Steps to Becoming Anti-Dogma

Now, please understand that these are not commands. I am not trying to proselytize here. It's is merely one route upon many possible ones, and my steps reflect , in part, my journey through philosophy as well as as a skeptic.

Step#1:
Move away from your religion. See the bullshit for what it is - become, through one or more phases, an atheist. It's OK to use a different word for it. Don't let anyone define you for you.

Step#2:
Recognize the harm of your religion. Be careful, this part is fraught with possible error. There will be a real temptation to entertain the notion that minorities can do no wrong, and so support other, minority, religions regardless of that religion's content. Millennials get caught on this one all the time, it seems. Of course the newer not-necessarily religious ideologies are pushing this craziness.

Step#3:
Recognize the harm common to all religions (become an anti-theist). Yes, this is the definition of an anti-theist. It's not about being anti theists, despite the wails of the people who oppose you. Instead, understand that they are victims of indoctrination and/or brainwashing.

Step#4:
Start digging deeper (intense skeptical inquiry), until you hit the prime content of any religion, which is to subjugate humans beneath dogma, beneath a narrative. The primary weapon for this is prescriptive normative "morality," which has no basis.

Step#5:
Proceed through the nihilist phase until you realize that you are still defining things as the religious want you to. Leave the religious definitions in the dust. Start learning and developing more human centered definitions, and leave nihilism in the dust of learned, necessary transitions, and overcome experiences.

Step#6:
Start exploring all the new potentials and possibilities of life post-dogma.

The In-Between Time

One Young Moral Nihilist

I want to take a moment, if I may, to yap about moral nihilism.

Despite the fact that, growing up, I was not "properly socialized,"  (read: indoctrinated) certain ideas did make their way into my understanding of things, just from the popular culture. One of these was the pernicious notion that morality stemmed from some absolute, objective, separate from humanity, authority. Generally, that authority bears the name "God." A consequent of this is that without that authority, there was no source for and hence no morality. Well, as I mentioned earlier, I am a "from the cradle" atheist - meaning that I was never indoctrinated into a faith. I think you can see an issue developing...

Perhaps I was victim of a Piagetan/Kohlbergian stage of moral development, but the issue came to a point early for me. Nevertheless, I remained, for the most part, a very lawful, by most accounts, moral individual. As I began studies in philosophy, I found that morals were obviously not empirical entities - were not things you could point to and say "there it is." Were not properties or qualities of objects, acts, or results. One could point at consequences and evaluate them, but not at the values/morals themselves. As I dismissed the idea of morals/value being objective/empirical things...

...I became a "moral nihilist." I used to go around saying things like, "There is no morality." "Morality is a lie." And the like.

Well, that was then; this is now. :)

You see, I was labouring under a misapprehension. Despite finding that morality was not in any sense objectively absolute, I was still defining morality in terms of objective absolutism. Add these together and you get nihilism. The reasoning is very simple:

All morality arises from absolute authority.
There is no absolute authority.
Therefore, there is no morality.

Seems bulletproof, doesn't it?

The Agenda of "Nihilism"

Now "nihilism" is a fun word, wrapped in negative connotations and derisive, vilifying inferences. Well, of course it is; it was a word used by moral absolutists (namely the religious) to describe, deliberately unflatteringly, those who rejected their vison of what morality is. It was, in effect, an ad hominem. Nihilists have no morality, and you are a nihilist, so therefore your arguments about morality are icky. (Sorry, there is just no way for me to depict this "argument" seriously).

This really had, it seems to me, one purpose. Ethical absolutists are not really bothered if you are moral or not, whether you accept or reject the particular morals of their particular view. Indeed, I would argue that absolutists want rejection of their morals in order to have an enemy to polarize around (remember the "mosque at ground zero" kerfluffle?), but that's a topic for another time. What they are really frightened of is the idea that you might define morality in other terms - human-centered terms. As long as you bought into the absolute-authority/truth definition of morality, a context in which you could be "legitimately" lauded or vilified could be maintained. Religions "despise" opposed religions, but what they all despise is someone who steps outside of their religious context. Religions love to hate each other, but it is the non-religious who are all religion's real enemy.

In this way, being a moral nihilist is really playing the absolutists' game. Liberation form the absolutists' "morality" comes not just from rejecting the divine authority, but also from revamping one's entire conception and perception of morality - it comes from redefining morality. Otherwise, you are still a thrall of, and subject to, the absolutists' context.

