Logical Coherence

Lately I have been thinking about the problem of morality and belief. Morality is a crucial link in the chain of belief, and in fact, has been invoked as the reason for God's existence more than any other. Dostoyevski, in The Brothers Karamazov, argues that if there is no God, all things are permitted.

All things are permitted. For some time I was unsatisfied with this as an argument for God because it seemed a bit thin. Yes it would be terrible if there were no morality, but we could muddle through with some kind of social contract. But this underestimates the meaning of "all things are permitted." Morality doesn't simply tell us not to kill our neighbors and eat them for food. It is the very coherence of human thought.

Here is what I mean. Morality is tightly bound to truth. After all, everyone agrees that we should all be seeking the truth. "Should" is the operative verb here. If there is no such thing as the moral "should," then knowledge of truth becomes at best a pretty incidental property of nature, something like color or shape. Taken another way, if I believe a lie and there is no moral dimension to truth, believing a lie is just as good as believing the truth, provided the truth will not hurt me (i.e., a bullet is coming my way).

This is not an easy problem to get around. In fact, most of the arguments against belief talk about the immorality of religion -- an incoherence if there ever was one, since something cannot be immoral if there is not a standard of goodness to apply it to.

Without morality logic loses much of its coherence. Truth becomes another property of matter just like any other, one that can be ignored just as we can choose to overlook the greenness of trees or the size of an ant. Truth is no longer a vital pursuit. Our desire to unlock the secrets of the universe become vanity exercises, and our desire to live a contradiction-free life is entirely meaningless.

The statement that belief in God is absurd is empty of meaning without morality. Only because the word God carries weight can the word absurd carry any.

I am now up to devotion 114.

The Matter of Complexity

It is a favorite tactic of religious critics, and especially critics of Catholicism, to ridicule one religious rite or another as proof that religion is bunk. Because Catholics cross themselves with holy water before entering a church, for example, we must all be under the spell of shamans.

Suppose someone knew nothing about France, not even its existence. That person might ask me, "What is France?" I could respond by saying, "The French enjoy eating freshly baked bagettes." This response, while peculiar, is true enough, and quite characteristic of the French. Yet it hardly answers the question. The response seems senseless, but, if I then went all the way back to the beginning of French history, explained how French culture and society came about, after a few hours of explanation I could finally get around to showing why the French like bagettes, and why it is reasonable that they should.

The same could be said about the idiosyncratic practice of genuflection, or any other peculiar Catholic practice. The question is never the practice itself. It is the orgins of it that count.

May Day

I would be remiss if I ignored May 1st as a special day in my devotion. May, of course, has always been the month of Mary. To celebrate the month, I will try to say the rosary every single day, and in church on Sundays.

So far, I have been pretty consistent about my devotions, but I skip days from time to time. Let's go for 30 days straight. I think I am used to it now, so I should be able to pull this off.

Of note, an interesting symmetry: Today is May Day and I am up to 99 devotions. Today would be my hundredth.

Ave Maria.