The quote specifies God, not “a voice claiming to be God”.
In that case, the Christian’s obvious and correct response is “that wouldn’t happen”, and responding to that with “yeah, but what if? huh? huh?” is unlikely to lead to a fruitful conversation. Penn’s original thought experiment is simply broken.
Replace “God” by “rationality” and consider the question asked of yourself. How do you respond?
That seems like a misuse of the word “rationality”. The “rational” course of action is directly dependent upon whatever your response will be to the thought experiment according to your utility function (and therefore values mostly) and decision algorithm, and so somewhat question-begging.
A better term would be “your decision theory”, but that is trivially dismissible as non-rational—if you disagree with the results of the decision theory you use, then it’s not optimal, which means you should pick a better one.
If a utility function and decision theory system that are fully reflectively coherent with myself agree with me that for X reasons killing my child is necessarily and strictly more optimal than other courses of action even taking into account my preference for the survival of my child over that of other people, then yes, I definitely would—clearly there’s more utility to be gained elsewhere, and therefore the world will predictably be a better one for it. This calculation will (must) include the negative utility from my sadness, prison, the life lost, the opportunity costs, and any other negative impacts of killing my own child.
And as per other theorems, since the value of information and accuracy here would obviously be very high, I’d make really damn sure about these calculations—to a degree of accuracy and formalism much higher than I believe my own mind would currently be capable of with lives involved. So with all that said, in a real situation I would doubt my own calculations and would assign much greater probability to an error in my calculations or a lack / bias in my information, than to my calculations being right and killing my own child being optimal.
In that case, the Christian’s obvious and correct response is “that wouldn’t happen”, and responding to that with “yeah, but what if? huh? huh?” is unlikely to lead to a fruitful conversation.
Except that most Christians think that people have, in reality, been given orders directly by God. I suspect they would differ on what evidence is required before accepting the voice is God, but once they have accepted it’s God talking then reusing to comply would be … telling. OTOH, I would totally kill people in that situation (or an analogous one with an FAI,) and I don’t think that’s irrational.
Replace “God” by “rationality” and consider the question asked of yourself. How do you respond?
[EDIT: I had to replace a little more than that to make it coherent; I hope I preserved your intentions while doing so.]
If it was rational to kill your child—would you do it?
If your answer is no, in my booklet you’re not a rationalist. You are still confused. Love and morality are more important than winning.
If your answer is yes, please reconsider.
My answer is, of course, yes. If someone claims that they would not kill even if it was the rational choice then … ***** them. It’s the right damn choice. Not choosing it is, in fact, the wrong choice.
(I’m ignoring issues regarding running on hostile hardware here, because you should be taking that kind of bias into account before calling something “rational”.)
Except that most Christians think that people have, in reality, been given orders directly by God.
What do the real Christians that you know say about that characterisation? I don’t know any well enough to know what they think (personal religious beliefs being little spoken of in the UK), but just from general knowledge of the doctrines I understand that the sources of knowledge of God’s will are the Bible, the church, and personal revelation, all of these subject to fallible human interpretation. Different sects differ in what weight they put on these, Protestants being big on sola scriptura and Catholics placing great importance on the Church. Some would add the book of nature, God’s word revealed in His creation. None of this bears any more resemblance to “direct orders from God”, than evolutionary biology does to “a monkey gave birth to a human”.
Replace “God” by “rationality” and consider the question asked of yourself. How do you respond?
My answer is, of course, yes.
Now look at what you had to do to get that answer: reduce the matter to a tautology by ignoring all of the issues that would arise in any real situation in which you faced this decision, and conditioning on them having been perfectly solved. Speculating on what you would do if you won the lottery is more realistic. There is no “rationality” that by definition gives you perfect answers beyond questioning, any more than, even to the Christian, there is such a God.
