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Monday, May 2, 2011
In between a Bomb and a Child
I'd planned on posting something else today, but this short story now seems more appropriate. It contains profanity so don't read it if you don't like such things.
“I don’t give a shit.”
Reese took a sip of his iced coffee and repeated himself.
“I don’t give a shit what the LT or anyone else says. I’m not running over any little kids.”
Whoever decided to start serving iced coffee in the dining facilities was a genius. Sure it wasn’t as good as the Starbuck’s lattes I was missing, but there a little goes a long way. Iced coffee is relatively cheap and easy to make, and even having one cup of the stuff can make the whole day seem better. The first time I noticed it in here; I drink nine glasses of it. That was a bad idea. I got sick.
Despite my lack of a response, Reese was determined to make his case.
“I will not run over kids. I’m just not going to do it. If I see them, I’ll try to drive around them or avoid them in some other way, but I will not run over little kids. I’ll stop the convoy before I do that.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to think or talk about this right now.
Earlier in the day, Reese and I had been in a briefing with our squad. Our team was completing our tour. Sometime in the next week or two we’d pack up all our equipment and make the three day drive back down south. Hopefully after that we’d be heading home. That was what we’d been told, but we’d been told lots of things lots of times before.
At this briefing the LT had brought up what Reese could not let go. In the time since our initial trip up here, the insurgents had started strapping bombs to their own kids. Then they would send the kids up to our convoys and when we stopped or reacted to the kids they would blow us both up. I kinda figured that you’ve given up any legitimacy you ever had when you start blowing your own kids, but my thoughts on the matter didn’t seem to give the insurgents any pause, and as usually no one had asked me for my thoughts (well except Reese, but that’s another thing).
Because of these attacks, Command had given, and the LT had repeated, a standing order to not stop a convey for any reason.
“Do your best to avoid anyone in the road, but if you can’t avoid them, run them over.” Reese repeated the Lieutenant’s order and shrugged. “I won’t do it. I just won’t fucking do it.”
“So you’d put us all at risk?” I asked him.
If Reese stopped a truck it would stop the whole convoy. We wouldn’t leave anyone behind, so if one guy stopped we all would. And most of the roads were far too narrow to allow us to drive around if someone stopped. Even if a kid in the road turned out not to have a bomb on him, and it was probably more likely than not the kid wouldn’t be packing heat, Reese would still be putting us all at risk. The insurgents made a habit of attacking convoys that were stopped. Even the bad guys like to be efficient, and it’s hard to do a lot of damage to a group of trucks that are driving away. So they would do things to stop convoys or wait for them to stop. As long as we could keep moving our odds would be pretty good. But if we had to stop, they would drop dramatically.
“We’re all at risk here all the time.” Reese countered.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. Stopping for any reason gives them an opportunity to light us up. If you stop the convoy you could easily get some of us killed.”
“So what would you have me do? Run the little fuckers down? I can’t do that.”
“No, no one wants that. But can you really justify putting us all in danger only to satisfy your own conscious?”
Reese frowned and took a drink of his iced coffee. He set the cup down and pondered what I had said for a moment. He stood his ground.
“No.” He said, “Because it’s not about that. We have to draw a line somewhere. If I can run over those kids then I might as well be one of the murdering fuckers who strapped the bombs to them. It’s not enough that we can kill them better than they can kill us, we have to be better than them. If we’re not than what good is any of it? That is worth my life, and I hope you’d say it’s worth yours or anyone else’s.”
“How wonderfully idealistic. Is that the reason we’re fighting them too? Because we’re better than they are?”
To my surprise Reese didn’t get angry he just shrugged and said. “Dance around and away from the point all you like, you know I’m right. What would you do instead? Whatever your reasons you only have two options.”
I would much rather have been thinking about getting some sleep that night. Working continuously in such intense heat is very taxing and we were all always exhausted every night. I wonder if maybe that’s part of the reason everyone in this part of the world is always so pissed off about everything all the time. This much heat can’t be good for the human mind.
