Alister McGrath's System of Belief

A common accusation levelled at the faithless is that they are just as much prisoners of faith as the 'faithful'; this charge can come from believers and the patronising non-believer 'post-modern' type of thinker alike. There's a good reason for doing this - it's to allow the apologist to create a straw man for them to attack in contrast to their own worldview. The unpalatable alternative is that they must positively defend the truth of their worldview; which is often indefensible. So it's a *deflection* strategy, when one has run out of arguments, and a tu quoque fallacy to boot.

A good example is this article, in The Times, by Alister McGrath, a softly spoken master of the non-statement. He starts by comparing the anti-apartheid ANC to atheism, pointing out the difficulties the ANC is having to create a *positive* identity for itself. He then cites Christopher Hitchens' work, and then says of his argument:

It locates the virtues of atheism firmly in the alleged outrages of religious believers.

That may be, but this is just one minor argument in favour of atheism. He goes on to point out that Christianity offers a transformation to the human situation, overcoming the fear of death and a 'pervasive sense of hopelessness in the face of human mortality and transciency'. Once again, this may well be true for some, but doesn't speak to the *truth* of the proposition. A more rational approach would be to understand the nature of human transciency and *embrace* it, and *revel* in it. It's our very transciency that gives our brief flicker its value, is it not? Theists want to *deny* us our humanity and replace it with a curious, ego-boosting, god-like, *immortal* state of being. And the key word there is *want*, because they cannot justify it in any other way.

McGrath's task in this article appears to be to cast *non-belief* as *belief*. But there's a twist; he *discredits* belief:

The demand that we limit ourselves to the logically and scientifically certain sounds reasonable until we realise the limits of both logic and science. Beliefs that we cannot prove to be true are part of the fabric of our lives, whether we are religious, secular or indifferent.

True, we all have beliefs we can't prove; but then 'proof' is an unattainable objective outside of maths and logic.  As with many apologists, McGrath doesn't see any difference between something which cannot be *proved*, and something for which there is *insufficient evidence*, because he doesn't approve of *non-belief*. Witness:

For example, Christians believe in God; the “New Atheists” believe that there is no God to believe in.

He cannot even write the line 'the “New Atheists” don't believe that there is a God'. This True/False boolean approach to belief is superficially attractive to many but doesn't acknowledge our knowledge or ignorance. Every proposition we are exposed to is weighed on the evidence presented, and when there is no evidence, we are naturally uncommitted - the Null position compared to True and False. When there is lots of evidence we are usually in a position to commit to True or False. For example, there is lots of evidence that we live in a heliocentric solar system. I would have difficulty *proving* this to you, but there is a mountain of evidence to this effect. It is *reasonable* to adopt the position.

Atheists don't adopt the *theist* position because the evidence presented for it is thin or contradictory. The worldviews of most theists are incoherent and redundant. It is quite difficult for an atheist to say they believe there are no gods (although some do) because it is an *absolutist* statement normally reserved for the all-knowing theists. I, personally, would always resist it for this reason, but I'm happy to say that I believe that all of the god stories so far presented to me are false. There may be a convincing story round the corner, but theism's *coherence* has yet to be established, so I will look again when a coherent story *is* presented. And just to be clear, for such a remarkable explanation of the human condition to be acceptable, the nature of any god and his workings need to be understandable. If anyone wants me to be believe something that is, by definition, inexplicable then they'll be wasting their time. 

McGrath quotes the rationally-challenged Terry Eagleton:

“We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain.”

So what? 'Reasonable to entertain' is completely different from 'reasonable to accept', and *that* is what theists harangue the rest of us to do. McGrath sums up:

All of us want to celebrate our beliefs. Yet can we do this without condemning the beliefs of others? It is an important question in contemporary Britain. The threat of social fragmentation is easily worsened if interest groups, secular or religious, lash out against others when justifying themselves. A rhetoric of dismissal and ridicule plays well to a populist gallery. Yet a robust civil society is fostered by a culture of respect and civility rather than derision and censure. Neither of these civic virtues seems to be much in evidence at the moment.

But the condemnation of the beliefs of others is *written in* to his credo, and many other theisms. Atheists merely point out the problems in his belief, and yet *we* are the ones condemned by *him* for pointing out the Emperor is naked, and further condemned by his church to an eternity in hell. A little ridicule and derision for such hypocrisy is surely in order.