What do the real Christians that you know say about that characterisation? I don’t know any well enough to know what they think
They think you should try and make sure it’s really God (they give conflicting answers as to how, mostly involving your own moral judgments which seems kinda tautological) and then do as He says. Many (I think all, actually) mentioned the Binding of Isaac. Of course, they do not a believe they will actually encounter such a situation.
just from general knowledge of the doctrines I understand that the sources of knowledge of God’s will are the Bible, the church, and personal revelation, all of these subject to fallible human interpretation. Different sects differ in what weight they put on these, Protestants being big on sola scriptura and Catholics placing great importance on the Church. Some would add the book of nature, God’s word revealed in His creation. None of this bears any more resemblance to “direct orders from God”, than evolutionary biology does to “a monkey gave birth to a human”.
AFAIK, all denominations of Christianity, and for that matter other Abrahamic religions, claim that there have been direct revelations from God.
Now look at what you had to do to get that answer: reduce the matter to a tautology
As I said, simply replacing the word “God” with “rationality” yields clear nonsense, obviously, so I had to change some other stuff while attempting to preserve the spirit of your request. It seems I failed in this. Could you perform the replacement yourself, so I can answer what you meant to ask?
They think you should try and make sure it’s really God (they give conflicting answers as to how, mostly involving your own moral judgments which seems kinda tautological) and then do as He says.
There is a biblical description of how to tell if a given instruction is divine or not, found at the start of 1 John chapter four:
1 John 4:1 Dear friends, stop believing every spirit. Instead, test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 4:2 This is how you can recognize God’s Spirit: Every spirit who acknowledges that Jesus the Messiah has become human—and remains so—is from God. 4:3 But every spirit who does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist. You have heard that he is coming, and now he is already in the world.
One can also use the example of Jesus’ temptation in the desert to see how to react if one is not sure.
And yet, I have never had a theist claim that “Every spirit who acknowledges that Jesus the Messiah has become human—and remains so—is from God.” That any spirit that agrees with scripture, maybe.
Was Jesus unsure if the temptation in the desert was God talking?
Was Jesus unsure if the temptation in the desert was God talking?
No, but the temptation was rejected specifically on the grounds that it did not agree with scripture. Therefore, the same grounds can surely be used in other, similar situations, including those where one is unsure of who is talking.
Jesus goes into the desert, and fasts for 40 days. After this, He is somewhat hungry.
The devil turns up, and asks Him to turn some stones into bread, for food (thus, symbolically, treating the physical needs of the body as the most important thing).
He refuses, citing old testament scripture: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
The devil tries again, quoting scripture and basically telling him ‘if you throw yourself from this cliff, you will be safe, for God will protect you. If you are the Son of God, why not prove it?’
Jesus refuses, again quoting scripture; “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”
For a third temptation, the devil shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and offers to give tham all to him—“if you will bow down and worship me”. A direct appeal to greed.
Jesus again quotes scripture, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”, and the devil leaves, unsatisfied.
They think you should try and make sure it’s really God (they give conflicting answers as to how, mostly involving your own moral judgments which seems kinda tautological) and then do as He says.
Your own moral judgements, of course, come from God, the source of all goodness and without whose grace man is utterly corrupt and incapable of anything good of his own will. That is what conscience is (according to Christians). So this is not tautological at all, but simply a matter of taking all the evidence into account and making the best judgement we can in the face of our own fallibility. A theme of this very site, on occasion.
AFAIK, all denominations of Christianity, and for that matter other Abrahamic religions, claim that there have been direct revelations from God.
Yes, I mentioned that (“personal revelation”). But it’s only one component of knowledge of the divine, and you still have the problem of deciding when you’ve received one and what it means.
As I said, simply replacing the word “God” with “rationality” yields clear nonsense, obviously, so I had to change some other stuff while attempting to preserve the spirit of your request. It seems I failed in this.
Not at all. Your formulation of the question is exactly what I had in mind, and your answer to it was exactly what I expected.
Your own moral judgements, of course, come from God, the source of all goodness and without whose grace man is utterly corrupt and incapable of anything good of his own will. That is what conscience is (according to Christians). So this is not tautological at all, but simply a matter of taking all the evidence into account and making the best judgement we can in the face of our own fallibility. A theme of this very site, on occasion.
