Religion: A useful theory?

Over many years I have thought about religion, listened to speakers of various beliefs and found myself arguing on both sides of debates. Eventually however, the tide of my thoughts turned, leaving me dissatisfied with religion. I hope here to list one of my main problems: religion is a poorly formed theory to use to make prediction.

To start with, I'd like to boil down the idea of religion. Religion comes in many different forms and types; most commonly it is a set of beliefs about a deity, a supernatural being of some sort. By some definitions, everyone has a religion, so I will restrict it for now to just those who believe in an all powerful deity and received truths such as ancient texts. Almost every religion professes to be the truth, or at least a truth. First I will consider religions that profess to be the only truth. This would contain most religious people, after all, the main Abrahamic religions tend to fall under this category.

Faith

At the basis of many religions there is faith. The Oxford English Dictionary states that faith is:

1. Belief, trust, confidence.

 a. Confidence, reliance, trust (in the ability, goodness, etc., of a person; in the efficacy or worth of a thing; or in the truth of a statement or doctrine).

So faith is an acceptance of a truth, acknowledging that something is correct as far as we know and usually the implication is therefore to base ones actions upon it. It's the axioms you base your logic upon. For example I have faith that my mobile phone can send messages hundreds of miles reliably. I derive this partially from my faith in my senses to be roughly true. As a result I use it to communicate with my friends on a regular basis, and trust that what comes up on the screen is actually my friends who I meet in the flesh want to say. More basic is truths I find it hard not to accept, like that I exist and the world I see around me follows certain physical laws. I base this on observation, and what I have learnt fitting with observation. My observation, in turn are based on my faith in my senses, after all, what else can I believe in? I believe in gravity because I need to describe how things stay on the ground. A certain amount of faith combined with strong evidence (and lack of it to the contrary) allows me to hold the faith that gravity does work, that every mass near the surface of the earth is pulled towards it at an acceleration of 9.81 metres per second squared (unless acted upon by a non-negligible force).

It would not be unreasonable to say, by the scientific method that my beliefs are based on how reliably it fits the world I see around me.

I think we can agree that the scientific method is the best way to make a decision. Logically, it is the best way we can make predictions about future sensory input from current sensory input. I.e. the scientific method is the best way to evaluate and understand your reality. Very quickly, what is it? Make a theory, develop a prediction (hypothesis) from the theory, test that prediction. If it fits, try more predictions, test it forever (i.e. continually adjust to new evidence). If it doesn't, amend your theory and try again.

So up to now, religion is fine, lets say it's a theory. It's a statement about reality that can be used to make predictions. Let's evaluate it as a theory, what makes something a good/useful theory?

Reliability

For this subsection, lets say we come across several theories, each of which is a religion or belief set. The test of whether or not a theory is useful is its reliability: how often the predictions it makes fit with reality. Tied into this is how sure the theory was of the prediction (what margin of error did it concede) and how precisely it was defined. If a theory consistently produces correct results, it is reliable.

Simplicity

There's something great about simplicity. As a mathematician it is what makes me tick. As Hardy said “A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.” The simplicity of the groups axioms which create amazing structures and interesting results when combined with intuitive constructions. Or the very basis, the Peano axioms, which alone can hold up the vastness of number theory. But that is just me rambling, more tangibly (and built on maths) are Newtons laws. Summed up with a simple F=ma, along with the law of gravitation which takes just the two masses and the distance between them, can explain the intricate and complex behaviour of our solar system to an amazing degree of accuracy. Instead of this simplicity, we could say that all celestial bodies are drawn to each other by magic pixies, and we are held on the earth by invisible ropes. Now you could say that's almost easier to understand, but it makes so many assumptions (the pixies have always been there, they are ultimately clever, they are invisible, impossible to interact with, they are reliable with mathematical accuracy). And these just aren't required, we could forget all about these sentient pixies, and have one assumption: one force gravity, interacts with mass with this relationship. Its the principle of Ockham's razor: "The [hypothesis] that makes the fewest assumptions should be selected." Especially if the two theories produce the same results, as assumptions should be cut down to a minimum.

