forty crosses or a ship or the likes. It seems to have its origin with Jean Calvin who made the comment in his “Traité Des Reliques” that there were enough pieces of the True Cross to build a ship, though it has lost no popularity to this day not alone with Protestants but free-thinkers, materialists, skeptics and atheists of all stripes. Well, we can thank an obsessive Frenchman for a rebuttal of this mockery; Charles Rohault de Fleury, an architect who devoted himself in later years to religious archaeology, and in 1870 published a book (“Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion”) on the fruits of his labours tracking down all authenticated relics of the True Cross, estimating the volume of a cross likely used in the execution of criminals by the Romans, and totting up the sizes of all the relics for comparison. He came up with a result that the claimed relics came to a weight of under 2 kilograms, which isn’t enough to make any kind of a boat, really. From the “Catholic Encylopedia” of 1913:

The work of Rohault de Fleury, "Mémoire sur les instruments de la Passion" (Paris, 1870), deserves more prolonged attention; its author has sought out with great care and learning all the relics of the True Cross, drawn up a catalogue of them, and, thanks to this labour, he has succeeded in showing that, in spite of what various Protestant or Rationalistic authors have pretended, the fragments of the Cross brought together again would not only not "be comparable in bulk to a battleship", but would not reach one-third that of a cross which has been supposed to have been three or four metres in height, with transverse branch of two metres, proportions not at all abnormal (op. cit., 97-179). Here is the calculation of this savant: Supposing the Cross to have been of pine-wood, as is believed by the savants who have made a special study of the subject, and giving it a weight of about seventy-five kilograms, we find that the volume of this cross was 178,000,000 cubic millimetres. Now the total known volume of the True Cross, according to the finding of M. Rohault de Fleury, amounts to above 4,000,000 cubic millimetres, allowing the missing part to be as big as we will, the lost parts or the parts the existence of which has been overlooked, we still find ourselves far short of 178,000,000 cubic millimetres, which should make up the True Cross.”

I’ve seen a relic of the True Cross (alleged); it’s in Holy Cross Abbey in County Tipperary (a restored Cistercian monastery and church which had a relic of the True Cross from the 13th century but which was destroyed in the 17th century after Cromwell; the relic currently there was presented in 1977 by the Vatican upon its restoration) and it’s more a splinter than a huge chunk of wood. If the other relics are on the same scale, then we’re definitely not talking “enough pieces to make a ship”.

There are even “relics” of very dubious provenance. Yes, the (in)famous Holy Prepuce, which yes, is exactly what the name implies and if you want to know more, you’ll have to look it up yourself here.

Apparently, there was one contender which survived up to 1983 when thieves supposedly made off with it. Further comment is superfluous.

It would seem to be human nature that we can’t resist “improving” upon things, such as the tilma with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There is some insistence that this image is not miraculous but was painted by a native painter; it is certain that there were some embellishments made (e.g. the figure of the angel, the golden rays, the stars on her cloak, other elements added and removed). On the other hand, this is well within the tradition of the “icons not made by hands” (acheiropoieta) in Orthodoxy. However, since there is room for honest error and the effects of enthusiasm as well as fraud and deceit when dealing with relics from the early ages of the church, this is why you’re on safer ground with relics from a more modern era, where they can be historically verified. Like the head of St. Catherine of Siena, smuggled out of Rome by the Siennese in 1380 when the Romans wouldn’t give back her body to be buried in her home town.

Or the head of St. Oliver Plunkett, 17th century Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All-Ireland, hanged, drawn and quartered in England for treason as part of the fallout from Titus Oates’ “Horrid Popish Plot”, now in the church at Drogheda.

Or the relics of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (the “Little Flower” which is a sugary sentimental name for a young woman who was as tough as old boots), exhumed due to popular devotion and nearly always on tour world-wide (they’ve been to England as recently as 2009, and visited Ireland both in 2001 – where one of the places they stayed was in Mountjoy Prison – and again in 2009). She even visited America in 1999.

Unfortunately, we moderns are much more squeamish than our sturdy forefathers in the Faith. When they put Padre Pio’s body on display, they had the face covered by a “a life-like silicone mask” (apparently so that he would look like his photographs, which is how the pilgrims expect him to look) which I think (a) misses the whole point of relics (b) could cause confusion with the bodies of the incorruptibles (and “incorruptible” doesn’t mean “looking as if still alive”, anyhow), if people think this is his real face and (c) panders too much to our need for prettification of death.

