 
### Morality is the Problem

A Layman's 'Stab' At Meta-Ethics

By Jake Yaniak

Copyright 2013 Jake Yaniak

All Rights Reserved

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'The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is immoral.'

\- Friedrich Nietzsche, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 43.

(All Scripture references in this book are from the King James Version)

Dedicated to my beloved wife Sarah for her unfailing companionship, my parents for instilling in me a passion to know the Truth (I have the passion at least, my reader must be the judge of whether or not I know the Truth), and to my brother and sisters, for their constant support, friendship and conversation.

Special thanks to David G. Johnson for his very helpful advice.

Preface

If I did not hold my own beliefs to be true, then they would hardly be my beliefs. It cannot therefore be considered arrogant if I not only think my ideas are correct, but think they are worthy of sharing. If I thought they were not, then I would think deception was better than honesty, or at least, I would think that the truth was of very little importance indeed. Some might ask me, 'Who are you to think that you know the Truth?' To which I can only respond, 'If the Truth has not yet been discovered, then how do we know what qualifies a man to be its discoverer?'

I may as well give it a shot.

This book was written over the course of seven years of careful thought and study (not seven ENTIRE years, as if I skipped meals and bathroom breaks, paintball trips and birthday parties). I hope I have learned something. I think I have learned something. I also have the audacity to think that it would benefit others.

At the outset this work was intended as an explanation of what is known as the Moral Argument (or Axiological Argument) for God's existence. I meant to school my readers about how God must be the ground of objective morality, but in the end my own study of morality schooled me. I began thinking that I would defend morality against atheists and agnostics by appealing to God, but in the end I have come to believe that morality itself is the fiend from whom God must save us.

At the very least, my readers will find in this work a very clear explanation and demonstration of the so-called 'Is-Ought Problem' and, in Part II, a demonstration of the necessity of Free Will to moral agency. If nothing else, my discussion of these two things will make the reading worthwhile.

But if my reader will follow me further than these two merely logical points, it is possible that they will find answers to some of life's deepest concerns.

I am a Christian. But in this book I pull no punches, and I expect to have more Christian opponents than non-Christian, if I am fortunate enough to attain any degree of attention.

Christians are fond of saying things like, 'God has a purpose and a plan for your life.' But let us be honest with ourselves. For many believers in Christ this simply means, 'You will be hit by a car and killed on the way home from the corner store.'

The question is not, 'Why would God allow such a thing to happen?' but rather, 'Have you made peace with this?'

God demanded of his Son that he die upon a cross; and Jesus sweated blood in the garden of Gethsemane as he wrestled with God's purpose and plan for his life. But he said, 'Thy will be done.'

By considering this man, and following in his footsteps (for, he is the Way), we can say the same to God concerning our own lot, however dreadful or wonderful our lot happens to be. But so long as we rebel against God in atheism, or so long as we cling to the trappings of Christian culture or tradition (instead of Christianity itself), we cannot have what Jesus possessed.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: What I Hope To Prove

PART I: Moral Judgment

Chapter 1: 'Should' Shouldn't Be A Word

Chapter 2: The Form Of Moral Judgment

Categorical Reasoning

Hypothetical Reasoning

Chapter 3: Goal Tending

Chapter 4: Good & Evil

Chapter 5: Who Is Not A Cannibal?

Chapter 6: Pathetic Sympathetic

Chapter 7: Bellum

Chapter 8: Telos

PART II: The Subject

Chapter 1: Causality

Chapter 2: Potter And Clay

Chapter 3: What Is Man?

Chapter 4: Free Or Not Too Free

Chapter 5. It Came To Pass

Chapter 6. We Are The World

Chapter 7. Lego My Ego

Chapter 8. Jury and Injury

PART III: The Object

Chapter 1: Moral Law Within

Chapter 2: Formal Affair

Chapter 3: To Be Or Not To Be

Ontological Argument

Cosmological Argument

Teleological Argument

Chapter 4: Problem of Evil

Axiological Argument

Chapter 5: Bad Karma

Chapter 6: Morality Is The Problem

Chapter 7: Revelation

Chapter 8: Recapitulation

CONCLUSION: Verbum

About The Author

[INTRODUCTION:  
What I Hope To Prove](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

Sin is whatever rebels against God,  
which in truth is nothing.

_-Hans Denck_ 1

For some time now I have been an observer of human-kind, as we all are from our mother's breast to our final breath. Man is an observer, and perhaps nothing else. He, through lenses of his own fabrication, sees tiny worlds, unimaginable by his natural powers. Not content with these ever shrinking wonders he turns his attention to the infinite heavens above him, where the wonders grow ever larger and grander. These objects of observation become thoughts in his mind and his Reason works to draw from them fresh truths, hypotheses and principles.

With such an infinitude of natural phenomena to consider, and with our own pressing physical needs constantly drawing our gaze away from the heavens and back to the dinner table, it is easy to understand why there is no real master of all-trades. More often than not we are jacks of only some. We should not be surprised, then, to find that along the way we might have taken some things for granted.

All the mechanical and electrical intricacies of my own automobile escape me entirely. When I ask a mechanic to take a look under my hood, I must take it on faith that he in fact knows what he is doing. This is the foundation of our common economy as human beings, my own deficiencies are supplied by my neighbors, while I contribute to their own wellbeing in some other way. Thus I lay out the newspapers that the mechanic advertises his business in and thereby provide him with something he might not have the ability to accomplish otherwise.

But this common economy has its flaws; charlatans can arise, and men can be deceived. If my mechanic told me that I needed a new 'Flux Capacitor', and that it would run me $400, I would not have any reason (except having seen Back To The Future!) to doubt him. My car might have a 'Flux Capacitor' for all I know.2

It is somewhat excusable then that we go through our lives without knowing what makes a computer work, or what makes a car move, or an airplane fly. After all, who can be expected to know everything?

But there are some things that are concerns for all men alike, regardless of their occupations and their backgrounds. The mechanic and the cleric alike must ask themselves certain basic questions, such as, 'Should I be kind to my fellow human beings?' 'What do I owe society in terms of my behavior?' 'Should I always tell the truth?' etc. In other words, human beings have morality in common.

Even our politicians, the godless lot that they sometimes seem to be, are so convinced of the soundness of their moral principles that they take it upon themselves to make universal laws that are meant to rule over every citizen alike. If even THEY believe it is wrong to murder and steal, then there must be some substance to the concept of morality.

But the confusion and carelessness that arises from these conflicting moral opinions, reveals that these moral rules are very far from settled. There is always some gray area to be found should one look hard enough. We might content ourselves with the notion that EVERYBODY abhors murder, and never question the foundation of the moral judgment 'Thou shalt not kill'. But clearly there are some who feel otherwise (some murderers for example). There are some who call war murder, and others that call war 'just'.

I've come to feel that wherever we are most liable to take things for granted, it is in that precise place that the greatest ambiguities, subtleties, and sophistries will be discovered.

When men and women march with banners demanding rights for immigrants, rights for homosexuals, rights for women, or rights for the unborn, they all seem to take it for granted that the groups of creatures they intend to represent actually deserve such rights. Why should men and women be treated equally? Why should a woman have the right to choose what to do with her own body? Why should we have any duty to the unborn, or to those who come into our nation illegally? Why should homosexuals have equal rights? Why should heterosexuals have rights? Why should Justice be done at all?

All of these things are so taken for granted in our society that it is impossible that anything short of chaos and perpetual strife should arise as a result.

If we want our moral judgments, indeed, the very laws on which our liberty and security rest, to be more than mere superstitions and cultural traditions, then a careful examination of morality itself is more than in order. If we cannot find some firm foundation, some objective basis for moral judgment, then we can kiss goodbye all hope of ever creating a just society.

The purpose of this present work, is to examine moral judgment itself, and draw from its logical form, certain truths that are well-known but often misunderstood - and often simply ignored. I mean to consider the question of whether or not objective moral judgment is possible, and if not, then what are the consequences of that deficiency. Some of us are happy to conclude that everything is relative, and we should just live and let live. But even that is a moral judgment, and as such it depends upon the same subjective relativistic (and therefore mutable) grounds as the moral opinions we denounce as intolerant.

Whenever we take it upon ourselves to judge the actions of another, to extend our moral opinions beyond our own person, we are appealing to an objective standard of behavior. Such being the case, the very basis of political authority and civil rights, and in fact every other public moral issue, is dependent upon our ability to do so.

It is time for mankind to grow up and accept the consequences of his ideas. If we want our society to be founded on purely human ethical systems, then we must accept what human ethical systems in fact are.

It is time to stop taking things for granted.

One might well ask of me at this point, 'Who do you think you are to write a book about morality? I must confess that I am neither a scholar or a saint. I have no lofty credentials to show, no letters after my name, and certainly no claim to holiness or virtue. I've never been arrested at least, for whatever that's worth (which is certainly not to say that I have never been on the wrong side of the law - I am a skateboarder after all...). What I do have, however, and what more than qualifies me for the task at hand, is that which is common to all men and women, whatever their education and background; that common thread by which we call ourselves 'homo sapiens'; that is, I have within me that form of thought called Reason. When all is said and done, it is Reason alone that endows man with his peculiar moral nature. Animals and inanimate objects we accordingly exempt from moral responsibility entirely.

If this is the case (that Reason is the difference between man and ape), then the source of our moral obligations must lie therein - in the form of thought itself. Why else should all the world and its earthquakes and tsunamis, hurricanes, diseases and ravenous predators receive a pass, but mankind alone be found guilty of sin?

One might also ask: what use has the world of another book on moral philosophy? Why does the world need a book on morality written by a layman, when there is Hume's Enquiry and Kant's Critique? Hasn't man already figured morality out?

In a sense, he has. Moral obligations, as we shall see, are derived through Reason; that being the case, we are born with the framework of morality built in and ready to use. Yet somehow we manage to have wars and debates, scandals and controversies all the same. Mankind is still in need of a little moral philosophy it would seem.

The central point of this work, however, will be the truth that the solution to the evil of this world is not MORE morality, but rather the absolute dissolution of morality. In our exploration of moral judgment we will discover the following truths: That Objective Moral Values cannot exist without God. That if man is a Moral Agent then he must have a Free Will. We will also discover a radical, but certain truth: That God is not the cause of the world; you are, and all its evils are your doing. Lastly, we will find the solution to this problem in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The journey from the Introduction to the Conclusion, like all journeys, must begin somewhere, and we must, like all travelers, be willing to leave many people, places and presumptions behind us. The assumptions that surround us at the outset will, like the familiar scenery of our hometown, fade away gradually as we progress, till we come at last to a new land which we could not have foreseen at the beginning. Just as the blossom destroys the bud (to borrow an expression from George Hegel3), so the end of this work will swallow up the beginning, explaining or resolving some of the difficulties that are brought forth in the earlier portions of this book.

If I could write the entire work in an instant, then this might be avoided. But as thought is a process and not a creative event, it is impossible but that some trace of the process will remain in the exposition. This may be necessary also insofar as one cannot justly expect others to agree with their beliefs without showing them the path thereto.

1. Denck, Hans, _Selected Writings of Hans Denck_ (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, Inc. 1976) 17

2. Zemeckis, Robert, _Back to the Future_ , Film, Directed by Robert Zemeckis (1985; United States: Universal Home Video, 2002, DVD)

3. Georg Hegel, _Phenomenology of Mind_ , 1807, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ph/phprefac.htm (December 2012)

[PART I:  
Moral Judgment](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)
[Chapter 1:  
'Should' Shouldn't Be A Word](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'For though in all places of the world, men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand, it could not thence be inferred, that so it ought to be.'

\- Thomas Hobbes

My wife insists that it is bleached blondes who are responsible for the 'blonde stereotype' (My wife is a natural blonde). And I would be forced to agree with her if every bleached blonde was like one particular young woman I worked with when I was in my teens. But one day, despite her hair color, she took a break from her work and shocked her coworkers with a statement of such clarity and brilliance that we were collectively at a loss for words. She said, 'Should - shouldn't be a word.'

Almost immediately it was pointed out to her that if you are going to expunge a word from your vocabulary, you ought in the very least to refrain from doing so by means of that very same word.

But after giving morality some consideration I have come to feel that she had inadvertently and momentarily become one of the most acute moral philosophers that has ever lived. Though her own doubts about the appropriateness of the word 'should' were short lived, it still remains that it is a peculiar word with rather important philosophical implications.

She was certainly not the first to raise questions about the meaning and validity of such words. Centuries before such thoughts entered into her mind, Scottish skeptic David Hume raised his own objections to such moral words. In his 'A Treatise Of Human Nature' he says regarding morals:

'In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, `tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention wou'd subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason.1'

This observation of his has been called the 'Is-Ought' problem, and the passage referred to above is perhaps its most famous formulation. Its effect on the issue of morality is enormous. For David Hume, it meant that morality was not something we discover by sober thought and reflection, but rather through feeling and emotion - particularly through sympathy.

When I reflect on this, and when I consider the carelessness and ease with which we use such words every day, it no longer surprises me that the world so often finds itself in a state of conflict and confusion. How many people each day make bold declarations about how things ought to be? How many legislators and demagogues direct people with 'shoulds' and 'oughts'? How many preachers and teachers boldly declare what their listeners 'should' do? How many college professors tell their student's what the law 'should' say? And how many religious zealots teach their pupils what they 'ought' to do for God? But how many of them, as they say it, keep Hume's observation in mind? How many of them solve this riddle before they go about their business making and teaching ethical judgments?

Part of the purpose of this book, accordingly, is to give some deeper reflections on the use of the word 'should' than I have hitherto encountered. Since it is by imperatives (should and ought) that we express moral judgments, a consideration of their meaning is more than in order in a work such as this one. It is also, as far as I have seen, the great glaring omission in much of the ethical literature I have seen.

Thomas Hobbes says in The Leviathan, 'For though in all places of the world, men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand, it could not thence be inferred, that so it ought to be.2'

There is a profound point in Hobbes' comment. If every single house that was ever constructed was built on sand, we could only then say that every house 'is' built on sand. And if no house was ever built on sand we could only say that houses 'are not' built on sand. And if there is a mixture of observations we could say that some 'are' and some 'are not'. But we cannot, just from what we observe empirically, conclude one way or the other what 'should' be or what 'ought' to be.

We will see in the next chapter exactly why this is the case, that we cannot observe what 'should' be just from observing something. For now I just wish to point out that if one were to say, as one might naturally think, that it is obvious that a house should not be built on sand since sand is not sturdy and does not offer a sound foundation for the structure, it is only because they are already assuming a moral judgment. In this case it is the moral judgment that 'houses should be sturdy'; after all, if they should not be sturdy, then we most certainly should build them on sand, and we should never, ever build them on a rock. The only reason one might conclude that houses should not be built on sand just from looking at a house so built is because of the moral judgments we have already made concerning houses in general. In other words, we derive the moral judgment that 'houses should not be built on sand,' not from any object of perception, but from other moral judgments to which we already adhere.

Granted, a house as an idea certainly implies that it is meant to 'house' a person, and in order to do so efficiently it must have certain qualities. But we do not observe the idea of a house, we observe a physical object – bricks on bricks, which empirically carry no such implications. It is only when our purposes and wants are added in that the judgment about the bricks and their arrangement arises. But this has nothing to do with the bricks themselves – it has nothing to do with the object we perceive.

To see more clearly that it is nothing in the object that gives us the moral judgment, consider the fact that a house is constructed of materials like wood and stone. But these objects can be used for many different things. If, for instance, I wanted to make a few moorings instead of a foundation for a house, then the stones should be cast into the sea rather than laid carefully one atop the other on dry ground. But no quality of the stones has changed by which I might discover how the stones 'ought' to be arranged. It is not any aspect of the stone that gives rise to the moral judgment.

The next chapter will be devoted entirely to the logic that underlies this fact, and it will be demonstrated that it is only from other moral judgments that we can derive any moral judgments at all, and also that no fact by itself can lead us to form a moral judgment.

In a proposition, the 'copula' represents the relationship between the two terms. For example, in the proposition 'Robert is an honest man' we are comparing our idea of a certain person with the idea of 'an honest man' and declaring that they agree with one another by means of a 'coupling' word (copula). But in the proposition 'Robert should be an honest man' we are expressing an entirely different kind of relationship. When we say he 'is' we are making a judgment based on observations of reality. But when we say he 'should' be honest, we say so independently of whether in fact he is or is not. If 'should' and 'ought' propositions (imperatives) can be made regardless of what occurs in nature (and by nature I mean all that is observable), how could nature ever prove them?

Immanuel Kant makes this point even clearer in his 'Critique of Pure Reason':

'The words I ought express a species of necessity, and imply a connection with grounds which nature does not and cannot present to the mind of man. Understanding knows nothing in nature but that which is, or has been, or will be. It would be absurd to say that anything in nature ought to be other than it is in the relations of time in which it stands; indeed, the ought, when we consider merely the course of nature, has neither application nor meaning. The question, "What ought to happen in the sphere of nature?" is just as absurd as the question, "What ought to be the properties of a circle?" All that we are entitled to ask is, "What takes place in nature?" or, in the latter case, "What are the properties of a circle?"'3

Kant says that the word ought expresses something which 'nature does not and cannot present to the mind of man'. Nature only tells us what Robert 'is', no empirical observation can ever tell us what Robert 'should' be. When we say he should be an honest man, we say so independent of all physical reality; we say so independent of whether he is or is not honest.

One of the more controversial events in recent years was the invasion of Iraq by former president George W. Bush. We can retrace all our memories of those days, we can watch the recordings of every newscast and read every press release, but we will never pass beyond the empirical; we will never pass beyond what was.

That George Bush invaded Iraq is a judgment about what was. But to go further than this and say that he should or should not have invaded that country is to say something quite different from what empirical observations allow. It is a statement that goes beyond what is observable in the physical universe; it is, by itself, a metaphysical statement.

1. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 334.

2. Hobbes, Thomas _The Leviathan_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 116

3. Kant, Immanuel _Critique of Pure Reason_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003) 307-308

[Chapter 2:  
The Form Of Moral Judgment](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'If an individual happens to see something ethical, then it is the ethical in himself, a reflex of which misleads him, so that he thinks he sees what he nevertheless does not see.'

_\- Soren Kierkegaard_ 1

Before we go any further I want to define two terms that I will be using quite often throughout this work. When I say 'Empirical', I will be referring to nature and our observations thereof. Accordingly, when I say 'Empirical Propositions' or 'Empirical Judgments', I will be referring to propositions that are derived from nature and which utilize the words 'is' or 'is not'. When I say 'Imperative Proposition', I am referring to a proposition that uses the words 'should' or 'should not'; these do not tell us anything about the physical universe, and are therefore not empirical. For example, that Hitler 'was' a tyrant, is an empirical proposition. That he 'should not' have been is an imperative proposition; it is a moral judgment.

I also need to make it clear that when I speak of imperative judgments, I am speaking of ALL imperative judgments, regardless of their relative importance. Some people would not consider the proposition 'You should get sprinkles on your ice cream cone' to be a moral judgment, not because it is not identical in form to a moral judgment like 'You should be kind to others,' but because it is just not that important to us. Logic, however, does not care whether a judgment is important or not, or even whether it is true or not - Logic is concerned only with the form of the judgment, which in all such imperative judgments is the same. Since it is not my purpose at this point to consider the content of moral judgments, but rather their logical structure, I will not concern myself with any distinctions concerning the content of the judgment. But since moral judgments are imperative judgments, whatever I have to say about imperative judgments may immediately be applied to moral judgments.

To explore the differences between these two kinds of propositions, I have from time to time made experiments, asking my friends and family whether they find a certain argument to be 'logical' or not. One such argument is as follows:

1. Rulers should not kill innocent people.

2. Stalin killed innocent people.

3. Therefore, Stalin was not a good ruler.

All other matters aside, I find it interesting to note that nobody has, as yet, pointed out the strange and sudden appearance of the word 'good' in the conclusion of this argument. What was said in the first premise (Major) is equally true of both good and bad rulers. So I might just as well have said that 'bad rulers should not kill innocent people' - because, well, they shouldn't. This would lead with logical certainty to the conclusion that Stalin wasn't a bad ruler either - which is the very opposite of what one would be attempting to prove by such an argument. There is clearly something being overlooked. In this chapter we will take a closer look at the logic of morality and see if we can resolve this difficulty. And we really must resolve this difficulty if we are to give an account of moral judgments. Every day people attempt to demonstrate the wickedness of politicians, celebrities, employers and more by showing how their behavior deviates from what they 'should' have done. But if saying that a ruler 'should' do something and then saying that they 'did not' does not prove that they are not a good ruler, I daresay our hands are tied. Tyrants are condemned for no other reason than that their acts are contrary to what they should have done, but nonetheless, simply saying what a ruler should do and then showing how the ruler failed does not, by itself lead to the conclusion we universally mean to draw by such argumentation. Without the ability to reason in this way we could pile the crimes of a tyrant up to the heavens, but it would never amount to a condemnation.

CATEGORICAL REASONING

The general principle upon which our logical reasoning is founded (Aristotle's dictum de omni et nullo) can be expressed in the following manner: Whatever can be said about a whole class can be said about any member of that class2.

1. All dogs go to heaven. (saying something about an entire class - about all dogs)

2. Tinky is a dog. (saying that 'Tinky' is a member of that class)

3. Therefore, Tinky went to heaven. (saying what was said of the whole class about the individual member)

Now, if we substitute a moral judgment in place of the Major premise, the argument becomes:

1. All dogs 'should' go to heaven.

2. Tinky is a dog.

3. Therefore, Tinky SHOULD go to heaven.

Notice that logic only allows us to conclude that what was said of the entire class can be said of any member of that class (in the latter argument we can say of 'Tinky', a dog, what we said of 'all dogs' - that they 'should go to heaven'). We can only conclude, logically, that Tinky 'should' go to heaven, not that he 'did'. If the major premise is an imperative, we can draw only an imperative conclusion. As the form of reasoning is the same in all cases, this result will follow from every argument that utilizes an imperative for its Major Premise (this is assuming that the argument has been converted to a First Figure syllogism, which all arguments must be ere they are conformable to Aristotle's dictum3).

If we were to make the Minor Premise (2) of the argument a moral judgment, no logical process can take place at all, regardless of whether our Major Premise (1) is empirical or imperative:

1. All dogs go to heaven.

2. Tinky should be a dog.

Here, regardless of what we said about 'all dogs', nothing follows because we have not actually affirmed that 'Tinky' belongs to that class; we have only said that he 'should' be a dog, which doesn't mean that he is. The expression leaves it undetermined, thereby precluding any logical procedure.

It follows from what has been said above that no empirical judgment can ever logically lead us to a moral judgment. Logic only permits us to say in the conclusion what was said in the Major Premise. Empirical Propositions must lead to Empirical Conclusions (and moral judgments can only lead to more moral judgments).

Were you to walk into my house as I write this, you would first meet with a rather lovely Christmas tree, decked out with lights, balls, and ornamental birds. From this initial observation, any visitor can draw the judgment: 'There is a Christmas Tree in your house'.

But this judgment does not imply that there ought to be a Christmas Tree in my house, any more than it implies that there oughtn't be. Similarly, if you looked in my bedroom, you would find a sleeping infant, and you might say, 'the baby is asleep'. But again, you could not tell, simply from observing the baby, that she ought to be sleeping. It may very well be, that she ought to be eating. In every conceivable case, the mere observation of nature provides us only with empirical propositions; which is to say, that nature gives us no imperatives. Nor does it matter if we take every fact in the universe into account - so long as they are all facts (empirical) they cannot conjure up an imperative copula.

That the world should be at peace, is a proposition that few would oppose, yet it may be that in no era will it ever be so. The relationship that exists between the subject and predicate in this imperative (and indeed, in all such propositions), is one that may not exist empirically (observably) in ANY era, whether past, present or future.

No empirical judgment can lead to a moral judgment.

All natural observations are empirical judgments.

No natural observation can lead to a moral judgment.

There are some in this country who believe that homosexuals ought to have the same rights as heterosexuals. On the other hand, there are some who believe that they oughtn't have any rights at all. What has been observed above, however, shows that whatever the moral conflict may be, there is no FACT that could be brought forth to demonstrate which party is in the right. Facts, unfortunately, are empirical, and what is learned from them is restricted to the empirical. We may learn that homosexuals do not have rights, or we may learn that they do, but whether they should or should not is beyond what observation can tell us.

A very good question arises at this point: How, then, can we have any moral judgments at all, if all that we know is empirical, and empirical judgments cannot lead to moral judgments?

HYPOTHETICAL REASONING

Suppose I went out for ice cream with my wife. If she was indecisive (as she has a tendency to be), I might employ an 'imperative' to advise her. She might say, 'Should I get the chocolate ice cream? Or should I try the new spinach - mango gelato? I really do not want to be disappointed.'

I would probably respond by saying, 'If you don't want to be disappointed, you should get the chocolate.'

Notice at once that my advice is tailored to her desire. She does not want to be disappointed. And since I know that she loves chocolate ice cream, this is the better choice as far as that goal is concerned. I then utilize the word 'should' as a means of directing her behavior toward her goal. In light of her desire, she should order chocolate ice cream. What I am pointing out to her by means of the imperative word is the relationship between her action and her goal.

Had she said, 'I'm feeling crazy; I want to try something radical!', then I would have told her she 'should' get the spinach - mango gelato (you can't get much more radical than that!). Again, the reason for this use of the word 'should' is the same, to direct her actions toward a goal. The difference that gives rise to the two different imperatives is the goal that she intends to achieve; in the first case she seeks satisfaction, and in the other some novel experience.

The same is true when considering past choices. If she had already eaten the spinach-mango gelato and was, as I would predict, feeling disappointed, I might tell her she 'should have' ordered the chocolate. I am still directing her toward a goal, albeit too late for her to change her decision.

The words 'should' and 'should not' are used the same way in moral judgments. If my son asks me why he 'should not' steal, I will respond by saying something like, 'because it is wrong', or 'because you can go to jail' etc. I direct him toward some goal. There is always some reason, some goal that is connected with the action we are recommending. Even in the case of consequences or penalties the words 'should' and 'should not' are used with reference to a goal, though it is stated negatively. The goal in such a case is to AVOID the penalty or the bad consequence. It is in connection with a goal, and only in connection with a goal that moral judgments possess their necessity.

This anecdote reveals at last the nature of our moral judgments. Moral judgments express the connection between some course of action or some state of affairs and a goal, which is, essentially, some other state of affairs. This connection is the chain and force of what we call duty.

To illustrate, consider the following argument:

1. If a man is a good husband, then he should not abuse his wife.

2. Friedrich abuses his wife.

3. Therefore, Friedrich is not a good husband.

This is what logicians refer to as a Destructive Hypothetical argument. The form of expression in a hypothetical argument implies that whenever the first part of the Hypothetical Proposition (Antecedent) is accepted as true, then the second part (Consequent) must be accepted also. Further, if the second part is denied, then the first part must be denied as well*.

*NOTE: For example: 'If evolution is true, then the first chapter of Genesis cannot be taken literally.'

Some affirm that evolution is true, forcing them to conclude that Genesis is not literal history (Constructive Hypothetical argument). Others, not willing to accept an allegorical or mythical interpretation of Genesis, are forced to reject evolution (Destructive Hypothetical argument).

In this case, if it is affirmed, as it is in the second proposition, that Friedrich abuses his wife, it should follow that he is not a good husband.... right? I have not yet met with anyone that does not recognize this as a legitimate and valid argument - A good husband shouldn't abuse his wife, but Friedrich does, so...

But the logical procedure in Hypothetical arguments depends entirely upon either showing that the first part of the Hypothetical is true (affirming the Antecedent), or that the second part is false (denying the Consequent). There is no other means of drawing a logical conclusion from a Hypothetical Proposition.

But notice that in our argument, when we said that Friedrich abuses his wife, we have not in any way, shape or form contradicted the Consequent - that he SHOULD not abuse his wife. But the logical process depends entirely upon our having done so.

A thief 'should not' steal, yet he does; lawyers should not lie, yet they do; Americans should not elect crooked politicians, yet they do. Virtually everyone agrees that Adolph Hitler 'should not' have persecuted millions of innocent people during the Second World War, yet these same people agree that he did. There is no inconsistency between saying someone should not do something, and saying that they do. And if there is no opposition, then this must be taken into account in our reasonings. In fact, the only proposition that can lead, by itself, to the conclusion we are seeking is the proposition that 'Friedrich SHOULD abuse his wife', which would be very alien to our purposes to try to prove.

What is the result of all this? Is the argument logical or not? We must remember what I suggested before: Moral judgments express the connection between a course of action and a goal. The goal in this case is to be a good husband; and it is only with this goal in mind that we can understand the logic of moral judgments.

Whenever we use the word 'should' or 'ought', we are implying that there is a connection between a certain course of action or state of affairs and another. So to say, a man 'should not' abuse his wife means, and must mean if our argument is logical (which I believe all will agree that it is), that a man DOES NOT abuse his wife IF he is a good man. In other words, imperative propositions imply empirical propositions, but empirical propositions taken as the Consequent in a hypothetical proposition. The Antecedent in a moral judgment is typically left unstated for practical reasons, but it is not, for that reason, any less important.

An easy way to see that this is the case, that all imperatives imply empirical hypothetical judgments, is to assume an absurd goal and then see what happens to the imperative. If the imperative is, for instance, that 'Good rulers should not murder their people,' assume that a good ruler's job is in truth to kill rather than protect his citizens. If this absurd goal were the case, then the imperative would be the very opposite of what we had said - in that case we should have said that it is not true that 'Good rulers should not murder their citizens.' In order to maintain our original imperative, then, we must already have the other goal firmly decided.

So it is quite clear that imperatives imply certain goals whether we express them or not. We do not express them simply and only because they are assumed.

This explains how we were able to draw an empirical conclusion in the first example I gave, despite the fact that the Major Premise was an imperative. When the Major (that 'Rulers should not kill innocent people') is replaced, as it must be, with its true meaning, 'If a ruler is a good ruler, then that ruler DOES NOT kill innocent people', then we can at last draw, from the proposition, 'Stalin killed innocent people,' that 'he WAS not a good ruler'.

We now have the key to understanding all imperative judgments and resolving the Is/Ought Problem once and for all, and the key to understanding the nature of morality itself.

Does this knowledge mean that we can all get along, hold hands and pass universal legislation? Unfortunately not. But this knowledge should at least help us identify the place wherein our moral disagreements arise. The vegetarian says we should not eat meat; the butcher says we should, and advertises his wares accordingly. Knowing that our moral judgments are derived through their connection with goals, we can now fix our attention in the right place and more easily discover wherein the disagreement lies. It is not in the imperatives that we will discover our differences, but in the goals that establish them. The imperatives themselves are simply the logical consequences, and therefore never the true point of disagreement.

Although we now have a better understanding of moral conflict, we have as yet to discover any better tools for resolving them. In the case of my wife's ice cream choice, for example, the following propositions are equally true, though they lead to contradictory imperatives:

1. If you want to have your favorite flavor, then you should choose chocolate.

2. If you want to try something new, then you should not choose chocolate.

Or more importantly:

1. If you want to be healthy, then you should choose a salad.

2. If you want to enjoy your meal, then you should choose the burger and fries.

Or more seriously:

1. If you are to preserve freedom, you should not spy on your own citizens.

2. If you are to preserve their lives, you should spy on your own citizens.

In all these cases, the propositions are true despite their contradictory consequences. Hypotheticals find their veracity, not in matters of fact, but in the connection between the Antecedent and the Consequence*. That being the case, the question of which imperative is right depends upon the question of which goal (Antecedent) is right. To discover what we should choose for our meal we must ask ourselves whether we want to be healthy or whether we simply want to enjoy our meal. It would be senseless to quibble about the imperative itself.

*NOTE: 'If a man's wife dies, then he will be a widower.' This is true regardless of whether any man's wife ever dies - it is the connection between the two propositions that is important in hypotheticals.

But then it must again be asked, why prefer one goal over another? We cannot conclude that we should do one thing or another unless we first conclude that we should pursue one goal rather than another. In other words, to conclude that my wife should choose chocolate, I must first know that she wants to have her favorite flavor rather than something novel. Similarly, I must decide, before I conclude that I should order a salad, that I indeed want to be healthy. And the government, before it makes a decision about whether or not it is right to spy on their citizens, must decide whether security or liberty is the greater value.

To come to an agreement on any given moral issue, then, it is necessary that we discover and agree on what goal we 'ought' to pursue. A seemingly simple task.

1. Kierkegaard, Soren, _Concluding Unscientific Postscript_ , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 140.

2. Whately, Richard, _Elements of Logic_ (London: Longman's, Green, and Co., 1875), 23.

3. Kant, Immanuel, _Introduction to Logic and His Essay on the Mistaken Subtilty of the Four Figures_ , (London: Longman's Green and Co. 1885), 79-95.

[Chapter 3:  
Goal Tending](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have ever given our race information as to the aim of its existence and that of the world, is still in his childhood.'

_\- Arthur Schopenhauer_ 1

In this chapter it is my intention to illustrate how subjective systems of morality inevitably lead us into contradictions, and offer no genuine basis for moral judgment.

French philosopher Rene Descartes is perhaps most famous for attempting to prove his existence through the argument 'cogito ergo sum' - I think, therefore I am2. He found that the only thing of which he could be certain was that 'I think'. From there he began to restore the knowledge his skeptical method had mercilessly stripped away.

In the proposition 'I think', the 'I' is the subject. The object would be the content of the thoughts - essentially, the recipient of the verb, whatever that may be. So if I said, 'I think the earth is flat', 'I' (in Latin, 'ego') would be the subject, and the earth's shape would be the 'object'. As every judgment is a thought, the thinker himself is always assumed, whether we say, 'I think' or not.

Objective knowledge would be knowledge that comes from a consideration of the object, in this case, the earth. Subjective knowledge would be knowledge that comes from a consideration of the thinker himself - the Subject in Descartes argument (the ego).

A subjective moral judgment would be an imperative proposition that has its root in some aspect of the subject, which always has a particular perspective (it is essentially the observer of the object). An objective moral judgment must have its root in the object, which is thought to be the same regardless of perspective.

I once had to take a certain toy away from my three year old son. He grew very angry and told me, not that 'You should not take that toy spaceship from me,' but rather, 'Parents should not take toys from kids'. Now this imperative had its root, manifestly in the perspective of the child, and I'd wager there will come a day when he is on the opposite end of the exchange. Then and then only will he come to understand his parents.

There is nothing in the idea of a parent that implies that they should not take toys from kids, nor is there anything in the idea of a child or a toy spaceship that could lead to this imperative. The root of the moral judgment is the desire of the child, which is to be in possession of the toy. This is the Antecedent to which his imperative judgment is connected. It is interesting to note that my son was not content to simply tell me what he wanted; he made his moral judgment universal, applying to all toys, all parents, all children and, presumably, for all time - as if to make his plea all the more authoritative. Such a moral judgment is subjective, however, because it does not arise from any consideration of the objects involved. You can observe parents, children and spaceship toys till the cows come home without ever deducing the imperative, 'Parents should not take toys from kids'.

Now, if we turn our attention to the subject, in this case, my son, then we will immediately find that this imperative has its ground in his own desire for the toy. 'I WANT THE TOY' is the true Antecedent (goal), and the judgment, 'you should give it to me' is simply the means to the end. But the imperative has its ground in his desire, and only in his desire.

My wife's 'duty' to choose this or that flavor of ice cream, similarly, is subjective, as it has its foundation in her tastes, and not in any objective quality belonging either to her or to the ice cream.

We can be certain from the above examples that there are at least some moral judgments that are subjective. But is this the case for all moral judgments? If so, then we are brought to the position of David Hume, and we must accept the fact that morality itself, and the legislation that is founded upon it, is in reality a matter of taste, depending upon the perspective and desires of the subject for its validity.

This is of the utmost importance. We are content to leave it to each person's private judgment whether or not they prefer vanilla ice cream or strawberry swirl. But we do not extend this freedom to the question of whether or not we should commit murder or whether or not we should steal.

But why should one man's goals be foisted upon another? If it is the desire of one man that another man be slain, what preference does the victim's desire to live have over his assailant's desire to kill? Each man has his own preferences. So long as morality is born of preference, as it was in the case of my son's moral judgment, right behavior will have a different meaning for each person. When we ask the question, 'What should people do?', the subject gives as many answers as there are people. And if morality is grounded in the subject, these answers all possess the same credentials.

It would do us no good to say that one man's preferences are 'better' than another's, since that would also be a moral judgment. If we are drawing our moral imperatives from the subject, then even the judgment that the one desire is better than the other is manifestly subjective.

There are many people who have attempted to ground ethics in the pursuit of happiness; and there are at least as many people who actually pursue it, whether they think it is the foundation of ethics or not. There are innumerable things that are sought after for the sake of happiness, yet happiness itself is never a means to an end. If men possess happiness they need nothing else, and they will not, if they know they have it, trade it for anything. For this reason Aristotle, in his Nicomachean ethics, argued that Happiness was that Chief Good toward which our actions were directed. He says:

'[Happiness] we choose always for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further: whereas honour, pleasure, intellect, in fact every excellence we choose for their own sakes, it is true (because we would choose each of these even if no result were to follow), but we choose them also with a view to happiness, conceiving that through their instrumentality we shall be happy: but no man chooses happiness with a view to them, nor in fact with a view to any other thing whatsoever.3'

Aristotle concludes: 'So then Happiness is manifestly something final and self-sufficient, being the end of all things which are and may be done.4'

In agreement with this opinion is the common experience of mankind. If I had a dollar for every time I have heard someone say, 'You gotta do what makes you happy,' let's just say I would be a great deal richer than I am at present. Almost every day I hear somebody justifying or recommending a course of action or behavior on the basis of happiness. Whether it is a man justifying his adultery, a student choosing a profession, or a coworker deciding what to have for lunch, happiness stands over and above their every judgment.

But it is readily apparent, even to a layman like myself, that there are many different happinesses in this world. Capitalists and Communists seem to have entirely different ideas of happiness. And the consequence, as we've seen by their endless rivalry, is that they have entirely different ideas of morality. As an American I was horrified to see a Palestinian mother on the news rejoicing over her son's death. She was proud that he had blown civilians to smithereens. Apparently, at least one mother in Palestine finds happiness in things that American mothers would abhor. But who are we to judge her happiness? By all appearances she was genuinely happy. Her son had brought honor to her family, and death to her oppressors. From where she stands, her son is a hero. And what more can a mother ask for than to have given birth to a hero?

Some terrorists find happiness in the idea of seventy virgins; good luck with that. For my part, one woman is about as much as I can handle. Such a paradise may bring a smile to the face of the man who anticipates it, but is such a place a source of happiness to those lucky virgins?

As far as I am concerned, I find happiness in video games, or at least a great deal of happiness. I must admit that there have been times when reading my son a bedtime story and doing extra chores around the house were merely means to that end. If someone told me that the reward of all my labors in life was to be plugged into a FPS (First Person Shooter) with a solid online multiplayer for all eternity, I would never cease to rejoice.

Of course, there are others, good people by the look of them, who seem to find their happiness in fighting against all those 'evil violent video games'.

But aren't the people fighting video games doing so because they feel that they are doing what they should? And if they are doing what they 'should', doesn't that mean that in the end, the goal for which they are aiming is happiness? But that is why we play violent video games in the first place; for the sake of happiness. It seems we are destined for conflict.

It should be obvious enough by now that we are not really talking about happiness in any objective sense. The word Happiness itself is somewhat misleading; are we really to believe that it refers to one single thing? Clearly, happiness is a very broad category, encompassing many contradictory circumstances. It is a word meaning, 'whatever the heck people happen to want' - and what they want is different in every case. To say, then, that morality is founded upon the pursuit of happiness is to say that morality is different in every case. This, of course, brings us right back to the subject.

Immanuel Kant observed:

'It is, therefore, surprising that intelligent men could have thought of calling the desire of happiness a universal practical law on the ground that the desire is universal, and, therefore, also the maxim by which everyone makes this desire determine his will. For whereas in other cases a universal law of nature makes everything harmonious; here, on the contrary, if we attribute to the maxim the universality of a law, the extreme opposite of harmony will follow, the greatest opposition and the complete destruction of the maxim itself and its purpose. For, in that case, the will of all has not one and the same object, but everyone has his own (his private welfare), which may accidentally accord with the purposes of others which are equally selfish, but it is far from sufficing for a law; because the occasional exceptions which one is permitted to make are endless, and cannot be definitely embraced in one universal rule. In this manner, then, results a harmony like that which a certain satirical poem depicts as existing between a married couple bent on going to ruin, "O, marvellous harmony, what he wishes, she wishes also"...5'

Ethics based on happiness can only lead to conflict. The solution to this problem has been to create governments and imbue them with sufficient powers to enact and enforce laws to control the subjective whims of the people. As Thomas Hobbes puts it:

'... the multitude so united in one person is called a COMMONWEALTH; in Latin, CIVITAS. This is the generation of that great LEVIATHAN, or rather, to speak more reverently, of that mortal god to which we owe, under the immortal God, our peace and defence. For by this authority, given him by every particular man in the Commonwealth, he hath the use of so much power and strength conferred on him that, by terror thereof, he is enabled to form the wills of them all, to peace at home, and mutual aid against their enemies abroad.6'

By sheer strength, the government (the Leviathan) 'is enabled to form the wills of them all'; that is, his power serves to direct the actions of men toward goals of its own.

This power amounts to nothing more than a mob, united and represented by a king, representatives, or by popular vote; so united to enforce their view of morality. But if all the morals of those represented thereby are subjective, the morals of the state will be subjective also. And there are none, I imagine, that doubt that laws and moral values vary from nation to nation. The morals of the masses are no better guide for us than our own subjective ideas of happiness. In The Republic, Plato has sharp words for anyone who would take the consensus morality of the masses as a guide.

He compares such men to one who studies the whims of a 'mighty strong beast' and learns by trial and error how to please the raging brute, calling the things that please the monster good and the things that displease the creature evil7.

People are constantly conforming their own moral judgments to the morals of the masses. I've watched people bless and condemn President Obama with the same mouth, in the same hour, though in entirely different company. It is not easy to be different, and people very often conform their wills, not to their own consciences, but to the demands of the 'mighty strong beast' of popular opinion.

This quality of human beings, above all other things, is probably where the biblical imagery comparing human beings to sheep originated. If one sheep leaps off of a cliff, others may very well follow. And if many sheep leap off of a cliff, the shepherds might find a stampede of lemmings on their hands. When the tide of public opinion turns, it is no easy task to withstand the peer pressure to turn with it. What else can account for the silence of so many good Germans during the reign of Hitler? They are first afraid of the 'mighty strong beast' of public opinion, and next they are afraid of the Leviathan, to which the masses themselves had given such dreadful powers.

Can we accept American public opinion as a guide, when in the past several decades it has schizophrenically given the sovereign executive power to a Carter, then to Reagan and Bush, then to a Clinton, then to another Bush, and now to an Obama? Change, indeed, is the only thing we can expect from public opinion.

So much for consensus morality. Such mutability cannot provide objective rules for ethics; it can only serve as an explanation for the inevitable conflicts that must arise. But can it really be expected that private opinion will serve us any better, when it is simply the broken and misshapen pieces out of which the malleable monstrosity of public opinion is born?

Clearly not. Every man has their own goals, their own summum bonum, and their own morality in consequence.

The entire criminal justice system demonstrates the truth of this perhaps more than anything else. Is it not true that all of the inventions of the law, the police department, the prison, the electric chair, the hangman's noose etc. exist solely to make a certain course of action someone's duty, which otherwise they would care nothing for? The true criminal cares nothing for honesty or integrity, he couldn't care less about being good, or living a just life. In the absence of these goals, there is no binding of the will to any course of action. And in absence of the law, he can create duties of his own with his own criminal Antecedents: if you want to get rich easy... if you want to get revenge... If you want this woman... if you want this car... But here the law steps in and says to him, 'If it is not in your interest to live the sort of life we want you to, we will MAKE it your interest!' The law and its punishments exist to make it impossible for a man to be happy while living in opposition to the opinions of the state. But the commands of the state are just as fallible and changeable as those of the individual, and they are, therefore no true system of objective morality.

This result accords fairly well with what I have encountered thus far in ethical literature. The inconsistency of passing from empirical propositions to moral judgments led David Hume to conclude that we do not discern right from wrong by reason at all, but rather by a moral feeling. He says, 'Morality, therefore, is more properly felt than judg'd of...8'

He says:

'Thus we are still brought back to our first position, that virtue is distinguished by the pleasure, and vice by the pain, that any action, sentiment or character gives us by the mere view and contemplation. This decision is very commodious; because it reduces us to this simple question, Why any action or sentiment upon the general view or survey, gives a certain satisfaction or uneasiness, in order to shew the origin of its moral rectitude or depravity, without looking for any incomprehensible relations and qualities, which never did exist in nature, nor even in our imagination, by any clear and distinct conception. I flatter myself I have executed a great part of my present design by a state of the question, which appears to me so free from ambiguity and obscurity.9'

But satisfaction and uneasiness are purely subjective, and if that is all there is to morality, then we waste our time trying to resolve conflicts through discussion.

