Out of the Blue

  

The Great Maybe

            Almost three weeks ago, “Alison Small” wrote me an email.  As a producer for Brown Stone Productions, she said, she had become aware of my book, A New Lord.  (Castles 1: A New Lord, is the first book in the Castles trilogy.) The theme of advanced alien technology mistaken for magic intrigued her, especially when combined with political conflict.  She was interested in the main character, an earthman named Martin Cedarborne, who had to deal with the challenges of the story’s planet, Two Moons.  Would I be interested, she wrote, in turning A New Lord into a tv production?

            What do you think?  Of course I was interested.

            I was also suspicious.  I checked online.  Alison Small is a real person, and she has a list of real tv productions for Brownstone Productions, which is a real Los Angeles based production company.  The “Great Maybe” had entered my life.

            I responded to Alison’s email, expressing both my doubts (was her email generated by AI?) and my inexperience (I know almost nothing about turning a novel into a screenplay or “creative film product”).  She wrote back, introducing me to “Hazel Johnson,” who lives in Britain; Hazel could guide me in creating a creative film product, which we could then submit to Brownstone decision makers.

            Naturally, I told Sarah about the email.  I asked Ron Mock and Dawn Shultz, who wrote the blurbs we used on the back of A New Lord, to reread the book.  If it were made into movie or tv show, what parts should I insist be included?  I told my friends in the Sunday night prayer group and the “geezers” (a dozen men with long-time connections to George Fox who meet for lunch on Tuesdays) about the possibility.

            More emails, back and forth between Hazel Johnson and me.  Hazel offered me a choice between three development packages, priced at $420, $620, and $820.  If I’m going to do this, I thought, I might as well go whole hog.  I’ll buy the full treatment.  Hazel sent me a link to an online payment site.

            When I clicked on the payment site, my Avast computer security program interrupted.  “This is a phishing site,” it said.  “Do not provide personal information to this site.”

            Hurrah for computer security!

            More online searching; I found an email address for Alison Small at Brownstone Productions.  I wrote to her, and within a day she responded that she had never written to me.  Brownstone was aware of scammers using this scheme and trying to stop them.  A day later, I got a follow up email from Chris Maddox at NBCUniversal that urged me to report the scam to federal authorities and included a link to the feds.

            “Alison Small” wrote again.  Had I contacted Hazel?  Is the project moving ahead?  I wrote back: I am very interested in turning A New Lord into a tv show, but I have no desire to be victim of a scam.

            Dreams die hard.  I have not yet reported “Alison” and “Hazel” to law enforcement with the link provided by Chris Maddox.  I think a part of me still hopes that somehow the Great Maybe could come true.

           

Second Truth Essay

  

Why Do We Tell the Truth?

Part Two

            Human beings can tell the truth; that is, they have the ability, in many situations, to discover what is true, and we have the ability, through language, to tell others what we know.  Both parts, discovering truth and communicating truth, have fascinated philosophers.

Sitting at my desk this morning, I look out the window and see my granddaughter’s car, a red Prius, sitting in the driveway.  Bekah went with her grandmother Sarah to run errands in McMinnville.  They took Sarah’s car, leaving the Prius here.  I see the car; I know where it is.  The Prius is here, not somewhere else, not in Wyoming.  I know this.

Of course, philosophers have worried much about these claims.  People fall into error, even about seemingly obvious truths.  Is it possible that Bekah bought a replica Prius and is fooling me by leaving the second one in the driveway?  Maybe someone slipped a hallucinogen into my morning tea.  Or maybe I’m dreaming.  Do we really know anything?  Does knowledge require certainty?  These and other questions are part of epistemology, the philosophy of knowing.  Skeptics say the problems are insurmountable; we never really know anything.  I think most philosophers would agree with my Intro to Philosophy professor, Arthur Roberts, that human beings often rightly distinguish truth from error.  As I said in part one of this series, we tell the truth because we can, in the sense that it is possible.

Now we turn from epistemology to a moral question.  Why should we tell the truth?