And there's another problem with religion, it invokes a God: a sentient, complicated uncreated creator. When all that's needed is one law: things came into beginning at the start of time (as we can tell). This gets rid of messy questions and needless assumptions. We don't have to look far to find awkward questions because of the existence of God, it on the tip of everyone's tongue: Why won't God forgive everyone? Why doesn't God stop the pain? In the assumption department we have more problems. If we have this God who is a bit like us but more powerful, we have to put him in his own universe with its own rules (more assumptions). How does God interact with this reality we know and love? (more assumptions and laws)

It may be commonly argued that science is constantly changing and therefore cannot be claimed to be the truth. This is partially true, science attempts to constantly improve; better, more succinct and accurate theories replace old ones. To avoid the continuum fallacy, you should think of science getting closer and closer to the correct answer. If we get closer, this doesn't mean we were far away before. The strength of a theory is not based one whether or not a better one is produced, but how strong the evidence actually is. So it isn't correct to use theories which are more complex and less accurate. We use the best one we have at the time.

What's the point in a theory?

A theory gives us a framework for looking at the world, it can make predictions and statements about the reality we inhabit. To use gravity as an example, it allows us to understand nearly all of rocket science; space exploration is based on the ideas of Newton, it can for example accurately predict how much fuel is required to leave earth. To give you some perspective, NASA managed to get to the moon and back without considering quantum or relativistic effects, just plain old Newton. Gravity and the rest of Newton's laws provide us with definite, quantifiable predictions which are tested time and time again to be shown to be true (to a high degree of accuracy for low speeds up to around 1% of the speed of light).

This brings us to the second case, religions which do not claim to be only or total truth. These tell us nothing for sure, and are useless for prediction. A theory which states x is true sometimes, with no qualification of when is near useless. Again, like all unfalsifiable claims, unless it has contradictions it cannot be false but we can say it is useless. And if a religion is somewhere in between the two, the set can be split into parts and critiqued separately. Either a specific Religious claim can be falsified, or it is pointless in this reality to use as a theory.

The point of a theory is to make definite, well defined statements about reality. Usually this is with a view to use it for prediction, which also entails constant testing.

Now, I don't want to offend religious people by putting it on the same pedestal as horoscopes, it was an extreme example to demonstrate the idea. Religion is a much better developed theory than astrology. Most religions have a/some powerful god/s (compared to us), we can consider two distinct cases from this. The god/s do interact with the physical world or they don't. Firstly, if the gods did interact with things we could see and detect the interaction, I don't know of any conclusive studies which show such predictions from holy books being detected but I could be wrong. However, in this case, at least the theory is potentially useful. If the god doesn't interact then the theory is useless as well as completely unprovable, it would make no useful predictions or explain any phenomena and logically should be eliminated.

Well Defined

This brings me to my final point, the strength of a theory is also based on it's certainty and how interpretable it is. For example to say "something is going to happen today" is correct but vague in many ways. You must have precisely definable terms and not make general statements. A classic example is horoscopes, they nearly always make correct statement without actually telling you anything useful. One I randomly found on the internet:

"Friends born under the Fixed signs of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius could offer the best kind of support over the next couple of days. You might need to access your own ability at detachment. A degree of confusion about a deadline is likely. Financially, however, all is likely to be clear - but not particularly pleasant. These issues may need to be addressed sooner rather than later."

Take the two highlighted phrases, they are near contradictory and actually describe the majority of financial situations we find ourselves in. Furthermore, there is no surety about these, there is no quantifiable way of measuring how right they were. The reading of horoscopes is therefore a poor theory, even discounted having no logical basis, they are pragmatically useless as a theory of how the universe works.

Similarly vague statements have little predictive power, particularly when they can be interpreted in so many ways. Being certain about something vague is analogous to being uncertain about something definite.

For example, saying

"Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever." 2 Samuel 7:16 (NIV)

is incredibly vague. At one point, this would have clearly referred to the physical line of David, however years later Paul was able to bend it to refer to the non-physical line including Jesus. This happens often today, if we define things in terms of some other more definite things, we could then make useful predictions. But we can't, every denomination disagrees. The more realistic denominations provide definitions so useless that it is a tautology or simply references something equally as badly defined.Thanks to the law of large numbers, someone is likely to make an interpretation that is correct, but this is no thanks to the poor theory. In this case its predictions are useful for only a small number of people, and only by chance.

For comparison, consider f=ma, where each term is defined relative to some exact object (for example a metre ruler) and their relationship mathematically. Newton's laws leave little room for interpretation and post-hoc reasoning. Admittedly, there is some amount of interpretability with everything, but it is clear to see that some things allow more than others. Almost everyone around the world with A level equivalent physics knowledge knows how to interpret f=ma. It's accuracy is high for a large percentage of people, it is a useful theory.