Consider the fact that what Osama Bin Laden did to New York City brought great pain and suffering upon the United States of America, while it brought great delight to himself and to many other terrorists. If vice and virtue are to be determined by whether some person or action bring us pleasure or pain, then Osama Bin Laden is undeniably both good and evil, and his actions are as virtuous as they are vicious. His attack drew much hate, but also much love and praise. And this hate and love are founded upon equal principles, namely the sentiments of other human beings.

Such a subjective system, where you can be good and evil, do right and wrong, live virtuously and viciously all at once, and by the same actions, in my opinion, does not even deserve to be called morality; it is a system of emotion only. In reducing morality to emotion, Hume may have avoided inconsistency; but he did not avoid absurdity. Seeing how the word 'should' takes us beyond our empirical limits (what 'is'), however, it is no surprise that the famous Empiricist would draw the conclusions that he did.

'Let us chase our imagination to the heavens,' he says, 'or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear'd in that narrow compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc'd.10"

If it were so that we could make moral judgments based on reason, and that those judgments were actually valid, then we would have passed beyond those limitations that he so carefully and skillfully encompassed human thought within. We would have knowledge beyond 'what is'.

But as much as it is necessary for a skeptic like Hume to restrict morality to the empirical, his interpretation clearly does no justice to the meaning that is intended by the mass of those who utilize the word 'should'. His efforts to free his own system of morality from metaphysical implications resulted in a system of morality that was free of morality altogether.

When we survey all the cruelties and miseries of human history, all of the war, the rape and the abuse, all the torture and the sick crimes that mankind is guilty of, we can say nothing more than that we do not like it, and that does not make US happy. To say, and to say truthfully, that a man like Hitler 'should' have done something other than what he did, requires that we reference a goal that applies not to our personal pursuit of happiness, but rather as an objective standard of morality that is binding over all human wills - regardless of their tastes. A Summum Bonum - a Highest Good that exists regardless of personal preferences.

But as we shall see, such a goal, and such universal duties as would be derived from it, are nowhere to be found within nature. They cannot be deduced from observations of objects. But in their absence, all we have is the chimera of human desire and self-righteousness amalgamated into a 'mighty strong beast', lumbering around haphazardly, led in all directions by its many heads and the many faces of public opinion; a true Leviathan: 'King over all the children of pride'11.

1. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10833/10833-h/10833-h.htm.

2. Descartes, Rene, _Discourse on Method_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm (December 2012).

3. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012).

4. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012).

5. Kant, Immanuel, _Critique of Practical Reason_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2004), 27-28.

6. Hobbes, Thomas _The Leviathan_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 96.

7. Plato, _The Republic_ , (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), 200-201.

8. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 335.

9. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 338.

10. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 48.

11. Job 41:34 KJV

[Chapter 4:  
Good & Evil](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'After the first week of the world ended, it seems that God brought the newly married couple into the garden of Eden. He charged them not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil but left them free to eat of everything else.'

_\- James Ussher_ 1

We have seen so far that simple observations of objects cannot introduce moral judgments into our reasoning. Subjective judgments, however, which have their root in some aspect of the thinker rather than the object, do introduce moral judgments. There is nothing, however, in such subjective judgments that gives one judgment any advantage over another, since they are, in every case, derived from the same source - the moral feeling of the individual. They inevitably lead us into conflict and contradiction; and they do not offer us any means to judge which of them is 'right.'

The only means to demonstrate that one judgment is the judgment we 'should' hold is to assert that there is a subject whose sentiments are decisive - in other words, an authoritative judge of what is good and evil. It is the purpose of this chapter to consider the meaning of the terms 'good' and 'evil' and to illustrate the fact that if there are objective moral values that apply to objects regardless of what any individual person thinks or feels, then there must be a God to do the judging.

Some philosophers have tied the idea of good and evil to the idea of pleasure or pain. That which brings pleasure is good, while that which brings pain is evil. This was the opinion of David Hume at least, as we have already seen. The Greek philosopher Epicurus went so far as to say that pleasure is 'the alpha and omega of a happy life', though for his part it seems that he found more pleasure in virtue and contemplation than in any form of concupiscence. Epicurus' own view accords very nicely with David Hume's explanation of morality. He says:

'For this reason we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a happy life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing. And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatever, but often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is worthy of choice, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned.2'

But such a system of morality rules only the individual since it is only individually that what is pleasurable can be determined. My wife, for instance finds great pleasure in playing Scrabble. But for my part, I'd rather be tied to the train tracks (If I am remembering the old commercials properly). Tastes vary. One man will take pleasure in a thing that others abhor, and that same man will abhor things that other men love. And these variables are as wide and as deep as the ocean, there being almost nothing that is immune to fluctuation. Pleasure and pain, which are by nature subjective and personal, cannot be the ground of objective moral judgments.

Epicurus goes on to extol the superiority of 'sober reasoning' over 'drinking-bouts' and 'sexual love'.

It is not these latter things, he says, 'which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul.3'

But on what basis does he judge these latter things to be superior to the former? It must be on the basis of his own tastes, or he has abandoned his own moral system to find some basis other than pleasure and pain to judge what is good and evil. Pain and Pleasure belong to the subject.

There are many people, I imagine, who would rather take part in those drinking-bouts than in deep philosophical meditations; so for them it is the revelry that affords the most pleasure. There may be some, like Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's great novel, who says, '...all I want is to live on to thirty, and then... dash the cup to the ground!4' However lofty and wonderful Epicurus may feel philosophical meditations are, if it is only the feeling of pleasure that makes it superior to the carnal pleasures, then his judgment is purely subjective and meaningless when applied to any other man. He can make sober reasoning sound however noble he wants, but it is only noble to him. For if philosophy and knowledge, to another man, bring only frustration, then to that man they are not good; they are not worthy of choice. So his ethics is an ethics only for him, and not for mankind - and an ethics based on the likes and dislikes of Epicurus, David Hume or any other individual, is hardly a solid ground for universal legislation - on the contrary, this very thing is decried every time someone speaks of 'tyranny' and 'oppression'. When the laws accord with our own will, we do not complain. Laws against murder are just fine with us, since we do not want to be murdered. And even though the state truly does take power away from us in forbidding murder, we think little of it. But if the law says we cannot marry this or that object of our affection, be it more than one woman or a person of the same gender as ourselves, then it is oppression, repression and injustice.

In quite literally the first line of the first book on ethics that I read, Aristotle states, 'Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.5'

In the next chapter he goes on to say, "Will not the knowledge of it, (the Chief Good) then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?6"

The example of archery is a very appropriate analogy. The word 'hamartia', which is translated 'sin' in the New Testament, is related to 'hamartano', which literally means to 'miss the mark'. What is an archer's purpose? To hit the mark at which he is aiming. And what is it to 'sin'? To miss that mark; to fail to fulfill the purpose and to fall short of the goal. It can hardly be imagined that an archer can have any chance of hitting his mark it he doesn't even know what he is shooting at. To know what is 'good' will do more than merely assist our moral reasonings, it will be their foundation.

Aristotle explains:

'... in the case of flute-player, statuary, or artisan of any kind, or, more generally, all who have any work or course of action, their Chief Good and Excellence is thought to reside in their work, so it would seem to be with man, if there is any work belonging to him.7'

A flute-player plays the flute, but a good flute-player plays the flute well. That is to say, the 'good' flutist performs his function well. That is good, which fulfills its purpose.

A pot that doesn't hold water is a bad pot. A tree that doesn't bear fruit is a bad tree. A father that doesn't protect his children is a bad father. A hunter that loses its prey is a bad hunter. A match that doesn't light is a bad match. A tent that does not close the when there is a skunk outside is a bad tent (Believe me!). A mockingbird that doesn't sing is not a good mockingbird; a diamond ring that turns to brass is not a good diamond ring; a broken looking glass is not a good looking glass; a billy goat that doesn't pull is a bad billy goat, and so on and so forth. An eye that doesn't see is not a good eye, and ears that do not hear are bad ears.

Pain and pleasure are powerful motivators to be sure, but the lips of a prostitute are not good and the pain that warns me to remove my hand from the fire is not evil. I would maintain, rather, that the pleasure that leads a man into a brothel is more wicked than almost any pain. And that blessed pain that the leper is lacking would be to him a greater benefit than any comfort. The study of leprosy might be the surest way of propagating the Stoics' philosophy (that pain is no evil). Pain is nasty, but it is not evil.

*NOTE: Immanuel Kant quotes a Stoic as saying the following in the midst of great suffering, 'Pain, however thou tormentest me, I will never admit that thou art an evil.8'

In the book, 'In His Image', by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey very vividly show the importance of pain. In the book the following comparison is made:

'...a healthy person nearly always falls when beginning to sprain an ankle. Perhaps you step on a loose stone or curb. As your ankle begins to twist, the lateral ligaments of the ankle endure a terrific strain. Nerve cells detecting the strain categorically order the body to take all weight off the damaged leg immediately. The thigh and calf muscles will become momentarily flaccid. But the other, undamaged leg is off the ground taking a step, you will now have no support and will lurch to the ground. (A step, says the anatomist, is a stumble caught in time.) Your body prefers falling to forcing the ankle to take weight in its twisted position. You get up feeling a fool and hoping no one was watching, but in reality you have just achieved a beautifully coordinated maneuver that saved you from a sprained ankle or worse.

'However, I recall watching a leprosy victim sprain his ankle without falling. He stepped on a loose stone, turned his ankle completely over so that the sole of his foot pointed inward, and walked on without a limp. He did not even glance at the foot he had just irreparably damaged by rupturing the left lateral ligament! He lacked the protection of pain. Afterward, without the support of the ligament he had ruptured, he turned his ankle again and again until eventually, due to more complications, he had to have that leg amputated.9'

There are some who have said, and they may well have said rightly, that Life itself, essentially IS pain. Arthur Schopenhauer, for instance, viewed pain as the positive fact of life, and pleasure as only a fleeting escape from its grinding presence10*. Are we then, with Schopenhauer, to call life itself an evil - because it is hard?

*NOTE: In one of his essays,Arthur Schopenhauer states: 'I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt.'

I believe that even extreme pain should not properly be called evil, for it does what it ought to do, informs us of the extremity of our danger. When a man is put on a rack and tortured, it is not the pain that fails him and is therefore evil, it is the torturers that are evil. But they are not evil because they are unpleasant, they are evil because they are not what men are supposed to be. They may be good torturers, that is, good at inflicting pain, but as far as their humanity is concerned, they are devils.

But what do I mean when I call the pleasure that leads a man into a brothel an evil? It is not an evil because it is pleasurable, it is an evil because it draws him astray; that is, it makes him 'miss his mark'. Pleasure is meant to benefit us, while pain is meant to protect us. But when the pleasure leads to destruction, it no longer performs its proper function.

If we could compare a man to his purpose in the same way that we compare a pot to its purpose, then we would have objective moral standard by which to judge the actions of men, even men other than ourselves. A pot, after all, is not a bad pot because it is unpleasant, or because it causes us pain if we touch it when it is hot; it is a bad pot when it doesn't cook our food properly and evenly. Likewise a man is not a bad man simply because he is unpleasant, nor is he a good man simply because he pleases us; it is only when he can be found to deviate from what a man is supposed to be that he can be judged to be evil - and certainly man's objective purpose is not to please US. But what is man supposed to be?

There are many contrary goals in this world, and it is necessary, if we are going to discover a rational, objective basis for morality, that we discover which of these goals in fact belongs to man. In the case of pots and flutes this is an easy task, for we are the designers; we are the ones who imbue the object with its end (its Telos). But if man has a purpose, objectively, then we must look beyond our own wishes. For our own wishes tell us only what we want, and to grant to ourselves the right to judge good and evil would lead morality itself into hopeless contradiction.

A line can only be considered a bad line according to the purpose for which it is drawn, and that purpose is determined by the artist. A machine is considered good or bad according to the will of its inventor. So also with the archer, it is the intention of the archer that determines whether his shot is good or not. If an archer misses a bullseye, and hits a bull-frog instead, it is only a bad shot if HE meant to hit the bullseye. It is the archer that determines where the arrow ought to fly.

The world should be destroyed.

The world should be preserved.

These two contrary goals establish entirely different systems of ethics. To objectively determine which is correct, we must know the purpose of the world, and compare the propositions to that purpose. A purpose is a state of affairs or an outcome that is set apart from all others. If the world, objectively, has such a purpose (and we cannot make objective moral judgments concerning the world if it does not - as all imperatives imply goals), then there must be something to do this setting apart; there must be something to prefer the one goal over the other.

This is theism, full and complete. For preference belongs to the will.

1. Ussher, James, _The Annals of the World_ , (Green Forest: Master Books, In., 2003), 17-18

2. Epicurus, _Letter to Menoeceus_ , http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html (December 2012).

3. Epicurus, _Letter to Menoeceus_ , http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html (December 2012).

4. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, _The Brothers Karamazov_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/dostoevsky/brothers.v_4.html (December 2012).

5. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012).

6. Aristotle, _Ethics_ http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012).

7. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012).

8. Kant, Immanuel, _Critique of Practical Reason_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2004), 63.

9. Dr. Brand, Paul & Yancey, Philip, _In His Image_ , (Grand Rapids: Judith Markam Books, Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), 235-236

10. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10732/pg10732.html.

[Chapter 5:  
Who Is Not A Cannibal?](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'I TEACH YOU THE SUPERMAN. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?

'All beings hitherto have created something beyond themselves: and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would rather go back to the beast than surpass man?

'What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

'Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.

'Even the wisest among you is only a disharmony and hybrid of plant and phantom. But do I bid you become phantoms or plants?'

'Lo, I teach you the Superman!'

_\- Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche_ 1

In the old 'Wizard of Oz' film2, a hungry Dorothy is startled to hear protests from an apple tree from 'whom' she plucked an apple. This of course would be a very unexpected result to someone from Kansas (or any other state of the union for that matter). Outside of Oz, it is generally accepted that there is nothing immoral about picking and eating the fruit off of a tree. And if something is generally accepted, that means it is correct, right?

There are certain things that mankind seems to take for granted. Some of these things seem so basic and clear that we never feel the need to consider them on a deeper level. Take for instance the following moral principles:

'It is good to pick and eat apples.'

'It is wrong to kill and eat your neighbor.'

There are, in this world, so many difficult ethical questions and moral dilemmas that it might almost seem a relief to find moral principles that we can so readily affirm. But just for the sake of thoroughness, let's take a closer look at these two judgments. If someone suggested that the latter of these moral judgments was not an objective moral judgment, but rather a matter of taste or preference, they would be viewed with suspicion \- and justly so. But if we consider man from the perspective of Naturalism, affirming there to be no purpose for man or for this world (affirming there to be purpose would be affirming the Teleological argument for God's existence), then our sole means of comprehending objective moral values is taken away.

If it is wrong to kill and eat your neighbor, but not wrong to kill and eat an apple, then there must be some significant difference between the two creatures.

A few things might come to mind.

One might say that it is a human being's intelligence that exempts him from a place on the menu. But certainly the mentally retarded, infants, and other human beings whose intelligence is not fully developed are not 'morally edible'. We do not eat coma patients or brain-trauma victims. It is clearly not the intelligence of the victim that makes cannibalism morally unacceptable. Even those who are in a persistent vegetative state and have no more conscious thought than an apple are not, in the moral opinions of most men, on the menu.

I imagine it might also be suggested that the human being does not make for a healthy meal, while an apple is packed with nutrition. But here I must insist that it is certainly not for health reasons that we abstain from eating human beings. For if it were merely the nutritional content of human beings that made it wrong to kill and devour them, it might very well be said that it is more evil to eat french fries than to eat your neighbor (all things in moderation, right?). Of course, we Americans might be just as fattening as french fries in the end; so, who knows?

I feel that it is safe to disregard any such differences as color, weight, texture, size, smell, taste etc. It certainly is not because a man looks different from an apple that he should not be eaten. Nor is it because he is heavier or softer or larger. Smell and taste have a great deal to do with eating, but I think most people who oppose cannibalism would still oppose it even were human beings the greatest of all delicacies (They say, 'Don't knock it till you try it', though, I don't think they were thinking of our current topic.).

But if it is not any of these differences, what can it be? Just how much are we taking for granted here?

I want to lay out for my readers three inconsistencies that I have noticed in terms of the way we deal with ethics. There are many more, but I do not want this book to turn into a compendium of man's moral inconsistencies. Such a book, I am certain, would fill this world to the brim with the number of its pages.

1. It is generally accepted these days that the southern plantation owners of Nineteenth Century America were wrong to treat African slaves like cattle. But most of the same people who condemn these slaveholders do not so much as concern themselves about their treatment of ... cattle, which were in some ways treated worse than the Africans (being eaten for instance).

2. In the last century, the nation of Germany, under the rule of Adolph Hitler, exterminated some six million Jews, many of them were poisoned with Zyklon B. Every day in the United States, however, untold numbers of cockroaches are killed in essentially the same way, often by the very same people who condemn the Nazis.

3. It is generally considered to be immoral to kill another human being and eat them. But it is not considered to be wrong to eat plants, vegetables, and even certain kinds of animals.

These moral views are not held by religious people alone. There are many atheists and agnostics who also maintain that slavery is wrong, the Holocaust was a crime, and that cannibalism is unethical. Yet many of these same atheists will not extend their condemnation to the enslavement of animals, the extermination of so-called pests, or the consumption of animals and plants.

Obviously there must be a difference in each of these cases between the humans and their animal counterparts that makes it acceptable to enslave, exterminate, and eat the one, but evil to do so to the other.

What I want to do in this chapter is to really consider whether it is possible at all to have objective moral values under Naturalistic assumptions. If there is an objective basis for the moral judgments I listed above, then we ought to be able to identify it in the object. Otherwise, how can we know that any of these actions are either right or wrong?

The most obvious and natural solution to the above inconsistencies is to point out that the African slaves, the Jews, and the people victimized by cannibalism are human beings, not animals or plants. But what is a 'human being'? What makes him so special that he gets treated so differently than other animals?

Naturalists tell us that human beings are the last surviving members of the Genus 'homo'. They are of the Tribe 'Hominini', the Family 'Hominidae', the Order 'Primates', and in the Class 'Mammalia' of the Phylum 'Chordata' within the 'Animal' Kingdom.

But this doesn't tell us why human beings should be treated any different than cattle or cockroaches. This just tells us what they are, which cannot lead us to any moral judgments.

The cow-eater maintains that it is not morally wrong to eat certain members of the Order Artiodactylae. There are some who even eat members of our own Order, the 'Primates'.

To look at the phylogenic tree one is immediately struck by how neatly nature has classified and grouped all of the animals into distinct families, orders, classes and genuses. That is, until you realize that Nature has done no such organizing at all. In nature you simply have so many individual creatures running about doing what they do. But who decides that this group of creatures is a Kingdom and that group is a Phylum? It is man that does so. Scientists certainly try to find objective differences when they classify creatures. But the choice of the ground on which they base their classification is purely subjective. That MAN gave names to all the animals is a truth that is more certain in science than it is in Biblical theology.

To illustrate the consequences of this, consider the following question:

Have you ever seen a house?

This may seem like a very strange and unrelated question, but just bear with me for a moment. If someone asked me this question I would probably just nod my head and say 'yes' without much hesitation, and then give them a strange look for asking something so bizarre. I assume it would be the same for most of my readers. But let us suppose that some of my readers are from California, a place I have never been, while I am from New Jersey, a place they have (let's assume) never been. How can we both say that we have seen a house? I have never seen ANYTHING that they have, nor have they EVER seen anything that I have. Yet we still both assert that we have in fact both seen a 'house'. Obviously, the word 'house' does not refer to any specific house, but rather to a class of objects, grouped together under that term. If I say 'The White House', I refer to a specific house, or if I say, 'William Penn's Mansion' I refer to another. In these two cases I am speaking about some real existing (I think) structures that can be seen by all who visit them. But when I say just 'house', it is obvious that there is nowhere to be found in nature any such structure; there is no 'house', there are only certain specific objects, all of which can be described by that one single name.

Without getting into the debate between Realism, Idealism, Nominalism and Platonism (that will be reserved for Part III), I want my readers to notice at the very least that the meaning of our words depends upon the purposes we have in employing them.

This is aptly demonstrated by the age old question of whether a tomato is a vegetable or a fruit. The biologist, for instance, might rightly classify it as a fruit because it bears the seeds of the plant from which it comes. On the other hand, a grocer or a chef might classify it as a vegetable on account of its lack of sweetness. Both classifications are arbitrarily made for the subjects' own purposes, and both classifications are therefore true. In the same way, we can classify Marshmallows as either 'food' or as 'white things', depending upon our purposes. If I were making up a grocery list, I would probably group it with other snack foods. But if I were painting a portrait of a marshmallow, then I would classify it according to its color. The class to which an object belongs varies according to our purposes.

For this reason I can do naught but laugh when I hear so-called skeptics criticize the Bible for classifying bats as birds, or for being unclear about whether Jonah was swallowed by a fish or by a whale. We classify these creatures on the basis of their genes and their use of milk, while the ancients classified them based upon their mode of travel - the one by sea and the other by air. Our classifications may be more useful for modern scientific reasons, but they are not any more objective.

Charles Darwin, in his 'Origin of Species', says, 'I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience' sake.3'

In modern science, a species is defined, not merely by morphological similarity, but also by genetic similarity and by their supposed connection in time with a common ancestor (I say supposed not because I doubt it, but because however you slice it, it is a supposition, and not an observation). But seeing as similarity itself always fixes itself upon some single quality, the choice of that quality will always lie within the scientist himself.

If we understand the role of the subject in classification (in choosing the differences on which to focus for its own purposes), then we will see that the whole phylogenic tree is nothing more than a logical arrangement of living things according to their varying qualities. The relationship between genus and species is precisely the same as the relationship between Phylum and Kingdom - which in turn is nothing more than the relationship between a subject and a predicate (which we saw in Aristotle's dictum). By fixing the term 'species' at a certain point we can fool ourselves into thinking that it is something concrete and objective. 'Species' and 'Genus' were originally logical terms, but their use in biology has made it seem as though they are real objects rather than mental 'classifications'. In logical terms a Genus is itself merely a species of 'Family' and that in turn is a species of 'Order'. Similarly, a Domain is the 'genus' to which a 'Kingdom' belongs, and a Kingdom is, in turn, the genus to which a 'Phylum' belongs.

Now, whatever rights we believe belong to human beings as a 'species' must in turn belong to everything contained within that 'species'. But who decides what constitutes the 'species' man? The differences on which our classifications rest are selected by man and for his own purposes; therefore, MAN decides which creatures have rights and which do not - and he does so for his own purposes. As it is written, '...whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.'4

On the same basis that scientists distinguish the genus 'homo' (man) from the genus 'canis' (dogs, wolves, coyotes etc.), namely, physical and morphological differences, the southern slavers distinguished themselves from their African captives. They made Africans and Europeans into different 'species' of the 'genus' human beings (keep in mind the logical significance of the terms). And this procedure is perfectly legitimate. It is an objective logical division, just as it is in the case of all other phylogenic judgments.

The ramifications of this are even more clear when we consider the question of genetics and common ancestry, which constitute the modern basis for classification.

Human DNA is something quite different from mouse DNA, but it still has a great deal in common. We have even more in common with Monkeys and Gorillas, and especially Chimpanzees, whose DNA is some 96% the same as ours. But is it mere genetic dissimilarity that justifies our consumption and enslavement of Bos primigenius (cows) and our heartless extermination of Periplaneta americana (cockroaches)? This would imply that if there are any extra-terrestrial creatures, whose DNA (if they have it) must be VERY different from our own, and with whom we share no common ancestor at all, then we can do with them as we please.

Again we are confusing ourselves with universals. Truth be told, my DNA is probably closer to that of my brother and sisters than it is to the so-called 'human' genome. In turn, it is more similar, I imagine, to my parents and ultimately to their forefathers, and less similar to that of an African. If morality is relative to genetics, then it follows that there is some point at which the differences in the code are sufficient to justify the cruelty, consumption and enslavement that we practice against those more genetically dissimilar to ourselves.

The more general the criteria, the more objects we assign to the class. We can draw a distinction between 'life' and 'non-life' based on certain qualities. But that class would include every living creature in the universe. So we divide these lifeforms into Domains and Kingdoms, Orders, Phylum etc., each time on the basis of some anatomical or genetic similarity or dissimilarity.

Of living things there are those that are motile and heterotrophic, which means they can move and that they must consume other living things in order to live; these we call 'Animals'. Of animals there are those that have backbones; these we call Vertebrates. Further, of vertebrates there are those that have warm blood, hair, mammary glands etc. These we call mammals.

We can continue these divisions until we classify every creature into some category or sub-category. We divide certain of the the mammals into Primates, and some of these into Great Apes (Hominidae - includes Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and homo sapiens), and then, again based on anatomical differences, we eventually come to the genus 'homo' of which we are the last surviving members.

But in all this division, when do we ever discover what anatomical traits make it so that we can enslave an Artiodactylae (cow) but not an African homo sapiens? Or why we can kill Arthropods (such as cockroaches and lobsters) but not homo sapiens judaeus (Jews)? How do these divisions inform us that we can eat the offspring of a Helianthus annuus (sunflower seeds) but not the offspring of a human being?

One might say that it is because we belong to the species 'human beings'. But again, a species is a logical division, and we can separate ourselves into as many distinct 'species' of human beings as we wish. None of those divisions will suddenly deliver to man the rights and moral worth we claim for ourselves. For that we will need something more than facts about living creatures, which is all that science presents us with.

David Hume, in considering the question of whether reason is the source of moral judgments, makes the point that we do not apply our moral judgments to animals, even though they very often commit what we would consider terrible crimes. He says:

'I would fain ask any one, why incest in the human species is criminal, and why the very same action, and the same relations in animals have not the smallest moral turpitude and deformity? If it be answer'd, that this action is innocent in animals, because they have not reason sufficient to discover its turpitude; but that man, being endow'd with that faculty which ought to restrain him to his duty, the same action instantly becomes criminal to him; should this be said, I would reply, that this is evidently arguing in a circle. For before reason can perceive this turpitude, the turpitude must exist; and consequently is independent of the decisions of our reason...5'

If these relations were truly, objectively immoral, independent of our subjective feelings, then they would be so whether the animals know it or not – their lack of reason would have nothing to do with the question. But it is precisely the vice and virtue that are lacking in any objective consideration of the creatures. Reason cannot discover them because they are not there – I mean, they are not in the objects. Hume brings home his point by saying:

'Take any action allow'd to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflection into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but `tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compar'd to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind.6'

Let's consider the evolutionary scenario more carefully now, without our subjective presumptions about 'genus' and 'species'. We have innumerable living objects, all descending to the present from an ancient ancestor. While it may seem easy to look at a group of people and say, they are all human beings, we must acknowledge that it was not always so, and it will not always be that way.

When two creatures share a single set of parents, we consider them to be siblings. When they share grandparents, we call them cousins. If they share great-grandparents we call them second cousins. Sharing great-great grandparents or great-great-great grandparents makes them third or fourth cousins respectively, and so on mutatis mutandi.

The Nazis were able to kill the Jews without remorse because they made a distinction between Jews and Aryans. They considered the Jews to be a lesser creature, a sub-human of some kind (or perhaps they considered themselves to be some sort of 'ubermensh' - Supermen). Obviously they could not have maintained any such illusions were it not for the fact that the Jews were of a different race of people.

In the same way, the southern slaveholders might maintain their right to own slaves by denying full humanity to a certain 'sub-class' of human beings. But they would not have done this were it not for the fact that the Africans were very different from themselves. As men who valued human freedom, they could not have treated their slaves like animals if they were not of a different race. The effect of classifying men according to race, when we understand the nature of classification, is the same as that of classifying them as another species.

Now, if I were to ask the average person if they thought it would be wrong to kill their brother or sister, I imagine the overwhelming majority would say 'Of course!' without hesitation (although several have, sarcastically answered me in the opposite way). I imagine that they would also agree immediately that it is wrong to kill their cousins. This of course can go on for quite some time. If I ask if it is wrong to kill one's fifth cousin, the answer will be essentially the same. I have made a trial of these sorts of questions, and so far there hasn't been anyone who stops at some point and says, 'Yeah, you can kill your eleventh cousin, but not anything before that.'

If I ask them directly 'Is there any distance cousin that you can kill?' they have always answered without hesitation, 'No, there is no cousin that you can kill.' Sometimes it is added that, 'You cannot kill anybody!' Which is to say, you cannot kill any human beings.

But the Naturalist must here admit that this is far from true, and that it is only an impression; a false impression derived from confusing our own subjective classifications with objective realities. Were it true that it is wrong to kill your cousin, no matter how distantly related to you they are, then it would be just as wrong to kill a cockroach as it is to kill a Jew. For in evolutionary terms a cockroach is just as much a cousin to myself as a Jew, though the ancestor I share with the Jew is unimaginably closer than the ancestor I share with the cockroach. But the nature of the difference is the same, it only differs by degree. Why would it be wrong to kill a Jew, but not a cockroach? Is it simply because the cockroach is a more distant cousin? But that would imply that it would be less wrong to kill a Jew than it would be for me to kill a Slavic or an Irishman to whom I am more closely related. It would also imply that with each generation I am removed from Jews, it becomes more morally acceptable to kill them. We almost universally agree that we can kill insects and animals, but they are our cousins, though very distant. Who decides how distant a relative must be before you can kill them?

Was Adolph Hitler's Final Solution a crime simply because he did not wait long enough? Would it have been less of a crime had he waited until the next generation was born, and the distance between the races (the cousins) greater?

The human family tree, under naturalism, does not terminate with Adam and Eve. It continues beyond them into the Archaic homo sapiens and ape-men; and the gradation from the early primates to mankind is so gradual that to fix any portion of this chain as a single, distinct species at any point would be an act so arbitrary (subjective) that I feel it is unnecessary to consider seriously the notion that it is difference of species that separates us, morally, from our fellow primates. In fact, our heritage continues back beyond even the cockroaches to some ancient ancestor that would give rise to homo sapiens and apple trees alike. It is only distance of relation and anatomy/genetics that separates us from one another.

But lets consider these things carefully. Is not anatomy and genetics the basis on which the Holocaust was built? Is not anatomy and genetics the thing that separated the American master from the African slave? Is not anatomy and genetics the difference between Dorothy and her distant cousin the apple?

Hitler's mistake, then, was not in exterminating his fellow human beings (since that is a subjective classification), it is only in exterminating creatures whose anatomical features too closely resembled his own race. Had Hitler's cousins, the Jews, evolved to look a lot different, or to be less intelligent perhaps, then clearly the Naturalist must admit Hitler committed no crime. For that is the only difference between Hitler and his other cousins, the cockroaches, whom he is permitted to kill at will.

The same goes for the plantation owners of the American south. The color of skin, apparently, is not enough of a difference to justify making slaves of the Africans. But given more time and more evolution, it is clear that there would be no difference between branding an African or a cow. For it is only the fact that we are more distantly related that makes it acceptable for us to own cattle. My high school biology teacher made us all laugh by suggesting that if we took all the people in the world who were born with six fingers or with vestigial tails and sent them to live on the moon, in some ten-thousand years or so, we might have become two completely distinct creatures. A friend asked him, to our amusement, 'Why would you send all the people with six fingers and tails to the moon?' But this separation and evolution is precisely what separates us from our primate relatives and, ultimately, from our bovine relatives as well.

Once we free ourselves from the subjective illusions we create by our own understanding, we can see clearly how impossible objective moral principles are under Naturalistic assumptions. When we realize that human beings are just one of many branches of animals, related to cockroaches in the same way we are related to one another, then it becomes impossible to establish any kind of objective standards. Who can judge the point at which it becomes acceptable to kill a cousin? If it is acceptable to kill cousin cockroach with poison gas, but not cousin Martin, I would like to have it explained wherein the difference lies. And I would like to hear it explained in clear terms, without subjective assumptions (such as difference of 'species', 'genus' etc.) intruding upon clear reasoning. When we frame the question in our subjective terms by saying, 'Why is it wrong to kill a "cockroach", but not a "human"?' it is easy to be misled and to answer, "Cockroaches aren't human beings, and human beings have a right to happiness (or something along those lines)". But if it is asked, 'why is it acceptable to kill your billionth cousin (the cockroach), but not your thousandth cousin (the Jew)?' we are forced to admit that we have no objective basis for our moral judgment.

There is no possibility, as far as I can tell, of giving a satisfactory answer to these questions. It is clear that David Hume spoke with great wisdom when he says that to discover vice we must not look to the object, but rather 'into your own breast.7'

A good illustration of my point can be found in the book Moby Dick. After detailing the history of the eating of whales, Herman Melville defends his character (Mr. Stubb) by pointing out certain hypocrisies in the landsman's diet. He says:

'But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.8'

In light of Naturalism it is certainly understandable why one might call someone who killed an ox a 'murderer'. For there is no line fixed between mankind and oxen besides the one we hold in our minds. We are distant cousins, though the distance is exponential and though we have changed appearance since the days of our common father (haven't Germans and Jews changed also?). But being ultimately derived from the same 'beef-stock', the beef-eater may very well be accused of cannibalism. It is only subjectively that we can consider ourselves otherwise; it is only subjectively that we consider ourselves as members of a separate 'species'.

What the Nazis did, and what the Slaveholders did is the very thing Dorothy did - they all fixed the line between themselves and their prey at a point of their own choosing, and thereby sought to justify their actions to themselves. And if it is legitimate to justify our actions on the grounds that we are a separate 'species' from the ones we slaughter, consume and enslave, then the justifications of the Nazis and the Slaveholders must stand impregnable to criticism.

Is it to be concluded then, that all men that are meat eaters are cannibals? By no means. On the contrary, it is to be concluded that all men, vegans and meat eaters alike, are cannibals. But we can go even further than this. Every animal is a cannibal, since all animals are heterotrophic (surviving by consuming other living things; living things to which they are ultimately, though distantly, related). If we wanted to get really picky, we might call into question the distinction between life and non-life, and ask ourselves with what right does a plant consume the light of heaven.

But in truth, I disagree with Melville. I do not mean to prove by all this that it is wrong for animals to eat other living things. I do not mean to extend the moral prohibition against slavery, cannibalism and genocide; I mean to obliterate it by demonstrating that it has no objective basis in reality under Naturalistic assumptions. We can classify objects until time itself draws to a close, but we will never discover morality within them.

This chapter is nothing but an exercise, however, as I believe it has been proved already that imperatives cannot be discerned from empirical propositions. It is meant merely to be an illustration of the problem as it appears within Naturalism. Every step in the evolutionary gradation, from worm to man, is a matter of fact, and every difference between ancestor and descendant is likewise a difference relative to matters of fact. Nowhere in this grand process does the imperative appear. The difference between this or that 'species' is in every case a difference of empirical import: Men are self-conscious; snails are not - ergo...

We have not learned and cannot learn any ethics from this.

'Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven. Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself - he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself "man," that is, the valuator. - Nietzsche9'

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 3.

2. Fleming, Victor, _The Wizard of Oz_ , dir. by Victor Fleming (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2009 DVD).

3. Darwin, Charles, _Origin of Species,_ 1859, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1228/1228-h/1228-h.htm (December 2012).

4. Genesis 2:19 KJV

5. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 333-334.

6. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 333-334.

7. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 334.

8. Melville, Herman, _Moby Dick_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm (December 2012)

9. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 37.

[Chapter 6:  
Pathetic Sympathetic](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

_'What impertinence!' said the Pudding. 'I wonder how you'd like it, if I were to cut a slice out of YOU, you creature!'_ 1

I have often seen the human capacity for sympathy lauded and lifted up as though it were an objective foundation for moral judgments. It is the purpose of this chapter to consider the nature of this human faculty, and to point out that this is very far from the truth.

In Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking Glass,' a Pudding of all things challenges Alice with a very revealing statement. It is revealing because it immediately draws our attention to the foundation of human morality. We have seen that objective morality has purpose as its foundation. But under Naturalism, all notions of purpose or Teleology are considered to be illusory. We cannot, therefore, have an objective basis for moral judgment (no objective goal) if Naturalism is true.

What then is the foundation of human moral judgment in Naturalism? It is apparent that Naturalists, despite the fact that their moral judgments cannot be objective, still make as extensive use of imperative propositions as the rest of us. The foundation must be subjective, and as a result one would expect that the summum bonum would lead one to act for his own self-interest in every situation. Yet such is not the situation. We often find atheists, Naturalists, and agnostics that are willing to forgo their own good for the sake of their loved ones and for the sake of humanity, many times putting religious people to shame. Considering all that we have said about subjective morality thus far, I feel that this circumstance might be worth considering more closely. If they act against their interests, for what do they act?

The Pudding marvels at Alice, saying 'I wonder how you'd like it, if I were to cut a slice out of YOU.'

It is strange that the Pudding would be interested in how Alice would feel. After all, it is the Pudding that is being cut. Why would it expect her to care about anything other than her own hunger? The statement points us at once toward the foundation of human morality.

What the Pudding is appealing to is sympathy, and sympathy, it turns out, is the White Rider and would-be savior of non-theistic systems of morality.

It is a common saying, that you should not judge someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Obviously we are not by this statement expected to actually walk in their shoes. The statement is simply saying that before we condemn another person we should imagine ourselves in their circumstances. That is why we so often say things like, 'How would you like it?' or 'Can you imagine how it must have felt?' or 'How would you feel if it were your own child?' All of these things appeal to the same thing: Sympathy.

When someone asks me, 'How would you like it if I did that to you?' What they are asking me to do is to imagine that the situation were reversed and imagine how I would feel if they did it to me. Obviously, I am not them, and they did not do it to me. So I cannot make use of my senses to discover the answer to this question. I cannot literally experience what the other person experienced; neither can Alice experience what the Pudding experiences. If there is nothing in nature to instruct us, we must turn to our own minds for the solution. It is our imagination that informs us how we would feel in the circumstance. Alice would have to try and imagine the same thing happening to her in order to understand the Pudding's feelings. Sympathy is a subjective feeling where we feel, or we think we feel, what another person feels. This feeling is generated by the force of our imagination.

Etymologically, the word 'sympathy' comes from the greek words 'syn' (as in synchronize), and the word 'pathos' (as in pathological). It can be seen as meaning something like 'synchronizing passions' - 'Sympathy'. This is similar to some of its synonyms: Commiserate (Com- as in 'with', and miserate- as in 'misery' - to have misery with) and Compassion (Com- as in 'with', and passion- as in 'feeling' - to feel with)2.

By the power of our imagination we bring ourselves to feel what the other feels, or more properly, we feel what we imagine they feel. The effect this has is that we will not want to act for our own interests alone, but we will keep our neighbors and fellow human beings in mind when we choose a course of action. Because if our neighbor suffers, our sympathy forces us to suffer along with them by means of our imagination. By transferring the emotions of another person to ourselves we not only take on their emotions, but also in consequence we take on their desires, and we may find ourselves acting for the sake of another man's good; we act for what we imagine to be another man's summum bonum. In essence, we artificially give another man's goal the rule over our actions.

The more similar to us a man is, the more sympathetic we tend to be and the more easily sympathy comes to us. This is because it is much easier to imagine ourselves in another person's position when we are already in many ways alike. Insensitive men are often chided with, 'You don't understand what it is like to be a woman!' The implication is that it is easier for a woman to understand another woman. This is, of course, because of their similarity. It would be easier for a man to understand another man with whom he shares certain things in common, than it would be for him to understand what it would be like to be a woman. The similarity lends assistance to the imagination; there is simply less that needs to be imagined. If a man complains about banging his thumb with a hammer, I fully understand his pain, and I can sympathize with him by means of my imagination. But when women talk childbirth, or when a woman describes feeling the child within her move, my imagination is quite at a loss. (So it is perfectly natural that men can never fully understand women! and I dare say the same visa versa)

David Hume gives an excellent explanation of sympathy in his Treatise of Human Nature with which I wholeheartedly agree. According to Hume it is sympathy that causes people to conform their own ideas to those of their neighbors, since the thought that their own personal opinions might cause the other to feel negatively toward them gives them an uneasy feeling. He says it is to sympathy that 'we ought to ascribe the great uniformity we may observe in the humours and turn of thinking of those of the same nation; and `tis much more probable, that this resemblance arises from sympathy, than from any influence of the soil and climate...3'

A few paragraphs later he continues:

'...nature has preserv'd a great resemblance among all human creatures, and that we never remark any passion or principle in others, of which, in some degree or other, we may not find a parallel in ourselves ... and this resemblance must very much contribute to make us enter into the sentiments of others.4'

Hume points out that the stronger the resemblance between ourselves the object, the easier it is for our imagination to sympathize with them - there is simply less that must be imagined. This will, I believe, prove to be the solution to the apparent inconsistencies of the previous chapter. It is not when a creature evolves into a human being that we consider it wrong to abuse it, it is when it falls under the protection of our sympathies through similarity*.

*NOTE: I once spared the life of a fly that landed on my arm because, when I looked closely at it, I saw that it was using its little arms to wash its antennae. This similarity stayed my hand; I had not the heart to strike him down in that moment. Similarly, the films and books that aim to persuade us of the evils of Nazism or of racism will seek to do so primarily by putting the viewer 'in the shoes' (in the perspective) of the victims.

It is easy for us to imagine ourselves as another person, but it is very difficult, if not absolutely impossible, for us to understand what it is like to be an apple tree or a carrot. The apple excites from us no pity and no remorse, while the human being with whom we share so much in common inspires a great deal of commiseration. It might also be added that even if we are able to imagine what it is like to be an apple, supposing that they do not think or feel, we have no reason to 'commiserate' with them - misery requires consciousness. We feel as much pity for them as we do for our own finger nails, which we trim and clip (some people bite them) mercilessly. It is because we imagine they feel no pain or terror. And imagining that they feel no pain or terror, we feel no pain or terror at the thought of harming them.

David Hume describes such sympathy very vividly:

'Were I present at any of the more terrible operations of surgery, `tis certain, that even before it begun, the preparation of the instruments, the laying of the bandages in order, the heating of the irons, with all the signs of anxiety and concern in the patient and assistants, wou'd have a great effect upon my mind, and excite the strongest sentiments of pity and terror. No passion of another discovers itself immediately to the mind. We are only sensible of its causes or effects. From these we infer the passion: And consequently these give rise to our sympathy.5'

Surgery certainly makes those of us who are not accustomed to it cringe (assuming you CAN grow accustomed to it); and hearing that someone we know may need some very intrusive operation inspires within us a great deal of pity. But we can watch a lumberjack saw into a tree with a rusty blade without so much as flinching. Why does the sterile and precise surgical operation inspire so much emotion, while the killing of a tree by such a crude means does nothing? Obviously it is because of sympathy. We imagine that the tree is unaware and indifferent to the saw, but we cannot imagine the human to be so. Whatever fear we imagine we would feel in that situation, we feel, though obviously to a much lesser degree than the actual patient.

So powerful is sympathy, that David Hume credits it as the origin of nearly all of our moral ideas. He concludes his book on morals with these remarks:

'If we compare all these circumstances, we shall not doubt, that sympathy is the chief source of moral distinctions ... Justice is certainly approv'd of for no other reason, than because it has a tendency to the public good: And the public good is indifferent to us, except so far as sympathy interests us in it. We may presume the like with regard to all the other virtues, which have a like tendency to the public good. They must derive all their merit from our sympathy with those, who reap any advantage from them: As the virtues, which have a tendency to the good of the person possess'd of them, derive their merit from our sympathy with him.

'Most people will readily allow, that the useful qualities of the mind are virtuous, because of their utility. This way of thinking is so natural, and occurs on so many occasions, that few will make any scruple of admitting it. Now this being once admitted, the force of sympathy must necessarily be acknowledg'd. Virtue is consider'd as means to an end. Means to an end are only valued so far as the end is valued*. But the happiness of strangers affects us by sympathy alone. To that principle, therefore, we are to ascribe the sentiment of approbation, which arises from the survey of all those virtues, that are useful to society, or to the person possess'd of them. These form the most considerable part of morality.6'

*NOTE: 'Virtue is consider'd as means to an end. Means to an end are only valued so far as the end is valued.' These two sentences express very succinctly what was demonstrated in Chapter II.

It is this sympathy and, I think, sympathy alone that explains why we eat apples but not people. We imagine that the apple feels nothing when it is eaten, therefore we feel nothing when we eat it. In the same way we stomp and spray cockroaches because we assume that they feel differently, or because we imagine that they are not as self-aware as we are, or something along those lines. But the thought of poisoning human beings makes us tremble, because it seems very certain that they feel much as we would feel were we in their situation – and that thought causes us no small amount of discomfort. Every year the porches on my street are assaulted by carpenter bees. And each homeowner goes out with a plastic baseball bat or a fly swatter and smacks the creatures down left and right. But if the creatures had the eyes of a child, and wept like newborns when their fellows were slain, who would have the stomach for such work?