First, sharing information benefits us.  From prehistoric hunter-gatherers to contemporary engineers and builders, truthful cooperation has enormously multiplied the goods achieved by human labor.  What percentage of ancient bison-hunters brought down their quarry without the help of their fellows?  The modern engineer—whether she builds airplanes, apartment buildings, or computer chips—is even more dependent on others for the success of her work.  If we don’t tell the truth, cooperation collapses.  In the language of moral philosophy, truth-telling is “utile.” 

In philosophy class I sometimes asked students to imagine a world with no moral rule favoring truth-telling.  What would the world be like if deception, in whatever form it might occur, were as acceptable as telling the truth?  To illustrate, I ask: what time is it?  The student, who wants to escape from a philosophy lecture, says, “3:50” (the scheduled end of class).  But this is hardly imaginative enough.  The reply could just as well be, “Bananas.”  The point of the silly example is this: If there is no preference for truth-telling, human beings would not speak languages; they would grunt.

An important theory in moral philosophy, utilitarianism, hangs everything on this observation.  It is right to tell the truth, say the utilitarians, because it increases overall utility.  Everyone knows this, which is why every culture in the history of the world has had a moral preference for truth-telling, usually expressed as a rule against lying.  Further, the utilitarians say, their theory explains why every culture also approves of some exceptions to the moral preference for truth-telling.  Precisely in those cases where deception would produce (or protect) more utility than telling the truth it is right to lie.

            Is that it?  Do we tell the truth because it is useful?

            Immanuel Kant objected vigorously against what he called the “serpent-windings” of utilitarianism.  Of course, truth-telling is useful, he would say, but there is a deeper reason why we must not lie.

            Consider an experience common to many parents, babysitters, and other childcare providers.  (This is my illustration, not Kant’s.)  We teach very young children to tell the truth, sometimes punishing them for their lies.  And our pedagogy works; children tell us the truth most of the time.  But then comes an unsettling discovery.  Evidence emerges that the child—usually an older child, perhaps a young teen—lied “successfully,” deceiving the adult.  Only after some time was the deception found out.  In such cases the adult may ask, “Why did you do that?”

            In one sense, the answer is obvious.  The child deceived the adult to gain some privilege, avoid some consequence, or achieve some result that the adult would not have permitted otherwise.  The adult already knows this.  Her question—Why did you do that? —is not merely an inquiry into the child’s goal.  It’s more personal.  The adult’s real question is, “Why did you treat me that way?”  In deceiving the caregiver, the teen treats the adult as nothing more than a thing, a tool, or an obstacle.  Recognizing her own feelings, the caregiver might say, “It’s not the lie that hurts; it’s the disrespect.”

            That’s Kant’s point.  We deceive other people because we don’t trust them to do what we want them to do.  Deception is a form of manipulation, a kind of power over other people.  The parent/caregiver in my illustration feels “disrespected.”  According to Kant, that feeling points to a deep truth. 

Kant thought that human beings are, at the root, rational beings.  As such, we each have dignity.  Each rational being is capable of discovering the moral law (Kant: “Act only according to that maxim that you can, at the same time, will that it be a universal law”), because the moral law is essentially rational.  Each time we encounter a human being, we ought to think something along these lines: “Wow!  This is a rational being.  This being can recognize the one, universally binding, moral law!  I must treat this being with deep respect, respect I would offer to Gabriel the archangel or any other rational moral being.”

            I think Kant has something right here, and I suspect that most people would agree if they reflected on times when other people have lied to them.  We feel the disrespect when someone manipulates us with lies.  We resent it when politicians deceive us (however much we have come to expect political lies).  And there is almost no surer way to destroy a friendship than by manipulation and deception.

            So now we have two moral reasons for telling the truth: truth-telling is useful, and the respect we owe to other people demands it.

            Is that enough?  Is that all?  I will say more in a third essay.

Reflections on 9/11

  

Did the World Change?

            Yesterday, September 11, 2026, was the 25^th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that killed almost 3000 Americans.  “9/11” entered our vocabulary, a date/word that symbolizes shock, death, and national resolve.  The anniversary occasioned many reflections by politicians and pundits; I read a few, which means I didn’t read many hundreds of others.

