Wait, you used an AI bot to ask what the top 10 existential questions should be for naturalists?

I thought this was a Poe when Massimo first said this in this Substack piece, but the list itself is real, and nothing really objectionable.

What I am currently playing with in my mind is a type of empirical naturalism inspired by Einstein’s contention that, when it comes to knowing and navigating the world, “experience is the alpha and omega of all our knowledge of reality.” By this Einstein didn’t mean that theory—mathematical, logical, or otherwise—is irrelevant, but rather that theory is limited to the formal description of possible worlds. The only way to narrow down those (infinite) possibilities to the one, actual world is by way of empirical evidence, as imperfect and tentative as it may be.  

So, as an exercise in empirical naturalism, I asked my AI assistant, Claude, to list the ten most consequential existential philosophical questions it could think of, to which I’m going to provide what I think is the answer that comes out of an empirical naturalist stance. I will not, in this essay, be able to provide much justification for my answers, though I provide links to previous essays and reserve the possibility to come back to some of these topics in the future. Let’s see what came out of the exercise!

Yes, even if "Claude" is based on your past philosophical scrivenings and ruminations, this seems like ...

Cheating, first? An AI bot doesn't have empirical engagement with the world like you or I. AI ≠ I. Second, it has no theory of mind, nor an actual mind, to be reflective or ruminant the way we are.

I could go meta, and whether I personalize an AI assistant or not, ask AI to analyze these questions and answers.

Instead, let's go AI in a non-snarky way and postulate this as one of the 10 questions:

"How serious of an existential threat is AI to the future of humanity?" 

I mean this for non-capitalist reasons, unlike Sam Altman or whomever.

So, which of Massimo's 10 to replace, then?

No. 3 on free will is low-hanging fruit and also something on which he's changed his mind. He used to defend the idea of at least something like free will from at least the worst of determinism. And, his new answer is wrong.

Maybe another of the 10 should be replaced as well as this? This deserves more thought. 

And this has gotten more thought, starting with the same day I saw Massimo post this.

Driving to work, I then thought of a second question, along the lines of:

"How dangerous is political liberalism for the future of the earth?"

Then I realized that wasn't quite right, and the question that really needs pondering is:

"How dangerous is neoliberal capitalism for the future of the earth?"

Both this and my first question are about the possible powers of human self-destructiveness, not framed by any of Massimo's 10. So, I either toss free will AND one other, or two others not free will, or expand my list to 12 while tweaking some of his.

Or so I thought, until an hour or two later.

I then realized, walking to a store, that there's another issue Massimo missed.

"What is the role, and degree of power, of fate, luck or chance on human life?"

This is not any sort of New Agey, or ancient pagan religion, personification of any of these, or otherwise making them metaphysical, of course.

It's actually not just human life, of course, either. Per Steve Gould, the whole "movie" of the unfolding of evolution on earth is massively contingent. Per cosmology, things like the creation of our Solar System, and certainly the details of the moon's formation, are massively contingent.

So, I can combine the somewhat related issues of free will and "selfhood" into one, and add three new questions for 12, or keep them separate for a baker's dozen.

And, see, I popped up three questions with half an hour of off-and-on pondering on my own, no Claude needed.

There's also the metaquestion, riffing on my first two, about how self-delusional individual humans can be, as well as self-delusional as a species, including in the face of possible self-destruction. Hell, that's a 14th question right there:

"How self-delusional is the human species, including about its own future and its own possible self-destructiveness?"

Instead of AI, reading Cormac McCarthy or some other dystopian fiction (Massimo himself links to Philip Dick as part of defending determinism. And wrongly so, per what he quotes. Rather, Dick should be seen, in the quotes phrase, as defending actual existentialism, per Massimo's starting point, or maybe a Camus-type absurdism, but he's not defending determinism. [Sigh.]) 

In a follow-up piece, Massimo makes clear that he's serious about determinism, or at least rejecting free will in a way beyond my "mu" to the canard of "free will VERSUS determinism." It's a false dichotomy. Indeed, I told Massimo myself that more than a decade ago. I forgot he was already "there" then. 

Well, his sense of determinism comes off as a type similar to what I semi-mocked at an old site of his when coming from some commenters as nothing more than tautological. These commenters seemed to hold that rejecting ontological determinism, of a mind "out there," required determinism. It does not. And, he should have known that then.

For Massimo, who has long touted the idea of emergent properties, free will or something like that can be such, just like consciousness itself.

 At least he's not making a category mistake like Sapolsky. That said, here's more of my thought. 

Finally, there's this note from Massimo that opens him up to the charge of hypocrisy on the use of AI. 

