The thesis of this blog is that the physics equations the started arriving in the 1600s played a large part in turbocharging materialism as a philosophy. On the surface, supernatural Christianity seemed to survive these equations more or less unscathed. Newton’s equations of 1687 were especially impressive, but it’s not like Christianity collapsed in 1750. It seemed to continue along more or less as it had, and it continues today.
Yes, but with this caveat: it continues at greatly reduced certainty. Christians no longer think you’re a bad person for being an atheist or Hindu. And they no longer have the confidence to burn heretics. If you’re sure hell exists and you’re sure bad preaching can lead there, why wouldn’t you try to stop it? We use force to stop much smaller harms, like petty theft. Punishing heresy had been common sense virtually everywhere through history, but it suddenly begins to stop in 18th century Europe. Why, what happened? The equations happened. Newton happened.
Two indicators
Two ways of tracking this reduced certainty seem especially helpful, as ways of cutting through the noise:
1. What degree of force are you willing to use over the belief: no force, judicious force, or mob force? Mob force is very distinct and a lot like excommunication: getting people fired, severing friendships, boycotts, deplatforming. Christianity is certainly not in that league today: can you imagine trying to get someone fired because you just learned (gasp) they’re agnostic? Judicious force is what government does: it carefully follows official procedures to hold elections, pass laws, and neutrally enforce them. No force is how we treat the vast majority of our beliefs (like “soulmates exist” or “I should lose weight”): we’re free to believe them, but we can’t use force to impose them on others. And of course Christianity is at the “no force” level today: we’d be horrified by a requirement that government officials be baptized.
2. How do you treat those who deny the belief: are they irrational, indecent, or both rational and decent? We think it’s irrational to deny math and science. We think it’s indecent to deny the Holocaust or use the N word. But Christians today think it’s both rational and decent to deny Christ is King. They may shun a neighbor for denying the Holocaust or using the N word (indecent), but they won’t shun him for being atheist or Hindu (decent). Nor will they slowly explain the proofs of Christianity to him like he’s an idiot (irrational), because they realize smart people may not believe (rational).
NOTE: What’s less helpful in tracking the decline of Christian belief is self-reports of subjective inner certainty. Fred may report he’s 99% certain Christianity is true, but how does he act? He treats Hindus as rational and decent people. Does he lovingly accept everyone then? Er, no: he pickets abortion clinics. He acts as if Locke is right: “real” harms count (killing babies), supernatural placebos don’t. If subjective self-report is about our “inner certainty”, we could say our response to dissent reveals our “outer certainty”: external, observable, and more revealing of the tectonic shift since Hobbes, Locke, and Newton.
Modern beliefs have four distinct bins
Using these two indicators as a guide (outer certainty and force), I think we can discern four distinct kinds of beliefs today:
Secular moral panics, over issues like racism, sexism, LGBT-phobia, and abortion. It seems super-important that the harms be secular; we don’t get people fired over issues like baptism. Modern Christians will picket an abortion clinic (real harm: killing babies) but not an atheist group office (supernatural harm). The “dissent is indecent” and “mob force” trackers seem quite entwined here: the mob force is justified because the other side is so flagrantly indecent.
Government policy. We agree rational and decent people can disagree over sub-panic policy issues like copyright and tariffs—yet we agree their disagreement can be legitimately overridden when the official procedures are followed: a law is passed, an election is held, a jury trial vote is taken, etc. When the procedures are followed, we agree force can legitimately be used (to enforce the copyright, collect the tariff, imprison the convicted). We agree a key legitimizer of all this is majority rule: a majority approved the procedures and has say over results (worst case, judges still appointed per democratically elected President and Senate).
Private beliefs. We agree there is a very wide range of beliefs that people should be allowed to hold, so long as they aren’t harming others with them; hence no force. We agree this automatically includes any belief in the supernatural (soulmates, law of attraction, religion etc). We agree such ideas are matters of personal belief, so rational and decent people are free to disagree.
Math and Science. We agree math and settled science are objectively true, hence denial is irrational. Paradoxically while these beliefs are the most certain they support the least use of force, since by their nature they’re so neutral as to incite no action at all (“no impetus”). If you believe science has proved warming will wipe out humanity by 2200 then you consider that settled science, but you’d have to add a non-scientific value judgment to that to incite any action (like “That would be a BAD thing”).