“I don’t know.” I told him, “I’m hoping something will come to me before we start the convoy back. Because I don’t like either option. Two bad choices is really no choice at all.”
Nothing came to me. I started the long drive back without a clue what I was going to do if I saw a little kid in road. All I thought about the whole way back was what to do, and I couldn’t figure anything out.
It took us three days make the trip back, and none of us even saw a kid the whole way.
Grace is Good because we're so Bad.
Some of my friends have been trying to get me read Rob Bell's new book "Love Wins." As people have already reviewed that book to death (just look at Amazon) I thought it would be more helpful to discuss/explain one of the questions he tries to answer.
Several months ago, a co-worker asked how I respond to a paradox within Christianity. He explained that there are people who can never hear about Christ due to practical limitations (like time and geography). Given this how can those people be saved? I responded by pointing to some sections in Romans that talk about the gentiles becoming a law unto themselves (2:14). I reason that this says God has adequately revealed himself in the world and other creation so he will judge people who have no access to scripture and knowledge of Christ based on that revelation. This is a very common response to the paradox but he countered with another one. If it is true that God can draw people unto him only by general revelation (creation and such) then by spreading the word of Christ we actually decrease the chances of someone being saved as this can introduce complications and other problems (I won’t list them here for brevity). However this violates the Great Commission (Matthew 28) and other directives of Christ so we have a paradox. Anyone who has seriously interacted with Christianity has encountered some form of this apparent paradox. So what about the people who have not heard and cannot hear?
To put it simply, this is no problem. In order for the question/paradox to be valid, it must in some way be unjust for God to allow people to perish with no chance to receive grace. There are only two possible reason why this would be unjust; either people must in some way be worthy of a chance to receive grace or there must be a moral requirement on God to extend people grace. Neither of these are true (In Christianity, they might be aspects of other religions/worldviews).
It is unjust when people do not get what they deserve. To say that it is unjust for some people to not receive grace due to lack of knowledge is to assume that these people deserve a chance to receive grace. But they don’t deserve it; none of us do. Every person who has ever lived deserves to go to hell, so there is nothing unjust about it if any of us do (no matter the reason). I deserve to burn in hell. The most honest and ethical person you have ever known also deserves to go to hell. As I really am that bad, it in no way makes God unjust if he decides to arrange the world in such a way that I have no practical chance of knowledge of Christ (obviously he did not do that in my case). The natural, logical, and necessary result of sin is death and damnation (James 1:15). We are all sinners (Romans3:23, Psalm 14:2-3) so if God decides he doesn’t want to save some people (or all of us) there is nothing unjust or unfair about it.
1. Christianity teaches that everyone is sinful and unjustified.
2. No sinful or unjustified individual deserves a chance.
3. So under Christian teaching no man deserves a chance, regardless of how good he appears or how unfair this might seem.
Under Christian belief, there are no moral requirements on God; moral requirements come from him. God is the source of all morality as what is moral is intrinsic to his nature (This is why God cannot sin. Nothing can violate its own nature and sin is a violation of God’s nature). The only possible moral requirement on God would be requirements he places on himself. When he makes promises (to Abraham, David, or people in general) he is placing a moral requirement on himself. When God swore a pact with Abraham, he swore by himself because there was no one greater for him to swear by (Hebrews 6:13). A moral requirement is always placed on the individual by a higher authority. There is no higher authority than God, so there is no one above him to place moral requirements on God. This does not mean God is amoral or immoral. As morality is an intrinsic and inherent part of his nature, God is the most moral and ethical thing that exists. When Job says that God is treating him unfairly one of God’s responses is to say Job that he doesn’t know what he is talking about and that Job has no moral authority over him (Job 41).
