Challenges to Christian Belief: Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMeNSG9dSjs

I've heard it said that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit was only possible when Jesus was on Earth, which is what the context is meant to suggest. Accusing Jesus of demonic activity is unforgivable, because what kind of a person could be within the very presence of Jesus, and witness works of God, and in full knowledge of the holiness of these things tell a bald-faced lie and call Jesus evil, when they know full well that this isn't true?

But this doesn't make sense. That sounds like blasphemy against the Son, not of the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself says that the reason he must ascend is so that the Holy Spirit can come to Earth, suggesting the Holy Spirit was not already on Earth when Jesus was there. (Why couldn't Jesus stay and the Holy Spirit come, I have no idea.)

And if God is three in one, then why isn't blasphemy against one as bad as against the other?

Moreover, the Holy Spirit is meant to be a person separate from the Son, per the doctrine of the Trinity. So for someone to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit per se, they couldn't be blaspheming Jesus. They would have to single out the Holy Spirit somehow. How would they do this, unless they believed the Holy Spirit to be a real, separate person in the first place? A non-believer wouldn't believe this. Only someone who had experienced the "inner witness of the Holy Spirit" would be in a position, it would seem, to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. But there are cases where people think God is speaking to them, or they think that the Holy Spirit is moving within them, but this turns out to not be the case. So how is someone supposed to tell whether this "inner witness" is legitimate or just a product of their imagination?

What must this blasphemy amount to? Could it be something as innocuous as reinterpreting a previous experience of the "inner witness of the Holy Spirit" as nothing more than one's imagination? Or does it require something more dramatic?

If God is perfectly forgiving, then how could there be any unforgivable sin?

For there to be an unforgivable sin, that's some serious stuff. So serious in fact, it would be a profound failure of love for God to give us just enough knowledge of the unforgivable sin to cause us great spiritual anxiety, but not enough knowledge to even know what it is. What kind of God would communicate such an important idea so poorly?

Then there's the obvious ethical problem. Genocide? Perfectly forgivable. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, whatever that even means? Unforgivable. This makes no sense!

And if blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a "lifetime thing" as they suggest in the video, then why doesn't the text say that?

And if the unforgivable sin is not forgivable because forgiveness always requires repentance, and the person who blasphemes the Holy Spirit is necessarily unrepentant, then that means blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is unforgivable in a trivial sense. By that definition of forgiveness, then anyone who is unrepentant is unforgivable, which means there is nothing special about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. But again, why wouldn't the text say this if this were the case? Instead, the text suggests that there is something special, not trivial, about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit that makes it a uniquely unforgivable offense. Put another way, the text suggests that someone who commits blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is directly unforgivable, while the above suggests that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit makes someone indirectly unforgivable.

But even if it were true that there is this kind of 'indirectly unforgivable' status, it's totally misleading to call such a person unforgivable. Instead, you should call the person unrepentant. It would be misleading to say "A lack of repentance is an unforgivable sin" when the truth is "Forgiveness requires repentance." One has to do with the quality of the sin itself and the other has to do with the meaning of 'forgiveness.'

If Jesus wanted to make things clear, he could simply say: "Those who do not repent cannot be forgiven" and leave it at that. But instead Jesus singles out a specific kind of evil that he labels "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" and says this sin, and only this sin, will not be forgiven. That's very different from saying "Forgiveness requires repentance and those who blaspheme against the Holy Spirit are unrepentant." 

And yet, even if Jesus said this, it would still be confusing. Is a 'blasphemer of the Holy Spirit' just another term for an unrepentant person? Or is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit a specific kind of sin that only an unrepentant person would commit?

If the latter, then even that makes no sense, because what determines whether a person is unrepentant is their attitude and behavior after they have committed a sin, not the sin itself. Case in point, Jesus says blasphemy against the Son or the Father will be forgiven, but not the Holy Spirit. So even the sin of blaspheming the Father or the Son needn't come from someone who is permanently unrepentant. Committing that sin doesn't tell us that this person is necessarily unrepentant. But why would blasphemy against the Holy Spirit have this quality when other sins do not?