This consideration is what I mean when I speak of reclaiming our humanity from the religions. Morality is a human function, in a human context, but the religiouns have annexed it, redefined it in their hobbled, inhuman terms, and then imposed that redefinition on all of our discourse.

Do It Like You Mean It!

If you really want to dismiss absolutist morality, don't stop half way, don't stop in the in-between time. Don't just dismiss the absolute authority that is claimed to be the source of morality, but dismiss also the definition of morality that requires an absolute authority. Nihilism is a stepping stone away from absolutism. Take the next step. Think of morality in terms that really frighten the absolutist. Define morality in a different way.

In studies of analytic ethics, one encounters a number of moral theories with different perspectives. Some seek to find moral truth - sometimes empirically, sometimes psychologically, sometimes analytically (via definitions and inferences), and of course, sometimes metaphysically/mystically - some equate morality with emotive outbursts, some others ... let's just say that a great many clever minds have come up with a great many clever (and not so clever) ideas. Often these examinations involve breaking down morality into basic components, things like prescriptivity (the command force of moral language), universalizability (universal applicability of moral principles), and many others. This suggests something interesting about morality, actually.

What if it turned out there is no moral truth? What if it turned out morality were a negotiated social construct? What if morality was not true in some objective, extra-human manner, but was an emergent property/quality of social interaction? This would mean that morality is not something that exists in a single individual's mind, but that is held among minds - that, although not objective, morality is inter-subjective. This would place moral evaluations beyond just the mind of any one individual, although that individual might take part in negotiations about such evaluations. No one of us would be the judge of all the earth.

"Everything is Permitted!"

This would provide us an answer to the old fanatics' bugbear, "Without God, where do you get your morals from? Without God, everything is permitted!" It seems to me whenever I hear this claim by the religious, that the obvious question comes to mind, "Permitted by whom?" The obvious answer is, everyone else, and me (as a participant in the social order/context in which I live). Where do I get my morals? From the people around me and social context in which I live. The source of my morality is that social context. And, surprise, surprise, it doesn't permit everything.

This is one redefinition of morality, such that we can coherently speak of morality without making reference to some absolute authority and without making claims to any "fact status" about values/morals. It is one version of the next step away from absolutism, leaving it, and it's flipside nihilism, in the dust. It is also a conception of morality that allows for flexibility, adaptivity, and change as we negotiate.

I put it to you that this is a more coherent, even more moral, version of morality precisely because it places morality squarely within a human context - of humans, by humans, and for humans. For example, we won't have absolutist reasons to slaughter one another, or bind our children as sacrifices to God.

Beyond Absolutism

There are even more astonishing possibilities. What if we were able to conceive of morality, not as an imposition from on high, but as a constructive, participatory human endeavor? What if we could actually conceive of ourselves as something other than intrinsically evil monsters that need to be kept in check by internalized prohibitions. Could morality be something we could participate in, rather than as chains to keep the monster in check...?

Into the Abyss

"We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact."
- Carl Sagan, "Cosmos"

Let us take a voyage, shall we, to the dark heart of nihilistic razing. Don't worry; it's not (quite) that scary...

When we talk about knowledge (justified true belief) we are talking about three things: the knower, the known, and the link between them. Skepticism convincingly illustrates that our perceptions are *potentially* flawed. This puts paid to the link between knower and known and turns "knower" into mere believer and the "known" into the merely believed.

Now, really, this post is not about that journey itself, which is pretty much non-controversial (Cogito Ergo Sum aside, which is an analytic truth and needs to be examined separately). An honest, thoroughgoing and dedicated inquiry into what we really know (with certainty) yields a whole lot of nothing. That nothing, however, is instructive. This post is about what we do when we hit ground zero - when we reach the point of epistemological nihilism.

So, what is the result of our voyage? Uncertainty. Nothing more; nothing less. Some run squealing in blind panic away from uncertainty. Others try to tolerate it. A very few embrace it and see the potential in it, the room for growth it gives. Some people just like to pretend that what they believe is certain knowledge.

Solipsism

Well! That was fun. And here we sit on the broken and smoldering debris of our respective houses of cards. Don't look down. We can't even be sure we are sitting on anything!

For your amusement, a couple of links to a conversation with a bomb stuck in its bomb bay as the ship's crew desperately tries to convince it to not explode...

Phenomenology with a bomb...
The bomb blows it...