More r/AcademicBiblical moronity

I'm doing this less and less, in part because I've weaned myself from there more and more.

Nonetheless, stupidities still pop up and again, not just from the peanut gallery.

Take James McGrath (aka "ReligionProf") in this piece. Tell me how we know, outside the Christian gospel claims, that John the Baptizer styled himself as Elijah? Answer: We don't, and I hope you didn't claim that we do in your book about John.

In reality, as you should know, this is Christian appropriation of the Baptizer movement, or an attempt at it. 

Pope Leo, immigration, sexual identification, and Protestantism

 This is a different take on a piece last Friday at my main blog.

If you're politically awake and not under a rock, you probably heard last week about the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, nearly unanimously (five noes, three abstentions) passing a sternly written policy statement about humane treatment of immigrants and explicitly rebuking ICE thuggery.

Per that piece, the statement was pushed by the new pope, Leo XIV, himself. Links at the Substack piece include the National Catholic Register as well as mainstream media.

Let us go to that NCR piece, skipping Hale's intermediary, in part for reasons at the bottom. Here's the nut graf:

"We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care," the bishops said. "We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones."

And, read on as you desire. 

With that, off to the second half of the header.

What ARE "conservative cafeteria Catholics," you might ask?

Nothing other than the flip side of "liberal cafeteria Catholics."

You'll note there is no such thing in world as "cafeteria Catholic" without the political adjective qualifier. I have written extensively before about mainstream media getting this wrong.

That's because many of the people playing "gotcha" on liberal cafeteria Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, etc. on abortion and birth control fail to follow the official Vatican line on the death penalty and are therefore ...

"Conservative cafeteria Catholics," period and end of story.

There are a few who walk the Catholic walk on both. 

At the national level, I am only aware of Bob Casey, recently voted out as one of two U.S. Senators from Pennsylvania, and Dan Kildee, Congressman from Flint. So was his uncle, Dale Kildee, whom I know personally.

I've called out hypocrisies of conservative cafeteria Catholics on the abortion issue before, too. 

This all said, let us not hold Christopher Hale up as some sort of saint. Beyond things like The Bulwark, bad enough, his "follows" on Substack include Bari Weiss's odious, genocide-supporting Free Press, a bunch of Obamiac / BlueAnon accounts, but not a single pro-Palestinian one. 

But, let us instead get to the rest of the header and the rest of that statement.

First, modern US Protestantism arguably divides into six main types.

The first is the conservative, usually fundamentalist, portion of old "mainline Protestant denominations. "Fundamentalist" is still appropriate, even if they're not all Calvinists following J. Gresham Machen's "Five Fundamentals." This includes the conservative wing of Lutheranism. (My sister and other family don't like this, but facts are facts. You have a Lutheran version of "five fundamentals." Indeed, none of the "Five Fundamentals" as first formulated take a position on either side of most of the TULIP acronym, or the standoffish Lutheran third side. In fact, these generally would be accepted by modern conservative evangelicals, while downplaying literal inerrancy, among other things, and having a differing stance on cultural and political involvement.) A lot of American biblical publishing houses have roots in this, even if they've at least partially moved beyond.

The second is the liberal half of these old mainline organization. We're talking United Methodist Church, Protestant Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, etc. 

The third would be neo-fundamentalists. I'm not sure that this fits in with Lutheranism, but with some modern Calvinists not only doubling down on some sort of Five Fundamentals but the TULIP? Yes, it's there. Some sort of wingnut searchers like Primitive Root Wiener loving Rod Dreher might fight here too.  There is bits of leakage into conservative evangelicalism at times, both on how strictly to hold to certain fundamentals and how much to not engage with the broader world, whether political world or general social world.

The fourth would be evangelicals. The main evangelical denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention, of course. There are some lesser ones; the Disciples of Christ and other "Campbellite" types might fit here. Most megachurches would.

Fifth, if you will? Liberal evangelicals. The American Baptists might fit here, or might fit more in the liberal half of mainline Protestantism. (I would NOT put the SBC in category 1.) I hesitate because, although not called "evangelical," a root of Baptists in the US in general is being evangelical-like. Sojourners folks aren't that liberal.

Sixth would be holiness tradition folks like Church of the Nazarene, and Pentecostalism. These folks are, like the fourth, generally conservative on political and social beliefs, though not necessarily tightly overlapping with conservative evangelicals.

OK, now to the rest of that policy statement. It covers sex, gender, and health care issues. And, on this, like abortion and other reproductive choice issues (where many socially conservative Protestants are drifting toward Rome at least a bit), it's right-wing, if not necessarily far right.