Summary

We use theories all the time, some of them we test and some of them we don't. The scientific method (almost by definition) is the best way to decide, whether or not we should a certain theory. Religion constitutes a terrible theory, that, when scrutinised offers very few helpful and accurate predictions. 

In summary, you can believe in an all powerful God who made everything (it is possible and it is a theory), however, it is not only more complex and less accurate, but riddled with inconsistencies. Furthermore, it is useless for solid predictions as it is open to so many wildly different interpretations. We can explain the universe accurately, reliably and in a well defined sense without a God.

"it is superfluous to suppose that what can be accounted for by a few principles has been produced by many" Thomas Aquinas (Ironic I know, I'll come back to this)

PS: I apologise that this article is somewhat confused, it has been written over a long period of time and has become a little unwieldy and haphazard.

Why do I do it?

It's a question I ask myself a lot, why do I spend a large chunk of my time writing a blog which is read by very few? One reason I like to tell myself is to improve my writing, although I'd be hard pressed to notice a difference. I'll keep on that one.

Another reason is to record my thoughts for myself. That was my original idea, after finding my memory was like a sieve. I would find myself having regular deja vu, re-"discovering" things. Having the words on the internet somewhere doesn't always directly help, but the act of writing itself seems to cement things in my mind a little better.  I suppose I can read back over what I have wrote, but I rarely do so, and when I do, it only reminds me how little I knew. So perhaps that's a plus, instead of telling myself that I did know something in the past, it tells me "yeah, you are making progress/you used to be an ignorant twat." To go even further off course, one day I'll read this and maybe think the same, how meta (okay, reading over that already makes me think that).

It also acts as a kind of filter, when thinking of a large idea I can lose track of the details. Getting it down on paper helps to lay it all out and potentially simplify it. Most of all I find it helps to make me notice when it's bullshit (which is why I have lots of unpublished and abandoned posts that you can't see).

This blog also allows me to properly set out what I believe for future reference. I think it is important to be able to call up previous conclusions, along with what should be reasonable logic to base then upon. And so in a slightly meta sense, I want this post to lay out my ideas about what this blog achieves and its limitations. I think I have covered what little it achieves, next, the limitations.

Many of my posts are about religion, this is mostly due to the fact that I come from a deeply religious family, and this is the best place to vent these. This has always been the case, but this blog is the only place that won't tire of my tirades. I think I may have exhausted the patience of most of my friend groups in this regard. Either my friends are all Christian and I don't want to offend them or they are strong atheist and they already know. I suppose I'm a little late to the atheist party, which means I'm still working through the arguments.

I'm not an expert on anything I talk about, I write almost completely on things other than maths, which is the only thing I can vaguely call myself an expert on. Furthermore, I don't spend enough time researching, they are predominately my thoughts. They aren't completely unresearched but not to the level I would expect of a professional blogger/journalist.

Fallacy fallacy and the big picture

The fallacy fallacy, apart from being a little more meta than its cousins, essentially boils down to this: the existence of a fallacy in an argument does not make the conclusion false. This is quite a straightforward fallacy once you have your head around it, essentially, an argument can be complete rubbish and/or the premises false, and the conclusion correct. To give a flippant example:

All envy is purple, therefore 2+2=4.

In reality, the fallacy is naturally more subtle. An argument is often a large set of premises and lines of logic, naturally, one line could be wrong but the argument could still stand on just one line of argumentation. If you're reading an article and the writer makes an error in an argument, we are often more dismissive of the surrounding arguments and general point. When a mistake spills overs from an arguments, tainting our opinion of the writer and in turn the article, you could argue that it is an ad hominem. Of course, I would like to stress again, this is a decent heuristic. If I read about a guy trying to prove gay marriage is morally wrong because of how magnets work; I am going to completely disregard everything else he says there.

To stretch the spirit of the fallacy a little further, we often mistake flaws in a system for conclusive evidence the system should change. Law is a common example. People will point out one example of a miscarriage of justice and declare the whole system to be wrong or requiring change. In reality, law, a reflection of the complexity of human interaction, is also complex. To change a law to fix that perceived mistake, could produce net negative effects. The fallacy fallacy here is that we are misjudging the complexity of the situation, systems and arguments do not rely on one logical support. Of course, even one miscarriage of justice is worthy of consideration but it must be taken in context.

