Intro to Extralogical Deism

It may seem strange that someone would create a philosophy that emphasizes avoiding wrongness over ascertaining correctness (extralogical, ER, calls this unwrongness). It might seem stranger that he would then base a religion on that philosophy. Most people associate religions exclusively with ontologies (studies of being) and ethics (philosophies of action), and not at all with epistemologies (philosophies of knowing). Nearly all religions and other “universal” philosophies invalidate themselves from the first by failing to construct an epistemology that undergirds the others in respective order, as universal philosophies should (this, of course, does not mean all elements of them are invalid). Religion’s lack of epistemology is clearly due to its absence everywhere else.

 

Extralogical reasoning reengineers your thinking for Unwrongness. This distinguishes it from “super-logical reasoning,” reasoning that emphasizes correctness and high-power deductive reasoning skills. Unwrongness centers on three convictions: that ascertaining correct answers is harder and less beneficial than most think; that wrong beliefs are more dangerous; and when one needs or desires correctness, suspending judgment results in better understandings than hasty ones even if the overall conclusions are the same. ER is also a religious philosophy and philosophy of Nature; both of which draw heavily on Complexity/Complex system theory. Examples of Complex systems include ecosystems, economies, societies, psychologies, the puzzle of life, and, ultimately, Nature itself. CST teaches that causality in Complex systems has limited ascertainability, reinforcing Unwrongness. As you’ll see, Complexity plays a central role in ER’s ontology.      

 

For the rest of ER epistemology, I refer you to the summary intro. Now I will introduce its ontology.

 

 

Extralogical Ontology 

 

Unwrongness takes extra things into account, deviating from logic and science at face value. After making these extra considerations, however, it’s about as logical and scientific as you can get. That said, although you probably agree that science and religion can work together, because of religion’s need to meet ontological, sentimental, and ethical constraints, additional logical compromises are necessary. Thus, Unwrongness will have to become tolerable wrongness. But while my ontology will bear many elements of questionable consistency with reality, sufficiently self-consistent models can be realized (don’t sneer: What you call “reality” is bottomed on the exact same modeling principle). Ultimately, Extralogical Deism aspires to create a tolerably wrong and emotionally satisfying ontology that compliments the rest of ER. Judge for yourself whether I was successful.      

 

 

Religion is often stigmatized, but it's not religion that's the problem--it's their human adherents. As said in other posts, when failure is met with the nominal use of certain methods, critics are too quick to blame the methods without taking sufficient look at how they were used. Anything can be poorly pursued, no matter how potentially beneficial, and ER is no exception itself. It's foolish to believe there's such a thing as an unconditionally "good" thing. If simply subscribing to an ideology guaranteed its appropriate application, no one would benefit from religion in the first place.    

 

Religion is useful because faith and guidance are useful. Seeking empowerment, everyone wants to believe in something greater than themselves. But like everything else, no matter how inherently wise, it's easily pursued unwisely, requiring intelligent management. Faith is belief DESPITE incomplete understanding. This invites wrongness, and a certain amount of readily available understanding is just as readily sacrificed to allow for faith. Blind faith often results from idolatry—or blind worship. This includes knowledge idolatry. Worshiping knowledge cultivates the working belief that knowledge is more important than wisdom and exacerbates people’s already-excessive attachment to preferred and preconceived notions. If someone or thing is so enlightening, then the focus should be on that: Idolatry distracts from learning; it leads to dogmatic learning, over-reliance, and blind zealotry; and, oftentimes, raving and worshiping are confused with the act of acting on the lessons that manage to be learned.  

 

Presumably, the source of faith must be accessible and much more powerful than oneself. To accommodate the former, It and Its own purpose must be relatable and easily understood. In other words: It must be anthropomorphic enough to have a vested interest in human virtues; have a personal pronoun (Him by tradition and author’s convenience); and It must allow your ontology to satisfy the causation bias, the assumption of comprehensible cause and effect relationships. Gods are the ultimate causational default, convenient sources of causation for the otherwise unexplained. Other examples include government executives and other nominal leaders, parents, traumatic events, and conspiracy theories. A god’s power as a causational default can neatly (and, of course, conveniently) explain the existence of the Universe despite its total violation of everything known to humankind. 

