"natural theology > III development > 1 Epistemology

vol III Development:

Chapter 1: Epistemology

page 5: Honesty

Physics

Am I telling the truth? Or am I deceiving you? Am I writing what I really believe, or do I have some hidden agenda that is disconnecting what I write from what I think? I say there is no conscious deceit here. I am trying to express my ideas as clearly and straightforwardly as possible. Nevertheless, I might be communicating something false. Clearly conscious and unconscious deceit play a significant role in life. Deception - Wikipedia, Self-deception - Wikipedia

Deceit in communication is possible because, in general, a communication is abstract. The information shared by two communicating entities is only a fraction of the information available within the entities. Assuming I write 10 and you read 100 words per minute, the bandwidth of this written channel lies between about 10 and 100 bits per second.

Yet we know that in our minds as I encode and you decode, millions of neurons are interacting over millions of channels: the bandwidth of the minds encoding and decoding this message are many orders of magnitude greater than the bandwidth of this communication channel itself. Only a very compressed versions of our brain states can be communicated by writing. Many of the details are unspeakable. Bell

This situation does not arise, we believe, in the physical world. Here we find that particles are created and annihilated as they communicate. In other words, they communicate their complete internal state to one another. This suggests that all the fundamental particles understand themselves perfectly and communicate their meanings exactly.We return to this idea in the pages on physics. Zee

Biology

Physical particles may be too simple to deceive one another, but it is otherwise with living things. Since the physical world is limited, whereas reproduction has no limits, living creatures must, at least in times of scarcity, compete for the resources to live. Deceit has a role here. An important factor affecting survival is productivity, the ratio of the return from an action (like a nice meal) to its cost (days of hunting). If one can increase ones productivity by deceit, deceit will become part of the survivors' repertoire. It is not surprising that all sorts of deceit are inclined to enter our interpersonal inrteractions. Axelrod

Morality

The protocols of behaviour put in place by evolution are supplemented in living communities by social protocols learned after birth. These protocols enable individuals to live cooperatively. Honest communication serves to preserve the integrity of a society which delivers benefits to its members in terms of security, nutrition, health and so on. So we often find deception deprecated: 'its a sin to tell a lie'; 'honesty is the best policy'. As far as we are allowed to go is the poker face, the 'no comment'. This moral precept is based on the observation that deception, often associated with secrecy and corruption, leads to the breakdown of society. Social contract - Wikipedia, Watson: Weasel Words

Politics

Highly organized deceit, by secrecy, 'spin doctoring' and even straight out lies is an endemic feature of politics, and seems to have been throughout history, giving rise to the dictum 'power corrupts'. The problem lies in abstraction. Politicians are trying to promote course of action which will be adequately acceptable to their constituency. If they, fail, they are likely to lose their jobs. Since it is very hard to get large numbers of people to agree on anything, the temptation to deception may be very strong. Spin (public relations) - Wikipedia

Honesty

How do we judge whether a source is honest? There is no easy way, but we can learn a little by considering the interests of the source. We are all inclined to doubt people extolling their own virtues and denigrating their opposition. It is in their interest to do so, and so expected. On the other hand, if we want to increase the probability that judges, politicians, governors, company directors and people in general are acting honestly, it is customary to exclude them from decisions in which they have an interest.

Science and politics

Political processes of one sort or another determine how a population is taxed and how the funds collected are spent. On the other hand, people vote in the light of their current knowledge, which is continually being updated by education, government propaganda, science, technology and the evolving protocols of social interaction.

Here we consider that the evidence based scientific approach to disputed questions as the touchstone of truth, but science is expensive. A government that wishes to hide the truth and influence the vote will be inclined to deny funding to scientific work which may expose contrary truths. Mervis

Political control of information is widespread, and serves to keep people quiet, that is to 'keep the peace' (even though it is a false peace). If the penalty for certain words is death, and one knows that the killers are listening, there is a strong incentive to be quiet.

Death is the ultimate political sanction, but there are many lesser sanctions built around the necessity for each one of us to obtain a livelihood. In the Catholic Church, only believers can work as theologians. Both the murder and the exclusion of dissenters tends to reduce the creativity of a community and so reduce its probability of survival. McGregor

The Roman Catholic Church reposes absolute power in the Pope, on the assumption that God will keep the Pope on the right track. There is very little feedback from reality in the Church. The Church claims that its source is an invisible mystery which cannot be verified by human means. But trust us. It still maintains, in the face of all the evidence that females are inferior to males. In the case of widespread child sexual abuse by its employees, the Church has tried to stand above the law.

The Church's sexual and political crimes are symptoms of a much deeper malaise: the Church worships a false God of its own invention. The Vatican, a small political elite, centred in Rome, depends on a scientifically incredible history of Earth and humanity to justify its claim to represent God. It is easy to believe that many scientifically literate members of the Catholic community (including myself) have difficulty in coming to terms with the Catholic history of salvation.