1. God is the source of all morality and all moral requirements.
2. As the ultimate source of morality, there is nothing and no one else to hold moral requirements on God.
3. So the only moral requirements God has are those that he places on himself.
Additionally asking “what about those who don’t know” ignores the general revelation of God. Christianity teaches that God has adequately revealed himself in creation so to assert that some people might not have a chance is simply false. Everyone who has ever lived experiences creation so if God can be known through creation the question is nonsensical and foolish. Psalm 14:1 calls atheists morally deficient, Psalm 19:1 says that creation proclaims God’s work, and Romans 1:18-20 says that God has made such things plain to people. Either scripture is wrong or everyone really does know on some level.
1. People can only be morally responsible for what they know.
2. God has adequately revealed himself to everyone.
3. So everyone is morally responsible for knowledge of God.
The point is that if Christian teaching is true, I don’t deserve a chance, and God is in no way required to give me one. What makes grace so amazing is that God does give me (and everyone else) a chance anyway. The gap God crosses to offer us forgiveness is greater than the gap that a Jew who was killed in a concentration camp would cross to forgive Hitler. If this seems like an excessive example; it’s not. The example isn’t nearly strong enough, but I have a hard time thinking of a stronger one. All of us have done far more evil to God than Hitler ever did to anyone. None of us deserves a chance, so asking “What about people who haven’t heard?” is at best a misunderstanding of what Christianity espouses.
So why does this question bother so many people and why does it seem so unjust that a man who lived in a jungle in South America in 550 AD and tried to do right by those around him might be hell? We cannot say that is through no fault of his own as everyone who exists is at fault and he has adequate revelation of God. We cannot say it is because God is unjust. Rather I think in most cases this question arises out of the ideals of Western/American culture. Our culture is highly individualistic and believes very strongly that everyone deserves a chance. A central idea of democratic style government is a high value on the individual and a belief that everyone deserves a say. American culture’s primary belief of individual nature is that most people are basically good and reasonable (if this were not so no one would believe democracy is a viable form of government). Because of this belief, we seek to treat everyone fairly and give everyone an equal chance. We think they deserve it. But (as I established above) no one deserves grace and salvation. Many people have (most likely inadvertently) allowed the culture’s belief about the goodness of people to co-opt the Christian teaching about the depravity of man.
The question “What about those who haven’t heard?” may (and most likely does) come from the best of intentions, but it isn’t really a valid question if Christian teachings on God, sin, and human nature are true. As God has a merciful and loving nature (he died for us after all) he hasn’t left those who haven’t heard to rot. Rather he has ensured that everyone does get a chance by revealing himself in the world. But if God had decided to refuse some people a chance there would be nothing morally or logically wrong with that.
This fact is what is so amazing and wonderful about grace. We don’t deserve it, we shouldn’t get, and God doesn’t have to give it to us, but he still literally went through hell to give it to us. Without the fact that we don’t deserve it, grace isn’t really that amazing. If we are just getting a chance that we deserve, why is that all that impressive? Christ said;
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back (Luke 6:32-35)."
What good would it be if God only gave us what we deserve? To believe that people might deserve a chance at best cheapens grace to a moral requirement. If this all grace is, than it is no longer based in love (love should transcend moral requirements according to Christ) and there is nothing that special about Christianity anymore.
So perhaps due to an accident of birth some people never hear about Christ. As none of us deserve it, this is perfectly just. But would the same God who comes up with something like grace just leave people to rot? No, has revealed himself to everyone and he does care for us. So praise God for grace and don’t inadvertently cheapen it by assuming we deserve it. We don’t and that is why it is one of the most incredible things that exists.
Several months ago, a co-worker asked how I respond to a paradox within Christianity. He explained that there are people who can never hear about Christ due to practical limitations (like time and geography). Given this how can those people be saved? I responded by pointing to some sections in Romans that talk about the gentiles becoming a law unto themselves (2:14). I reason that this says God has adequately revealed himself in the world and other creation so he will judge people who have no access to scripture and knowledge of Christ based on that revelation. This is a very common response to the paradox but he countered with another one. If it is true that God can draw people unto him only by general revelation (creation and such) then by spreading the word of Christ we actually decrease the chances of someone being saved as this can introduce complications and other problems (I won’t list them here for brevity). However this violates the Great Commission (Matthew 28) and other directives of Christ so we have a paradox. Anyone who has seriously interacted with Christianity has encountered some form of this apparent paradox. So what about the people who have not heard and cannot hear?
