Religion: The Next Step in Evolution

     Humans and many other organisms have evolved pleasure-pain mechanisms. To the extent that any evolved capacity can have a "purpose," the purpose of pleasure is to guide us towards those actions that preserve our health.  The evolutionary "purpose" of pain is to warn us away from harmful actions.  Pleasure and pain are our headlights illuminating a sometimes brutally dark and dangerous world.

     Humans, however, can hold values higher than pleasure.  We can place civility, honesty, bravery, loyalty, love, compassion, and many other values above pleasure.  We can do this because we have evolved free will; we have evolved the ability to guide ourselves, even when swimming against the stream of electrons flowing through our biological pain-pleasure wiring.

     But we still rely on headlights.  These "higher" values don't come into our brains out of thin air.  Aside from a few twists we as individuals add to them, aside from an innovation here and there, and aside from how we apply them to our unique individual lives, the basics of our values have been conditioned into us by our cultures.

     Evolutionists have long noted that culture itself is an outgrowth of evolution.  Cultures evolve out of our drive to avoid pain and pursue pleasure.  By which I mean: Cultures are ever-evolving repertoires of tools for survival and prosperity.  Less useful tools are usually dispensed with during the course of cultural evolution, the same way species lose features that ill-suit them to their environments.  Sometimes, as we all know, cultures create and preserve harmful practices.  In the same way, the pleasure-pain mechanism is not infallible.

     So our cultures have evolved these "higher" values.  And these higher values, on balance, serve us well. Religions play a role in creating and maintaining values that "transcend" pleasure and pain. But in fact the healthy religious values don't transcend the pleasure and pain mechanism at all.  Healthy religious values extend the range of the pleasure-pain headlights further into the darkness.

     Take the Christian virtue of love.  Jesus is said by the Bible to have replaced the punitive commandments of the Old Testament with a value system based on only three new commandments:  1) Love God with all your heart; 2) Love your neighbor ... as you 3) Love yourself.

     We can question whether Christianity originated the concept of a higher, spiritual love.  We can also question whether Judaism, out of which Christianity sprang, originated a higher love value either.

     But it's pretty hard to argue with the fact that sacrifice plays a central role in the Christian conception of spiritual love, and in the love-conceptions of many other world religions.  The bulk of the New Testament deals either directly or indirectly with the significance of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Jesus held that this sacrifice was done out of love for us sinners, and it is clear from the New Testament that Jesus taught the importance of sacrificial service.  Leaders in the Christian system are ideally not those who promote themselves, but rather those who serve.

     I think it's fair to say that Christianity's central tenets, so far as they apply to secular life, can be summed up by saying that Christian love is achieved by sacrificial service.  During one of the most important Christian rituals, communion, Christians are told to take the bread and wine in remembrance of Christ's sacrifice for us.  At the same time, the bread and wine are viewed as "the body and blood" of Jesus Christ.  Bread and wine are spiritual food to Christians, who are also viewed as members of Christ's body.  Christians therefore fill themselves with self-sacrificial love, with the essence of Christ, when taking communion.

     It might be argued that Christianity didn't invent this conception of love either.  Sacrificial offerings for the sake of connecting to Divine Love date back to well before Christianity.  That doesn't matter for my purposes.  All that matters is that in most cultures, the greatest advocates for sacrificial love have usually belonged to one religious tradition or another.  This applies to love of Higher Powers, interpersonal love, and love of one's own Divine humanity.

     My punchline is this:  Sacrificial love does not imply painful love.  Pain can sometimes be involved.  Adding sacrifice, and the possibility of pain, to the equation is one respect in which religious love modifies the pleasure-pain mechanism as a guide to action.  But for the most part sacrificial love and pleasure are complementary. They fit each other the way batteries fit a powerful flashlight.

     That is, for the most part love - even when it involves sacrifice - brings some kind of happiness, satisfaction, comfort, or other enjoyable feeling.

