living the dream

When I contemplate how my perspective changed—or didn't—as I gave up following insufficiently corroborated beliefs, I could compare it to living in a somewhat unreal "world" shaped by those beliefs. The typical illustrations of it from movie or television sci-fi are the Holodeck on Star Trek starships...and of course the Matrix. The flaw of these illustrations is that they're pictured as too, well, flawless. My principles of understanding metamorphosed into a Pragmatist-ish style years ago. On that basis, the breaking point of my former beliefs was precisely the noticeable flaws between the world I perceived and reckoned and the world that those beliefs should have implied. The seams were there all the time, but I didn't thoroughly realize that.

I consider the closer illustration to be the dream trap in the "Perchance to Dream" episode of Batman: The Animated Series, which I remembered after using Professor X as an illustration of something else recently (because my first exposure to X was also a '90s TV series). At the episode's very start, Batman is ambushed and hooked up to a device that forces him to vividly dream as if he were awake. The illusion is the setting of almost all scenes. It begins with him "waking up" at home. He goes through the day as a Bruce Wayne whose parents are alive and retired. He has imminent marriage plans with Selina Kyle. He's the formal owner though not the manager of his father's company. With his parents alive, he hasn't remade himself as Batman. There isn't a bat cave or any of his other standard equipment. His memories of reality are apparently as clouded to him as memories of a dream typically are.

As it proceeds, this episode includes four details that resonate with my experience. First, the figures around him collectively question Batman's (Bruce in their eyes) questioning. They tell him that these circumstances are totally normal; his frantic disorientedness is the curiosity. They're tenderly concerned about him and his mental state. They aren't callous or coercive or abusive. The dream is a jail, but they aren't acting like jailers. To some extent, their pressure eases Batman toward momentary enthusiasm for his replacement life. I can relate. The impulse to share the same beliefs as the people most important to me, as well as their complacency about the beliefs' accuracy, were partly why I was slow to explore my criticisms. I needed to grow comfortable with ignoring the impression that these criticisms had to be eccentric abnormalities of mine, because everybody else didn't seem as bothered. I was never mistreated or insulted whenever I hesitantly voiced these accumulating criticisms, but I was nudged, however tacitly, toward not disrupting my fellow believers too much with quibbles they didn't focus on.

Second, every time Batman reads something in the dream, the letters and words are jumbled. This is a repeated clue he must not be awake in the real world. In my case, I found that my beliefs were routinely jarring with knowledge obtained from other sources. I wasn't translating that knowledge into gibberish, but I felt like I was forced into viewing it with almost the same level of incomprehension. My beliefs and the outside knowledge were opposed. To continue following the beliefs, that knowledge needed to function to me like lies—or nonsense. And like in the episode, the telling factor was the consistent pattern. Though the issues might be demoted to trifles, the pervasiveness was troubling. It cropped up in multiple fields of independent study. I'd encounter the discontinuity by picking up a book, visiting a website, or turning the TV channel (e.g. I saw the NOVA coverage of Kitzmiller v. Dover prior to the time period I pronounced myself an atheist).

Third is probably the most thought-provoking element: Batman exists in the dream. More specifically, a mysterious "Batman-2", whose appearance is identical, keeps law and order on the streets. Batman—the dreaming protagonist Batman-1—is shaken and intrigued. The times when he says that he thinks that he's Batman, his hearers conclude that he's purely expressing a deeply confused envy of Batman-2. (On the assumption that the whole dream is formed from his wishes, the indication is that he would still wish for there to be a Batman if he weren't the same traumatized person.) Finally, the recurring sight of Batman-2's heroics—the stark reminder of his more ambitious self outside the dream—unnerves him so severely that he decides to instigate a meeting between the two rectangular-jawed men. For my past self, Batman-2 could have symbolized the form of inner reflection that was tightly restricted: adventurously pursuing the trail of signals wherever it led like a stoic, hard-bitten detective would. And it was similarly connected to a persistent, periodic undertone of awareness that my safer identity was predicated on suppressing that part of me. I had the somewhat guilty hunch that I could be someone else: someone who would absorb higher quality beliefs and be less conflicted overall. Just as acknowledgment of the second detail required honesty about the beliefs' contradictions with outside knowledge, acknowledgment of this third detail required honesty about the beliefs' contradictions with my personal best evaluations of accuracy/plausibility/logical consistency.

Fourth is Batman's unequivocal refusal near the end of the story to "live a lie". He's deduced, and received confirmation, that he's dreaming. He knows that he could possibly live a happier (but less interesting or challenging) existence...but he won't. Given his degree of fanatical, sacrificial commitment to his mission, he can hardly decide to give it up. To not be Batman would be unbearable. Pushed to this limit, he rather speedily opts for suicide as a potential escape. It works, obviously. He jolts awake and frees himself from the helmet device responsible. I'm not seriously about to state that I ever took an equally drastic risk. That said, turning away from specific beliefs and habits and in-groups represents killing the markers of earlier self-identity. Altering behavior to align with different beliefs, and bringing on the disagreeable ramifications, is distinct from solely pondering the beliefs.

I appreciate that my history or views aren't archetypal. My application of this episode certainly doesn't argue that its authors intended it to be used as such—not any more than the author of The Silver Chair would've intended the comparisons I extracted from that book. I'm not claiming that "Perchance to Dream" is a unique or ideal usage of the essentially uncomplicated story idea of tempting the hero with a fantasy. At least it's a highly distilled 22 minute example, broadcast widely, on a show regarded well enough to inspire a podcast to analyze it psychologically, for instance. And it's the one that captures the topsy-turvy transition of exposing the falseness of the standpoint passed down to me.

Professor X's true believers

Out of all the people who normally examine a belief's level of verified support before relying on it, more than a few of them subscribe/submit to supernatural beliefs which fail that examination. They might be uninformed, by accident or choice, about the realistic status of those beliefs' support. Or, when their thinking drifts in the proximity of those beliefs they might briskly swap their normal mode of understanding for a flightier one; they're "modal students" who selectively sever their educated wariness from their manipulable hunches and wishes. They may flippantly pigeonhole their secondary mode of unguarded acceptance not as careless but childlike.

In a more creative albeit obscure direction, followers of alleged supernatural realities might narrow their examination of their beliefs' support to the area of souls. By this they sidestep awkward questions about the beliefs' physical signs. (They could make an exception for recasting life's occasional beneficial coincidences as supernatural puppetry; if they do they conspicuously neglect the instances when a beneficial coincidence was badly missed.) They spotlight uniquely immediate parts of pure personal experience, such as heady episodes they've had which were somehow related to the beliefs. Also, they narrow their requests to supernatural beings to changes they'd like to see within souls, though their requests would compromise free will. They might be no less earnest, even as they pare down the expected level of backing for their beliefs. They may be true believers in supernatural realities—perhaps called "spooks" for convenience—which are practically confined to affecting souls.

This interpretation evokes a nontraditional but fairly well-known cultural metaphor: Professor X, who is the wise and seasoned founder of the X-Men team of superheroes. He can't use his legs. His muscles aren't superhumanly strong. He can't easily move (material) objects. But he has immense abilities over others' consciousnesses. He can both read and modify thoughts. Directly steering his own body accomplishes less than indirectly steering the bodies of others. Speaking outwardly, with sound waves, is usefully supplemented by eerie remote communication over longer distances, in such a way that he need not appear in person nearby.

Analogously, supernatural beliefs in the "Professor X subset" constantly underscore spooks' intersections with human souls—while categorically omitting verifiable predictions about consequences on things. True believers tend to report the actions of people who were acting as the spook's "hands". They receive a message from beyond, but it was silently delivered to the interior of their soul...or in lieu of that they received nonverbal inspiration which led them to compose the message. They receive aid in their souls such as inner calm, solace, courage, not tangible aid such as different circumstances. (The reverse is hostile spooks manifesting lies, fear, distrust, temptations.) Learning about a spook occurs through the representation of true believers who are its de facto ambassadors on planet Earth. When it is said to be "on the move", the method it uses is their sacrificial toil. When it is said to be "here right now", the mark of its presence is the modified demeanors of a crowd. The common thread is habitually referring to the kind of feats which Professor X could do. Its imagined shape probably has little similarity to his, but its, uh, uncanny interactions with people do. Needless to say, the abilities attributed to it might exceed his.

The twist is that, like a fictional land motivating a MUSH, beliefs that sway people are by that very fact occupying a smidgen of realness. In a loose sense, when true believers psychologically condition one another to symbols, their brains could act as if supernatural Professor X powers are in operation. Conditioning could start at a young impressionable age, so it harnesses the instinct to imitate older people. It could be renewed regularly (weekly if not daily). The product is hardened certitude in both the performances of the powers and the identities of the spooks performing. Suggestibility is a factor, although the extent of it is often overrated. The pliable chaos of the brain is more than capable of synthesizing marvels for itself. And it's effortless to retrospectively assign blame after the train of thought passes through an odd switch to an unexplored destination.