This site advocates a credible alternative. By rejecting the political stance of the Church and assuming that God and the Universe are identical, we bring theology into the realm of empirical science, opening the way for evidence based, rather than myth based, religion.

Jesus of Nazareth allegedly blasted the establishment in ancient Jerusalem, using some memorable phrases: 'whitewashed tombs', 'brood of vipers'. We are in a similar position now, subject to religious establishments and governments divorced from the reality of everyday human life and the Earth upon which we live.. The Gospel according to Matthew

Experience suggests that nobody gives up a position of privilege easily. A theological revolution in the Church will be a slow business, but it will prevail in the end. Denial of reality, like driving with one's eyes shut, is bound to lead to a crash sooner or later.

(revised 7 August 2014)

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books 1985 Amazon.com: 'This book is a must-read not only for students (broadly defined) of the social sciences, but also for politicians and bureaucrats, especially those in charge of military and foreign affairs. Axelrod's book is a tour-de-force in multi-method approaches. Although the author is a trifle repetitive and occasionally laborious, I think the profound content of the book far outweighs the minor inadequacies of its form. At the risk of sounding like a logical positivist, I would venture to say that Axelrod's approach offers hope for a bottom-up construction of cooperation in an uncertain world without a central authority.' Reeshad Dalal
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Bateson, Gregory, and Mary Catherine Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Anthropology, University of Chicago Press 2000 Jacket: 'This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. ... Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. He ... examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large.' D W Harding, New York Review of Books
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Bell, John S, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press 1987 Jacket: JB ... is particularly famous for his discovery of a crucial difference between the predictions of conventional quantum mechanics and the implications of local causality ... This work has played a major role in the development of our current understanding of the profound nature of quantum concepts and of the fundamental limitations they impose on the applicability of classical ideas of space, time and locality.
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Goebbels, Paul Joseph, and (Translated and Edited by Fred Taylor), The Goebbels Diaries 1939-1941: The historical journal of a Nazi war leader , Sphere 1983 Jacket: 'The Voice of War. Dr Paul Josef Goebbels was the voice of Hitler's Germany. As Minister for Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, heused his savage journalistic skills to glorify the Third Reich and justify its policies to the world. These grimly compelling diaries cover the the crucial years between the last months of peace in 1939 and the invasion of Russa in 1941. Cruel and sentimental, a tireless exponent of the twisted dogma he helped to refine, Goebbels emerges from these pages as a perverted idealist, an inspired man of straw.'
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Harrison, Kate, and Anne Cossins, Documents, Dossiers and the inside dope: A practical guide to Freedom of Information law, Allen and Unwin 1993 'Exercising one's right to see documentary information held by the government can be a daunting prospect for the uninitiated. This book is a guide to the Commonwealth and Victorian Freedom of Information laws, rights, what they mean and how to use them. Whether the request is for personal or top secret government documents, this book explains what one can ask to see, how to make an application, how much it will cost and how long it will take. It explains the grounds on which requests may be refused, rights to appeal, alternative solutions and how best to use them. For lawyers, government officers, social workers and all interested lay people, this book should be a useful guide.'
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Jaynes, Julian, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Mariner Books 2000 Jacket: 'At the heart of this book is the revolutionary idea that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but is a learned process brought into being out of an earlier hallucinatory mentality by cataclysm and catastrophe only 3000 years ago and still developing.'
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Lifton, Robert Jay, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: a study of 'brainwashing' in China, 1989 Jacket: 'Brainwashing has often been described in sensational terms; but Dr Lifton's painstaking investigation of Thought Reform is based on psychological studies (with follow up interviews) of Western civilians and Chinese intellectuals who underwent the process in a variety of prisons, universities and other settings."
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McGregor, Richard, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Harper 2010 Amazon editorial review: From Publishers Weekly 'McGregor, a journalist at the Financial Times, begins his revelatory and scrupulously reported book with a provocative comparison between China's Communist Party and the Vatican for their shared cultures of secrecy, pervasive influence, and impenetrability. The author pulls back the curtain on the Party to consider its influence over the industrial economy, military, and local governments. McGregor describes a system operating on a Leninist blueprint and deeply at odds with Western standards of management and transparency. Corruption and the tension between decentralization and national control are recurring themes--and are highlighted in the Party™s handling of the disturbing Sanlu case, in which thousands of babies were poisoned by contaminated milk powder. McGregor makes a clear and convincing case that the 1989 backlash against the Party, inexorable globalization, and technological innovations in communication have made it incumbent on the Party to evolve, and this smart, authoritative book provides valuable insight into how it has--and has not--met the challenge. ' Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Miller, Richard Lawrence, Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State, Praeger Trade 1996 Jacket: 'The war on drugs is a war on ordinary people. Using that premise, historian Richard Lawrence Miller analyzes America's drug war with a passion seldom encountered in scholarly writing. Miller presents numerous examples of drug law enforcement gone amok, as police and courts threaten the happiness, property and even lives of victims - some of whom are never charged with a drug crime, let alone convicted of one. Miller not only argues that criminal justice zealots are harming the democracy they are sworn to protect, but that authoritarians unfriendly to democracy are stoking public fear in order to convince citizens to relinquish traditional legal rights. Those are the very rights that thwart implementation of an agenda of social control through government power. ... '
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Packard, Vance, The Hidden Persuaders, Pelican/Penguin Books 1957-1974
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Soyfer, Valery N, and Leo Gruliow (Translator) and Rebecca Gruliow (Translator) , Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science , Rutgers University Press 1994 Hardcover - 379 pages (August 1994) Rutgers Univ Press; ISBN: 0813520878 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.26 x 9.34 x 6.33
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Watson, Don, Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words, Contemporary Cliches, Cant & Management Jargon, Knopf/Random House Australia 2004 Jacket: 'If you are curious to know what 'plausible deniability' and 'asset footprint' actually mean - or if you want to mock the very idea - this is the book for you. An essential reference for victims and saboteurs, Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words is a serious weapon in the struggle against those whose words kill brain cells and sink hearts. Sobering, scathing and wickedly funny, this companion to the bestselling Death Sentence flushes out political and managerial weasels and their hollow words, lampoons linguistic abuse and strikes a much needed blow for truth and clarity.'back

