Not only do I think MI:3 is the best Mission Impossible movie, it's also my personal favorite (yes, I make distinctions between "good" movies and "favorite" movies) of the series, and the only one I have ever bothered to watch more than once.
I’m super skeptical of implicit bias, especially after reading Jesse Singal’s The Quick Fix. Have you read it? It’s excellent and I’d love to hear your thoughts on his critique if you have.
I did read it, and liked it, and had a public discussion with Jesse about it. (Probably online somewhere). But there's a lot of excellent research on implicit bias--check out my original post to see some examples.
I haven't seen Mission Impossible:III and am certainly going to correct that. A sensible villain is one of the most rare of pleasures. Thanos must be my all time favorite.
Paul, I’m actually super interested in what you have to say about Dennett’s last interview with Peterson. I thought it was just fabulous. I’m particularly interested in the question of what gives ideas value and Peterson’s argument that ancient religious stories can be read in a way that maintains their practical benefit is appealing to me. I wonder what you think of that view.
Sorry, Yaniv, but I wasn't as impressed. I listened, hoping to see a final discussion of Dennett's many views. But I had no sense that Peterson knew anything about Dennett, except that he was an atheist, and he didn't seem even slightly interested. Instead Peterson spent the podcast--at least the part I listened to before giving up--presenting his own views about religion, and asking Dennett what he thought about them. I accept that if you find Peterson's views interesting, it could well be a great podcast. But I was hoping to hear Dennett.
Interesting. I've not heard the Dennett/Peterson interview, but I did sit through Peterson's supposed debate with Slavoj Zizek about Marxism/Communism. I came away with the distinct impression that neither knew anything about the other and that Peterson had never read any Marx or Marxist theory, which would be more palatable if he didn't consistently imply that he was some sort of lay expert on 20th Century political ideology, with a particular interest in Communism. Perhaps one day your publisher, Paul, will accidentally send you a copy of JP's itinerary and we'll get to hear the uncut version of your thoughts on him, behind a paywall somewhere.
I mean, luck would need a memory to keep track, no? He obviously meant that there's a law of large numbers that applies. One where the future expected luck is zero. And honestly, that's true almost by definition because if the expectation is not zero, then the deviation from zero cannot be called luck anymore. You would have to redefine what constitutes luck until you get a zero expectation.
I’ve been trying to read the Bible with my daughter, 13, and it’s been hard. There are so many cases where God acts in a morally questionable way: The directive not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, the lie about what would happen if they do, the subjugation of woman to man, the unexplained preference for Able’s sacrifice, the taunting of Cain, the flood, the Tower of Babel, going along with Abram's cowardly lies that Sarai is his sister, the demand for Issac’s sacrifice, the argument with Abraham over how many righteous men are needed to save Sodom, turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for looking back, going along with the incest between Lot and his daughters, the choice to make Ismael into a large nation that is a perpetual enemy of Issac’s progeny, the choice to favor the deceptive Jacob over the Esau… It just goes on and on. There comes a point where trying to defend God’s benevolence starts to feel intellectually dishonest.
I really get it. My own take on this -- very different from John's, I'm afraid -- is that reading stories from the Hebrew Bible is a bad way to get across the idea of an all good God. A jealous God, yes, a savage God, a loving God (yes, sometimes), a quirky and funny God (the scene where he's _negotiating_ with Abraham is wonderful--all of a sudden he's willing to negotiate????), but hardly a morally perfect being. But they are wonderful stories., and I hope you and your daughter keep reading them together.
Indeed it's such a delightful scene! I love it how Abraham makes sure to apologize before using the same argument again and again. It's like, does he think God is stupid?
It's one of the charms of the Old Testament God that while he can casually kill those who show the slightest sign of respect, he has a surprising tolerance for back talk, especially among his favourites, like Abraham and Moses.
What I could use is more rationally-oriented commentary on the Bible that is oriented around extracting as much value out of this text as we can. It's too easy and unfair and short-sighted to just tear it apart. I believe you have a comparative advantage in this and would love it if you'll consider posting more on the subject.