Everone has a worldview they think is most in tune with reality. It is only the dogmatic who look to *punish* others for not conforming to their worldview, so one may ask why McGrath clings to a *dogmatic* worldview among the many available.

Consider this quote from the Sunday Times:

“Who are these British?” he asked. “Just western unbelievers. Islam tells us not to have any links with unbelievers. That is why this man [Dyer] will be executed in the name of God.” - Abel Hamid Abu Zeid, Algerian militant

Rather than railing against harmless non-believers, I think McGrath's time would be better spent wondering what it was about this theist's worldview that drove him to commit the murder of an innocent tourist in his god's name.

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The Necessity of Evil?

The faithful like to think they have the moral upper hand on non-believers. This is usually because they believe there is an objective morality, somehow personified (is that the right word?) in their version of god. It's not clear to me how a god being the embodiment (again, is that the right word?) of 'good' establishes an objective morality, but let's see if we can run with it. 

I've seen theists say to deniers of objective morality, that to torture a child for fun is always wrong, so let us examine this knotty problem. (The 'for fun' is a little problematic, because it could defy accurate definition.)

Moral 'laws' are not constraining laws, in the way that physical laws are, they're normative - they can be overridden, but, we feel, they *should* be observed. This seems to make them a little worthless to me, but nevertheless, let's continue. For a morality to be objective, it would be recognised by everything under all circumstances; in other words, it wouldn't be *contingent*. Regardless of the viewpoint, one could identify the normative behaviour. This universality, I think, should apply to everything; you, me, trees, rocks. One could say that rocks, being inanimate objects never have the chance to operate with moral considerations. But one could imagine that a rock, having rolled down a hill and pinned an innocent child to the ground and caused much pain might be being immoral. It cannot do anything about it, agreed, but nonetheless, it *is* torturing a child. Perhaps the apologist would deny that this is 'for fun'? Perhaps, but it's certainly to no purpose, and if that's not 'for fun', I'm not sure what is.

OK, so the apologist says, don't be silly, these 'laws' cannot apply to things lacking agency, or the ability to do anything about it. Right, so they're not universal, they're just universal for, er, homo sapiens? And other animals, too, perhaps, but we'll figure that out later. Let's accept that, and carry on. Mackie says in his 'Ethics' that 'the device of morality is beneficial because of certain contingent features of the human condition'. On this I think he concurs with many ethicists. This has always seemed to me an obvious point about morality, and renders a universal objective morality unobtainable. History would seem to bear this out, but let's not be too empiricist about this, and explore further. 

To torture a child for fun is *always* wrong? Or can we think of a circumstance where this could be OK? I think we can. Imagine we are observing two rooms set up by some James Bond villain. In one, there are ten children, in the other 50. If no child in the first room tortures another child 'for fun' within the day, then the 50 children in the other room will be tortured. If I know kids, there will be some fun-filled victimisation going on sooner or later, so I guess the 50 kids are safe. More to the point, as observers, we must *hope* for the torture of a child for fun, to achieve the preferred outcome. Hang on, what's that? We want a child to be tortured for fun? Surely that's objectively wrong? Well, no, it's *contingent*, like all other morality.

Let's be charitable, and allow the apologist to say, hey, unrealistic thought experiments aside, it's *wrong* to torture kids for fun! You just *know* it's wrong. Well, I guess, we do, practically *all* the time. It's clearly *not* universal, but let's allow some leeway, and say that it *is* objectively wrong. Nevertheless, kids are tortured for fun everyday in this world, so it *does* happen. In fact, in the theists' world-view, their god is *allowing* it. Why would he do that, him being the embodiment (?) of good, and all that? The closest to an explanation of this conundrum is, to sum up centuries of theodicy, 'for the greater good'. So evils are allowed to occur to achieve greater 'goods'. But that means... that 'torturing children for fun' is for the greater good. Which means it's not objectively wrong, surely? Well, your guess is as good as mine, but I suppose we've stumbled upon the Euthyphro dilemma.

With such confused moral thinking, is it any wonder that abuses occur as we've seen reported in Ireland. If a doctrine acknowledges that evil is *required* for the greater good, why wouldn't the believers of that doctrine think that these evils are *inevitable*. I think only *humanitarian* instincts, which thankfully come to the fore in the vast majority of theists, prevent it. It's *human* values that conteract these bankrupt *theist* values.

One would hope that these abuses are confined to Ireland and the recent past, but one fears the worst; is it the logical outcome of a doctrine that preaches the *necessity* of evil?

