GEORGE TEMPLETON
COMMENTARY
The Conscience of Reason
By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
“What’s
it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? What’s it all
about – when you sort it out, Alfie? Are we meant to take more than we
give? Or are we meant to be kind? And if only fools are kind, Alfie,
Then I guess it is wise to be cruel. And if life belongs only to the
strong, Alfie, What will you lend on an old golden rule?” From the 1966
movie “Alfie”.
Jan
Markell, of Olive Tree Ministries, argues that Trump is “trying to stop
the runaway freight train of evil that has existed emanating out of
Washington and the Democratic Party.” She maintains “The left is
mesmerized by issues that tear down and grieve the heart of God.” But
evil can come from unsuspecting people who believe they are fulfilling a
sacred duty. Albert Speer, Hitler’s principal architect, said, “It is
hard to know the devil when his hand is on your shoulder.”
Is
there any such thing as evil? It could be just the privation of the
good that would otherwise fill our lives. Are all actions moral unless
they are done with hateful intent? Is our malice toward our fellow man
something that evolved from our primitive ancestors, or is it an
essential part of what it means to be civilized? Does it come from the
fall in the Garden of Eden, something planned in advance by God, or
something that is crafted by a demoniac outside of us? Is it a
rebellion that is a necessary part of growing up? Is it mundane, good
guys and bad guys, or more than “law and order”? Given that evil
exists, how should we live?
Evil
has abstract dimensions in our minds, and concrete dimensions in the
world. Jan does not capture the depth, breadth, and history of evil’s
cunning deception. Perhaps evil is not realized until we personally
experience its pain and surprise.
Irrational Religion
The
camera panned across the mega-prosperity pastor, Joel Osteen’s
entranced 52,000 person audience. So many people listen to him. His
message must be right. But Jesus said, “For it is easier for a camel
to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the
kingdom of God.”
Joel
has not made Jimmy Carter’s mistake. Carter cautioned, “… too many of
us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity
is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve
discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our
longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot
fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.” The
rejection of President Carter foretold the role of television, big
money, influence, and materialism in American politics and life.
The
reverend Hagee preaches to his 20,000 member congregation and to
millions more on television. God directly controls everything, even
breaking his own laws. Stopping the sun’s motion around the earth as a
one-time publicity stunt for Joshua at the battle of Jericho violates
the most central idea in physics, that energy is conserved. It would
drastically change everything that we know to be real.
Fragile Knowledge
Everyone
has the capacity to be rational. Democracy depends on the
well-informed. Belief absent of skepticism demonstrates how little
reason means. It is possible to have the right reasons, but the wrong
conclusion. Logic won’t change our life experiences, values, and
biases. It helps us identify improper forms of reasoning and make
better decisions.
There
are two kinds of reasoning, inductive and deductive. The former goes
from the specific to the general, for example: The economy will improve
because of me. There is a difference between taking credit and being
responsible. The future is uncertain and the economy might not continue
to grow. There could be reasons other than “me” for economic growth.
Deductive reasoning goes from the general to the specific, for example:
The law and its particular violation. We can confidently determine
what is true or false only in deductive reasoning.
We
have a feeling of awe when we stand at the base of the pyramids because
we easily identify with the toil and ingenuity of the ancient
civilizations that built them. In contrast, there is very little that
can be intuitively grasped about the contributions of people like Fermi,
Dirac, Shockley, and Noyce, yet they were the creators of the
electronic age. Before them, we went to the grocery store to test and
purchase replacement vacuum tubes for the ones that frequently failed in
our TV sets. Their replacement with solid state devices would
eventually create millions of jobs, revolutionize the lives of everyone,
and raise the world-wide standard of living.
Priorities
What
is most important, religion, science, or rationality? Religions
recognize that there are things that matter more than the self, but
their absolutism leads to intolerance. Science can solve many of
humankind’s problems, but shortcomings in our understanding of how to
use it can destroy us. Logic concerns how we evaluate arguments, but it
seems that fantasy, and feelings have become the smarter, better
message. There is a difference between thinking and reasoning.
Logical Fallacies
Beliefs
are rational when there are good reasons that support an argument’s
conclusion. Fallacies are the tools that give propaganda its persuasive
force. We believe that we are rational. Voting in elections, serving
on a jury, and making deals in the marketplace are examples. But people
knowingly make the wrong decision in order to agree with their group,
avoid embarrassment, and not draw unwanted attention. Sometimes it is
to get along, and sometimes it is because they lack confidence in
themselves. The power of the group lies in the fact that that it
requires consensus for its existence. Once we become a member we are
identified as a “subscriber” and we often go to ridiculous extremes
rather than admit an error.