Here's one part:

In their public session, the bishops also approved the revised text of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services by a vote of 206 in favor, 8 against and 7 abstaining. 

The revised directives, which are described as the "authoritative guidance" for U.S. Catholic health care institutions, now mandate that Catholic facilities not provide gender-affirming medical treatment to transgender patients.

And another:

In Part III of the revised directives, Catholic health care institutions are instructed not to perform any medical interventions "that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex." 

Catholic health care institutions are called upon to "employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria," while only using means "that respect the fundamental order of the human body."

That should be a good starter. And here's a summary:

The doctrinal note said gender-affirming medical treatments — which may include hormonal therapies and surgical procedures — are "injurious to the true flourishing of the human person," and said that Catholic health care services must not perform them. 

The note added that such interventions "do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated."

There you go. 

First, my background take.

First of all, sex is not gender, though gender roles, understandings, etc., in different cultures evolve out of sex.

Second, on what I'll call sexual identity affirming care, and add in gender-affirming care, while noting the two are different, I uphold Mayo Clinic guidelines for use of puberty blockers, and related issues that it may have spoken on. If "gender affirming care," used properly, means letting a biological male wear makeup or women's clothes? Have at it. But, it's clear the bishops are talking about sexual issues.

Related? Per this LONG piece of mine, which had poxes on four or five houses, since this is DEFINTELY a non-twosider issue? I totally oppose sexual reassignment surgery for minor children. Period and end of story. So do many within the transsexual and transgender world. For adults who are consensual and well-informed, fire away. But be WELL informed. There's literally pretty much no going back. (Yeah, reversal surgery can be done, but you have yet more complications, and they're certainly going to be psychological, not just physical.) 

Also, none of this is to say that either transsexual or transgendering people don’t have certain civil rights. They do. They may not always be the same, per at least one seemingly stereotypical but actual set of circumstances about things like women’s shelters, where I am OK with admitting fully transitioned male-to-female transsexuals, but not at all transgendered.

That said, per the non-joke "joke" about theoretically celibate Catholic priests making pronouncements for women? That goes double for talking about birth sex, when "ensoulment" can't deal with teratomas and other cases of reproduction going awry, nor can it deal with spontaneous abortion and ensoulment, or with related issues. That said, how do Baptists et al deal with the age of accountability and ensoulment?

Beyond serious philosophy mixing with snark? Catholic hospitals already ban things like tubal ligations because they prevent an "implantation." 

In short, the socially conservative religious (this includes non-"Western" monotheistic traditions) should shut up about anything and everything related to sex, pretty much. 

Did Leon Festinger commit some sort of research fraud?

"When Prophecy Fails" is a seminal publication in launching the whole idea of cognitive dissonance.

Now, there's new claims that Leon Festinger, who led research into the cult movement behind the book, committed multiple types of what is not just misframing but arguably research fraud. 

At The Debrief, Ryan Whalen writes about both these claims and some of the pushback. 

This, about two-thirds through, is arguably the nutgraf on all of that:

Fundamentally, Kelly’s work clearly illuminates many ethical breaches in When Prophecy Fails, and underscores the authors’ narrow focus on how groups respond to falsified predictions. However, not everyone feels that Kelly’s arguments completely upend the decades-old research, and it is important to note that Kelly’s paper offers a relatively narrow and specific refutation of the ideas in When Prophecy Fails and its claims regarding cognitive dissonance.

Maybe we should view this as similar to the Dunning-Kruger effect — it's partially refuted, but not totally, and we should narrow the scope of our claims and usage on both. 

After all, both ideas have often been used in a denotative, not connotative sense, with sneers and politicization. 

Bart Ehrman is retiring!

Interestingly, it is next month, in the middle of an academic year, and not next spring. Why?

Anyway, his blog site is promoting a final lecture Dec. 7.

He claims it will be about "The Greatest Discovery in the History of Biblical Studies."

Now, if he's talking both Christian testaments plus the "intertestamental" period, it has to be the Dead Sea Scrolls, right? 

If it's New Testament only, and he goes that way, I'd say that, contra him and Jeff Kloha, no, it's Nag Hammadi.

In either case, Bart, if you're retiring, use the additional time to write better books than your last three or four. (I fear he won't, and shudder at the possibility of something even worse in the future.) 

Worst and most recent? His Armageddon book, when he went Marcionite on the Old Testament, then ignored some of the apocalyptic stuff he would have read at Wheaton, then ignored OT apocalyptic material that would have been in those Chick tracts, above all, "Gog and Magog." 

Just about as bad? His second most recent, his "JW" book as I call it, and yes, THOSE JWs, for claiming the New Testament does not talk about hellfire and eternal damnation. 