            In the days after 9/11, we learned that the terrorists were part of an Islamist group called Al Qaeda.  Within a few months, President Bush was leading America in a “war on terror” that meant invading Afghanistan to root out the Taliban government that harbored Al Qaeda.  The American occupation of Afghanistan lasted through the Bush, Obama, and first Trump administrations.  Our military finally withdrew from Afghanistan under Biden.  Both Republican and Democratic presidents thought that, in some way, the war on terror required war in Asia.

            The Taliban has returned to power in Afghanistan.  Islamist extremists rule the government of Iran.  Mr. Trump, who campaigned against “forever wars” and who preached a doctrine of “America first,” launched a war against Iran.  Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu joined Trump in denouncing Iran’s progress toward nuclear weapons and justifying the attack on Iran.  Trump has declared success or victory several times, but he seems unable to understand that the Revolutionary Guard sees its continued hold on power in Iran as victory.  As I have said to some of my friends, Trump has started a war and lost it without ever understanding that he lost it.

            So: it has been 25 years.  Did 9/11 change the world?  Not from a biblical perspective.  The empires of the world come and go.  Human beings fight for wealth and power—and for ideologies and slogans.  We are sinners, willing to destroy each other out of envy or fear.  The terrorists of Al Qaeda were motivated by Islamism and a host of stored resentments.  Surely a just God would look with favor on their attack on the organized Satanism of America.

            The terrorist mindset is not all that different from the revolutionary Marxist, who knows that history is on his or her side.  “We know what to do with capitalists,” said Lenin.  “We shoot them.”  (The actual quote may be apocryphal, but the attitude is right.)

            The post-9/11 world, just like the pre-9/11 world, needs escape from the nationalisms and ideologies of revenge (labeled “justice” by the true believers).  We need someone to teach us to love our enemies.  Of course, anyone who genuinely taught a gospel of love would get crucified.  If anyone wants to follow him today, he or she must be prepared for the consequences.

First Truth Essay

  

Why Do We Tell the Truth?

Part One

            “The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

            George Burns often used this line in his comedy routines, though it’s likely that he picked it up from someone else.  Comedians often borrow their material.  It’s a funny line, but for a philosopher it opens a Pandora’s Box of questions.  What is truth?  How do we distinguish truth from error and deception?  Why do we tell the truth?

            Today (August 3, 2016), on his Truth Social account, President Trump commented on recent poll numbers. 

“My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn’t they be with the biggest tax cuts and employment numbers EVER, the biggest outside Investment in America in World history, a totally secure Border, a giant Victory in Venezuela, the Denuclearization of Iran, unparalleled respect and success throughout the World, and much more?”

I will not comment now about the various accomplishments the president lists, leaving it to my reader to judge whether the U.S. enjoys unparalleled respect throughout the world, that our border is totally secure, and so forth.  My point is this.  Mr. Trump says that the “Fake New Media” are lying about his popularity; they simply make up poll results, and his polling numbers are better than ever.  The president’s comments helpfully point to the same philosophical issues raised by George Burns.  How do we know what is true?  Why do we tell the truth?

When I took Intro to Philosophy (back in 1973!), Arthur Roberts categorized three “ways of knowing”: sensory experience, reason, and intuition.  Sense experience includes the things we see, hear, taste, smell and feel, and all the evidence empirical science tells us (often using sophisticated machines to extend our senses: telescopes, stethoscopes, EKG machines, etc.). Rationality consists in the mental work we do to criticize, compare, approve or dispute our beliefs.  Intuition names other kinds of belief formation: guessing, prophetic ecstasy, religious tradition (including sacred texts), and so forth. 

Philosophers have been arguing over these ways of knowing for 2500 years.  How do they fit together?  For instance, in the early 20^th century an influential group of philosophers, the logical positivists, campaigned for the doctrine that only empirical evidence supplied knowledge. Positivism died when its critics showed that every scientific observation takes place within some theoretical model or another.  There is no such thing as “pure experience,” no escape from a priori rational principles.  Example: the logical rule of non-contradiction.  All sane human beings deny (p + -p).