David Hume explains, '...the happiness of strangers affects us by sympathy alone'. This seems quite certain, since outside of imagination there is no other way to tell what another person is feeling or even that they feel anything at all.

So now we have, or so it seems, a basis for morality that is rooted in nature. A means of passing beyond our own self-interest in order to act for the sake of another - Sympathy. Noble sympathy, by which we feel what our neighbor feels and we can act for the good of all mankind.

But this too is misleading. We may have discovered a means of passing beyond selfishness, but we have not discovered a means of demonstrating that selfishness is a bad thing, or that philanthropy is a good thing. Sympathy may allow us to act for the good of humanity, but who says that what is good FOR humanity is what is actually good?

I love Pixar movies. But to be completely honest, it has taken some time for me to really begin to trust that animation studio. I was not at all excited about Toy Story when it first came out, though it soon became one of my all time favorite movies. I had no interest in A Bug's Life, I was extremely skeptical of Toy Story 2 (as I am of all sequels), and I was very reluctant to see Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. But when it finally came time to sit down and watch these films, I thoroughly loved and enjoyed them all. By the time I went to see Cars, I was thoroughly convinced that, although I felt no interest in the movie, I could trust Pixar to deliver; and deliver they did. As might be expected, Up and Toy Story 3 did not let me down either.

One of the things that Pixar excels at is making people cry. They have an uncanny ability to make you feel sympathy for things that you would never normally sympathize with. I think this is partly the reason that I always feel so disinterested in their films before I see them. There is nothing to grab my attention because I feel like I cannot relate to the characters (this was especially the case with Cars, since I am neither a car nor a racing fan). But even though we may not normally be able to relate to a bug, a fish, a car or a rat, Pixar manages to get the tears flowing. They make us cry with Marlin the Clownfish when his family is tragically taken from him and they get us to feel abandoned when a toy feels abandoned; or they make us feel angry with a 'bad' race car in Cars. They get us to feel what their characters are feeling. This, of course, is because we can imagine what we would feel like in their 'shoes' (or wheels as the case may be), and by that act of the imagination we generate the emotions.

When we see a car wreck, we do not care one bit about the car. It is only the thought of there being a human being in the car that makes us cringe at the sight of mangled metal. But nonetheless, in the movie Cars, Pixar manages to get the audience to invest themselves in the automobiles themselves emotionally. But this is not because we have suddenly realized that Cars are people too, but only because Pixar's cars ARE people; that is, they are more like people than real cars, and their personalities are genuinely human. As my wife put it, 'Because they have eyes!'. It is this anthropomorphizing of machines, robots, toys and animals that allows us to relate to the characters in their films and to sympathize with them. By giving them human hopes and dreams, and even human flaws, they can get us to react to their distresses like we would to any human characters.

But I want the reader to carefully notice here the difference between a real car and a Pixar car in terms of our tendency to sympathize with one and not the other. It is because the Pixar car is more human that we feel emotionally moved by it. That is, the Pixar car is more like us. As we've seen already, however, the very idea of a 'human being' is a subjective classification. It is the mind that calls this or that group of creatures 'homo sapiens', and it is therefore a subjective comparison by which our imagination allows us to sympathize with this or that object. We do not necessarily sympathize with them because they are like 'humans', but we sympathize with them because 'humans' are like us.

Hence it is natural for us to love and cherish our own children more than the children of strangers. It is also natural to love our close relatives more than people of another nation. It is very natural to sympathize with those of our own class, race and religion etc. Where there is similarity, there can be sympathy. In order, then, to make us care about the cars in Cars or the bugs in A Bug's Life, Pixar makes them human.

Sympathy, however, is purely subjective, having its foundation entirely within the individual. Whatever moral principles are derived from sympathy are, therefore, likewise subjective. They have their basis in our own natures, not in the object. We pity the object, not because it is itself pitiable, but because we pity ourselves when we imagine ourselves in the place of the object.

In other words, in every sympathetic moral judgment, it is our own person that is pitied, though we imagine ourselves in a different circumstance. It is our own person for which we act, and our protection will extend only to those who can in some fleeting way, remind us of ourselves.

As a basis for morality, sympathy will inevitably give rise to as many moralities as there are living creatures capable of the feeling. Sympathy is not objective, it is by its very nature subjective, and if human moral principles are derived from sympathy they must be subjective also.

As per our earlier discussion, our propensity for sympathy explains why we feel more compassion for our first cousins than for our billionth cousins, but it does not establish an objective basis for any moral judgment.

When we see another man suffering, the only means by which it affects us is by sympathy, that is, imagining ourselves in another's place and being affected by the emotions we imagine ourselves feeling under such circumstances. So when we act to rescue someone who is in distress, it is an act for the sake of our own distress, superimposed as it were upon the other person by an act of our imagination. No matter how highly we esteem sympathy, we have not thereby stepped so much as an inch outside of our own skin (it just means that other people are part of our own subjective interests); and we certainly haven't discovered, just from the fact that sympathy induces US to value others, that human beings are actually, objectively valuable. Truly we take too much for granted.

The so called 'species' homo sapiens is not an objective entity, it is a class of objects determined subjectively by the human mind. As a subjective class, it is obnoxious to variations slight and extreme. Can any historian doubt but that the definition of 'human being' is variable? All that it takes, it seems, to deny someone the benefit of our sympathies is some single difference by which we can draw a distinction between ourselves or our class of people and the other group.

By making a distinction between the Germans and the Jews (on the basis of anatomy, genes, lineage etc.), the Nazis could justify the most horrible acts imaginable. Under Naturalistic assumptions this should not surprise anybody. Human beings draw the same line for the same kinds of reasons between themselves and cockroaches. Since those lines were first made by men and for their own purposes, why should men be unable to alter where their own lines are drawn?

How does an exterminator carry out his gruesome task without remorse? He does so because he does not pity the cockroaches he kills. He imagines that they are lesser than 'human beings' and thereby pushes them out of his thoughts. The Nazi, though with greater difficulty to be sure, simply does the same thing, thinking of the Jewish prisoners as vermin. But if morals come from sympathy, and the Nazi has no pity for the Jews, it is clear that neither does he have any duty to the Jews.

Remember that imperatives must reference a goal, and under Naturalistic assumptions it is assumed that there is no ultimate goal for the universe or for mankind. Such being the case, there is nothing on which to ground the imperative propositions except for the individual's personal desires (summum bonum). If that person sympathizes with the Jews, then a part of his own happiness will be mixed in with their plight. In order to fulfill his own desires he will have to work for the good of those he pities. But if that man for ANY reason does not sympathize with the Jews, then it is clear that he can have no duties toward them. In fact, it may be more in accordance with his own desires to persecute them.

By convincing themselves that Africans were less intelligent and less human than themselves, or by suggesting that they were a cursed 'race', the southern plantation owners could justify their dreadful treatment of their slaves. What could be better for the attainment of one's wishes than to have at your disposal as valuable an asset as a slave. But when morals are tied to desires, and and those desires are derived from sympathy, and that sympathy is for WHATEVER reason denied the slave, then the master can have no duty to treat the slave with any kindness. I say for 'whatever reason' because to make sympathy subject to some other principle as if one 'should' have certain sympathies and not others is to posit for morality a basis other than sympathy. But if, in naturalism, there is no other basis for morality than the subject (and we have seen that there isn't), we cannot make any appeal beyond a person's own private passions.

If a slaveholder can cut the slave off from his sympathies, then he does no wrong. For the slave's happiness concerns him only insofar as it affects his own state of mind. If he can avoid being affected by his slave's plight, then he has no duty to his slave. All the master has to do in his circumstance and all the Nazi has to do in his (in fact what all of us must do whenever we eat food) is avoid imagining that their victims are 'like' themselves. And likeness permits of degrees; and even a tiny difference, relative to a still tinier one, is sufficient for this purpose.

Naturalistic animal rights activists are not people who have discovered that 'all life is sacred' - as if this sacredness belonged to the living objects as objects; in reality they are just a little more imaginative than the rest of us. They are able to imagine what it would feel like to be a baby harp seal without the aid of Pixar's animation studios. The Nazi is stingy with his sympathy because he refuses to allow his imagination to give humanity to the Jew. But the animal rights activists are prodigal with theirs, finding a place in their hearts for everything that moves.

But these same animal rights activists, by an arbitrary classification, choose not to extend their sympathies to the apples and vegetables without which they could not survive.

Arbitrary sympathy also lies between the pro-life and the pro-choice activists. The pro-life activists have such pity for the unborn human life that they could never imagine themselves (in another's shoes) aborting a fetus. Their affection for the helpless unborn child trumps whatever might make them sympathize with the mother. On the other hand the pro-choice advocate can, by imagining the difficulties faced by the mother, sympathize with her. In turn, they imagine that the fetus is without sense or without consciousness, and think of it like they would think of any inanimate material. For many it is easy to be indifferent to the humanity of the fetus because of its dissimilarities (being hidden from view for one thing).

This is why ultrasound imaging has proved so effective at changing mothers' minds about abortion. When they hear the heart beat (a similarity with themselves) they find a basis on which the imagination can generate sympathy (similarity aids the imagination). But when this reality is hidden from their view, and when they are taught (as many of us have been) that a fetus is a mere 'clump of cells', then they can 'evacuate' it with little more concern than they would have for a tumor.

That all of this sympathy is subjective can clearly be seen in both of these parties. For the pro-life activist sympathizes with a creature it has never met nor seen. In the absence of empirical experience there is only the imagination to fuel the sympathy. It is similar with those pro-choice activists who on occasion will argue that a baby would not want to live in such and such a circumstance or with such and such a disability. Can it be anything but pure and unadulterated imagination that makes these activists pretend to know the future mind of a child that has not yet been born? And to know that this child would wish not to live in such a situation?

I wonder if it is this capricious nature of human morality that lies behind the fact that homo sapiens is the last surviving species in its genus. Can you imagine a tribe of simple ape-men surviving for long when their relative homo sapiens can simply classify them as 'sub-human' and kill them at will?* Is this not what we do when we stomp on a fly or a roach? Because the dividing line between what may be exterminated and what must be treated with respect is not something that exists in between the animals; it exists within us. Man makes the rules himself, and he can change them at will, and he DOES change them quite frequently, if you hadn't already noticed.

*NOTE: Though I do not doubt that Homo Neanderthal must have been guilty of the same sort of sympathetic bigotries.

'The fly is gross', the woman says as she smashes it. 'But the baby kind of reminds me of me, so I'll keep it.'

1. Carroll, Lewis, _Through the Looking Glass_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12/12-h/12-h.htm (January 2015)

2. _Online Etymology Dictionary_ , http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sympathy (December 2012)

3. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 225-226.

4. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 226.

5. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 410.

6. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature,_ (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 440-441.

[Chapter 7:  
Bellum](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?

'A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.

'But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking-humanity itself?

'Thus spake Zarathustra.'

_\- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra_ 1

To avoid all of these questions from the outset we might have simply asked ourselves 'what is the purpose of sympathy?' It might be easy to say from a Naturalistic perspective that sympathy serves to facilitate the survival of the species by uniting the strengths of similar creatures against their enemies, difficulties etc. But that has only answered the question of what sympathy does, not what it should do. To suggest that sympathy developed FOR that reason is to postulate theism - a will outside and above human will. But it is precisely this purposefulness that Naturalism opposes. Moral value is inextricably bound to purpose; so in suggesting that sympathy is morally better than cruelty, objectively, is to suggest that it fulfills some objective purpose, which cannot be accounted for if man is, objectively, an accident of nature.

If we are faced with a moral dilemma, such as the question of whether abortion should be legal, it simply becomes a contest of sympathies. Who do we pity more, the mother faced with difficult circumstances or the unborn child who certainly has done nothing to deserve the gruesome fate that awaits it if her mother chooses to 'terminate' the pregnancy. If the people who govern, whether it be king or parliament, sympathize with the fetus, then abortion will find itself limited or outlawed. But if they sympathize with the mother, abortion will be accepted and legalized.

But who SHOULD they sympathize with? The answer to this question is the only way by which we can solve the dilemma. But it is a question that nature cannot answer for us. This is because it appeals, by the imperative, to purpose, which Naturalism denies. All that remains in the absence of purpose is our own subjective purposes, or the cumulative purpose of that great Leviathan (the government). There cannot be a right answer, nor can there be a permanent answer. Because with every change of rule and with every generation, sympathies will fluctuate and vary. One year the masses will root for Clinton, and the next they will vote for Bush. But the pendulum doesn't settle there, it will swing to Obama the next time around. Who knows where public opinion will swing next? The Tea Party? The Communist Party?

In the contest for survival it is clear that if by chance a creature evolved to feel sympathy for creatures like itself, creatures like the sympathetic creature would have a greater probability of survival, as they would have that creature in their service. We cannot, however, suggest that sympathy was meant to exist without postulating theism. The best the Naturalist can say is that by some series of random mutations the phenomenon we call sympathy developed. This phenomenon would increase the survival capabilities of creatures like the one that can sympathize. If that sympathy became nearly universal, as it very nearly is with human beings, then the survival advantages would be immense.

But under Naturalistic assumptions, we cannot say that a creature 'should' sympathize any more than we can say that life 'should' exist, or that such and such a creature 'should' survive. There is no goal within nature on which to hang such imperative judgments. To live and reproduce may be what we want, but it is not our purpose. It was not meant to be, it simply happened; and we cannot judge whether it was good or bad. Every attempt to find a basis for morality within Naturalism terminates in the subject.

The deer may think it is wrong to hunt, but the wolf knows better; the truth of this should be very carefully brought into reflection.

How can the abortion question be answered then? It cannot be answered by Naturalism except to say that each person will work for their own personal goals. Their sympathies, when we understand their dependence upon and origin within the subject, are also directed toward their own goals. They may change the sympathies of others by arguments or by appeals to emotion, but they can never correct them, as they are subjective from the start.

Let us bicker then, for that is all we can ever do. Let us gather together in organizations and rallies and bully the minority. That is the closest thing to right and wrong we will ever have. If women sympathize with the unborn, let them take the rights of others away, for those very rights are only their concern insofar as they sympathize with them. Let the homosexuals marry whomever they want, for it is only their personal desires that can ever rule them. And if the rest of us find it distasteful, if we find within us no sympathy for their desires, then let us band together to forbid them. Let the contest of sympathies begin!

To return to the Is-Ought problem, we can now answer with confidence that if Naturalism is true, then to say 'should' is to say nothing more than 'I want'. The homosexuals 'want' rights, the conservative 'wants' them to be denied. It is a contest of desires that cannot be resolved by any fact or any appeal to reason.

If my reader finds these comments distasteful, so be it. But it is not because I am wrong or because it is evil to deny marriage to gays or to restrict abortion, it is only, and it can only be, because they simply do not like it. All moral conflict, under Naturalism, is a simple contest of desires. Your wishes against mine. If I share a wish with another, then we can unite and defeat those that oppose us. And of course, you can do the same. But whatever happens, the anger that may arise within my reader at such ideas is no proof of moral rectitude.

This is what morality is when it is stripped of its pretensions: War Perpetual.

So what do we do? Do we abandon morality as the chimera that it is? No, we clothe it in subjective terms and meaningless catch phrases that have no meaning. We say that homosexuals have a right to marry. But what makes us think that heterosexuals have the right to marry? We say that a woman has a right to privacy. Who says? Did God say it? No, in Naturalism there is no God to endow us with all our basic rights and liberties. The only god to which we can look for our protection is that 'mortal god' the Leviathan. If the sympathies of the people change, the sympathies of this 'mighty strong beast' change with them. And so do all the moral principles that depend on these sympathies.

We say that 'All men are equal'. Isn't that a laugh? In what way are they equal? And in what way are they all men? We made up the word 'man' and we therefore made up all the rights he supposedly possesses. If we are the inventors and creators of what is defined as human being, as under Naturalism we are, then we are the 'valuators' who give him his rights.

Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence that, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'

But we are the creator, the 'creating ones' of whom Nietzsche poetically speaks. Naturalistically speaking it can only be man who invents terms and defines them, granting 'rights' to those with whom he sympathizes. Under Naturalism, men have, as Nietzsche puts it, 'given unto themselves all their good and bad.'

I have long felt that Thomas Jefferson's words were some of the most ingeniously elusive words ever penned. By claiming these rights to be 'self-evident', Jefferson (and all of America with him) is able to avoid proving something what no human being could ever hope to prove.

Some of these statements seem to fly in the face of reality. For instance, the son of a millionaire hardly seems to be 'equal' to the son of a slave. In what sense are they equal? They are not of equal strength. They will likely be of unequal intelligence, unequal wealth, unequal skill, unequal stature, unequal health, etc. It may well be found that they are not equal in any physical sense. As lofty and noble as these words may sound, they are far too metaphysical to be taken lightly. If Thomas Jefferson means that the souls of men are equal, then I would ask how he could possibly know such a thing. But if he means that men are equal in any physical sense, I must say that he is off his rocker. There is no empirical support for such a notion, and every empirical observation proves the contrary. If this principle, that every man is equal, is baseless, then so is every legal principle that rests upon it as a foundation.

Were I called upon to predict the outcome of a world ruled by morality, I would imagine a state of affairs much like the one in which we live: As Thomas Hobbes famously puts it, 'Bellum omnium contra omnes,' - a war of 'every man, against every man2'.

1. Nietzsche, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 37-38.

2. Hobbes, Thomas _The Leviathan_ , (Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 96

[Chapter 8:  
Telos](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.'

\- Revelation 1:8 KJV

There are some who have suggested, in defense of the character of God, that this world in which we live might be the best of all possible worlds. Arthur Schopenhauer contended, however, that even if 'this is the best of all possible worlds ... that would not justify God in having created it. For he is the Creator not of the world only, but of possibility itself; and, therefore, he ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would admit of something better.2' But we know that words like 'better', 'superior', 'preferable', 'greater', 'right' etc. must appeal to some standard for their application. A salt shaker is a 'better' invention than a defibrillator, if you want to get salt onto your food. And a boat is 'superior' to a car, if you need to travel by sea. A world without pain is 'preferable' to a world full of suffering, that is, unless you need some warning concerning an immanent threat to your life. A pineapple is the right choice for the shopper, if they need to make fruit salad and not a shelf.

From a subjective perspective, it is quite understandable that men should say of this world that it is evil, and that it could be better. But that is only so long as we hold our own interests, our own comfort, and our own survival to be the goal for which the world exists. But as far as I can see, nothing could be more manifestly absurd.

Look at the world.

Why would you think that the world exists for the sake of our comfort? For our subjective preferences, desires and sympathies? If there are objective moral values - values that exist independent of the subject, then we must cease all appeal to the self in determining what is good and what is evil.

But to suggest, as we must if we affirm that there are objective moral values, that there is some state of affairs that is truly and objectively 'right', we must also affirm that this preference, this purpose, this design, belongs to something. The subject of a such a preference is what we refer to as a 'Will'. The object of a desire is called a 'goal', or, in Biblical terms - 'Telos'.

To suggest that the world could be good or evil objectively, is to postulate the existence of a 'Telos' or a purpose, which can only exist in relation to that which purposes - a Will.

It is for this reason that the question of God's existence is of such immense importance. The question of whether or not the world has a cause is of very little moral significance. It may be an interesting question for science, but it concerns our actions only very remotely, if at all. But if the world exists for the sake of God's will, then our whole lives take on an objective moral significance in relation to his plan.

But if it is fully understood that in the absence of 'Telos' (objective purpose) the only foundation for human morality is the human will, which has as many variations as there are people, then the importance of the question is manifest. How can we pretend that our laws are 'right', if there is no 'right' but that which we invent for our own purposes?

It is not surprising that when people abandon their Christian beliefs, they often abandon their Christian behaviors. Can anyone imagine an Atheist tithing (giving a tenth of his gross salary) to a pastor whose doctrines he now rejects? Of course not. Will a Christian convert continue to cuss and swear when he believes that 'every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.'?

I suggest for my readers' consideration that this question, the question of whether or not there is a God, is one which is not only one that should affect our every decision, but it is also a matter in which we cannot afford to err.

I cannot dictate to my readers the answer to this question. But I hope that I have at least shown that we have come to a fork in the road. You cannot have it both ways; it is one or the other: God and Good, or Atheism and Nihilism. The Agnostic may fairly say that they do not know the answer to the question. But they cannot, after what I have said, pretend that the answer is not of the utmost importance.

1. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10732/pg10732.html (December 2012)

[PART II:  
The Subject](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

[Chapter 1:  
Causality](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.'

_\- Isaiah_ 1

The nature of Causality will play a huge part in the second and third parts of this book. In this first chapter, then, I will lay out as clearly as possible how I have come to understand this concept.

I also mean to show that free will is necessary to moral agency, and the first step will be to understand precisely why it strikes us as so unfair to ask more from a person than they are able to perform. If a man threatened his five year old with a beating because he would not get something from a shelf too high for him to reach, that man would be considered unreasonable, and his son would not be blamed for anything. In this section I will show that the reason such commands are received as ridiculous is that they contain a contradiction, and therefore annul themselves. To be the subject of a valid moral judgment, a man must be capable of performing that which is asked of him. This implies, we will see, that man must have a free will if he is to be judged as a moral agent.

Many years ago, my little sister came into the house in tears to tell our mother that one of her friends had hit her. Responding to her cries, my brother and I came to the door as well. To explain what had happened, my mother proceeded to imitate with her own hand exactly what my sister's friend had done. She imitated it TOO exactly, however, and she accidentally shoved her hand in my face and knocked my head backward. The back of my head hit my brother right in the nose. Without hesitation he (being a big brother after all) punched me right in the back of the head. I went down fast and hard.

Now my mother has a certain amount of strength, and my neck has a certain amount of strength. I also have a certain amount of time to react and a certain degree of ability in terms of my response time. But in this circumstance there was quite literally nothing I could have done to stop my head from hitting my brother's nose. I was not prepared for the blow, nor do I imagine that I would have been able to stop my head fast enough to avoid colliding with my brother's head even were I prepared. Like the balls of a Newton's Cradle, my head was moving according to the unwavering laws of physics. As soon as my brother learned that I had not struck him out of reckless stupidity, however, he helped me up and we went about our lives. Just what is it about powerlessness that makes us feel so innocent?

When the causes of an action lie outside of ourselves, or when something acts upon us by the irresistible forces of Nature, then the blame and praise for that action lie outside of us as well. This is why it is considered foolish to praise or blame someone for the color of their eyes or the color of their skin. They are not the cause of their appearance, therefore they deserve neither praise nor shame. But if someone's hard work has gained them great skill at playing piano, then we praise them. This is of course because we consider the cause to be their own diligence and hard work; something that has its root in themselves.

It is clear that to be the subject of a valid moral judgment, one must be the cause of their own actions. Nonetheless, there are those in both the scientific community and within the religious realm who believe and teach that everything is predetermined, in the former case by the laws of nature, and in the latter case by the will of God. Determinism, however, is entirely incompatible with morality itself, and it will largely be the purpose of the second part of this book to demonstrate this fact.

What does it mean, though, to be the cause of our own actions? Well, first we must ask what it means to be a cause. One might say that a cause is something that quite literally 'makes' something else happen, or 'produces' an effect. But in such definitions we are simply using words like 'makes', 'creates', 'produces' etc. as synonyms for 'causes'; in other words, we are not explaining anything.

The principle of causality has been stated as follows:

Whatever begins to exist must have a cause of its existence2. (this is also the Major Premise of what is called the Cosmological Argument for God's existence)

We will have much more to say about this principle elsewhere, but for now I just wish to state as clearly as possible just what it means.

There are two ways a thing can be said to begin to exist. Either it already existed, and now exists in a different state - in other words, it has changed. Or it did not already exist, and now exists. A thing that begins to exist in the latter sense cannot have changed, for the change would imply that it had already existed so as to experience the change. But it cannot begin to exist unless there was some state in which it did not exist, which then passed into a state where it does - in which case the state has changed from one state (where it did not exist) into another (where it does exist). On the other hand, if the object already exists, and then passes into another state where it exists differently (an apple into apple sauce for instance), then it is clear that time must have passed. Change requires a contradiction, or there is no difference between the one thing and the next. An apple and an apple is not a change. Now contradiction cannot occur at the same TIME, so change requires time. But we have seen that whether we think a thing has changed or whether we think it has not changed, the coming into being of which causality speaks requires some change, whether in the object itself or in the state into which the object comes into being. But change requires time. So causality requires time, and implies two distinct states (times). If something begins to exist, then, either it already existed and it has changed, or it did not exist and the state has changed. But if there were no previous state, then there could be no opposition between not-being and then being, which is implied by the notion of beginning to exist.

The consequence of this is that causality cannot be conceived of except by the conception of different times. But time itself is only cogitable in light of some change. If everything in the world remained static, and even our own thoughts remained fixed and unwavering, there would be no 'passage' of time, as the notion of passing implies alteration. Thus time implies change, and change implies time. Now, if time requires change, and causality requires time, then it is clear that causality requires change as well.

Change, by definition, implies a first state and a second state. So it is impossible to conceive of a change occurring without having in your mind two distinct states, which can only be comprehended as existing in time. Time is, in essence, the arena of change.

The mere passing away of thing A, and the coming to be of thing B, is not a change in the thing. The passing away may be a change in thing A, and the coming to be might be a change in thing B, but the passing from A to B is only a change if thing A IS thing B in a prior state and thing B IS thing A in a latter state. So if change is necessary in causality, then the passing of thing A and the arrival of thing B does not imply a causal connection between the two states; it may imply a causal connection between thing A and something, and thing B and something else, but not one with the other. The changes in each separate thing (A and B) do not, by themselves, give rise to the idea of causality, except in conjunction with the states to which they are connected in time.

We would never say, for example, that a butterfly dying at 2:59 a.m. caused a hurricane on Jupiter at 3:00 a.m., because the change in the butterfly is not connected in any way to the change on Jupiter. This is because, while there is a change involved in both objects, it is not a change from one into the other. The butterfly may change from living to dying, and Jupiter may change from a state of tranquility to a state where a hurricane rages, but the one is not a change into the other.

But if we were to say that the gunshot wound at 4:02 a.m. was followed immediately by the death of the victim at 4:03 a.m., then we would say that the gunshot caused the death. This is because the objects from state A (the shooter, the bullet, the victim living) are the same as the objects in state B (the shooter, the bullet and the victim dead), they are just those objects later on in time. Unless we see a unity or identity from the one thing to the other, there is no ground for drawing a causal connection. We will examine this identity in greater detail later on. But for now I simply wish to emphasize that this unity is an integral part of causality such as we understand it.

The result of all this is that I interpret the causal principle in the following manner:

Every thing that changes must have had a prior state in time. This is a principle that is in accord, I think, with the interpretations of Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer, among other philosophers. It is also, as far as I can tell, entirely self-evident. There are certainly some theists who will take issue with this definition, not because it is not clear, but because it doesn't extend far enough to warrant the Cosmological proof. I will address these concerns later on in this work. But for now, suffice it to say that this principle (that change implies before and after) is all that I can discover in the notion of cause and effect.

By definition, an effect is the result of a cause, and is implied by it. So to call an event an effect is to state that it is simply the result or consequence of what came before. That being the case, the effect has no power to alter its course, but rather receives its being entirely from its cause. This is because, by definition, an effect must have a certain relation in time and space to its cause. It was the lack of such a relation that prevents a causal inference in the case of things like the butterfly and the storm on Jupiter, the two states appear entirely separated from one another. In other words, with respect to its position in space and time (its existence in the world), an effect is determined by its cause.

For reasons that will follow shortly, moral imperatives cannot have a mere effect as their subject.

The cause, by definition, precedes the effect, and gives it its being by virtue of its priority in time (The cause determines, the effect is determined). But insofar as causes are themselves effects (determined), in relation to that which precedes them in time, they cannot be made the subject of moral judgments either.

We will see in what follows that it is only when an object is the cause of effects, but not the effect of any other cause, that it can be made the subject of a moral judgment. In other words, to be the subject of a valid moral judgment, the subject must be the First Cause of its effects. It will become clear as we proceed that this implies that if man can be the subject of moral judgment, then he must have a free will - he must be, insofar as his actions are concerned, an undetermined determiner.

'Friedrich should refrain from violence.'

The subject of this moral judgment is Friedrich, and that which is demanded of him is that he restrain himself from violence. All moral judgments imply a connection with a goal, in this case, 'if Friedrich is a good man, then he refrains from violence' is expressed as the imperative, 'Friedrich should refrain from violence.' But if Friedrich is compelled to punch his wife, then he cannot help but violate his duties. If someone vastly more powerful than Friedrich quite literally held his hand and forced it into his wife's face, then Friedrich would be without blame, as the deed belonged in truth to the cause, and Friedrich's act of hitting his wife was merely an effect. But what difference does it make whether Friedrich was the cause or the effect as far as his duty is concerned?

To understand this we must consider that the subject 'Friedrich' is defined by its predicates. The proposition, 'Friedrich is a cat' is false because the predicate 'cat' cannot be applied to Friedrich - the two terms do not agree with one another. Friedrich, for instance, can push the buttons on an ATM in the proper sequence while the cat, most likely, cannot. Thus 'Friedrich is a cat' is contradicted by the very nature of Friedrich's being. For if a cat cannot use an ATM, then saying 'Friedrich is a cat' leads logically (according to Aristotle's dictum) to the conclusion that Friedrich cannot use an ATM. Of course, we just said that he can. So saying that Friedrich is a cat leads us immediately to a contradiction, and to state that Friedrich is a cat is to state the contradiction.

But let's assume that it is true that 'Friedrich can lift 40 lbs.'

But let's say that it is also true of Friedrich that 'he cannot lift 4,000 lbs'. Now if someone comes along who is that strong, and that someone forces Friedrich to punch his wife, then, as he is being forced, it is true that 'Friedrich cannot refrain from violence'. And, of course, if Friedrich cannot refrain from violence, then it is also true that 'he does not refrain from violence'.

The moral judgment, 'Friedrich should refrain from violence' implies, when the goal is understood, that, 'If he is a good man, then Friedrich refrains from violence'. But if we understand the meaning of the term 'Friedrich' (the subject of the moral judgment), we will see that the moral judgment itself contains a contradiction, as it quite literally says, 'Friedrich (who does not refrain from violence against his wife) refrains from violence against his wife. The term 'Friedrich' contains within itself (analytically) a predicate that denies that which the moral judgment requires. The moral imperative itself contains its own denial, and thus logically implies that the goal itself is not possible. If the goal is not possible, then it is necessarily true that Friedrich is not a good man. And if Friedrich, by definition, is a bad husband, then saying, 'Friedrich is a good husband' (which was the goal on which the moral judgment was founded) literally means 'Friedrich who (is not a good husband) is a good husband'. But this is a contradictio in adjecto, and cannot even be thought, let alone made the ground and foundation of a moral judgment. It would be as senseless as saying, 'If these squares are circles, then pigs should fly'.

If the subject of a moral judgment cannot do what they ought to do, then it is true of that subject that they do not do it, which, when that judgment is taken as the Consequent in a hypothetical proposition, logically leads to the denial of the Antecedent. All valid moral judgments, then, must be made concerning subjects that are capable of performing the duty that is required of them. If they cannot, then they do not, and the goal itself on which the duty rests is manifestly self contradictory.

Since an effect is not capable of anything on its own, but is determined by its cause, it cannot be the true subject of a moral judgment. If the moral judgment is contrary to the effect, then it asks what is absurd, and if it affirms the effect, then it does not, in truth, belong to the effect. If God decreed, for instance, that Friedrich would actually refrain from violence, then, as Friedrich's behavior is entirely dependent upon God's power, it is God's act that is the true agent and also the true subject of the moral judgment. For you cannot speak of an effect without regarding its dependence upon its cause. If the cause were different, for instance, if God decreed that it should be otherwise, then the duty would not be performed and the goal would not be attained, and we would be left even as we would be left if the subject were unable to perform its duty. So the imperative, insofar as it requires a certain set of circumstances for its fulfillment, in truth applies to that which determines the effect and not, directly, to the effect itself. This, I trust, will become all the more clear the more we consider the nature of causality.

The distinguishing mark of a true duty is its necessity. This necessity, however, is relative to a certain goal. The choice between vanilla ice cream and peanut-butter swirl is simply a matter of taste for most people, and a mother would not be judged for choosing one or the other for their child. But if a child has an extremely severe allergy to peanuts, then a mother actually does have a very real and serious obligation to choose something other than peanut butter, since choosing peanut butter swirl ice cream would absolutely violate the purpose of mothering.

The moral judgment, in this case, would be expressed in the following way:

'If the child is to live, then do not feed them peanut butter.'

This judgment implies by its logical form that if the parent feeds their child peanut butter, then their child will not live. The denial of the Consequent logically leads to the denial of the Antecedent. So we can be certain that if there is some course of action that is necessary for the attainment of a certain goal, and we fail to perform that action, that the consequences will be that we will fail to attain the goal.

But if we perform the duty, it does not follow that the goal will be obtained. Logically, the only means of drawing a conclusion in a hypothetical judgment is to deny the Consequent or to affirm the Antecedent. If the duty is not performed, then the Consequent is denied. This logically implies that the goal will not be attained (the Antecedent must be denied if the Consequent is denied).

'If the child is to live, then do not feed them peanut butter.'

'She fed the child peanut butter.'

'Therefore, the child will not live.'

But if the duty is performed, all we have done is affirmed the Consequent, which logically proves nothing.

'If the child is to live, then do not feed them peanut butter.'

'She did not feed the child peanut butter.'

But that doesn't mean that the child will live. 'Death,' Homer writes3, 'in ten thousand shapes hangs ever over our heads, and no man can elude him.' There are many other ways for a child to die, and keeping him from peanut butter is only a small portion of what must be done to keep him safe. In other words, the single goal establishes innumerable moral imperatives, all of which may be necessary for the child's survival. The mother must teach her child how to stay safe, she must feed him, she must take him to the doctor, she must care for him when he is ill. But even when she has exhausted the entirety of her own powers in caring for her child, it still may be that he will not survive.

If a terrorist detonated a nuclear bomb in her city, for example, then no amount of vanilla ice cream or doctor's visits will help save the life of her child. Similarly, if an evil corporation dumps toxic chemicals into the water, the mother might have no hope of seeing her child live to adulthood.

It is necessary for this mother to keep her child away from peanut butter swirl ice cream. That is her duty. But if the child is to survive, then it is equally necessary that there be no nuclear terror attacks in her city, and equally necessary that toxic chemicals be kept out of the water.

But notice here that these additional moral imperatives do not even have the mother as their subject. These imperatives are duties that belong, insofar as the survival of the child is concerned, to other subjects.

As soon as the goal requires more than the parent is capable of performing, it requires more than the parent.

If there are no subjects capable of performing a duty, then, the subject, be it whosoever or whatsoever you will, will always contain the denial of the Consequent within itself, and the goal itself is proven to be absurd. Of course, if the goal is an absurdity, we cannot derive any duties therefrom.

There is another aspect of causality that is presenting itself here, and, as it will prove to be of great significance later on, it deserves some deeper consideration. Our ability, in considering the means to an end, to pass beyond the one subject and extend moral judgments to entirely different subjects is no accident, but rather the logical result of the nature of causality itself.

Causality applies, properly speaking, to states, and not to objects, and the states themselves extend as far as the universe itself extends. Thus, when we are considering the means to an end, our judgments in truth extend to the entire causal state in which the subject stands. The subject himself can only be taken as a part of the moral judgment, and a rather small part at that if he is a human being.

To illustrate this, imagine that there is an experiment being performed. There is a track that slopes down at a 45 degree angle to the floor where it levels out for several yards. Imagine that a scientist lets a red ball roll down to the bottom where it strikes a blue ball, moving it several feet before they both come to a stop.

There are few who would not say that the cause of the blue ball's motion was the fact that it was struck by the red ball. But this would be a very incomplete view of the circumstance. If the scientist had not released the ball, for example, it would not have fallen. Indeed, if it were not for the scientist there would be no experiment at all.

But even this is not an adequate description of the cause of the event. The mere release of the ball would not lead to the effect observed were it not for the track, which guided the one ball into the other. Further, the track would not have any power over the ball were it not for the earth's gravity, which is the consequence of the earth's immense size. Were it not for the existence of our planet, no motion at all would follow the ball's release. Of course, none of these things - the earth, the scientist, the track - would have budged the blue ball were it not for the solidity and weight of that tiny red ball. And, of course, the existence and position of the blue ball is as necessary a part of the causal state as any other.

The earth, of course, exists in consequence of the sun's gravity, and were it not for the sun and its relation to the world, there would be no scientist, no track, no world, and certainly no rolling blue ball.

When we say something like, 'The blue ball's motion was caused by the red ball,' we are merely isolating one part of the cause and one part of the effect for special consideration. In a car accident, for example, the one who violated the law is said to be at fault, and it is said that he is the cause of the accident. But if the other car was not there, then no accident could occur. We focus on the offender for the purposes of legal judgment, not because the victim is any less a part of the cause.

Arthur Schopenhauer explains this quite well in his consideration of Causality:

'If a state contains all the determining factors except one in order to condition the appearance of a new state, then, when this one ultimately appears it will be called the cause ... This, of course, is correct insofar as we keep to the final change which is certainly decisive here. Apart from this, however, a determining factor of the causal state has no advantage over others for establishing a causal connexion of things in general, merely because it happens to be the last to appear.4'

He gives the example of fire, which cannot come into being without heat, oxygen and fuel, any one of which would be called the cause should it happen to arrive last. Were there a pile of dried leaves laying in the open woods, it is the introduction of heat (perhaps from an old cigarette butt) that will be called the cause. On the other hand, in the case of backdraft, it is the introduction of oxygen that causes the ignition. Finally, if a piece of paper were to fall on top of a heated electric stove, it would be the paper's change that caused the fire.

But in each case it is only for convenience sake that we select one part of the causal state as the 'cause'. In reality, it is the whole state that determines the effect.

The earth, we saw, was the cause of the gravitational force that brought the one ball into contact with the other. But how could there be a life-sustaining earth, capable of supporting a scientist without a sun? Or a sun without a solar nebula? Or a solar nebula without a Big Bang? We must acknowledge that in this world everything is connected, and you cannot simply remove one thing without upsetting the whole system. One of the constellations that I can see when I look up at the night sky is the Big Dipper. Now, a certain train of causes led those stars to appear in the formation in which they stand. If we remove Megrez (the star that connects the handle to the 'dipper') from the constellation, the results for this universe, and this world may be such that we human beings could not even exist. How can such a distant object have such an important role in affairs down here on earth?

The causes that resulted in the existence of Megrez were such that when they occurred, Megrez followed. To alter the existence of Megrez, then, we would have to change the cause from which it follows in such a way that something as massive and significant as a star will be entirely removed. But many scientists inform us that ultimately our own sun and this distant luminary share a cause in common. How can you change that cause without changing the sun and the earth in consequence? Even if the only difference was the simple absence of the light of Megrez, it would still amount to an objective difference, forever separating the current reality from that which would be reality given the star's absence. However similar the two worlds might seem, and however slight the difference, they would still be two entirely distinct worlds. It is only in neglecting such details that we can overlook the role that the rest of the universe plays in causality. We might isolate this or that little ball for simplicity's sake, but we isolate them only in thought - in truth they are interwoven with everything else that exists.

The logical reason for this is the fact that your shape and the motion of your body, such as they are, are in truth inseparable from the rest of the world, and are only such as they are in consequence of all other things. The motion of your body, for instance, is only motion relative to other things, and is incomprehensible when they are ignored. To speak of motion or change in your body without speaking of the rest of the world in relation to which your body moves, is to speak inadequately. As I was taught in art school, you must pay attention to both sides of every line. Every convex form implies an opposing concave, and you cannot think rightly of the one without the other.

There are times when I look back at the past and say, 'Oh, I wish I went to school for philosophy, rather than art!' Or I might say, 'I wish I had never sold that red car!' But to change that which has passed I must change also, if our understanding of causality has any merit, that which has come to be. Who knows what present good I might be trading for a past uncertainty!? My children, my wife, my health, or perhaps my own life may hang in the balance in such a way that to alter those things about which I feel such regret might be tantamount to the destruction of the very things that are now most dear to me. Everything is connected.

The difference between moral and causal judgments is that in the former we are not merely stating the causal relationship between one state and another, we are endorsing the outcome (a certain goal), either as our own will or as God's will. The duty is simply the state of affairs that must be brought about in order to attain the desired result. 'If the world is to be at peace, then men should not arm themselves, commit crimes, or occupy the land of others.' This judgment lists only a part of the state which must exist in order to bring about the utopia we all wish could exist. The earth must not be struck by an astroid, or be swallowed by a black hole either. Also, the sun must not explode and the laws of physics must remain intact. Though in human affairs we focus only upon that which concerns us as causal agents, imperatives are, by the goal of world peace, placed upon Nature herself, and ultimately, if he is part of the causal chain, upon God himself.

1. Isaiah 46:10 KJV

2. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 57.

3. Homer, _The Iliad and the Odyssey_ , (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1999), 187.

4. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason_ , (Peru, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997), 54.

[Chapter 2:  
Potter And Clay](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'When Gods die they always die many kinds of death.

'Well! At all events, one way or other-he is gone! He was counter to the taste of mine ears and eyes; worse than that I should not like to say against him.

'I love everything that looketh bright and speaketh honestly. But he-thou knowest it, forsooth, thou old priest, there was something of thy type in him, the priest-type-he was equivocal.'

_\- Nietzsche_ 1

Theological Determinism is the belief that God determines or causes everything that happens in the world. When this belief is considered alongside the belief that the world is full of evil, it leads immediately into the absurdities described in the last chapter. These absurdities make belief in such a God objectionable for many, and it will be the purpose of this chapter to illustrate why this is the case. To ask men to believe in a God who asks of his creation what he has not given them the power to do is manifestly absurd and unfair - and impossible as well. The nature of contradictories is for one proposition to annul the other. To say X is to say not-not X, and so if you adopt the view that God determines all things, then you have, in saying this, said that he does not leave anything to man's free will - you have said that he does not, not determine all things. Some say they believe both doctrines, and it is a mystery - no, it is a contradiction. And if a contradiction is enough for the Christian to reject another religion as false, it must be accepted as enough to disprove his own doctrines. The contradictions that arise in Theological Determinism compel men to reject the Christian God.

There are forms of Theological Determinism to be found in Islam, Judaism and within Christianity, and even within certain philosophical systems. Perhaps the most famous western Theological Determinist is French theologian John Calvin, whose name is to this day attached to a wide assortment of Predestinarian Christian traditions. I will address the issue of Determinism from the Christian perspective as that is the system with which I am most familiar. But what I say of Christian Theological Determinism may easily be applied to any such system.

There is one particular Christian worship song that has always bothered me. The chorus of the song goes like this:

You are the potter,

I am the clay,

Mold me and make me,

This is what I pray2,

This imagery is found in various passages in Scripture, perhaps most notably in the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. Paul himself drew the imagery from the Old Testament. In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet writes:

'The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.

Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying, O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the LORD. Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.' - Jeremiah 18:1-6 KJV

St. Paul utilizes this imagery in the ninth chapter of Romans to demonstrate the absolute sovereign power of God:

'As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

'What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

'So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

'Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?'

Now I certainly agree with the Apostle. God can do what God wants to do with the things that God has made. I have no objection to the fact that God can form his creations into whatever he desires them to be. Nor do I object to the fact that he can make one vessel into a chalice of gold and another into a spittoon (one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour). I do not object to any of these ideas at all. God is entirely within his rights to act how he sees fit. But there is a question that Paul's imaginary opponent raises that Paul does not answer. He silences the opponent with grand and humbling statements about God's absolute sovereignty over his creation, but he doesn't answer the question.

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

Let us go down to the potter's house once more. There stands the potter at his wheel. He holds in his hands a lump of clay. He spins the wheel and begins to form the clay. But as we watch, something happens that we did not expect from this potter. The clay is marred in the potter's hands. Now clearly if the clay is 'marred', it must not have turned out the way the potter intended. I don't know of any other way to understand the term 'marred' than as an indication that the vessel is flawed, which means that it is not what the potter intended it to be. But whose fault is it that the vessel is marred? What is the cause of the mistake in Determinism? It cannot be man's free will, because that is the very thing Determinism denies.

Our Divine potter seems to have started out well enough. In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, we see that all that God created is good:

'And God saw the light, that it was good.'

'...the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.'

'And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.'

'And God made two great lights ... to give light upon the earth ... and God saw that it was good.'

'And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth ... and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.'

'And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.'

'And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.'

Would the sun have been good if it gave no light to the earth? No. Nor would any of God's creations be accounted as good if they did not accord to his design. Good, even with the actions of God Almighty, is a Teleological question. When God called forth Light, only light would do. A lemon meringue pie, even if it were the best lemon meringue pie in all possible universes, would not answer the purpose for which God created light. God calls his creations good because they fulfill his designs; because they answer to His purposes.