To put it simply, this is no problem. In order for the question/paradox to be valid, it must in some way be unjust for God to allow people to perish with no chance to receive grace. There are only two possible reason why this would be unjust; either people must in some way be worthy of a chance to receive grace or there must be a moral requirement on God to extend people grace. Neither of these are true (In Christianity, they might be aspects of other religions/worldviews).
It is unjust when people do not get what they deserve. To say that it is unjust for some people to not receive grace due to lack of knowledge is to assume that these people deserve a chance to receive grace. But they don’t deserve it; none of us do. Every person who has ever lived deserves to go to hell, so there is nothing unjust about it if any of us do (no matter the reason). I deserve to burn in hell. The most honest and ethical person you have ever known also deserves to go to hell. As I really am that bad, it in no way makes God unjust if he decides to arrange the world in such a way that I have no practical chance of knowledge of Christ (obviously he did not do that in my case). The natural, logical, and necessary result of sin is death and damnation (James 1:15). We are all sinners (Romans3:23, Psalm 14:2-3) so if God decides he doesn’t want to save some people (or all of us) there is nothing unjust or unfair about it.
1. Christianity teaches that everyone is sinful and unjustified.
2. No sinful or unjustified individual deserves a chance.
3. So under Christian teaching no man deserves a chance, regardless of how good he appears or how unfair this might seem.
Under Christian belief, there are no moral requirements on God; moral requirements come from him. God is the source of all morality as what is moral is intrinsic to his nature (This is why God cannot sin. Nothing can violate its own nature and sin is a violation of God’s nature). The only possible moral requirement on God would be requirements he places on himself. When he makes promises (to Abraham, David, or people in general) he is placing a moral requirement on himself. When God swore a pact with Abraham, he swore by himself because there was no one greater for him to swear by (Hebrews 6:13). A moral requirement is always placed on the individual by a higher authority. There is no higher authority than God, so there is no one above him to place moral requirements on God. This does not mean God is amoral or immoral. As morality is an intrinsic and inherent part of his nature, God is the most moral and ethical thing that exists. When Job says that God is treating him unfairly one of God’s responses is to say Job that he doesn’t know what he is talking about and that Job has no moral authority over him (Job 41).
1. God is the source of all morality and all moral requirements.
2. As the ultimate source of morality, there is nothing and no one else to hold moral requirements on God.
3. So the only moral requirements God has are those that he places on himself.
Additionally asking “what about those who don’t know” ignores the general revelation of God. Christianity teaches that God has adequately revealed himself in creation so to assert that some people might not have a chance is simply false. Everyone who has ever lived experiences creation so if God can be known through creation the question is nonsensical and foolish. Psalm 14:1 calls atheists morally deficient, Psalm 19:1 says that creation proclaims God’s work, and Romans 1:18-20 says that God has made such things plain to people. Either scripture is wrong or everyone really does know on some level.
1. People can only be morally responsible for what they know.
2. God has adequately revealed himself to everyone.
3. So everyone is morally responsible for knowledge of God.
The point is that if Christian teaching is true, I don’t deserve a chance, and God is in no way required to give me one. What makes grace so amazing is that God does give me (and everyone else) a chance anyway. The gap God crosses to offer us forgiveness is greater than the gap that a Jew who was killed in a concentration camp would cross to forgive Hitler. If this seems like an excessive example; it’s not. The example isn’t nearly strong enough, but I have a hard time thinking of a stronger one. All of us have done far more evil to God than Hitler ever did to anyone. None of us deserves a chance, so asking “What about people who haven’t heard?” is at best a misunderstanding of what Christianity espouses.