     Defining love is a notoriously intractable problem.  Nonetheless the positive effects of what most people can agree on as actualized love can be seen all around us:  rewarding interpersonal relationships, beloved children nurtured by caring teachers and parents, charitable organizations, beautiful works of literature and art and monuments inspired by love ... It's not hard to make a long list of the ways love helps humans to survive and prosper.

     Thus love is a cultural value that furthers the interests of humanity.  Throughout history, religion has been more responsible than any other cultural institution for propagating this prosperity value. Love evolved from the pleasure-pain mechanism.  Love is a guide to action.  Religion added to the guidance of love the further guidance that self-sacrifice is the power source for the bright guiding light of happiness love gives us.

     Thus religious self-sacrificial love is not properly understood as the denial of earthly pleasures. Asceticism is largely a perversion of religious love.  Rather religious self-sacrificial love - and romantic self-sacrificial love, and paternal love, and just plain love - are steps on our long evolution from beasts of fate, scratching mere subsistence out of the mud, to happy, self-directing spiritual beings.
   

Punishing Transgender Robot Criminals

          The Following is an adaptation of my response to a prompt in my "Science, Ethics and Culture" class at Arizona State University, taught by Maria Erspamer in the Fall of 2015. It outlines what I think is the proper grounding for ethics and government.

Prompt:

          Do you feel that transgender inmates have the right to have access to hormone therapy, and why or why not?

Response:

          This question is relatively easy to answer if we start with the premise that the proper grounding of ethical decision making is the prevention of suffering by sentient creatures. This premise leads naturally to what I call “The Protection Theory of Punishment.”


          To protect sentient life, the Protection Theory says we should remove the capacities, freedoms or abilities that enabled a perpetrator of suffering to harm someone, until such a time as that perp demonstrates that she is no longer a danger to others. Thus, a check-kiter would be prohibited from having a checking account until rehabilitated, and a dog which bites someone would need to be held - completely - in captivity until its owner demonstrates that the dog has been trained sufficiently not to be a danger any longer.


          Note that for purposes of imposing punishment, this theory completely bypasses the issue of the mental state, mental capacity, or mental health of the perpetrator, which Silpa Maruri said has been used to justify - for the wrong reasons - prisoners’ access to hormone therapy (807). Under the Protection Theory, all we care about is that a person demonstrably committed a crime, and what freedoms or capacities enabled her to commit this crime. (Admittedly, how we later determine that criminals are no longer a danger does necessitate consideration of their mental state, and is a very tricky and important issue, which parole boards are already grappling with to no one’s satisfaction; but this is tangential to the hormone therapy issue, as will become clear below).


          Now this is the key:  According to the Protection Theory, the only justification for incarcerating someone is to remove the danger they represent to others. Thus, the practical mechanics of incarceration are aimed at danger removal (for example through rehabilitation), not at vengeance, deterrence, or cancelling out the human rights of criminals just to exact “an eye for an eye.” This applies to ALL punishment - everything from restraining a child in danger of hurting himself, to removing weapons from autonomous killer robots. We are removing abilities and freedoms, not acting out angrily ourselves.


          So, under a Protection Theory of punishment we really only need to consider three things when establishing whether inmates should have access to hormone therapy:

1. Does access to hormone therapy enable the inmate to harm others? I say no. Therefore, the Protection Theory does not dictate that we remove this freedom from the inmate. So yes, she should have access to hormone therapy. However,

1. Who is to pay for this therapy? If the taxpayer is forced to pay, that victimizes - imposes suffering - on an innocent person. This violates the Protection Theory. Therefore the inmate or her insurance - which she pays for - should bear the costs. In fact, the inmate should bear ALL the costs of her confinement, unless demonstrably disabled and unable to work. Otherwise, if the inmate doesn’t work but is able, she would not be fed nor clothed nor given any other materials except a cell with no bed (although to be fair, initially the prison should extend enough credit to the prisoners to make it to their first paycheck). Any other action on the part of the prison would impose suffering on taxpayers, who are not responsible for the inmate’s misdeeds, rather than on the inmate, who is. However,