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Yet More on Faith - Fish Fingered

From Stanley Fish's article in the New York Times:

The theological formulation of this insight [reasoning without assumptions is impossible] is well known: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11). Once the act of simply reporting or simply observing is exposed as a fiction — as something that just can’t be done — the facile opposition between faith-thinking and thinking grounded in independent evidence cannot be maintained. Pking gets it right. “To torpedo faith is to destroy the roots of . . . any system of knowledge . . . I challenge anyone to construct an argument proving reason’s legitimacy without presupposing it . . . Faith is the base, completely unavoidable. Get used to it. It’s the human condition.” (All of us, not just believers, see through a glass darkly.) Religious thought may be vulnerable on any number of fronts, but it is not vulnerable to the criticism that in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on mere faith.

This is classic pomo style defence of religious thought, and whilst the argument is trivially true (in the sense that at bottom we all have to make assumptions a priori) it *isn't* the point of the reason/faith divide. The point is that the religious *do* use reason themselves, so they *do* adopt the same assumptions as the non-theist. But here's the rub; *except* when it comes to their privileged god belief. So the theist takes on board the assumption of reason, not unreasonably, and then discards it for one *particular* belief. This strikes me as inconsistent at best and dishonest at worst. What has Stanley Fish used to formulate his anti-reason attack if not reason itself? Any other tool than *reason* and it would have been a series of wildly unconnected thoughts of no relevance to the point in question (no jokes, please, tempting though it is). To attack *reason*, therefore, is self-defeating. All that non-theists ask is that theists apply the same critical thinking to their religious belief as they would to all their other beliefs.

It's also wrong historically, since most people in the past would have felt, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that everything around them was testament to the truth of the god concept. Homo sapiens had good *reason* to believe there were greater movers at work. It was the way his mind constructed a believable narrative about his situation.

More dangerously, to take a realisation about our epistemology (that we have no reason to assume reason!) and extend it to allow belief without reason is simply a recipe for conflict. Without allowing reason its supremacy, we simply have no conflict resolution mechanism. Well, other than violence, I guess.

And once again we have a theist defending the notion of faith without evidence, contradicting Catholic doctrine, and other theists, like Polkinghorne. Is it any wonder the non-believer has to spread his attacks wide, only to be accused of attacking the wrong target? There are so many different versions of superstitious belief, it is a Sisyphean task.

It really is about time the theists got together and sorted their story out. Do they believe for good reason, or not?

Fish continues:

So to sum up, the epistemological critique of religion — it is an inferior way of knowing — is the flip side of a naïve and untenable positivism. And the critique of religion’s content — it’s cotton-candy fluff — is the product of incredible ignorance.

It is more reasonable to believe that religion is an inferior way of knowing because:  

• It hasn't *demonstrated* any advantage over reason when it comes to taking advantage of reality; quite the opposite.  
  
• The religious way of knowing has led to numerous unsubstantiated and conflicting claims about the world. Logic compels us to say that they cannot *all* be right, so we must exclude at least all but one. Which are we to choose?
  

Why would a god make believing in him such an unreasonable proposal?

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Crucifixion or Freedom?

I’m grateful to Useful Idiot  for pointing out the Roman Catholic definition of faith, of which, despite being baptised RC, I was unaware! I blame my parents.

Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God. At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed. As personal adherence to God and assent to his truth, Christian faith differs from our faith in any human person. It is right and just to entrust oneself wholly to God and to believe absolutely what he says. It would be futile and false to place such faith in a creature.

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c3a1.htm Para 150

And further:

Faith is certain. It is more certain than all human knowledge because it is founded on the very word of God who cannot lie. To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."31 "Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt."

Para 157

It’s a very puzzling concept as stated, and needs a little unpacking. Not all Christians seem to observe this definition; for example, as I’ve discussed, Anglican priest John Polkinghorne bases his faith on what he considers to be good evidence and Monsignor Rodney Strange holds the (perhaps heretical) belief that *doubt* is linked to faith.

Para 150 seems most analogous to Polkinghorne’s position and, as such, is vulnerable to the same argument I used against him. If a god has revealed the whole truth to one then ‘faith’ is simply following the *reasonable* course of action – why that should be rewarded with an eternity in heaven is obscure. To be fair, perhaps it’s a reward for the searching, the openness to the idea of god? But we all know many people who have searched long and hard for the divinely revealed truth. I was a theist and searched for it, but didn’t find it. I know of ex-theists who haven’t found it. Many a theist appear not to have found it! 