So why does this question bother so many people and why does it seem so unjust that a man who lived in a jungle in South America in 550 AD and tried to do right by those around him might be hell? We cannot say that is through no fault of his own as everyone who exists is at fault and he has adequate revelation of God. We cannot say it is because God is unjust. Rather I think in most cases this question arises out of the ideals of Western/American culture. Our culture is highly individualistic and believes very strongly that everyone deserves a chance. A central idea of democratic style government is a high value on the individual and a belief that everyone deserves a say. American culture’s primary belief of individual nature is that most people are basically good and reasonable (if this were not so no one would believe democracy is a viable form of government). Because of this belief, we seek to treat everyone fairly and give everyone an equal chance. We think they deserve it. But (as I established above) no one deserves grace and salvation. Many people have (most likely inadvertently) allowed the culture’s belief about the goodness of people to co-opt the Christian teaching about the depravity of man.
The question “What about those who haven’t heard?” may (and most likely does) come from the best of intentions, but it isn’t really a valid question if Christian teachings on God, sin, and human nature are true. As God has a merciful and loving nature (he died for us after all) he hasn’t left those who haven’t heard to rot. Rather he has ensured that everyone does get a chance by revealing himself in the world. But if God had decided to refuse some people a chance there would be nothing morally or logically wrong with that.
This fact is what is so amazing and wonderful about grace. We don’t deserve it, we shouldn’t get, and God doesn’t have to give it to us, but he still literally went through hell to give it to us. Without the fact that we don’t deserve it, grace isn’t really that amazing. If we are just getting a chance that we deserve, why is that all that impressive? Christ said;
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back (Luke 6:32-35)."
What good would it be if God only gave us what we deserve? To believe that people might deserve a chance at best cheapens grace to a moral requirement. If this all grace is, than it is no longer based in love (love should transcend moral requirements according to Christ) and there is nothing that special about Christianity anymore.
So perhaps due to an accident of birth some people never hear about Christ. As none of us deserve it, this is perfectly just. But would the same God who comes up with something like grace just leave people to rot? No, has revealed himself to everyone and he does care for us. So praise God for grace and don’t inadvertently cheapen it by assuming we deserve it. We don’t and that is why it is one of the most incredible things that exists.
Building a house of thought: From the middle out
This essay is my mission statement/purpose in writing things.
One of the chief difficulties in developing rational and consistent beliefs is that we all start in the middle.
The most appropriate analogy I can think of is building a house. The best way to build a house is to plan it out on blueprints, start with the foundation, and work your way up from there. (Yes, there is more involved in building a house than these three steps, but these three work for the analogy and arguing semantics in an analogy is like killing the patient to cure the disease). If the house is my worldview, (a collection and construction of all my important beliefs) I walk into it not knowing if the foundation is any good, uncertain of what the original blueprints said, and only knowing a little bit about the external, visible aspects of it. The house could have an exceptionally good foundation and be ready to stand for years, or it could have an awful foundation and be ready to collapse under its own weight. It might be based on the best blueprints available, but the builder deviated from the plans and made a terrible house despite the good plans. The point is that I don’t know the condition my worldview (or the house) when I get started.
The reason is that we acquire our foundational beliefs before we are mature enough and thoughtful enough to assess them. We acquire these beliefs from a large variety of sources like family, culture, and social conditioning. Since we acquire them before we were able to examine them rationally, these beliefs may or may not be good and rational; we have to look at them and see. This is why we must question our foundational beliefs (Question does not mean blindly reject. It means to examine the reasons and evidence for the beliefs and see if they work and match up with the reality of the world. Most of the beliefs that most people have are correct and good because they are beliefs like “A chair is something people sit in.”)