In a small meta twist, I would like to highlight a nested fallacy fallacy when considering fallacies (buffalo buffalo buffalo...). When we highlight fallacies, we can react to them by doing the opposite, which although may be the correct direction is not necessarily the right amount. The proper reaction to error is not to do a big jump in the other direction, but to reconsider that area of thought.

Sometimes, when an error is found, the conclusion is still completely correct. Although it is a decent heuristic to then consider the argument weaker, an even better reaction is to completely reconsider the whole argument, system or methodology to get the bigger picture.

The anthropic, cosmological razor

Lets say I make a billion boxes, each capable of simulating a simple universe. Let's say the box has one parameter, where the probability of it being "correct" is 1 in a billion. When the parameter is correct, the universe produces sentient life. The boxes are completely sealed, and there is no way for the sentient life to know there are other boxes.

Let's say life is produced in at least one box. What would it be correct for that life to reason? Imagine the lifeforms realised that there was only one parameter, and that the probability of it being sentient was 1 in a billion. Does this probability tell it anything about the initial conditions? Without understanding anything about the mechanism that produced them, they cannot infer a probability and therefore infer that something must have been skewed. What if in my box making machine that parameter is always set to the "correct" value? What if it's 50:50 for a "correct" and "incorrect" value? Well there's no way to know. The only way to experiment on this would be to witness several such creations, but we have defined that as impossible.

Is it even possible for them to correctly recognise the parameters? Think about our universe for a second, and the infinite number of ways it could vary. What about if gravity turned off every minute for just a tenth of a second? What if there was an extra fundamental force? My point is, all our knowledge of reality and what it is like, stems from our observations and subsequent analysis of it. Without actually testing anything about the parameters of the box making machine, they should be careful making statements about it based on their universe. Naturally, the same applies in our universe.

But can't we use our intuition? Well how does intuition about reality form? Humans are pattern recognisers, by familiarising ourselves with a set of causes and effects, we begin to recognise the patterns. From this we infer a mechanism, an inference to the best explanation. Our brains are colossal and amazing, truly, the fact we regularly make sense of such complicated and noisy data is astounding. However, we can get carried away and over-apply it. At the conclusion of the cosmological argument, many conclude that a personal, all powerful deity is the most intuitive cause. I would say that the origins of the universe and whether anything else exists is no question suitable for our everyday intuition or emotion. If you want to derive a God from what you feel is correct, you need to take the assumption that your feelings are an authority. I am not willing to take this unnecessary assumption, and the principle of Occam's razor would agree with me. Anyway, life has probably given you enough examples of where your feeling have been wrong, however decent they are as an everyday heuristic.

Back to this example, I am the creator of the boxes, I am the box making machine, but there is no way for the life form to know this. The life form could equally imagine an upper-universe (that's where I, the creator live), where I do not exist. They could imagine an upper-universe where I have three eyes. They could imagine a universe where I am a tea-pot. To eliminate me completely would be a correct usage of Occam's razor. If two theories produce the same outcomes, then the one with the least assumptions should remain. To see this, start with me; then simplify me, producing identical consequences. For example, I have one eye, I have no mouth... Until I am just a single statement, their universe is created.  I am unnecessary and untestable. Notice that they would be incorrect (absolutely incorrect) to say I don't exist, even if from their viewpoint they were logically correct to eliminate me.

To move our perspective back to our universe (but it equally applies to my fictional one too), consider the two explanations of our universe.

1.The universe began, and it was like this.

2.There is a creator with these set of morals and he began the universe, and it was like this.

Number 1 is uniquely simple, you could argue: "but you've made number 2 look complex with language". And I admit, that it is possible to obfuscate with language, but I will struggle to explain it without. If you can see a hole please say. Perhaps I can try to lay it out plainer:

2a. There is a creator with these set of morals and she began the universe, and it was like this.
2b. There is a creator with this other arbitrary set of morals and he began the universe, and it was like this.

They are all equivalently plausible, even if they are a little facetious. Perhaps you could agree the following is one less assumption.

3.  There is a creator and he began the universe, and it was like this.

If you keep eliminating parts, you find you are left with 1. Again, it's not that it must be true, it's simply all you can assert. Any more detail is both completely baseless and unnecessary.