‘Free assent to the whole truth’ is required, invoking, I suppose, the theist’s favourite explanans, free will. Why would anyone say ‘no’ to faith if god has revealed the truth to one? Insanity would appear to be the only answer to that, or perhaps a healthy dislike of all the do-gooders one would have to spend eternity with.

Perhaps the divinely revealed truth isn’t quite as straightforward, or argument-ending, as I’m assuming? This brings us to Para 157; it starts off well – ‘Faith is certain.’ Good. That’s settled it. Founded on the very word of god blah blah... fair enough. Understand that. Then a very odd sentence:

To be sure, revealed truths can seem obscure to human reason and experience, 

This seems to be suggesting there *is* something obscure about divinely revealed truth.

but "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives."

But this straightaway contradicts this impression. "the certainty that the divine light gives is greater than that which the light of natural reason gives." (quoting St Thomas Aquinas) is plain; once one has been exposed to the divinely revealed truth bathed in divine light one will have no doubt. It’s *better* than natural reason.

So Catholic faith raises a number of questions:

• The evidence is overwhelming that we are prisoners of our own, sometimes flawed, perceptions, yet Catholics ask us to believe that in this one case, our perceptions can be trusted *absolutely*, presumably because god is all-powerful, supernatural etc. This is an *extraordinary* claim, but could be backed up by *extraordinary* evidence. Unfortunately it isn’t. The weight of evidence suggests no divinely revealed truth is being regularly revealed to good, honest folk; contrarily, various incompatible beliefs are being revealed to people around the world, almost as if these ideas came from... inside their heads. Where is the extraordinary evidence for divinely revealed truth?
• If one grants there is divinely revealed truth, why would anyone *not* freely assent to it? I’ve never met anyone who said, ‘Yeah, I saw the divinely revealed truth, bathed in divine light – it was incontrovertibly the whole truth. But I said no, not interested. I’m a contrary bastard.’
• Why the reward for assenting to faith if the truth is certain? This is equivalent to the question in Life of Brian; ‘Crucifixion or freedom?’ It is literally a no-brainer, and hardly something that a god should be rewarding.
  

Compared to the ‘faith overcoming doubt’ definition of Hebrews 11.1, the Catholic definition seems *even more* logic defying. It does, however, explain why many theists are so confident in their faith. Phenomenal experiences can be very powerful and believable (well, what else do we have!), and the fact that phenomena themselves are, in fact, rather ethereal is not apparent to any of us. How could someone distinguish between a brainstorm apparently revealing the divinely revealed truth and the actual divinely revealed truth (if there were such a thing)? Well one couldn’t, so one would be tempted to accept it. A great exercise of will and reason would be needed to disabuse oneself of the notion, in fact.

Not that, to be honest, I’ve actually met anyone who has admitted such a thing; in so many words, anyway :-).

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John 20:29

Another article in The Times, this time by Monsignor Roderick Strange on the interesting subject of faith and doubt. He quotes Jesus's comment to Doubting Thomas; 

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. - John 20:29

And the article points out how faith and doubt *are* linked. He ends the article:

Doubt need not be the enemy of faith, but its ally. Thomas knew faith, wounded by doubt. Faith is deepened when we wrestle with ambiguity. Then indeed they are blessed who without seeing have come to believe.

When I was growing up this was how faith was presented to me; doubt (we have insufficient evidence) overcome by faith. Without doubt there is hardly any need for faith, is there? But one also sees theists arguing that there *is* good reason to believe - see my discussion of John Polkinghorne's article on that subject.

These positions are not compatible, and, oddly, perhaps, I think both positions are untenable! 

'Faith overcoming doubt' is the *expressed* position of Jesus Christ in the Bible. It can scarcely be any clearer from John 20:29, and the Monsignor also argues this point. This exercise of free will seems to be something that many can identify with. There are two problems here for me. First, it is not clear why this is supposed to be a *good* thing. Why is it good to believe when something is doubtful? That is a recipe for believing every charlatan that comes to town. That is a recipe for believing in *any* god created by man. Second, Jesus says that those who haven't seen are blessed who come to believe. Leaving aside that this is a very convenient doctrine for subsequent proselytising, it is also not thought to be a good thing for the disciples and others who *have* been granted a 'visual'. Why are *they* allowed to be persuaded by evidence but not us? How do the disciples and Doubting Thomas have faith - they have no *doubt*, they've got the main man standing in front of them! So the Monsignor's position fails, IMO.