They did the same thing for St. Bernadette’s body (face and hands), only they had to use wax back in 1925:

A precise imprint of the face was molded so that the firm of Pierre Imans in Paris could make a wax mask based on the imprints and on some genuine photos. This was common practice for relics in France, as it was feared that the blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would make an unpleasant impression on the public.

Darn it, dead saint’s bodies should look like this! (Crypt of Ss. Ambrose – the bishop who baptised St. Augustine – Gervase and Protase).

Okay, we’ve had the fun, now comes the educative bit.

Early altars were built over the bones of the martyrs in catacombs; when the churches came up to the surface, the custom remained, which is why altars have relics in their bases or within the body of the altar itself (in an “altar stone”).

(Part One of Two, remainder below)

NYC Rats (rationalists) Gambling strategy & halloween party night [10/31]

5 comments - 1235 thread views 1yr ago by anewyorkrat (image post) Edited 1yr ago

Rationality and Religion

68 comments - 2263 thread views 1yr ago by dovetailing (text post)

1 Introduction

In the Small-scale Questions thread, @TheDag asked:

[H]ow do you handle the paradox of belief? [...] The 'logical' part of my brain relentlessly attacks what it sees as the foolishness of religion, ritual and sacrament. And yet, when I partake and do my best to take it seriously, I feel healed. [...] How do you make sense of a serious religious practice, while keeping the ability to be seriously rational?

This post is my attempt to answer that question.

My apologies in advance for any first-draft typos or errors.

I am an Orthodox Christian -- a convert to Orthodoxy, but not to Christianity in general. I've been reading material from LessWrong/SSC/ACX for about 10 years now, but never considered myself a Rationalist, in large part because of the movement's basically-axiomatic rejection of anything not comporting with a materialist metaphysics. Nevertheless, I'm a natural skeptic and a mathematician by training, and I think I understand, at a visceral level, what TheDag is talking about.

This post is not intended to be an apologia for Religion, Theism, or Orthodox Christianity in particular. Instead, it is an outline of my way of thinking about Reason and Christianity, and why I think that (some forms of) religion -- yes, serious, supernaturalist, actually-believe-the-creeds Christianity complete with ritual and sacraments (in fact, especially that kind) -- is fully compatible with being rational; at least, as rational as we can reasonably expect to be.

Small disclaimer: I'm going to use Christianity, and (sometimes) Orthodox Christianity in particular, as my source of examples/topic of discussion. I (a) do not guarantee that everything I say will be precisely correct Orthodox doctrine (I'm doing my best but I'm not getting feedback from a committee of bishops and theologians) and (b) don't know how applicable this all is outside of Christianity. (It would be kind of weird if I thought that Christianity and other religions were in exactly the same position, since I think Orthodox Christianity is true and other religions varying degrees of less-than-true.)

2 The Goals of Rationality

Why does anyone care about being rational in the first place? The usual answer, which in my opinion is basically correct, is that there are two reasons:

Because it helps you to believe true things rather than false things. ("Epistemic Rationality")
Because it helps you make better choices. ("Instrumental Rationality")

Note that these goals are just that -- goals. There's no law of the universe (at least, there's no non-circular argument) that a particular "Rational" way of thinking will always be the best way to achieve those goals. A particular set of scientific, logical, and probabilistic methods seem to be pretty good, overall, and certainly excel in some domains, but in principal these are secondary to the above goals. Do you want to believe true things and live well, or do you want to Be Rational? Obviously the first, right?

Well...

There's another kind of reason to want to be rational. Maybe you have a skeptical temperament, and have an internal demand for a certain sort of rigor. Or maybe you have developed a kind of self-identification as a Rational Person, which has attached itself to a certain set of assumptions and ways of thinking. Or maybe you like to think of yourself as Intelligent and Rational, and there's this bunch of intelligent people you know, and they all say that thinking in a certain way, and believing in a certain set of axioms, is a prerequisite to being Intelligent and Rational, and theism and rituals and faith and religion is just Dumb Stuff for Irrational People and you don't want to be Dumb and Irrational, right?

