Saturday, July 18, 2020

Why Christianity? - A Brief, Philosophical Case

Below is a very basic philosophical case for the Christian worldview.  It tracks the main line of reasoning I use (though developed in much more detail) in my book, Why Christianity is True.

God Exists: The First Cause

There must be an Ultimate Reality, a Supreme Being that is the ground of all being.  This Being must be self-existent – that is, it must not have derived its existence from any other source.  This must be so because an unending chain of causality is absurd.  There are two sorts of being one might have – contingent being and self-existent being.  Contingent being is being that has characteristics that require us to say it is derived from a logically prior source.  Self-existent being is being that is not derived from any logically prior source, but is itself an ultimate foundation of being.  All contingent beings must be traced ultimately to self-existent being.  Every contingent being must be traced back to a logically prior source, so if all being is contingent, then all being must be derived from a logically prior source, which means that we will have an infinite chain of causes with no beginning, and this is logically absurd because it would mean that we have no ultimate explanation for anything.  To use a picturesque analogy, imagine a stack of books.  We want to say that the book on the top of the stack is held up by the book underneath it.  But what is holding up that book?  The book underneath it.  But what is holding up that book?  What if we imagine that the book stack is infinite, and that every book in the stack is being held up by a book underneath it?  The problem with this is that none of the books are able to explain how the whole stack is held up, because none of the books have the power to hold up anything themselves.  So we end up with no explanation, no accounting for why the stack of books is held up.  Here's another picture:  Imagine a group of people standing in a line.  Bob, one of the persons in the line, borrows a marker from Steve, the person in front of him in line.  He thanks Steve for the marker, but Steve replies that, actually, he borrowed the marker from a person in front of him in the line, Dave.  Dave says that he, too, has borrowed the marker from another person in front of him, Sarah.  Sarah tells Bob that, in fact, the line of people is infinite, and that all the people in the line are marker-borrowers, none of them are marker owners.  They've all, down to the last person, borrowed the marker from the person in front of them.  The problem with this, of course, is that if they are all marker-borrowers, there is no explanation, no accounting, for how anyone has a marker at all.  Similarly, if we say that all reality is contingent – derived from a logically prior source – we end up with no explanation, no accounting, for reality at all.  We end up with everything coming ultimately from nothing, which is logically absurd, for nothing can come from nothing.  Therefore, there must be a First Cause, a self-existent being at the back of all reality, the ultimate ground and cause of all being, which is a being-owner and not a being-borrower.

But why can't we get something from nothing?  Because nothing, being nothing, does nothing and can produce nothing, by definition.

But isn't the very idea of a First Cause, a self-existent being, itself an example of something coming from nothing?  No, because the First Cause doesn't get its being from nothing.  It doesn't get its being from something, either.  It doesn't get its being at all; it simply has its being.  That's the very idea of a self-existent First Cause.  It is to say that the very foundation of all things is a foundational being from which all else is derived.  There is nothing illogical about this idea in the way that there is something illogical about the idea of an infinite regress of being or of being coming from nothing.  In fact, as we’ve seen, not only is the idea of a self-existent First Cause not illogical, it is required by logic because all alternatives are illogical.

(“But how do we know that reality is logical?”, someone might ask.  We know this because logic is essential to the definition of beingLogic is ultimately nothing other than the “law of non-contradiction” - that is, the idea that “A is not non-A,” or “Whatever is, it is what it is and isn't what it isn't.”  But this is clearly a part of the very idea of being, for, by definition, being excludes non-being, and any positive characteristic of being – like “redness” – excludes its opposite – like “non-redness”.  To talk about being that doesn't exclude non-being, or to talk about some positive characteristic as if it doesn't exclude its opposite, is just meaningless gibberish.  “But how do you know your concepts and definitions apply to reality as it really is?”, someone might then ask.  Well, we must remember that when we are using words, we cannot forget the meanings of the words we are using.  Our words have definitions, and these definitions express particular concepts.  Reality itself is a concept.  You cannot get beyond concepts while you are still using words with definitions.  Our words reflect our concepts, and our concepts are nothing other than our formulations of our observations of reality.  Therefore, to analyze a concept and to find that something is incompatible with it is to find out something about reality itself.  If you want to talk about a reality beyond the concept of reality, a being beyond the concept of being, you will quickly find, if you pay attention, that you are speaking meaningless gibberish.  To talk about a reality beyond the concept of reality is simply to try to talk about a part of reality that doesn't fit within the very definition of “reality.”  But to say that something doesn't fit into the definition of “reality” is just to say that it is not real – that it is not a part of reality.  So to talk about the way things really are beyond all definitions is just to use words without meaning, to speak nonsense.  So when we observe our words and our concepts to imply something or to exclude something – like being excludes non-being or red excludes non-red – we are learning something about reality itself.  From this we know that knowledge of reality can be gained not only from the direct observation of objects by our senses, but also by logical reflection on the concepts that we derive from reality.)

