Ep. 91: Should you be true to yourself?

[Brad]

Very much my pleasure, NHB.
I've loved Stephen Fry ever since he played Jeeves in the hilarious series based on the PG Wodehouse stories (vs. that fellow who is now "House," who was also hilarious as Bertie, a complete opposite of the House character). Now he has a funny talk show on the BBC that I try to catch now and then when in London.

In this case, Fry said some interesting things that made me think, once again, that what we do here, i.e., argue to believers that their faith is misplaced, might or might not be such a good idea. Maybe a fit subject for discussion in the atheist section?
In any event, his admonition about being shown or inspired versus merely being told (or commanded) can apply in several ways on both sides of the belief fence, methinks.

[Brad]

I'm trying to imagine how anything can be "selfless." My conclusion is that it's probably impossible.

By coincidence, I'm about half way through Twain's very thought-provoking What is Man at the moment. It's ALL about whether such a thing as selfless motivation is possible and also addresses, without using the terms (so far, anyway), free will and determinism.

I'd recommend it highly to you, humanguy, and to anyone else who likes thinking about these subjects.
And btw, it sounds like you and I and Emery and to a very large degree at least, Scott, and perhaps Mr. Clemens/Twain, are all largely in agreement on the existence of "selflessness."

[humanguy]

I'm trying to imagine how anything can be "selfless." My conclusion is that it's probably impossible.

By coincidence, I'm about half way through Twain's very thought-provoking What is Man at the moment. It's ALL about whether such a thing as selfless motivation is possible and also addresses, without using the terms (so far, anyway), free will and determinism.

I'd recommend it highly to you, humanguy, and to anyone else who likes thinking about these subjects.
And btw, it sounds like you and I and Emery and to a very large degree at least, Scott, and perhaps Mr. Clemens/Twain, are all largely in agreement on the existence of "selflessness."

Excellent. Thanks for the recommendation, Brad.

[marcuspnw]

The podcast discussion about selfish/selflessness reminded me of a "Friends" episode, (season 5 episode 4) to be exact. It would have been more fun if one of you had taken Phoebe's side instead of both being on Joey's.

Would unrequited love qualify as a selfless action by Scott and Emery per their mutual definition and only if the lover is both tormented and not a masochist? I wonder. If so, then many of us were quite selfless in our teens!

[mitchellmckain]

Would unrequited love qualify as a selfless action by Scott and Emery per their mutual definition and only if the lover is both tormented and not a masochist? I wonder. If so, then many of us were quite selfless in our teens!

Perhaps the teens is a time in which some start to fall in love with the idea of love itself. But then there is a question about what idea of love they fall in love with and this contributes enormously to the compatability problems between people. But since the love I am talking about here is an idea, it is not restrained by practicalities. And love itself isn't restrained by rationality. Thus the idea of love that one can fall in love with, can be a self-less love -- however unreasonable some people might find that idea to be. I am not saying that this is always how people come to have self-less love, but I do think it works that way for some people.

Perhaps the role of these different ideas of love is what contributes to the enormous difficulties in understanding love rationally -- not because mind and reasons do not play a role but because its great diversity makes it difficult to nail down the concept.

[humanguy]

Would unrequited love qualify as a selfless action by Scott and Emery per their mutual definition and only if the lover is both tormented and not a masochist? I wonder. If so, then many of us were quite selfless in our teens!

Perhaps the teens is a time in which some start to fall in love with the idea of love itself. But then there is a question about what idea of love they fall in love with and this contributes enormously to the compatability problems between people. But since the love I am talking about here is an idea, it is not restrained by practicalities. And love itself isn't restrained by rationality. Thus the idea of love that one can fall in love with, can be a self-less love -- however unreasonable some people might find that idea to be. I am not saying that this is always how people come to have self-less love, but I do think it works that way for some people.

Perhaps the role of these different ideas of love is what contributes to the enormous difficulties in understanding love rationally -- not because mind and reasons does not play a role but because its great diversity makes it difficult to nail down the concept.

Very well-put, Mitch.

[Brad]

Scott mentioned in the podcast that God likes to refer to himself using the analogy of a jilted lover. As I understand the concept, this places humanity in the role of “jilters.” I remember hearing that framing of God’s and/or Jesus's feelings or point of view in a sermon or two, but have to admit it seemed goofy to me even before I gave up on believing. Isn’t the underlying effect behind making us all “jilters,” whether or not the analogy has Biblical foundation, to cause the audience, often including children, to feel guilty and sinful for just being human – and alive? Oh, I forgot - that's the whole idea, right?

So we’re the creatures God created “in His image,” yet we creations are supposed to feel guilty or sorry for the creator because He made us to be human, imperfect in love as in virtually everything else, and we are accordingly disappointing to Him? God, the creator of the universe, feels “jilted” by the likes of us? What kind of potter blames the pot if it’s lopsided? And in God’s case, He was supposed to have made not just the pot, but the “clay,” too.