Yet this smidgen of realness is its own counterargument. A belief's accuracy is separate from the possibility of humongous quantities of people acting as if it's assured. The boundary between error and socially approved "common sense" isn't thick and/or brightly colored. One person's faulty reasoning isn't repaired by merely setting another person's identical faulty reasoning next to theirs. The pattern of these spooks is to stay unseen except through the murkiness of true believers' souls. Doubters have no trouble leaping to the relevant question: what if spooks weren't responsible for any of the listed events in souls...implying that support for the spooks is nonexistent? What if Professor X and his mutant powers were made up, and people's brains weren't under continuous infiltration from outside forces?

axioms to grind

So many people make decisions through beliefs which are missing satisfactory corroboration. In so doing they adjust how they act and think and—most alarmingly—treat others. Calling them "followers" is more apropos than "believers". Whatever they're called, it's far too simplistic to assume that none of them ever notice the relative suspiciousness of some of their beliefs, on some level, sometimes. They compensate with an an array of strategies, such as contenting themselves with the self-concept of perpetual seeker. Perpetual seekers always openly look for fuzzy beliefs that "speak to them right now" as opposed to beliefs with excellent impersonal accuracy.

Without a doubt, that option wouldn't tempt followers who are more fastidious about their beliefs: they who wish they could detail the sturdy reasoning behind their thinking. Mathematics is the paragon of this formal style. It demands painstaking proofs. The overt exceptions are axioms, which are purposefully accepted as true without proof. Proofs can then build on top of the axioms. Plane geometry is a familiar example.

Axioms generally fall under the principle of parsimony, i.e. few and small, selected with stringent awareness of benefit and cost. The content is centered on universal premises reusable in discrete cases, not on the minutiae of historical facts. It's not rare to work on reducing dependence on axioms by showing that one or more can be proven via the rest or further distilled to essentials. Cursorily proposing more or larger axioms is not the predominant method of reaching reliable, persuasive results.

Followers may opt to equate their most central beliefs to axioms. By analogy, this removes the perceived burden of justifying plausibility. Axioms are invaluable in mathematics, which avoids gaps in arguments whenever possible. Consequently, they can feel more serene about disregarding the realism of the "axioms" in their beliefs, too. And they can retain high standards for ideas beyond those. In words, "All diligent thinking about a topic needs to start with axioms. I start with those, and I can't be expected to reasonably justify why." Axioms impart a respectable-looking loophole.

The tacit error, as usual, is easier to distinguish from outside of the follower's mentality: the discussed beliefs don't mirror the qualities of sensible axioms. People could drive in nails using miscellaneous objects, but not all of those objects qualify as sensible "hand tools". Perhaps the beliefs have inhabited the follower like axioms, because the follower was taught early that the beliefs' accuracy was unquestionable. But in order to properly mimic the axiom category of mathematics, almost all propositions should be left out. If it's quite possible to contemplate a variety of cases without referring to a proposition, and/or it's feasible to estimate/determine a proposition's accuracy through normal means, then a proposition shouldn't be dumped into axioms.

If it is anyway, then its logic withers. It shifts the intellectual status of the beliefs' coherent whole. A system that obliges onlookers, from the start, to adopt an abundance of weighty, uncorroborated propositions isn't a viable axiomatic system. It has a different mathematical analogy: a sequential set of conjectures. Conjectures aren't useless or repugnant, of course; throughout history conjectures have motivated brilliant leaps. Greater candor is the main difference between naming the beliefs axioms or conjectures. Followers shouldn't mislead themselves, or anyone, to depict their beliefs in the image of logically derived proofs which result from "simple" beginnings—little idea dominoes tipping one another. It's worth remembering that tipping over a preliminary domino such as "one or more gods exist" has kept debaters occupied for centuries. So has the next domino, "What are these one or more gods like?"

on a mission to seek and...seek and seek and seek

In response to a huge variety of motivations, some more excusable than others, legions of people choose to base their actions and thoughts on the accuracy of beliefs that lack sufficient corroboration or reasonableness. They direct themselves, physically and mentally, as if the beliefs were well-established. But how do they manage to keep it up, if they're the type who aren't generally receptive to letting shaky beliefs go unchallenged?

Perhaps they may summarily declare that the less credible parts of the beliefs they follow are mere trifles that they don't try to uphold. Or at all times they may voluntarily disengage normal scrutiny in the special case of these beliefs. Or their evasiveness could assume yet a different form: they're perpetual seekers through and through. Seekers in this sense are enamored with seeking. They tend to glamorize uncertainty, elevate questions over answers, and relish subverting all definitions with exceptions. They do show a laudable glimmer of pragmatism in that they would emphasize individual practices instead of unsinkable allegiance to sweeping dogmas. So their outward affiliation might be relatively loose; a subset might be "nones" who don't name any particular affiliation, despite the faith-beliefs they erratically substitute for unflinching materialistic naturalism.

Seekers grant themselves permission to respond to criticisms with nonchalance. If seeking is never expected to meet a goal and/or as a rule the seeker refuses to presuppose a fixed goal, then criticisms are inconsequential. Moving from one belief to the next is one of their few constants. When a belief gradually loses its appeal the seeker blames the belief, not their own developing habituation to it. 

Anyway, they're seeking not testing. They aren't applying universal, previously decided criteria to the beliefs they stumble onto. They're trying on beliefs like shoes, as they're guided by nebulous guesses of what might gratify them for a short while. Implicitly, each belief holds comparatively little weight. None can rise to a supreme rank of believability, because seekers aren't concerned with conscientiously checking the accuracy of the belief. To the seeker, the belief is not a hypothetical reality, strictly speaking. It's a temporary resting spot which cannot be a lasting answer. When told "Your current beliefs are probably inaccurate," the seeker's tepid reply is "No surprise to me—I never had thought that I'd found out anything dependable." 

Unashamedly, then, the seeker way of life exposes its drawback: it's haphazard. It ensures a twisty path winding in no uniform direction and earning no durable prize. Traveling a path of this shape is a pleasant enough activity in a leisure context, but it's a dreadful strategy for productive investigation of momentous information. In order to fulfill their presumed thirst for trusty information, they should be striving to prevent the self-serving interference of their distorting predispositions. A personal mission of seeking is the converse of that.

Can anyone feel at ease divulging that their beliefs are works in progress? Absolutely. Be that as it may, why can't they be expected to feel equally at ease coherently estimating and explaining how much progress they've made in seeking accurate beliefs? If they counter that they don't care about the accuracy of the beliefs that they're conforming to, then they're prompting two additional quibbles, the first selfish, the second unselfish. First, the cost of following possible fabrications is a regrettable waste; paying that cost to follow legitimate beliefs, or simply forgoing the cost of following unfounded beliefs, is almost certainly more constructive. Second, the belief's grounding will be indispensable in the event that the seeker wishes to attract other seekers to it, so they can benefit too.

The defect is the shortage of discriminating examination. Their devotion might be fleeting, but it's too easily handed out nonetheless. Absurdly, they're using seeking as a defense for not seeking seriously enough.

The Trouble With Trifles

Like followers of any belief, followers of materialistic naturalism like myself—who may individually prefer a gamut of different labels—often assume that their views deserve to be irresistible to the discerning, the knowledgeable, the modern, the compassionate, and the curious. Nevertheless, this markedly isn't the case...by a long shot. So I've been covering some philosophical/psychological coping ploys which underpin dedication to faith-beliefs. I followed a set for a long time and continue to spend time around others who do.

This entry is about the the ploy of dismissively classifying all the least tenable parts of the faith-beliefs as trifles. Through this quick compromise, a follower can feel reassured in choosing to ignore the status of those parts. Plus it eases their thinking. If those parts just don't matter, then they don't even need to try to subscribe to those parts "by faith" or to reconcile those parts to conflicting information from a multitude of other sources. Provided a part can be minimized as "small stuff" and set aside, a ludicrous level of probable inaccuracy isn't a fatal blow. Meanwhile, by default the remaining parts represent treasures of precious, immutable claims about the follower's realities. The ploy's total effect resembles chess players sacrificing pawns to block threats to the valuable queen and king.

Eventually, I ceased to be satisfied by this. Trifles caused five troubles. First, undercutting the credibility of so many parts, no matter how minor, inevitably degrades the credibility of the whole too. When a source is inaccurate about a string of details, the recipient has compelling reasons to be leery toward whatever the source communicates. Although it's very possible for a source to mix falsities or exaggerations with truths, such a source doesn't command complete trust. Violations of trust sap faith.

Second, faith-beliefs' associated traditions, rituals, creative works, and mandates gravitate to the treasures classification. By nature everybody changes actions less readily than thoughts. Pretexts for maintaining old, comforting habits are gladly welcomed. Yet downgrading those actions' supportive beliefs to trifles tarnishes these actions' basis and symbolism, which after all are intended to parallel definite (albeit otherworldly) realities. Followers vary greatly according to how much they're bothered by this. Personally, the more that I abandoned facets as fallacious trifles, the more foolish and pointless the actions felt to me. Singing about the role of divine intervention in a plentiful harvest sticks out as superfluous in an advanced age of agricultural science.

Third, due to discarding the vexing trifles, the treasures offer a medley of increasingly disconnected pieces. The formerly integrated set of faith-beliefs dissolves into a patchy assortment. And the boundaries between the isolated treasures and the beliefs that don't require faith seem more like troublesome cracks. If the belief in the spectral human soul is one of the treasures, but almost all body phenomena operate without regard to spectral stuff, then the precise relationship between each soul and its human poses a puzzle.