Ah, good point. But the specific example was that He had commanded you to do something apperently wrong—kill your son—hence the partial tautology.
Yes, I mentioned that (“personal revelation”). But it’s only one component of knowledge of the divine, and you still have the problem of deciding when you’ve received one and what it means.
Whoops, so you did.
… how is that compatible with “None of this bears any more resemblance to “direct orders from God”, than evolutionary biology does to “a monkey gave birth to a human”.”?
Not at all. Your formulation of the question is exactly what I had in mind, and your answer to it was exactly what I expected.
Then why complain I had twisted it into a tautology?
You cannot cross a chasm by pointing to the far side and saying, “Suppose there was a bridge to there? Then we could cross!” You have to actually build the bridge, and build it so that it stays up, which Penn completely fails to do. He isn’t even trying to. He isn’t addressing Christians. He’s addressing people who are atheists already, getting in a good dig at those dumb Christians who think that a monkey gave birth to a human, sorry, that anyone should kill their child if God tells them to. Ha ha ha! Is he not witty!
The more I think about that quote, the stupider it seems.
You cannot cross a chasm by pointing to the far side and saying, “Suppose there was a bridge to there? Then we could cross!”
I’m, ah, not sure what this refers to. Going with my best guess, here:
If you have some problem with my formulation of, and responce to, the quote retooled for “rationality”, please provide your own.
He isn’t addressing Christians. He’s addressing people who are atheists already, getting in a good dig at those dumb Christians who think that a monkey gave birth to a human, sorry, that anyone should kill their child if God tells them to. Ha ha ha! Is he not witty!
He is not “getting in a good dig at those dumb Christians who think that a monkey gave birth to a human, sorry, that anyone should kill their child if God tells them to.” He is attemppting to demonstrate to Christians that they do not alieve that they should do anything God says. I think he is mistaken in this, but it’s not inconsistant or trivially wrong, as some commenters here seem to think.
(He also appears to think that this is the wrong position to hold, which is puzzling; I’d like to see his reasoning on that.)
He is attemppting to demonstrate to Christians that they do not alieve that they should do anything God says. I think he is mistaken in this, but it’s not inconsistant or trivially wrong, as some commenters here seem to think.
It seems trivially wrong to me, but maybe that’s just from having some small familiarity with how intellectually serious Christians actually do things (and the non-intellectual hicks are unlikely to be knocked down by Penn’s rhetoric either). It is absolutely standard in Christianity that any apparent divine revelation must be examined for its authenticity. The more momentous the supposed revelation the more closely it must be examined, to the extent that if some Joe Schmoe feels a divine urge to kill his son, there is, practically speaking, nothing that will validate it, and if he consults his local priest, the most important thing for the priest to do is talk him out of it. Abraham—this is the story Penn is implicitly referring to—was one of the greatest figures of the past, and the test that God visited upon him does not come to ordinary people. Joe Schmoe from nowhere might as well go to a venture capitalist, claim to be the next Bill Gates, and ask him to invest $100M in him. Not going to happen.
And Penn has the affrontery to say that anyone who weighs the evidence of an apparent revelation with the other sources of knowledge of God’s will, as any good Christian should do, is an atheist. No, I stand by my characterisation of his remark.
I was going to point out that your comment misrepresents my point, but reading your link I see that I was misrepresenting Penn’s point.
Whoops.
I could argue that my interpretation is better, and the quote should be judged on it’s own merits … but I wont. You were right. I was wrong. I shall retract my comments on this topic forthwith.
In that case, the Christian’s obvious and correct response is “that wouldn’t happen”, and responding to that with “yeah, but what if? huh? huh?” is unlikely to lead to a fruitful conversation. Penn’s original thought experiment is simply broken.
Replace “God” by “rationality” and consider the question asked of yourself. How do you respond?
That seems like a misuse of the word “rationality”. The “rational” course of action is directly dependent upon whatever your response will be to the thought experiment according to your utility function (and therefore values mostly) and decision algorithm, and so somewhat question-begging.