(It should go without saying that this is a general You, not about TheDag in particular, but here I am saying it anyway.)

The important thing here is that these temperamental, identity-based, and social reasons for wanting to Be Rational are not, themselves, rational or virtuous. If it's the identity or social reasons that have got you, all I can say is that the faster you admit it to yourself and work on getting rid of them, the better.

But perhaps your troubles are in part due to a skeptical temperament, whether natural or trained, or with a difficulty believing that doing and thinking in ways that are not Rational could possibly lead to believing true things or living well.

In that case, the rest of this essay is for you.

3 Ontology

Some people are Christians because they trust authority figures who tell them it's true. Others are Christian because they believe they've witnessed an inexplicable miracle. There's nothing wrong with these people; many of them are better people than I am; but they are not me.

I am a Christian because of the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Okay, maybe that's a bit too glib, so let me expand a bit. There is a fundamental mystery of how consciousness can exist in a purely material universe. I don't mean that it's a mystery how something could exhibit intelligent behavior, or have some sort of internal model of the world that contains itself. I mean that the existence of a first-person perspective, of there being an I that sees from my eyes and thinks my thoughts, of there being a quality to experience -- all things that we take for granted -- seem impossible in a materialist ontology. The usual materialist takes either handwave the problem away, or else (inexplicably to me) bite the bullet and deny the existence of the conscious self at all.

Even so, I exist.

Lest I digress into the apologia which I did not intend to write, let me just make my main point here: the existence of a first-person perspective not only reveals materialism to be a premise rather than a conclusion, it poses a problem for the universal applicability of rationality, because while the first person perspective is a universal and undeniable fact, even the best thinkers cannot seem to articulate what, exactly, it is, or delineate it to the point of being able to reason clearly about it -- which is why we see the problem being dismissed as just muddled thinking by others.

My other point in bringing this up is as a segue into talking about exactly how deeply the Theist (or at least, Christian) ontology differs from the Materialist one. A lot of people have this unspoken idea that Christian ontology is essentially the same as materialist ontology, except that there is are extra entities which maybe don't follow the laws of physics, and one of them is "omnipotent" (whatever that means, maybe power level = infinity or something), and we call that one "God".

This is not the Christian ontology.

The actual Christian ontology is something more like this: The fundamental nature of reality does not look like atoms and the void, governed by laws of physics. Rather, the fundamental nature of reality is something which is in most respects unimaginable, but in which what we call personhood and will and morality and love and reason are fundamental attributes. This is God -- not another entity like a star or a chair or a cat or a human, only immaterial and superpowered, but rather, the Person at the heart of all reality, in virtue of which everything that exists (including, of course, the entire material universe and all its physical laws), exists.

This is so fundamentally difficult to get one's mind around that people resort to paradoxes to talk about it: We call God "The Existing One", and yet some Christian theologians have said things like "God is not a being" -- not because they think that God is just some idea, but because our notion of "existence" or "being" imports the idea of a separate entity within the universe, and is insufficient to what -- who -- God is. (More on this in the next section.)

This ontology is probably shocking to people whose habitual assumptions are materialist -- which is true of most people, let alone Rationalists. So they round off theistic claims, in their head, to something like "Superpowered Invisible Man". This concept is, from the Christian perspective, nearer to the truth than pure materialism, but -- the skeptics are right on this one -- being materialist-except-for-this-one-superpowered-dude is not very rational.

But within the ontology I've outlined, Christian beliefs about the world make reasonable sense -- I would say they are rational, not in the sense of being obviously inevitable or circumscribed by reason, but in that they don't pose any problem for a rational person who recognizes his limits and is content with partial understanding.

4 Cataphasis and Apophasis

When people talk about paradoxes in Christianity, they generally mean one of four things:

Doctrines, like the Trinity, which refer to concepts that our minds have a difficult time comprehending, because they are so different from our usual experience and categories.
Counterintuitive truths, expressed in apparently-contradictory language in order to draw attention.
Deliberate paradox in the form of Apophatic theology, meant to explode misconceptions about God and emphasize our inability to comprehend His fundamental nature.
Multiple ways of talking about the same topic that seem to be inconsistent.