For the 'Faith justified by reason' position, I'll assume for the sake of exploring the validity of this that there is good reason to believe (there isn't!), as such apologists think. The flaw in this position leaps out at one. If the believer genuinely thinks that there *is* good reason for faith it no longer becomes 'faith', but a justifiable scientific position. There is now *insufficient* doubt to allow faith, and there scarcely is any need for free will -reason is *dictating* one's position. I suppose in principle such a person could defy reason and say, 'No, I don't believe it, despite the evidence that shows it's true!'. This would just be the act of an irrational person, as the act of believing with insufficent *evidence* is as well. So the exercise of free will seems to boil down to acting irrationally.

We have here a credo that flies in the face of reason whichever way one looks at it.

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Polkinghorne's Motivated Belief

John Polkinghorne has written a piece for the regular Credo column in the Times, called Motivated Belief and the Stringent Search for Truth. Polkinghorne is notable for being a physicist *and* an Anglican priest. From what I’ve read of his apologetics, his arguments for a god stem from such things as the intelligibility of the universe and fine tuning. I find these arguments very *unpersuasive*, but it’s apparent that Polkinghorne thinks that a creator god based universe makes more sense to him than no creator. To a limited degree, I think that one could *understand* how someone might arrive at this (erroneous, IMO) conclusion. And not being a physicist, I obviously have to bow to his greater understanding of the fundamental building blocks of the universe. But at best this only gets one to a deist view of reality.

What is more baffling, and, I would say, unforgivable, is how he can be a Christian theist and claim it is based on the evidence. So it is noteworthy that he writes about his ‘motivated belief’ in the article.

He starts:

If being a scientist teaches you anything it is surely that the world is surprising, often behaving in strange ways that we could not have anticipated. Who would have thought in 1899 that something could sometimes behave like a wave (spread out and flappy) and sometimes like a particle (a little bullet)? Yet that is how light has been found to behave, and physicists have come to understand how this seemingly oxymoronic combination is possible.

This sort of experience means that the instinctive question for a scientist to ask is not "Is it reasonable?", as if we knew beforehand the shape that rationality had to take, but rather "What makes you think that might be the case?"

I think this is true; we cannot know what’s unusual if we don’t know *everything*; we don’t have a full knowledge of the workings of the universe, so we cannot judge if something is unreasonable in the sense that it is improbable. Whatever the evidence suggests, should be considered. At least, I think that’s what he’s saying. Then

That is a question at once more open and more demanding. It does not try to specify beforehand the form that an acceptable answer has to take, but if you are to persuade me that some unexpected possibility is true, you will have to offer evidence in support of your claim. Science trades in the search for truth attainable through motivated belief.

I quite like that. One must follow the *evidence*.

So does religion.

Not so much. Many theists *don’t* have ‘motivated belief’, in the sense of *evidenced* belief, for religion, but faith. Still, good to hear that JP has good reason for his belief. Let's hear it:

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jesus Christ is that we have all heard of Him.

Eh? He puts forward an argument that one should believe in JC because he’s famous. Well, I do think this counts a *little* as evidence for his position (many wouldn’t). But it is *very* little; otherwise one would be obliged to also believe in every other famous religion – an impossible position to put oneself in. But I'm prepared to give them a few brownie points for having a persistent meme.

All the writers of the New Testament believe that what happened was his Resurrection from the dead the first Easter Day. Can we today believe this strange counterintuitive claim?

Hume says 'No'; what does JP say?

Looking for the motivations for this belief requires a careful and scrupulous assessment of the evidence.

Good, I would say so too.

Here I can do no more than sketch the considerations that persuade me to bet my life on accepting the claim.

Never mind, get on with it.

The New Testament offers two lines of evidence. One line is the appearance stories, strangely varied, yet with a surprisingly persistent theme, that initially it was hard to recognise the risen Christ. I believe that this is a genuine historical reminiscence, indicating that these are not just a bunch of made-up tales constructed by a variety of early Christians.

This doesn’t seem to qualify as evidence to me. I can’t go to someone else and say, ‘John Polkinghorne thinks the surprisingly persistent theme of the appearance stories in the gospels means it's a genuine historical reminiscence’ – there’s your evidence. After all, that person might say, hey, Bart Ehrman and others have demonstrated how after the fact adjustments to the texts have tried to enforce some kind of persistent theme. And *Ehrman* has studied the texts more than JP, I would think.