But God made man also. The last verse of the first chapter of the bible says that everything God made was 'very good'. And man certainly deserves his place in that class of objects. But does the conclusion follow? That man is very good?

Apparently not.

A great deal of the rest of the bible is a polemic against man's wickedness. Genesis says that before the Flood, the 'thoughts of his heart was only evil continually'. In the 53rd Psalm the writer says, 'there is none that doeth good. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.'

Isaiah says that 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way'. Jeremiah asks, 'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?' St. Paul clearly believed there to be a great deal of wickedness in man. In Romans he accuses certain men of, 'Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:'

There are many verses in the bible that seem to teach that 'all have sinned'. And there are innumerable verses that at least demonstrate that 'some have sinned', which is all that it takes to make the point that I am trying to prove. In fact, all it takes to prove my point is for there to be one single solitary sinner in all the history of the universe; just one man that 'misses the mark' and does what he oughtn't do, and perhaps only for an instant.

Valid moral judgments can only be made concerning subjects capable of performing what they are called upon to do. So let's not beat around any theological bushes. In Determinism, everything that exists or occurs is an effect of God's will. Even the 'typist's error', I haaave been told, is caused by God.

If God is the First Cause of everything, then all power resides within him, and he is the only proper subject for a meaningful moral judgment.

To say of Pharaoh, for example, that he ought to have let the Israelites go is an absurdity, even though he was commanded by God to do so.

If God is to be obeyed, then Pharaoh will let the Israelites go. But Pharaoh, whose heart is hardened by God, cannot let them go, which means that obedience to God is an absurdity - and so is the command and the will from which it is derived. Pharaoh cannot be the subject of this moral judgment because he, as a mere effect, has not the power to fulfill it.

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

The Chinese sage Mencius (a student of Confucius) once said that 'The archer adjusts himself and then shoots. If he misses, he does not murmur against those who surpass himself. He simply turns round and seeks the cause of his failure in himself3'

Our potter could learn a lesson from this archer. But instead, the God of Determinism turns his wrath against the clay and blames the inanimate materials for the mistake. We all know how this works.

When we used to skateboard more often, my friends and I would frequently blame our mistakes on 'these blasted shoes' or 'these loose trucks' or maybe it was our 'worn out deck'. It was always something outside of ourselves that we turned our frustration against. When we lose a match in an online video game we blame 'glitches' or 'lag', not our own flaws. I can't recall how many times I threw the old Nintendo controllers onto the floor in frustration, saying, 'Grr. this stupid controller!'

It is... all too human to blame our failures on others.

Genesis records that when Adam was asked if he had eaten of the tree, he responded by laying the blame on his wife. Eve, also having a grasp on the principle of causality, blamed the Serpent. The Serpent's defense, incidentally, was not recorded.

If the Serpent is as subtle and clever as he is portrayed, I am sure that he must have discovered what Friedrich Nietzsche had discovered at the age of thirteen, when he first took up the question of morality. He says:

'... as a thirteen-year-old lad, my mind was occupying itself with the problem of the origin of evil. At an age when one has 'half childish play, half God in one's heart,' I devoted my first childish literary trifle, my first written philosophical exercise, to this problem-and so far as my solution to it at that time is concerned, well, I gave that honour to God, as is reasonable, and made him the father of evil.4'

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

Paul replies, 'Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?'

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

Paul says, 'Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?'

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

Paul once more insists, 'Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?'

Of course he does, Paul, but you have not answered the question.

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

I do not deny the truth of any of Paul's responses. Like a human potter, God has the right to do whatever he wants with his clay. But that does not answer the question of why he finds fault with the clay. Moral obligation lies upon the cause. But if Determinism is true, then mankind cannot be the cause. Therefore, moral obligation cannot lie upon mankind.

To make this clear, consider what was discovered in the last chapter, that man cannot be conceived of as more than a part of the means to a goal. If we take the survival of our species to be an objective moral duty, clearly there is only so much that man can be responsible for. Beyond our own efforts, the earth must be protected from disease, asteroids, solar death etc. Certainly man cannot be blamed if an asteroid destroys the earth, or if the sun explodes. He can only be blamed for that which was in his power. Any imperative such as, 'If man is to survive, then the sun should not explode', binds duties, not on man, but on God himself. But the Determinist is not content to leave man even his tiny part, but rather seeks to make God the master of man's thoughts and actions, even as he is the master of all inanimate matter. In doing so, they make man's part into God's part, allowing the blame to fall upon God Almighty, and upon him alone.

You cannot do what is right if you do not know what is right. But how can you know what is right if you have not been told? How can you be told, if 'the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear'? (Deuteronomy 29:4)

It was partly this sort of Determinism that led Nietzsche to rage against God, saying:

''He was also indistinct. How he raged at us, this wrath-snorter, because we understood him badly! But why did he not speak more clearly? And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them? Too much miscarried with him, this potter who had not learned thoroughly! That he took revenge on his pots and creations, however, because they turned out badly-that was a sin against GOOD TASTE. There is also good taste in piety: THIS at last said: 'Away with SUCH a God! Better to have no God, better to set up destiny on one's own account, better to be a fool, better to be God oneself!'5"

Should anyone wonder, then, that of those who assign to God the totality of causality, those who cannot stomach Determinism reject God altogether and become atheists? This alone can explain the popularity of the so called 'Problem of Evil' arguments against God's existence. When you give God all power, you give him also all of the duty - and all Evil in consequence. And this is precisely the difference between theism and atheism: The ability or inability of the Eternal Power to attain goals.

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

The dilemma should be apparent.

If the God of Determinism is perfect, then there can be no evil (deviation from purpose), since everything occurs precisely as he intends it to.

If there is evil, that is, if the clay is marred (if things deviate from their purposes), then the God of Determinism (when he condemns evil) is a vindictive demiurge, an impotent tinkerer, and a potter that curses the clay for his own blunders.

Christianity teaches that 'all have sinned'. Therefore, the God of Determinism is a vindictive demiurge and a tinkerer; he cannot be perfect; therefore he cannot be God. Moreover, such a being - a being that causes ALL to sin, including the devil himself - is worse than the devil.

The only way to avoid accusing the God of Determinism with error and incompetence is to suggest that it was in fact entirely his design that the world be such as it is. Then and then only can you conclude that God is perfect. It is possible that God wanted Adam to disobey him, and that he wanted Sodom and Gomorrah to become corrupt, and that he wanted Nimrod and his ilk to build their little ziggurat. It is possible that God wanted his people to reject their Messiah. Then you could certainly affirm with the author of Genesis that everything is very good. But if the whole sad tale of history is what God wanted all along...

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

The God of Determinism is the architect of Hitler's mad whims. Every dark thought and every cruel and dastardly plan of every tyrant, terrorist and criminal has its cause in that First Cause. If these things deviate from the plan and purpose of the deity, then the Deterministic God must be declared incompetent; he is not capable of fulfilling his designs. Determinism amounts to a Cosmological Argument for either the goodness of all wickedness, or for the incompetence of God himself.

I will put my money where my mouth is. I have my own moral failures according to the Scriptures. These I despise, because I believe that they are contrary to what I am supposed to be. My consistent failure to attain my goal of being a good man leads me to feel the hopelessness of guilt; that is, I feel the imperative motivation of moral judgment, combined with the knowledge that I can do nothing to change the past: Despair. My dark thoughts and my wicked heart cause me to hurt the ones I love. Truly I can say with the Apostle, 'the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.' (Romans 7:19) I am broken. But here comes Determinism. The dark and evil thought that I hate is not my own. It is mine because it was god's thought first; god's thought; god's plan. If the Devil torments me, he does so because he must; he is caused to do so by the will of god. Therefore, it is not the Devil that torments me, it is god almighty that torments me. The Devil himself might make the defense he makes in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov:

'Before time was, by some decree which I could never make out, I was predestined 'to deny' and yet I am genuinely good-hearted and not at all inclined to negation. 'No, you must go and deny, without denial there's no criticism and what would a journal be without a column of criticism?' Without criticism it would be nothing but one 'hosannah.' But nothing but hosannah is not enough for life, the hosannah must be tried in the crucible of doubt and so on, in the same style. But I don't meddle in that, I didn't create it, I am not answerable for it. Well, they've chosen their scapegoat, they've made me write the column of criticism and so life was made possible.6'

For if Determinism is true, how can we believe anything other than that the Serpent himself acted only as it was ordained that he act? The acts of the devil are the acts of God. He did not err, then, for he did as he was intended. The same goes for Adam and Eve, they did only that which they were supposed to do.

Paul may demand of us, 'Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?' To this I answer confidently that he does. He can do with us whatever he wants to do. He could, for instance, forgo creating earth and Heaven altogether and just get to the point by creating Hell alone and casting every soul into it. 'For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' But the god of Determinism likes drama, so he creates a world and fills it with machines, incredible machines, machines that even believe themselves to be alive. These machines behave precisely as he programmed them, and when all is said and done, he keeps his favorites and burns the rest. Fair enough. I won't complain.

But we ask one thing; one single question for the Determinist.

'Why doth he yet find fault?'

It is not enough to simply say that God can do as he pleases. That is precisely the point in question. Did God do as he pleased in making us? If so, then how can we be evil? If not, then how can he be God? He cannot, unless he is simply blaming his own blunders on us in some sort of divine state of denial (ignorance is bliss, and such is the state of the gods, they say). If the universe and everything that exists, and every event and every particle in it is Determined by god, who has decreed evil from the beginning, then I will take the advice of Job's wife and 'curse god and die'(Job 2:9). For such a being, the being that causes my dark thoughts and makes me feel guilty for them as though they were my own, I find so hateful that an eternity in its presence would be more painful than any Hell. Hell alone would be release. I do not say this lightly or doubtfully. For if all is Deterministic, then it is clear that I cannot do anything else, and that even my cursing is entirely of his own design. If God is not the cause of my evil, then my cursing only vindicates him, as it is directed not toward him, but rather toward the Supralapsarian idol of the extreme Calvinists and other Theological Determinists who slander God by accusing Him with being the cause of evil. Either they accuse him with being a petty half-deity that cannot accomplish his designs, and who blames his own flaws on his toys, or by affirming his perfection they make evil into good and tyrants into saints. Either way they turn morality on its head.

If I am sinful (deviant), it is because God alone is a sinner. 'Against thee, thee only, have I sinned', David said (Psalms 51). But I say, 'Thou, thou only has sinned.' For if all is Deterministic, and God made something other than what he intended, then the fault, and therefore the sin, lies in him in exactly the same way that the fault lies not in the gun, but rather in the hand that wields it. In this opinion I have full assurance, as ultimately, my argument rests upon grounds about which I cannot have any doubt - in the logical form of moral judgment itself. I cannot be condemned if I am merely an effect.

If God is not a sinner, then I do no wrong, even as I curse him. For if I curse him against his designs, then he has not determined my actions, and is therefore not the one I curse. If all things occur precisely as he intended them to occur, then I can have mathematical assurance that I am absolutely without a single moral flaw. For if it was decreed before the foundation of the world that I curse him in order to fulfill my purpose as one of the 'vessels of wrath fitted to destruction', then, though I go to destruction, I go with the certainty and the satisfaction that I am as righteous a man as ever walked the face of the earth. For how can I sin if the God that creates me is not a sinner himself? And if he is perfect, how can his creation sin? Either I serve God by defending him against the accusation of evil, or I serve God by fulfilling my lowly duty of being damnable.

Determinism, by removing causal power from man entirely, entirely removes the possibility of resting moral judgments upon man's shoulders. In considering the causes that must exist in order to attain God's Will, every link in the chain is a mere effect of that First Cause, and that is where all imperatives must find their resting place and their true application. This, as far as I can tell, amounts to a full and complete destruction of morality, rendering it impossible for man to be judged evil without extending our condemnation to the God in whom 'we live, and move, and have our being'(Acts 17:28).

This is the origin of that dilemma, so popular among atheistic thinkers:

If God wants to stop evil, but cannot, then he is impotent.

If God can stop evil, but doesn't want to, then he is evil.

If God wants to stop evil, and can, then how can there be evil?

The conclusion that is meant to be drawn, of course, is that whichever you choose, there is not, properly speaking, anything resembling 'God', certainly not in the traditional (especially the Christian) sense.

The baselessness of the above dilemma will become apparent later on, and I trust that if my readers understand what is said throughout this work they will be fully equipped to see the vacuousness of this position without any further attention on my part.

I cannot leave this subject without simply pointing out that this determinism is expressly contradicted by the Bible. The Christian Scriptures teach very clearly both that God is perfect and that man is wicked. Therefore, since in Theological Determinism these two things cannot both be true, the Scriptures teach that Theological Determinism (as it is commonly propounded) is false.

A cursory glance at the bible will prove that man is wicked. Adam, by violating God's imperative, was exiled from Eden. Noah's family alone was spared from God's wrath in the ark, not merely for show, but because man was wicked. If the Tower of Babel was not a deviation from God's plan, why would God interrupt and halt its construction? All the curses that are included in Israel's covenant with God are conditional. It is always 'if' they disobey, they will be punished. It is strange that if God had planned and intended from the very beginning to cause them by his supreme power and inviolable will to disobey his words that he would not have simply said it from the very start, 'You will disobey and be punished'. The word 'if' has no meaning to a Deterministic God; there is no 'if'; there is simply what is and what must be. God of all beings 'ought' to know this. So why would God of all beings say 'if'?

So wicked is man that Isaiah says, 'All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way'. What is it to go astray? It is to deviate from the right path. It is from the intended course that we have deviated. In Determinism there is no other way but the way that God decrees, yet Isaiah says we have turned to our 'own way'. Is this not conclusive? Must I retrace every misstep that is recorded in the bible? Should I talk about Peter's denial of Christ? Or about the corruption of Ahab? The murder and adultery of King David?

The Determinist can answer that God has the right and power to make all these creatures do what he wants them to do. But he cannot say that it is not God's fault. For when all is said and done, that is all that Determinism is; it is the claim that God is the sole cause of all that is. But 'fault' is simply another way of identifying the cause. 'Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?' A Deterministic God cannot find fault, not unless he is a flawed demiurge himself, blowing off steam by accusing his own handiwork.

'Who hath resisted his will?'

There are fewer things that are more clear in Scripture than that mankind HAS resisted his will.

God has the right and the capability of doing what he pleases, yet still man turns out wrong. Determinism cannot reconcile these two facts without absurdity. Christianity, then, is an absolute denial of Determinism, regardless of how many famous Christian theologians fail to see it. The doctrine of the fall in and of itself is nothing more than a full rebuttal to Christian Determinism.

By removing causal power from man, Determinism undermines all moral judgment regarding human beings. Theological Determinism, then, is wholly and entirely incompatible with morality.

A man is sinful when he 'misses the mark', like an archer who fails to hit that toward which he aims. But in Theological Determinism man is merely an arrow, who flies precisely where the archer directs it to go. If it misses its mark, it is not the arrow that fails, but the archer. The arrow's purpose is not to hit the mark, but to fly wherever the archer makes it fly. So if man sins, he does so because archer is incompetent. Look at the wars and ravages of history and judge how well this archer has aimed. The only escape from these conclusions is to say, as morality and the scriptures demand, that man himself is the archer. We must have some part to play that is not wholly determined (caused) by God.

All of this, of course, is assuming that we must, at all costs, uphold morality.

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 185.

2. Espinosa, Eddie, _Change My Heart O God_ , (Anaheim: Mercy Publishing, 1962)

3. Mencius, _Mencius_ , http://www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/menc/menc06.htm (December 2012)

4. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Genealogy of Morals_ , 1887, http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/genealogypreface.htm (December 2012)

5. Nietzsche, Friedrich _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 185.

6. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, _The Brothers Karamazov_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/dostoevsky/brothers.ix_2.html (December 2012).

[Chapter 3:  
What Is Man?](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

' LORD, what is man, that thou takest knowledge of him! or the son of man, that thou makest account of him! Man is like to vanity: his days are as a shadow that passeth away.'

\- Psalm 144:3-4

In the first chapter of this section it was pointed out that a man must be the cause of his own actions if he is to be made the subject of a valid moral judgment. Some modern physical theories seem to suggest that, rather than events being strictly fixed like the parts of an enormous clock, events have some degree of randomness. This chapter is meant to show that these theories, though they are not Deterministic in the same sense as the Theological Determinism of the previous chapter, do not by themselves resolve the problem. To legitimize moral judgment it is not merely enough to show that events are not fixed, we must be able to show that man himself is in control of his actions - that HE is the free agent.

What is man?

Why do so many these days clamor for equal rights? It was a long and hard fight that finally won African Americans equal rights in the eyes of the law in the United States. Today homosexuals march for the right to marry, which they claim they are being denied. But why should they have this right? What is the basis of their claim? Is it Equality? It is claimed that it is unjust and unfair to grant privileges and honors to some, but not to all. What is 'injustice'? It is simply giving unequal treatment to equals. And the homosexual activists claim that this is precisely what is occurring in America. They march, they weep, they shout and they plead, all for the sake of equality and justice.

But what do they mean by equality? It is not enough, after all, simply to show that one person is treated differently than another, it must be shown that they are both in fact equal in the first place. For the other side of injustice is to give equal treatment to unequals. What is the basis of the equality they claim? On what basis does a homosexual claim that his relationship is 'equal' to a heterosexual's?

The vote of an amputee is given the same value that the vote of a 'whole' man is given. But is he not, for the lack of his arm or his leg, less of a man? Is not a Sumo wrestler more of a man? Should the Sumo wrestler's vote carry more 'weight' than an average citizen? Clearly the amputee and the Sumo Wrestler are not equals in terms of weight (unless it is a very BIG amputee). Are bigger people more human because they are 'more' human? Is a midget only half a person? Clearly they are; in fact, that seems to be the root of the word itself. Yet in the eyes of the law they are still called equal. Africans and Europeans are not equal in color or shape. Scholars and laypersons are not equals in intelligence or education.

What is man?

What exactly is it that speaks of the whole body as if it were its possession? My legs, my hands, my brain, my idea?

It is said that every seven years or so the body completely replaces itself. In other words, you are not the same creature you were seven years ago; there is not a single molecule in your body that is the same. But the statute of limitations for crimes is in many cases a lot longer than seven years. How can you arrest a man for a murder that he did not commit. If you catch a man thirty years after the crime, how can you accuse him of being the killer when he NEVER, EVER touched the victim?

If a man leaves his wife and goes off to war for seven years, he is still considered her husband, though after that period of time has passed he is entirely transubstantiated into a new man. She rushes into his arms and buries her head in his shoulders, weeping. She has missed him so. But empirically, the man she loved and married has passed away. She has never touched nor seen the man she now embraces. Yet she loves him. What does she love? Is it simply the similarity of the man? Would she love a twin or a clone just the same? What she loves and so eagerly embraces is not the physical man that stands before her, but rather that which, despite the passage of time, remains the same. But if everything is material, what remains to remain?

What is left to be 'me' when everything is material, and all material is fleeting?

The purpose of moral judgment is to recommend, either to ourselves or to others, the causes by which a certain goal may be attained. Since causality applies not to individuals alone, but rather to the whole interconnected world, every moral judgment ultimately resolves itself into a statement about the entire state of the universe and its relation to some other possible state. Thus, if George Bush should not have decided to invade Iraq, then his reasoning must be changed. To change his reasoning, you must change his beliefs. To change those, you must change his perceptions, and to change those you must change the testimony of those who provided him with council. This chain, if the world is deterministic, extends all the way back into the distant past, all the way to that First Cause, be it whatsoever it may. But in the process of making such a judgment we have passed by George Bush entirely and carried the blame beyond any human accountability.

To judge George Bush, as a person, and not as a mere effect of some ancient power, be it God or mere physics, we must be able to stop with him and say, 'It is HIS fault.' 'HE is to blame.' If he acted his role through sheer physical necessity, then the moral judgment simply passes from him to his cause.

Some have tried to avoid the metaphysical consequences of this causal chain by ascribing some things, not to causal necessity, but to the indeterminacy of Quantum Mechanics. The random movement of particles would allow, in theory, different effects to follow from identical causes. But the cause of such variation is not the man or the moral agent, it is the random nature of the Quantum World, whose cause is either the laws of physics or God himself*.

*NOTE: There are some who suppose that Quantum Physics negates the possibility of God's Providence and Sovereignty. But such a view is entirely baseless and reveals a complete misunderstanding of what exactly God is said to be, as we will see later in this work.

There is a popular strategy video game series made for Nintendo called 'Fire Emblem'. In the game, the outcome of many actions are altered by something that fans of the game refer to as the 'Random Number Generator' (or RNG). The random numbers produced by the RNG affect the outcome of actions in battle, the success of certain skills, and the degree of growth that takes place when a unit reaches a certain level of skill. Though the game itself is identical for everyone who plays it, the outcome for each player is different. Some characters will be virtually invincible for one player, and only moderately powerful for others, all as a result of the RNG. Characters that achieve great strength in this way are called 'RNG Blessed'. Some players will reset their game after hours of play, just because the RNG didn't give their character a sufficient degree of growth. But why repeat the process? They play it again knowing that though their actions be identical, the RNG can produce an entirely different result.

If a player makes his swordsman attack an enemy, for instance, that swordsman may miss, leading to the loss of his life. The player can reset the game and repeat the attack exactly as before, this time causing his swordsman to connect, dispatching his foe and winning the day. But notice that the result in both cases was not caused by the swordsman himself. His abilities remained fixed in both attempts. It was the RNG that was the cause of his failure and success.

Far from making man responsible for his actions by eliminating strict determinism, Quantum Mechanics, the cosmic RNG, only takes the blame upon itself. So if an action was not determined by the Big Bang itself, but rather by a random Quantum event, the blame or praise for that action lies, not in the man or in the causes of the event, but rather in the random nature of Nature itself. Of course, one might justly ask, 'who made this RNG in the first place', bringing the blame immediately back to God himself or back to the Big Bang. God may not have determined the outcome specifically, but he determined that it would be random.

It should be noted here that my definition of causal determination, which I gave in the first chapter of this part, does not depend upon any specific physical theory, but is, as far as such a thing is possible, philosophical. By definition a cause precedes its effect in time, and thereby determines it, since, if they had not a connection in time and space, there would be no grounds for drawing a causal connection in the first place. It matters not what physical theory you maintain to explain this change, what is important in causality is the change alone. Change alone proves the unity of the first and second state (cause and effect respectively) as, if there were no unity it would just be two states, and not a change. The effect, then, has no power to be other than it is, as it has by definition a fixed relation to its cause. And, of course, we saw that if the cause is the effect of something else, that it too is fixed.

If man can be the subject of a moral judgment, and bear the responsibility for his actions himself, then he must be the cause of his actions, and that cause cannot be the mere effect of some previous cause. If all matter is fixed, and we are nothing but matter, then we are fixed, and no blame can rest upon our shoulders. To lay a moral judgment upon man, and upon him alone, we must ascribe to him a power not found in matter - the power to determine without being determined.

Free Will.

[Chapter 4:  
Free Or Not Too Free](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.'

\- Deuteronomy 30:19 KJV

It is my hope that by this point I have given adequate proof of the proposition set forth at the beginning of Part I: That if man is a Moral Agent then he must have a Free Will. In a sense I must be content with having once again proved a dilemma. In Part I I proved, not that God exists, but that If he does not, then there can be no objective moral values. And here I might have to content myself with having shown, not that man has free will, but that he must have it, if he is a moral agent.

Metaphysics is a dangerous field, and to go further than the dilemma, and affirm that man does or does not have free will, is to step into a realm I feel myself unqualified to enter.

But considering the fact that no one has solved all the riddles of metaphysics, it would seem strange to say at the outset that we know what in fact qualifies one to discuss such matters. I might as well give it a shot. After all, this is a question that, like the one we considered in Part I, affects each and every choice that we make (or think that we make as the case may be). I cannot claim any originality for what follows; if there is any wisdom in what I have to share, then it is received as a gift from those who have better minds than my own. And if it takes on a character that is in any way unique or distinct from those from whom I have learned, then it is the conjunction of their ideas that must be praised, and not any great talent or originality of my own.

There are several strands of causality that we ought to tie together at the outset of this section.

1. Causality implies time, which in turn implies change.

A distinction cannot exist between cause and effect unless there is something in each that is opposed to the other. But opposition cannot occur at the same time, or the propositions would cancel one another out entirely. Causality, then, can only be thought in the context of time, which in turn can only be understood by means of change. Causality, then, can only be understood through change.

2. A causal connection can only exist between two connected things.

The end of one thing does not imply a causal connection to something that immediately begins to exist. The thing that ends is the cause of the state that follows it, and the state that precedes the other is the cause of what follows, but the one is not cause of the other because they are not the same thing - the one change belongs to one, and the other change belongs to the other. A causal connection exists only between the two states of some one thing. In other words, Change can only be understood by identity over time. And this identity requires a certain proximity in space and time.

3. Causality extends to the whole causal state, not merely to one object.

It is only for convenience' sake that we limit our description of cause and effect to individual objects. In reality it is the entire state in which the object exists that causes the entire state that follows.

As I write there is a banana peel on the table next to me. A moment ago it was a banana. The banana of 5:53 is the cause of the banana peel of 5:54, but it did not cause it alone. It was a choice on my part, a choice on the part of the supermarket, the evolution of the banana, and a great many other things that stand in a causal relationship to the state of the banana. The table cannot be neglected, as, without it the banana would fall to the ground, which is a state different from that in which it stands. So to give a full account of the cause of the banana's state, I must also factor in the table, which in turn depends upon the existence of Ikea, the evolution of the tree, and, ultimately, the very existence of this world. No world, no banana. I say 'this' world and not 'the' world because, causally, to bring us to the state we are in we must not have any old world; we need the particular one that led us to this place. A difference in any circumstance would amount to a difference between that world and this world. As we saw in our imaginary experiment, it is the earth itself that causes the banana peel to rest upon the table, and we cannot adequately account for the state of the banana without a world. The world orbits the sun, the sun orbits the galaxy, and the galaxy has a black hole for its root and foundation. All these things must exist and exist as they are in order to have the state we are considering, and to neglect them would be to give an inaccurate description of causality.

When we isolate a cause and say that, 'my consumption of the banana caused it to become a banana peel resting on the table,' we are isolating the cause and effect in thought only. In truth, the whole world of now is what causes the whole world of tomorrow to exist, and it is only the unimaginable scale of the universe that forces us to focus on individual objects and say, 'this little thing caused this other little thing to exist'.

Now, a change here and a change there do not constitute causality. They imply causal connections between something and something else, but not between one another. But if we are considering the whole world, as we ought to, then we see an absolute unity from one state to the other. So the world of a moment ago, not only causes, but becomes the world of now. This change, not in a prior state and in a latter state, but FROM a prior state TO a latter state, is alone what constitutes the causal connection. For without the identity there is no change.

But if this is an accurate description of causality, where does man get off saying, 'My actions are free,' as if he alone is exempt from the law of causality? If I begin moving my hand down toward the table, for instance, it is not at liberty to go somewhere other than where it is sent. It is not at liberty, for instance, to land in Paris as opposed to the table at which I sit (in Pennsylvania). My hand a moment from now is determined (limited or bound in time) by its position in space at the current moment. This determination is alone what is meant by causality, and it is implied in the very notions of time, change and matter. To say that I have an existence in the world at all, then, seems to me to imply this sort of limitation - this determination. There is no objective aspect of mankind that can be exempt from the law of causality, as the object must always have some existence within time, and its connection to its cause always depends upon its spacio-temporal relation thereto.

Modern physical theories seem to imply that there is some variability in terms of how tiny particles behave. But if we consider these ideas carefully we will see that, far from destroying the idea of causality, these scientific theories have causality as their foundation. Motion implies a change. And since change implies contradiction, motion requires the idea of time (the arena of contradiction). If we are trying to predict the motion of a particle at all, then we must accept that it has a former and a latter state in time, the former of which establishes the position of the particle in the latter state. It is because of their connection in space and time that they are considered to be one and the same particle in the first place, rather than two separate particles. If we are considering the motion of the particle at all, then we accept its identity from one state to the next, which can only be established on the basis of its relation to a previous state. Determinism, in the strictest sense.

At any rate, even if we allow Nature to 'cheat' a little, and have all the peculiarities that physicists describe in Quantum Mechanics, for our purposes we have accomplished nothing. Even if Nature cheats man, and there are perhaps reasons to think that it does, it by no means follows that man cheats Nature and escapes Determinism through Quantum uncertainty. The randomness of nature is not the result of MAN, and is therefore not chargeable to him. Man may be ruled by Cruel Chaos rather than Cruel Fate, but he is no less ruled for being the slave of a madman.

But if man is to be the subject of moral judgment, he must not be the slave of anyone; he must be master of his own person.

If an object has no duration, then it is said to have no existence. An object without duration would not appear at any moment in any age, and would be like the chimera or the yeti. To exist, physically, then, is to exist in time, and to consequently fall under the power of causality, and to be determined by that which precedes. So if man is free from causality, then some aspect of his being must be free of time. This gives rise to the division that is made among Christians between the body, the soul and the spirit. The body is the matter, the spirit the animation (literally, 'spirit' seems to mean 'it breathes'), and the soul is that which exists immortally and distinct from the body, and which allows man to be a free agent*. As this soul is distinct from both matter and time, there is no need for empirical evidence, and no possibility of empirical refutation. Certainly, if Christianity is true, and there is a God, it is not difficult to conceive of there being, like God himself, other disembodied 'souls'. Of course, the inability to refute a proposition is not a proof; it should, however, serve to temper the criticism of detractors.

*NOTE: I am certain that there are some theologians and philosophers who would quibble about whether it is the 'soul' that is the life of the creature and the 'spirit' its immaterial nature. This is entirely a verbal concern, and I will not fret over it. I chose my terms for etymological reasons, with which I am quite content.

The problem as it stands is as follows:

If moral judgments can be applied to individuals, then those individuals must possess a unique immaterial causality (soul). And of course, if individuals do not possess such a causality, then moral judgments cannot be applied to them, and the whole concept of morality is but a dream.

[Chapter 5.  
It Came To Pass](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'Pastness, if I may make such a word, is nothing but a Mode of ideas.'

_\- Jonathan Edwards_ 1

I have often heard it argued that our sense of identity somehow proves that we are not composed merely of matter, and that we must possess a soul. But in what follows I intend to show that the sense of identity we possess is not in any objective sense different from what we observe in the physical objects that surround us.

There is an old debate in the world of physics about whether or not Time Travel is possible. This would be a very silly question if we take it at face value - we are constantly traveling through time. The question is really, 'Can we travel through time at will?'

At the moment, I am in New Jersey; later, if God be willing and the Delaware River don't rise, I will be in Pennsylvania. To travel from here to there, I must move through space. But to travel from now till then, I must move through time. But when I say that 'I' travel from one place to another, what do I mean by 'I'? When I am speaking about space it is very apparent that I mean simply 'my body', which must be in the one place and not the other.

But when I say that 'I' travel from the past to future, it is clear that, though I possess a body at all times, my body is what it is in each moment. Otherwise it would not be true to use past tense phrases. I WAS at home earlier this morning, for example. If, at that time, my body was not where it was, then it is not true that I was at home. For the past tense to be valid, my body must remain in the place I left it (in time).

A moment ago, my head was tilted to the left; now it is not - a contradiction were it not for the dimension of time. But however I move, my body's position in the past remains unchanged. My body with all its predicates applies only to a certain moment in time; and each moment I leave it all behind. The only thing that changes about that moment, it would seem, is its distance from the present. But even this, if I use the term 'present' to mean only one time, is fixed. It is only when 'the present' changes that the distance from a past event to the present increases, and the present only changes relative to another 'present' - we will have to look more closely at this phenomenon later on.

My mother remembers quite vividly that 'I don't like iced-tea.' But she constantly forgets that, 'I do'. That is, I, in the past, did not like iced-tea (as a kid), but now I, in the present, like it just fine. But in all of this time-travel, what is it exactly that remains the same?

We do consider ourselves to be the 'same' person from moment to moment. But it is not simply because we share all the same predicates; it is clear that there are many that change with each moment. If our location and position in space changes, and if our position in history changes, what remains the 'same' so as to justify our notion of 'identity'?

There are certainly few things that seem more intuitively certain than that we are the same people from day to day. Of course, you cannot go very far in philosophy without realizing that intuitive certainties aren't always as certain as we would like them to be. On the other hand it seems just as certain that we are temporally and physically different in each passing moment. After all, it is difference that gives rise to time in the first place. This is what makes the phenomenon of 'consciousness' so remarkable - we find some sense of identity in a changing world, and within a changing person.

In a theistic worldview, it has always been a simple matter to ascribe our sense of continuity to the 'soul' or 'spirit'. If there is a God, and man is a special creation of his, then wherein lies the difficulty?

It must be confessed, however, that there seems to be no part of man's inner life that is free from causality and from alteration, particularly when those causes and alterations affect the brain. When damage has been done to this organ, we will excuse many evils, ascribing them all to the effects of an accident or some other mishap. It is considered rape when a young woman is taken advantage of sexually while she is unwittingly and unwillingly put under the influence of mind altering drugs.

By stripping her brain of power, 'she' was stripped of power. But if her soul is distinct from matter, and free from the causal chain, then why couldn't it have 'stepped in' at some point and taken control of the situation, despite her brain?

Whether we believe human beings possess a unique independence from material causality or not, it is clear at the very least that the soul has no power where the brain has no power, and the soul is blind where the brain is blind.

But even a sober mind is not wholly free of causality. A drunk driver is not blamed for crashing his car due to the effects of alcohol, he is blamed for driving drunk.

Aristotle addresses such cases in his Ethica Nicomachea, saying, 'they chastise for the very fact of ignorance, when it is thought to be self-caused; to the drunken, for instance, penalties are double, because the origination in such case lies in a man's own self: for he might have helped getting drunk, and this is the cause of his ignorance.2'

Notice, of course, that it must be within HIS power to choose sobriety. But even the sober brain and all its particles, and all the choices that are produced within it, is comprised of matter alone, and therefore subject to the same laws that rule over all other objects.

Consciousness means, essentially, 'to be with thought'. A conscious creature is one that thinks. Thoughts are comprised, at their root level, of perceptions. There are a great many creatures that possess consciousness to one degree or another. So long as the creature possesses some form of sensibility, it will be conscious - to the degree that it possesses senses.

Only a creature that possesses memory, however, will be able to compare and unite past perceptions with present ones, allowing the creature to identify objects from one moment to the next - to cogitate duration in time.

To anticipate the future requires imagination, which is the ability for the mind to generate perceptions at random; perceptions drawn from experience but not determined by it. These three faculties comprise our entire notion of time: Memory (the ghost of perceptions past), Sensibility (the ghost of perceptions present), and Imagination (the ghost of perceptions yet to come - and simulated perceptions from the distant past).

To have any notion of identity one must be able to unite a past perception with a present perception. If I saw a man sit down, for example, it is only in conjunction with my previous perception (a man standing) that I can say it is the 'same' man in both cases. The notion of sameness implies a duality of perception - there must be some other perception in relation to which the perception is called 'the same'. In turn, a duality of perception implies some contradiction (standing vs. not standing) - otherwise it would be just one perception. But the union of these two perceptions is never, itself, presented to us in perception. We only have the infinite gradation of the one into the other, but never their unity.

To call a standing man and a sitting man 'the same' is, properly speaking, false. And it is only by ignoring the differences between the two that the disparate perceptions can be united. This is abstraction; which is the work of the mind, and not of nature.

If we are considering an object, let's say, an apple as it falls from a tree, the unity that exists between the apple on the tree and the apple on the ground (and all the apples in between) is applied to the perceptions by the mind itself and is not discovered in the apples. The unity is precisely what is lacking in nature, and it is the lack thereof that constitutes change. By ignoring the differences between each apple, the mind, by abstraction, unites the apples into a single idea.

In self-consciousness the thinker has depth of memory enough to not only recall their experiences and their perceptions, but also to recall the very act of perception itself. In considering the act of perception insofar as it relates to one object and the act of perception insofar as it relates to another object (or to the 'same' object later on), the mind, if it ignores the differences between the two acts, abstracts from the particular act of perception and unites the acts into a single idea - the self.

In other words, in the same way that the mind unites its sundry perceptions into a single object (an apple falling for instance), the mind unites the sundry acts of perception as they are, themselves, made the object of thought. The continuity superimposed upon thought by thought is what constitutes our identity. By abstraction, we ignore the differences between each and every act of thought and thereby apprehend a unity where, in truth, there is nothing but a gradation of disparate thoughts.

The function of language, insofar as it allows us to 'capture' our thoughts in symbolic sounds and retain them for later use, makes this unity all the more concrete.

But just as the unity superimposed upon the series of apples does not prove the apple to possess an immaterial soul, so also the unity superimposed upon the series of thoughts does not prove the 'mind' to be an immaterial substance. On the contrary, if we suppose that the unity of an object from one moment to the next is objective at all, then we will find that what unity is retained in all the alternation that constitutes time is equally possessed by the self-consciousness, which changes moment to moment along with the objects that comprise the contents of its thoughts.

The consequence of this is that we do not need to imagine there to be an immaterial existence somehow piloting our brains so as to provide us with a sense of identity. Our sense of identity is simply the consequence of our ability to make thought itself the object of thought, and in no wise is it necessary to view self-consciousness as the result of some supernatural or transcendent intuition.

The true value of this method of thinking will reveal itself fully only in the conclusion of this work. For now I merely intend to borrow it so as to show that our own 'ego' has no existential advantage over the material objects we, generally, recognize to be without souls.

The idea that man possesses the ability to act from outside of space and time in such a way that he can be considered a free will is not, as we will see clearly in the conclusion, something that can be discovered through experience. It is, on the contrary, postulated for the sake of moral judgment.

I can hardly be expected to deny outright that man possesses an immaterial soul capable of acting freely and without being coerced and cajoled by God's decrees on the one hand and the immutable laws of nature on the other. But in the Conclusion of this book I will demonstrate from the nature of the idea of 'Possibility' that we can never be justified in asserting that man possesses such a power - a demonstration that will prove to be just as fatal to moral judgment as an actual proof of man's inability.

1. Edwards, Jonathan, _Remarks in Mental Philosophy - The Mind_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works1.ii.iv.html (December 2012)

2. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , 2005, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012)

[Chapter 6.  
We Are The World](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'What is the son but an extension of the father?'

_\- Frank Herbert, Dune_ 1

Causally, man is not independent of his surroundings, and is defined by them even as he defines them. This much we saw in the first chapter of this part of the book when we first considered causality. But since a portion of this book will be devoted to an explanation of how the Christian religion relates to morality, I think it would be good to begin understanding some of these logical points in the language in which they appear in Scripture. This chapter will lay the groundwork for understanding the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, which will be more fully explained in Part III.

I have previously mentioned Rene Descartes' famous argument for existence: I think, therefore, I am2.

This enthymematic expression, of course, depends for its validity upon the proposition, 'whatever thinks must exist.' However sufficient this argument may seem for Descartes, it can only be applied by a thinker. Rocks don't think, trees don't think, some people don't think, yet, they exist, right? Obviously, thought and consciousness are not a requisite of existence in the popular sense of the word. When I say that 'I' exist, though my thoughts may be the basis of my belief, they are certainly not the basis of my existence. We all began to exist in a physical sense some time before conscious thought was even possible for us. My awareness, then, is not what makes me exist - in the popular sense of the word at least.

The word 'self' itself seems to imply awareness at the outset. I am not 'myself' to anyone other than 'me'. And I am only a 'person' in the eyes of others when they recognize that within me lies something akin to what they discover within their own bodies. In that sense, 'I' did not exist prior to my conscious awakening. This consideration plays a large part in the justification of abortion and also factors into 'end of life' issues. So long as the fetus has no awareness of itself, no consciousness, our ability to sympathize with it will be greatly limited. It is similar in the case of those who are in 'persistent vegetative states'. I have often heard it said about such cases, when the removal of life support is considered, that 'they are gone', 'they are no longer in there'. I remember thinking that very thing at my grandfather's funeral, after seeing the 'empty shell' that was his body. 'He' was no longer there. That is, the self-consciousness was gone.

Every day we part with parts. Skin cells are lost, blood cells die, hair falls out etc. But so long as our consciousness remains intact, we think little of it. It is only when the loss poses some threat to our continued consciousness and comfort (which itself is only a concern to our conscious existence) that we become concerned with the passing of all these individual entities. In a very real sense, we die every day, though not completely. But seeing as our lives began before consciousness, what reason have we to believe they will end after consciousness? Throughout the whole controversy surrounding the death of Terri Schiavo it was never suggested that she, though she was in a 'persistent vegetative state', was not in fact alive. We cannot say, then, that life begins when we reach such and such a state of awareness, nor can we say that life ends when that awareness has passed. The living creature is not centered in consciousness - it is not centered around the brain. After all, there are many forms of life that consist of one single cell. Such creatures will never possess consciousness, yet they live and exist all the same. My own past self, if it was placed at my side in space, would appear entirely distinct from my present person. The differences in size, position, opinion, age etc. would lead us to conclude without hesitation that the two objects were absolutely distinct. But in time there is nothing but a seamless progression of matter.

It is said that human life begins at conception. But this is very clearly false. In the transformation that takes place when the counterpart gametes meet, there is no passing away and coming to be. The living matter from the father and mother unite; they are not eliminated, they are transformed. The life of the parents literally carries on into the children and from them to their grandchildren in an unbroken chain of life. There is no moment in which the parent's cell has passed and yet the child's has not yet come to be. The parents' cells become the child. The parents become the child. Though the rest of their parts continue on separately for a time, the parts that became the child live as long as the child lives.

Individuality is a spacial conception, applying to us only insofar as we perceive ourselves to be separated from others by some length, width or height. In time, however, our connection to our parents, and ultimately to our first parents, is absolute and indissoluble - there is no expanse separating their flesh from our flesh. The two are connected seamlessly. We are one flesh.

To draw a line between what belongs to our parents and what belongs to us we must arbitrarily fix a moment as the dividing line. Conception, quickening, birth, weening, adult independence - it matters not which moment we choose for our division, it is still chosen by us for our own purposes.

To the Christian this means, in the very strictest sense possible, that we are in our very substance, Adam; and his sin belongs to us. Whether you accept the Christian tradition or not, however, and whatever you may call your first father, you are not distinct from him as an object in time. What distinction exists is made arbitrarily and with a prejudice to our own personal consciousness. Insofar as this first man is the cause of all men, all moral judgment rests upon his shoulders. And insofar as mankind is wicked, that wickedness is chargeable to his account - this is regardless of whether you, with the Hebrews, call him Adam or by some other name, or whether you consider him an individual at all.

Causality deals with the whole causal nexus, however, and not just one object alone. That being the case, the cause of the present is the past, and the cause of the future is the present. This means that when we speak of the cause of the Holocaust, we must, if we are to give a full account of it, describe the whole of history, and not just a single detail. Martin Luther wrote a vicious pamphlet against the Jews3, but he did not 'cause' the Holocaust. Neither did Nietzsche4, though he viciously attacked Judaism on philosophical and theological grounds.

Even Hitler could not have managed such an enormous endeavor all by his own power, if any power, properly speaking, truly belonged originally to him. It is, to speak truly, all these factors (and a great many more) together that comprised the cause of the Holocaust.

But if causality only applies to states of the world and cannot be applied to single objects (since they, when fully understood, imply the rest) except by ignoring some aspect of the situation, then the cause of the holocaust, and all other human evils, is the world itself and its First Cause in whom all power of determination truly and ultimately rests. Even as we are simply the extension of our First Father in time, our First Father is but one of many extensions in time of that one Cause from which all else derives its being. The world and all those that dwell therein are simply so many parts and portions of this one entity extended throughout history. What is chargeable to me is chargeable to the Cause of me. But I cannot be separated from this cause - for the causal connection requires identity. I am the cause of this world; its First Cause, and you with me.

Thus, considering the unity of cause and effect, and how the former by definition determines the latter, the true subject of moral judgment can be no individual man, but rather the whole world in its entirety.

But some say, 'this world is evil!'

And some say, 'God is the First Cause of the world.'

If it is only the cause that is chargeable for the failures of its effect, then to call God the First Cause of the world, and to call the world evil, is to commit blasphemy. It is also, insofar as causality implies an identity between the cause and effect, undiluted pantheism.

1. Herbert, Frank, _Dune_ , (Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965) 48.

2. Descartes, Rene, _Discourse on Method_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59/59-h/59-h.htm (December 2012).

3. Luther, Martin, _The Jews and their Lies,_ http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html (December 2012).

4. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _The Antichrist_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19322/19322-h/19322-h.htm (December 2012)

[Chapter 7.  
Lego My Ego](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

_'...if a man is firmly persuaded that every good deed is repaid to him a hundredfold in a future life, then such a conviction is valid and effective in precisely the same way as a safe bill of exchange at a very long date, and he can give from egoism just as, from another point of view, he would take from egoism._ 1 _'_

\- Arthur Schopenhauer

_'At you, ye virtuous ones, laughed my beauty to-day. And thus came its voice unto me: "They want—to be paid besides!"' 'Ye want to be paid besides, ye virtuous ones! Ye want reward for virtue, and heaven for earth, and eternity for your to-day?' - Nietzsche_ 2

The remainder of Part II will be devoted to certain things that greatly interest those who are interested in ethics and morality. In this chapter we will consider the idea of rewards and punishments as they relate to moral judgment. In the next chapter I will give some brief thoughts on the illusory nature of justice.