Fourth, the subsequent pile of trifles keeps growing. Accurate ideas are co-dependent dominoes. Replacing a trifle with a single corroborated statement spurs the replacement of other trifles with the statements that are interwoven to the first. Additionally, the growing pile contrasts with the strange self-contained aloofness of the faith-beliefs which are left. The follower is driven to legitimize—to themselves if not to their peers—the metaphorical "moat" that encircles treasures though never trifles. Like in the third trouble, if A/B/C/D were all closely linked faith-beliefs, and A/B/C ended up one by one as mere trifles surrendered in the face of external contradictions, then treasured D's lone immunity to those same contradictions calls for an explanation.

Fifth, an unwanted side-effect ensues: the treasures dilute and leave lighter impressions. The proverbial introductory phrase "one thing I know for sure" doesn't inspire enthusiasm in potential converts. Treasures that furnish so little meaningfulness, and so few distinctions in practice, act like thin layers to add on to a number of views, as opposed to firm, all-encompassing standpoints. A second consequence is the blurring of divisions within the brackets of faith-beliefs. (Followers might judge that to be an asset or a penalty depending on their mentality.) The shorter the list of essential beliefs dwindles, the less necessary the conventional partitions are. And along with that development is, once again, diminished authoritativeness of the forebears who first instituted the partitions.

To reiterate, these five troubles are clues, not irrefutable proofs, of the inadequacy of reclassifying disrupted faith-beliefs as trifles. Finally quitting the ploy is voluntary. It's voluntary to admit that the ploy is a ploy. These choices can't be forced on them by anyone else. Sure, everyone says that they want to follow the trail toward the most authentic ideas. But they neglect to mention that they'll leave the trail at the moment it stops heading in the direction of their preconceptions—pardon, their "inner compass".

the problem with modal students

Recently I've been listing mechanisms by which faith-beliefs persist in numerous followers who "shouldn't" be susceptible; they're intelligent, well-educated, integrated into surrounding society, and willing and able to probe conclusions for themselves. (I intentionally restrict my comments to "faith-beliefs" not "religion" because not all who associate themselves with a religion, or even participate in aspects of it, enshrine it as the overriding source of accurate information about everything, and not all faith-beliefs fit the category of religion.) The most frequently underestimated mechanism is the pure inertia of the follower's outlook, aided perhaps by a shortfall of genuinely wide-ranging curiosity.

Other mechanisms are far more inventive. A well-tested template is to take an unrelated, indisputable principle and jumble it with the faith-beliefs. For example, based on the principle that independent but equally effective investigations will arrive at harmonious findings, committed followers may submit that, contrary to appearances, human knowledge is in an abysmally tedious chase toward their chosen faith-beliefs. Or, based on the principle that different domains sometimes require different methods of verification, they may submit that their faith-beliefs require finicky "modes" of examination. In a completely unsurprising coincidence, the mode they pick is more congruous to faith. The prescribed mode almost certainly won't be alert perception, or minimal speculation, or rigorous collection and review of impartial records (either quantitative or qualitative). But it's more often a mode of overexcited/overstimulated consciousness, or unnegotiable presumption, or extravagantly construing the meaning of inexact and malleable impressions, memories, shivers. In a word, the generalized demand is for modes that are based on uncurbed feeling. They're seeking students who agree to switch to noncognitive modes before learning begins: students who are flexibly modal when asked.

The advantage of having modal students for followers is easily appreciated. They can be excellent detectors of inadequate corroborations in the majority of domains. Yet they remain steadfast in their faith-beliefs because they rapidly enter a less scrupulous mode whenever their thoughts wander in that vicinity. They can be appealingly level-headed and "normal"—they just have quirks such as regularly meditating on the generosity of accepting the blood sacrifice of an innocent in place of endless torture of the guilty. They can be more responsive to directions delivered through the corresponding mode. If their mode is already tied to their loftiest inclinations, they can be directed by evoking those inclinations. If their mode is already tied to the nobility of self-denial, they can be directed by presenting them with a new "opportunity" of self-denial, e.g. additional cash donations. If their mode is already tied to audacious leaps outside logical extensions of sufficiently tested ideas, they can be directed by encouraging, uh, more leaps.

Ultimately, the flaw of explicitly modal understanding reflects the flaw of prematurely expanding the scope of a thesis. Like a thesis, a mode isn't necessarily misleading until it's reapplied inappropriately. The importance of context shouldn't be underestimated. It's arbitrary to exclusively use an inadequate mode of examination in a particular domain...on purpose. In usual modern domains nobody is advised to study detectable phenomena by disengaging their high-level judgment, then interpreting their own inklings in extremely broad fashion. Nowadays nobody is told that they must divine the chemical composition of a substance. A mode of fond gratefulness is a great idea in human interaction; it's less great for cherishing the unconfirmable actions of mythic figureheads.

As I've repeated in numerous forms, the crux is still the keen question, "Why should supernatural topics benefit from irregular rules? (And the follow-up, why should these irregular rules solely cover my set of beliefs regarding those topics?)" Regardless of how baffling the mind-game is to outsiders, modal students are distracting themselves from thinking "too much" about the very existence of supernatural entities by emphasizing how they feel about those unvalidated entities. They're reifying objects to which they can attach their reverent emotions. To them, hearing more cases of absent signs or logical contradictions accomplishes virtually nothing because those are shut out of their preset mode. With little prompting they may remark, à la Fideism, that irrationality is integral to their concept of "faith"! Their felt Truth is preserved from the attacks of facts. This tactic is the epitome of compartmentalization—not only are intellectual objections isolated from the domain but so is the mode of processing the objections.

In my background, this mechanism didn't have a lot of influence. I was more driven to the project of rationalizing my faith-beliefs as much as possible, despite how that project actually turned out. Unfortunately, unlike when I was a follower, modal students are unlikely to absorb the arguments in a blog entry...

the tedium of the chase

In the ongoing project to explore exactly how those who "should" know better continue to follow faith-beliefs—including me in the first years of my life—a central yet underreported explanation is the habitual unbending momentum of belief. Along with that are actual rationales they may have for either not seeking out conflicting information or for offhandedly discounting the information's implications. One is the sanguine confidence that all unearthed discrepancies from the faith-beliefs are superficial and temporary. I know that it's sincerely professed by individuals of superb intelligence, education, inquisitiveness, etc. It's probably rampant in religious liberal arts colleges/universities.

Given that the faith-beliefs are unalterable, the presumption is that every human method of investigation will eventually bridge the gap (or disprove it). In effect, knowingly or not, directly or not, those methods are said to be chasing the faith-beliefs. This chase's secondary value is a veneer of unworried participation in numerous secular fields. Provided that any chosen field can be tenuously embraced as a path to the same old set of faith-beliefs, then careers in those fields aren't frightening temptations. Especially bold followers might further boast that the picture of a "chase toward the One Truth" unifies everything in a tidy manner. And they have a valid point, from their perspective. Why is it unreasonable to them that, sooner or later, the fullness of human knowledge would seamlessly mesh with the ideas which they promote as ultimately fundamental?

When speaking to followers of faith-beliefs, I've previously discouraged referring to a total war between science and religion/spirituality and proceeding to demand an exclusive switch of their "loyalty". I'd rather nudge the thoughtful reexamination of the nature of verification and the standards that are acceptable before following an idea. But I'm not enthused by the effort to replace the war with a chase. For critics, its basic problem is easy to notice. If the chase is indeed happening...then it's turning out pitifully dull. It's not nail-bitingly close. For whatever reason, the pursuers aren't advancing. Worse, they're falling farther behind. With each passing decade, the overall trend is of increasing intervals. It's almost as if the pursuers are headed in the wrong direction.

I'm alluding primarily to examples of the empirical sciences not converging to a singular system of faith-beliefs, although needless to say the humanities aren't either. I realize not all faith-beliefs are identical, but very few of the top ones seem to have proposed an extremely old (and gargantuan) universe, containing an off-center, relatively younger yet very old planet Earth, where species that are approximately human have lived for a minute fraction of that time range. Very few seem to have proposed the common genetic ancestry among organisms from large to small, observable in embarrassingly similar genetic code. Very few seem to have proposed the continual failure of ubiquitous modern-day recording devices to ever capture unambiguous supernatural occurrences. Very few seem to have proposed that the idea of a soul is unnecessary to the study of the basis of human behavior and consciousness. Very few seem to have proposed the germ theory of disease (i.e. not an evil spirit theory of disease).

The attempts to disqualify these examples are less than satisfying, too. If these are disqualified because the topics aren't patently religious, then there isn't a chase at all: without even the faintest of overlaps in topics, the sciences can't be chasing the faith-beliefs in the first place. If these are disqualified because of how much time has passed since the introduction of the faith-beliefs, then the chase has stopped already and the chase doesn't help to address present issues. If these are disqualified because the original communicators of the faith-beliefs weren't privy to modern terminology and concepts, then that would mean measuring progress in the chase will always be vulnerable to inconclusive decoding of the intended future meanings of their culturally limited past communications. If these are disqualified because the chase is only expected to yield nonspecific subjective benefits such as greater inspirational appreciation of the "creator's mind", then the chase itself adds less value; it doesn't promise an end to concrete discrepancies. If these are disqualified because every discovery that clashes with the faith-beliefs is immediately assumed to be a mistake in one way or another, then the chase is a worthless pretense; the compliant remnant amounts to a mere shoe print of the faith-beliefs, not a discrete confirmation.