Third most recent and third worst? His history, theology, and comparative religions uninformed book on the causes for the rise of Christianity. 

My Goodreads review system

 

Since the much-self-heralded overhaul of the Yellow Satan-owned book review website a little over a year ago failed to give us partial-star review options, unlike places like Storygraph, where my account has pretty much gone dormant, and my regional library, both of which have nowhere near Yellow Satan's money, I finally figured I'd knock out a piece here about how I use partial stars.

I'll look at non-fiction first, as what middlebrow or whatever fiction I read has a different review system and is of less depth. I'll also add comments about particular types of non-fiction as needed.

Side note to begin: Lack of an index on a non-fiction book can cost you up to one full star. 

Second note: I, like Goodreads friend Marquise, have become a more critical reviewer as I've gotten older. Books from a decade or more ago would probably in many cases rank a half star or more lower today. 

5 full stars:

Rare. For history, the book must have a good thesis, be well presented if it's controversial, etc. For military or diplomatic history, good analysis needed. Good and legible maps needed if the book needs them. Good photos, on plate pages, preferably, as needed. NO factual errors. Political science/political history? Minus the maps angle, pretty much the same. Science? Good info, at a non-dumbed down public level. Charts, graphs etc., as parallel to maps in things like military history, are a must. Again, they should be legible as well as explanatory. Critical religious studies? On biblical criticism and exegesis, new thought is fine, but anything flunking Ockham's Razor or even approaching that is not. This is even more the case on archaeology, anthropology and other social sciences.

Within 5 stars, you may get on my "worth buying" shelf if you truly nail all of this.

4.75 stars:

No obvious failures. May have minor, trivial and totally non-essential errors, but usually, I won't allow that. Usually, this is because the book just falls short of the pinnacle, and, in a Major League Baseball reference, re the Hall of Fame, I don't believe in a "big hall."

4.5 stars:

History? Very solid, informative, but not quite compelling. A less than fully-compelling narrative may be part of why. Maybe you fell short on picking up ideas hinted as in your thesis. Biblical criticism: Somewhat the same. Ditto on social sciences. "Hard" sciences: Maybe, especially in biology and evolution, the narrative wasn't quite there. Physics? You probably didn't sell me on just how important the idea is.

4.25 stars:

In all nonfiction areas, you've got something good, but it's not that new, not that broad beyond what I already know, whether in terms of information, or ideas, or narrative, or value. Or, if newer, you didn't sell it well enough.

4 stars:

In history, military history and political science, you either definitely didn't move enough beyond what's already out there, or else you had either a poorly formed thesis or else a poorly defended one if new. You also, where not only warranted but called for, were inadequate on maps, charts, photos, etc. And, if you have an index, but it's partial or inadequate, and the book was very good otherwise, you'll be here. 

3.75 stars:

Same as above, but you also may have become tendentious. This is also the case in biblical criticism, social sciences, etc. And, if you have an index, but it's partial or inadequate, and the book was pretty good otherwise, you'll be here. 

3.5 stars:

On history and related, usually, you're not that much more than conventional or received wisdom, but tidbits and nuggets here and there make this of some value. In the hard sciences, as well as to a lesser extent in the social sciences and some humanities, like philosophy, you probably did not do good work explaining items that needed explanation. Related may be that your writing was too dense, or quasi-academic.

3.25 stars:

Not used that often, but similar to the above, only with more problems on writing, whether narrative style, poor explanation, or more. Serious lack of the peripherals, of charts, graphs, photos, maps, etc., may get you here. Total lack of an index, combined with other problems, will get you here or worse.

3 stars: 

Basically, you're average in my take on average, per all of the above.

2.75 stars: 

Probably used even less than 3.25. Per becoming a more critical reviewer with age, and per "ars longior, vita brevis," I'm less likely to waste quarter-star nuance on you.

2.5 stars:

History and related? If your book needs a thesis, it's probably poorly written and poorly defended as well. You're also surely missing some of the peripherals above. Biblical criticism? You're getting either too close to fundagelical territory, or if Christian New Testament criticism, too close to either that or Jesus mythicism. Sociology, anthropology and some political science? For this leftist who's a skeptical leftist, you may also be getting too far into identitarian-based ideas. Or, you may be getting too far into "-isms"; this can be true with philosophy and philosophy of history type books, too. On hard science books, you probably haven't done a good job of explaining concepts and such well to educated laypersons, or similar. This is going to be especially true in things like serious "pop" physics. If I need half a hand, at least, on quantum gravity, and a full hand on your sub-version, and you don't supply it, for example, you'll be here. Archaeology, anthropology? Poor explanation of relations between different peoples, cultures, etc. can also get you here.