The space-time world we live in cannot be Ultimate Reality, because it has the marks of contingency – that is, again, the marks of being derived from a logically prior source as opposed to being self-existent.  One of those marks is time.  Our universe comes to us in a temporal sequence, moment by moment.  It consists of a past flowing into a present flowing into a future.  Time is essential to our universe, because it is evident that all the characteristics of the world around us necessarily imply a past narrative; we cannot make sense of them without such a narrative.  Time is a contingent property because every moment in time begins, and since it begins, it must derive its existence from that which came before it.  It cannot be a First Cause, because it has come into being and thus has received being which it previously didn't have.  Therefore, the space-time universe cannot be the First Cause, the Ultimate Reality.  To imagine the space-time universe as the Ultimate Reality, we would have to imagine that its time-series is infinite – that is, we would have to imagine that every moment in history has been brought into being and is therefore explained by a previous moment in history, for otherwise we would have a first moment coming from nothing (which we know is absurd).  To say that the time-series of our universe is infinite would be to say that the past is infinite, that it's always been going on and had no beginning, no first moment.  But this is absurd.  It is absurd because it provides no ultimate explanation for being, as we saw earlier.  It is also absurd because if the past was infinite, it would have taken, literally, an infinite amount of time for the universe to reach this present moment.  But this is absurd, for, by definition, one cannot traverse (get through) an infinite amount of time.  If I began to count to infinity right now, when would I finish?  Never, because you cannot ever complete an infinite series by the addition of one piece at a time.  So if the past was infinite, we could never have arrived at this present moment.  And yet here we are.

If the space-time universe cannot be the Ultimate Reality, the First Cause, because time is a part of its nature (among other reasons, such as those discussed below), then we know that the true First Cause must be outside of time.  That is, temporal experience must not be a part of its nature.  It must be timeless.

God Exists: Single and Simple

The First Cause—the ultimate, self-existent reality—must be single and simple.  That is, there must be only one First Cause, and it must be without parts or pieces.  Why?  There are a number of ways of showing why this must be the case.

If there were multiple First Causes, each of them would be completely independent from each other, since none of them could be derived from any of the others (being First Causes).  Nor could any of them be derived from anything else (again, being First Causes).  But if they were completely independent, there would be no explanation for how they all fit together as parts of a larger whole.  If there were multiple First Causes, they would exist in a larger context, a larger fabric, which would include all of them.  But none of them, and indeed none of the pieces of that fabric, could explain the fabric as a whole and the mutual inter-dependence of the parts as they make up the larger whole.  We can illustrate the problem here partly by an analogy:  Imagine you walked throughout the world picking up random puzzle pieces and putting them in a bag.  When you got home, you put all the pieces together and were surprised to find they all fit together to make a coherent picture.  This is, of course, absurd, for, since all the pieces were independent of each other, there is no explanation for the larger pattern they are all a part of.  Similarly, if Ultimate Reality consisted of multiple beings or multiple parts, there would be no explanation for the coherence and inter-dependence of the whole.  In fact, it would be even worse than the situation with the puzzle pieces, because at least the puzzle pieces, by being parts of the same world, are similar to each other in that they are all made of matter, all share the same laws of logic and physics, all are made by humans to fit into some puzzle, etc.  But the multiple beings or parts of Ultimate Reality would literally have nothing in common, for they would be completely independent.