1. As the penal system currently functions, inmates are not paid a living wage for their work. In some states inmates are literally paid pennies an hour, while corrupt corporations and politicians profit greatly. The ability of an inmate to earn a wage comparable to what she could earn in the private sector is not an ability that enabled her to harm others through her criminal acts. Therefore, the Protection Theory says this ability should not be taken away from the inmate.  What kinds of work would be available to the inmate without violating the rights of taxpayers, business owners, prison guards or other stakeholders would need to be decided case by case.  We would also need to decide how wide a range of products or services inmates could purchase without imposing too much of a burden on prisons or on society (again, guided by the principle of protection of the innocent from suffering).  But the important thing is that inmates have both the right and the responsibility to earn a decent living and pay their way through life.  This is also congruent with rehabilitating them.  So the only reasons to deny hormone therapy to inmates would be either that they couldn't pay for it themselves, or that the logistics of providing the therapy endangered guards, doctors, or someone else.  In fact, this treatment endangers no one.

          I have no doubt that if the Protection Theory of punishment were implemented, the implication of it that inmates have ALL the same rights as anyone else, except those that enable them to harm others, or that interfere with their rehabilitation - would lead a great many people to believe we were coddling inmates. However, any other policy would unnecessarily impose further suffering. And it is the elimination of suffering that justifies a proper ethical theory in the first place.

          Protection from suffering is also the only ethical justification for any other government action.  Opinions may differ about the practical applications of a broad Protection Theory of ethics.  But the undesirability of suffering is not, strictly speaking, a theory ... it is a fact which can be experienced directly by anyone who suffers.

Works Cited:

Maruri, Silpa. "Hormone Therapy for Inmates: A Metonym for Transgender Rights."           Cornell journal of law and public policy 20.3 (2011): 807. Web.

The Examined Rock

I want to make sure my judgments are my own.  I've been influenced by other people to my detriment too many times to not be cautious about this.

Still, the more I interact with other people and the world, the more I learn what I really believe ... and don't believe.  I liken this to my being a rough stone, which is put in a rock tumbler with other stones.  The rough edges stick out the way I put my ideas out in the world.  Some of the sharp corners are smoothed away by rubbing up against intractable facts and other people's beliefs that hadn't occurred to me on my own.

     But social interaction is a "magic" rock tumbler; some of the interaction fortuitously pounds rocks together in such a way that flat facets are created - meeting points of self and world, where the world is reflected out without distortion.  A number of facets, in turn, lead out inexorably to angles - the personally-perceived implications of those commonly-accepted flat understandings.  All this happens because when people are put into the tumbler, unlike rocks we move in our own directions.  Thus much of the movement isn't haphazard smashing and rolling around; it is directed by people's free will.  This is what permits both the polishing down of beliefs and the sharpening of angles making beliefs even more pronounced.

     The role of the tumbling machine, a regular churning, is analogous to the role of the physical environment.  The walls of the tumbler are the confinement of unyielding reality, representing the way we all bump up against natural laws in our attempts to control our trajectories.

The result is a polished gem: My true ideas, the beauty of them revealed by the process of tumbling.

This process works best for me when I alternate between tumbling and private polishing.  The soft, sensitive private polishing washes the dust from my tumbling thoughts - getting rid of the little bits of other people's gems that have clung to me.  Going from my contemplative states into the tumbler and back gives me the requisite alone time to clean myself, but continually grinds away my misconceptions about other people and the world.

It’s frustrating when my prejudices stick out into the tumbler, scratching up other people, the jagged edges grinding themselves up into dust that sticks to us all, obscuring our true humanity.  But staying in the tumbler, combined with honest introspection, removes these imperfections.