Why?  How do we know the basic rules of logic?  Jews, Christians, and Muslims affirm that we are made in the image of God, one aspect of which is to be rational.  In recent centuries, though, many philosophers have become “naturalists.”  Not like Aristotle, who thought philosophers ought to strive to understand the natural world.  Modern “naturalism” is the doctrine that since there is no God the universe occurred purely by chance.  On this view, human beings are not made in the image of God; all our mental activities result from nervous systems (including our brains) that evolved by natural selection.  If our beliefs, including our belief in logic, help up pass on our genes, they are “successful” beliefs.

Notice that on this story successful believing is not the same as true believing.  It might well be that a group of ancient hunter-gatherers that believed in the gods of the hunt would survive better than a bunch of atheists.  According to modern naturalism, none of the gods humans have worshiped are real, yet belief in those gods may have been “successful” by promoting group cohesion, successful hunts, and so on.  In naturalistic terms, truth doesn’t count for much.

Alvin Plantinga has made this argument in detail in Where the Conflict Really Lies. He points out the inevitable conclusion: given naturalism, the theory of evolution implies skepticism about all our metaphysical and scientific theories, including evolution and naturalism.  (If you think naturalism is true, you have a very good reason to think it is false.  Philosophers love pointing out that sort of thing.)  Given naturalism, our noetic capabilities may be aimed solely at successful gene replication.  In contrast, supernaturalism combined with evolution opens the possibility that God directed our evolution so we could be knowers.

Why do we tell the truth?  First, because we can.  In my next essay, I’ll reflect on truth telling a bit further.

 

 

 

Digital Worries

  

Uncertain Times

            Technology shapes the times.  Eighty years ago, the world had entered the atomic age.  At first, only the U.S. had the bomb, but within a decade the “atomic club” included Britain, France, and (crucially) the Soviet Union.  I was born and grew up under the cloud of nuclear worry: Would the missiles fly?  What happens to human life if they do?  More decades passed, with more countries joining the club: China, Israel, North Korea, etc.  Only God (and the CIA?) knows which heads of state have the power to kill millions.

            Worries about thermonuclear weapons overshadowed the world I grew up in.  International leaders had to learn to talk with each other; when they failed to talk (as in October 1962) ordinary people cowered before the threat of war.  Political leaders concerned themselves with many diverse issues, but no one could escape the question of preventing war.  Peace through negotiation, peace through strength, peace through prosperity, peace through advanced technology (anti-ballistic missiles), and so on.  Only madmen would straightforwardly advocate war.

            Questions of nuclear security continue.  Mr. Trump says Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.  The judgment here is, I suppose, that no country dominated by certain versions of Islam can be trusted with weapons of mass destruction.  Maybe that’s true.  But it might be helpful to remember that communist governments have held nukes for decades without using them.  In the 1950s and 1960s, many voices said that godless Marxists could not be trusted with the bomb.  Gradually, we came to rely on mutually assured destruction.  Ideological opponents could learn to “coexist” (language of the 1960s) if they believed the other side believed that war would end civilization.

            We’ve learned to live with the bomb, even if we haven’t learned to love it.  (Remember Dr. Strangelove) That means living with anxiety, because some day some man or woman may press a button.

            In this decade, we’ve become aware of a new technology that may be just as anxiety-producing as H-bombs.  Our computers have been growing more powerful at an exponential rate.  According to Moore’s law, which is really an observation of recent history, not a natural law like Boyle’s law of gases, says that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years.  In 1975, Gordon Moore speculated that this rapid increase in calculating power would continue for another ten years.  It has continued for fifty years, and tech companies have built empires in the expectation that it will continue.  Much of our post-industrial prosperity has come from the amazing growth in computing power.  Your hand-held phone contains a camera and a light and connects you to the Internet.

            But now we learn about Chat GPT—and dozens of other programs that can write to us (and for us).  Do the computers also think, or do they “just run programs”?  (Remember Short Circuit) Tech experts and philosophers are working on that question.  Interestingly, some of the big tech companies have started hiring Philosophy PhDs to help them think about their products.  We know that AI is coming.