Anytime you have pieces making up a larger whole, those pieces are essentially defined at least in part by their relationship to the rest of the whole.  Their part-of-a-larger-whole-ness is an aspect of their essential definition.  But beings who are supposed to be completely independent of each other, all being First Causes, could not at the same time be defined essentially by their relationship to each other, as inter-connected parts of a larger whole, for this would make them dependent on each other and the larger whole for their very essence and definition.  So, Ultimate Reality must be single and simple.

To put this another way:  When we have an entity made up of multiple parts, what we really have are multiple entities connected to each other – in fact, an infinite number of them, as divisible objects are infinitely divisible (see below).  None of the entities present can explain or account for the other entities present or for the fabric that connects them together and makes them parts of a coherent whole.  Since a divisible entity is nothing other than a collection of parts, the only way to explain the fabric, the whole, in which these parts exist is to trace the parts back to a more ultimate reality from which the parts are all derived.  (Think of individual pages in an animator's book.  The pages altogether, flipped through quickly, create an animated story, but none of the individual pages themselves explain or account for the overall story.  To explain this, we must trace all the individual pages back to a single source – in this case, the mind of the narrator who has the story in mind and creates the pages based on this idea.)  But if we say that a divisible object with multiple parts is the ultimate reality, the First Cause, we cannot explain its parts by tracing them back to a more ultimate reality, and so we are left with no way to account for the whole in which the parts exist.  Nothing in the divisible entity itself explains that whole, and since it is not derived from any more ultimate unifying source, nothing explains the whole.

Another argument:  When you have a reality made up of multiple parts, those parts exist in different places from each other, and so you have a fabric of reality that is extended and has dimension – in other words, it has length, height, width, etc.  Such a reality is also divisible – that is, it is made up of parts that can be distinguished from each other.  But it turns out that an extended, divisible reality can only exist within a limited viewpoint.  Picture a tree.  It is an extended reality with parts.  It has a top, a bottom, a left side, a right side.  It has multiple leaves in different places, etc.  In order to have an object like that, the parts must be in different places relative to a grid, an X-Y axis.  (Draw a picture of a tree, and then draw an X-Y axis on the picture to have a visual version of what I am talking about.)  But, if you consider it, you will see that the central point on such an X-Y axis is actually the center-point in the perspective of the one viewing the tree.  If you try to remove the perspective of the one viewing, you lose the grid; and when you lose the grid, you lose the tree, for the tree as an extended, divisible object with parts can exist only on such a grid.  Its very nature implies such a grid.  So the very essence of an extended, divisible object like a tree is necessarily bound up with the viewpoint of a perceiver.  Remove the perceiver, and you remove the thing perceived.  And the viewpoint must be that of a limited perceiver – that is, a perceiver whose viewpoint is limited to one particular vantage point in the midst of a potentially infinite number of other vantage points.  The perceiver has to be looking from one particular location among other possible locations, so that the different parts of the tree are in different places relative to the specific location of the perceiver.  If we imagine an unlimited perceiver – one whose viewpoint is not limited to a particular location, but whose view would include the whole of reality from all vantage points, such a viewpoint would have no grid, for there would be no specific location relative to which different parts of the perceived objects could be in different places on the grid.  In such an unlimited viewpoint, all of reality would appear as a single, undivided whole.  A limited viewpoint can only be derived (by adding limitation) from an unlimited viewpoint (just as a part can only be derived from a whole—without a whole, the concept of a part has no meaning), and so our conclusion, then, must be that extended, divisible reality must be derived from a more ultimate state of reality that is single and simple. 