Of the second I will have nothing further to say; it is clearly not a problem for rational thinking. Of the first, I want to emphasize that the apparent paradox is due to our inability to understand the concepts involved and nothing more, much like how arithmetic on infinite cardinal numbers is not a "real" paradox just because it doesn't behave like arithmetic on the integers. ("But I understand cardinal arithmetic, down to how it is a consequence of ZFC! If nobody understands the Trinity fully, how could it be reasonable to believe it?" More on that later.)

So let's talk about the third and fourth.

A number of foundational Christian thinkers have divided theology into two parts: Cataphatic, or positive, theology, and Apophatic or negative, theology. Cataphatic theology is what is at play when one says things like "God loves", or "God is merciful", or "God is just"; or that which is expressed in creeds and dogmas. Cataphatic theology is saying the things that we know about God. Apophatic theology is an approach in which, rather than making positive statements about God, we make negative statements about what God is not. (For some easy examples: "God is not material", "God does not have a cause outside Himself".)

Apophasis often takes the form of paradox when juxtaposed with cataphatic statements, because, first, our concepts which are employed in cataphatic statements will smuggle in implications or impressions which are not true, and second, because this paradox emphasizes our inability to comprehend the full truth about God. I mentioned the apophatic "God is not a being" above, for instance, which seems to contradict theism, but actually the point is that our notion of "being" or "existence" is not really applicable to God.

One might think of apophatic theology's relationship to cataphatic theology as trying to help us understand the "map" of cataphatic doctrine as a guide to the "territory" of who God is and how we relate to God, by continually pulling our attention to the fact that the map is not the territory. This isn't irrational paradox at all, but our continual reminder that the person at the center of reality is not something we can really get our minds around, and we're better off not imagining that we can.

(Digression: Apophatic theology is not unique to Christianity; there is something very similar in Neoplatonism as well as, I think, in Taoism ("The Tao which can be spoken is not the true Tao.").)

Finally, the fourth kind of paradox. It is much like the third, except that multiple counterbalancing positive statements are made, each pointing to part of a truth which is too difficult for us to really get our heads around. Now of course it is possible to excuse nonsense as "just different aspects of an incomprehensible truth," but the thing can really happen as well as being faked.

Let's take an example: What's the deal with sin? Why is it bad for me to sin? (other than it being bad for the people I harm)? The following answers are all defensible from both the Bible and Christian Tradition:

Sin is breaking God's rules. It makes God angry, and He will punish you for it. (BUT: Doesn't the Bible also say that God hates no one and is quick to forgive?)
Sin is bad because it's foolish, and tends to lead to bad natural consequences: material, psychological, or social. (BUT: People who do bad things often end up ahead.)
Sin is like a progressive illness; if you sin, you get sicker, and eventually you'll be miserable (unless you get cured). (BUT: where's the will and personal guilt in all this? And why do I need to consent to being cured?)
Sin separates you from God, and the absence of God's love ends up in misery. (BUT: How can anyone be separated from God and God's love, if God is everywhere and in everything, and loves everyone?)
Sin breaks your relationship with God (BUT: a human's relationship with God is only similar by analogy to our relationship with other humans, and how could this be broken, since God doesn't get emotional baggage like humans do?)
Sinning makes you into the sort of person that finds the presence of God intolerable. (BUT: how does that even work?)

(I probably left some out.) For what it's worth, I -- and many Orthodox theologians -- think the last one is probably closest to the truth, but in some ways it's the least actionable. What we get is all of them: partly because each of them is the right model for some occasions, and we, being unable to really understand the underlying reality, need a multiplicity of models for different circumstances. "All models are wrong, but some are useful," indeed.

5 Those Who Have Not Seen and Yet Have Believed

This section title refers, of course, to Jesus's words to the Apostle Thomas -- after the resurrection, Jesus appears to the Apostles, but for some reason, Thomas isn't with them. The rest tell Thomas, but he -- being a bit of a skeptic -- refuses to believe unless he can verify it for himself (down to unfakeable physical proof). Later, Jesus appears to all of them, offers that proof to Thomas -- and then gives a blessing to "those who have not seen and yet have believed".