I think what you're touching on is that when we read the Bible we are reading something with a different relationship between author and reader than everything else we read. When the author is another human, we are generally on the same playing field in terms of understanding; typically, the author will understand a bit more than we do about some topics they write about but there will be parts or topics that the reader actually knows more about than the author for a variety of reasons, so we naturally question what we are reading because sometimes it is wrong. With God as the ultimate author of the Bible, though, we never know more than the Bible's author and never are morally superior to Him, but it is hard to make that mental switch from reading humans' writing while being skeptical of what they are writing to reading God's writing while being skeptical of our understanding.
Some of your examples help explain this phenomenon: 1) what you describe as God's lie about what would happen if Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, by which I believe you mean that God said "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." When Adam and Eve don't experience a physical death on the calendar day that they eat the apple, a reader might consider God to have lied. But knowing that God doesn't lie, and that he wrote the book we're reading, it is appropriate to ask what we are missing. Perhaps this primarily meant the spiritual death that Adam and Eve experienced by no longer walking with God in the Garden; this did seemingly happen on the same day they ate from the tree. In our focus on the lack of immediate physical death, maybe that even implies to us that we are overconcerned with physical death and God is nudging us through a confusing element of this passage towards the importance of spiritual life/death. The meaning could also be that physical death that was not necessarily on the cards for them had they not eaten of the tree becomes certain on the day that they eat from the tree (as in, that day brings physical death for humans into the world). 2) the demand for Isaac's sacrifice. This one is certainly jarring and seems horrific when we read it. But it is so jarring and horrific-seeming, even intentionally so (e.g., when we already know that Abraham has been asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, Isaac pauses and asks where the lamb for the sacrifice is), that it all but forces the reader to ask why is this happening and why is God telling us this? The conclusion of that particular story, that a sacrificial ram is provided by God, points us towards the overarching story of the Bible that God is providing the sacrifice for us. And perhaps a story of a father (almost) sacrificing his only son helps us to understand a little more about what the Father sacrificing his only Son was like, except in this case with the Son's full knowledge of what was to happen to him.
In those couple examples I am trying to exemplify the type of approach that is logical to take to God's Word: when it doesn't make sense to us, it's us not understanding, not being perfect, etc. rather than God being in the wrong.
I appreciate the length of your response and your line of thinking, and this is roughly what I'm trying to consider with my daughter. But I find the task exhausting. The position that the Bible is the true word of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-benevolent being is not available to me. Once you take God to be benevolent by assumption, that's the end of the discussion. What evidence would the Bible need to include to convince you otherwise? With that starting point, there's no such evidence possible.
I commend your efforts with your daughter and agree that it can be a tiring task. I have heard the statement that God does not need a lawyer, which is logical on principle, but it doesn't always feel that way (hence the statement's origin).
To your point about assuming God's benevolence, it is true that if one unwaveringly believes Him to be good then nothing the Bible says can change that belief. I would note that the belief of His goodness and our concept of morality itself are intertwined with each other (i.e., the source of morality is God, evidence for his existence includes some common ground on morality). In other words, square 1 isn't "God is always good" but rather that's a conclusion which is then a lens through which everything from that point should be understood.
People do not grant God status as the moral law giver so they allow some parts of their view of morality to be shaped by their own setting rather than an external source. But morality must be objective to be maximally useful: if two interacting people (or cultures) disagree about whether an action is immoral they are at an impasse as to whether to allow it. And agreement on very basic moral concepts is wide and apparently innate, thus pointing to an external source (a law giver). For example, if a person approached a stranger and punched him, the victim would universally be opposed to that and feel no need to appeal to a complicated moral code to justify that the action was wrong—it just is clearly wrong.
Indeed some crimes are universally accepted as immoral, such as the killing of babies. That's precisely what makes the last plague so hard to reconcile with benevolence. If God commits an act that everyone regards as immoral, what claim does He have on being the universal origin of morality? Almost nobody thinks killing babies is a moral act.
Of the points of difficulty that I listed, the one that I find hardest to excuse is the rewarding of Lot's daughters with nation-founding for their act of rape and incest (nations that are also fierce enemies of biblical Israel, mind you). I'm unaware of a way to resolve that one.