In our consideration of the subject of moral judgment, we have seen that when the subject is incapable of performing its duty, it cannot be bound with an obligation without contradiction. If the subject of a moral judgment cannot do what it ought to do, then it contains within itself the contradiction of the duty it is being bound with, which logically proves the impossibility, and therefore the absurdity, of the goal to which the duty is, supposedly connected. If there is no means to the end, then there is no ground for moral judgment.

If the moral subject is an effect (having no power of its own), then, the judgment truly belongs to its cause, since it is only in relation to the cause that the effect has its being. If the moral subject cannot obey, then it is clear that the goal itself is absurd.

To be the subject of a valid moral judgment, man must have a free will - he must be the cause of his actions, but not the effect of previous causes. This led us to the question of whether man can be the subject of moral judgment at all.

Causality, when properly comprehended, refers simply to the ever changing universe, and moral judgments, if everything is causally connected (determined), can only be rested upon the First Cause itself, be it whatsoever you will. The question, then, which ethics must ask (unless we take man to be something independent of matter, a soul perhaps), is not what man ought to do, but what the world itself ought to be. The world is both the subject and the goal, the object of moral judgment.

The object of moral judgment (the purpose of the world itself) will fall under our perusal in Part III. But before we turn our attention to the object of moral judgment, I want to consider one final matter relating to man as the moral subject. There is something sought after in morality; and if that something is objective, then it cannot be derived from the interests of the subject, which vary from person to person. But if the goal is not in the interests of the subject, what interest does the subject have in its attainment?

If I were told that I would no longer be getting paid for my labor, that very moment I would end my employment. I do not work for the fun of it, I work for the money. That is the end of the story. I do not 'believe' in my work. I do not have a passion for it; I do it for the money.

Now this may seem like a selfish question... but what is in it for me? Why should I do my duty? We've seen that objective moral values, if they exist, cannot have the interests of an individual as their basis. They do not appeal to our desires or our sympathies for their validity. But supposing mankind has a purpose, and supposing him to be a causal agent, whether as an individual or as a species, a very good question now arises: Why would man ever choose to do his duty? Subjective moral duties have our desires and our sympathies at their very root, so they serve as their own motivation. If I want to become wealthy, then hard work and sacrifice (and a great deal of good luck) are necessary actions. In this case, it is in my interest to work hard and forgo frivolous enjoyment while I pursue wealth. But these lesser pleasures are not passed by because I do not desire pleasure, they are passed by because, like Epicurus, I have a greater pleasure in sight.

But the purpose of mankind, supposing there to be one, makes no appeal to our own desires, as these are varied and contradictory. As the blacksmith needn't have any regard for the happiness of his hammer and tongs, we have no reason to expect our own personal pleasure and happiness to follow from our virtue. How then can this question be answered? Why would I ever want to do that which does me no good?

It is easy to imagine a situation where our objective moral values might come into direct conflict with our own desires. If we suppose for instance, that men ought to be honest (a seemingly safe assumption), what do we tell the German family that is hiding a family of Jews from Nazi soldiers? Should they tell the soldiers the truth? Clearly, if their purpose is to be honest, then it doesn't matter what the consequences are, it is their objective duty to tell the Nazis where the Jews are hidden. I once heard about a teacher who saved her students by lying to a gunman about their location - though, for love, she lay down her own life for them, she ended her life with a lie - a sin according to those who must universalize the evil of deception.

Innumerable other examples of these sorts of conflicts can easily be produced; circumstances where our own desires and sympathies stare objective universal principles in the face. But why choose the hard path, the unpleasant path - why choose virtue?

In the twenty-third Psalm, David uses the imagery of a shepherd and his sheep to portray his relationship to God. He says:

'The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.'

Jesus, who is the Good Shepherd, made extensive use of this imagery during his ministry. He says:

'But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.' (Matthew 10:5-6)

'Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.' (Matthew 10:16)

'What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days.' (Matthew 12:11-12)

'If a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.' (Matthew 18:12-14)

'And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.' (Matthew 25:31-32)

'All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.' (Matthew 26:31)

'I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd. Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.' (John 10:14-17)

Certainly the beauty of these passages depends upon taking the analogy no further than it is meant. When I ask people what shepherds do with their sheep I get several different answers. But the most common answers are that shepherds raise sheep for their wool, and for their...meat.

This certainly puts the 'good shepherd' in an entirely different light, and the 'lost' sheep as well. If it is the slaughterhouse and the dinner plate that awaits them upon their return, we might very well not only sympathize with the 'lost' sheep, we may actually root for them. If the sheep themselves were aware of what the good shepherd has in store for his flock, I imagine every one of them would bolt the moment the opportunity arose. How can human beings be expected to fulfill their purpose if it comes directly into conflict with their own interests, or even their own survival? It is better to reign in Hell than to be 'served' in Heaven.

In Plato's 'Republic' there is an interesting debate about whether or not Justice is better than injustice. In Book II there is a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon in which Glaucon expresses the arguments of those who believe that injustice is better for man than Justice. He suggests that 'to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just.'

If you are a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien you will undoubtedly find his illustration as interesting as it is effective. He tells the tale of a man named Gyges who discovered a magic ring, the wearer of which is rendered invisible. In the end Gyges seduces the queen, murders the king and takes control of the kingdom - he commits injustice, but without fear of punishment. He does not need to fear that others will do to him what he has done. He is utterly above all consequences. Glaucon brings home the point with this powerful statement:

'Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and sleep with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust.'

He suggests that the true test of whether or not a just life is superior to an unjust life would be to have the two lives set apart so that the unjust man lives in such a way that his injustice is never recognized, and he maintains his honor throughout his life. Of the just man Glaucon says, 'Let him be the best of men, and let him be thought the worst; then he will have been put to the proof; and we shall see whether he will be affected by the fear of infamy and its consequences. And let him continue thus to the hour of death; being just and seeming to be unjust. When both have reached the uttermost extreme, the one of justice and the other of injustice, let judgment be given which of them is the happier of the two.3'

Indeed, it is difficult to argue with this description. If I could take whatever I need and want without suffering any penalty whatsoever, why would I hesitate even for a moment? This is in fact the very attitude we all have toward our food and toward the natural resources of the earth. Whether we are vegetarians or carnivores we all take the lives of other living things for our own sakes. We do so without fear because we know that the animals are not capable of retaliation. We have nothing to fear from the apple tree (this side of the rainbow) when we pick its fruit. We can devour with impunity; with no fear of suffering any injustice ourselves. It is only because other human beings are capable of doing the same things to us that we have contracts and laws and governments. Justice is a '...compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation...'.

Much to the same effect, Thomas Hobbes calls man's natural state without a government a war of 'every man, against every man'4. The chaos that would rule in such a state necessitates the existence of the government. Man, according to Hobbes, has by nature the right to do as he wishes, but that leaves him as vulnerable as it does entitled. The solution: Compromise (Justice).

Why should I choose duty over self? What can serve as the motivation for such a decision?

I think it is only fair that this question be asked. For we are not ants, and we are not automatons. The ant may go about his business motivated entirely by instinct and passion; he simply follows his programming. Whether designed by chance or by intelligence, he asks no questions. He is a natural machine. Automatons do as they are bidden, acting with pure physics as their lords. If this is the case with mankind, then all our moral meanderings terminate in a dead end, as we have clearly seen.

At the end of the day, when we hang up this mortal cloak, do we have any reason to expect good to come from a good life? Or will we have labored in vain?

The answer that Plato ultimately offers us is this:

'We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life is still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do whatever he likes with the single exception that he is not to acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice and vice...?5'

How can a man enjoy all the dainties and gains of injustice when his very soul is corrupted. Similarly, Jesus warned, 'For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?' (Matthew 16:26)

But moralists have never succeeded in showing a link between happiness and virtue. A man like Plato may very well find it difficult to enjoy himself when he is acting in a way that is contrary to what he thinks is right. But I think experience shows us that there are many in this world that can smile in the midst of their own dark deeds. In Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche sticks a pin in the air-filled ethics of Aristotle and Plato by simply mentioning 'the wicked who are happy - a species about whom moralists are silent.6' Indeed, if it is possible to do wrong, and yet to truly be happy, then the pursuit of happiness is proved to be an affair entirely alien to morality and virtue. For my part, I am disposed to agree with Nietzsche on this point.

David hoped to 'dwell in the house of the LORD for ever'(Psalm 23), but what if all that awaited him was the dinner plate? What if man is not the bride at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, but rather the entree?

We should very seriously ask ourselves, especially us Christians, if we would still do good, if the rewards and punishments were reversed: Eternal Hell for a righteous life, and Eternal Bliss for a life of vice. For my part, the answer makes me tremble, for it forces me to come face to face with my own egotism.

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain his own soul, and lose the whole world?

1. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _The World as Will and Representation_ , (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966), 295.

2. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 61.

3. Plato, _The Republic_ , (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), 40-43.

4. Hobbes, Thomas, _The Leviathan,_ (Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 70

5. Plato, _The Republic_ , (New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004), 147.

6. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Beyond Good and Evil_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4363/4363-h/4363-h.htm (December 2012)

[Chapter 8.  
Jury and Injury](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

Orual: 'Are the gods not just?'

_Fox: 'Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?'_ 1

-Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

Every moral philosopher gives their own account of justice. To some it is the entirety of virtue (Aristotle2), to some it is a compromise between the chaos and war that would exist otherwise (Hobbes3). But one thing is certain: There are few who do not hold it in high honor, and there are few who do not see Justice itself as a worthy goal. Consequently there are few that do not make use of it in their own moral judgments. Whether it is my son claiming that it is 'not fair!' that he doesn't get more time to play LEGO or a gay rights advocate marching with a banner that reads, 'EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL', they are all appealing to the same principle as a goal for our duties.

Parents long ago learned how to deal with these sorts of claims. 'Who ever told you life was supposed to be fair?' they demand. The whole question of gay marriage might very well be solved in the same way. 'Who says that you should have equal treatment?'

One morning my son gave me a very hard time about getting ready for school. He insisted that it was not fair that he should have to spend so much time at school and so little time playing LEGO (He blamed it on President Obama!).

'It isn't fair!' he claimed.

I asked him, 'Tell me, do you really want life to be fair?'

'YES!' he exclaimed.

'How many children are there in the world?' I asked him.

'A lot,' he answered.

'And do you think most of those kids have as many LEGOs as you do?'

Seeing my point even before I made it he very reluctantly answered, 'No.'

'If life is fair, doesn't that mean that you should give some of your LEGOs to the other kids?' He had no answer to this, so I concluded, 'Do not ask for 'Fair' unless you are willing to accept it.'

I say the same to all who march in the streets calling out for Justice.

Shall the poisoner of Cockroaches accuse the Nazi executioner of injustice? Shall the vegetarian who consumes apples accuse the carnivore who consumes cows? Are cows more sacred than apples? Shall the man with fish in a tank in his living room accuse the slave holder of injustice?

One might object saying, 'Ah, but human beings are of greater worth?'

So says the human being!

Recall what has already been said about Naturalism and the implications should be clear. Justice, in Naturalism, is an illusion; a complete hoax and fabrication of the human imagination. We define men; we give them their rights by our own subjective understandings and sympathies. We grant the rights, and we can take them away whenever we please. If Naturalism is true, then, let gays marry... if it so pleases you. But if it does not, do not fear their riotous call for Justice. For justice is something we made up ourselves. We made the rules, and who is to say we cannot also change them?

When the first Europeans landed in the West, how absurd was their 'claim' on the land? 'I hereby claim this land for Spain!' they said. But they did not realize that the land was already inhabited. But we cannot accuse them of injustice, for that would be to presume that the natives had a more valid claim to the land. No, the Native Americans claim to the land was just as absurd. The first time they felled a tree they committed injustice, the first tent they made of animal skin was made through injustice. Life is injustice (all animals are heterotrophs); and without injustice there would be no life at all.

If there is any merit to the idea of justice that is entertained by mankind in general, it can only be because human beings are in some way more precious to the gods than their animal compatriots. But perhaps more interesting than the question of the legitimacy of justice, however, is the question of its possibility. The pessimistic Jewish thinker who wrote Ecclesiastes says:

'All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?' (Ecclesiastes 7:15-17)

As important as Justice is to us as human beings, it seems to remain entirely outside of our grasp. A man may live his entire life in poverty, always giving to others and sacrificing his own comfort for the good of others, yet in the end he may die a painful and shameful death. Meanwhile the world is full of those who steal from others and defraud their fellow men for their entire lives without so much as suffering a slap on the wrist. A tyrant like Adolph Hitler can, with a single bullet, escape answering for his crimes altogether. Thus his fate is no worse than all the innocent men he slaughtered and all the heroic dead that fought to stop him. His fate is demonstrably more desirable than that of many better men.

If there is no God, then justice (I mean, justice in the popular acceptation of it - we will see in Part III that true justice is as immediate as it is inescapable) cannot possibly be obtained. There can be no equality, there can be no fairness. In this world the wicked and the just share the same frailties and perils. The tyrant dies peacefully in his sleep, the corrupt politician enjoys his long retirement without fear of penalty, and the mass murderer can have it no worse than his victims. At least, so long as there is no God. To the soul that has not wholly removed God from his thinking, however, death may not turn out to be an escape at all, and the tyrant who cuts his own throat to avoid an earthly punishment may do as well as the proverbial frog - jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Of course, just because God CAN raise the dead, and just because he CAN exact justice from the soul after death (or reward the soul as the case may be), it doesn't mean that he does.

If there is any such thing as Justice, we must look for it beyond this world. But can we really expect to find Justice in the heavens? And do we really know what we are asking for? Are we willing to accept it?

But here, when we raise these immensely important questions, Reason and Nature alike are entirely silent.

'There is a vanity which is done upon the earth; that there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous: I said that this also is vanity. ' (Ecclesiastes 8:14)

1. Lewis, C. S., _Till We Have Faces_ , (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1984), 297.

2. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , 2005, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012)

3. Hobbes, Thomas _The Leviathan_ , (Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 80

[PART III:  
The Object](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

[Chapter 1:  
Moral Law Within](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.'

_\- Immanuel Kant_ 1

I don't know how many times I have seen 'Religion' blamed for all the world's ills. Certainly there have been many religious wars, and certainly religious people have been behind a great deal of trouble in this world, but to blame religion itself, as though it were some single monolithic organization or mentality is fundamentally unfair (not to mention ignorant). When it is countered that great numbers of people have been killed in non-religious states like the former Soviet Union it is commonly objected that you cannot lump non-religious people together as if they were one group. Of course, by attacking Religion generally the accuser is, in fact, the one who is lumping non-religious people together (in contrast to the class he is assailing). And of course, in attacking Religion itself the accuser lumps the Amish of Lancaster and the Buddhists of Tibet into the same group as the Taliban and the Crusaders of old, which, I dare say, is as unfair as blaming the late Christopher Hitchens for Oliver Cromwell's oppressive policies on the ground that they are both English. Not all religious people can be charged with violence. Nor can they all be charged with ignorance, superstition or whatever other vices 'Religion' is commonly charged with. Of course, if the critic means only, 'some religions' or 'some religious people', then he is not really criticizing 'religion' at all. He speaks incorrectly. Some English are drunkards; but I would be looking for trouble if I were to say, simply, 'English are drunkards.'

As far as the number of people killed in religious wars is concerned, I would very much like to see the figures. I know, for example, that it is estimated that Adolph Hitler killed some six million Jews. I have also heard that Joseph Stalin killed some twenty-three million people. But how many people were killed by religious wars throughout history? How many were killed in non-religious wars? Unless a number can be given for both of these variables, any judgment concerning their ratio is nothing more than hot air. Unless for instance it could be demonstrated that religious wars have killed no less than, let's say, 400,000,000 people, and non-religious wars have killed no more than 200,000,000, we really cannot say with fairness which side has killed more. It is a simple mathematical comparison. Until someone can provide numbers, and numbers beyond a certain margin of error, I will regard all such accusations (from whatever quarter they originate) as entirely vacuous.

I am not a good debater, so I generally avoid these sorts of conversations. But on one occasion I decided to ask the accuser about the origin of morality. His answer seemed to indicate that morality was somehow 'just there'; it was to be found in the human mind in some way. But we have already seen it demonstrated, as Aristotle's Dictum requires, that observation can only provide us with Empirical propositions. Thus we can be certain that it is not through any consideration of the object itself that we derive moral judgments. On the other hand, it is equally clear that if morality is derived from some quality of the thinking subject, it is not objective.

When a history student rails against the religious wars of the Crusaders, for instance, he takes it for granted that the wars were, in fact, bad. In order to make an objective moral judgment about anything that human beings do we must know what human beings are supposed to do in the first place. Sympathy (especially MODERN WESTERN sympathy) convinces us that we oughtn't kill innocent people. But sympathy is like water, taking the shape of whatever container it is in. Suppose the Religious warriors simply did not pity their foes. If sympathy is the source of morality, as it is in subjective systems of morality, the crusaders cannot have done anything wrong. The truth is, those religious warriors have not violated their consciences at all; they have violated ours.

But clearly this was not what the accuser has in mind. In his mind all the death and suffering so-called religious wars have inflicted upon mankind is proof positive that Religion is bad for humanity. But Osama Bin Laden obviously views his own war as wholly and entirely good. His followers cheer when innocent people die; and they are filled with joy at the thought of car-bombs and terror attacks. If morality is subjective, then they stand on as firm a foundation as we do when we condemn them. It is all desire and sympathy, and they have their own sympathies and desires. To suggest that such men can do as their sympathies and desires guide them, yet still do wrong, is to suggest a foundation for morality that is distinct from sympathy - distinct from our subjective wishes. Yet such objective moral values can only be found in the supposition that man has an objective goal - a purpose. But this most certainly cannot be discovered in Nature, as we saw in Part I.

This brings us to Theology: The study of God. This study, when connected with morality, is of the utmost importance. For if God is the originator of morality, we cannot afford to make mistakes about his nature. For instance, if it were believed that God almighty had cursed an entire race of people, then such a belief could potentially justify any number of crimes against them. On the other hand, if God DID curse an entire race of people, we might, mistakenly grant them rights that the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth has denied them.

When Theology comes into contact with ethics \- that is the birth of Religion. A System of Theology is a system of belief about God, an Ethical system is a system of behavior; a Religion is a System of behavior that is based upon a system of theological (transcendent) belief; the marriage of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. As objective morality itself depends entirely upon God, any true system of objective moral duties will be by nature Religious. It brings our purpose to bear on our practices. The vacuousness of any system that pretends to be objective without reference to God's will is easily discoverable, as has been shown already.

When my Chevy Cavalier broke down on the side of the highway it was second nature to get out, open the trunk, and take a look under the hood. Looking under the hood did me no good, however: I do not know anything about cars, so how can I judge what is wrong with my car? The mechanic can look at each part and compare its condition to its purpose. On this basis he makes his diagnosis. But without knowing the purpose of the human machine, we cannot make any objective moral judgment at all. How can we judge the ancient crusader without knowing what man is truly supposed to be like?

There are many who believe that human beings naturally have some sense of what is right and wrong. The Apostle Paul was certainly one of them, in Romans 2:14-15 he says, 'For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.'

According to St. Paul, and innumerable other theologians, pastors and philosophers, there is some sort of Moral Law written in the hearts of every single human being. Certainly, if our accuser expects the Crusaders of yore to bear the same moral code as we do, then there must be something that each member of our race holds in common - some universal moral law that applies to all men and women.

In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis references this Moral Law. In the first chapter of the book he says:

'Quarreling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.2'

Certainly it is to just such a law that a man must appeal if he expects others to be ruled by the same things that rule him. The folly of thinking that men who lived a thousand years ago (or a thousand miles away for that matter) would be ruled by the same SUBJECTIVE moral standards as ourselves is barely worth addressing at this point.

It is the purpose of this portion of the book to consider the source and origin of objective moral judgments. We will be looking, no longer at the subject of moral judgments, but rather at the Object. If there should prove to be no such object, or if it should prove that we cannot know such an object, then the question of whether or not a man's actions are predetermined will not matter in the least. As an archer, man may shoot where he will, but let him strike whatsoever he will, he cannot tell if he has shot true unless he knows his target.

1. Kant, Immanuel, _Critique of Practical Reason_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2004), 170.

2. Lewis, C. S., _Mere Christianity_ , (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1996), 17.

[Chapter 2:  
Formal Affair](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'But it is impossible to conceive that a whole nation of men should all publicly reject and renounce what every one of them certainly and infallibly knew to be a law; for so they must who have it naturally imprinted on their minds ... This is enough to satisfy us that no practical rule which is anywhere universally, and with public approbation or allowance, transgressed, can be supposed innate.'

_\- John Locke_ 1

That children are not born with Moral principles is a truth that any parent can tell you. In fact, children are not born with any ideas (properly speaking) at all. A newborn baby does not know what a 'human' being is, for example, nor do they know what it means to murder. They certainly cannot, therefore, judge such a thing to be wrong. They know nothing of killing, and even less of 'justified' or 'unjustified' killing.

The old crusaders and religious warriors whom our accuser berates could not be opposed to texting while driving. They have no notion of either a text message, or of an automobile. Nor will it do to say that this specific moral judgment can be derived from a general one. For example, 'Don't risk the lives of other human beings', certainly encompasses texting while driving, but not so in the mind of one who knows nothing about it. Our general ideas are formed out of our particular ideas, not the other way around. So even this very general statement cannot be known to one who has no abstract notion of human beings (an infant for instance).

But how is it then that man can have an Inner Law, when without first experiencing things he can form no judgments? The same question could be asked of all our other knowledge. How do we know, for instance, that we ourselves are actually mortal? It is something that we have no empirical basis for believing, and when at last we do, we are not capable of believing it. I, as far as I am aware, have never died. How can I know that my death is a certainty? Certainly people are not born knowing that they will someday die any more than they are born knowing they will some day marry or have children or grow pimples.

In answering my oldest son's many questions I once told him, 'Everybody dies'.

It is very revealing to consider his reaction. He knew instinctively that this meant that someday HE would die. But where did this knowledge come from? I did not say that 'You' will die, I said 'Everybody' will die. He discovered its personal application through Logic. The word 'human', which is what is meant by 'everybody', is an abstract term that stands for a whole host of individual creatures. Whatever is said about this group applies to anything that is contained therein, as per Aristotle's dictum de omni et nullo. Thus, when it is said that 'All humans are mortal', we immediately recognize, since we know that we are contained in and represented by the word 'human', that we also are mortal.

The form of such (universal affirmative) syllogisms, when expressed in symbols, looks like this:

Every X is Y

Every Z is X

Therefore, Z is Y

When my son understands death, and when he has an idea of what a human being is, then he can replace the variables (X,Y, and Z) with those terms and compare those ideas with reality. When I tell him, 'Every man dies (is mortal)', he puts those terms into their places in the syllogism to draw his conclusion.

X = Man

Y = Death

Z = Me

With this empirical content now in place, the form takes over and leads us to the appropriate conclusion.

Every man (X) is mortal (Y).

I (my son; Z) am a man (X).

Therefore, I (Z) am mortal (Y).

The reason I did not have to tell my son specifically that HE is mortal is because Reason leads him there itself. But notice that I only taught him what death is, what man is, that he is a man, and that every man dies; I NEVER taught him the Syllogism - I never taught him how to reason. The content of each term in this particular argument was provided by experience. But the form itself was already there. Nobody was ever taught the FORM of Logic.

My younger son proved that this form was already in his mind even as a very small infant, though his limited experience did not allow it to be used properly. One of the first words he learned to say was 'Dog' and he learned that the sound it made was 'Woof'. When he looked out into the yard and saw a squirrel, he said, 'Dog' and proceeded to make the 'woof' sound.

Logically his reasoning was essentially this:

Every Dog says 'Woof'.

This creature (the squirrel) is a Dog.

Therefore, this creature says 'Woof'.

Logically his argument is flawless. It is his lack of experience that led him astray as far as the content is concerned. But it is clear that before he even reached his first birthday the 'form' of knowledge was already fully in place in his mind. The form of Logic is not taught to us, yet we make use of it from our infancy until our death. If man has within him an Inner Moral Law, then it cannot be the content of the moral law that is innate, but only the 'form' of the law. You cannot have within you a law against murder, if you do not know what death is, let alone 'wrongful' death. But inasmuch as the syllogistic 'form' MUST be within you prior to the content, each man has within him the 'form' of moral judgment.

We saw that without their connection to a goal, imperative words like 'should' or 'ought' have no rational interaction with reality (should and is not are not contradictory). But when understood to imply a hypothetical goal toward which our reason is directed, these imperatives take on the form of a hypothetical proposition. (Friedrich 'should no't abuse his wife implies that 'If Friedrich were a good man, then he DOES NOT abuse his wife' - an empirical proposition.)

The Imperative proposition 'X should Y' can be stated as the hypothetical empirical proposition 'If Z, then X is Y' (where Z is understood to represent the goal that is hypothetically connected with the duty, but which is typically unstated for practical purposes)

The content we gain, of course, through experience:

X = A man

Y = A man that does not abuse his wife

Z = A man is a good husband

Once the content is in place Reason takes over and we can make our judgment:

If a man is a good husband (Z), then the man (X) does not-abuse his wife (Y).

There is not a soul that can be born with this knowledge, since no one is born knowing any of these terms. But the FORM of the moral judgment, the FORM of duty, is intrinsic to logic itself, and is our possession from the moment we first begin to comprehend words (Logos/Logic). That being the case, the form of moral judgment is part of man's a priori rational faculties, and will be found in every rational creature, be he from whatsoever continent or galaxy.

I have heard gay rights supporters suggest say that 'If you hate gay marriage so much, then don't get one; but mind your own business and let others do what they want'. This statement in effect amounts to the claim that the opposition to gay marriage is born out of personal prejudice; that is, they are dismissing their opponent's opinion as subjective.

Yet when they make the claim that homosexuals have a 'right' to marry, they cannot have subjective morality in mind at all, or they would be guilty of the same thing for which they criticize their opponents. If human beings universally have a duty to allow same-sex marriage, in fact, if human beings universally have any duties at all, then the appeal must be made to a universal (objective) goal, which can only be derived from an understanding of our purpose.

Similarly, the chief objection to homosexuality given by Christians (aside from Scripture) is that it is 'unnatural'. This is countered by demonstrations that the behavior, in fact, occurs in the animal kingdom. But why look to the animals for proof of the naturalness of homosexuality when you have human examples of it? What the opponent of homosexuality means when they say that it is 'not natural', is not that it does not occur in nature, but that it SHOULD not. This of course, cannot be learned from nature, nor can it be disproved.

We have already seen that, objectively speaking, there is nothing discoverable in man, or in the world itself, that could lead us to an imperative judgment. The whole logical basis of morality is in place, but without a knowledge of the truth regarding God and our purpose as creatures, we can only shoot in the dark.

1. Locke, John, _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10615/pg10615.html (December 2012)

[Chapter 3:  
To Be Or Not To Be](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

_'Sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself?' - Bertrand Russell_ 1

_'Of course you can't see him, he's invisible!' - Sid Sleaze, Follow That Bird_ 2 _(Sesame Street Movie)_

_'...an omnipresent being should be recognizable precisely by being invisible... since his visibility would annul his omnipresence._ 3 _' Soren Kierkegaard_

'The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.' - Psalm 14

Finding a place to begin in philosophy is perhaps the most difficult task. Once a beginning is discovered, the rest of the system falls into place quite naturally. So naturally, in fact, that it often passes for proof of the system itself that what was assumed at the outset is proved in the conclusions.

The so-called skeptic, in that he assumes nothing, is in a similar condition; assuming nothing, and proving nothing as a result. Whether we leap or no, we are in the same state, only proving what we held at the outset. The Major Premise of any argument proves the conclusion only because it already contains the conclusion. It has been a constant criticism of Logic that it is ALL circular. All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore, Socrates is mortal. But when the term 'All men' is understood, there is no need for the Minor Premise and the Conclusion, as the Major states it all in full. What was said at first is the same as what was said at last. And while we are at it, we might as well add that the predicate, likewise, is unnecessary, as all man's qualities are meant to be represented simply by the word 'Man', so that the predicate is merely an explanation of what is given in the mere word (The importance of this will reveal itself in the Conclusion).

The fallacy of arguing in a circle is simply a matter of having so small a circle that the futility of one's reasoning is too easily detected.

But if you are inclined to doubt Logic, then you are cut off, and we have nothing to learn from you. If you are inclined to accept Logic, you accept what is given you without question, or, more properly speaking, without reason. To ask a reason for reason itself is also circular - for you are assuming the very thing that must be proven. But you must begin somewhere, or not begin at all.

If we possess unlimited knowledge about the world itself; if we know all facts and figures, past, present and future alike, we are still in no position to discover whether or not there is a God. The world is the totality of all that exists, it is all space and all time. But what follows from this logically is all space and all time - but nothing further. From the world you can only prove the world, because what can be concluded is only what is given - what is said in the conclusion is no more than what was said in the major premise.

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Logic is restricted to what is given. It has been suggested, however, that the existence of God is given in the very conception of God. This is the Ontological argument, which can be formulated as follows:

1. The greatest conceivable being must necessarily exist.

2. God is the greatest conceivable being.

3. Therefore, God must necessarily exist.

St. Anselm is generally credited with formulating this argument. But properly speaking, it is not a proof or a demonstration of God's existence. St. Anselm himself, in his Proslogium, states that, 'I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, -- that unless I believed, I should not understand.4' It cannot be pretended, therefore, that his argument will lead the mind to God - one must begin with God in order to find him in this argument.

The value of this argument, if it were accepted, is that it attempts to prove God's existence from pure reason alone. It does not depend, as the Cosmological Argument does, upon the perceptible causal chain, or, as the Teleological Argument does, upon the beauty of nature or complexity of living things, which are discovered and not known a priori. Rather, it depends upon nothing but Reason, and would, therefore, be universal and immediate to all rational creatures - and as compulsive as mathematical propositions, which alone among the various kinds of knowledge possess absolute certainty. This latter quality is probably the source of this argument's incredible appeal among theistic thinkers throughout history. If it were accepted, there would not only be proof that God exists, but proof that, once understood, cannot possibly be doubted, rejected or refuted.

The argument suggests that God is a being 'than which nothing greater can be conceived5'. In other words, God, by definition, is the greatest conceivable being; if one could conceive of a greater being, then they are not thinking of God at all.

We can certainly THINK of such a being, the argument suggests, and all would readily admit this to be the case. But does this really prove that the being exists? Anselm, and Descartes after him, argued that a being that exists in reality, and not merely as an idea in the mind, is greater than a being that exists only in the mind - and is therefore that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Which is to say that the existence of God is part and parcel of the conception and is implied by it - for a being that exists in reality is greater than a being that exists only in thought. So the greatest conceivable being (God), by definition, exists. Descartes says, '...the existence [of God] can no more be separated from the essence of God, than the idea of a mountain from that of a valley...6'

To say, they suggest, that 'God does not exist', would contain a contradiction, since the term 'God' implies his existence (otherwise you could think of something greater). To deny God would be tantamount to saying, 'God exists and does not exist', which, of course, is utter nonsense.

This argument, however, insofar as the term itself is taken to imply existence, is manifestly circular. In concluding that God exists you are saying no more in the conclusion than what was said in the Major Premise - that God exists. You are simply placing the term 'supreme being' or 'greatest conceivable being' in as a place holder to make it look like an entire syllogism. It is for this reason that the argument cannot bring you from a state of unbelief to a state of belief - which is the purpose of a proof. Certainly, if you believe that God is a necessary being, then that very idea proves itself - to you, insofar as you believe. But if you are beginning in ignorance, or in the contrary position, then the argument is of no value.

Soren Kierkegaard realized this when he explained:

'"A supreme being who does not exist must possess all perfections, including that of existence; ergo, a supreme being who does not exist does exist." This would be a strange conclusion. Either the supreme being was non-existent in the premises, and came into existence in the conclusion, which is quite impossible; or he was existent in the premises, in which case he cannot come into existence in the conclusion. For in the latter case we have in the conclusion merely a deceptive form for the logical development of a concept, a deceptive circumlocution for a presupposition.7'

There are many ideas that imply existence, yet cannot be said to have counterparts in reality. Real unicorns, for example, contain in the conception the notion of existence. To deny their existence, then, would be a contradictory statement. The difference, of course, between a real unicorn and an imaginary unicorn is precisely and only the existence of the former. So the idea of a 'Real unicorn' implies the existence of the thing. Yet, we have no real unicorns. This, and many other examples, very clearly reveal that there is a flaw in the Ontological method of reasoning.

Here would perhaps be a good place to consider a certain carelessness with language that I have noticed as frequently in philosophy as in every day life. People do not say what they mean. By this I mean that they do not define their terms precisely, and therefore they run into confusion. People will argue for hours on end about whether or not God exists without ever settling just what they severally mean by existence in the first place. Some will go so far as to say that all men by nature know infallibly that there is a God, yet when pressed for a definition of existence they will say, 'it is unfathomable'. But how can you affirm that a predicate belongs to a subject without understanding the term? If I told you my house is a trifflerig', I dare say you would be at a loss to deny or to affirm the claim. If you do not comprehend existence, how can you know what does or does not exist? In affirming God's existence while asserting that existence is unfathomable, we are only saying that God is unfathomable. This is what many Christians do, in fact, believe - but then how is it knowledge? I know that God exists, but I also know that existence is unknowable - ergo - I do not know God.

Most people would agree with the following statements:

'Real unicorns do not exist.'

'There are no real unicorns.'

But both of these statements contradict the idea of a real unicorn, which must, by definition exist. Both statements are, therefore, as self-contradictory as the statement 'God does not exist'. But what do we mean when we say 'real unicorn' as opposed to simply 'unicorn'. Clearly, adding the appellation 'real' or 'existing' to the idea does not do anything to make the object more real.

In the case of the unicorn it is solely on the ground of the creature's absence from space-time that we make our judgment. But God, on the other hand, cannot be presented to us in space-time at all. If appearance in the world is necessary for existence, then God, its transcendent creator, cannot exist. On the other hand, if it is possible at all for God to exist, then existence is not limited to space-time; in which case we have no ground for denying the existence of anything: God's throne, unicorns, goblins, the One Ring of Sauron etc.

It is precisely in this difference that the confusion concerning this argument lies. When we say that an object exists in space-time, we are suggesting that it is actually contained therein, and relates to the rest of it in some manner. But when we speak of the existence of God, it is quite different. In the former case, the definition of existence stand before us, and we can affirm and deny as we please. But in the latter case - who knows what it means to exist? Without some definite description of what it means to exist in this sense, how can we come to a judgment?

We can throw around words like 'real' or 'existence' all day long. But if we do not know what they mean, then what hope have we of attaining the truth?

The chief flaw of the Ontological Argument lies in the fact that it takes existence in a sense that is alien to its common usage.

Napoleon Bonaparte, myself, and the next president of the United States have this in common: Time. Me, my desk and my shoes have this in common: space. These things, Napoleon, my desk etc. all exist insofar as they appear within space-time. But none of them share any predicates. The location of the desk, for instance, is different from that of the shoes, and the time of Napoleon is different from the time in which I myself live. To say of all these objects, on this ground, that they all exist, is an abstraction; an abstraction from all particular times and locations in space - all particular existences. So when we say that a horse exists, we are, in truth, affirming that it occupies some specific time and place, though the details are lost in the abstraction. But the details are no less important. Without them existence loses all meaning.

In the case of God, however, it is clear that we affirm of him no specific time or place, as he is the creator of them both. Existence as we know it has no application to him. It is, I think, absurd to say 'is' or 'is not' of that which gives to all things their is or is not-ness - in other words, their being.

COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The most popular argument for the existence of God nowadays seems to be the Cosmological argument, which rests, it claims, upon the principle of causality. The argument has many forms, but perhaps the most well-known is the Kalaam Cosmological Argument, which Christian philosopher William Lane Craig frequently expresses as follows:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence8.

We have given causality due consideration elsewhere, so I do not feel that it is necessary to repeat everything that was said earlier. What we must recall, however, is that the causal inference requires identity. It was a lack of identity that prevents us from saying that eating a strawberry on earth causes a solar flare two seconds later. It is only through change that we can think of cause and effect, and that change must be from one state INTO the next, not simply a change here and a change there. A change here and again there prove a causal connection here and again there, but not a causal connection between here and there.

So, if the world is the effect, as the cosmological argument suggests, then its cause must, in fact, BE the world in an earlier time. As soon as the identity of the subject of the change is lost, the causal connection is lost. If the world is not eternal, then it must have a beginning, as the second premise of the argument states. This First Cause, however, is simply the first state of the world, ere it was transformed into that which we behold today. This is why, earlier in this work, I suggested that the Cosmological Argument is undiluted pantheism. If we take Causality in its proper sense, understanding it to refer to changing states, then we have no alternative but to say, if God is the First Cause, that God is the world. The Major Premise of the Cosmological Argument suggests that 'Everything that begins to exist' must have a cause of its existence. Which we have understood to mean that 'Every change must have been preceded by a previous state' - a proposition that, when it is understood in this way, seems to me as intuitively certain as the proposition that 'No Bachelor is married'. Implied in the very concept of change is that which precedes (Antecedent, Cause etc.) and that which follows (Consequent, consequence, effect etc.). Thus, if anything is said to be an effect, then it must necessarily have a cause, and if anything is said to be a cause, it must necessarily have an effect. This is all a simple matter of definitions. A First Cause, then, is a state or a thing that does not follow as a result of any previous state; in other words, it is a cause of effects, but not an effect of anything else. There is no need, then, to extend the application of the cosmological principle to the First Cause itself. The questions, 'Who made God?' or 'What Caused the First Cause?' are clearly nonsensical, and are only asked by those who do not understand the argument to begin with. But if the First Cause is simply the first state, and Causality deals only with change, there is no need to extend the question further than the mere existence of the world. Atheists are constantly ridiculed for claiming that the world caused itself to exist. But it is only ridiculous so long as the principle of self-causation is not clearly expressed. The world (in its First State) caused itself (its current state) to exist.

Thus Immanuel Kant says, in his famous criticism of the Cosmological Argument, that, 'The pure cosmological proof demonstrates the existence of a necessary being, but at the same time leaves it quite unsettled, whether this being is the world itself, or quite distinct from it. To establish the truth of the latter view, principles are requisite, which are not cosmological and do not proceed in the series of phenomena.' He goes on to say, '...if we begin our proof cosmologically, by laying at the foundation of it the series of phenomena, and the regress in it according to empirical laws of causality, we are not at liberty to break off from this mode of demonstration and to pass over to something which is not itself a member of the series.' He then points out that, 'Certain philosophers have, nevertheless, allowed themselves the liberty of making such a saltus...9' Indeed, if we are to argue from matter to matter to matter then suddenly ... to spirit, we must make a leap at some point or another. But in a proof, properly so called, no saltus is permissible.

If what is given to us is the world, what we receive is the world. What reason possesses at the outset is what it concludes in the end. Causality leads us back, but it cannot lead us beyond.

IMMATERIAL

What is given to us in experience and through reason is given to us. On the other hand, of course, is the equally certain fact that what is not given to us, is not given to us. And if God is, as Christians claim, distinct from the world, then he is distinct from what is given to us in experience. What experience, then, can disprove him?

I once had someone tell me that they would not believe in God until 'He appears to me in the flesh'. Christian theology aside, I cannot help but find this to be an extraordinarily ridiculous demand. He certainly doesn't require this caliber of evidence for his belief in the existence of Antarctica or Sydney, Australia. Granted, we can visit these places (assuming they exist) and verify their reality ourselves. But what experience could lead someone to 'disbelieve' in them? Disbelief, properly speaking, is simply belief in the contradiction of a proposition. As such it requires as much proof as the proposition it opposes. For instance, if I were certain that I stood in the precise location in which the Sydney Opera House was supposedly built, and found there no such building and no such city, then and then only might I say that Sydney (as we define it) doesn't exist. Or perhaps if Sydney was a place mentioned only in The Lord of the Rings, somewhere east of Minas Tirith perhaps, then I might believe that it is not real. But when we are speaking about God, properly defined, such a demand is clearly incoherent, asking what is by its very nature an impossibility. It would be somewhat akin to refusing to believe in the color 'Green' until you had touched its hands and sides.

What kind of experience can lead someone to conclude that there is no God? It is a big universe, and we are such small creatures within it. Why would someone expect God Almighty to appear before him in all his glory? I think those who make such demands are clearly making themselves far more important than they have a right to. Someone once told me, 'I feel that if God does exist, then the burden of proof is on him.' Absurd. Why should God need to prove himself to us? Should the mechanic have to prove himself to the automobile before it functions? Of course not. Lack of experience proves nothing except one's own ignorance.

Here it might well be objected that if God is going to condemn us to hell and set us on fire for all eternity, then he should at least give us some evidence that he exists. But this is to lose sight of just what it means to be a creature. God could, with perfect justice, simply create us and cast us into hell for all eternity without pressing charges, without a trial and without a conviction. Schopenhauer seemed to believe that this was not far from the truth. If I made a sculpture out of clay and shattered it with a hammer, there is not a soul alive that would accuse me of injustice. God owes us nothing; whether we like it or not. He certainly doesn't owe us a personal visit. Such a God may be unlikeable. But that doesn't mean that he does not exist. There are many people in this world that I cannot abide, yet I affirm that they exist all the same. God does not exist to be liked by us, and all such demands for evidence and direct personal revelation will ultimately prove to be vacuous. Our hatred of God does not make him evil any more than our self-approbation makes us good.

When my wife bakes cookies, I can see them, smell them, taste them, and touch them. If I had only my sense of hearing, I might have no knowledge of the cookies at all. But I would look rather foolish saying with any degree of confidence that 'there are no cookies!' simply because I had not the tools to experience them. When a Platypus dives for shrimp for instance, they do not see them, hear them, or smell them, they sense the electronic pulses from the shrimp's muscles through a special organ in their noses. Would a creature that that lacks this faculty of electroreception be correct in concluding that there are no shrimp, when stripped of what senses they normally possess? Obviously not. From experience we may find no reason to believe that there are shrimp, but how could you possibly come to the conclusion that there are NO shrimp from a LACK of experience? The fool hath said in his heart, 'There are no shrimp.'

By definition, God cannot be material; and as such he could not (in his own nature) directly interact with our senses in the first place. He might be, as St. Paul says in the book of Acts, 'not far from every one of us', yet he might never be known because we do not have the equipment to discover him. The German mystic Meister Eckhardt, understanding this, says, '...if the soul is to know God, it must know Him outside of time and place.10'

TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

Another major argument for God's existence is the Teleological Argument, which is sometimes stated as follows:

1. Whatever exhibits marks of design must have had an intelligent maker.

2. The universe exhibits marks of design.

3. Therefore, the universe must have had an intelligent maker.

Human beings are constantly making design inferences. While camping in Shenandoah National Park my wife and I stepped out of our car to find eight or nine cars of the exact same model (some kind of tiny electric car) lined up one after another in the parking lot. Our natural assumption was that these cars were there for some common purpose, and had arrived together by design.

Were a pilot to fly over an island and see a group of stones arranged in the form of the letters 'S-O-S', he would almost certainly assume that the stones had been arranged by design, and not by mere coincidence - though coincidence is certainly possible.

There are innumerable instances where we are led to postulate the existence of intelligence. If your opponent in Poker turned out a Royal Flush in each and every hand, for example, your confidence in intelligent design might manifest itself in the form of violence.

William Paley is famous for making what is called the 'Watchmaker Analogy', which he expresses in the following manner:

'In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (...) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (...) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.11'

There are two features alluded to in the Watchmaker analogy that are of the utmost importance: Improbability and Functionality. When I was a kid, I would occasionally find a stone that, in some distant fashion, resembled an arrowhead. The only thing required of Mother Nature in this matter is that she somehow manage to mould a stone, roughly, into the shape of a triangle - a thing that, to me at least, seems highly probable. But had the 'arrowhead' been found with a shaft, some feathers and a bow and quiver, then the improbability of their appearance together would do what the appearance of the triangular stone by itself could not; they would lead me to believe that the stone was carved by an intelligent designer.

A Royal Flush is as probable a hand as any other. But it is not merely the continued appearance of this hand that would lead us to accuse our opponents with deceit, even though it is improbable that it should repeatedly appear. It is the functionality, or the usefulness of the Royal Flush - specifically, the usefulness to the other player - that makes us look with suspicion upon our opponent. A man with normal motivations, dealing himself ten no-pairs in a row, would be accused of having lousy luck, but never of cheating (in other words, there would be no Teleological inference).