There is an epistemic issue -- two, maybe -- that a lot of rational/skeptical people have with Christianity, and it's this. A lot of Christian doctrine contains claims that cannot be verified by anyone alive today (e.g the Crucifixion and Resurrection), or even could not have been directly verified by human observation at all (e.g. the Trinity).

The first is not, in principle, a problem. Everyone believes lots of things they can't verify, even things that nobody can verify now (historical events, e.g.), because they trust in the body of people who did observe those things and those who have passed on the report. They are not wrong to do so! Very little can be empirically verified by an individual. So part of the question, then, is how trustworthy are the people who reported and passed down these events? Since this is not an apologia I won't get into the weeds here (and also I'm not really an expert), so I'll just say that I think a good case can be made that the answer is "Pretty darned trustworthy, all things considered". Still, some of the claims made are pretty wild (cf Resurrection) if you haven't already accepted the overall metaphysics, so skepticism is understandable.

The second is more of a problem. How can anyone, no matter how honest or intelligent, come to know something like the doctrine of the Trinity, which is (a) something that can't be (physically) observed, and (b) admittedly not fully comprehensible by anyone? Christianity, of course, has an answer: it was revealed by God -- through the words of prophets, or Jesus, or by a revelation given to some of the Apostles. That's an explanation, but it has one problem: it does not bridge the epistemic gap for those who don't already broadly accept Christianity.

Here's the thing: this is fine. Nobody should be asked to accept these things just on the say-so of people they aren't sure they can trust. It is not rational to do so, but it's also not necessary. There are good ways to bridge that gap, such that blind belief is not required.

Roughly, it works like this: you get good evidence, of some sort, that at least some of the claims are true. Since all these claims are coming from the same source, they are tied together -- belief in one should increase your estimation that the source is a good one, and thus that the others, which you can't verify, are true as well. Coming to believe in the others to an extent, you see how they fit together (and/or find that believing other claims has good results). At some point a threshold is passed, and you believe not in the truth of this or that statement, but in the whole edifice, even those parts you don't understand (yet), because, as Chesterton put it, you find that Christianity is a truth-telling thing.

Talk to most thoughtful Christians, including many converts, and you'll find that something like this is the process. Maybe they have, like me, some deep philosophical convictions that turn out to be elucidated best by Christian doctrine. Maybe they had an experience that, while maybe not communicable to others, they feel they had no choice but to accept as miraculous, and which pointed them in that direction. Maybe they just found that acting as though the doctrines are true had good results for them that they did not find elsewhere.

As an exercise, I invite you to think about why, from the Orthodox Christian perspective, correct doctrine is so important. It's not because the beliefs, in themselves, are going to save someone ("Even the demons believe -- and tremble!"), nor the converse, that one cannot be saved without specific beliefs (see: the many saints who made errors or lacked knowledge, or the fact that the Church believes that children and idiots can be saved). It's not an arbitrary test, either. Rather, the Church believes that knowing certain truths about God and Humanity's relationship to God helps you, because God is real, and believing true things makes it is easier to be aligned to that reality, which is the real goal.

[ I ran out of characters, so the rest will be in a reply to this post.]

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

1657 comments - 25805 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

1657

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

Shaming.
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
Recruiting for a cause.
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 29, 2023

163 comments - 3419 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

Israel-Gaza Megathread #3

456 comments - 14158 thread views 1yr ago by naraburns nihil supernum (text post)

Advice for disagreeable people

24 comments - 2195 thread views 1yr ago by gog (text post)

Friday Fun Thread for October 27, 2023

172 comments - 3312 thread views 1yr ago by PaperclipPerfector (text post)

World Series 2023 Megathread

11 comments - 1702 thread views 1yr ago by inappropriatecontent Nihil Concierge (houseofstrauss.com)

Transnational Thursdays 23

43 comments - 1347 thread views 1yr ago by Soriek (text post)

Ways to address underlying emotions that may be causing physical health issues?

22 comments - 1615 thread views 1yr ago by TissueReligion (text post)

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.

Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.

New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!

Quality Contributions in the Main Motte

Contributions for the week of October 2, 2023

Contributions for the week of October 9, 2023

Contributions for the week of October 16, 2023

Contributions for the week of October 23, 2023

Contributions for the week of October 30, 2023

Some People Did Something (Israel Edition)