Related to the previous argument, we can also observe that there are certain paradoxes – certain logical anomalies – in reality which can only be solved if we recognize that space-time, extended, divisible reality is derived from a more ultimate, single, simple reality.  These paradoxes have to do with places where we run into the idea of infinity.  For example, consider a table.  How divisible is the table?  I'm not asking how practically divisible the table is – that is, how much one could use tools to actually physically divide it – but I am asking how theoretically divisible it is – that is, if we distinguish all its parts, how many parts does it ultimately have?  I can divide the table in half and get two parts.  I can divide both of those parts again and get four parts.  I can divide those parts again and get eight parts.  And so on.  There is no theoretical stopping point.  Every time I divide the parts, I end up with parts that can be further divided.  So we have to say that the table is infinitely divisible, which would imply that it is made up ultimately of an infinite number of parts or pieces that are infinitely small.  But there is a problem here, because an infinitely small piece of matter would have no size, would take up no space, and thus, no matter how many of such parts we have, we will not be able to make a table that has a particular size and which takes up space.  So it would seem that the table must be infinitely divisible, and it would seem at the same time that the table cannot be infinitely divisible.  We have a logical problem to solve.  The only way to solve it is to recognize that the table, as an extended object, only exists relative to a limited perceiver (as discussed in the previous paragraph).  If we recognize that, we can say that the table is potentially infinitely divisible because there is no theoretical stopping point for division, but at the same time we can say that the table is only actually finitely divided, because no limited (finite) perceiver actually ever perceives an infinite number of divisions.  The infinite potential divisibility is thus never infinitely actualized.  There is no logical problem with a potential infinite, but only with an actual infinite, and so our logical paradox is solved.  Apart from recognizing that the extended, divisible table is derived from a more ultimate, single, simple reality, we are stuck with unsolvable logical absurdity.

God Exists: Consciousness

The single, simple First Cause must be a conscious being, because consciousness is irreducible – that is, it cannot be derived from non-consciousness.  The irreducibility of consciousness is evident upon observation.  If we imagine ourselves to start out with material that is something other than consciousness, we cannot produce consciousness from such material.  To do so, we would have to get something from nothing.  The law of causality (“You cannot get something from nothing”) implies that everything that comes from something else must be explainable in terms of the ingredients it came from and the interactions between those ingredients.  But if we have nothing but bits of non-conscious matter, able to engage in non-conscious activity by means of non-conscious energy, we will never be able to produce consciousness from such ingredients no matter what we do with them.  We can put them together in ever-so-complicated patterns.  We can add more and more pieces.  We can move them about and bump them into each other.  But all we will ever have, logically, is simply larger or more complicated constructions of non-conscious matter.  (To make an analogy, if all we have are red legos, no matter how we arrange them, put them together, no matter how many we add or how complicated the structures or formations we make from them, whatever we end up with will only be red.  It will not be green, because the color green cannot be derived from or explained by our available ingredients.)  Therefore, consciousness cannot be derived from non-consciousness.  If consciousness ever arises (as it obviously has, since all we ever actually directly perceive are the impressions upon our own consciousnesses), it must be traced back to a conscious source.  Therefore, the First Cause, the ultimate origin and source of all things, must be a conscious being.

We have now proved that all of reality must be derived from a single, simple, conscious First Cause.  As St. Thomas Aquinas would say at this point, “and this all men call God.”  Therefore, God exists.

God Exists: Some Logical Consequences

If God exists, certain things logically follow.  If God exists, there will be a Trinity.  This is because God, being conscious and perceiving everything, will have a perfect image (that is, a perfect idea, for God is beyond space and time and so has no physical, dimensional image) of himself.  By having a perfect image of himself, he will become both subject and object, viewer and viewed, perceiver and perceived, lover and beloved (for God, being the fullness of all being, must be the fullness of all goodness, and so must be infinitely beautiful and beloved of himself).  God's self-reflexive act of producing an image of himself causes the Divine Essence to exist in two distinct subsistences – that is, there will be two distinct manifestations of the one, single, simple Divine Being.  There will be one Supreme Being, and that Supreme Being will exist in two subsistences that have a relationship with each other.  And their relationship will produce yet a third subsistence of the same Divine Being, for between the perceiver and the perceived there is the act of perception; between the lover and the beloved there is the act of loving.  There is the communication of the Divine Essence from the image-producer to the image.  And this Divine Being in act who connects the other two subsistences, being himself yet another manifestation of the Divine Being, will possess that Divine Essence just as fully as the other two.  So we have one Divine Being existing in three subsistences.  Each subsistence is distinct from the others in terms of his relation to the others, but there is no division in the one Divine Being.  The subsistences are distinct by their relationship to each other in virtue of God's self-reflexive act of viewing and loving himself, not by virtue of being pieces or percentages of the Divine Being (which, being single and simple, can have no pieces).  Each subsistence is a full manifestation of the entire single Divine Being, so each subsistence is fully God.  God is a Tri-Unity.