If we really did discover a watch lying on the ground somewhere, we would infer that it had a maker from the fact that it is unlikely to have formed on its own, and that it actually answers to a purpose. A stick in the ground, though it can be used to tell time, is so probable by the laws of nature that one would never, just from the sight of it, assume it to be the work of a rational maker. On the other hand, however so improbable an arrangement of matter may be, if it answers to no purpose, we would not even consider calling it the work of an intelligent being. The motions of a tornado are extremely complicated, yet they are not for that reason considered the work of intelligence.

But when we say that the watch answers to a purpose, we imply that there is some goal or some end - some Telos \- for which the object has been formed. But in the case of the watch, we understand the purpose only because the purpose belongs to us, or at least, to creatures with which we are familiar. In other words, we KNOW the purpose to which the watch answers. This is a very important point to bear in mind. The stone to which Paley refers is thought to be the work of mere physics, and not of intellect, not because it is not useful for something, but only because it is not useful to US.

The heart of the matter, as far as I can tell, is the question of how it is that we perceive 'ends' within Nature. When I see letters, I recognize it as the work of a human being. But when I see organization and functionality within nature, I do not suppose it to have been the work of another person. It is entirely beyond man's ken and ability to make such things. But when I perceive within nature inanimate and unintelligent matter acting as far as I can tell according to a purpose, then I judge it to be the work of the only thing that I know of that is capable of such a thing: If not a man, then some other sort of rational mind - in this case, one so much superior to man that the word 'god' is by no means an exaggeration. But perhaps we are taking too much for granted.

I once watched a video of a sand-artist. The artist would fling sand onto the board and shift it around until it formed an image. But just as it seemed to be complete she would 'mar' the image (or so it seemed) with a chaotic gesture and disrupt what just a moment earlier had seemed to be a completed work. But despite all appearances, her movements were not chaotic at all. The new motion, though it disrupted the previous image, was part of the next stage in her 'performance'. In the end, she left a beautiful sand painting, though it was at times difficult to believe that she would be able to produce anything but a mess from her dramatic and seemingly wild hand motions. Yet here, and again, there, the audience would be shocked and amazed when they recognized what it was that she was drawing, and that it was not for naught that she so wildly dashed the sand about.

How then, can it be judged whether something has an 'end' or not? You certainly cannot reject the idea of Design simply because from where you stand you cannot see the end. If we only looked at the sand-artist for an instant, not seeing in her drawing anything but meaningless lines and senseless forms, then we might wrongly assume that she did it all without a design in mind. In the same way, if we looked at the drawing at another instant and saw an image that seemed to us to be designed, but did not look the next instant when she obliterates it with a swift and chaotic stroke, we might make an opposite yet equally presumptuous judgment*.

_*NOTE: For those who are familiar with the band Dream Theater, consider the chaos of the song 'The Dance of Eternity', the whole of which does nothing but set the mood for the beauty of the song 'One Last Time', which largely resolves the tension of the wild instrumental song that precedes it. One might listen to the first song by itself and wonder, 'what is the use of all this noise?' It is to build up to that song which comes after it, though while you listen to the quick and pulsing sounds of the first song, you might think they were not making music at all_ 12 _._

The Major Premise of the Teleological argument does not exhaust every possibility. It is readily recognized that things may appear to be designed which are the works of physics. On the other hand, things may actually be designed, yet have the appearance of chance or accident. An example of the former might be the beauty of a crystal, which, though it is complex and organized, is simply the working of natural law. On the other hand, an example of the latter (of things that appear to be undesigned) could be Peter Pan's hideout, which deliberately and designedly resembles a natural tree. Thus the proposition that 'whatever bears marks of design must have a designer' can only be taken as an expression of a certain degree of probability. As such, it is not an a proof, properly speaking.

But the Minor Premise, 'The universe bears marks of Design', is where the argument really runs into difficulty. What is it about this universe that we seem to believe requires an intelligent author. If the universe were nothing but dead rocks, volcanos and black holes, would we still feel the need to suppose there were a designer? The whole debate as far as I can tell seems to center around the improbability of life evolving, and the improbability of even the universe being capable of supporting life. Our universe, like any given hand in poker, is as improbable and as probable as any other universe. What makes men believe there is a Designer behind it all, then, is not its improbability alone. It is the improbability combined with the fact that life is created in this universe, and more importantly, that human life is created. In other words, improbability combined with an identifiable goal - mankind.

But here we must ask a very important question: 'What does God need with a starship?' (to steal the words of Captain Kirk)- or, more relevant to our present discussion, but not objectively different, 'What does God need with human beings?' Why are we so important to God that our very appearance would indicate that the universe, despite its silent mindlessness, is really a rational place after all?

The watch we recognize as a work of design because, as Paley said, it answers to a purpose - a purpose we must already know if we are to judge the watch to be adequate. But what is man's purpose? We must certainly know it if we are to infer the existence of a designer. If we know already that man has a purpose, then we already possess a knowledge of God, rendering the Teleological Argument entirely superfluous and redundant, but most importantly, dependent upon our acceptance of objective moral values. In other words, we see ourselves as choice worthy creations. But how do we know what God, if he exists, would choose to create, unless we are assuming from the outset that God is endowed with tastes very similar to our own?

The cards have been dealt, and we have in our hands a Royal Flush. But are we playing poker? The whole nature of the lives we live will turn on this one question.

'What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.' (Psalms 8:4-5)

'Ye have made your way from the worm to man, and much within you is still worm. Once were ye apes, and even yet man is more of an ape than any of the apes.' - Nietzsche13

Why should we, besides our own egotism, believe that God would even want us in the first place, let alone believe that our existence PROVES God? It is as though we said to ourselves, 'How can anything as awesome as me come about by chance?' We must be very careful to recognize just who it is that thinks mankind is so wonderful.

IMPROBABLE

Speaking of probability, I find it interesting that some atheists have argued that God is somehow 'improbable'. Probability, properly speaking, is determined by the number of times a certain thing occurs under the same conditions. But clearly, when we understand God to be something fundamentally other than the world, all notions of probability lose their application.

This is of the utmost importance as it relates to questions that are soon to fall under our consideration. William Paley felt secure in the evidence for Christianity partly because he was so confident in the proposition that there was a God. In his response to David Hume he complains, 'As Mr. Hume has represented the question, miracles are alike incredible to him who is previously assured of the constant agency of a Divine Being, and to him who believes that no such Being exists in the universe.14'

By representing God as something improbable, as if he were one of so many rolls of the dice, atheists find it all the more simple a matter to disregard the claims made by religion. But when it is understood that God does not fall under the perusal of probability, as he is not 'something that HAPPENS in the world', such objections fall to the ground.

If all that exists is what is contained within the world, then, as God is the creator of the world, the question of God's existence or non-existence is, itself, naught but a category error. It is somewhat difficult for the mind, which is accustomed to weighing the odds, to make a decision where probability is not, as it is in a coin toss, fifty-fifty, but where it is irrelevant.

1. Supposedly this is what Bertrand Russell would say if it turns out there is a God after all.

2. Freudberg, Judy, Tony Geiss, _Follow That Bird_ , Film, Directed by Kwapis, Ken (1985; United States: Warner Home Video, 2002, VHS)

3. Kierkegaard, Soren, _Concluding Unscientific Postscript_ , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 219-220

4. St. Anselm, _Proslogium_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anselm/basic_works.iii.ii.html (December 2012)

5. St. Anselm, _Proslogium_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anselm/basic_works.iii.iii.html (December 2012)

6. Descartes, Rene, _Meditations on First Philosophy_ , http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/Meditation5.html (December 2012)

7. Kierkegaard, Soren, _Concluding Unscientific Postscript_ , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 298

8. Craig, William Lane, _The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe_ , http://www.leaderu.com/truth/3truth11.html (December 2012)

9. Kant, Immanuel _Critique of Pure Reason_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003) 258-260.

10. Meister Eckhardt, _The Nearness of the Kingdom_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/eckhart/sermons.v.html (December 2012)

11. Paley, William, _Natural Theology_ , (Oxford: J. Vincent, 1826) 1.

12. Dream Theater, _Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory_ , 1999, Elektra Records

13. Nietzsche, Friedrich _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 3.

14. Paley, William, _Evidences of Christianity_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14780/pg14780.html (December 2012)

[Chapter 4:  
Problem of Evil](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'I shall only say in general that all that is said by the atheist against the existence of God, always depends either on the fact that we ascribe to God affections which are human, or that we attribute so much strength and wisdom to our minds that we even have the presumption to desire to determine and understand that which God can and ought to do.'

_\- Rene Descartes_ 1

AXIOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

The Axiological Argument (axios = worth), which has been at the center of this work from the very beginning, is distinct from the other theistic arguments in that it does not endeavor directly to prove the existence of God, but rather hypothetically asserts the relationship between objective moral values and the existence of God. It, by itself, leaves it undetermined whether or not there are such values, and whether or not there is a God. It is a dilemma, in essence, and a fork in the road, one at which we must make a choice; a choice which will impact every aspect of our lives.

Ironically, one of the most popular objections to God's existence, when it is carefully considered, turns out to be an affirmation of this very proof. I speak here of the so-called 'Problem of Evil' that has been the cause of so much pain, confusion, apostasy and anger. But if my reader has fully digested all that has been said thus far he will already carry within him the answer to this puzzle. They will know, accordingly, that the existence of evil is not, never was, and never will be a problem for theism. It is much to the the contrary...

Now, I do not deny that seeing the pain and suffering of others, and the cruel injustice of wicked men inspires the most unimaginable pangs of sympathy; feelings of sympathy powerful enough to drive some to conclude that there is no God. They ask, 'How can God allow such things to happen?'

Certainly, that is a fair question. But it is by no means beyond a solution. In fact, no 'solution' in the proper sense is required. God, if he exists, can do as he pleases. In the Bible, Job asks God for a solution to this problem, and God responds, 'Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.' (Job 38:2-4)

Ouch.

Good and evil, as we've seen, can be taken in two ways: There is the subjective, Epicurean sense, in which good is simply that which pleases and evil that which displeases us. Then there is the objective sense, which deals not with our own personal goals, but with our objective purpose as creatures.

Obviously, if we take the Problem of Evil in the former sense, the objection amounts to nothing more than a complaint. Under naturalistic assumptions the question, when the meaning of the terms is properly understood, is really, 'why do things that I don't happen to like happen to people that I happen to like?' which, while an interesting question, is not a question of objective metaphysical importance.

On the other hand, if we take the terms Good and Evil objectively, then it is clear that in claiming that there is real evil in this world we are affirming the Axiological Argument, which is just the opposite of that which is meant to be proved.

In his famous essay 'Why I am not a Christian', Bertrand Russell, after criticizing theists for basing their belief in God on emotion rather than reason, goes on to attack the moral character of Jesus Christ, saying, among other things, 'I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.2' But does the truth of the matter revolve around how Mr. Russell feels? On what basis does Bertrand Russell judge the teachings of Christ to be inadequate? Earlier in his essay he rejects the Axiological argument with a sad regurgitation of Euthyphro's Dilemma. If he has rejected objective moral values, which he must if he rejects God, how can it have entered into his mind to think that his own subjective moral sentiments are an adequate means of appraising Jesus' moral character? I walked away from his essay with the distinct impression that his chief objection to Christianity was simply the fact that it seemed objectionable to HIM.

To the atheist then, I direct this question, 'How can anything in this world be evil, if there is no good from which it is deviant?' If there is good, then you have the Teleological Argument staring you in the face - for good has reference to those very marks of design that the atheist must deny. If there is no good, then there is no evil and your argument is no more than hot air.

It is to a supposed lack of evidence that atheists often appeal to when giving reasons for their belief that there is no God. Yet despite the fact that they claim to have scoured every corner of this universe and to have discovered therein not a single solitary sign of 'Telos', they seem to have little difficulty discovering when that Telos (the very Telos the atheist must deny) has been violated.

I do not acknowledge God's sovereignty lightly. That is to say, I do not deny that we live in a troubled world. Yet even as I am disturbed and frustrated with the evil of this world, I must acknowledge that for it to be evil it must be deviant, and if it is deviant then there must be a God. The atheist cannot therefore simply reject God on the basis of evil, for God's purpose is the only ground by which evil can be made manifest. If we say that there is no God, then all that we find hateful and disgusting in human nature and history is no worse than all that we find noble and beautiful.

If a man, for twenty four years, imprisons and rapes his own daughter in a secret basement3, or if a group of U. S. soldiers, inflamed with murderous lust, murders an Iraqi family before raping and murdering their fifteen year old daughter4, on what grounds do we accuse them of evil? Aren't their own desires a more valid goal for them than our own? If these things are evil, and if the atheist wishes to gather scores of such horrors, as Ivan Karamazov does in Dostoyevski's famous novel3, and use them as evidence against God, mustn't they be more than simply disagreeable to our tastes? In order to be truly evil, they must be disagreeable to purpose; that is, they must be disagreeable to God. And of course, if that is the case, then no argument can be made with them.

Evil then, if it exists, amounts to a full and complete proof of the existence of God; a more certain proof than the Cosmological or Teleological arguments could ever hope to be. Without purpose there is no evil, and if there is evil, then there is purpose, and the Minor Premise of the Teleological Argument must be affirmed. If atheists see no purpose, then on what basis do they judge anything to be evil? What utter sophistry!

Obviously atheists who, like Richard Dawkins, accuse God of being a 'petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully'6, must believe that there is an objective standard of morality. What meaning do any of these claims have other than that the God of the Bible 'ought' to be different? It is no criticism to call someone a homophobe unless it is also implied that he 'ought' not be one. If he 'ought' not, then we must connect that imperative to an objective goal, as we have seen so many times already. By accusing the world with evil, we come no closer to atheism. In fact we are compelled irresistibly to acknowledge purpose and therefore Teleological realities.

Suffering makes us resentful and despondent. And it is perfectly natural to come to dislike that which seems to be the cause of all the world's evil. In this sense, the Cosmological Argument, though it intends to serve God by making him known to the world, in truth blasphemes him, making him the father of evil. Since the atheist cannot reject his goodness, he must reject his existence. But however natural such a mode of reasoning may be, it is entirely fallacious and self-defeating. For the moment God disappears from our belief, the objective reality of the evils we condemn are wiped away as well, and with them is eliminated our basis for rejecting God.

The world is full of evil. Of that it is hard to doubt. On September 11th, terrorists claimed the lives of several thousand Americans in New York City. I will never forget that day. Nor will any forget Pearl Harbor who were there to experience it. The World Wars collectively unleashed so much blood and death that it is unimaginable that any rational creature would call it anything but evil. All the torture of the inquisition and the ravages of the ancient tribal wars come into our minds, convincing us further of man's great wickedness. Tsunamis, volcanos, hurricanes add the might of Nature herself to the conflict, and leave us in utter disbelief. Chaos, Death, War: These are the rulers of this world it seems.

1. Descartes, Rene, _Meditations on First Philosophy_ , http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/Preface.html (December 2012)

2. Russell, Bertrand, _Why I Am Not A Christian_ , http://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/whynot.html (December 2012)

3. CNN, _'House of horror' children never saw daylight_ , http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/04/28/austria.cellar/ (December 2012)

4. Washington Post, _Details Emerge in Alleged Army Rape, Killings_ , http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/02/AR2006070200673_pf.html (December 2012)

5. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, _The Brothers Karamazov_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/dostoevsky/brothers.iv_4.html (December 2012).

6. Dawkins, Richard, _The God Delusion_ , (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006), 51.

[Chapter 5:  
Bad Karma](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'Said ye ever Yea to one joy? O my friends, then said ye Yea also unto ALL woe. All things are enlinked, enlaced and enamoured.'

_\- Friedrich Nietzsche_ 1

For the rest of this book I will be considering what has already been said in light of the doctrines of Christianity, first by showing that, far from being the solution to evil, morality is in fact the source thereof, and then secondly by showing how the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ corrects this dreadful blunder. Make no mistake, in the end the gospel is 'good news' only because it militates against morality.

If my readers have gained nothing else from this work, I hope at least that they have fully convinced themselves that it is impossible to learn moral imperatives from empirical truths. Science is by its very nature forever barred from the question of morality. When a goal is put forth as one that ought to be pursued, then science has a great deal to say and an important role to play in its attainment, as science first and foremost is a systematic evaluation of causality. But however adept science may be in the discovery of better means and superior methods, the discovery of the ends themselves is entirely outside its scope and purpose.

The cardiologist takes it upon himself to keep the heart beating, and his whole profession is anchored around that goal. But he cannot, by science, discover that the heart actually ought to pump blood. He can see what the heart does, and how death follows from its disruption, and he can see how necessary the heart is to life, and life to happiness. But he cannot discover whether men ought to live in the first place. The means belong to science, but the goal is beyond the empirical.

No moral judgment can be made without reference to some goal, some desired end, whether it be a goal chosen by ourselves or by God. The former class of goals will vary from person to person, leading inevitably to conflict. The latter class of goals, though they would be objective and universal, are entirely beyond man's natural abilities to discover, since, by nature, he has no knowledge of God's purposes.

Where does this leave man but in absolute darkness?

In this darkness man nonetheless finds himself using words like 'ought' and 'should', words that can only have reference to the man's own purposes. Happiness, Aristotle says, is the highest of all goals, the summum bonum of mankind3. There is little that men would not sacrifice for the sake of happiness, and virtually nothing for which men would forgo their own happiness. Altruism and sympathy, though they are so highly esteemed among us, find their value, not objectively, but according to our own subjective desires. We are social creatures, and we bear within us a great deal of affection for those beings that resemble us. Thus it is that we find ourselves unable to be happy when our neighbors or our family suffers. But for all of this, sympathy is no more objective than our more avaricious desires. The well-being of others IS our own desire - so in making sympathy the foundation of morality, David Hume says nothing different from what Aristotle said when he made Happiness the ground of ethics. In turn, Aristotle was little different from Epicurus, whose highest good was pleasure. Happiness is not the same for every man; it is simply, all things considered, what that individual wants - which is no more than to say that Happiness is what pleases you - Pleasure. Whether we live for sex or for the well-being of our fellow man, if we have not an objective principle to guide us, our imperatives are no more than our own personal will. We may approve of someone's philanthropy and disdain someone else's philandering, but so long as the moral judgment is derived from US and OUR opinion of those disparate behaviors, we can be certain that it is only upon our own authority that we speak and judge.

When man's natural ignorance of God's will is brought into the equation it becomes all the more clear that when we open our mouths to pronounce judgment, we are speaking nothing more than our own private will - OUR moral law. As man has no innate knowledge of God, and as he cannot learn moral judgments from nature, his own subjective purposes are all that remains. Objectively, that is, as an object, man is what he is, and we cannot learn imperatives from him.

Every desire can be expressed in a moral judgment, the desire taking the place of the Antecedent and the means to its attainment taking the place of the Consequent. Every moral judgment, in the absence of God's will, is an expression of some preference belonging to the subject (If what has already been said has not sufficed to prove this, I shall give yet another proof in the Conclusion of this book). The Object of moral judgment, then, is the desire of the subject, which is to say, as these desires are variable and contradictory, that there is no absolute Object of moral judgment. Well did Nietzsche say it when he wrote, 'Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad.4'

Causality requires change, which can only be understood by the concept of substance enduring through time (else there is no change). If there is nothing different, then there is no change, and therefore no causality. Causality, if we are to understand it completely, applies to the whole extent of this substance, and not to this or that particular object. So the cause of evil is the cause of the world, and we, insofar as we are the effects thereof, are united in substance with it, and with one another, for we are simply different parts or aspects of the state which follows upon that state. But no part of the cause can be removed without altering the effect, be the difference howsoever small you wish. So what I am, I am because my cause was what it was and was not something else. So whatever I am and whatever I become I am and become because of the previous state of the world. Likewise, when I consider myself as the cause of other effects, I am not the cause of them alone - my own power, received from my cause though it may be - is united with all else in determining all that is to come. So that which determines me is the world, and that which is determined by me is not determined by me except in conjunction with everything else - and with everything else, what is determined by me is the entire world.

A causal connection exists only between the two states of some one thing. As we are ultimately bound together with all other things in the causal nexus, every coming to be (incarnation) is in fact a reincarnation of the state of the world that came before it. Temporally speaking, there is no line at which the matter of the parents objectively 'becomes' the child. The sperm of the father and the egg of the mother do not vanish to make room so that the fetus may spring into existence. They become the fetus, and are the fetus in its previous causal state. It is only for convenience sake that we speak of life beginning with conception - it began a long time before even our grandfathers' grandfathers were born, and it has not ended, not even for an instant. In one unbroken chain this living matter passes from one form into the next, causally determining (along with the rest of the world) the state that follows it in time. I am my parents at a later time, even as they are the reincarnation of their own forefathers. This is the Samsara (cycle of reincarnation) from which the Hindus and the Buddhists seek liberation. The Law of Karma, which gives each person their circumstances according to their conduct in a previous life, is identical to the law of Causality, which states essentially the same thing - that the world of yore determines the world of today, and the world of today determines that which is yet to come. Our sufferings at present are the result of our actions in the past, whether the actions belonged to us 'personally' or to us when we were yet in the form of our parents' parents*.

*NOTE: The Buddhist doctrine of Samudaya can also be discerned here. This doctrine states that suffering is caused by craving. This may seem silly from a naturalistic perspective, where we consider each person's birth to have been caused by the motion of certain organs and cells. But it is in truth the desire of the parents that leads and compels them to conceive a child. When taken as subjects, this desire belongs to the parents, and unfairly causes the child to suffer. But taken as members of the causal nexus, the substance of the parents flows seamlessly into the child so that the desire they felt during their intercourse is the craving of the child's own substance - the craving to exist that blinds them to both the pains of childbirth and the sorrows of parenting that follow from their love.

Samsara, when we consider it in terms of a 'personal' rebirth, is a bitter pill to swallow; and a hard doctrine to believe. But as the 'person' or 'ego' itself is merely an abstraction (as we saw in Part II), it cannot be reborn. That which never existed in the first place can never exist 'again'. But the world of which we are all a part, is reborn in every moment, living and dying in many forms, and coming to be in the form those objects, taken together, determine. The Hindus and the Buddhists attempt to escape from this cycle, essentially (as far as I can make out) by truly realizing and apprehending their own nothingness (their existence is an abstraction, not a reality).

If a man harms his own son, it is his own substance he harms, though he is not personally conscious of it. But as a substance, the suffering of the son and the crime of the father are one and the same thing. The son harms himself in his father and the father harms himself in his son.

Every murderer, since he is causally the same substance as his victim (causally we can only speak of the entire state, and cannot treat the murderer and his victim separately as though they are two distinct effects of two distinct causes), is murdered in his victim. Adolph Hitler, in his substance, was put in as many gas chambers, and subjected to as many horrors as he inflicted upon the Jews. Though with a quick round from a gun he (as a single 'person') escaped judgment, as a substance he repaid all his evil in blood, ounce for ounce.

Objectively there never was a ground for the so-called Problem of Evil. It is clear that the debts incurred by one person are paid by another - and so they are paid. Every crime is punished at the moment of its commission. Perfect justice reigns in this world; and given that the world as we see it is the consequence of the world that was, we can certainly come to understand the old pessimist Schopenhauer when he says:

'[The depravity of man] is a sight which may well fill us with horror. But now we must cast our eyes on the misery of his existence; and when we have done so, and are horrified by that too, we must look back again at his depravity. We shall then find that they hold the balance to each other. We shall perceive the eternal justice of things; for we shall recognize that the world is itself the Last Judgment on it, and we shall begin to understand why it is that everything that lives must pay the penalty of its existence, first in living and then in dying. Thus the evil of the penalty accords with the evil of the sin - malum poenae with malum culpae. From the same point of view we lose our indignation at that intellectual incapacity of the great majority of mankind which in life so often disgusts us. In this Sansara, as the Buddhists call it, human misery, human depravity and human folly correspond with one another perfectly, and they are of like magnitude. But if, on some special inducement, we direct our gaze to one of them, and survey it in particular, it seems to exceed the other two. This, however, is an illusion, and merely the effect of their colossal range.'

The Christian, though he holds there to be a better solution and a greater hope than the escape sought by the Buddhist and Hindu, ought at the very least to acknowledge the wisdom and philosophical value of these two Eastern religions, and give them the credit for having discovered several millennia ago metaphysical principles that our Western philosophers only discovered relatively recently, and have never fully come to understand. This, as will be revealed in the conclusion, is my last purpose in writing this book - to revive a certain mode of thought, implicit in the Christian Scriptures, but long forsaken and misinterpreted. One can find this sort of thinking in these eastern religions, which I think largely explains why they have been found so appealing to westerners, many of whom feel within their very souls the inadequacy of the Christian religion. Indeed, Christianity as it is largely expressed in America is little more than a branch of the Republican Party - and if not, then it is a shadow of Christianity, retaining the language of faith, but not the power thereof. I am speaking of those Christians who have rightfully abandoned right-wing politics, but wrongfully for the sake of left-wing politics. But if ethics is groundless, as it has been the purpose of this book to show, and politics is public ethics, then the whole political arena is just a big stage upon which to display the emptiness of man's moral pretensions.

I have, however, discovered that throughout history there have been men who truly understood the nature of Jesus' religion. Most recently I stumbled across these truths within the writings of the German mystics, especially in the work of Meister Eckhardt and within the Theologia Germanica, whose author was perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher ever to have lived - a man whose name is lost to history, but whose contribution to right faith will, in the life to come, be pronounced from the rooftops.

At this point I hope that my main contentions have now been fully explained.

1. Objective Moral Values cannot exist without God.

2. If man is a Moral Agent then he must have a Free Will.

3. God is not the cause of THIS world (for this is pantheism); you are the cause of everything.

And perhaps, if all this has been understood \- if we have understood that it is our own being extended in time that has caused the world to be what it has become, then we will see how all suffering is the result of our own nature. But the counterintuitive truth that forms the basis of this whole work has not yet appeared. We have shown that man, as he is one with the world, is the cause of suffering. But we have not, as yet seen wherein morality itself is the problem with the world. Life is suffering; I do not quarrel with this. But, contrary to what every fiber of my being screams, it does not follow that Life is evil. To say that all the horrors and terrors of this raging planet are evil is a moral judgment; but we have already shown that man is not capable of nor qualified for moral judgment.

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 233.

2. Aristotle, _Ethics_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8438/pg8438.html (December 2012).

3. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 37.

4. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _On Human Nature_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10739/pg10739.html (December 2012)

[Chapter 6:  
Morality Is The Problem](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'In the second place, I observe the Diseases of a Common-wealth, that proceed from the poison of seditious doctrines; whereof one is, "That every private man is Judge of Good and Evill actions."

_\- Thomas Hobbes_ 1

'In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.' (Judges 17:6 KJV)

It would be difficult to judge whether a solution is adequate if we do not first understand the problem. The central problem, according to Christianity, is Original Sin, a doctrine which has been the cause of a great deal of confusion and disdain. Many have protested that it would be unfair in the extreme to punish a child for the crimes of his father. This is precisely what the Bible seems to indicate when we see the suffering that befalls men as a result of the evils of others. The children of Adam, according to Christian doctrine, are all doomed to hell by virtue of their mere descent from their first father. The firstborn of Egypt suffer a fate that their Pharaoh alone deserved. The infants of the Amalekites suffered the vengeance of God as a result of crimes in which they could not possibly have taken part. The whole of Biblical history, and indeed of all human history, bespeaks the suffering of the innocent for the crimes of the wicked. As if all of this injustice were not sufficient, Christianity adds to all this the seemingly cruel and absurd doctrine that all of these innocent sufferers are suffering for the sins of another, and are even born wicked themselves as the result of causes beyond their control.

But all of this inequity vanishes away when we remember the causal unity of Mankind, not as he appears to us in space as so many individuals, but rather as a single being connected and unified throughout all time. It is certain, for example, that 'I' as an individual consciousness or a person, have never abused my grandmother. But my grandfather, to whom I am connected and with whom I am united in time, unfortunately did. As an object extended in time, then, and not as a conscious subject, my father and I are a part of that tragedy, and, were it not for the grace of God manifested in my father's life through the gospel of Jesus Christ, I would have been forced to suffer the results of what occurred between my grandparents.

The doctrine of Man's Unity (his unity as a single being extended in time), while not taught explicitly in Scripture, is implied in several passages. As proof of Jesus' superiority over the Levitical priesthood, the author of the book of Hebrews argues that 'Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchizedek met him.'

The meaning of this passage is extremely important for our present purposes. Certainly the 'ego' or the 'individual consciousness' that we describe as Levi did not yet exist, much less the descendants of Levi who actually received tithes (Levi did not, himself receive them). But consciousness is a subjective awareness, not an objective reality. As an object, Levi truly and really did exist within his great grandfather, passing in time through the form of Isaac and Jacob until finally manifesting itself in the form of Levi. Consequently, when Abraham tithed to Melchizedek, Levi, to whom the Jewish tithe was owed, also tithed, proving the superiority of the priesthood of Melchizedek over the priesthood of the sons of Levi.

In a similar fashion the Apostle Paul argues that '... since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' As a single being extended in time, mankind stands or falls as one, whether we stand with Jesus Christ or fall with our first father. We, as a substance, were 'in' Adam when he sinned.

As long as we derive morality from subjective considerations, from our hatred of pain or our desire for happiness, we will have as many moralities as we have subjects - there will be, in essence, a whole ethical system for each and every individual consciousness. But we are subjects only to ourselves. Our moral worth in God's sight will not be derived from our self-approval, or our self-effacement - it will not be derived from our 'selfs' at all.

That God's opinion of us can be quite different from our own, and consequently that our objective moral value can be quite different from our subjective self-worth, is aptly expressed in one of Jesus' parables:

In Luke 18:11-14 Jesus explains:

'Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

'And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'

The doctrine of Original Sin, which seems so unfair and perverse to the subjective consciousness in that it punishes the innocent child for the sins of the father, can now be understood as the equivalent of the Hindu doctrine of Karma, which is observable in every causal relation. Understanding it in this way entirely removes the accusation of injustice. Whatever we suffer in this life (form of matter) is the result of our own actions in a previous life (form of matter). As an individual (consciousness) we may very well be 'innocent', but as an objective entity extended in time we are guilty of all the crimes of our forefathers and descendants. In other words, we are innocent only in that the subjective consciousness has no awareness of its previous objective actions. Whatever we suffer, therefore, we suffer as a result of OUR sin in Adam. And Adam suffers in us, though his subjective consciousness has long since passed away. As an object extended in time he endures, suffering the consequences anew every time a newborn baby draws his first breath. And he dies anew every time an old man breathes his last.

The state of mankind, as we see it today, really is the result of man's state in all its previous stages, and ultimately, if mankind is not eternal, it is the result of man's first state. It is for this reason, I think, that some Theologians have concluded that Adam was the only human being in possession of a Free Will, and that all his descendants are in absolute bondage to sin as a result of his Fall. We are, all of us, bound in time and space in relation to our first father. But he, being first, is not bound, causally, to a parent.

Our own state is a simple matter of Karma, but understood as Original Sin in the context of Christian theology. But it is the same principle of causality that is being described in both systems.

The description of the 'human condition' given in the Biblical account of Mankind's Fall is equally true and accurate, whether we take it to be historical or allegorical. As we shall see, however, there is so much truth in it as an allegory that its historical veracity is only of a very remote and secondary importance (this should by no means be taken as a denial of its historical truth, though some are apt to make such leaps - for my part I am much too skeptical to make such a denial). To fully appreciate what follows it will be necessary to have a familiarity with the first three chapters of Genesis.

INTERPRETATION

Genesis 2:9

'And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.'

Genesis 2:15-17

'And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.'

It has always seemed peculiar to me that God would create such a tree in the first place. If it was his desire that man act as he commanded him to act, and if this act (eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge) was his only prohibition, why create it as a possibility in the first place? If it were his will that man live, and not suffer the evils that this tree would bring upon him, then it would have been incumbent upon him to create only the Tree of Life. If God wanted man's obedience to be automatic and absolute, the creation of the second Tree would seem very foolish and counter-productive.

On the other hand, were it impossible for man to have obeyed, as some Determinists believe*, then the creation of the Tree of Life in the first place would have been entirely superfluous and unnecessary, and amount to little more than a cruel taunt. Moreover, the imperative 'Thou shalt not eat' is an absurd command if man was fated to eat; the imperative would contradict itself, proving God's will to be absurd (as was shown at the beginning of Part II).

*NOTE: The Westminster Confession states, 'God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.' This decree, as it is from eternity, cannot take account of man's will, for then God's decree would follow man's own decree, which is not acceptable2.

Consequently, it is impossible to read this text without at once being struck with the idea that God did not create human beings to be mere tools, or robots, doing their master's bidding out of pure physical necessity. That man's outcome was uncertain by no means implies that he had no intended outcome. It means only that, whatever it is that God wants out of man, God wants it to be done freely. Or perhaps his will is the freedom itself.

One might think of this in terms of romantic love. If it is my desire that my wife not only remain faithful in her love toward me, but also that she do so freely, and not because I force her or compel her, then I must put my heart in her hands and accept the fact that to a very great degree my desired end must rely upon the will of another. There are certain things that can only be attained with a certain amount of risk. The love of a free creature is certainly among them, and if this is what God desires out of this world, then the risk of loss and the possibility of evil is absolutely necessary. It seems somewhat unnecessary to say, but seeing as it is a constant claim of atheists that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of God, I must emphasize it again: God can do as he pleases, and if the possibility of evil is necessary to his ends, there is nothing that can be said against him. Of course, if we insist, as the Determinists do, that God is not merely the creator of the world, but also the cause of all things, then he cannot with any justice punish man for faults that are his own.

St. Irenaeus affirms this in his fourth book Against Heresies:

'This expression [of our Lord], "How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldest not," set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free [agent] from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God.3'

Genesis 2:20-25

'And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.'

I quote this passage specifically because here, I think, would be a good place to explain the origin of the Christian concept of marriage. Jesus himself appeals to the authority of this passage in discussing the Ideal of Marriage; which is to say that this passage is the entire foundation of the Christian marriage. It is by this passage that the errors of the ancient Jews were to be corrected - and our own errors too perhaps. It is an essential quality of a living creature in both science and in the Genesis creation account that it be capable of reproducing itself. The imperative given to mankind, and indeed to all living things, is to 'Be fruitful and multiply.' But man has no such ability, and neither does his helpmeet. Alone, therefore, neither gender constitutes a living thing. Fill the world to the brim with men, and they will not be alive - for they do not multiply. Fill the world to the brim with women, and they will not be alive - for they do not multiply.

But when a man loves a woman, the full creature appears at last - and God's will is done.

Many living creatures keep their genders united in one entity. Some snails can sludge away from a night of passion with both partners pregnant. At some point in time, however, the genders were sundered with mankind. This is a fact in Genesis and in Darwinism, so the historical question is irrelevant. Every union of man and woman is a reunion. And in this reunion the creature that was sundered is restored - and appears again in the form of the child, the united flesh of his parents.

It is because they were sundered that they must be brought back together again; it is because the creature, in its separation from the opposite gender, is incomplete that a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. That is, in their union they are made whole again at last - the particular (the man and wife) becoming the Ideal (the full human creature) and the Ideal manifesting itself anew in time.

And they are one flesh; their very essence passes from them and takes on a new form; repeating throughout history the ordinance of God - to live - to multiply.

This is Christian marriage, and as it is in its very essence a reunion of male with female, we Christians are not at liberty to redefine it or to extend it to any other sexual partnership. Let Uncle Sam do what he wants, let this or that state pass a ban or a sanction, they cannot change the nature of the Christian marriage, which is the reunion of man and woman toward the completion of the creature. Let society accept the union of men with men or women with women; they cannot thereby lift such unions up to the level of Man and Wife: the partnership which alone makes mankind truly alive. These qualities of the Christian Ideal simply do not and cannot belong to any other so called 'marriage'. To do otherwise is to speak nonsense; for Christianity speaks of the reunion of male and female, and homosexuality is by definition something different. A 'Homosexual marriage' is, in the Christian sense, as incoherent and self-contradictory as an 'incorporeal body' or a 'married bachelor'. Granting homosexuals the legal right to marry will have as little effect as granting circles the right to have corners.

Schopenhauer suggested in his essay on the metaphysics of love that the true beginning of a person's existence is not when they are born or conceived, but rather it is, '...the moment when the parents begin to love each other — to fancy each other, as the English appropriately express it. And, as has been said, in the meeting of their longing glances originates the first germ of a new being...5'

This love - this desire, is the first form of a new human being, and thus the love of a man and a woman bears this unique quality: that it alone creates new life and in fact, is the form in which the new life first appears.

It is perhaps for this reason that Buddhists believe that it is literally craving or desire (Samudaya) that causes us to be reborn. For the cravings that bring us into existence are in a very real sense our own cravings, in that we are not temporally distinct from our parents except in our self-consciousness.

Schopenhauer continues to say that this new 'human individuality struggles with the greatest eagerness and vehemence for its realisation in the phenomenal. It is precisely this vehement desire which is the passion of the future parents for one another.5' But the love of homosexual partners is not of this nature, and if it means to be, then it is due to ignorance. It is not the same love.

Genesis 3:1-8

'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

'And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.'

What does it mean to 'know good and evil'? Certainly we cannot imagine that they did not know good and evil before they ate the fruit. The very fact that the serpent reasons with Eve proves that she is in possession of Reason. And if she is in possession of Reason, then she is also in possession of the form of moral judgment. This much she proves by stating her reticence in the form of expression that is easily reducible to a hypothetical imperative, 'If you don't wish to die, then you should not eat of the tree.' Man is already in full possession of all that is necessary for moral judgment. What can it mean, then, when the serpent says, 'ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil'? Well, what does it mean when we say that God 'knows' good and evil? There is a very famous dilemma called Euthyphro's dilemma. It comes from one of Plato's dialogues6. In the dialogue, Socrates meets up with a man named Euthyphro who is about to prosecute his own father for a crime. Socrates is surprised at this and asks him how he knows that his actions are pious. They get into a discourse regarding the nature of piety. But their discussion becomes deadlocked at the question of whether an action is pious because it is beloved by the gods, or whether it is beloved by the gods because it is pious? So, how does God 'know' good and evil? Are things good because God likes them? Or does he like them because they are good?

The answer, according to all that I have said, is that God, by willing, establishes good and evil. Good is that which accords to his will, and evil is that which deviates from it*. He doesn't know good and evil in the sense that I know my times tables. He 'knows' good and evil in the sense that he 'discerns' or 'judges' (legislates) good and evil. It is apparent from the context of the story that man already 'knows' (apprehends) good and evil. He knows what he ought to do, and he knows what constitutes disobedience. Taking from the Tree of Knowledge, then, is not a simple matter of eating a piece of fruit. It is taking upon oneself God's role of actually judging what is good and what is evil; not simply understanding it. It is clear from the story that Adam and Eve 'knew' what their duties were. They knew what God wanted, therefore they knew good and evil. But as of yet, they did not themselves judge what was good and what was evil.

*NOTE: Some have retorted that this makes morality entirely dependent upon God's fiat. But if my readers have been paying attention thus far they will have apprehended the fact that this is precisely what a moral imperative is - a command, a fiat - will (purpose) expressed in words. If it is not God's fiat, then it is your own. But the nature of a command cannot be changed.

Thus the anonymous author of the Theologia Germanica (a man whose wisdom has been too long neglected in modern Christianity) explains, 'What else did Adam do but this same thing? It is said, it was because Adam ate the apple that he was lost, or fell. I say, it was because of his claiming something for his own, and because of his I, Mine, Me, and the like. Had he eaten seven apples, and yet never claimed anything for his own, he would not have fallen: but as soon as he called something his own, he fell, and would have fallen if he had never touched an apple.7'

Thomas Hobbes says:

'...having both eaten, they did indeed take upon them Gods office, which is Judicature of Good and Evill; but acquired no new ability to distinguish between them aright. And whereas it is sayd, that having eaten, they saw they were naked; no man hath so interpreted that place, as if they had been formerly blind, as saw not their own skins: the meaning is plain, that it was then they first judged their nakednesse (wherein it was Gods will to create them) to be uncomely; and by being ashamed, did tacitely censure God himselfe.8'

In other words, they 'knew' their nakedness, but until they took it upon themselves to make their own rules, they had not 'judged' their nakedness to be evil, and therefore had no reason for shame.

That this interpretation is quite appropriate will become all the clearer from the following consideration. We get our ideas from the things we experience. We know what a horse is and what a man is, but this is not properly speaking, knowledge, it is simply what we see and experience. But to say that we 'know' something means that we are in possession of some propositional truth. If we simply have the idea of an apple in our minds, we cannot say that we 'know' any truths about that apple. But when we say, 'This apple is red', then we are not only expressing a truth, but we are, in the very act of 'knowing', judging an apple to be one thing and not another. All truths can be expressed in propositions; and all propositions make a judgment betwixt an affirmation and its contradictory negation. To say then, that we 'know' good and evil means not that we have a simple idea of it, but that we are actively utilizing our own faculty of judgment to assign something to the one class or the other - not because of knowledge, but because of desire. Prior to this subjective presumption, Adam would have understood good and evil on the basis of God's commands and simply taken God's commands as his guide. But as long as they were God's commands that acted as his highest goal, he could not properly be said to have judged them himself. He received them, much like a small child receives knowledge from their parents. But he did not judge (know) them.

The moment man chooses to take upon himself the role, God's role, of being the judge of good and evil - in that moment he has eaten from that ancient fruit.

'And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.'

Pleasant to the eyes, desired to make one wise, truly these things are good for mankind. But however something may accord with our own subjective or even our collective subjective good, if it conflicts with our objective purpose, then it is sin. Adam and Eve, in this story became sinners, not because they ate some 'magic fruit', but because they made their own interests the foundation of their actions. They chose to make their Flesh (subjective personal interests) their highest goal, rather than making their true purpose the foundation of all their actions. Whether we believe that man possesses knowledge of God's will by nature or not, we are all intuitively and constantly aware at least of this principle: That we all too often choose to do that which we want instead of that which we believe is right. As we shall see, this is all that is necessary to render ourselves deserving of damnation.

'And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.'

When man takes it upon himself to be the lord and judge of right and wrong he takes it for granted that he really does become the lord and judge of right and wrong. And when he does that which he deems to be evil, then by his own standards, by the standard of his own conscience, he becomes evil - objectively, in that he has strayed from God's will, and subjectively, in that he has violated even his own moral law.

In our presumptuousness and ignorance we take it for granted entirely that in taking this power upon ourselves, we, in failing to fulfill our own moral standards, become the foundation of our own condemnation. Our every moral judgment is testimony against us.

My reader should not be surprised to see that I have passed from speaking about Adam to speaking about Mankind in general. The two cannot be distinguished, regardless of our interpretation of Genesis. If the narrative is an allegory, and Adam represents the whole race, then what is said of him applies equally to every member of the human race. On the other hand, if the story is literal, and it really speaks of our first father, then the same result follows, for every member of our race was present, substantially, within him, and sinned with him - in Adam, as Paul indicates. They did not sin as 'conscious individual persons', but as that single being extended in time they deviated from their purpose and chose to follow their own wills. Whether we take the passage to be myth or reality, the doctrine that is taught is the same, and is equally true - This Samsara, this Karma, and this suffering are all the result of man's own sins*.

*NOTE: Here I would like to express the following consideration: If this passage, where God says to Adam that, 'in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,' is taken literally, then the very first prophetic utterance in the Scriptures falls to the ground as a falsehood, for Adam didn't die. If the author of Genesis was even literate (and he was), then we must assume that he would have noticed this discrepancy as well. For this reason the Christian has always been justified in interpreting the passage to refer, not to man's body, but to his soul. Thus we have a spiritual death brought about by the Fall - to which is opposed the spiritual life that was lost. But if we are, in accordance with orthodoxy, interpreting the life and the death spiritually, why should we not also interpret the Man and the Apple spiritually as well?

This, as I said, is not meant to be a proof of any sort but simply a consideration.

A similar way of interpretation reveals itself when Protestants rebut the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation by showing that Jesus said he was 'the door', yet did not transubstantiate himself into a door. The obvious point is that, given the spiritual meaning, the literal meaning becomes secondary - so secondary that it can be seen as absurd if taken in a literal sense. If Genesis speaks of spirit, and it must if the author was not a blunderer, then the literal interpretation becomes secondary.

But again, this is just a consideration.

Accordingly, when man's sin is discovered, God declares, '...cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.'

This is, in truth, the Creation account with which we, in our world, ought to concern ourselves. For Genesis chapter 1 tells us of an Ideal world, where everything is bright and good. Accordingly, Naturalists, when they look at the mountains of death that fester in the fossil record and the geological nightmares that have, in the past, befallen our sorrow-stricken planet, find nothing but opposition to the Genesis record of a friendly, beautiful world. But in Genesis chapter 3 God makes a world full of pain, sorrow and death. But it is not God's volition that is the cause; it is Adam's will - man's will that brought this about.