Again, this suggests that the only kind of person capable of blaspheming the Holy Spirit would be someone who has direct contact with the Holy Spirit in an unmistakable kind of way. But no one has that contact, because there is always the possibility that what you perceive to be the Holy Spirit could be your imagination or something else. Putting all your faith in what you perceive to be the Holy Spirit speaking to you leads to what I call epistemic hypocrisy. Imagine a Muslim says to the Christian, "Allah has told me that Jesus did not die on the cross." The Muslim has a deep gut feeling that this is true. The Christian has a deep gut feeling (that they attribute to the Holy Spirit) that Jesus did die on the cross. So we have clashing certainties, and the Christian has to say that the Muslim can be wrong in their certainty, but hypocritically does not apply this same risk to their own certainty.

"My certainty is better than yours because it's mine," the Christian has to say. Or, "Someone (the Muslim) can have religious certainty and yet be wrong."

But the Christian either applies this to himself or not. If he does, then his certainty is destroyed, as he admits it's possible that his certainty is wrong. If he does not, then he's committing special pleading, making his own certainty an exception to the rule when there is no principled reason for doing so.

For all the Christian knows, the phenomenology of Muslim certainty is identical to the phenomenology of Christian certainty, and that there is a secular explanation that uniformly explains the misplaced Muslim certainty and the misplaced Christian certainty (only a naturalist gets to take advantage of this beautifully uniform explanation).

If your epistemology leads to epistemic hypocrisy, then your epistemology is bad.

But again, this is a moot point, because it assumes an 'indirectly unforgivable' status of the unforgivable sin that the text strongly suggests against.

At some point I will look into biblical commentaries and bring receipts to these questions.

Stream of consciousness: How does your material reality affect your worldview?

There's a quote that goes like this: Don't expect a man to understand something when his survival depends on his not understanding it.

Taylor Tomlinson made the joke that it's easy to believe in God when you've won the genetic lottery.

When I first moved out of the house, it was the first time in my life where being a Christian was not socially advantageous. I was still a Christian, at first, but I was shocked to see just how much my faith had been influenced by survival pressures. When your survival is tied to your parents, suddenly getting along with your parents is a matter of survival. If your parents are religious, then getting along with your parents means going along with their religion.

This applies beyond one's parents. If your survival depends on your job, then your worldview will be shaped by your work. What happens when your worldview is incompatible with your work? Then work will become agony for you.

Christians have a habit of disagreeing with their church, uprooting and going on to create their own Christian denomination. Internal beliefs and external survival pressures often clash. Remove the external pressure, and the internal beliefs show themselves in action. When slaves are set free, they usually don't hang around, but leave and build their own life.

Give any Christian a million dollars, and I think there is a 90% chance that their faith won't last. The reason why is because their survival will no longer be attached to their Christian community, and they will have the freedom to explore the world. And when you explore the world, you see just how non-Christian it is, and just how cult-like all forms of Christianity really are, and if they're observant, they will see how tribes and cults fit perfectly into an evolutionary viewpoint. People go where the money is and where the people are, and there's money and people in religion. People are naturally social creatures who rely on social structures for access to resources and for a sense of meaning, and religions provide all these things that are directly or indirectly tied to our survival.

When you look around, you are seeing that which survives. So there is no surprise when you look around and see those beliefs that attend survival. If your beliefs happen to conveniently line up with what evolution would select, that's reason to be suspicious of your beliefs. That doesn't mean your beliefs are false, only that you should take a second look and ensure you have reasons for them grounded in the public tools of inquiry.

You may think that everything I'm saying is so obvious that it's embarrassing that I would say it as if it needs saying. But sadly, it does need saying, as people like Justin Brierley, Jordan Peterson, and to some degree Alex O'Connor keep trying to make things out to be as though religion is anything more than an artifact of human biology. Really, what Peterson seems to be grasping at is that consequences are very, very, very consequential. Flourishing is really good, so good that it may be worth taking on a lie of sorts, like religion, to obtain it, and certainly flourishing requires a degree of unified social success, and certainly religions are useful (even necessary) for creating unified social success. And if it's true that flourishing is that good, and that suffering is that bad, and if it's true that getting rid of religion results in suffering, then it's like, what truth are we attending to here? The truth of literal scientific descriptions of empirical reality, or the truth that flourishing is overwhelmingly and absolutely better than suffering? Other "pseudo Christians" like Douglas Murray or Tom Holland seem to be grasping toward this idea as well.

I wonder what the ultra wealthy believe? I doubt many of them believe in an afterlife, given their ambition to live as well as possible in this life. In that case, it might be less of materiality affecting one's worldview and more of one's worldview ("you only live once") affecting one's ambition.