 

Yet ER embraces Complexity and holistic thinking and, therefore, the Universe’s lack of anthropomorphic agency. 

 

Moreover, He must be measurably manifest and support epistemic and psychological constraints without magnifying what can’t be explained. Some inconsistencies with reality are inevitable, but that doesn’t necessarily eliminate the utility of your models so long as they remain sufficiently self-consistent. Embracing an absence of understanding is not the same thing as having the lack of it thrown in your face. Part of avoiding wrongness is making sure any inevitable paucity of knowledge won’t lead to confusion, wrongness, and disempowerment. In sum, unnecessary complication can be as dangerous as oversimplification, and, therefore, loose ends must be wisely culled. After all, Heinsberg’s dismissal of a hidden determinism in quantum mechanics didn’t stop it from revolutionizing the modern World.  

 

Superstition, as well as dependence on luck, disempowers self-agency, or the force that drives one’s ability to “make things happen” (and avoid the dangers of thinking “it will happen to them”). Given how incomprehensible a divine “plan” would be, an actively-interfering god that expects belief in miracles and “revelations” passed down by countless generations of hearsay creates intolerable wrongness, confusion, and disempowerment. This disqualifies the traditional Christian God.

 

But perhaps there’s a silver-lining here. Maybe the Universe’s lack of agency could explain its very purpose? Could some of the wonders of self-organization be a major part of what an omnipotent being is interested in? Most of Nature, including psychologies, ultimately falls back to Complexity. Nature and sentient psychologies are Complex systems, making their achievements those of Complexity. This includes the rise of human agency and its achievements, both intellectual and ethical. Everything that remains is still the product of self-organization. Solar systems and galaxies may not be Complex networks, but they remain wonderous self-organized phenomena. People’s moral and intellectual contributions showcase the powers of the Universe’s self-organization and create a better Universe, gratifying God and themselves. Maybe the Universe is all a divine experiment?

 

Thus, calling the Universe “a/The Self-organizational Experiment” that encourages sentients to maximize their self-agency seems tolerably wrong.

 

This religion should also connect adherents to other sentients for mutual empowerment. Who does extralogical reasoning and its creator have kinship with? Other scientifically-oriented philosophers, especially believers in democratic republicanism from the Enlightenment. While Franklin, Jefferson, and Adams were Christian or Christian-like, they and many other Men-of-Letters had another religion in common: Deism. 

 

 

Deism

 

Traditional Deism is founded on two ontological axioms, two ethics, and two sentiments. The two ontological axioms are, one, a Creator called God exists due to Existence itself and, two, that he hasn’t actively interfered in the Universe since bringing it and the laws of physics into Existence. ER Deism adds the self-organizational experiment as Existence’s purpose to the second.

 

First Ethic: Liberties called “natural rights” are granted EQUALLY to all sentients by God and Nature, and the only qualification for sentience is the ability to comprehend these rights.

 

These include the liberties protected by the Constitution and Bill of Rights such as freedom of opinion, privacy, religion, etc. They are protected because mortals can only protect them; they can’t grant them. They come from God and Nature, who don’t share their monopoly on truth with any arbitrarily large body of mortals (the second ethic). In fact, the definition of tyranny is that mortals can grant these rights and/or decide truth. Any time someone invokes their legal and social rights as if society’s sanction validates them is a promulgation of tyranny. And fuck them if they’re too ignorant to realize it.

 

In my second conceit to my POL and Extralogical Reasoning: Sapience, Sentience, and their Hypothetical Civilizations, I talked about sapience, a greater level of awareness. I explain that an evolutionary process, you can’t have any appreciable degree of self-awareness without self-delusion, and you become what humans pretend to be when you become aware of it enough to (in one way or another) create a working reasoning system that reengineers your thinking accordingly. This is called an epistemic Puzzle of life (POL, from Bishko’s life engineering). This would, hypothetically, allow people to make equal contributions to the Self-organizational Experiment and live in relative harmony with their environment for an extended period of geologic time. While writing the article, I started really questioning whether I was sapient, but I remain confident that humans by and large are not. However, my feeling has always been centered on the tragedy of people’s failure to become aware, never that I’m something more, merely not less.    