So it’s interesting we seem to have these four types of beliefs, each with a unique degree of outer certainty and a unique degree of force:
Panics: dissent is indecent, mob force
Policy: dissent is overridable, judicious force
Private: dissent is rational and decent, no force
Math/Science: dissent is irrational, no impetus to action
It’s like everyone agrees on the four bins and the degrees of certainty and force they authorize; we differ only on the specific beliefs we slot into each bin. Bill, a left-of-center Buddhist, may have “racism, sexism, gun violence” in his Panics bin, “net neutrality” in his Policy bin, and “Buddhism is true” and “jazz is awesome” in his Private bin. Max, a right-of-center evangelical, may have “abortion” in his Panics bin, “copyright reform” in his Policy bin, and “Southern Baptists are correct” and “classical music rocks great” in his Private bin. Bill and Max may largely agree on what’s in the Math and Science bin: certainly on math, perhaps not on evolution vs intelligent design. If Max thinks intelligent design is so clear you’d have to be an idiot to disagree then it’ll be in his Math/Science bin (dissent is irrational), otherwise in his Private bin (dissent is rational and decent).
While Bill and Max disagree on a lot, they seem to agree on the bins and their boundaries. Panics are for grand secular harms, so Max won’t panic over baptism and Bill won’t try to get random people fired over Buddhism. Policy is for sub-panic secular politicking, so while Bill and Max may divege on copyright policy, they’ll both accept whatever law gets passed according to official procedures and majority rule. Private is for personal beliefs, so Bill won’t try to impose jazz by force in Policy, nor Max impose classical. The Math/Science bin holds settled science that’s irrational to deny, though on a few issues they may disagree about what’s settled.
Whatever the medieval bins were, they certainly weren’t these. Medievals also had moral panics and mob force, but these were primarily over supernatural harms: witch hunts, religious wars, inquisitions, pogroms. Medievals also rejected the notion that religion was a Private matter that rational and decent people could disagree over; the atheist next door would not be tolerated. Medievals also differed on the Policy chamber; majority rule was not a sine qua non.
While belief in supernatural Christianity has continued long after Newton and Locke, its outer certainty seems much eroded. Christian faith is now tightly confined to the Private bin—so tightly that the Christians themselves agree. Those who don’t are the kooky exception that proves the rule: Christian Reconstructionists, for example, who want to stone adulterers and homosexuals because it says so in the Bible. To reject the bin structure like that is to reject modernity, and everyone on both sides of the political aisle will dismiss you as fringe.
Four treadmills
I thought I might be onto something with the four bins when I noticed something surprising about them: they seem to create four treadmills of endless activity. When I think of them as treadmills I almost feel like I’m looking at a dashboard of modernity, and these are its four great enterprises:
A gloss on their endlessness might be this: with the supernatural and transcendent squashed down into Private by the equations, there are no longer the kind of fixed destinations they made possible. No perfect form of government as defined by the 613 laws of the Old Testament, or by Sharia Islam. No Christian journey through a necessarily imperfect vale of tears, leading to a fixed destination of heaven or hell. We can’t see human civilization as cyclical either, as some have. Secular utopias are promising since they’re at least secular, but we also find them unbelievable. With all that off the table, what can we still believe in? We can at least imagine things getting a little better from here: progress, incremental secular improvement, a bit here, a bit there, and why can’t that just continue? And so each treadmill slopes gently up, indefinitely. We might say Progressives are the party of Heaven, approached incrementally in small, believable steps.
Visualization/Diagram
Putting the treadmills aside for the rest of this post, let’s focus on visualizing the four bins. We can draw them on a diagram like this, with force on the X axis and outer certainty on the Y:
If you’ve read my other posts you know I keep returning to this diagram. It’s hard to visualize intangibles like “modernity”, and I think pictures like this help. At least they help me.
I subjectively make Private wider as a nod to the bulk of our daily beliefs being there. The “no impetus” category extends a little into Private because there are neutral supernatural beliefs that impart no impetus: e.g., the Bible says the tax collector’s name was Matthew. That doesn’t make believers want to do much of anything, really, much less use force. Whereas the Bible’s “love your enemies” (also in Private) incites them to do something, short of force.
We could draw the diagram like this instead, but I find it odd to picture these chambers hanging in the air:
I’d rather picture them rising up from total doubt toward different degrees of certainty: sort of “how tall can you grow?” This also leaves more room for text inside each chamber, which is helpful.
To give a feel for how issues can be visualized with the diagram, I’ll share a few examples:
So that’s the diagram. To the extent the model I’m developing here is helpful to anyone, I hope it’s at least helpful in showing these four chambers exist, and that they have these weirdly specific degrees of outer certainty and force. But I’m more interested in trying to explain why we ended up in these four chambers, and why they have the specific degrees of certainty and force they do. That’s what I’m trying to explain with the “hacks” approach, which I’ll be developing more in the next post. There’s a bit of that here on the PPPH Hack.