More likely than not, followers could invent more justifications to keep the hope of the chase workable, like conspiracy theorists who can swiftly digest incompatible data and arguments. Just as I can't utterly prove nonexistence from absence, I can't utterly establish that all varieties of human inquiry will never vindicate someone's faith-beliefs. I can state that I don't have nearly enough faith to suppose it will happen—my own adaptation of the half-baked quip, "I don't have enough faith to be an atheist". However, the suggestive trend is that the whole pack of pursuers is giving a horrible performance...and the performance is strikingly coordinated. A dawdling minority doesn't wreck the chase. But when a majority is teaming up to dawdle, the chase becomes tiresomely drawn-out. Evidently the group is more than lagging behind, it's lagging behind in lockstep. The increasing distance from the "target" isn't accompanied by increasing distance among the pack. In this chase, to be remote from this target isn't to be an unusual outlier; to be the outlier is to be the target.

At a high level, I'm pleased by the admission of the chasm that separates the content of beliefs that require faith and the content of beliefs that don't. I'm less pleased by the nominated remedy that the chasm will shut by itself someday (so in the meantime the chasm signifies nothing).

It's a Good Life...of belief in objects by "choice"

A monster had arrived in the village. Just by using his mind, he took away the automobiles, the electricity, the machines - because they displeased him - and he moved an entire community back into the dark ages - just by using his mind. [...] Oh yes, I did forget something, didn't I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge.  --"It's a Good Life", The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone had a memorable episode in which a character could remake everything around him with a thought. Unfortunately, as indicated by the quote above, this character was six. The results were...disturbing. This staggering ability has appeared in a large number of stories across media; TV Tropes maintains a long list of comparable examples under the description "Reality Warper".

Looking back now, I've noticed that it has a subtle application to the religious views that I eventually discarded. It was connected to a pair of precepts. The first was repeated often and dramatically: choice of belief had severe moral stakes. Choosing to believe the correct ideas was an essential duty. Guiding everyone to do the same was an official mission of mercy, because the afterlife of all who had chosen beliefs well would be infinitely preferable to the afterlife of those who chose poorly. For belief to warrant that degree of judgment, it had to consist of self-aware, willful choices.

The pair's second precept was that the objects described by the beliefs were categorically genuine. The beliefs weren't solely metaphorical. Unlike a daydream or a fondness for cake, the beliefs weren't all about the believer, i.e. the subject. The topics of the beliefs were objective and external. Accordingly, the beliefs' objects certainly weren't hallucinations encased in the subject's thoughts. Nor would the objects' features vary by the subject's individual perspective.  

Separately applied, these two precepts are commonplace. It's not peculiar to in effect punish someone for the despicable beliefs they've chosen to adopt—but never until after they've translated the beliefs into harmful deeds. Similarly, it's not peculiar for the content of beliefs to be about objects beyond than the believer. But in combination, the pair formed the frankly bizarre prescription of assigning moral blame based on beliefs about objects which the subject didn't control. The subtext was that regardless of the objects' independent existence and effects, believing in the objects was somehow a grave, voluntary decision which was the responsibility of the subject.

Normally, from an evenhanded subject's viewpoint, statements about physical objects have unequal "believability". That authentic believability is built on the successes or failures of ordinary methods: observations, deductions, tight inferences, calculations. But to fairly hold their pure willpower accountable for those objects' believability presupposes that their willpower itself must be capable of increasing object believability. When someone is in a forthright state of unbelief about the objects, faulting them for flaws in their related logical reasoning is more pertinent than just faulting them for not thinking or acting more as if the objects are believable. If, on its own, the subject's striving to envision and feel with greater intensity is honestly expected to significantly boost the objects' believability, then the subject possesses amazing psychokinetic powers. Essentially, if it's appropriate to chastise them for not trying hard enough to metaphysically readjust the level of detection, then their mistake must be that they aren't properly industrious Reality Warpers.

Despite how strange this sentiment sounds, a disguised form of it slowed my progress out of my former views. It wasn't verbalized, but it was present. For approximately a four year period, I would've contended that my ominous doubts about the plausibility of some of the core parts of my religious view didn't weaken my preexisting choice to keep believing in other core parts. I was in the group of split-minded followers that's frequently overlooked. I was perpetually restless, because I was full of chronic doubts and clinging to the original commitment anyway. I'd been taught the virtuousness of deliberately insisting on the accuracy of a set of supernatural "objective facts" come what may. In the midst of that courageous endeavor, missing or highly questionable proofs weren't excuses but rewarding challenges: it was more admirable to adhere to these mysterious facts without whining for corroboration. If their advice were paraphrased to be less self-flattering then it would declare, "It doesn't matter if the expected indications of these facts don't show up in experience. What matters is if you nonetheless sternly command these notions to be really most sincerely factual."

I confess that this characterization is sarcastic. I'm expressing my current amusement when I hear the glib recommendation to respond to lackluster substantiation by doggedly "believing more" in an object's realism. At the time I didn't picture myself psychically fortifying the objective believability of supernatural pronouncements. Rather I embodied it in the structure of my past viewpoint. There were sorted and sealed layers, each one more prone to shifting and unreliability than the one below it. The consciously chosen remaining core parts of my religious beliefs were in the bottom layer. My thoughts, steady but changeable, were in the next layer up. On top was the layer of the ordinary methods listed earlier.

I was ordered to align my middle layer of thoughts with the bedrock layer of supernatural deep Truth, not with the deceptive, shallow, surface layer of material events. If my thoughts were feeling shaky, then my obligation was to forcibly re-anchor my thoughts in immovable doctrines. I was squashing my wavering estimations against beliefs that I treated as more "objective" than fallible objects. I felt that I was diligently reemphasizing, not wholly generating, the shadowy supernatural objects.

Before information could possibly topple this stack, I needed a philosophical refinement of my inconsistent definitions of belief. I needed to quit settling for a stubborn belief by choice. A handful of piercing questions triggered the avalanche. Why did the supernatural domain deserve permanent residence in an unshakable bottom layer? More to the point, why were there distracting layers of protection? Why inject exceptional complexity into assessing the accuracy of candidate supernatural objects? Why was belief in those objects recast as a grueling, praiseworthy, premeditated selection...instead of the spontaneous and undeniable aftereffect of showing/explaining persuasive objective support? Why were us followers instructed to begin with belief and only later scrunch information into the belief's shape as needed, which was the exact reverse of the conventional procedure? Why didn't everyone who investigated my views end up in total agreement when they started from scratch?

Imagine if you will an absurd analogy from one of the many domains besides than the supernatural. Generally, if someone wants to convince a companion that snow is falling outdoors, they urge looking through a window, opening the door a crack to peek out, checking which month it is, etc. They don't say, in an echo of the paraphrase from earlier, "Forget using your eyes or reasoning to evaluate whether the snow falling outdoors happens to be believable to you. No, your mandate is to concentrate intently about a sudden snowfall. Believe me, that shall suffice."

veer not

Last time, I asserted that the high values I placed on thinking didn't shift during my progression from religious to atheistic views. On either side of that boundary, I highly valued the serious pondering of beliefs and presuppositions before acting on them. I highly valued that convincingly separating reality from unreality requires more work than hazy intuitions and fleeting goosebumps. I highly valued that credible beliefs should be backed by coherent explanations whenever someone asks, though for religious statements the typical explanations were meticulously chosen excerpts of sacred texts.

Moreover, I highly valued my rejections of rival positions. I rejected that a statement and its logical opposite could be true at once—unless the statements have differing, limited scopes, which would also imply the two aren't in fact opposites. I rejected that everyone is equally qualified to offer opinions on all topics or that they may be in conflict yet all be "right". I rejected that (hypothetical) supernatural stuff, unlike everything else, could have a bizarre or fluctuating status between real and unreal, just because the corresponding statements were so vague and varied.

Most vitally, according to what I was taught, I continued valuing the worth of faith-beliefs in proportion to the amount of accuracy; our ideas mattered because our ideas were definitive. But with broader experience I've recognized the obvious point that not all those who identify with faith-beliefs necessarily "believe" in that sense. Their ancestral legends/traditions can have openly acknowledged inaccuracy and nevertheless supply substantial emotional/societal rewards. They may opt to fruitfully reinterpret the original symbolisms for their contemporary tastes and needs.

However, by asserting that I supposedly held all these values from the start, I'm inviting a frank retort: why weren't my views forced to change sooner? In general, how does someone with these values remain committed to faith-beliefs? One complex answer is sociological: the ability of a group to have a mutually-defining, mutually-strengthening relationship with a set of ideas. A second complex answer is psychological: the strategy of spliting the self into a smoothly organized team composed of the part that needs to sincerely believe and the part that continually contrives ways to satisfy and preserve that need. A third complex answer is philosophical: the doubt that undirected evolution would produce a trustworthy brain. And the answers go on and on from there. All this agrees with the common principle that greater intelligence is often used to invent dazzling ways of being comfortably wrong, i.e. denials and rationalizations.  