May we begin at “the beginning?”
The Eve character disappoints God, hurting his feelings by listening to the serpent and eating a piece of fruit, sharing it then with the man, Adam.
God then casts the hapless couple out of his garden, condemning them and all subsequent humans forever to suffer and die – to endure fires, tsunamis, cancers, holocausts, and horrific cruelties such as the recorded moaning of Michael Bolton and Walker, Texas Ranger.

Doesn't this make God kind of like the person who buys a puppy then throws it in the pound (or drowns it in the bathtub) after it chews on a chair leg? "Damned thing didn't love me! It just wouldn't listen!"
(And according to Don Johnson, it wasn’t about disobedience, just a lack of love – from Adam and Eve, of course, not from God. Why, doesn’t everybody except Emery know that tenet of real Christianity?)

What titles and adjectives would we use for any other “lover” or mate or any other being, for that matter, who would act in such a bizarrely extreme and vicious way? Would the term “jilted lover” continue to be the most appropriate descriptive term, even as a metaphor?

And what might we call anyone else, jilted lover or no, who responds to perceived jilting with murder and genocide as God does throughout the OT starting with the flood story? I’d guess we’d have stronger terms than “jealous,” another label God is said to prefer for himself (at least according to the Englishmen who bequeathed us the KJV).

A jilted lover is one for whom we might feel sympathy, no? Maybe it’s just me, but I’d have a hard time feeling sympathy for a thinking being, “jilted” or not, who would torture a faithful servant like Job or command a father to kill his son just to see if he would do it or would send “she bears” to maul children because they teased an old bald guy. Talk about thin-skinned! And maybe thin-haired?

God, of course, is absolved of all moral responsibility, no matter what he does. It's got to be good, it's from God!
(Somehow this concept reminds me of an old tv advertisement, "You can tell from the smell - it's Hormel!)

Do you, Scott, really buy the “jilted lover” analogy?
If so, why?

And how might it make a difference whether one thinks these tales are literal and historical or “literary,” except that the latter is more useful in explaining their obvious implications away with serpentine (pardon the pun) rationalizations?
I suppose it's superfluous to say at this point, but in addition to the old Hormel ad, all these sorts of things remind me of something Julia Sweeney said to the effect that, "At some point, lots of things that are invisible start to bear a striking resemblance to things that don't exist."

[marcuspnw]

If I’m not mistaken, Johnson took a swipe at an essentially identical false dichotomy in his interview with Emery when he seemed to suggest that people have a choice between becoming atheists who have no moral foundation and inevitably become nihilistic hedonists or they can become believing Christians.

Brad, I noticed that, too. I am disappointed. I guess I have no choice but to hide my "Eyes Wide Shut" party mask for the duration of the "Johnson" podcasts.

[mikedsjr]

A quick scan.....but i will read the whole thing later.....but I'm stunned that I agree for the most part with Mitch.

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1 John 4: 7-12 (esv) says,

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

The audience.......audience, what are you doing on christian and an atheist, audience?.INTRO of darkness, then redness then whiteness...(sorry....been watching Toby Turner)

The audience is Christians in these verses.

Let us, Christians/believers in Christ, love one another, for love is from God. [Let me emphasized to you what this means, so] whoever loves has been born of God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God is love. As I teach my son, "we are to Love, because God is love". So what is this love? If a person can have the ability to love a wife forever and they do not know God, then this love they have for their wife is not God's love. If a person can feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and build homes for the homeless and they still don't know God, then these good things they are doing is not of God's love. They are good for humanity, but they are still rejections of God. And if God is love, then they are rejecting love.

The scripture above says, "In this is love, not that we have loved God...". because we can't love God. Romans 3 tell us that that we do not seek God at all.
The scripture goes on above and says, "...but the He loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins". Love came from God first.

And for a subject like this, or Don Johnson's sermon, done in church, even a high school class, it should be understood the subject is for Christians. This isn't for non-christians. If the person says they are a Christian and believes they can just go sleep with any girl/guy/it they want is either demonstrating they are tares among wheat or they are disobeying God and trying to live the, "This is my life" way of american life.

[mitchellmckain]

A quick scan.....but i will read the whole thing later.....but I'm stunned that I agree for the most part with Mitch.

I would take that what mike says here to mean that he agrees on the issue of self-less love, for that is the content of my smaller posts and the overall theme of the discussion so far. I think it is likely that if he read the longer post responding in detail to the podcast and Don Johnson's sermon that he would find things to disagree with.

[mitchellmckain]

In mike's addition to his post perhaps you can see what there is in my posts that he resonates with and thus perhaps what he really agrees with.