This is a seemingly never-ending process ... The gem getting smaller and smaller, until just the essential kernel, the really important basic truths - my fundamental convictions - are revealed.

Yet we’ve all heard the stories of grooms losing the precious rings they needed for their weddings.  The smaller the gem, the easier it is to lose it out in the world - in the tumbler.  The dust from the grinding just covers you up, the tumbler swallows you up, the grinding really never does stop, and ultimately the self is ground away.  But without the tumbler, how would this gem have been cut?  It would have remained a wild rock.

The important thing is to undertake really looking at the gem.  Some people never do.  You’ve got to wipe the dust off to do that; you need time to meditate.  It’s said the common mass of people see in rough diamonds only a rock.  The master diamond cutters bring out the hidden individual beauty of each unique stone.  Some say God can see into the deepest recesses of our souls.  Be that as it may, the ultimate diamond cutting and polishing responsibilities are ours.

The examined life truly is worth living.  But it can only be fully appreciated by a true craftsman equipped with a high-quality loupe.  

Unreal: Evil Cats

     Evil is all around us.  Murder, rape, genocide, theft, child abuse, extortion, fraud ... What is the cause of all this?
     Many answers have been offered.  The simplest and easiest answer to digest, the answer that allows us to explain the really inconceivable depravity, is that some people are "just plain evil."  Bad to the bone.  Incorrigible.  I suspect all of us have had this thought before.  It seems so obvious.
     Sure, we all make mistakes, we all sin occasionally, but a select few are demon spawn, incapable of mending their ways.
     Turns out, that's logically impossible.
     It's impossible by the very nature of evil.
     An evil act involves a choice.  No one forced Ted Bundy to callously murder people; he did it because he wanted to - because he freely chose to.  Sure, he may have had a deprived childhood, he may have had bad genes.  But all those possibilities do is exonerate him of responsibility.  No, we must assume he is evil incarnate.  That's part of his identity.  For that to be true, he must have freely chosen his crimes.
     But wait ... He's innately evil, bad to the bone ... yet he had a choice.
     That means he's intrinsically bad, even though if he were intrinsically bad he couldn't help himself, yet he could help himself.  He's evil, yet not evil.
     Those of us who think for ourselves call that a contradiction in terms.
     So you can't "be" evil and have free will.  You can only choose bad behavior.  Ted Bundy chose bad behavior.  Describing him as evil frees him of responsibility for his actions.
     Let's consider another case:  A cat not only catches a mouse, she also toys with it.  She inflicts pain on the terrified little creature.  Is the cat evil?
     Many people claim "lower" animals don't have free will.  Does this assumption free us from contradictions enough to call the cat evil?
     Well, if the cat doesn't have free will, then she must have been programmed by nature to torture mice.  If so, then is nature evil?
     Maybe so.
     But wait ... Aren't we assuming that there is such a thing as "evil?"  That is, aren't we assuming that there exists some objective standard of good and evil - that evil is not just subjective?  Aren't we assuming that torture really is bad?
     If so, then where do we get this standard of good and evil - is it the "natural" standard?  But if nature itself is evil, and we got the standard from nature, from reality ...
     Again, we are led by inexorable logic into a maze of contradictions, as soon as we assume that some creatures are "evil."  It doesn't matter whether the creatures have free will or not.
     The only way out of this maze is to accept responsibility for our choices and actions.  Choices and actions can be evil, but people can't.
     No wonder Christians say God loves all of us in spite of our sins.
     But wait ... If we can't be evil, doesn't that mean we can't be inherently good, either?
     Well, it certainly means that we can't earn goodness by our actions.  We can only choose good actions.
     No wonder Mom and Dad always told me to "Do the right thing."
     And for the record, cats do have free will.  They aren't forced to purr and act cute; they really mean it when they snuggle up against you lovingly.
     I'm not so sure about dogs.  They may have ulterior motives:-).