Forgive me Lord, for my I, Mine, Me,

Let me say instead, let Thy will be.

1. Hobbes, Thomas, _The Leviathan_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 181.

2. _Westminster Confession of Fait_ h, http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/ (December 2012)

3. Irenaeus, _Against Heresies, Book IV_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vi.xxxviii.html (December 2012)

4. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _Metaphysics of Love_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11945/pg11945.html (December 2012)

5. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _Metaphysics of Love_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11945/pg11945.html (December 2012)

6. Plato, _Euthyphro_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1642/1642-h/1642-h.htm (December 2012)

7. _Theologia Germanica_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anonymous/theologia.v.III.html (December 2012)

8. Hobbes, Thomas, _The Leviathan_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2006), 116.

[Chapter 7:  
Revelation](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

'For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!'

\- St. Paul (Romans 10:13-15 KJV)

Before we consider the teachings of Christianity, we must address a certain philosophical objection to revealed religion in general. In his work, 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,' David Hume put forth an argument against miracles that he hoped would serve as 'an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion'. It has certainly proved effective, and rightly so, for it is the only possible argument against miracles, and those who wish to free themselves from religion entirely will forever have need of it. David Hume says:

'A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle; nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered credible, but by an opposite proof, which is superior.

'The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish; and even in that case there is a mutual destruction of arguments, and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force, which remains, after deducting the inferior.' When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.1'

I call this the only possible argument against miracles for two reasons. First, because nearly every argument against miracles that I have ever encountered has in some way been dependent upon this argument, or at least been grounded upon the very same principle. Secondly, because it is not actually an argument against miracles; it is an argument against liars.

It would be difficult to imagine why God, assuming he exists, cannot perform a miracle. So any actual argument against miracles must either assume that atheism is true, which, I think, is impossible to prove, or it must show that miracles are in some way opposed to the character of God, a position that would in all likelihood require greater knowledge about God than the revelation itself provides.

The opposition that miracles bear to experience, which constitutes the entire force of Mr. Hume's argument, is irredeemably ambiguous. Properly speaking, testimony can only be contrary to experience when it is opposed to OUR OWN experience. If for instance, I were to watch someone perform a skateboard trick down a set of three steps, and then later hear him claim that it was a set of ten steps, then I could conclude that the testimony was contrary to experience; that is, what they say happened conflicts with what I saw. As William Paley affirms, 'this is a contrariety which no evidence can surmount. It matters nothing, whether the fact be of a miraculous nature, or not.2' But to suggest, as Hume's argument must, that miracles are opposed to ALL experience, is to assume as a premise, the very conclusion for which he is arguing. That is, he assumes that no one has ever experienced a miracle, therefore, no one has ever experienced a miracle, which is simply arguing in a circle. The bias of his argument, and the circular nature of it are easily discerned when you read his own words. He declares at the outset that, 'it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.' Really, Mr. Hume? What about in the age of Jesus of Nazareth? And what about the land of Palestine? This whole train of thought depends at the outset upon his prior rejection of the accounts of Jesus' followers, who DID observe such a thing. In other words, Hume, to hold the position that allows him to reject the evidence of Christianity, must first - reject the evidence of Christianity.

I am typically reluctant to accuse people of fallacy. We all make errors in judgment now and again, and I have always felt that the word 'fallacy' carried with it more than a gentle correction. To me the word carries with it the idea of intent and deception, hardly an accusation a sober reasoner should throw around carelessly. But the errors in reasoning that this argument involves, the ambiguity of its terms, and the circular nature of the argument combined with my deep respect for Mr. Hume's intelligence, convince me that the faults of this argument are in fact intentional. I have too much reverence for Mr. Hume's abilities to believe that he could not see through the argument himself.

That is not to say that David Hume is some sort of villain, however. From what I have read of his work, it seems to me that he was a very rare kind of philosopher: A philosopher with both clarity and a sense of humor. Deficiency in both of these areas, and perhaps a pinch of desperation, is the only explanation I can come up with for the popularity of his argument among skeptics and atheistic philosophers.

Mr. Hume makes reference to probability in his argument. But I would argue that probability is of very little utility when considering individual historical questions. What is the probability that Hitler would come to power? Well, how many times has it been tried? Probability, properly speaking, references the repetition of the same event under the same conditions. The flipping of a coin, for instance, allows us to imagine perfectly even odds. But what about an event like the election of a president? In order to come up with the probabilities for such an event, would we not have to repeat the experiment?

Even if probability dictates a certain expectation, it can never dictate a result. Probability is a tally of experience, and it helps us predict and expect the future, but it cannot determine what can and cannot happen - it certainly cannot determine what has happened in the past.

Hume may succeed in showing us that it is difficult to believe a miracle, but he doesn't so much as advance a millimeter in proving that there is, in and of itself, any difficulty whatsoever in the miraculous. David Hume of all men understood this best. And thus I think he simply meant to be obnoxious. In that respect, I can laugh at his joke. I am untroubled by the 'argument'.

It might have been evident from the outset, as no imperative can be derived from empirical principles, that man is not, by nature, capable of apprehending objective, universal moral values. Nature gives us only the facts; and facts are things from which no moral can be derived. As if to kick our moral pretensions while they are down, Nature also gives us no clue one way or the other about whether or not there is a God, and whether or not there is a purpose for our existence. It may very well be that God has a purpose for mankind, or it may well be that he has a purpose for some distant galaxy, and this solar system, and mankind along with it, is just an unavoidable and unfortunate consequence. How should I know?

Yet all of our natural ignorance does not seem to stop us from making moral judgments. We not only extend our own moral opinions over the heads of others, we go on to actually enforce those moral opinions, collectively, by the power of the government. This misuse of moral judgment, wherein we make what is desire for us law to another (and ALL law is of this nature), is, as I have suggested, the sin of Adam and the origin of all human evil - in other words, if there is evil in the world it is because of morality, and not despite. Ethics is sin; politics is public ethics, and therefore simply an extension of our depravity. Among the animals there is suffering incomparable, but they accept and endure it stoically, not raising a fist to their maker in anger, or accusing one another of 'evil' - that is a presumptuousness that belongs to mankind alone. They hurt, they hunger, they thirst, they kill and die, all without sin. But mankind comes along, and when it is his turn to perish, his turn to suffer, he turns his head to heaven and says, 'How can God allow ME to suffer?'

In calling the world, or in calling his fellow man evil, man implicitly accuses God's work; and in doing so \- in raising his voice in moral judgment, actually becomes evil himself.

Soren Kierkegaard said, 'The Scriptures teach: "Judge not that ye be not judged." This is expressed in the form of a warning, an admonition, but it is at the same time an impossibility. One human being cannot judge another ethically, because he cannot understand him except as a possibility. When therefore anyone attempts to judge another, the expression for his impotence is that he merely judges himself.3'

When I judge another man, I judge myself IN them, as we are one creature. We are evil because we have called ourselves evil. We have made ourselves judge, and we have judged ourselves. This is human nature.

The consequences of this we see before us in every war and every conflict. The wars of today are the result of the wars of yesterday, all of which have their root in human will. As man, by nature, has no knowledge of God, he can do nothing else but perpetuate the Karmic cycle in which he is locked, bound and enslaved.

So long as this is the case, man has no hope of righteousness, as he is bound to his course by causality and restricted in his knowledge to the empirical. Without knowledge of his purpose he cannot help but sin, spending his arrows in the dark. So long as this wicked world is the effect of one single First Cause, there can be no freedom nor holiness. The subject is ignorant, and the object is unknowable.

If hope is ever to present itself to mankind, it must come to him as from beyond this world. The world, we know, tells it like it is, and our will tells us how we would like it to be, but we do not know how it ought to be, or if it ought to be at all. To learn this we must place our hope in God.

For many ages mankind was forced to live without chocolate, and could not choose to eat chocolate even if he were inclined to do so. Until he knows what chocolate is, it cannot be an object of the will. If man's natural powers limit him to the world, then he cannot, by his own power, ever hope to attain knowledge of God or of his purpose as a creature. If God were to reveal his will to someone, as that revelation comes from outside of nature, it would not merely be accompanied by miracles, it would be a miracle itself. If such knowledge came to man, it would permit him to do what he would otherwise be incapable of doing - good. Insofar as the revelation is from God, the moment of its utterance is the first cause of goodness, and the cause of all righteousness is God himself. On the other hand, if man has made himself such that even this revelation cannot turn him around, then the wickedness in which he remains is entirely his own doing. A revelation, therefore, reveals two things: First, it reveals God's will to man. Second, it reveals man's will to God, insofar as his reaction to the revelation will make it clear just whose side he is truly on. God, of course, does not need this experiment to discover the contents of a man's heart, so this second purpose also serves only to further our own self-knowledge. This is why Christians compare the Law to a mirror in which we behold our sinful nature.

This is, essentially, the purpose of God's commands to men. In light of all that has been said thus far it is, in truth, the only purpose that remains for God's Law. It is not as though God was unable to make a world and fill it with servants, and needed to wait, biting his nails, to see if man would obey him. The purpose of God's commands are not to accomplish his purpose, but to show us our nature. In his epistle to the Romans the Apostle Paul explains, 'Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.' (Romans 3:19-20)

Righteousness, the Bible teaches, cannot come through the Law; that is not and never was its purpose. It is a template and an ideal, not for us to become, but by which we might come to understand how desperately wicked our own hearts are. The problems we encountered at the beginning of Part II will present themselves and prove fatal to our faith if ever we attempt to maintain philosophically that God's commands to us are meant to accomplish some purpose in the world - to bring it into one state as opposed to another. If it were God's will that the Israelites not murder or commit adultery, then it was not his will that David should sleep with Bathsheba and then murder her husband Uriah. But this happened. No philosophy, theology or revelation can rectify this - that God, who is omnipotent, should be robbed of his due. We must ignore this problem if we are to remain theists, or we must reject God, if we are to be consistent with ourselves. This is, of course, only if we thoroughly believe that God's purpose in giving the Law was to bring about a certain course of events as opposed to another.

'Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable unto himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? or is it gain to him that thou makest thy ways perfect?' - Eliphaz, Job 22:2-3

'If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him? If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand?' - Elihu, Job 35:6-10

The very thought that man could, by his wickedness, thwart God's will in any way whatsoever is, itself, great arrogance. So John the Baptist told the overconfident Pharisees and Sadducees, who thought their parentage made them indispensable to their maker, 'And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.' (Matthew 3:9)

The accusations of Nietzsche ring quite true to the mind that is convinced that God's intention for Israel is that Israel have a different fate than what it had. He asks, 'And if the fault lay in our ears, why did he give us ears that heard him badly? If there was dirt in our ears, well! who put it in them?4' If God wanted Israel to obey him, then this circumstance is utterly incomprehensible, as it makes the will of God into an absurdity unparalleled in the history of nonsense.

Thus the Apostle Paul states in Galatians:

'Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise.' (Galatians 3:16-18)

This clearly argues that the promises given to Israel in their father Abraham cannot be dependent upon their adherence to the Law, as the promise was given to Abraham prior to and independently of the Law. He continues:

'Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

'But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

'For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.' (Galatians 3:19-29)

If the Law were meant to bring righteousness, then, Paul argues, it would negate the whole nature of God's relationship to Israel, which was grounded in his promise to Abraham in deference of his faith, and not in the obedience of Israel according to the Law. For if it was dependent in any way upon their obedience or their righteousness, then the promise to Abraham would prove to be a lie should Israel fail in its mission. The absurdity of the Antecedent upon which Israel's Law is based ('it shall be our righteousness, if we observe to do all these commandments') is not, therefore, proof of God's incompetence, but rather an argumentum ad absurdum against Israel, showing, not that God is incapable of achieving his ends in the world, but that the very idea that Israel is anything good, in itself, is ridiculous. The Law, therefore, by this absurdity, demonstrates the sinfulness of man.

Thus Paul concludes that the purpose of the Law of Moses was not to bring righteousness but to reveal wickedness, that the people might, by seeing their own hearts, be prepared for the gospel, either looking forward to it in hope or receiving it with joy when it comes, but either way placing their faith in the God who alone is able to make one righteous. Paul goes so far as to state quite plainly that, '...if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.' (Galatians 2:21)

Whether we know the Jewish Law or not, however, the form of moral judgment, which we all possess by our rational nature, is sufficient to this end; it is sufficient to reveal our sinful nature. And in this regard the Jews, who are given commands from God, are no better off than the Gentiles, who are utterly devoid of such revelation. We judge, and we do not obey our own judgments. Thus, whether by the standard of the Law given by Moses or by our own standards, we stand condemned; for all man sin against their own consciences.

During his ministry, Jesus warns us of this judgment. He warns the sons of Adam to 'Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again' (Matthew 7:1-2). Far from teaching that all mankind will suffer in hell for a trivial sin in which they had no part, Christianity teaches that, in taking upon himself the role of judge, as he does with every subjective moral judgment (Eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil), man actually becomes judge. But he does not become the judge of the world, as he foolishly thinks; he simply becomes his own jury - with a guilty verdict to boot.

It is for this reason that it is so foolish and dangerous to act against your conscience. It is not because your conscience is an objective source of moral principles. By no means! Our conscience is nothing more than the self-application of our own moral opinions; opinions which are derived from no better source than our own desires and sympathies. It is perilous to act against conscience because it is, essentially, adding your own voice to the prosecutor's argument. Doing the devil's dirty-work, in other words.

St. Paul expands upon this principle in the first several chapters of his epistle to the Romans. At the climax of perhaps the most powerful indictment of human sin in all human literature Paul says, amazingly, 'Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest:for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?' (Romans 2:1-3)

In a shocking turnaround, the apostle teaches that what renders man inexcusable is not the sin, but the judgment of sin - sins of which we ourselves are guilty. The sin of Adam was no trivial little one time offense against an unreasonable God. It was a perpetual offense, a perpetual selfishness that manifests itself in virtually every corner of humanity. We are all in Adam, and he is in all of us; we have all tasted of that fruit, for we have all taken part, to some extent or another, in this hypocrisy.

Too late, almost, do Christ's words reach our ears, warning us, 'Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.' Who is exempt from this condemnation, which manifests itself to us in the Karmic cycle, which is called by Paul, the 'law of sin'? (Romans 7:23)

The 'shameful' Christian doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement can now be easily understood. How can one man's punishment atone for the sins of many others? How can one man's righteousness fulfill the whole Law?

Mankind, when taken as an object, is one being.

We are not so many individuals, as our consciousness leads us to believe. We are one substance with all nature; We are Adam and Adam stands for us all, whatever view on the book of Genesis you take. We are all branches on that One Vine of humanity.

When Jesus suffers for mankind, then, he suffers AS us. And when God declares of Jesus that 'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'(Matthew 3:17), he declares it about all those whom Christ represents. Just as when one player scores a goal, the whole team receives a point, when Christ does his Father's will, it is the whole object of humanity that is credited with the win.

When Jesus does what pleases God, then his Father can look at his creation - at mankind - and truly declare, 'It is good'. He can say the same of us, insofar as we are made, by God's grace, one with Christ. But how can we be made one with Christ, if we are sinful? What fellowship hath light with darkness?

Christ declares that the life eternal is given to those who believe. But how can belief, such as was found within the thief to whom Christ said, 'Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise,(Luke 23:43)' save a man? For the thief, there was no time for works; there was no time for a sacrifice at the Temple, no time for baptism or the Eucharist. He could only believe. If God wanted man to do something or to be something, then no deathbed conversion could ever save a man and make his life different from what it was. Nor could a changed life suffice. It would not do to live half a life of crime and the other in innocence - the innocence in no way expiates or negates the first half. Neither could Christ, by dying, undo what had been done. Christ came, not to undo the past, but to save men's souls from sin. To understand how this works we must keep firmly in mind just what the problem is that Christ came to rectify. If evil is deviation from God's plan for the world, then the solution would be to remake the world - to negate Time itself and replace the history of the universe with another history. But the problem with our world is not any objective course of historical events.

Morality is the problem.

This we have understood to be the sin of Adam; the taking upon ourselves of moral authority. It is our presumptuousness in this regard that constitutes our wickedness. Therefore, if Jesus is the answer, he must, by his life, make an end to this human delusion. He does this insofar as he says, when his hour of trial is come, 'not my will, but thine, be done' (Luke 22:42). He raises no protest against heaven, no accusation against his Father, but goes to the cross as a lamb to the slaughter. It is the very opposite of Adam's sin, where willfulness leads man to cry out against his maker. Thus the creature that had been under delusion of selfishness through his nature in Adam, is brought at last to the light of God's love, knowing at last that it is in God alone that his righteousness dwells. For on our own we are not capable of righteousness. It is for this reason that Jesus says, when he is called 'Good master,' that, 'there is none good but one, that is, God.' (Matthew 19:16-17)

Thus Jesus is not, like Adam, the rebel and enemy of God. He is the very will of God, with no admixture of personal moral judgment. He says, 'For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me' (John 6:38). Thus, in the garden of Gathsemane, though his own body rebelled against it, he sought his Father's will at the cost of his own life.

God's will is revealed to us finished and complete in Jesus, and being finished, God can really forget our sins, as, in light of Christ's finished work (the destruction of will/morality), they are truly nothing.

1. Hume, David, _An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/files/9662/9662-h/9662-h.htm (December 2012)

2. Paley, William, _Evidences of Christianity_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14780/pg14780.html (December 2012)

3. Kierkegaard, Soren, _Concluding Unscientific Postscript_ , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 286

4. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 185.

[Chapter 8:  
Recapitulation](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

_'Verily, I say unto you: good and evil which would be everlasting - it doth not exist!' - Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra_ 1

In Part I of this work it was demonstrated that imperative propositions, and the moral judgments that are expressed therein, cannot be derived from empirical propositions. They must have a source altogether distinct from the facts of the natural world. Naturalism, as it is restricted to the empirical by its own definition, can deal only with the world, and not with morality. Attempts to ground morality in science will forever be doomed to fail, as they reveal a complete misunderstanding of the nature of moral judgment. One may certainly, insofar as moral judgments are simply causal judgments, draw a line between means and ends, but the preference of one goal over another belongs to the will, and not to the facts of the matter.

As we sat on the patio eating lunch, my three year old son once said to me, 'I should have a Zelda dream.'

I asked, purposefully, 'Oh, you HAD a Zelda dream?'

He shook his head, because he, as a three year old, understood fully that what he was saying was not an empirical truth. 'No, I said I SHOULD have a Zelda dream,' he reaffirmed. There is something so honest and unassuming about his use of the imperative copula. He should have a dream about the Zelda video game series, not because he discovered any physical reality, but because he feels the desire to have such a dream. THAT is the objective reality - the fact of the matter. He WANTS.

When the time comes and he is old enough to be told the horrors that befell the Jewish people during the Holocaust, he will inevitably experience a certain outrage, and this outrage will certainly manifest itself in moral indignation and judgment. But, again, this is not a deduction from a FACT; it is the response of his own will - his own private sympathies.

Imperatives are derived from the will - and if they are derived from our own, private wills; they are our own, private moral principles. Aristotle's dictum requires that we draw no more in our conclusion than what was said in the Major Premise. If moral imperatives begin with the will, then they must end with the will, and we have no right to make them apply beyond the scope of our own desires.

The force of duty is to be found in the connection between a goal and the means thereto. Where an action is necessary for the attainment of some end, in that place the action is a duty. When the end can be attained without an action, there is no obligation. Thus, an objective obligation, and an objective duty would be an action that is relative to an objective goal, not the mere whims of an individual.

Atheism is precisely the denial of purpose in the world, and accordingly amounts to an absolute denial of objective morality, justifying the Axiological (Moral) Argument for the existence of God.

'If Objective Moral Values exist, then God must exist.'

However highly we esteem the feeling of sympathy, whereby a mother cherishes her child, and a soldier sacrifices his own life for his countrymen, that feeling is, perhaps of all the grounds upon which a system of ethics can be built, the most subjective, being relative in every instance to the particular individual who feels it. As Hume explained, when there is a stronger resemblance between ourselves and any object, we more easily imagine ourselves in the position of the object, and sympathy comes more easily.2

It will be no mystery to us, when we have fully come to understand the capricious nature of sympathy, that nations war one with the other, and races look after their own - it is only... natural that they should do so, when sympathy is their summum bonum.

Every man seeks happiness.

But every man has his own peculiar happiness.

And I trust that my reader can by this point see why, if this is the case, happiness is no ground for morality. Aristotle says, 'Happiness', Epicurus says, 'Pleasure' - but either way they will be different according to the constitution of each individual. What can come of this circumstance but conflict?

If we are to retain anything resembling an objective system of morality, we must discover it within the purposes of our maker. But to do that, we must first relinquish our claim upon happiness, sympathy, desire and all subjective, and therefore selfish, goods.

Part II of this book led us to consider what a beastly doctrine it is to say that 'God is the cause of everything'; that is, if the world is full of evil, as the Scriptures teach.

Moral judgment compares a state of affairs, taken as a goal, and a course of events, actions or circumstances and declares that the latter are necessary to the attainment of the former. Thus, moral judgments are, essentially, causal judgments. To judge anything, then, is to treat it as a cause (as an essential element in the state that produces the goal), and if we expect our moral judgments to apply to people, and not to the First Cause of the universe itself, then we must assume that those people are, themselves, First Causes of their own actions. It would be very silly to say to a fist, 'you oughtn't strike me', when it is the arm that propels it, and the man who wills it, that is to blame for the blow. But if the man himself is an effect of a previous cause, then the imperative must follow him in regression along the causal chain till it comes to rest at last at that First Cause, on whose shoulders rests the blame for everything.

To say that God caused the world to exist, then, if the world is evil, is blasphemy in its highest form, and oughtn't be uttered or thought by anyone who fears God. It is only when I am the cause of my own actions that I can be judged. If God reserves all causal power to himself, then he reserves all the blame as well. For a mere effect cannot be made the subject of an imperative proposition.

Though the possession of a Free Will is absolutely necessary for morality, it is beyond my ability, I think, to prove that man has a Free Will or that he does not. It may be that each and every soul has an independent, and therefore, spiritual power that manifests itself in their lives in the form of independent actions. But I cannot think of any reason to believe this; certainly not on the basis of Reason alone. I am not aware of any thought that comes without cause, or any motive that is not derived from my physical nature. In short, I would not dare claim that there is aught in me that is original.

I think if we give every thought and every motion of our bodies a careful cross-examination, we will discover within ourselves, no trace of anything that does not proceed from things that precede.

To condemn a man we must assume that his actions are not determined. If a man cannot do what we claim he ought, then the moral judgment contains a contradiction, when it is understood in light of the goal to which it is connected.

If we do not know whether man has such a free will or not, HOW DARE WE judge him? If we are not certain, our judgment must follow suit in its uncertainty, admitting its limitations, and not pretending to have any authority over the behavior of others.

Though I became conscious at such and such an age, I existed prior to my thoughts, though in a form unrecognizable as a human being. What came into existence, when at last I 'awoke', was myself as the product of abstraction - an object of thought, not an object of reality. I am matter, as my father and grandfather before me. This matter, passing through many forms, is one thing, extended in time in an unbroken chain of duration, from the very foundation of the human race, and perhaps, if you must reduce all causes to one, to the very root of this universe.

An effect is simply the cause in a later form, and a cause is simply the shape of the effect, though a moment earlier in time. Identity is essential to the notion of change, which underlies the causal relation.

In my every sin it is really my cause, which is to say, that which I was in a previous age, which is at fault. It is only my personality, or my subjective self-consciousness, that thinks it is innocent, and only because it is ignorant of the truth. Every man sinned in Adam, and every man, insofar as he is a part of and one with this world, is the cause of all that has come to be. And what a world we have made!

Finally, in Part III we have been considering the object of moral judgment. Though it is our expectation that men will be ruled by the same moral principles throughout, as moral judgment is nothing more than hypothetical judgment couched in terms of desire, every man's imperatives will in reality be different and relative. That which is universal and which manifests and affects every rational creature is the logical form of moral judgments only, which we have solely by virtue of possessing language. By nature, then, our moral principles will vary as widely as our desires.

The sole source of meaning, and the sole source of objective moral principles, then, is God's will as it is revealed to us through religion, if it is revealed to us at all. Man is restricted to the empirical, and cannot therefore pretend that he knows one way or another whether there be a God or not. The arguments frequently asserted in favor of the existence of God are, ultimately, unable to bring us to any certain knowledge of our creator. The Ontological argument is circular at best (as St. Anselm reveals when he said that 'I believe that I may understand3'), making the conclusion take the place of the Major Premise. The cosmological argument depends upon a 'saltus' or a leap, carrying us beyond the causal chain on which the argument depends. The Teleological argument, as it depends upon the existence of 'ends' or 'purposes' in nature, depends, in reality, upon having already accepted that the world has a moral aspect, which is, if we understand morality, theism through and through and therefore not in need of further proof. You may know the arrow's flight from its string unto its end, but if you do not know the will of the one who shoots, you cannot judge whether it has flown aright.

In this state of ignorance (Agnosticism), man's only hope is in the agency of God himself.

The Problem of Evil, if we have objective moral values rather than epicurean in view, is really a problem for the atheist, who must explain how it is that something can deviate from its purpose, without having a purpose. Certainly life can be miserable; full of pain and suffering. But it is not, for all this, evil, unless we take our own desires for comfort and happiness and make universal laws of them. Evil, if it exists, is perhaps the most certain proof of theism, as it proves the existence of a preference (a will) that exists above and beyond mankind.

The real problem with mankind, is that we have called evil that which displeases us, and called good that which we desire. And, in the absence of God's commands, we do naught but seek to fulfill our desires. Thus, in every case of injustice and in every crime, it is human morality - man's seeking after his own ends - that is to blame. Each act, through causality, impacts the things that follow in time, so that we can say with certainty that, whether we accept the story of Adam and Eve as literal history or not, morality (seeking our own ends) is the problem with the world, and not the solution to its problems.

The whole narrative of the Bible confirms that mankind is locked and bound within the Samsara of his own sins. We sinned in Adam because, when we leave consciousness aside and consider man as a creature extended in time, we are Adam, and if Adam was caused to sin by circumstances that preceded him (perhaps by the world itself) then at last we will understand just why it is that the Gnostics identified the creator of this world as the Devil - the god of this world, as the Scripture calls him, and the Father of all sin.

We should not pretend in our moral judgments, as even many atheists carelessly pretend, that man is something different than this world. When atheists talk about artificial, man-made disasters, they borrow from a distinction that can only exist within theism. When they call certain things 'pollutants', they mean, things that act against the survival of living things. For if they are not concerned about life (specifically the group of primates to which they, to a man, belong), what difference does it make if the air is filled with oxygen or methane? But in this they are giving living things a moral significance that cannot exist in their worldview. But when man's true place in this world is understood, we must realize that Chernobyl was as much a natural disaster as Krakatoa, and all our acts are acts of the world itself. But even in calling such things 'disasters' we are clinging to ideas that cannot have objective significance without God.

But in saying, as I have suggested, that morality is the problem with the world, we are still in some manner affirming morality. For a problem cannot exist without some ideal from which it deviates. We have found all our moral notions to be vacuous; but if they are all empty, then so is our accusation against them.

If we are to truly free ourselves from the fetters of subjective morality, we must go just a little bit further.

1. Nietzsche, Friedrich, _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), .

2. Hume, David, _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , (Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc. 2003), 226.

3. St. Anselm, _Proslogium_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anselm/basic_works.iii.ii.html (December 2012)

[CONCLUSION:  
Verbum](tmp_717d27b80afd14220379ef53f9da2219_KmzbtE.ch.fixed.fc.tidied.stylehacked.xfixed_split_004.html#Table_of_Contents)

_'GOD is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him.' - Meister Eckhardt_ 1

This section is not a conclusion in the sense that it follows logically from what has already been said. The conclusions I meant to draw in this book have been drawn already. But many questions have arisen along the way, and many important things have been called into doubt. It is my purpose here to reconstruct, to some degree, what has been lost. I mean to do so, however, in such a way that the doubts that led us to these questions not only cease to threaten our beliefs, but rather serve as their foundation. I will not, however, attempt to restore to man the faculty of moral judgment - I will not play the Serpent.

It is my purpose here to introduce to my readers a way of thinking about God that is somewhat different from what passes for theology in many circles. I do not mean to prove that God exists, as though he were something very distant that needs to be discovered by examining weatherworn footprints. I have seen many debates where philosophers and scientists argue very technically about what happened in the nano seconds following the Big Bang some 13.8 billion years ago. How ridiculous that our faith in God should come down to questions so complex that only a specialist could even hope to comprehend them - and that no man could hope to be certain about!

If your faith hangs upon the latest calculations from astrophysicists or the latest 100 million-year-old Neanderthal bones, you will live a life of doubt and vexation. You might be able to grasp after God by clinging to the arguments made by creation scientists or by those who advocate intelligent design theories, but you will never have peace. Every new ape man and every new high-resolution image from space will threaten to undo your faith.

If God has revealed himself to mankind in such a way as to render the unbeliever inexcusable for his unbelief, then we will search in vain for him in the distant cosmos, or in a 'time' before time began. I say that we will search in vain, not because he is not there, but because the very fact that we think we must search in such distant places reveals that we do not know what we seek. Men will not be faulted in That Day for not having a powerful enough telescope or a clear enough lens to capture a snapshot of their bashful maker. If we want to know God, we must start HERE. If he has revealed himself as clearly as Christianity suggests, then he must be as discernible in a liar's tongue as he is in the Cosmological Argument. We do not need to bring him to light from some dark corner of the universe in order to know Him. We do not need to dis-cover him at all, in fact, for he is not hidden. We must learn to recognize him where he already stands - in plain sight of all rational creatures. I do not, therefore, need to demonstrate his existence. I merely need to tell you about him so that you too can recognize him.

God is Holy.

This is often taken to mean that God is morally good or righteous. But the meaning of the word 'holy' is really somewhat unrelated to our conceptions of morality. Bread is bread. The Eucharist, however, is holy; not because it is a good person, but because it is 'set aside' from all other bread to serve a purpose.

God is holy because he is utterly unique and without rival. He is above and beyond all other things. But if we take him to be merely one of these other things to which he is opposed, then he loses his Holiness entirely.

If, for instance, we say that God is so holy that he is not at all like those 'other things,' then we have rendered his holiness meaningless. Because if he is just one of a set of 'things,' then he is no different from them insofar as they are all 'things.' In saying that 'God exists' and that 'I exist' I am saying that, insofar as our existence is concerned, there is no difference between us whatsoever. And if I mean something different by the word 'exist' in each case, then I am equivocating when I say that God exists, and nobody should be faulted for disbelieving me when I say that God exists. A God who exists ALONGSIDE his creation as a thing among 'other' things is not holy, and is therefore not God. But every time you say that God is in some way distinct from other things you are implicitly stating that he is not holy.

The only way that this can be avoided is by understanding that God is not merely an existing thing among 'other' existing things - he is Existence itself.

Existence is the class to which all things belong, and like other classes it is not a concrete object - it is an abstraction. This has led many to conclude that even if God is Existence, it means that he is 'only' an abstract Ideal - he is not 'real' like the planets and the stars, or like the animals and rocks we encounter in life - he is 'just' an idea. But if you think that saying God is an abstract idea makes him any less real than these more mundane objects, you are taking WAY too much on faith.

In truth it is not skepticism, but rather the lack thereof, that is the cause of unbelief. Those who reject Christian Theism do not do so because they cannot extend their credulity far enough, but because they have, in general, already overextended it. Consider the reasoning that was brought forth at the end of Chapter 5 in Part II:

If I observe an apple falling from a tree, the apple, at every stage of its descent, contradicts itself. The principle of Identity requires of a thing that it bear all the same predicates. But in time, things, as they alter (and Time requires alteration/change), lose this quality - they come to contradict themselves; they are not identical. Here, and not here, are contradictions. So the apple on the ground and the apple on the tree are not identical, nor are any of the 'intermediate' apples, which are intermediate for being contradictory to both the apple on the ground and the apple on the tree (and to one another). What IS identical throughout, however, is the Name that we give to them. Ignoring the relatively small differences between the apple on the tree and each step on its way to the ground, we think of it as a single object. This is an act of abstraction - which does not present itself to us in experience, but rather interprets experience. The substance of the object, if the object endures at all, cannot alter - for being A and then being not A is not endurance but contradiction, which means we speak not of the same thing.

But the only thing that remains the same throughout the alteration is the Name. This being the case, parsimony requires of us no further explanation of substance than the act of abstraction itself - the Name is the substance. In accordance with this, my entire metaphysical philosophy can be summarized by the four words, 'Substance is a Word,' a phrase that is, I think, very obviously true - and once it is fully understood, it is as deep as it is shallow, reflecting both the simple fact that the word substance is a word - a mere truism, and that the very essence of our world is nothing but the Word of God or the Logos. Though the former aspect of this doctrine is as shallow as a sheet of paper and the latter is as deep as the cosmos itself, they are identical. Before we unfold this doctrine further, however, I want to take a closer look at the ideas of Time and Space.

TIME

What leads us to think that we really do experience change is the fact that we are not only abstracting from the differences we perceive, uniting them into objects (the apple as it falls for instance), but we are also abstracting from the differences in our own acts of perception. When I say, 'I see the apple fall,' for instance, I am omitting the fact that, when 'I' see it on the tree and when 'I' see it on the ground, 'I' am not identical with myself, as, in the former case, 'I see an apple on a tree,' while in the latter case, 'I do not'. Thus, the observer which supposedly witnesses the change, only witnesses 'change' because he is ignoring the fact that the observer is not the same observer in both cases - he is uniting the acts of perceptions themselves into a single observer (the ego). This abstraction (the ego) says of itself, quite contrary to the actual experience, that 'I' see the apple as it descends from here to there. Thus we think that 'we' have watched something change. But in truth the 'I' that supposedly witnesses the change, is not the same, and so we have only a sequence: 'I' seeing the apple on the tree, to 'I' seeing the apple on the ground, but no change from one to the other. I do not witness any unity or identity between each apple, nor do I witness any unity between myself of a moment ago and myself now; the unity is superimposed on perception by the use of abstraction - by the taking of the two as one.

Even if I simply stare at the unmoving wall, I am not conscious of an identity between the wall of a moment ago and the wall of this moment. In the first place, there is a certain act of perception where the wall is seen. Time is only comprehensible through change, so if it is a different moment at all it must be because some change has transpired. But that change is manifested only by contradiction, which destroys the unity we mean to discover. To say 'I' see the wall and that 'I' still see the wall is to unite two separate and contradictory acts of perception and objects of perception under one name, not perceiving their unity (in truth we only perceive their differences), but uniting them by ignoring their differences. So it is with the wall, I ignore the change (whether it is within me or within the wall), be it ever so slight, and unite them under one common name 'wall' or 'I'.

SPACE

This is as certain in Space as it is in Time.

When I say that 'I' see the wall, I am ignoring the differences between the different points in my visual field and uniting these contradictory sensations into one single idea. They are contradictory, otherwise they would be the very same point (they would be identical). Likewise, in considering the 'wall', I am ignoring the differences in texture, in color etc. so as to unite the contradictory sensations under one term. This is all the more clear in the tactile sense, where we cannot feel more than a little piece of a thing at a time. If I were to run my hand along a rail, and call it one 'rail,' I am not only ignoring the differences between this or that section of the rail, I am also ignoring the differences between the rail of a moment ago and the rail I feel now, not to mention the very real differences between myself as I feel the rail and myself as I felt the rail a moment before.

If I put my finger on the rail and say, 'My finger is touching the rail,' I am ignoring the fact that the left side of my finger is touching something completely different from that which the right side touches. They are not touching the same thing except insofar as I choose to ignore the differences between the rail 'here' and 'there'. Similarly, it is not 'my finger' that touches each part of the rail, but 'these' nerves of my finger and 'those' nerves. It only becomes one finger touching one rail when I ignore the many contradictory aspects of the experience by naming them 'finger' and 'rail'.

Duration, as it implies a contradiction between before and after, is only duration of one thing insofar as we ignore these contradictions by abstraction. So also with extension; as extension implies a contradiction between here and there, it is only extension of one thing insofar as we ignore the contradictions in abstraction. In truth, things cannot endure - for then they must contradict themselves in some regard so as to have existed at two distinct times. Identical things cannot extend, for then they must contradict themselves in some regard so as to exist at two distinct places.

The identity of objects over time or in space, is not discovered in sense, but imposed through an act of the mind, whereby the differences between sensations are ignored and united under a common name. Some call this act 'perception' and then push back the abstraction to a higher level of consciousness, so that objects are 'perceived' or 'observed', but then understood by the mind by abstraction. In this way they hope to retain the notion that they are, at the heart of it, truly seeing, receiving or perceiving 'objects' in and of themselves. But whether you call it perception as some have, or abstraction as I have, the act is such that it unites that which in itself is not united. Thus perception itself is an act of the intellect, and not a passive reception of objects. It is the creation of objects by the union of contradictions under a single idea, conception, mental object or what have you - in other words, the objects are abstractions. Without abstraction, there is nothing but an absolutely senseless chaos of disorganized sensation, ever contradicting, but never forming into objects in their own nature. The idea of an object that stretches out in space and endures through time arises through abstraction alone - through naming. It cannot arise simply from experience, since experience gives us only the contradictions, and never the unity of the objects in time or space.

To truly appreciate this, of course, it is requisite that we take the time, not merely to read this, but to try the experiment, and view the content of our own experience with these considerations in mind. Our whole body is a process, and its relation to external things is such that the body as it experiences the first things is not the same body as it experiences the latter things - except in that it bears the same name.

Think very carefully about the apple as it is on the tree, and imagine its descent; make yourself aware of how, in order to perceive it as different, you, the observer, are likewise changed. Not only is the apple, at one time, on the tree while, at another time, it is falling, but you likewise are, at one time, looking at the apple on the tree while, at another time, you are watching it fall. The two watchers contradict one another, and their identity is only upheld by the fact that we ignore the differences in abstraction - which is to say, because we have one name for them all.

In truth the substance of all these so-called 'concrete' objects, both as they endure through time and extend in space, lies not in the objects of experience themselves, but in the mind that unites the experience - their substance is their name.

This is why it in no way impugns the nature or reality of God to say that he is the Highest Idea or the abstract Idea of Existence. On the contrary, to deny the reality of God by denying the reality of abstract ideas is to deny everything \- for all things are only 'things' insofar as their differences are set aside and they are given, by abstraction, the same name. The whole concept of 'Reality' itself is an abstract idea, and to deny the reality of abstract ideas is to deny the reality of reality. All things have their 'reality,' their 'existence,' their 'being,' and their 'truth' (all of these are synonyms) by means of abstraction.

LOGOS

To better understand God's nature, we must consider the nature of existence - for they are one and the same.

Consider the proposition 'Dogs go to heaven'.

This, of itself, is not an act of reasoning. Add to this, however, the proposition that 'Tinky is a dog', and you have, formally, an argument leading to the conclusion that 'Tinky goes to heaven'.

But you must ADD to it that Tinky is a dog. If you do not judge of the proposition 'Tinky is a dog' that 'it is true', then you can say these propositions a hundred times without ever drawing the conclusion.

In the proposition Dogs go to heaven, if things that go to heaven are not quadrupeds, then neither are dogs, since dogs, being things that go to heaven, must bear the predicates of things that go to heaven according to Aristotle's dictum. If it is true that 'Dogs are quadrupeds', when 'things that go to heaven are not quadrupeds', then dogs would, by logic, be excluded from eternal bliss.

This is to say: According to Aristotle's dictum, we must be able to affirm of the subject whatever we affirm of the predicate. So if the predicate bears any quality that is contradicted in the subject, then that predicate cannot be applied, by logic, to the subject. For instance, if all men are mortal, God, being immortal, is excluded from the class 'men'. The Subject of a proposition bears the predicate affirmed of it, and every predicate affirmed of the predicate.

To illustrate this in a more formal manner, consider the following:

B is C

C is D

D is E

E is F

F is G

G is H

A is not H

Therefore A is not B

Affirming that A is not H allows us to exclude A from G, since if it were G, it would be H according to Aristotle's dictum. Likewise if we have excluded A from G, then it cannot be F, since we have affirmed G of F and whatever is said of F could be said of A if it were F. So on until at last we are brought back to the beginning of the chain.

In reasoning, then, it is implicit in the affirmation of a proposition that the subject bears all the predicates of the predicate. Dogs are mammals, mammals are chordates, chordates are animals, animals are living things, living things exist etc. Dogs must bear every higher predicate, or they would be excluded from the class we directly affirmed of them. If they were not living things, they could not be mammals, since mammals are living things.

Now, if the predicate does not, itself, bear the predicate 'exists', then neither can the subject. For then the subject, bearing the predicate 'does not exist', would not exist. If the subject does not exist, then it cannot bear any predicates, otherwise there would be something 'true' concerning it. So if we can affirm anything at all of a subject, then it is true that it exists. If the subject of a proposition exists, then the predicate must also exist - otherwise there would be a contradiction. If the predicate of a proposition exists, then so must the subject, for the subject bears the predicates of the predicate. Thus, everything that can be made the subject of a true proposition, and everything that can be made the predicate of a true proposition, must bear the predicate existence.

'Chimera is hungry' is false because Chimeras, not existing, do not truly bear the predicate 'hungry'.

'Mother is a Chimera' is false because, the predicate (Chimera), not existing, would contradict the subject (Mother), which exists.

The fact that existence is predicable of everything that bears a predicate (non-existing things do not have predicates) is no accident or coincidence. It is not as though we might have found some things that have predicates but that do not exist, or things that exist but have no predicates - but lo, we happen to find that everything that bears a predicate also just happens to exist!

It is quite literally in the act of predication itself that existence is to be discovered. To exist is simply to bear a predicate - for there to be something true concerning the subject.

Existence itself is not some single quality that objectively belongs to every object, but rather, every object bearing SOME quality, is predicable of them as an abstraction from all possible predicates.

In other words, ignoring the differences between what is true of each object and considering only THAT something is true, the differences between the objects are ignored, leading to the abstract idea of existence itself. Existence, then, is not any quality borne by an object in itself; but is an abstraction of the mind, ignoring the differences between every contradictory predicate and uniting everything under the common term 'thing'.

In classical logic, the subject is called the 'Species' and the predicate is called the 'Genus' - as was indicated back in Part I. The Genus contains the Species as members, uniting them, not in experience, but in word. So creatures of intelligence, who walk upright, etc. are, their differences set aside, called simply 'man'. Man is the genus to which they belong. Primates, stepping further away from the particular beings, is the genus to which 'man' belongs, and so on ad infinitum. When all possible distinctions are ignored, and we are simply considering THAT something is said, then we have 'Existence', which is an absolute abstraction, and therefore the highest genus, or the 'Summum Genus'. So abstract is this conception that we very often neglect to even include it in our existential statements. Thus in the statement 'There is a God', 'God' is the subject, and the predicate is not even stated, as if stating it would somehow obscure the absolute nature of the abstraction. As this predicate (Existence) is an abstraction from all possible predicates, being a name standing for them all, it is predicable of everything that can possibly be thought. It's nature is that of being the abstract idea of all things, and it is therefore utterly unique (Holy), not for being different from all things, but for alone BEING all things (The Alpha and Omega).

This is what the author of the Theologia Germanica speaks of when he says, 'That which is perfect is a Being, who hath comprehended and included all things in Himself and His own Substance, and without whom, and beside whom, there is no true Substance, and in whom all things have their Substance.2'

The ancient Chinese sage Laozi wrote that, 'The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.3' Until we have united the contradictory data of our senses under a single name, there can be no enduring or extending - it being the name alone that endures and extends, and not the sense data. Thus, all objects of space and time have their origin in the act of abstraction – the act of naming. Until we extend a common term over our disparate and contradictory sensations, they have nothing in common; for perception only gives us the disparity between each moment and each length. It is the name that provides the identity. The naming substantiates the objects (gives them their 'being').

It is not surprising to me that some translations of the New Testament into Chinese render the Greek word 'Logos' as 'Tao'. As far as I can tell they both serve the same function in the philosophical systems in which they appear. The Christian doctrine of the Logos is most clearly expressed in the prologue of the Gospel of John:

'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.' (John 1:1-5)

For this is precisely what this Summum Genus is, 'The Word' (in Greek 'Logos'). All predicates are words, and the highest of them is that Word which stands over them all and gives them all one substance, where otherwise they would be a senseless chaos. You cannot reason if the subject does not bear the predicates of the predicate - so no sense could be made of the world at all if we did not, by abstraction, ignore sense data and unite everything by the single Idea 'Existence'. But since the objects of perception do not, in and of themselves, extend and endure, this uniting work of the Word is not merely a matter of interpreting what is 'there.' Since the substance of the thing is the name, the Word which by abstraction unites them all things into a comprehensible whole (universe), is their substance, and the act of abstraction creates them - giving what has no substance, substance. Thus Paul writes, '...he is before all things, and by him all things consist.'