In the house analogy, the wisest thing to do is to examine the house as completely as possible and determine what parts of it are good and what parts are bad. The problem is that if this house is my worldview, I must live in it while I am evaluating it. I have to determine if the sink works while I am using the sink. Alternatively, for the worldview, I have to question my beliefs about the value of human life (until I find a good base for them) while using those questionable beliefs to interact with the other humans around me. This is why we start in the middle.
A rational and consistent belief is a belief that is built off the foundation of other beliefs that are either certain (I exist) or so likely to be certain that to question them is irrational (my senses allow me to perceive reality). For example, the belief that murder is evil is built off foundational beliefs like human life having value and the existence of morals. In order for the belief that murder is evil to be good and rational the foundational beliefs it is built on must be reasonably certain (Very few things are absolutely certain but a lot of things are so reasonably certain that only fools question them).
But we still have to live in the world, and our interactions with the world require us to use our beliefs in a practical way. So we must use the beliefs we have built on uncertain foundations while simultaneously questioning and evaluating those beliefs and their foundations. In effect we all must start in the middle and push in both directions (At least until we have acquired some certain or fairly certain foundational beliefs).
As we start pushing in both directions, we will find that some of our beliefs do not match up with our foundational beliefs or vice versa. Everyone has some inconsistent beliefs so if we start examining our beliefs we will notice these inconsistencies. In the house analogy, it would be like finding an addition without a foundation, or a foundation without anything built on it.
Two easy examples of inconsistent beliefs come from American political views on abortion. A lot of people on the political left support abortion rights because they believe people have a right to privacy in medical issues and since abortion is a medical issue it should be kept private. (The official legal justification for the right to abortions appeals to the Constitution’s “Right to Privacy”) Conversely, the political right believes abortion is evil because it is the taking of innocent life.
The inconsistency on the political left is that many of the same people and groups who use the right to privacy to justify abortion also claim that the government should mandate/control health-care (Obviously, this is not true of all politically left groups). If medical issues should be private than the government should have no business mandating or controlling it (as this makes medicine public). The political left has a belief (government ran health-care) which conflicts with a foundational belief (right to privacy in health-care) of another of its beliefs (right to abortion). If there is a right to privacy in health-care the political left is being inconsistent in its belief in government ran health-care. Conversely, if that belief is abandoned, than the primary justification for the right to an abortion disappears. Obviously, the Left is wrong in at least one of these beliefs. (Of course, it is possible to find other foundational beliefs that support abortion or government ran health-care.)
The Right's inconsistency is that it does not apply the same standards of justification to abortion that it does to other acts of killing. The political right believes abortion is wrong because they believe it is murder. Murder is the intentional taking of human life where there is little or no context and reason that could justify it. (If I kill someone because I drove my car too fast and crashed into him, I am responsible for his death, but I’m not a murder because I didn’t intend to kill him. If I kill a man who broke into my house and is trying to kill me, again I am responsible, but I’m not a murderer because there is context that can justify the killing).
The Right also believes that at least some of the killing in war is justifiable and so not murder. The Right reasons that the context and extreme nature of the situation(s) in and around war make certain acts of killing justifiable. The underlying belief is that the overall value of human life and dignity can be better adhered to by killing certain people in certain situations (Sometimes it is better to shoot the serial killer or rapist in the head to protect other people from them). So the Right believes that context and circumstance can make killing justifiable (although they also say it often is not).
The inconsistency is in saying that context and circumstance cannot justify killing in the case of abortion, but it can elsewhere. The only substantial difference between a born and unborn human is location (In most of the Right’s beliefs and mine). So if it is possible to justify any act that would otherwise be murder, than logically it must be possible to justify at least some abortions due to extreme or highly unusual situations. It’s about human life regardless of location. The Right has to be wrong about at least one of those beliefs.
In these two examples, having inconsistent beliefs clearly does matter, but some inconsistent beliefs do not matter. It is inconsistent to believe I am allergic to tomatoes if I eat and enjoy ketchup, but it doesn’t cause me or anyone else harm (other than the damage to my reputation because people will think I’m a moron). One sign of maturity in thought is being able to distinguish between the inconsistent beliefs that matter and those that don’t.
