Religions seems to serve 3 distinct purposes:
- An explanation of the world around us (“first cause”).
- How to make sense of it (“purpose”).
- How to act in it (“ethics”).
To use the language of David Hume, the human mind needs the “is” and the “ought” — but to connect the two together, you need a binder in the form of “for what”.
One of the problems with modern ideologies is that they typically posit that a) there is no first cause, b) your purpose can be whatever you want it to be, and c) therefore you must act a certain way or you’re a bad person.
But one can’t help but ask — how does “c” follow from “a” and “b”? If there is no first cause and the purpose is subjective, what does “bad” even mean? Why is murder bad, for example? I see no logical way to answer this without first deriving a good<->bad scale out of something.
There have been some attempts to square this circle by superimposing a Jainist purpose — minimizing the suffering of sentient beings — on an Atheist cosmology. Sam Harris is perhaps the most notable example of this. And yet, it is still entirely unclear why suffering would be bad in this framework, or why sentient beings should be treated differently than insentient ones.
Let me try to square this circle a different way, layer by layer.
1
In the first layer, we must make some assumptions about what “is” and how it came to be. Agnosticism is scientifically valid, but it’s extremely hard to build an “ought” if your “is” is nothing but a shrug of the shoulders. So we have to assume something. For reasons I’ve laid out in the past, I propose we assume a sentient creator.
2
In the second layer, we must make some assumptions about “what for”. For reasons I’ve also laid out in the past, I propose we assume that the creator made this universe as a kind of grand sociological experiment to see how sentient beings would use their mind, consciousness and free will. The reason for this assumption is obvious — everything else in our universe is either deterministic or probabilistic; mind, consciousness and free will are the only things a creator might actually care to observe and learn something from, because they can be unpredictable; they are the only possible reasons to conduct an experiment in the first place.
3
In the third layer, we must make some assumptions about the “ought” — if the purpose of the experiment is to see how we use our mind, consciousness and free will, what do we ought to do? What actions would be good and what actions wouldn’t?
In hasn’t occurred to me when I tried to answer this question previously, but the framing of this question is very similar to the way ancient Greek schools of philosophy — Stoicism, Epicureanism and Cynicism — approached it millennia ago. Perhaps, their answers might be useful today as well.
Consider the Stoics, whose writings have been preserved relatively-well — so we can glean their entire system of ethics.
The primary purpose of Stoic ethics is to live in accordance with nature. Stoics assume that everything in the world has a “telos”, a purpose, and that using things in accordance with their purpose is better than doing the opposite. To figure out the purpose of something, you simply need to observe it — figure out what makes it unique, what makes it it.
If you apply this question to humans, the answer would be obvious — humans have a mind, and humans have free will — so their purpose is to think rationally and to turn their thoughts into willful actions. No other animal or object has this capacity. Humans do. Therefore it is humans’ purpose and living in accordance with it is good.
For the Stoics, this meant several things.
First, the ability to think rationally has to be juxtaposed against the inverse — reacting mindlessly. Therefore modulating your automatic reactions is virtuous, and acting out your automatic reactions is a vice.
Second, being able to act out your rational thoughts is a virtue. There are 4 types of cardinal virtues Stoics have identified, all of which require rational thought and modulation (one might even say suppression) of automatic reactions:
- Wisdom / Prudence.
- Courage / Fortitude.
- Justice / Fairness.
- Temperance / Self-Discipline.
(I am using two names for each because of the imprecision of Greek-English translation)
All 4 of these virtues are specific instances of actions a person can take, which would be based on rational thought and not on automatic reaction.
1
Prudence would mean asking yourself whether something is good, bad or neither before reacting to it. Most things that people consider bad — illness, death, pain — are actually neither. They are undesirable, sure, but they are not actually bad since they could happen to anyone and our actions cannot guarantee their avoidance. A mindless person would react to these things as if they were bad. A virtuous person would use his rational faculties, classify them correctly, and act as if they are neither good nor bad — they are just an externality he cannot control.
Prudence would also mean asking yourself whether a particular thing is something you can control, and only expending efforts on the things you can control and not on those you can’t. What is the purpose of complaining about the weather, for example? It is an automatic reaction we all have, but it cannot possibly result in anything useful, and is therefore irrational. It is more virtuous to focus on what you can control — for example, your urge to complain (which is bound to ruin everyone’s mood).
2
Fortitude would mean acting in accordance with your rational judgment even when the consequences may be unpleasant. Not bad, mind you — if something is actually bad, you shouldn’t do it. But if something merely leads to pain or poverty, for instance, it might still be the virtuous thing to do.
Virtuous behavior is good, even if it might be rewarded with pain. Virtue is its own reward, and it takes fortitude to act on this rational realization.
3
Fairness would mean acting in a way that benefits others and not only yourself. It cannot be defined precisely, and the expectations might vary with the times, but unfairness (or injustice) tends to be something we can all recognize and condemn.
Trying to make the world around you more fair, perhaps more meritocratic, is virtuous.
Self-dealing that leads to the maximization of pleasure or the avoidance of pain is something people do automatically, without rational thought, and is therefore a vice.
4
Self-discipline is perhaps the most difficult of the Stoic virtues, as it requires people to avoid overindulging in pleasant things and to avoid the avoidance of unpleasant things.
Stoics believe that it is virtuous to eat simple foods and to avoid exotic ones; to wear simple clothes and to avoid fancy ones; to drink in moderation but to avoid drunkenness; to have sex with your spouse but to avoid debauchery.
In fact, Stoics caution against the hedonic adaptation that people’s automatic mind is prone to — how quickly we get used to better and fancier things — and how it makes it difficult for people to enjoy the simpler things in life. To fight this tendency, Stoics advise us to intentionally practice being hungry, being cold, being uncomfortable and being exhausted.
If you practice these unpleasant things (which are neither good nor bad) constantly, you will be able to maintain a constant “baseline” of requirements that does not ratchet upwards. And you will therefore be able to enjoy life in all possible conditions, regardless of what fortune brings.
— — —
To summarize, we have constructed a coherent belief-system that answers the three basic questions that any religion must answer:
- What is.
- What is it for.
- What should we do.
One can tweak any of these assumptions, and I certainly don’t claim that this belief-system is “true” in any sense of the word.
But as a minimum viable product, it seems to be sufficient for leaving a good life —
And we desperately need one now that God is Dead.
