PERSPECTIVISM PERMUTATIONS

 Once again, I'm structuring a post here so that I can also use it as a response on a forum-thread. All the readers of this blog need to know is that the forum-thread involves discourse on the subjects of atheism and agnosticism.  As I am an agnostic, I reject the certitudes of both theists and atheists as to whether gods do or don't exist, but one comment on the thread, with respect to Christian morals with respect to slavery, raised some interesting questions that bring me back to Nietzschean perspectivism.                                                                                                                                 _________________                                                                                                                                                                                           "Slavery would likely be inherently immoral from [Jesus'] point of view. Like thousands of isolated moral conundrums, there is no record of him responding to slavery one way or another. But he did have a take on how to love. Slavery would be in contrast to that principle."

                                                                                                                            I would tend to speak of things like "pro-slavery sentiments" and "anti-slavery sentiments" alike as being intersubjective rather than objective, but your argument as a Christian is far more interesting than the rote dogma of the atheists here, and so deserves a longer response.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         The dominant atheist response here to the question of morality has been to claim that it's purely determined by social factors. This claim is made according to atheist beliefs about the absence of any overriding human nature that simply takes different permutations in different societies. Now, though I have argued (and still argue) that atheists cannot be sure that nothing like gods or spirits existed for early man, I also have not dismissed the equal possibility that such gods and spirits did not exist except as poetic metaphors. But for this post, I will hew to the latter possibility: looking at the human custom of slavery as if its attendant morality was independent of any divine input. This is also possible to me because I am a perspectivist as well as an agnostic: I seek to understand how perspective affects morals.                                                                                                                      Jesus' most famous statement of "love" in relation to human bondage would be, to my mind, "Do as you would done by." This speaks to an innate human need: the need for cooperation in activities that are mutually beneficial to the parties involved: cooperation between families, tribe-members, nations. However, the human need for cooperation may be partly if not wholly predicated on competition as well: families gather together to keep away intruders, nations sign peace treaties to repel common enemies, and so on. There are legitimate areas of human endeavor to which the ethic of cooperation does not unilaterally apply. A merchant who never "bought cheap in order to sell dear" would embody the lovingkindness expected by Jesus's admonition. However, he might also find himself going out of business and being unable to feed his family. So in my terms both ethics, of cooperation and competition, are intersubjective in that they apply across the whole of human cultures, rather than each culture being determined by local standards.                                                                                                                                                                                                                From this formulation it follows that slavery, too, would be judged by these two competing ethics. Prior to the Old Testament, recorded history doesn't preserve a lot of moral commentary on slavery (though there's no reason to assume that there was none). We know from Exodus that Jews didn't like being slaves (even of the economic variety) in Egypt, because their slavery is depicted as being bad. Yet the Jews of the Nation of Israel kept slaves, as we know from Leviticus. How did those archaic Jews justify slavery? We don't know this in any precise sense. We do know that the custom of Jubilee encouraged slaveowners to emancipate slaves under just the right circumstances, though. This suggests that archaic Hebrews were aware that slaves of other nations didn't like being slaves in Israel any more than the Jews had liked it in Egypt. Leviticus 25:44 even seems to be justifying the taking of foreign-born slaves over the enslavement of one's fellow Jews, though we can't be certain what the actual practices were like in such a distant period.                                                                                                                                                          To wind up somewhat, if we could ask a tribesman of early humanity why his tribe took slaves, he would probably answer with some version of an ethic born out of competition: "They did it to us first," or "If we don't have some of their people held captive, the enemy tribe may try to wipe us out." At the same time, the ethic of cooperation would have co-existed. It was probably easier for two tribes, even if they disliked each other, to use tradecraft to facilitate exogamous unions rather than by going to war every time one's tribe had a bridal shortage. These contending aspects of human nature are reflected in the mythopoeic conceptions of the philosopher Empedocles, who wrote:                                                                                                                                                                                        "The force that unites the elements to become all things is Love, also called Aphrodite; Love brings together dissimilar elements into a unity, to become a composite thing. Love is the same force that human beings find at work in themselves whenever they feel joy, love and peace. Strife, on the other hand, is the force responsible for the dissolution of the one back into its many, the four elements of which it was composed."

Perhaps more pertinently, he also wrote: "Each man believes only his own experience."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

ANOTHER FORUM-DERIVED ANSWER WITHOUT THE QUESTION

 Back to my debates with online materialists, one of whom tried to counter my position with the idea of "atheists who still believe in things supernatural, just not gods."

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If you choose to search this forum for the word "psychic" you will see that I've noted, possibly a half dozen times, that belief in psychic forces does not presuppose belief in gods.

That, however, does not mean that the former belief was not influenced by the growth of materialist interpretations of the universe. 