Certainly an unsettling passage, but their actions are never praised, just described, so I would say it is a mischaracterization to say they were rewarded with nation-founding. A more accurate characterization may be more along the lines of God worked through their (very notable) imperfections and/or allowed evil not to be immediately punished in that instance (a common theme across history); that the ensuing nations are enemies of God's people might actually imply condemnation of the act.
An excellent discussion of the Plagues in link below. Joel Baden and John Collins. Excellent scholarship but entertaining and accessible for lay person like me. Yale Divinity School. All Yale Divinity youtube videos are great (and there are many). Joel Baden is a Jew teaching at Yale Divinity for many years.
I just subscribed in order to listen to the Overtime section of the conversation about Dennett. How do we access that from the newsletter (Small Potatoes).
If you ever wanted to do further reflection on Dennett on consciousness, evolution, AI, etc. outside the context of meditating between him (RIP) and Bob, I would be excited to consume that content. If it were with Tamler and David I would be very excited indeed!
I was nodding along with much of what you said about Pharaoh, but the conclusion was not where I was going: you said "If he was really depicted as all powerful, all knowing, and all good, we would have stopped reading these stories long ago." It's a lot more like this: if we understood exactly why God acted the way He did/does, the Bible would be a lot less compelling because it would all make sense to us, but also because the main protagonist would be someone like us. We should not want to worship someone like us and we should not expect to understand a perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful God.
I have only seen the Mission Impossible movie that was directed by Brian de Palma (the first one?). Should I watch them in order? Would a home TV screen do them justice?
Sorry Paul, I think we're all aware that M:I 2 is the best one in the series (ducks)
You are not alone!
Not only do I think MI:3 is the best Mission Impossible movie, it's also my personal favorite (yes, I make distinctions between "good" movies and "favorite" movies) of the series, and the only one I have ever bothered to watch more than once.
MI: III was a big step for JJ Abrams in his directorial career and the movie revived the series, but nothing will top Fallout.
I’m super skeptical of implicit bias, especially after reading Jesse Singal’s The Quick Fix. Have you read it? It’s excellent and I’d love to hear your thoughts on his critique if you have.
I did read it, and liked it, and had a public discussion with Jesse about it. (Probably online somewhere). But there's a lot of excellent research on implicit bias--check out my original post to see some examples.
I haven't seen Mission Impossible:III and am certainly going to correct that. A sensible villain is one of the most rare of pleasures. Thanos must be my all time favorite.
Paul, I’m actually super interested in what you have to say about Dennett’s last interview with Peterson. I thought it was just fabulous. I’m particularly interested in the question of what gives ideas value and Peterson’s argument that ancient religious stories can be read in a way that maintains their practical benefit is appealing to me. I wonder what you think of that view.
Sorry, Yaniv, but I wasn't as impressed. I listened, hoping to see a final discussion of Dennett's many views. But I had no sense that Peterson knew anything about Dennett, except that he was an atheist, and he didn't seem even slightly interested. Instead Peterson spent the podcast--at least the part I listened to before giving up--presenting his own views about religion, and asking Dennett what he thought about them. I accept that if you find Peterson's views interesting, it could well be a great podcast. But I was hoping to hear Dennett.
Interesting. I've not heard the Dennett/Peterson interview, but I did sit through Peterson's supposed debate with Slavoj Zizek about Marxism/Communism. I came away with the distinct impression that neither knew anything about the other and that Peterson had never read any Marx or Marxist theory, which would be more palatable if he didn't consistently imply that he was some sort of lay expert on 20th Century political ideology, with a particular interest in Communism. Perhaps one day your publisher, Paul, will accidentally send you a copy of JP's itinerary and we'll get to hear the uncut version of your thoughts on him, behind a paywall somewhere.
Fair enough. It's an accurate description of reality.
Thanks for more great stuff!
I know everyone has to love Daniel Dennett now, but Robert Sapolsky's take-down of him in "Determined" really does it all, IMO.
https://www.mattball.org/2023/12/dan-dennett-is-arrogant-asshole-also.html
Does everyone have to love Daniel Dennett now, or was their an outpouring of fondness from people due to his recent passing as seems reasonable?
I cannot believe Dennett said that "luck evens out". It cannot be. He must have been misquoted. Nobody is that dumb.