A better term would be “your decision theory”, but that is trivially dismissible as non-rational—if you disagree with the results of the decision theory you use, then it’s not optimal, which means you should pick a better one.
If a utility function and decision theory system that are fully reflectively coherent with myself agree with me that for X reasons killing my child is necessarily and strictly more optimal than other courses of action even taking into account my preference for the survival of my child over that of other people, then yes, I definitely would—clearly there’s more utility to be gained elsewhere, and therefore the world will predictably be a better one for it. This calculation will (must) include the negative utility from my sadness, prison, the life lost, the opportunity costs, and any other negative impacts of killing my own child.
And as per other theorems, since the value of information and accuracy here would obviously be very high, I’d make really damn sure about these calculations—to a degree of accuracy and formalism much higher than I believe my own mind would currently be capable of with lives involved. So with all that said, in a real situation I would doubt my own calculations and would assign much greater probability to an error in my calculations or a lack / bias in my information, than to my calculations being right and killing my own child being optimal.
Any other specifics I forgot to mention?
Except that most Christians think that people have, in reality, been given orders directly by God. I suspect they would differ on what evidence is required before accepting the voice is God, but once they have accepted it’s God talking then reusing to comply would be … telling. OTOH, I would totally kill people in that situation (or an analogous one with an FAI,) and I don’t think that’s irrational.
[EDIT: I had to replace a little more than that to make it coherent; I hope I preserved your intentions while doing so.]
My answer is, of course, yes. If someone claims that they would not kill even if it was the rational choice then … ***** them. It’s the right damn choice. Not choosing it is, in fact, the wrong choice.
(I’m ignoring issues regarding running on hostile hardware here, because you should be taking that kind of bias into account before calling something “rational”.)
What do the real Christians that you know say about that characterisation? I don’t know any well enough to know what they think (personal religious beliefs being little spoken of in the UK), but just from general knowledge of the doctrines I understand that the sources of knowledge of God’s will are the Bible, the church, and personal revelation, all of these subject to fallible human interpretation. Different sects differ in what weight they put on these, Protestants being big on sola scriptura and Catholics placing great importance on the Church. Some would add the book of nature, God’s word revealed in His creation. None of this bears any more resemblance to “direct orders from God”, than evolutionary biology does to “a monkey gave birth to a human”.
Now look at what you had to do to get that answer: reduce the matter to a tautology by ignoring all of the issues that would arise in any real situation in which you faced this decision, and conditioning on them having been perfectly solved. Speculating on what you would do if you won the lottery is more realistic. There is no “rationality” that by definition gives you perfect answers beyond questioning, any more than, even to the Christian, there is such a God.
They think you should try and make sure it’s really God (they give conflicting answers as to how, mostly involving your own moral judgments which seems kinda tautological) and then do as He says. Many (I think all, actually) mentioned the Binding of Isaac. Of course, they do not a believe they will actually encounter such a situation.
AFAIK, all denominations of Christianity, and for that matter other Abrahamic religions, claim that there have been direct revelations from God.
As I said, simply replacing the word “God” with “rationality” yields clear nonsense, obviously, so I had to change some other stuff while attempting to preserve the spirit of your request. It seems I failed in this. Could you perform the replacement yourself, so I can answer what you meant to ask?
There is a biblical description of how to tell if a given instruction is divine or not, found at the start of 1 John chapter four:
One can also use the example of Jesus’ temptation in the desert to see how to react if one is not sure.
And yet, I have never had a theist claim that “Every spirit who acknowledges that Jesus the Messiah has become human—and remains so—is from God.” That any spirit that agrees with scripture, maybe.
Was Jesus unsure if the temptation in the desert was God talking?
No, but the temptation was rejected specifically on the grounds that it did not agree with scripture. Therefore, the same grounds can surely be used in other, similar situations, including those where one is unsure of who is talking.
For those unaware of how the story goes:
Jesus goes into the desert, and fasts for 40 days. After this, He is somewhat hungry.