None of us will ever be completely consistent in all our beliefs, but with mature thought and work, we can work through our inconsistent beliefs until they are all insignificant. It’s possible to live in a house with rain gutters that clash with the paint color, but a house without a foundation will not last through any storms or rough times. Likewise it’s possible to live in a worldview with insignificant inconsistencies (Like hating Xbox games while loving Playstation games), but a worldview that has important inconsistencies (like telling people language is inherently ambiguous) will not survive any serious life issues or introspection.
In order to live better lives we all need to push out of, find, and correct our inconsistencies. Starting in the middle does make this difficult, but it is more than possible (I used to hold the Right’s inconsistent belief about abortion and war). It is possible to live in a house that is falling apart for a little while, but it will be quite painful (if not fatal) when it collapses. Likewise, it is possible to survive with inconsistent beliefs for a while, but when the inconsistencies collide, it will be quite painful (if not fatal). To avoid this pain (or maybe death) strive to have consistent beliefs (and of course play both Xbox and Playstation games). That is the purpose of good philosophy and what I am trying to do.
One of the chief difficulties in developing rational and consistent beliefs is that we all start in the middle.
The most appropriate analogy I can think of is building a house. The best way to build a house is to plan it out on blueprints, start with the foundation, and work your way up from there. (Yes, there is more involved in building a house than these three steps, but these three work for the analogy and arguing semantics in an analogy is like killing the patient to cure the disease). If the house is my worldview, (a collection and construction of all my important beliefs) I walk into it not knowing if the foundation is any good, uncertain of what the original blueprints said, and only knowing a little bit about the external, visible aspects of it. The house could have an exceptionally good foundation and be ready to stand for years, or it could have an awful foundation and be ready to collapse under its own weight. It might be based on the best blueprints available, but the builder deviated from the plans and made a terrible house despite the good plans. The point is that I don’t know the condition my worldview (or the house) when I get started.
The reason is that we acquire our foundational beliefs before we are mature enough and thoughtful enough to assess them. We acquire these beliefs from a large variety of sources like family, culture, and social conditioning. Since we acquire them before we were able to examine them rationally, these beliefs may or may not be good and rational; we have to look at them and see. This is why we must question our foundational beliefs (Question does not mean blindly reject. It means to examine the reasons and evidence for the beliefs and see if they work and match up with the reality of the world. Most of the beliefs that most people have are correct and good because they are beliefs like “A chair is something people sit in.”)
In the house analogy, the wisest thing to do is to examine the house as completely as possible and determine what parts of it are good and what parts are bad. The problem is that if this house is my worldview, I must live in it while I am evaluating it. I have to determine if the sink works while I am using the sink. Alternatively, for the worldview, I have to question my beliefs about the value of human life (until I find a good base for them) while using those questionable beliefs to interact with the other humans around me. This is why we start in the middle.
A rational and consistent belief is a belief that is built off the foundation of other beliefs that are either certain (I exist) or so likely to be certain that to question them is irrational (my senses allow me to perceive reality). For example, the belief that murder is evil is built off foundational beliefs like human life having value and the existence of morals. In order for the belief that murder is evil to be good and rational the foundational beliefs it is built on must be reasonably certain (Very few things are absolutely certain but a lot of things are so reasonably certain that only fools question them).
But we still have to live in the world, and our interactions with the world require us to use our beliefs in a practical way. So we must use the beliefs we have built on uncertain foundations while simultaneously questioning and evaluating those beliefs and their foundations. In effect we all must start in the middle and push in both directions (At least until we have acquired some certain or fairly certain foundational beliefs).
As we start pushing in both directions, we will find that some of our beliefs do not match up with our foundational beliefs or vice versa. Everyone has some inconsistent beliefs so if we start examining our beliefs we will notice these inconsistencies. In the house analogy, it would be like finding an addition without a foundation, or a foundation without anything built on it.