If God exists, then there is an objective moral law.  Morality is about goodness and badness.  It is about values and the priorities of values.  If God exists, then there is a supreme viewpoint that defines what reality is really, ultimately like.  Whatever that viewpoint finds pleasant or desirable will be objectively good.  Whatever that viewpoint finds unpleasant or undesirable will be objectively evil.

The Divine Being must love himself supremely, for he is the fullness of Being.  He cannot be dissatisfied with himself, because then he would have to have an image of how he would like things to be distinct from (and not derived from or an aspect of) how they actually are, and this would imply duality and divisibility in the Divine viewpoint, which is impossible.  Since God loves himself fully, he must hate that which is the opposite or absence of himself, which would be non-being.  (Non-being is the implied notional opposite of Being, and thus an aspect of the awareness the Supreme Being has of himself involves the awareness of the idea of this notional opposite.)  The space-time universe is derived from, created by, the Divine Being.  It differs from the Divine Being in that it is limited.  God possesses in himself the fullness of reality, but the space-time universe is nothing in comparison, for each being in it is only a point in a potentially infinite (but actually finite – see earlier discussion) grid.  Thus, finite, limited reality is a manifestation of Being that is infinitely inferior in being (and thus in value) to God.  Inasmuch as Being is manifested in the space-time universe, it is lovely to God, for he loves the image of himself.  But insofar as our finite reality is a manifestation of lack and limitation, it is different from the Divine Being and manifests characteristics that are hateful to God.  While God is infinitely (completely, fully) satisfying, the space-time universe is ultimately unsatisfying.  While God is infinitely (completely, fully) powerful, the space-time universe is weak.  While God is infinitely good, the space-time universe has fallen into evil.  Misery is both a natural and a moral consequence of evil.  The natural consequence of the loss of God is the loss of happiness, and the very idea of that which is hateful being rewarded with happiness is itself hateful to a Being who loves goodness and therefore could never be willed by that Being.  There is no hope for the space-time universe and the beings in it to ultimately avoid evil and misery and to attain ultimately to goodness and happiness unless they derive these things from God, the only one who ultimately owns them.

So the space-time universe and the beings within it, without God's help, will end up in total evil and misery in a condition hateful to God.  But God does not only contrast in his fullness with space-time reality in its emptiness; he is also the filler of all.  He fills non-being with being.  If God is to save space-time creatures and fill them with himself, he must take upon himself their emptiness – their limitations, their evil, their misery.  He must absorb all of this into himself, face it, and endure it.  And then he must overcome it all, destroying the emptiness by enduring it and filling it up with his own fullness.  To use an analogy, imagine a pitcher full of water filling an empty cup.  The pitcher must take on the emptiness of the cup in order to fill the cup up with water.  After it does this, the pitcher has less water in it than it had before, corresponding to the lack of water the cup had previously.  And this is where the analogy breaks down, for when God takes upon himself our emptiness and fills us with his fullness, he loses nothing ultimately.  His fullness is so full, and our emptiness so small in comparison, that he can absorb it without ultimate harm or loss, while we gain his fullness.  While he must endure our emptiness, absorb it into himself, and overcome it, his victory, unlike the pitcher's, is complete. 

Christianity is the True Religion

The reason Christianity is the true religion is because, of all the philosophies and religions existing in the world, it is the only one which gets reality fundamentally right.  All others fail by fundamental error or at least by fundamental incompleteness.

Christianity teaches that there is one God, absolute, single, and simple.  It teaches that this God exists in a Trinity of three subsistences (Persons), each of whom bear the whole of the Divine Being and who are distinct only in terms of their relationships to each other.  The Father begets the Son, who is the fullness of his Being and his perfect Image.  The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity who proceeds from the Father and the Son, the manifestation of the love and the relationship between the Father and the Son.  Christianity teaches that God created the space-time universe, which has being but which is not divine and is infinitely inferior to God.  The creation has fallen into decay and emptiness.  Humankind has fallen into a state of moral evil (sin) by rebellion against God, and God's objective moral law decrees destruction and misery for humans due to sin.  But God has provided salvation for humanity by doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  The Second Person of the Trinity – God the Son – has taken upon himself our limitations by acquiring a human nature.  God has become man while remaining fully God.  That human is Jesus Christ.  Christ took upon himself the sins and miseries of the world.  He suffered, died, and was buried, thus absorbing into himself all our weaknesses, lacks, sinfulness, and misery.  On the third day he rose again from the dead, the conqueror of sin, death, and hell, and has ascended to the Father.  Through his death and his resurrection, he has attained eternal salvation for the human race, and all those who trust in him to the end are redeemed and filled with the fullness of God.  God sends to them his Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Trinity, who fills them with the Divine Life and makes them adopted children of God, sharing by grace in the Sonship of the Son, purified and made holy and beautiful to God, and destined to enjoy the fullness of the life of God forever in the Beatific Vision.