The devil turns up, and asks Him to turn some stones into bread, for food (thus, symbolically, treating the physical needs of the body as the most important thing).
He refuses, citing old testament scripture: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
The devil tries again, quoting scripture and basically telling him ‘if you throw yourself from this cliff, you will be safe, for God will protect you. If you are the Son of God, why not prove it?’
Jesus refuses, again quoting scripture; “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”
For a third temptation, the devil shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and offers to give tham all to him—“if you will bow down and worship me”. A direct appeal to greed.
Jesus again quotes scripture, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”, and the devil leaves, unsatisfied.
Your own moral judgements, of course, come from God, the source of all goodness and without whose grace man is utterly corrupt and incapable of anything good of his own will. That is what conscience is (according to Christians). So this is not tautological at all, but simply a matter of taking all the evidence into account and making the best judgement we can in the face of our own fallibility. A theme of this very site, on occasion.
Yes, I mentioned that (“personal revelation”). But it’s only one component of knowledge of the divine, and you still have the problem of deciding when you’ve received one and what it means.
Not at all. Your formulation of the question is exactly what I had in mind, and your answer to it was exactly what I expected.
Ah, good point. But the specific example was that He had commanded you to do something apperently wrong—kill your son—hence the partial tautology.
Whoops, so you did.
… how is that compatible with “None of this bears any more resemblance to “direct orders from God”, than evolutionary biology does to “a monkey gave birth to a human”.”?
Then why complain I had twisted it into a tautology?
You cannot cross a chasm by pointing to the far side and saying, “Suppose there was a bridge to there? Then we could cross!” You have to actually build the bridge, and build it so that it stays up, which Penn completely fails to do. He isn’t even trying to. He isn’t addressing Christians. He’s addressing people who are atheists already, getting in a good dig at those dumb Christians who think that a monkey gave birth to a human, sorry, that anyone should kill their child if God tells them to. Ha ha ha! Is he not witty!
The more I think about that quote, the stupider it seems.
I’m, ah, not sure what this refers to. Going with my best guess, here:
If you have some problem with my formulation of, and responce to, the quote retooled for “rationality”, please provide your own.
He is not “getting in a good dig at those dumb Christians who think that a monkey gave birth to a human, sorry, that anyone should kill their child if God tells them to.” He is attemppting to demonstrate to Christians that they do not alieve that they should do anything God says. I think he is mistaken in this, but it’s not inconsistant or trivially wrong, as some commenters here seem to think.
(He also appears to think that this is the wrong position to hold, which is puzzling; I’d like to see his reasoning on that.)
It seems trivially wrong to me, but maybe that’s just from having some small familiarity with how intellectually serious Christians actually do things (and the non-intellectual hicks are unlikely to be knocked down by Penn’s rhetoric either). It is absolutely standard in Christianity that any apparent divine revelation must be examined for its authenticity. The more momentous the supposed revelation the more closely it must be examined, to the extent that if some Joe Schmoe feels a divine urge to kill his son, there is, practically speaking, nothing that will validate it, and if he consults his local priest, the most important thing for the priest to do is talk him out of it. Abraham—this is the story Penn is implicitly referring to—was one of the greatest figures of the past, and the test that God visited upon him does not come to ordinary people. Joe Schmoe from nowhere might as well go to a venture capitalist, claim to be the next Bill Gates, and ask him to invest $100M in him. Not going to happen.
And Penn has the affrontery to say that anyone who weighs the evidence of an apparent revelation with the other sources of knowledge of God’s will, as any good Christian should do, is an atheist. No, I stand by my characterisation of his remark.
Having just tracked down something closer to the source, I find it only confirms what I’ve been saying.
I was going to point out that your comment misrepresents my point, but reading your link I see that I was misrepresenting Penn’s point.
Whoops.
I could argue that my interpretation is better, and the quote should be judged on it’s own merits … but I wont. You were right. I was wrong. I shall retract my comments on this topic forthwith.