On this page I responded to (name withheld) as to previous posts in which I asserted the possibility that gods were not necessarily purely imaginary, but may rather have been inchoate forces molded by human imagination into culture-specific icons. This theory is not one in which I "believe," but is rather an agnostic counter to the materialist belief that all gods must be purely imaginary.

But this informal postulate, which I did not originate, was also influenced by mainstream materialism, albeit without being in any way identical with mainstream materialism. This "spiritual materialism" is what is represented by your non-mainstream atheists who assert that supernatural forces are generated by humans and disembodied principles rather than by gods.

I've said repeatedly that theism and atheism grow out of intellectual discourse. Theism is almost certainly first. It's possible that early man did sense what the Polynesians called "mana" in both living and unliving phenomena, but such inchoate forces lack any power to personify the mysteries of the universe for human meditation. Thus we get the articulation of "departmental gods" who administer different aspects of reality, whether physical phenomena like storms or social phenomena like war. Possibly in their earliest forms one would not even call such figures "gods," but something more like the millions-of-years-later Japanese concept of kami.

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This informal postulate, though, does not assume that even if this is the way belief in gods evolved, that tribal peoples were conscious of such formulations. They would not have been able to stand back from their own assumptions, just like modern materialists. Therefore it's probable that most tribal humans really did believe that gods had existence independent of human interaction. Naturally any given tribe would have become aware at an early date that the neighboring tribe might have different gods, but this would not have led to the assumption that all gods were imaginary in nature. Rather, it probably led to henotheism, the idea that rival gods exist in the common universe but that the god of one's own tribe is the biggest and the best. This form of theism appears in a few Old Testament passages in which it's implied that the Hebrew God does share his celestial space with rival gods, rather than being the only one.

Eventually we do see the historical development of actual atheism, the spawn of intellectual discourse that I've fruitlessly tried to explain to my opponents. It might have appeared earlier than the documents of the Greeks, but that's our main source for the history of that philosophy. One assumes that theists pushed back against the atheists, as attested by Socrates and his deadly cup, but theists were not the only opponents of atheists. 

It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed.-- Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus.

We have only sketchy documents of what figures like Epicurus and Lucretius believed, but I think it likely that they are among our first "spiritual materialists." Lucretius believes in the gods as principles more than as departmental chiefs, and while he's not agreeing with "natural philosophers" who believed that Greek science explained everything, he's been influenced by them.

So when we come down at last to modern spiritual materialists, we are dealing with individuals like Lucretius, who have some notion that supernatural forces exist but do not conceive of gods in the sense of mainstream theism. Moderns who attest to supernatural force residing in their chakras, but not in the universe as literal gods, have been influenced by mainstream materialism; in a "man is the measure of all things" formula. By taking this human-centered form of supernatural belief, the supernatural materialists are still subscribing to one doctrine taken from mainstream materialists: that gods are not necessary to explain the functioning of the universe. And thus the discourse of the supernatural materialists remains influenced by atheist discourse, accepting that at least some phenomena are entirely explained by material evidence, including the chakras, which may have also started from theistic belief but grew independent of it thanks to the influence of mainstream materialist discourse.

AGNOSTICISM ASIDES

 Below are some assorted thoughts from Thomas Huxley on the agnostic movement for which he became famous, though he insisted that he merely followed earlier examples set in archaic cultures. The essay "Agnosticism" was written in 1889 and replied to what Huxley considered a certain churchman's inaccurate definition of agnosticism.

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So I declare, as plainly as I can, that I am unable to show cause why these transferable devils should not exist; nor can I deny that, not merely the whole Roman Church, but many Wiccan “infidels” of no mean repute, do honestly and firmly believe that the activity of such like demonic beings is in full swing in this year of grace 1889.

Nevertheless, as good Bishop Butler says, “probability is the guide of life;” and it seems to me that this is just one of the cases in which the canon of credibility and testimony, which I have 7  ventured to lay down, has full force. So that, with the most entire respect for many (by no means for all) of our witnesses for the truth of demonology, ancient and modern, I conceive their evidence on this particular matter to be ridiculously insufficient to warrant their conclusion. 

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When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis,”—had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion.

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This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, long since deceased, but of green and pious memory, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there, and expressed itself with entire openness; most of my colleagues were “ists” of one sort or another; and, however kind and friendly they might be, I, the man without a rag of a label to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the 11  appropriate title of “agnostic.” It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the “gnostic” of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes. To my great satisfaction, the term took; and when the Spectator had stood godfather to it, any suspicion in the minds of respectable people, that a knowledge of its parentage might have awakened was, of course, completely lulled. 

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If anyone had preferred this request to me, I should have replied that, if he referred to agnostics, they have no creed; and, by the nature of the case, cannot have any. Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, “Try all things, hold fast by that which is good”; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him; it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.