I cannot point to anything in this that I exactly disagree with, but can only point out that this is not the way I would have said things. I would not redefine love as something that people cannot do in the way that he seems to be doing, though perhaps when mike does this he is simply clarifying what kind of love is meant when the apostle Paul says that "God is love". Nor would I say as he does that not knowing God means that everything you do is a rejection of God and would deny the implication that these are things that God cannot value. That makes a picture of God that is too self-centered for me believe in -- and when I observe that, I also notice that mike doesn't actually use the word "self-less", suggesting that all he really cares about is the word "God".

In the last paragraph, you can see mike agreeing with the idea that "be true to yourself" is not meant for your relationship with God but rather for your relationship with the world. But you can see that mike takes this in a direction that I would not. For mike the latter seems to be something that must be rejected completely, but for me that does not fit in with Jesus' words about the greatest commandments, which is both to love God with everything you have and to love your neighbor as yourself. And that last bit we see a discord between the Bible and what mike and Don are preaching. There is a love for yourself in the Bible and it comes before a love for your neighbor. Now it is true that the Christians would say that this love for yourself must come from God, by seeing the value that God sees in you, rather than taking your value from other people, from the things that you do, or from the things that you have. All of these are not only idolotry but they put your self-worth on very shaky ground.

Perhaps where mike and I part company is what I see as an idolotry of words. So when I see an atheist or the world using the words "be true to yourself" to reject all these ways in which people put their own value on the flimsy basis of deeds, other peoples opinons or possessions and instead take it from a fundamental faith or starting premise, then frankly I see something that beyond the words is in fact very similar to what the Christian means by taking ones value from God. I don't reject all of that just because it dares to omit the magic words of "God" or "Jesus" as if it requires a "Christian stamp of approval" to give it any truth value.

[humanguy]

I want to see an example of a person who is being false to himself.

Is it really possible for a person to be anything but true to himself? If so then what would it require for a person to be "untrue" to himself?

[mitchellmckain]

I want to see an example of a person who is being false to himself.

Is it really possible for a person to be anything but true to himself? If so then what would it require for a person to be "untrue" to himself?

I can understand why you ask this, because for me personally, it is inconceivable. It is difficult for me to think of any time in which I was untrue to myself. But I have seen it in other people. People who allow themselves to be pressured into things. People who constantly think in terms of the things which they have to do because someone basically said they have to do it, when it is quite clear that those are things that you would do if you want to rather than have to. It is definitely something that happens a lot in religion but that is hardly the only place where people are pressured by others to do things they don't really feel comfortable or any personal motivation for doing.

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On further thought, I think I have uncritically accepted a view of this that is black and white. On reflection, how can we live our lives without what we do being some compromise between our own ideas and the ideas of others? Ones relationship with family and friends, but especially with teachers and bosses makes this untenable, and in those relationships we do things to make other people happy. So the advice, "be true to yourself" is not this black and white thing about something you should never ever do, but rather something to remember at the end of the day so that you don't become completely lost in the ideas and desires of other people -- to remember that somewhere in this that it is your own life and so you should not forget this so completely that there is nothing of you in what you do, which isn't just about what you want for you (i.e. just selfish) but also about what you believe and what you choose to do for whatever reason. So even if you live your life totally for other people, at the end of the day you need to make sure that this is your choice of what you want to do with your life and that you don't start telling yourself that this is what have to do and that you have no choice.

[GeoMan]

Just listened to this podcast. I agree that it is impossible to be selfless. Everything I have ever done on purpose has been selfishly motivated. To those who disagree, let me pose a problem.

Most people (and probably all Christians) would agree that it is good to give a hungry person food. I have done it before, and it made me happy. I felt like I had done the right thing. BUT if I felt a little bit sick afterward, if I felt guilty for giving the poor guy some dinner, I probably wouldn't do it again. Would you? If doing right felt wrong, would you still do it?

I think we do good because it makes us feel good--ultimately, a selfish motive. I think God designed us that way. The evolutionary benefit of positive feelings about altruism would also make sense.

[mitchellmckain]

J I felt like I had done the right thing. BUT if I felt a little bit sick afterward, if I felt guilty for giving the poor guy some dinner, I probably wouldn't do it again. Would you? If doing right felt wrong, would you still do it?

OHHH! You mean like if a some gang of assholes saw you and decide to beat you up for doing what they say is such a ding bat thing to do. Yeah I imagine that a lot of people would obediently do what the creeps told them to do and look for a hole to crawl into -- maybe even lick their boots a little. Yeah there are indeed a lot of people like that, who really don't give damn about anybody else and only do "good deeds" if they think it makes them look good and earns them brownie points. But however much such worms repeatedly tell themselves that everyone would do the same thing. It just isn't true.

I think we do good because it makes us feel good--ultimately, a selfish motive.

Perhaps you do at that. You would know. However I do not think that you speak for everyone.

I think God designed us that way.

I on the other hand, do not believe in design. We make our own choice and decide for ourselves what kind of person we want to be.