As this Word is the highest Genus, it is 'that than which nothing greater can be imagined' (there can be no higher abstraction). American theologian Jonathan Edwards explains, 'It is impossible that we should explain a perfectly abstract and mere idea of existence; only we always find this, by running of it up, that God and Real Existence are the same.' He goes on to conclude, 'Hence we learn how properly it may be said, that God is, and that there is none else; and how proper are these names of the Deity, Jehovah, and I am that I am.4'

The heart of the Ontological argument is simply the fact that God and Existence are equivalent, and that to say that Existence does not exist is impossible even to think, let alone to prove. The Ontological Argument does not prove God, it only defines the term.

MATERIALISM

Now, the materialist might say at this point: 'You are saying that all things are, in truth, mere words. But words are nothing mystical or supernatural; they are sounds, vibrations in the air, and nothing more. It is matter that gives rise to sounds and words, and not visa versa. Words are certainly not God of all things.'

To this I reply, 'This 'matter' of which you speak, is it real (in the sense of being something outside of thought) or is it itself an abstraction whereby many different objects are united? And this motion you refer to - the motion of sound waves - is it real or is the continuity between the wave of a moment ago and the wave as it strikes your ear (the continuity that constitutes the whole concept of motion) something you have perceived or is it something that your mind has attained by setting aside the differences between the two things (not to mention two perceptions) and uniting them under a common term by abstraction. You have seen many sights and felt many sensations, but you have not seen 'matter' as such. It is in the mind alone - by words - that matter exists. It cannot exist, insofar as the unity of the concept requires an act of abstraction and not merely passive observation. I grant, of course, that words are mere sounds; they are symbols that stand in the place of certain groups of perception. I have not suggested that they are, in any way, mystical, supernatural or in any way otherworldly. In fact it has been my intention to show just the opposite, and to suggest that God is not something so alien to us that we cannot but by delicate calculations and speculations discover him.

But the materialist, in that he believes in what cannot be seen or perceived, believes in something beyond experience (something supernatural). For I have seen this, and I have seen that, but I cannot say they are one object until I have united them by ignoring their difference and applying one single symbol to stand for both of them (and to stand for my own thoughts). The materialist on the other hand sees this and that, and though he experiences no unity he asserts that aside from and independent of his abstractions they are truly and in themselves one thing enduring and extending. He believes that, though contradiction destroys unity and identity, objects somehow defy contradiction and retain themselves even as they pass away in time. The apple as it falls a moment ago is also the apple as it rests on the ground in the mind of the materialist. Though these two things are contradictory, the materialist asserts that they are somehow one and the same thing. He then pretends that it is the Materialist who is not going beyond experience, though no experience could ever prove what he maintains (again, experience gives us only the contradictions, not the substance).

Arthur Schopenhauer, though his pessimism separated him from faith, ridiculed Materialism because it pretends to begin with matter and to work its way up through chemistry to simple lifeforms and then to the animals and finally to man, explaining each step according to the principle of causality. At this final stage, knowledge comes into being, which they must see as some modification of matter produced by causality.

He says, 'Now if we had followed materialism thus far with clear notions, then, having reached its highest point, we should experience a sudden fit of the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians. As though waking from a dream we should all at once become aware that its final result, produced so laboriously, namely knowledge, was already presupposed as the indispensable condition at the very first starting point, at mere matter. With this we imagined that we thought of matter, but in fact, we had thought of nothing but the subject that represents matter, the eye that sees it, the hand that feels it, the understanding that knows it. Thus the tremendous petitio principii disclosed itself unexpectedly, for suddenly the last link showed itself as the fixed point, the chain as a circle, and the materialist was like Baron von Munchhausen who, when swimming in the water on horseback, drew his horse up by his legs, and himself by his upturned pigtail.5'

The Materialist has always been able to oppose the Ontological Argument on the ground that the thought of a thing cannot prove the existence of a thing. But insofar as existence itself is merely the most abstract of all THOUGHTS, there is no need to prove its existence any further, as it (the Greatest Thought or Summum Genus), by virtue of representing every possible predicate, exists. It exists if anything exists, and if it does not, then nothing does - for then everything that exists, bearing the predicates of the highest predicate, would not exist (a contradiction). The Materialist cannot accept the argument, not because it is unsound, but because he does not understand that the Greatest Thought gives all things their substance.

The Ontological Argument, ironically, is identical with Ayn Rand's maxim, Existence exists6, though I would argue that St. Anselm and Rene Descartes were closer to the proper interpretation of the proposition. If the substance of 'things' is recognized as the Word, then we have no need to leap from the Idea of God to the reality of God, for all reality is in the Word, and the reality is no more than the Word.

If we were to argue that Existence has some form of 'being' (there is an irony in even attempting to imagine such things) outside of abstraction (outside of the Logos), then we would very clearly be going beyond what inference allows. But this is precisely what the Materialist does when he, based upon the abstractions of his own mind, postulates the duplicated existence of the objects of thought outside of his own powers of abstraction. For example, he truly believes that the seat of the chair on which he sits is not only united in abstraction by his mind's act of ignoring differences, but also united in reality, without either the perception that supplies the material and the abstraction that unites and constructs the object. For a seat is an extended surface, and extension implies a unity from one point in space to another; a unity that is destroyed in the very experience of extension. But in the word 'seat', the multitudinous perceptions are united, whereas in experience, it is quite the opposite. The Materialist, however, believes that they are, in themselves, extended, as if they could be in two places at once. An abstraction, however, extends over contradictory objects, and is in fact their substance - that which endures across the extension.

But if we understand that abstraction is not the perception of unity, but the creation of unity by naming, we can forever dispense with this unnecessary postulation of abstract ideas like matter. I mean, we can dispense with the notion that they are, apart from our minds, 'something'.

Schopenhauer continues his criticism with the following description of science:

'To the assertion that knowledge is a modification of matter there is always opposed with equal justice the contrary assertion that all matter is only modification of the subject's knowing, as the subject's representation. Yet at bottom, the aim and ideal of all natural science is a materialism wholly carried into effect. That we here recognize this as obviously impossible confirms another truth that will result from our further consideration, namely the truth that all science in the real sense, by which I understand systematic knowledge under the guidance of the principle of sufficient reason, can never reach a final goal or give an entirely satisfactory explanation. It never aims at the inmost nature of the world; it can never get beyond the representation; on the contrary, it really tells us nothing more than the relation of one representation to another.7'

The doctrine of the Logos is essentially an Idealistic doctrine, acknowledging the nature of existence to be an Idea. Philosophical Realism and Nominalism, in that they imagine objects to be 'real' things without understanding that 'realness' itself is an abstract idea, have no real need for theology. Their explanation for the abstract ideas that comprise their knowledge is that the objects their minds generate by abstraction are essentially the same even without the mind's interpretation. But this is simply to accept, by faith, what experience cannot give to us.

God is a difficult thing to accept for one who has already overextended their credulity, however. To account for what they perceive to be change, extension and duration in objects, they postulate the 'real,' external existence of matter and more importantly the 'real,' external existence of Time. Having already leapt in believing that matter and Time exist without abstraction, the leap beyond the leap to belief in God is a saltus that only the most passionate believers can manage - and because such believers have made this double-saltus, doubt will gnaw at them night and day for as long as they hold fast to this perspective. It will always seem to them that the solidness of the world in which they live is ground enough for their experience, without stepping beyond it to believe that this solid world has a very un-solid creator. They may still believe in him, but they will always feel as though they are being dishonest with themselves. Idealism, however, teaches us precisely what is our experience - that the incomprehensible pandemonium of experience is given its shape and substance through the Mind.

It will not do to say, as some may be tempted to say, that it is, in truth, we ourselves who create this world by abstraction, or that this world is a creation of OUR minds. For in so saying we are assuming our own personal existence apart from abstraction, though in truth our existence is itself an act of abstraction. If we believe that we are, in ourselves, something, then God cannot be proven by any argument - for we have already taken a leap of faith. But if we realize that we ourselves are nothing, then all that remains is the incomprehensible God, who, Soren Kierkegaard says, 'is present as soon as the uncertainty of all things is thought infinitely8.' And we will not need to leap anywhere, for he is already here; more present in us than we ourselves are.

MEDIATOR

You cannot say that there are 'two' of anything unless you consider them to be 'two' of the same thing. In order to conceive of numbers at all we must already be assigning objects to abstract classes. All duality, then, implies the unity of the Logos, insofar as and conception of number involves the unity of the class to which the numbered things belong. Abstractly speaking, all 'things' belong to the single class 'Things.' But in themselves, outside of abstraction, these things are utterly incomprehensible and unknowable. Absolutely nothing can be said or known about them because knowing is abstracting. Even number cannot apply to 'them,' since number arises only after 'they' have been given substance through the Word (through abstraction). God is 'one' then, not because there is only 'one' of him, whereas there might have been a dozen or a thousand - he is 'One' in that number cannot be applied to his nature outside of the Logos – which is how he is known to us.

Because the Logos is the name for 'Existence,' we cannot say anything about 'Existence' besides simply the fact that it 'is.' To say anything less abstract about it would contradict some aspect of what it is meant to stand for, much like saying 'humans are men' would contradict the idea of humanity, which, to be complete, must encompass women as well as men.

To explain anything is to speak more abstractly. You cannot answer the question, 'Who was George Washington?' without waxing abstract. All explanations, therefore, ultimately lead up to the explanation of all things - 'Existence.' But just as there can be no abstraction higher than the highest abstraction, and no man taller than the tallest man, there can be no explanation of the explanation of all things. The German mystic Meister Eckhardt says quite appropriately that, 'God is nameless, for no man can either say or understand aught about Him,' and later, 'If thou wilt be without sin, prate not about God. Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I could understand, I would never hold Him to be God.9'

God is, outside of the Logos, utterly incomprehensible, but made comprehensible through the Logos, which reveals him through the minds of all rational creatures. This is why Christians teach the Christ (the Logos) is the mediator between God and man. But the Logos is not distinct from God as if they were two things standing side by side; he is the name of God.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE

What I am not suggesting here is that Words are the cause of the world, or that Words in some way make things happen - the Word certainly is not the cause of the Big Bang, for instance. The Word does not precede the Big Bang in Time as if it, itself, was an object or an event.

But the Word IS the maker of Time and Causality alike, since the unity of cause and effect, the two representing two contradictory temporal states, is only possible in abstraction. So in saying that the Word created the world we are in no way saying that the Word stands, causally, at the beginning of the sequence of events. The Word is within you and within me. It is our own act of naming by which God's Word creates the world. And it creates the world at every moment and in every causal connection; the temporal beginning (if there is such a beginning) is irrelevant. It is also quite irrelevant whether there are an infinite number of universes and an infinite number of divergent timelines. All things have their being in the Word, however big or small you make your universe or multiverse.

This doctrine, then, bears no opposition to physical science, which is a systematic description of what happens in nature. No discovery in any field of science can even bear relevance upon what we have been here discussing. True Christian theism, then, has absolutely nothing to fear from science, since its doctrines do not depend in any sense whatsoever upon any particular physical theory. Some physical theories may depend upon philosophical misconceptions or assumptions, and therefore run afoul of what has been said, but the doctrine itself is not the result of scientific investigation. Rather, all scientific explanations being explanations, the Word is the source and root of them all.

Since the Word is, itself, the substance of the world, nothing can endure through time or extend through space until its power has come to exert itself over our mind. Thus the author of the Wisdom of Solomon says of Wisdom (the Logos) that she is more moving than motion (Wisdom of Solomon 7:24 KJV) - for it is in the Word that motion consists, and not in the things which are thought to move. It is the name that travels, extending as an abstraction from here to there (here and there are contradictory in themselves).

It would be an error to say, as some will undoubtedly be tempted to say, 'Well, then, you are simply saying that you cannot understand the world until your body has evolved, developed and gained the use of abstraction.'

This is certainly the case in a sense; but even this description already presumes the abstraction insofar as it describes things as if they, in themselves and apart from Reason, 'evolve', 'develop' etc. No, it is the Word that gives all things, even the evolution of our own bodies, their existence. You can certainly, from the outside, watch the temporal becoming of a consciousness. But you are watching a sequence of contradictions that only have substance within your own mind by abstraction. For until you say of them, this is that (abstraction), you have not watched a becoming. 'You', properly speaking, cannot watch anything. It is only when we unite our sensations, and our sensations at other times, that 'we', as a single object, come to exist. So no matter how we attempt to go about it, it is the Word alone that gives substance to the world and to our own souls. It is the Word that does the evolving and the developing, uniting the different stages of the development by abstraction into one thing.

'But this is something OUR body does,' some might say.

Again, it is only OUR body after we have been created by the Word (by abstraction). The act of abstraction by which WE are created (the union of 'I' and 'I'), is the work of the Incomprehensible - the Nameless God. This is what is meant in Christianity by the doctrine that God the Father (the Incomprehensible) begat the Word before Time in Eternity*.

*NOTE: It is for this reason that science cannot and will not ever discover any hint or trace of design in the universe. Design and intention are motives, coming from a rational process and finding their fulfillment, not merely in time, but later in time. Thus the beginning of the world will not follow any preconceived plan or pattern, for the pattern does not precede the world, but is the act of creation itself. This is in keeping with Christian doctrine, which emphatically asserts that the Word, which creates the world through abstraction, is begotten of God, not God from the Word. In other words, the Logos is born from the Incomprehensible. It is this relation that constitutes the doctrine that the Logos is the Only Begotten Son of God. Ironically it is this very condition that supports and upholds the atheist's accusation that the world shows no signs of design. But understood properly, the atheist's complaint is simply a reflection of the doctrine of the Logos.

VERITABLE REBELLION

Now that we have come to understand, to some degree at least, what Christians mean when they say, 'God,' I want to make it all the more clear to my reader just how certain it is that our moral judgments amount to wickedness. If there seemed to be any loophole in what I have already suggested about man's incompetence as a moral judge, I intend to close it up with the following argumentation.

In the Scriptures God declares, 'I am God, and there is none else.'

God is existence. There is nothing else.

Everything that 'is' exists; what does not exist, belongs to no class. That is what it means to exist - to belong to some class of things. To not exist is to belong to no class.

Nothing can be said about nothing, properly speaking. Even in what I have just said I have not spoken accurately, for I have said something about nothing. Some might snicker at this and say, 'Is what you are saying about nothing true?' - to which I reply, 'Of course not, or else it would be false, and I would have said something about nothing.' The best we could do, if we wish to speak about nothing, is to say nothing. Suffice it to say, non-existence is not a quality that 'things' can possess, and it is not a separate class to which existent things are opposed. It is not a class - and that is its nature (again I speak incorrectly, for it, being nothing, has no nature). I will now leave off this discussion of nothing, and leaving off, I will finally speak truth.

There is only existence.

Existence encompasses all things, and so all power is contained within it. For an omnipotent being there can be no difference between what it wills and what it creates. Psalm 115 says, '...our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.' In human endeavors we typically judge a work by the outcome, comparing the result with the desire of the workman. But with God there is nothing to resist his desire, and what he wills, is, and what is, he wills. These two things are not merely compatible, they are identical. The two terms, 'what is' and 'God's will' are synonymous.

This fact alone should render moral judgment impossible, since it essentially does away with the whole essence of moral judgment, which consists in comparing purposes with results. There is no comparison to be made, since the purpose and the results are the same. God is the Beginning (arche) and the End (Telos). But yet we go on judging.

When people grow frustrated with an argument, it is not uncommon for them to say in a huff, 'Well, you can believe what you want!' How damning to man's intellect, that any could believe what they wanted to believe in opposition to what is actually presented to them. What a man accepts through experience and reason, the former actively shaping his belief, and the latter passively unfolding the experience, he accepts without reference to the will. What he accepts without experience, or in opposition to experience and reason, he accepts according to some other consideration. I argue that a man will not accept a conclusion that opposes experience and reason together unless it be such that he wants to believe it. For if reason and experience dictate a certain proposition, and we want to believe it, what is stopping us? The devil? No, if our belief runs contrary to these two factors, then we can be sure that the will is involved.

Thus, if we come to a belief that is not born of experience or reason, then that belief is born of the will. For those who may take issue with this, I must add that the witness of the Holy Spirit is experience. I am not, therefore, suggesting that one who says that they believe the Spirit of God against the rest of their experience is in this category. I am speaking of one who believes a thing against ALL kinds of experience, supernatural or not.

At any rate, on with the argument:

The Possible is a category about which we can know nothing. For knowledge comes from experience, which is always actual. And logic extends our knowledge only according to what is given, which is never the possible.

The flip of a coin - the outcome is heads. Flip it again - it is tails. Is this not possibility? Is it not possible for the coin to land on heads or tails?

This is not so. For the coin flipping here and the coin flipping there, the one landing on heads and the other on tails are two coin flips, with two outcomes. So far we have only actuality. Flip the same coin twice, first landing on heads, next on tails. We still have only actuality. It is only when we ignore the differences in time that constitute the two events that we can say 'a coin may land thus or thus'. This, again, is abstraction. It is only when the many events are taken under one name as if they were but one single thing that we can say of that 'thing' (I speak here of the abstraction) that it 'can' be this OR that.

The only means, properly speaking, to come to a true knowledge of possibility would be to repeat the same event twice. Not by flipping one coin and then another, buy rather by flipping the same coin twice at the same time. It is only when this is done that it can truly be said that something 'could have been' different from what it was. Scientists speak of repeating the same experiment, and then think that from their differing results they have acquired a knowledge of probability, but it is only because they do not realize the role of abstraction in this endeavor. The idea formed by abstraction can be described according to probability, but not in truth the thing itself, which is only one way or the other, and never both.

I said that the only way to know probability would be to repeat an event, not in succession, like flipping a coin twice, but to flip it twice at the same moment - otherwise we are speaking only of abstractions. But the very experience would be destroyed; for the experience consists in one result or the other, and the one replaces and negates the other - it does not and cannot add to it. For if it added to the experience so as to give us two outcomes (so as to permit our conception of possibility), then it, being addition, would be the taking of two things together - and it would be two things, not two possibilities. If it does not add anything, then no concept of probability can be derived, since without the addition you only have one result. There is no way to observe anything but the actual.

Thus one is never justified in saying concerning an event that, 'It could have been otherwise.'

If someone were to lose a game due to a coin toss, then, they could not say that, 'I could have won,' as though that particular coin toss could have been something different from what it was. What exhibits the possibility is the abstract idea of a coin toss, which admits of two possibilities, not the actual coin toss, which can only be what it is.

The copula 'can' does not express a relation between the subject and predicate in the same way that 'is' or 'is not' does. In the proposition 'Humans can make nuclear bombs' it is not at all implied that every human will or even can make such weapons. Plainly most people cannot. Given that they cannot, it is clear that 'can' propositions, even if they are made concerning a whole class, cannot, as is the case with empirical propositions, lead us to conclude anything about the individual members of the class.

If no human being ever made a nuclear bomb, we would have no basis for concluding that humans can do it. When one person accomplishes the task, however, suddenly we can say of the whole species that 'they can' or 'it is possible.' What this means is that the statement 'Humans can make nuclear bombs' can only be drawn from the fact that one or some of them DO. But just as saying 'Humans can be male or female' does not at all imply that George Bush can be male or female, so also saying that 'humans can make nuclear bombs' does not at all imply that I or any other specific individual can. This is because the judgment about possibility (that humans can make such bombs) is drawn, not from any universal quality of human beings, but from the fact that 'some' or 'one' can. If the proposition that 'some' or 'one' person can is the root of the judgment 'humans can' then, as per Aristotle's Dictim such a judgment cannot mean any more than that 'some humans do,' since that is, rationally, the source of the judgment. To say more would be to leap beyond anything that experience or logic can tell us.

What happens when we make judgments about possibility is that we are neglecting this fact, and forgetting that the substance of the human creature is in the name and not in the objects. Taking what is possible of the genus and applying it to the individual member thereof we think we are in keeping with the rules of logic, which allow us to say what was said of the class about every member (Men can, Bob is a man, ergo, Bob can). But if we understand the root and therefore the nature of 'can' propositions, then we can see that saying humans 'can' do something implies, not that every member 'can,' but rather only that 'some' do or have done, which proves nothing more than what we can learn from experience - that some people do the deed in question. We have not learned and we cannot learn anything about what is or is not possible for an individual from this, any more than we can conclude that penguins can fly from the fact that birds can fly.

I have shown here, I believe, that we never experience what is possible - that is the very opposite of experience. Moreover, I have shown how the idea of possibility arises. The name is what truly bears the 'possibilities', not the actual objects. Insofar as my refutation of the possible is given along with an explanation of how the idea arises, howsoever untrue it may be, I know that I stand on solid ground in asserting that the possible cannot be learned from experience, but arises as an illusion due to the fact that we are careless in detecting our own abstractions.

Remember that to say of a thing that it 'ought' or 'ought not' be implies that the subject is capable of performing the duty asserted. To say that 'Friedrich should avoid striking his wife' implies that Friedrich can avoid it. The imperative judgment implies an empirical hypothetical (If Friedrich is good, then he avoids striking his wife). But if Friedrich cannot avoid it, then the judgment contradicts itself, since one who cannot, does not. But if it is true that Friedrich does not avoid striking his wife, then the moral judgment amounts to saying, 'If Friedrich is good, then Friedrich who does not avoid it, avoids it'. But this is a contradiction.

So to say of a thing that it 'ought' to have been different than what it was is to assume that it was possible for it to have been different. But knowledge of the possible, I have shown, cannot be derived from either experience (which is only actual) or logic (which adds nothing to the experience that is not already there). Thus, since moral judgments that contradict the way things are must assume as their foundation this possibility (that things could be different than the actual), and since this possibility is an undetected illusion of abstraction, it is clear that the moral judgments can only be born of the will of the subject, and not through reason or experience.

God made the world. If you have aught to say against it, then you say it not for any fact or truth, but from your own will. If you judge good and evil, then you have eaten the apple; there can be no doubt whatsoever. If ever you speak of oughts and shoulds, in opposition to that which God has made, then as surely as you live you are in rebellion against Almighty God. Because it is impossible to know the possible, it is beyond man's power to make any objective moral judgments whatsoever, and every moral judgment reveals only our own willfulness.

This understanding of possibility, in fact, answers the age old question of why there is a devil in the first place. Abstraction is the taking of two or more things together under a common name. So by its very nature, it involves considering two things with differences to be one and the same thing. Thus, whatever the Idea, its members will vary according to their unique natures, and so that Idea will have certain probabilities according to those differences. So if I abstract from a certain body of actions, calling them all coin tosses, then the Idea of a coin toss will be comprised of so many coins landing on heads and so many landing on tails. The coin tosses themselves will, of course, have but one result - their actual result, which admits of no probability. The Idea, which is just the name 'coin toss', however, will, as an abstraction, have a 50/50 chance of being one or the other. When abstraction takes place, probability arises as an idea immediately according to the differences between that from which we abstract.

In other words, you cannot have abstraction without comprehending these differences, and in making these different things 'one' in abstraction, we have the root of probability within us already, since it is these differences that, when taken as one thing in abstraction, constitute the various 'possibilities.' When we lose sight of the fact that it is the idea and not the event that admits of variability, then we come to think that the events themselves could be different from what they are. The danger of believing in the 'possibilities' that underlie our moral judgments is inherent to Reason. Since Reason itself is the creator of the world, there cannot and will not ever be a world (the essence of which is the power of the Logos) where this temptation (to judge some other 'possibility' to be better than the actual) will not take place.

The Serpent says, 'Ye shall not surely die,' in opposition to what Adam and Eve believed to be actual, so that the possibility that they might eat and live would arise in their hearts as the foundation of their moral judgment, that it would be better to eat. The Serpent might have generated this illusion, if we are to take the story literally, simply by showing how Adam and Eve could eat all the other fruit in the Garden and still live. Since the Forbidden Fruit is considered, by abstraction, to be the same 'kind' of thing, it would seem to follow that it is possible to eat of the fruit of that tree without dying. But in truth the 'possibility' belongs to the Idea of fruit, and not to the Forbidden Fruit itself.

Why, then, did God create the devil? If the world is the work of the Word, and it is in this Word that things have their being (their substance IS the Word), then the idea of possibility will arise as a temptation to the subject necessarily, since it is the nature of abstractions to reflect a variety of results or events. It would be impossible to make a world without this peril, since the whole notion of a 'world' implies a unity that can only be created in abstraction when many things are taken together. If one then says, 'if this temptation is necessary, then God shouldn't have made a world in the first place,' well, they are giving in to the temptation, aren't they? That is not our decision to make, however much it may displease us.

Arthur Schopenhauer certainly succumbed to this temptation, arguing that God '...ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would admit of something better' than our world.10'

But this obviously misses the truth that the illusion of possibility, and therefore the temptation on which rests our fallen state, is inherent to the nature of the world itself - to all worlds in fact (to all 'possible' worlds, as modern philosophers are fond of saying). To argue that it should be otherwise is to ask of the world an absurdity - it is to say, The world, which to exist must represent to Reason the misleading idea of possibility, should not do so. But if it did not do so, then it would be no world, since the Idea of possibility is necessary to all worlds - all words having their substance in the Word alone.

This is not to say that Reason deceives us; on the contrary, reason does not, itself, draw the conclusions we, when we sin, have drawn. Reason is what it is: the Logos. It is the individual's will alone that makes it into more than this; it is the will that grasps the Ideal as a possibility for the individual, leading us into error.

To see the devastating effects of this more concretely, and to see just how terrible a thing it is to give in to the Serpent's temptation, consider a man whose young daughter dies of leukemia. Possibility leads him to think of what his daughter might have been, had it not been for the disease. Looking toward that beautiful and hopeful vision he begins to look darkly upon the world which took his beloved child away. 'How could God let this happen!?' he asks; he rages.

The possibility is a daughter that is cancer-free, and never ravaged by the illness; the possibility is a walk down the aisle, not a walk to the graveyard; the possibility is a smile and not a grimace; the possibility is happiness instead of misery. But lo and behold, this angelic vision of possibility only leads him to long after a creature that is not and never was his daughter. The cruel work of Satan, that angel of light, has taken full effect, making even a father hate his daughter - for he longs after a daughter that contradicts the daughter he actually had. Possibility leads his love astray, making him love a lie, and turn his back on his own (I mean his actual) daughter in anger. All the while this father may feel that he is in truth filled with indignation for the sake of his daughter, but in truth he has rejected her for the sake of that which was not, is not, and never shall be. He has turned his back on his daughter because of a lie.

Not content with putting a wedge between this hurting man and his daughter, the Serpent of Possibility will torment him for the rest of his life with questions like, 'What if I had taken her to a different hospital, found a new doctor, tried a new treatment, or done a billion other things that I did not do?' All of these ideas stand before him as possibilities, not because they are possibilities, but because he has mistaken abstractions for actualities. He will have no peace, not because God has wronged him or stolen anything from him, but because he could not see the Truth. With his mind filled with these deceptions he will, when comparing them to his actual life, fall into despair. But notice that the abstraction is what it is; the experience is what it is. The deception does not come from God, or from anything that exists. That is the nature of deception - it is not a belief grounded upon existence, but upon nothing.

CHRIST

Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. We are lost, not because God cannot see us, but because we cannot see God when we are filled with moral judgment, which has its root, not in truth, but in our will. Moral judgment, therefore, is a certain mark that we do not see God.

In Genesis chapter 1, the earth is described as being 'without form' and 'void'. This unknowable substance is given form, not by force or by might, but by a word, 'Let there be light'. This first utterance begins the process by which the world is, by Reason, brought into being (brought under the power of abstraction and made understandable). This light, this first Word, is that in which the life of man consists (Colossians 1:14-17), for apart from it nothing exists. The Gospel of John says that this light shines in the darkness, but 'the darkness comprehended it not.' (John 1:5)

Where light shines, darkness cannot be, except where the eye has been blinded. This is precisely what happens when we have the idea of 'better' possibilities in mind; we lose sight of the truth and chase after phantoms of the mind – we lose sight of God.

In this state we will be utterly helpless against the temptations of possibility. Not detecting that these things are abstractions we will take the possibilities represented by them to be qualities of the world itself, and from these errors we will form moral judgments, and come to judge God's work to be evil when it goes against what we believe would be better.

But all of this evil is not reality; it is mere ignorance - for it is God that is real, and we are shadows, who have neither the right nor the ground to judge anything. If man is to return to the God who created him, we must be brought from this ignorance to a place of knowledge. And in this place of knowledge we will find good and evil swallowed up. The only thing that can destroy ignorance is the Truth. God is Truth. Saving knowledge, therefore, however it comes, is always a revelation from God.

These truths are manifested perfectly in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Insofar as he reflects the truth of God he is the 'image of the invisible God,' and the 'express image of his person.' To see him as he is depicted in the Gospels is to see the image (person) of God.

The pure being of God manifests itself to us through Jesus, not to change our world and our bodies, since these are nothing, but to change our minds.

The fundamental result of morality, as it has floundered in the hands of human beings, is that there is something very wrong with the world, or that it is full of evil - or even evil itself. When morality is grounded in the person and therefore his individual perspective, sooner or later it will reveal an opposition between what should be and what is. But this conclusion, that the world is evil, is the result of judgments for which we have no real foundation. Yet in the absence of God we have nothing else. If the world is evil, how can there be a God, and if there be a God, how can he be good? The very fact that these questions can occur to us demonstrates our blindness.

The message of Jesus, therefore, is first and foremost a call to repentance. That from which we must repent, of course, is evil. But we have recognized evil to be morality itself. 'Judge not, that ye be not judged' (Matthew 7:1). For it is only in human moral judgment that evil exists. Relent, repent, relinquish the pretenses of your will, and no evil can ever take hold in the world. The evils vanish away with the judgments. When they pass away, so do the accusations against our maker - which alone among sins render a man worthy of damnation.

So long as your will is set against the will of God, you cannot be saved. It is, in fact, this will against will, this rebellion itself that IS damnation. For it is separation from God, as truly as one might find in the Lake of Fire itself. Nay, it is worse, for if men truly burn with fire under the wrath of God, at least then they cannot think that God is such that he will be robbed of anything. But rather, burning, they will know God. No, hell is much worse than fire, it is ignorance of He in whom all meaning and truth exists. For God would not burn a man about whom he cared nothing - strange as this might sound. But he who does not know God is sundered from all worth, all value, all meaning.

The Father of lies is not distinct from his progeny. So long as moral judgment demands of the world that it be other than it is – that is, so long as our vision of the Truth is distorted by error, the father and god of the world will seem to be the devil himself - a monster and a brute. But if we realize that the knowledge of good and evil that came through the devil is, like the devil, a lie, then the Enemy himself vanishes away; for his whole essence lies in the illusions of possibility (one can only be tempted by a possibility).

He who would be free of sin, though, must not only realize that they are sinful, they must realize that their sin is nothing in the light of God's love. Until we understand God's boundless grace the knowledge of our sin can only be a starting point. No atonement could ever truly take away sin, unless it were such that time itself were rewound. The only way in which sin can truly be removed is by the realization that no man ever did, nor can resist the will of God. The moment this is truly understood and accepted, then the wrath of God which hung over us while we were in ignorance vanishes away to reveal an unblemished sky. But it is not God, who cannot change, who changes when we repent. True, saving repentance, then, is not necessarily a change in life, it is a change in our understanding of God. It will change your life; but the change is a process that follows salvation. If salvation depended upon the change then no man could ever be saved from their sins.

According to Jesus, God loves the world and sent him to save those who would believe (John 3:16). And those who believe his doctrine certainly are saved. Not insofar as there is for them some future bliss - this is quite alien to the meaning of the salvation and life that Christ promises. The life and salvation he gives is immediate, it is within the believer, it is eternally his the moment he believes - it is not something yet to come. It is possessing the belief itself which constitutes the salvation - the turn from ignorant rebellion into the truth.

Those who do not believe cannot be saved, because it is not a matter of doing or accomplishing, but of knowing God.

It is not, therefore, as though God, just to be unfair, chose to save only those who believe in him. On the contrary, when the belief is the salvation (faith is the SUBSTANCE of things hoped for), there is no means by which the unbeliever can be saved - it would be a contradictio in adjecto.

One may raise the question here as to whether revelation is necessary to understand such a doctrine, or whether it is a philosophical truth. But if a revelation is Truth - if it is to be recognized as such, it must appeal to that within us which recognizes Truth. If we know not what is truth from the outset, then, let however so many revelations come to us, we will never recognize the truth, for we do not know what we are looking for - we will always be grasping in the dark. Truth is said to be the correspondence of thought and being. But being, which is Existence in general, is not some external entity to be discovered 'out there in the world,' but rather the highest act of Reason itself - it is the Logos which upholds all things and which gives the world its substance. So all knowledge is, in a sense, a revelation of God to the mind. True philosophy and Revelation, then, are, in essence, indistinguishable. Jesus says, 'To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice' (John 18:37). The notion that we in some way possess the Truth already does not render revelation such as it is given in Jesus unnecessary. We do possess within us all that is necessary to come to this knowledge, or we would not recognize the Truth of the Gospel. But this makes us all the more damnable, for we do not come to it until the Son of God jolts us from our self-righteousness and, in essence, makes us look in the mirror and see our rebellion.

Those who have truly looked inward and recognized within their own souls the Logos of God will recognize his voice and follow him.

RESURRECTION

The chief stumbling block to Christianity is no doubt belief in the miraculous. And here the so-called skeptic may hope to regain the title that Christian doctrine has stripped away from him - I mean, he may hope to show that here at least he is not the one taking the leap of blind faith.

But the Christian is at no cognitive disadvantage compared to the so-called skeptic. It is not as though the Christian thinks that people rise from the dead all the time, and that the Resurrection of Jesus was, therefore, not so out of the ordinary after all. It is as improbable in the Christian worldview as it is to the so-called skeptic - or, at least, it is very nearly as improbable.

But the question of probability immediately brings up the fact that our application of probability reveals our underlying assumptions. In the case of the so-called skeptic, who says that they cannot believe because it is improbable that a man should rise from the dead, we see that he has already rejected Jesus. For if you believed, as the Christian believes, that Jesus is the Son of God, and the Jewish Messiah, then there can be no doubt about the Resurrection. In other words, the determining factor is not what you think about the data, but what you think about Jesus.

I shall therefore omit, in the body of this work, any attempt to support the 'historicity' of the Resurrection \- such a thing has been done elsewhere and been done much better than I would be able to do.

The only other thing I will say here concerning Jesus' resurrection is that, if you must at all costs maintain a Materialistic perspective, then you never will and never could accept that a miracle had occurred, not unless it occurred to you personally. But those who have truly learned, whether through the Law of Moses or through the Law of their own consciences, that their every moral judgment is hypocrisy will be prepared to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ with joy. For a drowning man takes hold of what floats his way, and he does not, for lack of mathematical certainty, turn his nose at a raft that appears, to his judgment, less sturdy than he would like.

Until you have come to understand your own sinfulness, however, you cannot believe the Gospel - and the cross will be an offense to you. But if you ever happen to get a glimpse of yourself - I mean, a glimpse of your true self: that monstrosity that stretches forth through time from person to person in vindictive self-righteousness, that beast called humanity, then you will at last realize that the only hope of righteousness lies in the mercy of God. A man in that state will seek salvation, and not try to find a way out of it through subtle fallacies and tricks of pseudo-philosophy.

The apostles themselves initially doubted the resurrection. St. Thomas demanded hard proof. There is nothing wrong with having such doubts. But so long as it is doubt in the sense that one is torn over the matter, wrestling with the question, it is not properly speaking a rejection, since it involves also a doubt on the other side. He who is adamant in his rejection of the resurrection, however, and claims that it did not occur, reveals only that he has allowed false philosophy to lead him into a dogmatism matched only by the most obtuse religious fundamentalists.

Jesus said to Thomas, '...because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.' There is a danger here of assuming that Jesus means to praise blind faith, and that he thinks it a very noble thing to believe in the resurrection without the evidence that was available to Thomas and the other disciples. But the issue is not whether or not Thomas believed in the resurrection; the historical detail is accidental. The issue is what the resurrection proves - that Jesus spoke the Truth, and is therefore the messenger of God. St. Thomas came to accept Jesus' teachings as truth, not because they were, but because his experience made it undeniable in a remarkably carnal sense. But he who comes to have faith in Jesus Christ in the absence of such an appearance is one who recognizes the Truth as Truth without being cajoled by miracles. In other words, they are blessed, not because they have overextended their credulity, but because their hearts have already been prepared for the gospel, the Truth within them (the witness of the Holy Spirit) bearing witness to the Truth in Christ's teachings.

A genuine Christian, being a true skeptic after all, will not hesitate to say that their own understanding is nothing. That being the case, the possibility that they are wrong hangs over them every day and every night - and many are more than willing to admit this openly. But for a man to say that a resurrection has 'never been observed in any age or country,' requires a leap that is not nor could ever be justified by experience, science, philosophy, logic or any other power that man possesses, save that of obstinate, blind faith. As such a belief cannot be derived from experience, and since reason is restricted to the deliverances of experience, the rejection of the resurrection is not based upon sound thinking, but upon willfulness.

As far as miracles are concerned, however, those whose lives have been changed by the power of God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ are conscious of a miracle within their own souls, and the resurrection of Jesus will not be all that difficult for them to accept. That he whose doctrines have saved them and cleansed them from all iniquity is God's chosen one becomes all but a certainty, when a soul that had been red as scarlet becomes white as wool (Isaiah 1:18).

THE LIFE TO COME

'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life' (John 3:16).

John 3:16 is famous because it succinctly states the basic doctrine of Christianity: That God, out of love for the world, sent Jesus to bear witness to the Truth.

To be loved by another person is a temporal matter. I have not always loved my wife. Of necessity my love began some time after I met her, and it will end when at last my mind is taken away through death. Human love is something that exists between two objects in time and for a time. But if God loves a person, as all God's relations are from eternity (and by eternity I mean outside of time, not before time), then that person is loved by God throughout their whole life. As God's relations do not ebb and flow like our own, the relationship between the lover and the beloved is in this case eternal and unchangeable. And an omnipotent God could not create what he does not love. So while we can doubt the love of another person, we can never doubt the love of God.

Man, in his dissatisfaction, has failed to recognize this love - the love that quite literally wills him into existence. But if a man ever truly comes to know this love, which is to say, if man comes to believe the good news declared in John 3:16, then he will be loved and he will know that he is loved, and he will not be able to resist loving back, for it is in the love of God alone that any true sense of worth and purpose can be found. In human systems of morality there is always a tension between what is and what should be, and even where there is agreement it means only that we are pleased with things, and not they they are, in fact, good. But God's work is always good, not because it is always pleasant, but because it is always in perfect accord with the Truth. Those who know their maker can have a peace that passes beyond all understanding. When morality is born of the will, the tension between is and ought can never be reconciled; and so long as we try to maintain such a way of thinking our spirit will be in torment. But in God, is and ought are the same.

Prior to conscious thought, throughout infancy, again in convalescence and finally in death, man exists without knowledge of God. But this is just a temporal illusion. If ever you realize, even if just for an instant, that God loves you, then you stand in that relationship: knowing God and being loved by Him. And as God's relations do not change or alter, this state exists unbreakably for all eternity. Though, to our minds, this state may pass out of sight, it cannot pass away.

The Scriptures teach us that Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). But if we are thinking of this in terms of a future life, the future being unknown to us, this faith will always be doubtful and out of reach. The wealth of the believer is not something that will, sometime, maybe, in the distant future, belong to him. It is something that belongs to him in the very act of believing. It truly is the substance of the life to come; not merely a foretaste.

If a man should live his whole life in ignorance of or in rebellion against this truth, then this state - the eternal relationship between man the knower and God the lover, will never be realized, and that person (as far as his conscious existence is concerned) will be separated from God forever. On the other hand, he who knows God's love is already in the presence of God, and as God's relation to the knower is eternal, so is this state of loving and knowing. The eternal life of the believer, then, in relation to God, is his possession the moment he believes the teachings of Christ. And he, in that this relationship is with the Eternal God, will never see death, though his body will certainly, with respect to time, expire*.

*NOTE: This essentially answers the question of whether one can or cannot 'lose' their salvation or fall away from a true, saving faith. Certainly with respect to their temporal mental state, a man may believe whatsoever he will in each moment. But with respect to his relationship with God, if he believes for a moment, God has him; and as each moment is eternally related to God, so is he eternally related to God. That a man should believe, and yet be separated from God would require what is impossible - a change in God himself. So to those who fear for their souls each moment; work out your salvation with fear and trembling, but do it for love, not because you are afraid that the life you had possessed will be taken from you. It may, with respect to time, be taken from you (as an abstraction in time), but nothing can take you from God.

This last phrase has two meanings, both of which are true. Nothing can take you from God - in that there is nothing that can possibly separate us from his love. Howbeit, Possibility, which is nothing, can lead us into darkness, separating us from the knowledge of God - so Nothing and only nothing can take you from God.

The truly repentant heart - that heart from which all moral pretension has been stripped away - will find itself unable to judge others, nor will it find any value in those self-indulgent behaviors it formerly deemed, of its own authority, to be good. Many Christians have argued that Jesus' injunction against judgment is only directed against hypocritical judgment. But all judgment is hypocritical. Not only are we causally involved in the very crimes we commit, we are also completely unjustified in the formation of our judgments. The true penitent, then, will not point their finger at others, but rather, if they must point a finger they will point it at themselves, and at themselves alone. In his incredible book, 'The Brothers Karamazov', Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in the character of Father Zossima, explains: 'There is only one means of salvation, then take yourself and make yourself responsible for all men's sins, that is the truth, you know, friends, for as soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that it is really so, and that you are to blame for everyone and for all things. But throwing your own indolence and impotence on others you will end by sharing the pride of Satan and murmuring against God.11'

This is the meaning of Christ's sacrifice upon the cross - he made himself responsible for all sin. And doing so he said to us, 'Take up your cross and follow me.' It does us little good to say that he is the Way if we do not follow him where he leads and also take upon ourselves this responsibility.

Father Zossima goes on to say:

'Remember particularly that you cannot be a judge of anyone. For no one can judge a criminal until he recognizes that he is just such a criminal as the man standing before him, and that he perhaps is more than all men to blame for that crime. When he understands that, he will be able to be a judge. Though that sounds absurd, it is true. If I had been righteous myself, perhaps there would have been no criminal standing before me. If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once, suffer for him yourself, and let him go without reproach. And even if the law itself makes you his judge, act in the same spirit so far as possible, for he will go away and condemn himself more bitterly than you have done. If, after your kiss, he goes away untouched, mocking at you, do not let that be a stumbling-block to you. It shows his time has not yet come, but it will come in due course. And if it come not, no matter; if not he, then another in his place will understand and suffer, and judge and condemn himself, and the truth will be fulfilled. Believe that, believe it without doubt; for in that lies all the hope and faith of the saints.12'

It is our ignorance of the nature of God alone that permits us to rant and rage against other men as if we ourselves were not part and parcel of all that takes place in the world, including the very 'ills' we condemn. But I thank God that he has not abandoned us to this darkness, but chose to give us a teacher in Jesus Christ, capable of leading us from darkness into light.

God loves the world.

And knowing the love of God the believer understands at last that they, despite their own faults, have a tremendous value in the sight of God. God created you for the world and the world for you. Knowing that God is the substance of all things, the love that God has for the believer must be granted immediately by the believer to his neighbor, whom he must love, not as he loves himself, but as himself. This is the whole Law.

'And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.' - John 17:3

1. Meister Eckhardt, _Light, Life and Love_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/inge/light.light_eckhart_1.html (December 2012)

2. _Theologia Germanica_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anonymous/theologia.v.I.html (December 2012)

3. Laozi, _Tao Te Ching_ , http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lao-tzu/works/tao-te-ching/tao.htm (December 2012)

4. Edwards, Jonathan, _Remarks in Mental Philosophy - The Mind_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/works1.ii.iv.html (December 2012)

5. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _The World as Will and Representation_ , (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966), 27.

6. Rand, Ayn, _Introduction To Objectivist Epistemology_ , (New York: Meridian Books, 1990) Foreward.

7. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _The World as Will and Representation_ , (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966), 28.

8. Kierkegaard, Soren, _Concluding Unscientific Postscript_ , (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 80.

9. Meister Eckhardt, _Light, Life and Love_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/inge/light.light_eckhart_1.html (December 2012)

10. Schopenhauer, Arthur, _The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism_ , http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10732/pg10732.html (December 2012)

11. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, _The Brothers Karamazov_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/dostoevsky/brothers.iii_7.html (December 2012).

12. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, _The Brothers Karamazov_ , http://www.ccel.org/ccel/dostoevsky/brothers.iii_7.html (December 2012).

End of Book

About The Author

If you have enjoyed or benefited from this book, you can add it to your bookshelf and leave a review on Goodreads.com

For the author's blog, please visit here:

<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6949089.Jake_Yaniak/blog>

Questions, comments and any other inquiries can be emailed to:

moralityistheproblem@verizon.net

I obviously cannot promise that I will be able to answer every question or respond to every objection, but I will do what I can.

If you are interested in my fiction writing, you can also read my fantasy novel 'The Punishment of the Gods'.