 

Science and common experience make clear that no race is significantly smarter than another and that other human universals are at best less applicable to the hyperintelligent. But questions that are too infrequently asked are, should it matter? should a hypothetical race ten percent less intelligent on average be denied equal opportunity? and even if some races, demographics, individuals etc. were as superior as some think/thought, would thinking in these terms be USEFUL? My answer to answer to both questions is an emphatic “no.” 

 

In Jeffersonian rhetoric, belief in inequality suffocates the germ of ethical and intellectual enlightenment. Or as Bish would say, “It really isn’t good for your attitudes.” Belief in the superiority of an “elite” discourages debate among competing viewpoints, repressing debate’s ability to catalyze learning and correct mistakes; hinders the self-agency of both “inferiors” and “superiors” by disparagement and cultivating entitlement respectively; suppresses potential contributions of the exceptional among the “inferior”; obscures God and Nature’s monopoly on truth; and fosters poorer morals and attitudes generally.   

 

And the very fact the so-called superiors couldn’t/can’t see this shows just how non-superior they really are.   

 

Second Ethic: God and Nature do not share their monopoly on truth with any arbitrarily large body of mortals.

 

A consensus in opinion and practice can’t determine right and wrong, and any suggestion to the contrary denies God and Nature’s monopoly on truth and is, therefore, an affront to God and Nature themselves. Violations of the second sentiment are one of the hallmarks of tyranny and elitism, as mentioned. Most of all, it directly and indirectly obstructs learning. This brings me to the sentiments.    

 

 

First Sentiment: Learning is about much more than truth: but ideas, thought processes, explanations, understanding, proficiency, and wisdom--which are maximized by UNIVERSAL SKEPTICISM. 

 

Truth and learning have nothing intrinsically to do with sentients, who are merely a means to an end. Consensus and expert opinions can’t determine fact (second sentiment); are very often wrong and inconsistent; and true learning wouldn’t come from unquestioned belief in authorities regardless. What makes someone a teacher is the very fact they never have to say, “Take my word for it”—and why I’ve always been constitutionally opposed to uttering it. If anything, the very notion of authority is an enemy of learning—and, therefore, an enemy of agency and freedom--and person/authority-centric learning is a sin in Deism.    

 

Don’t confuse a means to an end with an end itself. Some people and things are better means to an end--a better teacher, better book--but in the end, they’re only a means. A good teacher doesn’t want to be idolized—but exploited.

 

Don’t be blinded by the obvious advantages of right answers, either. When people realize something is important, they’re too quick to get confused and act like it’s the only thing that’s important. Learning and the quality of intellectual research aren’t just about the answers—but the questions, explanations/presentations, and data. Simply knowing a possible truth doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to act upon it, especially if it runs counter to your instincts.  

 

Universal skepticism is the foundation of wisdom, and universal skepticism is mutual skepticism combined with a desire to learn. Mere “acceptance” of ideas isn’t skepticism, but meekness; skepticism without self-skepticism isn’t skepticism, either--but arrogance. Disagreement can be healthy, but telling a person what to believe isn’t educational or ethical, and is destructive to a relationship. Discouraging universal skepticism is discouraging learning and intellectual achievement; discouraging learning is discouraging agency and freedom; discouraging agency and freedom is a blight on the Self-organizational experiment and a crime against Nature.   

 

Second Sentiment: Being opinionated is healthy (even if one is selective about their chosen beliefs), but in the end, FREEDOM of opinion and choice are more important than the QUALITY of sentients’ opinions and choices. 

 

A quote from Voltaire best characterizes this sentiment: “I disagree with everything you say, but I would give my life to defend your [legal] right to have it.” Harboring a philosophy that tends to alienate them from society, this sentiment allows extralogical reasoners to accept individuals and form friendships, despite inevitable differences.

 

 

As I hope I’ve shown, ER’s Deism is not just a set of non-unreasonable ontological beliefs of sentimental value; it’s useful, a creed to foster better people and a better universe. It’s designed to enhance learning, and learning is the force that drives progress in the journey known as life. Insanity is an incapacity to engage in intuitive life learning to correct one’s flaws, rooted in an inability to connect symptoms to “disease.” Life is about being a work in progress. That’s the journey. The destination is reaching your potential. ER Deism is a means to that end--for oneself, God, and the Self-organizational Experiment.