I mean, luck would need a memory to keep track, no? He obviously meant that there's a law of large numbers that applies. One where the future expected luck is zero. And honestly, that's true almost by definition because if the expectation is not zero, then the deviation from zero cannot be called luck anymore. You would have to redefine what constitutes luck until you get a zero expectation.
I’ve been trying to read the Bible with my daughter, 13, and it’s been hard. There are so many cases where God acts in a morally questionable way: The directive not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, the lie about what would happen if they do, the subjugation of woman to man, the unexplained preference for Able’s sacrifice, the taunting of Cain, the flood, the Tower of Babel, going along with Abram's cowardly lies that Sarai is his sister, the demand for Issac’s sacrifice, the argument with Abraham over how many righteous men are needed to save Sodom, turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for looking back, going along with the incest between Lot and his daughters, the choice to make Ismael into a large nation that is a perpetual enemy of Issac’s progeny, the choice to favor the deceptive Jacob over the Esau… It just goes on and on. There comes a point where trying to defend God’s benevolence starts to feel intellectually dishonest.
I really get it. My own take on this -- very different from John's, I'm afraid -- is that reading stories from the Hebrew Bible is a bad way to get across the idea of an all good God. A jealous God, yes, a savage God, a loving God (yes, sometimes), a quirky and funny God (the scene where he's _negotiating_ with Abraham is wonderful--all of a sudden he's willing to negotiate????), but hardly a morally perfect being. But they are wonderful stories., and I hope you and your daughter keep reading them together.
Indeed it's such a delightful scene! I love it how Abraham makes sure to apologize before using the same argument again and again. It's like, does he think God is stupid?
It's one of the charms of the Old Testament God that while he can casually kill those who show the slightest sign of respect, he has a surprising tolerance for back talk, especially among his favourites, like Abraham and Moses.
What I could use is more rationally-oriented commentary on the Bible that is oriented around extracting as much value out of this text as we can. It's too easy and unfair and short-sighted to just tear it apart. I believe you have a comparative advantage in this and would love it if you'll consider posting more on the subject.
I think what you're touching on is that when we read the Bible we are reading something with a different relationship between author and reader than everything else we read. When the author is another human, we are generally on the same playing field in terms of understanding; typically, the author will understand a bit more than we do about some topics they write about but there will be parts or topics that the reader actually knows more about than the author for a variety of reasons, so we naturally question what we are reading because sometimes it is wrong. With God as the ultimate author of the Bible, though, we never know more than the Bible's author and never are morally superior to Him, but it is hard to make that mental switch from reading humans' writing while being skeptical of what they are writing to reading God's writing while being skeptical of our understanding.
Some of your examples help explain this phenomenon: 1) what you describe as God's lie about what would happen if Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, by which I believe you mean that God said "in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." When Adam and Eve don't experience a physical death on the calendar day that they eat the apple, a reader might consider God to have lied. But knowing that God doesn't lie, and that he wrote the book we're reading, it is appropriate to ask what we are missing. Perhaps this primarily meant the spiritual death that Adam and Eve experienced by no longer walking with God in the Garden; this did seemingly happen on the same day they ate from the tree. In our focus on the lack of immediate physical death, maybe that even implies to us that we are overconcerned with physical death and God is nudging us through a confusing element of this passage towards the importance of spiritual life/death. The meaning could also be that physical death that was not necessarily on the cards for them had they not eaten of the tree becomes certain on the day that they eat from the tree (as in, that day brings physical death for humans into the world). 2) the demand for Isaac's sacrifice. This one is certainly jarring and seems horrific when we read it. But it is so jarring and horrific-seeming, even intentionally so (e.g., when we already know that Abraham has been asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, Isaac pauses and asks where the lamb for the sacrifice is), that it all but forces the reader to ask why is this happening and why is God telling us this? The conclusion of that particular story, that a sacrificial ram is provided by God, points us towards the overarching story of the Bible that God is providing the sacrifice for us. And perhaps a story of a father (almost) sacrificing his only son helps us to understand a little more about what the Father sacrificing his only Son was like, except in this case with the Son's full knowledge of what was to happen to him.
