The Problem of War, Part 2

 

"Hitler claimed that if his genocide of the Jews was wrong, God would have stopped him."

The Problem of War, Part 2

By George Templeton

Gazette Blog Columnist

Editor's note: This is the second in a 5-part series by Gazette Blog Columnist George Templeton entitled "The Problem of War."  

In part 1, I wrote about morality.  It is a subject of much discussion on the web, especially concerning artificial intelligence.  The writings of brilliant innovators imply that there is little knowledge on their part of the many theories of morality. 

Politics is unavoidable in any social project.  We don’t know everything and we don’t know the future.  So, we pick a solution within the field of possibility.  We see what happens and we make adjustments.  It is the method of trial and error.  But some things are just plain evil.  That isn’t politics.

Essential reading is the 2000 book by Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay.  Douglas is a professor of Philosophy at the Denver Seminary.

In part 2, I turn to philosophy.  We have to do this if we want to be sensible.  My reference is a 2015 book by Gary Gutting, endowed chair in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.  His 2015 book is “What Philosophy Can Do”.

Sensibility requires communication and consciousness.  This is where philosophy overlaps with psychology and physics.  It provides a perspective for what I am trying to say.  If you pay any attention to political discourse you might discover that there is a problem with the truth.

Metaphysics

Ruth walked down the street with her two grandchildren.  A friend stopped to ask her how old they were.  Ruth replied:  “The doctor is five and the lawyer is seven.”  Every life has a purpose.  A machine has no autonomous purpose.

Heidegger argued:  Time connects everything.  Our mortality shapes our lives.  It makes us conscious of what we could be and the short time we have to do it.  It changes our focus to concentrate on what could happen within our lifespan, our children’s, and our children’s children.  There are no geologic epochs here.  They exist only within mathematical expectation and the law of large numbers.

As soon as we try to perceive anything, it becomes not “in itself” but reality for us.  Heidegger coined the term Dasein.  He was us, thrown into the world, trapped by the world.  He was reality, an explanation for probability, and a justification for a God who takes all possibilities simultaneously.   To define God would objectify him.  Our God is an idol of subjectivity.  His destruction “opened up a place for a more divine God” that was neither subjective nor objective.  After all, didn’t he create us in his image?  Doesn’t that give us a sacred worth and a responsibility?

God throws us into a world where his love does not save us from the consequences of sin.  It reveals his anger.  Hitler claimed that if his genocide of the Jews was wrong, God would have stopped him.  Instead, Hitler killed God in the eyes of millions of people.  God could not do such an evil thing!  Does God’s love have to come out of catastrophe?  Is there no disaster but deserved disaster?  Where was the miracle that would have proved God’s existence?  Perhaps we do not deserve to know.  That would have destroyed faith, a process, not a thing.  When will we learn?      

Leibniz believed that God created the best of all possible worlds.  God gave us the least amount of evil possible.  It did not mean that there was no evil.

In physics, nothing happens for a purpose.  In Leibniz’s universe things seemed to cause one another because God ordained a pre-established harmony for them.  Space, time, causation, and material objects are all illusions.  The birds, bees, and even the rocks have a “mind” (sort of).  They have perceptions, feelings, desires, choices, and a soul.  We don’t know what life is let alone the soul.  Perhaps the flickering stars, forever distant, are alive.

Leibniz combined the subjective and objective in a view of reality that explained things like good, evil, and free will in a non-mechanistic way.  It was not atomic, but it was more complete than Newton's universe.

But isn’t man so much more than the rocks?  He has an identity that defines his virtues, character, and integrity.  He imposes boundaries and constraints on them.  Understanding this cannot prevent horrors.  Passive ignorance keeps them going.  As some politicians say, we have to be “strong”, but how so?

Information Died

We know that information is not a substance.  It isn't necessarily true.  You can copy information.  That is the only requirement.  Information is not a substitute for thinking.  Knowledge, on the other hand, must be capable of perpetuating its existence.  But when it tells you a fact that you already know, it does not add to your knowledge.  The question is:  How much information does it take to accurately convey a message?  Are one’s and zero’s, true or false, enough?  More information is required whenever anything is uncertain.  The more we know, the less remains to be known.  Information changes probability.  We call that learning.

Exactly what is information?  To be scientific it has to be something measurable in time and space.  It needs units like pounds, inches, or degrees F.  That would objectify it.  But nature did not give us the “proof” in our bottle of rum.  These things are interactions with human consciousness.  They are different in thermal physics and information theory.  Information is like chemistry.  It requires a catalyst (humanity), an engagement, to become knowledge.  But you could be wrong.

Is information just one or zero, a computer bit, or is it also an organization of bits, a byte?  What about things bumping into each other, altering their initial arrangement and consequent human interpretation?  Every moment contains the information to determine the following moments.  There is only one way in, and one way out.  Some arrangements become “emergent properties”.   We encounter them at a higher level in the world hierarchy. The information in the universe seems to go on forever.  What will we do with it?

Artificial intelligence has opened the door to qualitative data analysis.  It is not like algebra or plane geometry.  It is algorithmic and sequential, a rubber or pliable geometry that can be stretched and twisted to reveal reality, to find otherwise hidden form.  

Imagination and intuition are more important than beliefs.  Any belief which is certain requires no information to convey its message.  Your emotions are intelligent and private.  Those are the ones engaged with, and coming from your experience.  They are personal, but not feelings, gossip, prejudice, or physiological upset.  You can’t be human and capable of rational choices without emotion.  Try reading tables of logarithms.  All the numbers seem the same.  There is nothing to focus your attention on, no valuation without emotion.  It is emotion, not reason that compels us to drop the bomb, to risk ending civilization.

 Emotions matter because they influence your friends, religion, politics, economics, health, and common sense.  We can’t explain what “blue” looks like, but we know it when we see it.  My blue might not be the same as yours.  Likewise, emotions don’t happen to us.  We control them.  Look inward!  By contemplating our emotions we can change our outlook on life, war, and peace.

Evolution Destroys Truth

For any event to be random, it has to have no structure or pattern.  We can compress digital photos because the color at one location changes the probability of the color in an adjacent position.  A truly random object cannot be compressed or simplified.  It is what it is.

Rare catastrophic events are outside of our experience.  Consequently, they are not part of our plans.  Order emerges from disorder.  That is what life is.  Don’t let the seeming randomness of the roulette wheel fool you!  Most people do not decide rationally.  Their beliefs are only as good as they compress information into a smaller, simpler set of assumptions.  

We live in a world where a lie is better than the truth because a lie can be anything you want it to be.  It satisfies your wants and needs.  It has a payoff.  Survival depends on them.  We evolved to survive, not to see what’s actually there.

A prominent sociologist explained that facts are insignificant.  They really don’t matter in the scheme of things.  Hatred of the “other” makes the world go around.  Tell that to a scientist who sees that the progress of the world is driven by facts.  Hatred is not a force in physics.

Theories must be falsifiable and independently verifiable.  New theories have to explain the old.  Reality might not be “more of the same” but unlike religion and politics, science corrects itself.  But it cannot prove itself.

A world governed by prejudice and bigotry is not fundamentally part of business.  It is about profit and healthy competition.  It does not care about the “Mexican” on the saw blades.  That was the politics of one of our elected representatives.

Our intellect pales insignificantly in comparison with instinct.  When we see that someone belongs to a group, we understand that they share in the properties of the group.  This tribalism makes atrocities acceptable by overwhelming the morality of a group's members.   Our leaders pressure us from above.  Our neighbors pressure us horizontally.