Complex answers are intriguing to catalog and analyze. Yet the whole collection is a distraction from the foremost factor that kept my views, and countless others', from shifting. It's less emphasized in debates because it's transparent, rudimentary, and indefensible: inertia. I don't refer to "inertia" as a metaphor for the absence of motion but for the unforced tendency or habit of never deviating from a predetermined path—nor contemplating the possibility of it. As I'm referring to it, inertia doesn't even represent the active effort to counteract disruptions. It's the momentum of not observing any disruptions in the first place. It's following a faith-belief today due to following it yesterday, not due to compelling reasons or superiority over fairly compared alternatives.

Inertia is an exceedingly gentle form of deprivation. It never indicates the restrictions that it's imposing by default. It doesn't hint at the noteworthy information that isn't being sought. It doesn't disturb long-term confidence and contentment. It doesn't force confrontations with any opponent or opposing viewpoint. It doesn't break expectations or promises. It doesn't ask challenging questions.

It may be indirectly encouraged in followers through more pleasing ideals: faithfulness, persistence, single-mindedness, devotion. It may be reinforced through the monotonous lifestyle connected to, and constructed around, the faith-beliefs. By comprehensively complying in every aspect of their behavior, the follower reduces if not eliminates the odds of colliding with surprise contradictions to their settled faith-beliefs. They talk to the same individuals, go to the same destinations, expend their leisure time with the same activities, consume the same categories of media...

...including reading the same internet sites and books. Thus the success or failure of atheistic sites/books to reach such followers is inseparable from inertia's level of influence. The followers who have enough interest to read these resources are the subset who aren't as bound by inertia. Opening the site/book is a sign that they're the sort with questing, lively styles of thought: they might not be persuaded, but mere inertia doesn't isolate them from unfamiliar standpoints. The flipside is that the tougher followers to reach are also the subset who didn't think of trying these resources, or feel any motivation to. It's akin to a visitor who chooses to attend a religious service: they might not be impressed to come back, but they're evidently willing to hear the service, unlike everyone who didn't visit.

The stubborn obstacle of inertia is one of many considerations in the perennial clashes over the "best" tone for these resources. Some endorse an antagonistic and accusatory tone toward all manifestations of faith-beliefs, while some endorse a conciliatory and sympathetic tone. Unfortunately, neither is a universal antidote to followers' inertia. The first has the advantage of achieving recognition through controversy, as well as provoking bewildered followers to wonder "What problems could they possibly see in my views that could cause that reaction?" In contrast, the second has the advantage of appearing less daunting, thereby attracting followers who wish to gingerly explore their doubts without the threat of feeling attacked. In other words, the first can potentially shake and penetrate inertia, and the second can potentially dodge and placate it. A range of strategies might succeed in getting past followers' indifference to mulling over the weaknesses of their views.

I've previously noted that the second was better suited to my ambivalent shift in views. My own inertia wasn't radically deflected at all. Like a long ship, I wouldn't see that my route veered. The curve out of the shadow was steady and slow. I didn't seek atheistic resources until after I had stumbled onto contradictions that were meaningful to me. I didn't feel an urge to painfully dissect my personal convictions. Without intending to undermine my faith-beliefs, I learned, thought, and lived. Then, I kept reevaluating which ideas still could fit, on account of my aforementioned intellectual values. The progression wasn't always calculated or methodical. It was prolonged and tentative. I didn't want to step off a ledge; I preferred to, uh, rappel if I could. If I'd applied my values into more vigorous research and more fearless self-interrogation, I would've dislodged my old views more quickly. Inertia didn't stop me from turning away from my faith-beliefs, but it propelled me into a longer arc.

the trials of scopes

To the uninitiated, the claim to have superior reverence for Reason may sound as presumptuous and self-congratulatory as Libertarians claiming to have superior reverence for Liberty. Way back in 2012, when I was first getting acquainted with atheists on the internet and with organized atheistic "movements" of any kind, I balked a little at their penchant for publicly designating Reason as a distinguishing feature of their views. My shift from religious to atheistic didn't reflect that. Although the outcomes of my thoughts had greatly changed, my appreciation of logical deliberation had never changed throughout. I had always embraced the importance of closely examining ideas. I know now that my former view had an undercurrent of awful deficiencies, but blatant anti-intellectualism wasn't one. If it had been, would I have been as attentive to the counterarguments that ultimately persuaded me?

Later, I realized my misunderstanding. In these contexts, "Reason"—not to mention "Rationalist"—represented an assorted category of commendable methods to gather and test knowledge. And a major need met through introducing a distinct category, no matter its choice of name, was to specifically set up an opposite to the flawed method of faith (and the unrecommended methods of gullibility, ungrounded conjecture, and the substitution of wishes in place of facts). According to the wording they chose when they were advocating greater respect for Reason, I saw that they were in general agreement with my philosophies. In their more succinct language, like me they were stressing the need for carefully gauging ideas' amount of meaning/accuracy according to the quality of the verification of those ideas' implications. As usual, abstracted labels don't expose similarities and conflicts as effectively as unsummarized particulars. In my experience, likelier than not their views shared a lot with mine: my absence of belief in gods, and the broad outlines of the best ways to handle ideas, and the stance that the ideas of materialistic naturalism are the most probable fit for all the actual findings that have passed adequate standards.

Nevertheless, crisply invoking plain Reason as an explanation and/or justification has a small risk. It might entice followers of faith-beliefs into once again attempting to gloss over or rationalize the key differences in their beliefs' premises. They may suggest that materialistic naturalism is also a faith (requires the method of faith) or suggest that its notion of authority is equivalent. To that end, they're pleased to detect the faintest whiff of immaterial stuff in materialistic naturalism. It offers the immediate opportunity to pronounce that this view is relatively incomplete, hypocritical, illogical, etc. Then they may swiftly declare that anyone who holds to this view is forced to concede that Reason is their own version of an immaterial foundation; like them, their view is "really" dependent on the existence of something ghostly. At the same time, they certainly won't mention the meagerness of this concession. Even to concede the existence of a spiritual being entirely synonymous with Reason, such as a Cosmic Legislator behind the "laws" of nature, would still be foreign to the anthropomorphic content of the commoner faith-beliefs. It would be a relative of Deism's aloof god.

Fortunately, I don't define Reason in those disconnected phantasmal terms, and as stated earlier, I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. My longstanding position is that Reason's existence is embodied in countless concrete acts. These acts include work carried out by human brains, despite the apparent passivity of some acts like direct perception. (Actually transforming the sense organs' nerve impulses into usable information is a convoluted process that incorporates expectations and judgments.) Except metaphorically, I don't see Reason as a guide, an oracle, or an overlord. Reason is an ideal to measure against each act, one by one. It's largely about honoring consistency. Acts that are in accordance with Reason, such as cautious deductions and generalizations, are beneficial due to the reliable consistencies of encountered realities. Reasoners can confidently let causality be causality because the reasoned links between causes and effects echo these reliable consistencies—though the links aren't easily disentangled.

This prosaic depiction of Reason has an inherent cost. Since these acts occur in complex, unique, concrete contexts, the acts' results aren't necessarily applicable to other contexts. The importance of context shouldn't be underestimated. The analogous limitation in software development is known as the scope of an entity in software. For instance, the entity could be a single running total. By necessity, software code is broken up into manageable sections. To keep the meanings of entities predictable at all times, each entity is associated with a set scope of one or more code sections. It can be simply referenced, and possibly manipulated, only by the code sections in its scope. Of course, the section in which it is first introduced is its primary or native scope. Before an entity is manipulated in a separate scope, it must be explicitly exported there, or duplicated to a new entity there, or mixed into one or more of the preexisting entities there, or retrieved from across scopes through a completely descriptive longer version of its name (i.e. more like a full mailing address for the entity).

The relevant similarity is that just as the scope of each software entity doesn't automatically extend outside of the code section it came from, clear-sighted appraisal of an act of Reason recognizes that its correctness has a scope that doesn't automatically extend outside of the context that led to it. Additional contexts might be in the scope. But neither acts nor contexts are all alike, so there can't be generic rules for determining scopes. Indeed, the boundaries of the acts' scopes might be unknown without experimentation. Near a phase transition, changes in heat have smoothly changing effects...until the phase transition happens. The phase transition violates acts of Reason on either side of it. Neither do pure mathematics escape scopes. The interior angles of a triangle have a sum of 180°...but that could be false for Non-Euclidean geometries. The result of multiplication doesn't hinge on the order of the factors...but that could be false for matrices. Numerous realities remain appallingly unsympathetic to human longings for smooth simplicity.

That said, the relentless accumulation of human acts of Reason has established, and repeatedly confirmed, an array of conclusions with undeniably wide scopes: elements, particles, fundamental forces, energy conversions. These conclusions weren't spoken by a singular thing, entitled "Reason", which humans idolized and begged for answers. Acts were committed, in a lurching sequence, until these conclusions' wide scopes were surveyed.