In those couple examples I am trying to exemplify the type of approach that is logical to take to God's Word: when it doesn't make sense to us, it's us not understanding, not being perfect, etc. rather than God being in the wrong.
I appreciate the length of your response and your line of thinking, and this is roughly what I'm trying to consider with my daughter. But I find the task exhausting. The position that the Bible is the true word of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-benevolent being is not available to me. Once you take God to be benevolent by assumption, that's the end of the discussion. What evidence would the Bible need to include to convince you otherwise? With that starting point, there's no such evidence possible.
I commend your efforts with your daughter and agree that it can be a tiring task. I have heard the statement that God does not need a lawyer, which is logical on principle, but it doesn't always feel that way (hence the statement's origin).
To your point about assuming God's benevolence, it is true that if one unwaveringly believes Him to be good then nothing the Bible says can change that belief. I would note that the belief of His goodness and our concept of morality itself are intertwined with each other (i.e., the source of morality is God, evidence for his existence includes some common ground on morality). In other words, square 1 isn't "God is always good" but rather that's a conclusion which is then a lens through which everything from that point should be understood.
If God is the source of all morality, how can the view of what is moral and not moral vary across the cultures of the world?
People do not grant God status as the moral law giver so they allow some parts of their view of morality to be shaped by their own setting rather than an external source. But morality must be objective to be maximally useful: if two interacting people (or cultures) disagree about whether an action is immoral they are at an impasse as to whether to allow it. And agreement on very basic moral concepts is wide and apparently innate, thus pointing to an external source (a law giver). For example, if a person approached a stranger and punched him, the victim would universally be opposed to that and feel no need to appeal to a complicated moral code to justify that the action was wrong—it just is clearly wrong.
Indeed some crimes are universally accepted as immoral, such as the killing of babies. That's precisely what makes the last plague so hard to reconcile with benevolence. If God commits an act that everyone regards as immoral, what claim does He have on being the universal origin of morality? Almost nobody thinks killing babies is a moral act.
Of the points of difficulty that I listed, the one that I find hardest to excuse is the rewarding of Lot's daughters with nation-founding for their act of rape and incest (nations that are also fierce enemies of biblical Israel, mind you). I'm unaware of a way to resolve that one.
Certainly an unsettling passage, but their actions are never praised, just described, so I would say it is a mischaracterization to say they were rewarded with nation-founding. A more accurate characterization may be more along the lines of God worked through their (very notable) imperfections and/or allowed evil not to be immediately punished in that instance (a common theme across history); that the ensuing nations are enemies of God's people might actually imply condemnation of the act.
An excellent discussion of the Plagues in link below. Joel Baden and John Collins. Excellent scholarship but entertaining and accessible for lay person like me. Yale Divinity School. All Yale Divinity youtube videos are great (and there are many). Joel Baden is a Jew teaching at Yale Divinity for many years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTZ7jHxtMhA
I just subscribed in order to listen to the Overtime section of the conversation about Dennett. How do we access that from the newsletter (Small Potatoes).
welcome! You should have received an email which includes a link that will give you access to all the paywalled podcasts.
I saw that link, thank you Paul.
If you ever wanted to do further reflection on Dennett on consciousness, evolution, AI, etc. outside the context of meditating between him (RIP) and Bob, I would be excited to consume that content. If it were with Tamler and David I would be very excited indeed!
I was nodding along with much of what you said about Pharaoh, but the conclusion was not where I was going: you said "If he was really depicted as all powerful, all knowing, and all good, we would have stopped reading these stories long ago." It's a lot more like this: if we understood exactly why God acted the way He did/does, the Bible would be a lot less compelling because it would all make sense to us, but also because the main protagonist would be someone like us. We should not want to worship someone like us and we should not expect to understand a perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful God.
#3 is what led a young Robert Sapolsky to become a freethinker (as he's discussed in podcasts and his books). Hard to get past that!
I have only seen the Mission Impossible movie that was directed by Brian de Palma (the first one?). Should I watch them in order? Would a home TV screen do them justice?
Alas, a TV is no longer the best option for watching anything by yourself. A VR headset is the way to go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebnGrCbRr8I