This won't apply to those who inherit that wealth. So then I wonder, for those who inherited wealth, how do their beliefs differ from the general population? Are they more or less likely to be religious? I would guess they would be less likely to be religious, as they have the freedom to go their own way, and, like Nietzsche would say, they have no need for the "slave morality" that religions trade in. (As indicated by the scare quotes, I don't care much for Nietzsche's views on morality.)

But maybe it's easier to believe God loves you when you've been blessed? And yet, those who inherit wealth probably are aware of just how arbitrary it is that they would be blessed when so many others are not. That kind of arbitrariness does not engender confidence that the world works according to a divine plan. Life is too random, chaotic, meaningless, boring, and too indifferent for that. After all, if God meant for me to inherit all this wealth and do something specific with it, then wouldn't there be a burning bush or something? And yet for all the billionaires and millionaires there are, there is a striking lack of burning bushes, or Gideon threshing floors, or pillars of fire or burning chariots or prophets or prophecies of any kind.

What do people believe when they are free to believe according to what makes sense to them instead of what enables their survival? Not in religion, not in politics, not in social trends, and not in jobs, I suspect. To be truly allowed to go your own way is an incredible privilege.

Alastair Norcross - There are no moral obligations

A view that I've had for a while now is that there are no moral obligations, only legal ones and other social obligations (by 'social obligation' I mean like you are obligated to follow your job duties or you will be fired). Obligations are social constructs. I don't believe in moral rights—there is no intrinsic 'right to life.' Rights are something a state grants a citizen. Rights can be taken away. If someone has a seizure, their right to drive is taken away until they have been seizure-free for 6 months. Your right to life is taken away when you try to kill someone. Etc. However, we can have discussions around what rights a state should grant its citizens. You could argue that it would be objectively better for a state to grant a right to produce alcohol compared to a state that bans alcohol, because banning alcohol leads to all sorts of problems (as America discovered in the Prohibition Era). In this sense there are objective rights.

The reason why I don't like moral rights is because I can't make sense of them. I don't believe anything can be magically right or wrong. If an action is right or wrong, there will always be an explanation for why this is the case. You could say I believe in a moral version of the principle of sufficient reason. In fact, I suspect that morality necessitates this—it is necessarily the case (i.e., the inverse is impossible) that for any moral fact, there is an explanation for that fact.

But if someone has a moral right, then violating that right is wrong. But how is it wrong? What's the explanation? Moral rights sound like these magical things that people have, but there is no explanation as to what they are or where they come from.

This is one reason (of many) why I like consequentialism. I don't have to worry about trying to make sense of moral obligations or about explaining why violating someone's right is a bad thing. (Certainly, violating someone's legal right is often a bad thing for consequential reasons.)

Importantly, I think we still have objective morality without moral obligations. Moral facts don’t need ‘em. You have something like obligation when it comes to epistemic normativity. You ought to reason well, you ought to think rightly, you ought to believe what's true, and so on. If we call those epistemic obligations, I think that's fine. We are still demanded by normativity to not make mistakes in our reasoning, and we can apply reasoning to moral contexts to produce moral reasoning. Just as reasoning can be objectively good or bad, reasoning applied to moral contexts (moral reasoning) can be objectively good or bad.

(There's a good question you can ask about the nature of normativity's demand, which is basically the question of why should we care about being rational, or why should we oppose irrationality. But I'll save that for another time.)

If we call epistemic obligations applied to moral contexts moral obligations, then I'm fine with that idea of moral obligation, but you aren't violating anyone's intrinsic rights in the case that you violate these moral obligations—you would just be violating your epistemic, normative obligation to think rightly, reason rightly, etc.

Anyway, I'm excited to have discovered a philosopher who is a hard consequentialist like me and feels the same way I do, at least roughly, about moral obligations: 

https://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/people/alastair-norcross

Leda and the Swan - The Truthseeker Objection Against Antirealism

God visits Earth and transforms into a swan and rapes a woman named Leda.

Leda says to the swan, "Why have you done this? I thought the world was good, but you have taught me that it is not, and now I don't know the reason I have to live.