            Are intelligent, autonomous computers a threat?  Already we have self-driving cars (which I predicted in 2015), and we laugh when we read of a group of Waymo taxis lost in a cul-de-sac.  We assume that all self-piloting vehicles will be programed to protect passengers and other human beings.  (Remember Isaac Asimov’s first law of robotics.)

            We’re pretty confident that medical diagnostic programs, translation programs, vehicle piloting programs, and many other complex computer systems will be benign.  We have some worry about energy management.  If there is not enough power to go around—in a winter storm, let’s say, when the grid loses some capacity because of wind, and it’s really cold—how will a computer prioritize energy distribution?

            Of course, we think that’s solvable.  But then we worry about military uses of AI.  The long history of warfare suggests that speed is often crucial to victory.  Of course, it’s not the only important factor, but smaller armies have often defeated more powerful but slower foes.  In the 21^st century, speed of decision making has become crucial.  Increasingly, we program our responses into computers, because AI can respond much faster than soldiers.  To win battles, we program computers to respond automatically.

            When does “automatically” become “autonomously”?  We worry about a computer that decides not just when to fire but whether to fire.

            In science fiction terror stories, the computer decides to eliminate us.  This is the computer apocalypse, which has already achieved “legend” status.  I’m confident I could find several such stories.  (How?  By a computer-aided Internet search, naturally.)  But our worries go further than that.  The autonomous program may decide that a certain weakness in the enemy’s defenses should be exploited—and the missiles fly.  How do we use computers to fight without letting them decide whether to fight?

            We have other worries about AI, unrelated to wars or bombs.  Some people have used AI technology to produce “revenge porn.”  I fully expect to see political ads containing falsified images of politicians in coming years.  Our social and political discourse has already been harmed by the way we retreat into Internet ghettos; AI will make it easier and more emotionally satisfying to ignore the humanity of the other side.

Apparently, there is profit in programming computers to call phone numbers (selected randomly or by algorithm) to sell insurance or home repairs or many other things.  I have made it my policy to never buy a product advertised this way; I insist on talking to a real person.

We live in uncertain times.  To some degree that has always been true.  But my lifetime, spanning the atomic age and the digital age, seems to be especially uncertain.  The fact that we have survived eighty years of the atomic age may give hope that we can meet the challenges of the digital age.

           

Authoritarian Worries

  

Presidents on the Precipice

            Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, started a war against Ukraine four years ago, in early 2022.  Donald Trump, President of the United States, started a war against Iran four months ago, earlier this year.  I’m sure each president consulted advisors before ordering his military to attack, but the responsibility for the decision to attack belongs squarely with the presidents. 

            Putin is an authoritarian ruler.  His authority in Russia has almost nothing to do with elections or the will of the people.  He will never be voted out of office.  He will rule until he dies or some conspiracy of powerful people throw him out.  After all, there are powerful people in Russia—heads of government agencies, leaders of important industries, military commanders, and others—and without these people Putin could not control his country.  An authoritarian needs lieutenants to execute his policies.  He must always be worried that some of his underlings might conspire against him.

            Trump wants to be an authoritarian ruler, which is why he admires Putin.  In Trump’s word, Putin is “strong.”  I suspect this means that Trump sees that Putin makes decisions and then forces other people to accept the consequences of his decisions.  Putin consults advisors, but the decision belongs to him.  Trump wishes he had such power, and he resents Congress and the courts because the other branches of government impede his use of power.

            In many areas, such as trade policy, monetary policy, immigration policy, and taxation, Trump has tried to act via executive orders or by publicly criticizing independent government officials.  When the Senate seems slow to approve his nominees to head various government agencies, Trump makes liberal use of “temporary” appointments.  On social media he complains frequently about Democrats and “liberal” judges who obstruct his decisions.