Two easy examples of inconsistent beliefs come from American political views on abortion. A lot of people on the political left support abortion rights because they believe people have a right to privacy in medical issues and since abortion is a medical issue it should be kept private. (The official legal justification for the right to abortions appeals to the Constitution’s “Right to Privacy”) Conversely, the political right believes abortion is evil because it is the taking of innocent life.
The inconsistency on the political left is that many of the same people and groups who use the right to privacy to justify abortion also claim that the government should mandate/control health-care (Obviously, this is not true of all politically left groups). If medical issues should be private than the government should have no business mandating or controlling it (as this makes medicine public). The political left has a belief (government ran health-care) which conflicts with a foundational belief (right to privacy in health-care) of another of its beliefs (right to abortion). If there is a right to privacy in health-care the political left is being inconsistent in its belief in government ran health-care. Conversely, if that belief is abandoned, than the primary justification for the right to an abortion disappears. Obviously, the Left is wrong in at least one of these beliefs. (Of course, it is possible to find other foundational beliefs that support abortion or government ran health-care.)
The Right's inconsistency is that it does not apply the same standards of justification to abortion that it does to other acts of killing. The political right believes abortion is wrong because they believe it is murder. Murder is the intentional taking of human life where there is little or no context and reason that could justify it. (If I kill someone because I drove my car too fast and crashed into him, I am responsible for his death, but I’m not a murder because I didn’t intend to kill him. If I kill a man who broke into my house and is trying to kill me, again I am responsible, but I’m not a murderer because there is context that can justify the killing).
The Right also believes that at least some of the killing in war is justifiable and so not murder. The Right reasons that the context and extreme nature of the situation(s) in and around war make certain acts of killing justifiable. The underlying belief is that the overall value of human life and dignity can be better adhered to by killing certain people in certain situations (Sometimes it is better to shoot the serial killer or rapist in the head to protect other people from them). So the Right believes that context and circumstance can make killing justifiable (although they also say it often is not).
The inconsistency is in saying that context and circumstance cannot justify killing in the case of abortion, but it can elsewhere. The only substantial difference between a born and unborn human is location (In most of the Right’s beliefs and mine). So if it is possible to justify any act that would otherwise be murder, than logically it must be possible to justify at least some abortions due to extreme or highly unusual situations. It’s about human life regardless of location. The Right has to be wrong about at least one of those beliefs.
In these two examples, having inconsistent beliefs clearly does matter, but some inconsistent beliefs do not matter. It is inconsistent to believe I am allergic to tomatoes if I eat and enjoy ketchup, but it doesn’t cause me or anyone else harm (other than the damage to my reputation because people will think I’m a moron). One sign of maturity in thought is being able to distinguish between the inconsistent beliefs that matter and those that don’t.
None of us will ever be completely consistent in all our beliefs, but with mature thought and work, we can work through our inconsistent beliefs until they are all insignificant. It’s possible to live in a house with rain gutters that clash with the paint color, but a house without a foundation will not last through any storms or rough times. Likewise it’s possible to live in a worldview with insignificant inconsistencies (Like hating Xbox games while loving Playstation games), but a worldview that has important inconsistencies (like telling people language is inherently ambiguous) will not survive any serious life issues or introspection.
In order to live better lives we all need to push out of, find, and correct our inconsistencies. Starting in the middle does make this difficult, but it is more than possible (I used to hold the Right’s inconsistent belief about abortion and war). It is possible to live in a house that is falling apart for a little while, but it will be quite painful (if not fatal) when it collapses. Likewise, it is possible to survive with inconsistent beliefs for a while, but when the inconsistencies collide, it will be quite painful (if not fatal). To avoid this pain (or maybe death) strive to have consistent beliefs (and of course play both Xbox and Playstation games). That is the purpose of good philosophy and what I am trying to do.
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