My point is, there is currently no, and may never be, a way to know about what is outside our box. If we can make no physical statements about what is outside our box, we can't assign probabilities to it. Consequentially (as in by examining the consequences) the simplest explanation is simply that we are, ie we know nothing. All other explanations are at least currently useless and untestable, which is fine to believe in, but don't come telling me you're sure unless you're willing to present decent evidence.

I have seen arguments that go something like this: "The best theory from atheist scientists is to invoke a multiverse. But a multiverse doesn't help because what created that? Therefore, there's a personal God with a son called Jesus." First, presenting a false dichotomy between the multiverse and a Christian God is ridiculous and unnecessary. I would submit that the current best explanation is none at all, to accept that "this reality simply exists" is all we can reasonably conclude from what we know.

So where does a multiverse theory come from? As in, why was it devised? Why did the silly atheist scientists devise it? I would submit that this links back to intuition. This branch of physics, namely theoretical physics is a mathematicians game. Above all, they hold a certain intuitive sense of elegance and simplicity of theories. This is where the multiverse is born, as a nice and intuitive explanation. Do the scientists stop there? Well, the theoretical physicists may but it by no means becomes an established theory until evidence is found. If you will, for now the multiverse theory is just a plaything for mathematicians. It isn't supposed to be an explanation for everything, it's an intuitive and nice explanation for some people. It's easy to believe too,  and doesn't over reach. Because there is no evidence for it, it would be stupid to make decisions based on it. Likewise, even if you find God an intuitive explanation, that as evidence is not strong enough to warrant you to change your actions.

But you may say that we still need an ultimate explanation, from the cosmological arguments. But lets do a similar exercise as before.

1. There's an uncreated, sentient, omniscient, just and kind cause called God. This cause produced the universe.

2.There's an uncreated cause. This cause produced the universe.

Which one is preferable logically? I would suggest the second. It makes less assumptions. The explanation is no better by adding sentience, never mind the other attributes, because they both explain it all.

God although not impossible, is either untestable or there is currently insufficient evidence for him. We cannot conclude with any surety from intuition that God is required. We cannot conclude this from a priori logic either, as God is logically superfluous. To you this theory might feel unsatisfactory, but this is no grounds for logical discourse, reality is often cruel, heartless and disconcerting.

Why aren't the gospels reliable?

Are the gospels evidence for a divine being? And further, evidence that Jesus was the son of that being? It should come as no great surprise that I'm not the first to ask those questions, and I shan't be the last. The historicity of Jesus is probably a topic which historians have given more undue attention to than any other. Please note, I am not a historian, not even particularly knowledgeable about historical events or even methods of historical analysis. So when coming out as an atheist to Christian friends, it was a question I wasn't really expecting. I had put more of my efforts into more "a priori" arguments about deities, and not thought about historical evidence. Ideally, properly appraising the evidence would mean hours of research and proper tuition. But I can afford neither the time nor the money of a tutor, and even then I wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the sheer volume or quality of historians before me. I can however try to produce reasons as to why I may dispute the evidence. Here I hope to formalise my argument a little more, and cache it for future use.

Context and implications

Existence of divinity is an extremely important claim, it requires a huge amount of evidence. I can accept that Julius Caesar did this and said that with fairly large margins of error. The reason I can is that it really doesn't matter to me. Historical evidence of a deity and especially the link of one person to said deity is a really important question. If such a deity is real, I need to profoundly change my behaviour; it's not something I am going to accept without very certain evidence. In other words, I am sticking to my null hypothesis because of the huge implications of the tested hypothesis. At this point, you may feel an urge to tell me that this makes me evil, as if I am somehow avoiding God. I can demonstrate the circular nature of this with two arguments. Firstly, imagine you tell me that by jumping off a cliff I will achieve eternal happiness and life. In this case, the consequences under my current theory (no belief in any such supernatural mechanisms) are dire. I would need stupendous amounts of evidence to convince myself to do it. It is the same for religion, it will literally change the way I live, that's a big deal. Secondly, you would exercise the same caution when evaluating other religions and their books, and you would implore me to do the same if I was to look at the historicity of Muhammed. If you are compelled to reply to that with, "I have looked at Islam, and it really was silly and unbelievable", just seriously consider whether perhaps your cultural or confirmation biases would have affected your judgement at all. For more about my choice of the null hypothesis, read this post.

