Mitchell9 McKain

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Mitchellmckain
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Mitchell9 McKain

Post by Mitchellmckain »

I was raised by a couple of extremely liberal psychology majors. So you can say that was my first dominant influence on my thinking. At 13 years old I was constructing a rational for morality based on the dictates of psychology -- i.e. what was was good to do based on what was good for psychological health. I had a basic commitment from this time to search for the truth via the methods and discoveries of science and since that was part of the way I perceived and comprehended the world it was unlikely I was likely to take anything seriously which contradicted them. In high school I fell in love with the writings of Albert Camus and existentialism and made my first forays in into Buddhist thought as well. In college I majored in physics and also took classes in symbolic logic, existentialism, and religions of China and Japan.

When I was at that Catholic school for that one year (6th grade) other students asked if I believed in God and I responded that the real question was what is God not whether he existed. This was a question which remained largely unanswered for me well into college when I was comparing the ideas of ideas of different religions to figure out what the word "God" could possibly mean. It was an attempt at suicide by my sister that made me decide the fundamental existentialist faith was that life was worth living and it seemed to me that the theists faith in God played an equivalent role in their thinking. That equivalence became a means for me to attach meaning to the word "God."

Because I was in Salt Lake city, it is inevitable that I would encounter the Mormons and form an opinion on what they were pushing. I compared what I read in their book with the Bible and I felt that the personality portrayed was different for the two books. While in college I encountered first the Jehovah Witnesses and then the moonies and I formed opinions about them as well. I found the writings of Scott Peck and his psychology approach to things was very appealing to me. From there I have step by step reconciled myself to the different issues in Christian theology to where I see myself as a Trinitarian liberal evangelical non-universalist open theist with preference to a more Eastern Orthodox understanding of atonement and original sin. However, I defend the rationality, morality, etc... of both theism and atheism. So I don't push Christianity and particularly reject the idea that salvation depends on belief.

So what do I "push"? I believe the diversity of human thought is a valuable asset for human civilization comparable to the value of the diversity of the gene pool for the species. But this doesn't mean there are no criterion for the judgment of human belief. For this I have the following...
1. logical coherence as the minimal condition for a belief to be meaningful.
2. consistency with the objective evidence (science) for a belief to be reasonable.
3. compatibility with the ideals of a free society for a belief to be completely moral.

Let's see... what else should I tell you.
1. Ontology - I like Aristotle modified by modern science -- everything is a form of energy. I particularly despise Plato and similar forms of idealism.
2. Epistemology - I like the pragmatism of Charles Sanders Pierce. I don't see much value in logical positivism and post-modernism.
3. Mind-body problem - I am physicalist in the sense that I think the mind is no less physical than the body, although I do not equate the mind with the brain. Instead I see an effective dualism operating because the mind is a non-biological form of life in its own right with it own memetic inheritance passed on to the next generation. On the other hand, I think there is a non-physical or spiritual aspect to reality outside the laws of nature and thus found only in our subjective apprehension. This reopens this question in terms of a spiritual-physical problem, according to which I ascribe to epiphenomenalism as the only answer which is consistent with the scientific facts.
4. Determinism - I think physical determinism is dead, excluded by the discoveries of science.
5. Free will - I am an incompatiblist. It is a difficult philosophical issue to be sure, but I think resolution can be found by going beyond the limitations of time-ordered causality.
6. Normative Ethics - I go for virtue ethics, meaning that the most decisive issue for determination of what is good is the impact something has on our own identity.
7. Social philosophy - I am a secularist (Christian secularist rather than secular humanist obviously) because I believe society/goverment must limit the force of rule to what can be objectively established. There must be a recognized separation from personal moral commitments for subjective reasons which are perfectly valid reasons for governing your own behavior but which cannot expect any compliance from other people.
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