The question of scope is complicated, but it's not inconsequential hair-splitting. It's exactly why commonplace anecdotes—testimonies—have low validity. On its own, the highly specific context of an anecdote shouldn't be accepted as a decisive source for acts of "Reason" with prematurely extensive scopes. The reasoner should at minimum have plausible arguments for assuming that to be the case. And perhaps they should postpone that assumption altogether until after more acts of mental study and physical investigation.

Lastly, if Reason is a collection of acts, with shrewdly scrutinized scopes, performed by humans, then it functions as more than a category or an ideal. It's a spreading cultural custom of confronting ideas' accuracy in credible ways. I absorbed this to some degree in my conventional upbringing in contemporary America, but the cultural customs of my faith-belief started out more dominant nonetheless. At first, these two groups of customs persisted in a sometimes restless truce that divided up the territory of my beliefs. The start of the end was when I permitted myself to candidly compare the substance of the two. I didn't exchange my loyalties for a new metaphysical master. There wasn't a shining light of irresistible Reason compelling me to abruptly embrace "self-evidently right" opinions on all issues. All that happened was the crucial decision to more fully pursue the customs of the culture with the stronger corroborations, regardless of where the other disagreed on the details uncovered. It wasn't my fault that a thorough commitment to the one, combined with increasing quantities of information, ended up eroding the whole structure of the other...

sit a spell in the Silver Chair

And this time it didn't come into her head that she [Jill] was being enchanted, for now the magic was in its full strength; and of course, the more enchanted you get, the more certain you feel that you are not enchanted at all.

My impression is that The Silver Chair is typically placed in the lower tier of the Chronicles of Narnia series. Part of the reason may be the unsettling villainess, namely the witch in green. Her alluring appearance and mostly-cordial composure are only masks. Like her realm of Underland, greedy malevolence lies under the mild surface. She's a patient schemer whose impulse is to work in secret.

Truth be told, plainly she doesn't need clumsy, aggressive threats of force to achieve domination. Her well-suited style of bewitching magic is psychologically manipulative and overpowering. Why would she wastefully assault her enemies' bodies when she can either mislead them or infiltrate their souls, thereby seducing them to defeat themselves? To seize Narnia's Prince Rilian, she doesn't overwhelm him with a contingent of fighters. She gradually fascinates him. She captivates him to make him a captive.

Similarly, his ensuing entrapment in Underland doesn't involve violence or intimidation. His magically mediated self-betrayal progresses to a worse stage due to regularly scheduled sessions bound in the witch's potent Silver Chair. In essence he's no longer himself. He's shifted into a complete second persona. His former memories, motivations, and disposition are displaced. Throughout the day, Rilian's mentality is confined so masterfully that he's mostly oblivious of the difference. The author reiterates this obliviousness a few times to ensure that readers note this characteristic of the witch's powers. It may be an allusion to the author's recurring theme of moral desensitization: frequently committing wrongdoing, or just fantasising about it, can cloud perception of its wrongness.

So much for the author's intentions. In fact, Rilian's second life under the sway of the witch and Chair is a striking multifaceted illustration of living under the sway of religious inculcation.

• He's gushingly committed and grateful to the witch, i.e the designated authority over him. He trusts the authority wholeheartedly. He believes earnestly in the statements made by the authority, even though he can't explain exactly how the authority got that knowledge. The authority has extraordinary abilities ("magic arts") that he can't possibly duplicate or evaluate for himself, so he doesn't feel able to question.
• He has been handed a tidy script of expectations to fulfill. His destiny to capture Narnia for Underland. His free will—such as it is—revolves around his willingness to conform, not the individual freedom to chart and assess his course. He's been told what role he will play and how. Equally clear is his present and future hierarchical position; commands will flow from the witch to him and from him to his inferiors. On some level his freedom persists, but external forces have tampered with it.
• The witch takes him on short trips to preserve his acclimation to the surface, e.g. the intensity of sunlight. Being a prisoner, his trips entail severe conditions. He's forbidden from displaying his face or speaking. These preventative countermeasures embody an attitude of minimizing and filtering unavoidable contact with the frightening outside world. This same attitude is demanded of religious followers. They're cautioned from weakening their faith by paying attention to unvetted sources of information or by studying alternative viewpoints. It's worth noting that this worry isn't far-fetched. I've previously mentioned that my uninteresting background didn't feature ruthless cultural isolation, and indeed my steady absorption of contradictory information was key to ultimately discarding my parents' faith-beliefs.
• Like the rigidity of followers' attitudes toward outside ideas, the rigidity of their habitual rituals is shrewd. These repeatedly reinvigorate their faith-beliefs, just as Rilian's periods in the Silver Chair reinvigorate the twisted roots of the thought patterns imposed on him. These prescribed doses of "spiritual relief" are indispensable to reinforce the desirability of their specific concepts. The opposite tendency is unrelenting, because observable violations of faith-beliefs inevitably accumulate. It isn't rare to hear devoted attendees comment that their weekly activities renew their faith or to hear them warn that erratic attendance would endanger their faith.
• That said, the comparison isn't perfect. Most obviously, Rilian must be tied to the Chair. In each sitting, his preexisting self and his central memories temporarily surface. Some of the book's most moving lines of dialogue are his desperate pleas to be released before he loses himself again. Followers of faith-beliefs, some more than others, have comparable episodes of clarity and candor. They may not be nearly as horrified as Rilian about how they've spent their time nor nearly as eager to drop their comforting beliefs. But perhaps they're haunted by the meddlesome pair of questions, "What if my faith-beliefs have been inaccurate all along?" and "Precisely what indicates that my faith-beliefs probably aren't inaccurate?" Those are the occasions when they're more willing to pay sincere attention to the arguments against them, and they're temporarily less inclined to brush away the holes in their own arguments. Debates don't need to convince them immediately; hearing the faults expressed is preparation for a hypothetical future hour, in which they'll abruptly stand up, look around, and deliberate about the soundness of their thinking without the Silver Chair's interference.
• Lastly, he's courteous and quick to laugh and smile. The problem is that a short amount of conversation with him is enough to reveal that he's selfish, patronizing, boring, flippant, and stubborn about his opinions. He deflects. He's positive but the cost is refusing to ponder anything that might counter his perspective and assumptions. Unfortunately, this demeanor is reminiscent of some irksome followers of faith-beliefs. They're detached and consumed by their image of a happy and proper paradise. Their inoffensiveness is mixed with hastiness to devalue anything or anyone who they consider below their concern and their strict, inflexible standards.

Besides the metaphor of Rilian's spellbound lifestyle, two more topics are obligatory during discussion of this book. The first is Puddleglum's speech to the witch, who moments ago had nearly succeeded at mystifying the whole group of heroes about the existence of anything above ground. In tightly condensed form: "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things [...] the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. [...] I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. [...] we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

Sometimes his speech is portrayed as a stirring counterpoint to all kinds of atheism. In 2005 I might have agreed. Now, I can't stop noticing the shaky premises it rests on.

• If it's interpreted to mean that goals and ideals depend on faith-beliefs, then I've already responded to that. Of course faith-beliefs aren't necessary to envision improvements to realities. Moreover, the odds of attainable progress increase when goals and ideals aren't kept separate from accurate realities. Certainly one can emulate Narnian behavior without believing in Narnians by faith. 
• If Pud's speech is treated like the claim that one's realities are in the realm of personal preference, then I don't accept that either. Realities routinely violate personal preference, to put it mildly. Humans' preferences don't adjust realities telekinetically—no, psi energy doesn't appear in the equations of quantum mechanics. But humans are manifestations of matter who can participate in causing changes to other matter to better fit their preferences. (This doesn't deny the instrumental effect of their chosen mode of reaction on how current realities disturb their thoughts.) 
• If P-glum's words are understood to be serious essential downsides of not relying on faith-beliefs, I would disagree. Generally those downsides are uninvestigated prejudices. Reaching a negative conclusion about a faith-belief doesn't imply that one is negative about everything all the time. Examining rather than surmising a notion's likelihood doesn't imply that one lacks sufficient imagination for the notion. 
• If one follows the symbolic lead of Puddy-g by pronouncing the verifiable world "dull", many who share my stance would recommend additional closer, curious, nonjudgmental peeks. Then the world might not seem dull enough anymore to justify futile attempts to intertwine it with a world of faith-beliefs.

Moving along, the second obligatory book topic is Aslan's hurried "signs" of guidance to the heroes: curt instructions for them to carry out the mission while the lion is, er, somewhere else doing something else. Maybe his absence from the bulk of the story is a factor behind its lesser popularity in the series. An immensely capable and compassionate entity leaves behind Delphic (oops, wrong mythology) sayings. The recipients are assigned to conscientiously obey all the sayings. But since Aslan isn't more communicative either that time or later on, they themselves bear total responsibility for refining and applying the sayings' meanings. They anxiously debate with each other to sort out various missing details that would've been extremely helpful to have known for sure in advance.

Golly, I can't imagine why followers of faith-beliefs aren't more enthused and flattered by such an analogy...

MUSHy identity, mission, and investment

Recent blog entries have analyzed why beliefs can thrive in the face of missing or lackluster corroboration...particularly forms of corroboration that are inherently unrepeatable, infeasible, or illogical. Such beliefs can persist indefinitely in the midst of a self-reinforcing group of followers, who are extremely Serious. In a number of instructive ways, the overall result eerily echoes a MUSH: an early internet example of a group of hobbyists maintaining and experiencing a fictional realm together.