Bayes' Theorem

One qualitative assessment of Bayes' theorem is the need to consider prior evidence. If you'd rolled a dice 1000 times and every time it came up a one, and a friend told you that your next roll would be a six, you should be a little skeptical. You would also be skeptical of a historical document which talked about unicorns and dragons, because you have never observed any yourself. This is not unreasonable, the claim is extraordinary, and to quote Sagan: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If a historical document said that people generally went about doing normal peoplely things in the past, we'd be much less critical of it. It is not wrong to "view" the bible in such terms, it is indeed correct to require extraordinary evidence for the claims of miracles and of deity.

To use a further example: if you found a video of me shooting a laser out of my mouth, would you believe I possessed a power like some kind of gastronomical Cyclops? No, you would view the evidence in light of what you know about me, and about the source. You've never seen anyone shoot lasers out of their mouths, and you'd probably be right to say it's impossible within our current understanding of physics. Furthermore, you know that videos are easily and convincingly faked. It would be ridiculous and naive to believe I could. Of course, with the bible it is not so obvious, but think about the concepts which would lead you to reject or accept such claims.

Were they lying?

I was asked several times whether or not I thought the gospels were faked. I see this as a false dichotomy, on one end the early church conspired to mislead us and on the other, the whole bible is literally (like literally literally) true. In reality, humans are capable of everything from outright lies to honesty, but there's a lot in between where intentions are good but the outcomes are false. Biblical experts widely agree that none of the gospels were written by eye witnesses. It is perfectly plausible that the facts about Jesus were escalated, getting more and more fanciful as traditions began to form and people began to get caught up in this new messiah. Like a game of Chinese whispers, an increasingly fascinating story on top of someone who was probably a great teacher. Naturally, the accounts may all be true, but it is most certainly a large leap to suggest that it amounts to evidence. It is circular at best: there is a plausible pathway to the gospels being formed and not being literally true.

But how did a lie convince so many people? They plead. As people we are bombarded with huge amount of information from birth. Much of what we learn is simply copied and pasted from our culture and parents. Once a religion takes hold, it stays, and as I have mentioned before, strong religions remain. By definition. The weak religions die much more easily so the only ones that are left are the convincing ones. Obviously this is a theory, but it shows that there is a possible mechanism for convincing religions to form without any real truth behind them. Also, this argument falls apart when we consider other religions. How about Islam vs Christianity, both religions deny the authenticity of the other. Clearly convincing incorrect religions can form, convincing in fact to 2.2billion and 3.3billion respectively. People don't tend to lie, they bend facts with a whole slew of biases. Humans are really terrible sources for many reasons, especially in a religiously and emotionally charged environment.

Conclusion

The problem with looking back and making theories around the evidence is that there are an infinite number of possibilities that fit with any given set of evidence. It is no surprise that both theories fit. This is invariably what happens with all kinds of historical theories, I'm not saying history is wholesale tosh, far from it. Historians know how difficult it is to make concrete statements about past events. Obviously, this applies to all historical theories, even the one that Jesus was not divine. With the bar for proving the existence of a deity is so very high and the theoretical quality of the source is so low, it is inadequate to make even a weak claim.

In-groups and Stockholm Syndrome: The Musical

By what criteria do we judge music? It's some fuzzy quality, that when we listen to it, makes us want to float on the music; take it all in and absorb it. It's a quality that expresses emotions quickly and effectively, good music makes you feel empowered, it lifts you up a little bit in every way. Even sad music can lift you a little, reminding you that you're not the first person to feel that, or by temporarily allowing you to sympathise.

Uncharacteristically vague descriptions aside, music is a truly pervasive and powerful tool. Music can turn a crowd, a simple look at football chants shows us the powerful effects. It effectively polarises, perhaps when used socially it taps straight into our wish to be similar. Sometimes, this makes me wonder back about the "quality" of music. The most powerful music I have experienced sometimes correlates weakly with any ideas of high art: maybe a euphoric but cheesy Christian song, a primitive chant inducing solidarity or a shallow and repetitive beat that makes me go crazy.

The only common factor is that the music was a social act. I went along with the flow, it was the feeling of belonging and social acceptance that lifted me. Even if the song was annoying at first, it would grow on me because everyone else was enjoying it. Perhaps it's a big jump to say music is just Stockholm syndrome, but your music taste is defined almost entirely by what you listen to and what group you identify with. Perhaps there is some backward causation too, we are often drawn to people similar to us (in a mildly xenophobic way). I am over-simplifying what is an extremely complex behavior, but I can't seem to escape the feeling of that music quality is near arbitrary.