2.25 stars:

Might use this a bit more than 2.75. Basically, it says your book is near the fairly bad territory, but not quite there. Or, that it is fairly bad for me, but some people may find moderate redeeming value. 

2 stars:

Your book is fairly bad for several of the reasons above. In history, you may be over your head, on a poor thesis which isn't new, along with bad narrative plus not being able to organize raw information into history.

1.75 stars:

Used rarely. Basically, your book is falling into really bad territory, but it's not quite totally there.

1.5 stars:

Your book is pretty much really bad. It has no truly redeeming qualities, even for people less informed than me. In the hard sciences, you're at least flirting with pseudoscience. Ditto in health and medicine. In history, you're over your head, or at least flirting with the edge of conspiracy theories. On political science, some types of history, and some social sciences, you're getting strongly into identitarianism, or other isms. I may like crushing you.

1.25 stars:

Very rare. Possibly a charity rating half the time.

1 star:

You're more into conspiracy theory, in history and political science, even if not a central part of your thesis. You're into quack levels of pseudoscience. You're into hard-core identitarianism. You're failing on trying to defend things. I probably like crushing you.

Less than 1 star:

I review-bombed your conspiracy theory book is the usual. Or you write a book that appears to be knowledgeable, but in reality has a self-undercutting pseudo-thesis that isn't what the book is actually about, like Sapolsky's "Determined."  If it's not a review-bomb review, I totally like thoroughly crushing you.

==

Middlebrow fiction?

Something like Tony Hillerman's murder mysteries, or Ursula LeGuin's fantasy?

I use a three-part rating, looking at plot, narrative and characters. I then average out the three, with weighting toward one of the three areas as necessary. 

Plot: The scale runs from plausible to implausible. On mystery-type books, don't be either a Captain Obvious, or on the other side, offer up bizarro twists.

Narrative: Don't give me stilted dialogue, or stilted narrative moving the plot along, either. And, if your book is part of a series by you, do a reasonable job at book-to-book consistency.

Characters: Are they plausible as individuals, on psyche, personhood related to job and other situations in the book, and interactions with other characters? If part of a series, do they grow from book to book? Is the growth and changes reasonable?

On the sum of the parts, how am I being entertained? 

==

Highbrow fiction?

If it's philosophical fiction, whether Plato, Hume, or Camus, you're getting a mix of the three-elements judging plus how I would judge your philosophy as philosophy.

Historical fiction? Less emphasis on the three-elements judging, but not nonexistent by any means, and plausible history. I'm not expecting maps here, but if an Alison Weir, etc., photos/paintings of photos, of course. And, within your historical fiction, like history, some sort of thesis, defended.

Alt-history? If it's a novel, at a minimum, be better than Harry Turtledove. If it's an alt-history essay like in the "What If?" series of books, no more than one major twist, please, and otherwise, meet the canons of history writing.

Other "highbrow"? A Thomas Mann to cite someone I've read from within the 20th century? Beyond the three-elements judging, have you moved me? Have you made me think? Have you enlarged me? Middlebrow fiction might be about entertainment; highbrow, for me, is about these things.

==

Finally, a couple of other additional notes.

First, I will call out egregiously bad reviewers, either as a class, or individuals, in some cases. That's above all in political science, modern political history and related, where I suspect low-star reviewers as individuals or a class are doing so for narrowly political reasons.

Second, I've called out much further, in a blog post, an oft-wrong history reviewer who has willfully developed a cult around himself. Don't make yourself into another History Nerd/History Toddler. 

'Karma' 2.0 — a secular spin on Edward Arlington Robinson

Ennui was in the air, and one lament

From me, one of a few confusing flaws

In divers of self-images. Because

The world round me would not march to my bent,

Was I to answer for my discontent?

I pondered, and the reason for it was 

A purveyor of a religious cause

Warning the world that it must repent.

 

Accepting a wonted disgust at this

I magnified a fancy that I wished

His own evil led to an end so grim.

Then, my eye rove, found solace if not bliss

And, from the pavement before me, I fished …

A dime for myself who was dead to men.

 

====

 

“Karma,” by Edward Arlington Robinson

 

Christmas was in the air and all was well

With him, but for a few confusing flaws

In divers of God's images. Because

A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,

Was he to answer for the axe that fell?

He pondered; and the reason for it was,

Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus

Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

 

Acknowledging an improvident surprise,

He magnified a fancy that he wished

The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.

Not sure of that, he found a compromise;

And from the fulness of his heart he fished

A dime for Jesus who had died for men.