For instance, the group itself collectively acts as the sole measurement of "accuracy" for the content. And the deficiency in outside corroboration doesn't reduce the genuinely satisfying mental benefits furnished by the combined contributions of the group and the content. Human culture contains a multitude of comparisons (the internet alone never ceases facilitating far-flung topical communities). A MUSH is especially suitable because it's small, mild, and uncomplicated. It's less predominant and ambitious than its Serious counterparts, yet the telling similarities show how MUSHy those can be.

As already mentioned, mental benefits attract individuals to the group and the content and then keep their attention thereafter. Extracting even more commitment demands the potent incentive of deep-seated connections. One of those effective connections is identity. Once again, a MUSH presents harmless, miniaturized manifestations of the phenomenon. In this case, its content offers lists of fanciful identities for the participants to "inhabit"...during the times when they're logged in and typing. Whatever the size of the role they play, they become familiar with filling it. They know it completely and comfortably. They're adapted to meeting its expectations. Abandoning the MUSH requires abandoning that accustomed (and entertaining) portion of their identity.

The molding of members' identities is typical of Serious groups too, but to a larger extent, of course. Unlike a MUSH identity, perhaps their Serious identity is supposed to be constant, like a mask that can't ever be dropped. Also unlike a MUSH, they may spend the majority of their daily lives surrounded by the group. Details aside, once they have firmly embedded their group role into their personal identities, nonchalant challenges to the content appear as aggressive challenges to pieces of them. When reevaluating an idea entails potentially breaking their identity, they have an excuse to avoid going through with it.

Other kinds of connections complement the connection to identity: a mission is an excellent second kind. Whereas handing over an identity clarifies whom someone is to be, handing over a mission further clarifies what they are to do. An unambiguous mission offers manifold gratifications. Minor or intermediate goals are chances for short-term victory, and simultaneously, grand or virtually unattainable goals are endless reasons to continue striving. With a mission, group members can see a need for their exertions—and themselves. Their actions have weight and direction. They can feel that they're accomplishing valuable progress. They're part of making circumstances "better"...as defined by the mission objective, at any rate. They're an asset to the team, so giving up would be a disappointing, selfish betrayal of the team's trust. The "missions" pursued during long-term in-depth MUSH participation probably sound uncaptivating at first, but the basic allure shouldn't be underestimated. An amplifying cycle is at work: an intensely felt connection has the effect of motivating greater involvement, and steadily expanding involvement has the effect of intensifying the feeling of connection.

Obviously, missions of all shapes and sizes are pervasive in Serious groups as well. Although repetitive passive contemplation of the content gradually hardens it in followers' thoughts, missions dramatically animate it in their lives. By affecting group behavior directly, the content accrues exciting meaningfulness and importance. For more than a few, inspiring missions might engross them so much that almost all of the content itself is peripheral—inconsequential minutiae that's little more than outdated decoration.

Carrying out a mission implies investing toward it, but more generally, any investments are a third kind of enduring connections to the group and content. Likelier than not, financial investment is only one of several types. In practice the rest might be more burdensome: sacrifices of time, effort, and competing opportunities. The common thread is that each investment raises the stakes. Thereafter, rejecting the group and the content has the expensive price of affirming that these formerly promising trade-offs were worthless all along.

For a MUSH, this risk isn't terribly chilling. Still, it does sway the decision to come back again and again. The time-consuming events and deeds of past sessions are partially intended to set the stage for intriguing future sessions; to walk away and never use that "stage" seems wasteful. Just by investing enough in something, no matter how little it is, the investor transfers a sentiment of ownership onto it. They acquire a well-founded interest in its fate. Additionally, active group socializing is an "investment", though that mercenary mindset is best avoided. Initiating enjoyable group interactions increases the perceived value of the group...for more interactions. After someone has given themselves into opening and preserving reliable companionship, including at shallow or casual levels, they're understandably reluctant to hastily discard it.

By contrast with these low-key instances, the routine investments associated with Serious groups are strict and obligatory. So this policy is plainly strategic, because forcing quick, large investments secures the loyalty of new followers. The more that they invest, the more determined they are to think that their venture is deserving. Moreover, before the investments are actually tried, an above average cost for the group and the content creates a pretense of above average worth to justify the cost. That pretense exploits the usual link from relative superiority to a relatively greater charge—good stuff usually isn't easy or free. On the other hand, the most savvy strategy of all might be a set of (maybe implicit) tiers: starting tiers stipulate low but non-zero investments, yet the group continually prods everyone to progress to tiers of greater investments.

Given the cumulative pull of these deep-seated connections, the relevant question isn't necessarily "How is it possible for Serious groups cluster around ideas with problematic corroboration and then sustain those ideas?", but "How could such groups possibly not exist when broadly similar elements apparently suffice for fueling decidedly unserious groups, like a MUSH that merely clusters around outlandish stories?"

the MUSHy psychological payoffs of joint faith-beliefs

I've suggested that the relationship between the content of a MUSH and its group of participants resembles the relationship between the content of a joint faith-belief and its group of followers. First, the group is brought together through their common relationship to the content. Second, the group is also the active source for explaining, refining, and expanding the content. Third, the group itself determines the explicit and implicit rules for what the content is or can be—although everyone probably doesn't have equal influence on these determinations.

On the other hand, the differences are impossible to miss. Consistent with its technological era, a MUSH's outward expression is limited to typewriter-like lines of text data (including rough "images" created out of carefully arranged punctuation). Its inward mechanism is software running on a computer that's exposed to the internet. Interactions with it consist of relatively short bursts of digitized signals speeding back and forth over great distances of transmission lines. The endpoint is marks on a screen. Without question, the experiences of MUSH participants are drastically unlike the typical experiences of followers of joint faith-beliefs. These experiences seem comparatively lifeless, spare, and remote, even alongside the various other experiences enabled by internet connections. Someone could easily assume a corresponding deficiency in the subjective value of these experiences.

However, that assumption is at least a little mistaken. It doesn't recognize that the group supporting the MUSH is completely unforced, so the group's continuing existence signifies worthwhile value. Somehow the group gains a motivating psychological "payoff". It could come in many subtle forms: fascination with the content, companionship with others, gratification of helping to make a wonderful addition, etc. Once again, a MUSH has an illuminating parallel to joint faith-beliefs. Through payoffs that are purely (and admittedly) psychological, it can have appeal independent of its lack of factualness.

This parallel isn't mentioned in order to foolishly claim that the two categories have identical payoffs or that one can substitute for the other. A MUSH is a microcosm, a more modest example in every way. Actually, the thought-provoking surprise is that its payoffs are appreciable nonetheless. Although it's a leisure hobby, revolving around fiction, operating through a primitive medium...it's sufficient to spur a persistent human group to maintain its existence. Hence it reiterates major defects in trying to seriously corroborate beliefs on the basis of mental effects: 1) countless other stimuli can produce mental effects of the same kind, if not the same vividness, 2) usually the mental effects themselves are either nebulous, or packed with formulaic echoes of the subject's expectations. Greater intensity of mental effects and psychological payoffs solely position the category of joint faint-beliefs on a farther end of a MUSHy continuum, not reposition it on another continuum entirely. (Phrased in internet popular lingo, it's a MUSH...in which things just got real.)

Likewise, an unending array of human pursuits/ideas could serve as supplementary illustrations that joint faith-beliefs aren't exceptional. The variations are virtually unlimited, with contrasting levels of formality, realism, grandiosity, popularity, exclusivity, zeal, style, intricacy, comprehensiveness, mood, comfort, rigidity, difficulty, age, methodology. In any case, the conclusion stands. The psychological payoffs of joint faith-beliefs aren't satisfactory rationales for countering the possibility that the core is MUSHy after all.

the MUSHy content of joint faith-beliefs

In the Nineties, the fictional land Narnia existed.

The description "existed" might be too strong—more on that later. Without doubt, though, adapted textual representations of it showed up for long time periods on the internet thanks to MUSH software. As suggested by its lighthearted name Multi-User Shared Hallucination, it resembled interconnected advanced chat rooms embedded in an expanding multiplayer "game". Through their role-playing dialogue and software commands, MUSH "players" (world builders?) collectively fashioned virtual realms. By their mostly implicit mutual agreement to collaborate and follow that realm's distinct mythology, they populated/enriched it as they wished without transforming it into something unrecognizable...and therefore no longer appealing to them.

I recalled MUSHes after a point I raised at the start of the the last entry's penultimate item. I noticed that if "[...] followers of deeply organized/defined faith-beliefs still depend on unstated tradition spread through attitudes and norms and conventions," then their efforts to enjoy, preserve, and develop their joint faith-beliefs are analogous to the efforts of MUSH players. Inside the boundaries of a Narnia MUSH, players instinctively know that centaur characters may not carry laser guns or complain about the Seinfeld series finale. One might say that a "Narnia MUSH" with those elements wouldn't be a Narnia MUSH.

Meanwhile, inside the conceptual boundaries of joint faith-beliefs, followers abide by their own collection of unbreakable principles, not all of which are plainly described. For example, in practice they may forbid one another to propose that their supreme supernatural entity could experience surprise. Like MUSH enthusiasts they delineate the content that unites them, so their process and their content are fairly "MUSHy".