Zee, Anthony, Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press 2003 Amazon book description: 'An esteemed researcher and acclaimed popular author takes up the challenge of providing a clear, relatively brief, and fully up-to-date introduction to one of the most vital but notoriously difficult subjects in theoretical physics. A quantum field theory text for the twenty-first century, this book makes the essential tool of modern theoretical physics available to any student who has completed a course on quantum mechanics and is eager to go on. Quantum field theory was invented to deal simultaneously with special relativity and quantum mechanics, the two greatest discoveries of early twentieth-century physics, but it has become increasingly important to many areas of physics. These days, physicists turn to quantum field theory to describe a multitude of phenomena. Stressing critical ideas and insights, Zee uses numerous examples to lead students to a true conceptual understanding of quantum field theory--what it means and what it can do. He covers an unusually diverse range of topics, including various contemporary developments,while guiding readers through thoughtfully designed problems. In contrast to previous texts, Zee incorporates gravity from the outset and discusses the innovative use of quantum field theory in modern condensed matter theory. Without a solid understanding of quantum field theory, no student can claim to have mastered contemporary theoretical physics. Offering a remarkably accessible conceptual introduction, this text will be widely welcomed and used.
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Papers

Mervis, Jeffrey, "Senator's Demands Freeeze NSF Political Science grants", Science, 341, 6147, 16 August 2013, page 703. 'Oficially the $10-million-a-year political science program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) remains open for business, but in reality the agency has decided not to fund any political science reseach this year.'. back

Links

Deception - Wikipedia Deception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification and subterfuge are acts to propagate beliefs that are not true, or not the whole truth (as in half-truths or omission). Deception can involve dissimulation, propaganda, and sleight of hand, as well as distraction, camouflage, or concealment. There is also self-deception, as in bad faith.' back

Deception in animals - Wikipedia Deception in animals - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Deception in animals is the giving of misinformation by one animal to another, of the same or different species, in a way that propagates beliefs that are not true. Deception in animals does not automatically imply a conscious act, but can occur at different levels of cognitive ability. Mimicry and camouflage enable animals to appear to be other than they are. Prey animals may appear as predators, or vice versa; both predators and prey may be hard to see (crypsis), or may be mistaken for other objects (mimesis). In Batesian mimicry, harmless animals may appear to be distasteful or poisonous. In automimicry, animals may have eyespots in less important parts of the body than the head, helping to distract attack and increase the chance of survival.' back

Public relations - Wikipedia Public relations - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Public Relations (PR) is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc. back

Self-deception - Wikipedia Self-deception - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.' back

Social contract - Wikipedia Social contract - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In political philosophy the social contract' or political contract" is a theory or model, originating during the Age of Enlightenment, that typically addresses the questions of the origin of society and the legitimacy of the authority of the state over the individual. Social contract arguments typically posit that individuals have consented, either explicitly or tacitly, to surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the ruler or magistrate (or to the decision of a majority), in exchange for protection of their remaining rights. The question of the relation between natural and legal rights, therefore, is often an aspect of social contract theory. The Social Contract, created by Jean Jacques Rousseau was a book about government reforms and how it should change to suit the people instead of the government.' back

Spin (public relations) - Wikipedia Spin (public relations) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In public relations, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing an interpretation of an event or campaign to persuade public opinion in favor or against a certain organization or public figure. While traditional public relations may also rely on creative presentation of the facts, "spin" often, though not always, implies disingenuous, deceptive and/or highly manipulative tactics.' back

The Gospel according to Matthew Matthew Chapter 23 '27: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth. . . .
33:You serpents, you brood of vipers, how can you flee from the judgment of Gehenna?
34: Therefore, behold, I send to you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, . . . ' back