Excellent:
Yes, it's religion again, and the (between-the-lines) challenge is this:Nutz:If operating under the guidance of a sovereign, absolute and undemocratic Authority is a good idea, then why not become a Christian?For who is God, if not Authority?
In fact, especially since we cannot know if there is a God or not, because the "cannot know" argument cuts two ways, as recently argued by Hitchens. If you can't know (and nobody can) then it is possible to believe in either direction. You should pick the one that is most right.Religion is the position that epistemology does not rest upon reason...that there is something (faith) that outvotes reason. Do not be so silly as to pretend that reason can support your belief in God. From a religious point of view, this both elevates reason, and diminishes God. And besides, it doesn't work. Substitution:
In fact, especially since we cannot know if (there is a Cthulu/there are faeries/crystals have psychic energy/green ideas dream furiously) or not, because the "cannot know" argument cuts two ways, as recently argued by Hitchens. If you can't know (and nobody can) then it is possible to believe in either direction. You should pick the one that is most right.As all my formalists friends suggest, it's worthwhile to read the source material before moving forward...and the source material is Hume. He dismissed most arguments used today...200 years ago.
More interestingly is whether the formalist argument requires authority as a valid position, and whether the argument for authority requires suspension of reason as well.
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"we cannot know if there is a God or not, because the "cannot know" argument cuts two ways, as recently argued by Hitchens."
A Hitchens agrees with me? I feel dirty now.
Incidentally, the next step is to realize if both answers are unknowable it means the question itself is malformed.
So...what does "Is there a God?" pre-suppose that isn't true?
"You should pick the one that is most right."
You should pick the one that feels better. There's no other logical consequences to the answers, and thus no other criteria.
As far as I understand, the formalist argument fundamentally rests on being formal - as the name would imply. It's about not lying or pretending things about your security force, such as that it can be restrained by a constitution.
Formalism agrees with your 'authority == big stick' definition. Indeed, that's most of the point - there's someone with a bigger stick, so stop pretending there isn't.
If you stop pretending that, or supposing we can break everyone's sticks, what kind of government is ideal?
I should note my own disagreement. Cash and legitimacy are trump-able by physical force, but tend not to be so trumped in practice.
Or: if the bank froze every soldier's bank account, how long would the war last?
"Bat-shit insane." Perhaps! However, what I'm getting at here is really whether belief in God is a good thing, politically speaking.
Other reasons to believe in God, up to and including whether He exists or not, are not actually part of the argument, provided that nobody can prove He doesn't. And nobody can; such a proof would be logically impossible, as Hume (presumably) tells us.
This is quite a different thing from Pascal's wager. Pascal wins his wager by going to Heaven after he dies. Whereas in the line of thought I'm taking, the wager is that belief in God makes conditions better right here on Earth, because God sits at the top of the authority pyramid and provides a ready answer to awkward questions like "Who gave you the right to be King?"
Equally, widespread belief in God provides a sort of check and balance on the king, because some behaviour would cause the people to wonder whether he really has a divine right after all. This would be especially effective if the king himself believes in God, or at least isn't completely sure of God's non-existence.
If belief in faeries or Cthulu had similar properties, then the same argument would surely apply to them. But I notice that even amongst established religions, not all hypotheses have desirable properties. For example, casting the king himself as God would be a bad idea.
Vladimir,
Welcome. Thanks for dropping by. Nothing personal.
1. I understand the positive results argument for positions. I'm mostly onboard (theoretically anyhow...in practice I'm incompetent/incapable) with believing things for their positive results. EVEN if practice isn't 95%+ of your skill, believing that it is gives FAR better personal results than believing anything else.
2. I'm an anarchist, personally, but I agree 100% that God is a wonderful (necessary?) thing for anyone who wants authority to have moral clout.
3. From a rational point of view, there are three questions:
(a) does god exist as a matter of fact
(b) is it possible to rationally believe in God?
(c) is it useful to believe in God.
We agree that (a) is an open question.
We agree that for the formalists preferred governments, (c) is a big positive, and the for we anarchists, it's probably a negative.
My primary claim is that (b) is done as a question. Answer is no. Goose is cooked. And it was cooked by Hume 200 years ago.
So perhaps we're orthogonal? But I'm not so sure. I think a lot of folks take a look at question (a), and think it solves (b) as well.
Thanks for your comments. I think actually we do agree on many things.
But not everything. I'm not sure if (b) is as clear-cut as it seems. Belief in God actually seems quite rational to me. I'll read the Hume that you linked and then see what I think.
Thinking about this, I came to find another perspective to show philosophy is only the enemy of conservatism in a limited sense.
Proper authority is the authority of property.
If you're on someone's real estate, and they say, "Jump or get out," the only self-consistent answers are, "How high?" or, "Bye, then."
"Who gave you the right to be King?"
Answers:
A: "It's my kingdom. You agreed I was King when you crossed the border."
B: "You did. The only way to justify your right to be left alone is to also justify my right to be King of my stuff."
(Notably historical kings did the opposite - their justification only justify taking their kingdoms from them, rather than sanctifying the rights of others.)
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