With a similar disregard for precise words and actual meaning as my first paragraph, read this review of Alt-J's "An Awesome Wave" from NME.

Alt-J indulge in impatient, complex songwriting. From the twisted a cappella interludes offsetting the distorted vocal and jagged guitars of ‘Intro’, to the wafting clap-happy breeze of ‘Dissolve Me’, each song flits between genres with the rapidity with which one would imagine Alt-J completed their algebra homework. ‘Breezeblocks’, starts as a smooth R&B groove before switching to a magnificent, clattering and sinister plea: “Please don’t go – I love you so!” The ‘In Rainbows’-indebted ‘Something Good’ is awash with piano and soaring melody. And while ‘An Awesome Wave’ might begun as some half-baked stab at a cinema concept album – ‘Matilda’’s drab strum is a paean to Luc Besson’s troubled child-star in Leon – it’s all the better for the added grit, real-life misery and heartache, as ‘Fitzpleasure’ attests. It’s a welcome injection of dirge, adding yet more sounds to the mix with rasping bass riffs and storming vocal before ‘Taro’’s finale, which fizzles disappointingly to the finish line.

Perhaps I have a unreasonably pessimistic view of art criticism but this previous paragraph strikes me as achieving very little. Sure, for someone who has experienced the album before, it does recall the feeling of listening to it. But, as a piece for expressing how good the album is to someone not in the indie rock in-group, it's useless. I suppose if we think we fit into NME's intended group it could work as a recommendation. It would express "I liked this, and as we like the same things, so will you". But we (I included) occasionally try to convince people outside of our music group that our music possesses some absolute, intrinsic quality. I'm probably being typically autistic and missing the point of such discussions but it always seems that we have the wrong end of the stick. Music taste is defined by who we hang out with and who we idolise. The music speaks to something within us, our identity and our experiences with no reference to intrinsic quality.

How do I conclude? Probably with the shocking revelation that music as an art is subjective, who knew eh? Well, not many, me included. I often thought of music as somehow different, as if there was a way to show that Justin Beiber's music is shit and Alt-J's is amazing. Of course, the stupidity of my statement appears now that I think about it, but as with many things, its trivial but not obvious.

I love easy wins

I was looking before at the book "The spirit level". It is a deeply divisive and influential book, with many people both supporting it and some making some seemingly valid criticisms of it. Right now, I don't want to take a side, I think of equality as a matter of morality; even if the evidence pointed the other way, I'd still want a more equal society. I want instead to consider what was going on in my head when I was looking into the book.

I was initially drawn to this book because of my left leaning. It looked great, evidence to justify my belief. My belief that an equal society is morally good means I want an equal society by any means (obviously within reason). When I find evidence which can achieve these ends, I jump for joy. But as you should be able to see, I am guilty of several fallacies: creating sides in a multifaceted debate, confirmation bias and the is-ought fallacy.

It doesn't end there though, I decided to check out criticism of the book, although I admit I went into war mode. I was looking for criticism so I could strike it down with my towering intellect and clearly correct information. As it happened, I brought only a pointed stick to a gun fight in both senses. My mind crawled away, wounded, cursing the day it ever decided to fight this battle and I gave up. Oh I can't be bothered with this it exclaimed.

And this reminded me of my previous post, I had missed something crucial. Not only do I give myself undue credit, not only am I prone to type one errors and not only that I turn debates into war. But I am also lazy! I like easy wins, unfortunately this was no easy win for my left centred brain. It struck me: I derive pleasure from winning, from being correct and shooting down other arguments, of course I will develop a complex where I avoid hard debates where my views will be challenged. I actually prefer to remain wrong and have a nice side to sit on and throw stones from than be buffeted by other people arguments and really engage with it.

You could call this self-flagellation, an in a way it is, I am pointing out my error in the hope that it will stick in my mind. To reiterate: Reality and morality are distinct and sometimes at odds with each other. The aim is to find the correct answer not for one side to win. I should not seek self affirming arguments. And to add to this: I should seek hard arguments and stop being so bloody lazy.

If you want to take a look at the debate:

A talk from the author summing it up: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

The blog of the book called the spirit level delusion: http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.co.uk/
A free pdf critique of the book: http://www.environnement.ens.fr/IMG/file/stages/A%20critical%20reading%20of%20The%20Spirit%20Level_Milos%20Simic-2.pdf

And heed my warnings.