Since the Constitution makes the U.S. President Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Trump is less constrained when it comes to making war.  The War Powers Act allows the President to use military force in an emergency, and presidents of both parties have claimed emergency justification for attacking enemies.  But the War Powers Act also requires the President to seek Congressional approval for wars that last more than a few months.  To get around this requirement, Trump declared a “cease-fire” in his war on Iran.  The so-called “cease-fire” is a sham.

The true authoritarian and the wannabe authoritarian both face one of the oldest lessons of war: you can’t predict, going in, how the war will fall out.  Once you let lose the dogs of war, look out!  They can bite you.

After four years, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has ground down.  (I have no special information.  All I know is what I read in the papers.)  Many thousands of soldiers and civilians have died without substantially moving the front line in the last three years.  New weapons, in particular drone aircraft, have changed warfighting in ways no one predicted.  With drones, the Ukrainians can strike targets far behind the front lines, and compared to Russia’s strategic missiles drones are cheap.

Trump’s war on Iran has also produced unwanted surprises.  Trump may have thought, going in, that he could create regime change by killing important Iranian leaders.  But Iran and its military are controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.  I don’t think Trump understand the mindset of true believers.  The Revolutionary Guard may only comprise one or two percent of the Iranian population, but they have the guns, and they are dedicated to the authority and rightness of the revolution.  And the war has shown them, if they did not know it before, that they hold a “card” (to use a word Trump likes to use) of vast power: by closing the Strait of Hormuz, they can greatly harm economies around the world.

Both presidents are on the precipice.  Each started his war, and each now finds himself close to losing it.  Each would like to find a way to declare victory and get out, but the whole world can see the truth.  You don’t have to be a peacemaker to see both wars were foolish.

Unfortunately, authoritarians on the precipice present great danger to the rest of us.  The temptation to hit harder, to use even more force, is right there.  May God help us.

On Memories and Hopes

  

An Old Man’s Hope

            I am an old man, so I think about the past a lot.  I remember scenes and images from my youth: walking up a hill in East Wenatchee when I was seven, playing football in a cow pasture when I was twelve.  I locate events: “She was born in 1947, so she would have been 18 at the beginning of 1966.”

            For what should an old man hope?

            Young men hope—they look forward to milestones like finishing school, marriage, becoming a father, or career success.  The good things they desire are possible because they can reasonably expect to live decades more.  By contrast, old men remember.  They may (or may not) have accomplished the things for which they hoped, but they don’t hope any longer.

            This contrast between youth and old age is often attributed to Aristotle, though I can’t find the quote this morning, not even with the aid of google and the Internet.  It is an instructive comparison, because it illustrates how hope is a forward-looking virtue.  Hope desires something in the future.  We might wish that history was different, but we can’t hope that it was different.  The Mariners had a wonderful season in 2001, but they did not make it to the World Series.

            I published Understanding Hope in 2022, having written dozens of essays on topics related to hope beginning in 2014, the year I turned 60.  Thus, my philosophical explorations of hope can be located in my middle age years. 

(I’ve often joked that we are young until 35, middle-aged until 70, and old after that.  I referred to myself as “almost old” when I was still 69.  Few people find humor in the joke, but Hank Helsabeck liked it.)

Linking hope with youth and memory with age would fit Aristotle, who built his philosophy on observation.  (Remember Raphael’s School of Athens, which pictures Plato pointing up—to the realm of the forms, we imagine—and Aristotle motioning down—showing that wisdom is found in the observable world.)  Given a naturalistic take on the world, we can all understand Aristotle’s epigram, if he really said it.  Death brings an end to our projects, leaving nothing to hope for.  Young men still have time, so they can hope.

Now that I am old, do I still hope?  I might hope that some novel I write will find readers.  I do hope that my occasional sermons will help listeners grow in love and discipleship.  In this life, I hope to see intimations of the kingdom of God.  Beyond this life, I hope for resurrection.  I hope to grow forever in the knowledge of God and to participate in the eternal community, Jesus’ people.

It’s easy to type the words, but the ideas are big.  To be God’s friend, to be part of the body.  According to the New Testament, these things are true right now.  I am already a friend of God, and I am already a member of Christ’s body.  They are already true, yet I hope that they will be “truer” in the resurrection.