Truth
Can self-driving cars distinguish between right and wrong?
Tests
of intelligence include: Can the machine fool a person into thinking
it is a human? Can the machine identify incongruence, such as a man
floating in the air in a pastoral country scene? Can it pass the exams
given to school children? Does the machine have an “attitude”? Can the
machine appreciate art and music? How will the computer make moral
decisions? Can it decipher inexact language, for example when “they” or
“it” possibly refers to more than one thing?
Philosophers
have struggled with argumentation and the determination of the truth
for thousands of years. The truth is often incomplete, not necessarily
so, or only what could be.
The
unity of knowledge brought philosophy and applied science together.
Electronics has combinatorial and sequential true-false logic, but it
does not treat the vagueness of words and confusing relationships in and
between sentences. Now we have “fuzzy logic” with potentially infinite
shades of truth, but that does not excuse us from trying to reduce
ambiguity and complexity into discrete true-false parts.
Human
intelligence has feelings, wants, and needs. It was forged in the
fires of evolution. It has great difficulty with uncertainty,
responsibility, and rationality. Our brains are wired for survival.
When our ancestors on the Serengeti Plain saw movement in the grass they
ran. Their judgment, that it was a tiger, was wrong more often than
right. Will our car’s computers make better decisions than us?
Rescued by Authority
Strong
leaders liberate us from the burden of responsibility and the choir of
critical thinking. Adolf Eichmann claimed that it was his duty to order
the deaths of millions of Jews. The 1978 Jonestown massacre was made
possible by a charismatic religious leader.
We
think that conspicuous success in any arena identifies a person as
competent, even in things they know nothing about. Candidates for
political office tell us that they should be chosen because of their
complete lack of experience. The more ignorant they are, the more
likely we believe that they can do the things they know nothing about.
Hoping to find a savior, we demand amateurishness and demote those who
have learned through their mistakes. The unwitting manager acts
quickly without the constraints of doubt, rewarding himself as a strong
leader and a man of action. He makes the same or even worse mistakes
than the misunderstood statesman who sacrifices himself for the public
good. When strength is confused with personal power instead of public
service America loses.
Political
candidates like to claim that their business experience qualifies them
for office, but the goal of business is to make money. Success in
public office needs more than that. Public servants need a
sophisticated moral philosophy and empathy. The leader who joins the
fray, who engages in personal attacks, cannot lead all the people. The
man at the top sets the quality of his organization. Consensus building
is his most important duty. You can’t force everyone to agree with
you. A complicated project will not be successful with only majority
support.
Functions of a Variable
Functions
of a variable are the scientific version of philosophies’ “If A
therefore B”. Logicians call it modus ponens. A mathematical function
acts on an input to result in an output. When there are few variables,
understanding comes most easily. But when variables interact and
proliferate, complexity explodes. It is important to study the
variables that matter most and ignore the others that obscure the
underlying reality. But this is not the dumbing down of America that
comes from tweeting. Far from being the center of attention, its fans
never find the solitude needed to get in touch with themselves.
Modus
ponens is hard to find in the tweet-o-sphere, but not false witness and
extortion coming from the highest levels of our government. Our
President’s tweets are showing up in our language. Many find them
sufficient. But subjects cannot be learned and novels cannot be enjoyed
by only reading the last chapter.
Fahrenheit 451
was a 1953 novel concerning a future where books were outlawed. It was
about mankind’s urge to suppress what it does not understand. The fire
department’s role was not to extinguish fires. It was to burn every
book found! The smart phone is the friend of that fire department.
To
be logical, you have to think and write in complete sentences. Tweets
have no need for that. As a result, they mean whatever you want them
to. Consequently, they mean nothing at all. The news unwittingly
confirmed this when they explained that nothing sticks because this is
the new Teflon normal. Rudeness is O.K. as long as you attack your
enemy.
It’s Not Even Wrong
The
function of social conflict has been debated for many decades. Alfred
North Whitehead wrote, “The clash of doctrines is not a disaster, it is
an opportunity.” Sixty years would elapse before the electronics that
put the encyclopedia and world at our fingertips would split us apart
and dehumanize us. Perhaps Karl Marx was right when he wrote “It is the
bad side that produces the movement that makes history by providing a
struggle.”
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