Indeed, their content cannot avoid being MUSHy, i.e. socially determined, as long as the customary methods for extending and/or corroborating it are largely non-transferable among ordinary followers. Individuals cannot even imagine how they could fully comprehend, recheck, and reconstruct their joint faith-beliefs without counsel. They cannot explain or recreate the mystical realizations contributed by elite past/present followers. They might have designated texts to analyze, but they cannot plausibly translate the texts into an identical detailed set of joint faith-beliefs, unless they have the necessary supply of standard guidelines/clues/addenda. (At first guess, a Narnia MUSH seems like it would have an utterly simple relationship to its "source texts". No, the "Narnia" lands in the MUSHes, in accordance with players' consensus, purposely improved the book series' original Narnia in a few aspects. Plus, blanks needed filling. Although the series had "Chronicles" in the title, it was tightly focused on the adventures of selected characters, not on an exhaustive account of the lands' history and geography and ecology.)

Consequently, MUSHy content has a self-referential nature. MUSHy content is valid...because the MUSH declared that it is. Each piece of content's acceptability builds on nothing beyond the pooled verdicts of past/present followers and its consistency with the rest of the historical, conglomerated, favorably rated pieces. Coherency is paramount, and it's assessed by trusted insiders. An external or standalone objection to their content is prone to being assessed as incoherent. And that negative assessment isn't necessarily affected by promising bases for the objection, such as alternate readings of their authorized texts or followers who have alternate views than theirs but major tenets in common.

Broadly speaking, MUSHy self-referential pieces of content are cultural realities, which interact with the real mental and physical actions of the culture's members. Sometimes the members are passively swayed by cultural realities. Sometimes they actively adapt the cultural realities in return. Money functions as a medium of exchange because everyone is willing to exchange money. Rulings on legal matters cite previous rulings on legal matters. The conversational rules for a language dialect are laid down by the conversations of the dialect's speakers. A cultural reality is bigger than the humans who live in its shadow...yet its sole toehold on realness is whatever humans do about/with it.

So, Narnia did "exist" in the MUSHes...but only in the shape of a cultural reality. It certainly interacted with the MUSH players like a cultural reality, such as consuming their time and creative attention. While the effects on players are enough to convincingly demonstrate existence as a pastime and as an artifact of bytes, these aren't nearly enough to convincingly demonstrate a land's existence. To be clear, aside from this very blog entry, nobody has contended that the content of the Narnia MUSHes existed in the same ways that a land does.

And that's the pivotal distinction between this analogy and joint faith-beliefs. By definition, faith-beliefs are ideas whose implications cannot be sufficiently verified using substantial corroboration. But faith-beliefs can thrive anyway as ongoing social projects. Like the Party of Nineteen Eighty-Four, followers can reinforce each others' visions. They can share the burden of adroitly harmonizing their earnestly desired faith-beliefs with unverified (or contradicted!) implications. Unfortunately, also like the book, they can become menacing as soon as they aspire to forcibly pulverize the whole outside universe of human understanding into the MUSH they adore...

when my former faith minimized free will

In February I wrote that my decisions were less free while I followed my parents' religion; it constrained my decisions in numerous ways. The amusing twist is that it simultaneously included a cherished and essential faith-belief in vaguely-defined transcendent free will! I was less free while I thought free will was absolute.

Since then, I've remembered several counterexamples to my own generalization. Frankly, the faith-beliefs I learned, as well as the followers I knew, sometimes placed minimal emphasis on the invulnerable independence of the individual human's free will. Of course, this embrace of differing ideas is unsurprising for a set of long-lived faith-beliefs. Realities are messy and varied. Offering opposite alternatives is an excellent strategy for adaptation and survival. It sets up faith-beliefs to always have an applicable answer. A new item of information or a new need might conflict with some of the available ideas, but it might also match at least one. Outlandish theories of conspiracies perform a similar trick: easily reinterpreting a lack of straightforward evidence as "proof" of the formidable conspiracy's strenuous efforts to conceal itself. Anyway, here are some faith-belief counterexamples that demoted and/or counteracted free will.

• pleas for guidance from omniscient/omnipotent entities...These pleas may be phrased that the entity "help someone see the truth" or "impress on someone the wrongness of their acts". The flaw is that the invoked entity's incredible abilities empower it to act as a master of manipulation. It knows everything about its targets. It has effective knowledge of how to methodically evoke behaviors from the targets. Perhaps it can't eliminate the targets' free will, but it hardly needs to do so. It can apply superb pressure to the targets—possibly with enough delicate expertise that the targets don't suspect. Moreover, the level of subtlety raises a vital question about the specific mental form of the uncanny entity's miraculous "guidance". What forms would be too overpowering to be compatible with the targets' free will? What forms does the pleading follower earnestly expect, assuming their plea is serious and not regurgitated flowery gibberish? Would guidance in the form of a terrifying hallucinatory vision be sufficiently respectful of the target's free will? Or would guidance in the form of unrelenting agonizing feelings of guilt qualify? Regardless, highly valuing the target's individual free will is difficult to reconcile with any plea for a direct, or even a skillfully indirect, intervention within their brain. If the follower pleads for guidance of themselves, then their request to be operated like a marionette remains distasteful. And it has the risk of motivating their unthinking obedience to spontaneous, reckless impulses which they incorrectly attribute to a spiritual source.
• diabolical deception/temptation...In many ways my background was fortunate, and one of those was no exposure to so-called demonic possession. However, I heard warnings or stories about cunning diabolical sources of deception/temptation. Those sources were said to launch underhanded sneak attacks on humans' free decisions. That explanation was especially unnerving when it was identified retrospectively; apparently a follower often didn't recognize until much later that malevolent forces had intentionally misled or enticed them. If those forces were tirelessly working to sabotage clearheaded contemplation of decisions, then the usefulness of free will was diminished. (On the other hand, an outsider's impression of this interpretation is that it's a convenient, shameless, faith-based substitute for the otherwise embarrassing admission, "At the time, my freely chosen decisions, which I made with full awareness, were simply idiotic and/or contemptible.")
• divinely controlled destiny...Countless arguments have analyzed the nature of the interaction between human and supernatural influences on "destiny". Despite the unending controversy about the details, the shared truism was that supernatural contributions definitely exceeded and potentially overruled all human contributions, particularly at larger scales. The center of the disputes was the exact extent of humanity's inability to change destiny. In this formal sense human free will was limited at best. Its role was comparable to coloring prescribed areas inside someone else's vast pencil drawing.
• afterlife decisions...The afterlife was yet another topic of debate. I'll only address what I was taught: the afterlife occurred after the unchangeable final judgment. In moral terms, it came after the whole "test" was finished. Presumably the afterlife either had no more decisions at all or it had decisions of no moral significance. Thus, the immortal soul either no longer had free will or it had free will to decide nothing of importance. According to this interpretation of the afterlife, free will eventually became nonexistent or fruitless.
• wrongdoing resulting from inner corruption/weakness...Contrary to their proud by-the-book self-portrayal, followers of deeply organized/defined faith-beliefs still depend on unstated tradition spread through attitudes and norms and conventions. Their treasured texts are just raw layers incorporated in an overlapping collage of their active understandings of their faith-beliefs. Thanks to input from sources they trust, over time they infer which bits to disregard or reshape, which clarifications are necessary before accepting overoptimistic supernatural claims, and which excessive statements provide realistic counterbalance of other excessive statements. In this case, the devastating effect of inner corruption/weakness carefully circumscribed the official doctrine that anyone could decide to cease wrongdoing. Specifically, the effect was that someone's will (heart, soul, etc.) could be corrupted/weakened to the point that they couldn't accurately judge morality—or comprehend the correctness of faith-beliefs preached at them. Using biblical terminology, they were the "swine" who were too coarse to appreciate the generosity of "pearls"; they had been "given over" to their depravity. They were theoretically capable of change, but their free will was now too perverted to offer much hope. (They were prime targets of the first counterexample: pleas for supernatural brain readjustment.) Obviously, different groups of followers varied in how enthusiastically they employed this ready justification for discounting outsiders' ability to exercise genuine free will....and therefore the outsiders themselves. Usually they put principled ex-followers into the category. From their perspective, the dissenters' free will must already be unreliably defective. Else, how could they have "decided" to dump their former faith-beliefs after insisting that an idea's accuracy be measured by the verification of its implications? 
• parental blame for the decisions of adult offspring...This counterexample is like the previous. The primary, endorsed position was personal responsibility for wrong decisions. Everybody needed to confess their own offenses. Nobody automatically inherited "saved" status. Even so, layered on top of this position was the expectation, or implicit duty, that parents should do all they could to assure their family's unwavering commitment to right decisions. In fact, ritual "dedications" were fairly normal, in which parents publicly agreed to a series of vows regarding their new child's religious instruction. Again, using overworn biblical terminology, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6) Given this context, parents with less devout adult offspring couldn't escape feeling blamed for it. But by proposing that the parents could somehow instigate the decisions of their adult offspring, the offspring's free will was reduced correspondingly. To split responsibility between parents and offspring was to dangerously concede that an individual's free will couldn't be as "uncaused" as dogma asserted.