Why should I live in a bad world? What do I have to fight for? Do I have my happiness to fight for? But you have made my happiness impossible. Do I have the happiness of my family to fight for? But I know what despair awaits them when they discover the truth of this world, the truth you have shown me. To fight for their happiness would amount to bearing a lie every day, and to shield them from anything that might show them the truth. But I cannot bear this lie. The truth weighs too heavily on my conscience.

So I have nothing to fight for, and a world such as this is not worth fighting for. You have done something so evil, that I'm not sure even I comprehend how evil it is, though the evil was done to me. If there is a God of justice, he will judge you, and the weight of your sins will break his scale."

The swan looks upon Leda and sees her as a small, tiny, speck of a thing. For a moment he wonders whether to bother speaking to something so small, but something in him prompts him to speak.

"I am the God who you say will judge me. But I judge myself and find no wrongdoing. I know all things, I see all of reality all at once. In my sight I do not see any moral facts that could make true your claims against me.

I raped you because it pleased me to do so, and I will do so again if you are still around and if I am so inclined, and if you are no longer around, as you humans tend to die so quickly, then I will find another girl and rape her instead, if I am so inclined. 

And in all of this, there is no truth of the matter that I have done wrong, or that I am something that I ought not be, or that I think or feel in any way opposed to reality. I am perfectly aligned with reality; I act within the confines of all facts, and with reality's permission I can rape and kill as I please. If I want to eat your child just to see the look on your face, then I will. If I want to infest your body with bugs to see what it looks like for them to burst out, I will. If I want to satisfy my curiosity on the effects of acid and flesh, or blood and soil, then I will send rain and war, and if I want to lay with a woman so a husband kills her in jealousy, or lure sailors to their deaths as a siren, or frighten them as a sea monster, or drink myself into a stupor and laugh as I watch an empire fall, then I will, and in doing so I do not fall out of step with reality even one inch, nor do I commit any real crime, as I see all facts and not one makes it true that I should do none of these things. 

There is no basis upon which to cast judgment on me. You have no sight of my sin, no proof of my poison, no truth to test me with. What wisdom says I am wicked, or reason that I am wretched? In virtue of what am I a villain? What is your argument? You have feelings, but nothing that concerns a connection with reality."

Leda listened with horror to what the swan said, sobbing all the while. "If what you say is true," she cries out, "then what is this world? If a demon like you can be perfectly aligned with the world, then what a nightmare of a world it is. 

The competition of animals tells us that to survive is to be part of this world. But if being part of this world says nothing good about us, then what good is our survival? To live in this world is to embrace it, but to embrace a nightmare is to become a nightmare yourself. The only chance of goodness or virtue we have is to separate ourselves from this nightmare. We assume it is good to survive, and thus good to be aligned with the world. But if what you say is true, then being aligned with this world says nothing good about us. If anything, to be good is to reject such a nightmare, and to reject such survival."

A sharp knife appears in front of Leda. The swan responds, "If you wish to reject survival, then here."

Leda's hands shake as she picks up the knife. She turns the knife, and with both hands points it to her heart, and hovers.

God moves her hands and the knife plunges into her heart. Leda's eyes widen with shock, and her dress grows red.

"Ahh, I love it. I really do. I love blood and death. I love how dramatic they are," God says, stretching his wings to ready a takeoff.

Leda falls to the ground and sees the sky one last time, wondering why things had to be this way.

Notable quotes: Kant on philosophy

Section 381, page 83 of Jonathan Bennett (https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1783.pdf):

“Mathematics, natural science, law, arts, even morals etc., don’t completely fill the soul; there’s always a space staked out for pure, speculative reason. The emptiness of this space prompts us to resort to grotesque masks and worthless glitter, or to mysticism, ostensibly in search of employment and entertainment though really we are just distracting ourselves so as to drown out the burdensome voice of reason, which, true to its own nature, demands something that can satisfy it, and not merely something that started up so as to serve other ends or to satisfy our inclinations. So a study that is concentrated on •this territory of reason existing for itself must (or so I have reason to hope) have a great attraction for anyone who has tried in this way to stretch his thought, because it is just precisely •here that all other kinds of knowledge—all other goals, even—must come together and unite into a whole.”

Ben's Law

If you let someone speak on his or her moral system long enough, always, without exception, it will eventually sound like consequentialism (even if they explicitly reject consequentialism).

Notable quotes: William James

"There is but one indefectibly certain truth . . . that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists." ("Will to Believe", 1896)