Then there are the empty-tomb stories. If these were just concocted, why make women the discoverers when they were regarded as unreliable witnesses in the ancient world?

Why do they need to be concocted? Bodies can be removed from tombs without resurrection. How many times in history have empty tombs been found? Lots. How many times was it a result of resurrection? None, I would say; JP would say once. I’ve *no* idea why, if one bases it on *evidence*.

Clearly there is much more that needs to be said...

Yes.

...but I hope I have said enough to show that a scientist, open to unexpected beliefs but stringent in demanding adequate motivation for them, can believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, the fundamental pivot on which Christian belief turns.

No, and one cannot help but conclude that this ‘evidence’ is not why John Polkinghorne believes. Two very sorry looking bits of exegesis do not make a compelling case. A *stringent* search for truth is not at all evident.

I think he’s missed an opportunity here, because it would be nice to know what does lead a brilliant scientist like Polkinghorne to believe in Christian Theism. I guess he wasn’t able to tell us in this short article. Pity.

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Confounding Expectations

I’ve been reading Daniel Dennett’s excellent Consciousness Explained in which he makes the thought provoking observation that the brain is a future predicting device. This is sort of obvious when one considers that once life has evolved the ability to propel itself, it will be advantageous to predict its own course, so a whole load of *expectations* of events will be established by the brain to assist; there’s a tree ahead, so the brain plots a path around it.

It seems to me that these expectations of what *should* happen play a part in one or two of our most common human emotions. Occasionally an ‘expectation gap’ occurs, that generates a response in us. In the video above, Lee and Herring wittily deconstruct a common element of basic jokes - the lazy comedy slag template for a joke incorporating the confounding of expectations – and that confounding (confoundation?) is an element in a lot of humour. The comic suggests one or two things that our brains take on board to create a scenario, and the pay-off comes when the comic explodes that scenario. I quite like this clip because it demonstrates that the *expectation* is important; just doing something inappropriate in an unusual scenario isn’t necessarily amusing, but for some reason it is more amusing after one has been led to think the situation is different. I don’t know why!

I think I see expectations in music appreciation too; we are all familiar with the way that a song fixes itself into our minds after a few plays (if it’s good). We can listen to the song ‘in our heads’, but it’s better to hear it again. There is surely an element in which expectation satisfaction (of the expected words and tunes fixed in the mind) makes this process feel good to us. In fact, hearing a live version of the song, with different tempo, and arrangement, perhaps the odd bum note, can grate against the expected version in our heads. We experience an expectation gap. But a few listens to the new version can often replace the old one, and one can come to prefer it, bum notes included, thus eliminating that expectation gap.

I also see an element to this in moral thinking. One occasionally hears the theist ask the non-believer ‘Haven’t you ever sinned?’, or ‘Are you without sin?’. It’s a very revealing question, I think. The theist is adamant that he *has* sinned, but what does that mean? When confronted with a situation requiring a course of action, everyone establishes a notion of ‘what they should do’. This normative moral construct is then used to drive one’s course of action. Sometimes one fails to follow that (apparently) prescribed course of action, and this produces an uncomfortable feeling within us; our *expectations* have not been met. Once again we suffer an expectation gap, and the theist is inclined to assign guilt to this uncomfortable feeling.

(Of course, whether or not one has sinned is pretty irrelevant to the anti-Pelagian Christian denominations. For them, everyone is sinful, even before they’ve had a chance to do anything! I’ve often thought this means that real time sinning has no ill effect for them – ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’)

But the normative construct causing this expectation gap is a result of one’s genetic, evolved altruism, culture and education. All these elements are variable, so any ‘sin’ is variable. In fact, the individual’s prescription could be wrong (may well be wrong), so the feeling of ‘sin’ could be mistaken. To base one’s 'guilt' on this would be an error, but we see this amongst the religious all the time. And conversely we see with psychopaths that it’s possible not to feel *any guilt*, even when clearly doing wrong. So to base one’s worldview on this doubtful construct is not wise. We need to establish a normative ethic through reason and negotiation with others. No-one can ever establish such things reliably in isolation.

Well, this is layman speculation, obviously; do all mammals (animals?) create these expectations, and expectation gaps? They must to a certain extent, I suppose, but presumably not with the degree of sophistication of the human mind. Otherwise one would expect chimpanzees to point and laugh if they saw a human slip on a banana. Or perhaps they do?

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