One thing we have to be careful of is to avoid making the same mistake we were correcting on our way here. It is tempting to think that if we do not know something that we know that something is not. This would be an error, since it would be confusing the subject of the inquiry, which is our knowledge state, with the thing about which we do or do not have knowledge about. To make this mistake, where we are in our journey, would be introduce what is called "metaphysical solipsism." Solipsism in its most favorable reading is cautious, metaphysical solipsism - not so much.

Given an honest skeptical inquiry, we can no more make claims about the non-existence of other minds than we can about the existence of other minds. We can only claim that we don't know with certainty either. Claims about reality are in the same boat. We can no more claim that reality doesn't exist than we can that it does. The argument that the bomb makes from "Dark Star," is a mistake. We cannot conclude that "you are false data" any more than we can conclude that "you are true data." Understanding this is critical to negotiating the treacherous depths of the abyss.

So, the problem with "metaphysical solipsism" is not the inquiry itself; it is the attempt to "resolve" (read: evade) the inquiry in a particular way. It is a refusal to accept the conclusion of the inquiry. It is still desperately seeking certainty and tries to contrive something to be certain about.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that there is no certainty (at least with respect to reality). Is this really the, so to speak, end of the world? I intend to post, down the line, about skepticism as a positive philosophy, as potential for growth.

Choices, Choices...

What now? Do we sit and wallow in the angsty, yet smugly comfortable broodiness of nihilism or do we start throwing ideas out there? Well, we can sit and wallow if we wish, but here's the thing: reality is not denied by skepticism, only knowledge of it is. The conclusion that there is no reality has just as little basis as the conclusion that there is a reality (much less a particular one). Don't let the theologians fool you: skepticism is not denial of anything except certain knowledge. The trick is to accept that we don't have certain knowledge, to take it seriously rather than running away from it. Nothing more and nothing less.

So, after spending some time wallowing in existential angst, we finally realize that non-existence is as poorly substantiated as existence is, and that assuming non-existence of reality is getting us nowhere at a glacial pace. We decide, perhaps out of sheer boredom, perhaps in a desire to explore options, to put ideas out there and see what happens.

There are two ways of putting ideas out there for consideration. Now we are getting to the heart of things (and the purpose of this post)...

(1) One is to affirm as truth (which we'd already established is unsubstantiated).
(2) The other is to posit tentatively and see what we can get from it.

Now, the difference in mentality is critical. One is critique-based, exploration-oriented, and open to correction. The other is based on uncritical recapitulation, mistakes building an elaborate story with exploration, and confuses orthodoxy requirements with error-correction. I'll give you two guesses which is which. ;)

Into the Future

Mostly, throughout human history we have tried the former, affirming truth, and that has resulted almost invariably with orthodoxy-based tyranny. Sadly, orthodoxy requirements are not error-correction. Affirmation is not confirmation. One, and only one, philosophy tried the latter approach, tentative positings. That was skepticism. "We may be wrong, but let's try this idea on for size" (compare that with "we are right, make it fit no matter what!"). Well, after skepticism got put to the sword for a couple of thousand years, by the religious, for having the temerity to question dogmatic orthodoxy (indeed dogma itself) and undercutting false certainty, it reappeared in a methodology that had the assumption of potential error (the recognition of uncertainty/fallibility, AKA: skepticism) and hence error-correction at its core. Science. Let the explorations begin! In a few hundred short years, compared to the thousands before it, we have something other than blood to show for our efforts. It is a popular misconception that "pure skepticism" is "sterile and unproductive." We can build with skepticism. We just do so tentatively. Carefully, ever watchful for error.

And this is not as difficult as it sounds on first blush. We all do this every day. Here's an example:
Compare (1) "It may be raining outside" with (2) "It is raining outside."
If you understand the difference between these two propositions, and the mindset involved with each, then you understand the difference between expressing something provisionally (1) and expressing things as affirmations (2). One is a question, an expression of inquiry. The other is an answer, an end to inquiry.

Explorations

We take the point to heart. Could we be wrong? Sure we could. Does that mean we *are* wrong. Not necessarily, but we will keep the possibility of error (fallibility) firmly in mind, so that we don't repeat the same tired old mistakes of the dogmatic affirmers in the past. More, we will realize that doubt and denial are not the same thing. We may doubt, say, the existence of God, but that doesn't mean we are denying it, because doubting is not actually talking about God at all. It is talking about our knowledge-states.

Reality is a tentative positing (an axiom, if you like), not a dogmatic truth, and we add more tentative positings based on it, and deduce therefrom. "Holy worldwide communication network, moon landing, and tripled lifespans, Batman! This seems to be working!" ;)