If all this sounds familiar, it should, for it is the very nature of reality we proved in our previous arguments.  Christianity gets all this right.  All other religions fail to do so (although they often have a good deal of truth mixed in).  Some worldviews, like Atheism, deny the existence of God and thus fall into absurdity from the very beginning.  Others, like Agnosticism, fail by failing to realize all that can indeed be known, as we have shown by our arguments above.  Other religions, like paganism, Jainism, and Shinto, deny or fail to teach an ultimate, single, simple reality, and so fail in the same way Atheism does.  Other religions, like Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism, teach an Ultimate, single Reality, but they fail to clarify whether that Supreme Being is fully conscious.  They fail to point out his Trinitarian nature.  They treat the world as an illusion, as almost a day-dream of the Divine Being rather than a conscious creation.  They hold that what goes on down here is ultimately unimportant, and that our salvation lies in simply learning to ignore and forget about this world and focus instead on union with the Ultimate Reality.  They fail to recognize that our salvation can only come from God's help and grace, as he actively takes upon himself our emptiness and our sin and fills us with his fullness and goodness.  The way to salvation is not by ignoring this fallen, empty reality but by God's dealing with that reality and confronting it with his fullness.  The pitcher does not fill the cup simply by trying to convince the cup to forget that it is a cup and to focus on the importance of the pitcher, but by taking on the emptiness of the cup and filling the cup with its fullness.  Religions like Judaism and Islam believe in a fully conscious, single, simple Creator God, and in this they do well.  But they fail to recognize his Trinitarian nature.  And they fail to recognize the full implications of our emptiness and sin.  They tell us to save ourselves by obedience to God, but they fail to recognize that we cannot be saved unless God unites himself with us, takes upon himself our limitations and failures, conquers these, and thus breaks the barrier and fills us with his Divine life and righteousness.

In the world, there are many philosophies and many religions.  Some claim to have been invented or discovered by humans, others to have been revealed by God or the gods or some form of Ultimate Reality.  But among all of these, Christianity stands unique as the only one to provide the key that unlocks for us the true nature of reality, to reveal reality to us in all its crucial aspects.  Thus, Christianity's claim to be the true divine revelation stands vindicated, as it is clear that God has associated the revelation of himself inseparably with the Christian religion.  In Christ, God has reached out to the human race and brought to us the knowledge of himself, the knowledge of ourselves, and the way of salvation.

For why Catholicism more specifically is true, see here.

Published on the feast of St. Camillus de Lellis.

ADDENDUM 8/6/20:  See here for a more intuitive case for Christianity.

ADDENDUM 2/5/23:  In my Apologetics class, I make use of another layout of the basic argument for God and for Christianity in the form of a series of points I want to emphasize in class.  I have pasted it below.  "George" refers to my Catholic role-play character, George Stewart.  (I role-play different characters with different worldviews in class as a way of aiding engagement in the arguments.)

1. Rationalism, as George defines the word, refers to the position that holds that knowledge is gained not only through the senses and direct internal reflection, but also through the logical analysis of concepts.

2. George holds that philosophical arguments (by which he means non-empirical arguments rooted in the logical analysis of concepts) can give us true knowledge of objective reality.  Our experience of the world provides the basis for our concepts or ideas (for example, our experience with cats in the world provides the foundation for our concept of a “cat”).  These concepts/ideas have certain essential characteristics that give them definite meaning (for example, the concept of a “cat” necessarily involves things like “walks on four legs,” “gives birth to live young,” “is a mammal,” etc.).  So we can gain knowledge about cats by examining the essential characteristics involved in the concept of “cat.”  We can even have universal knowledge beyond the limits of our empirical experience.  For example, if it is essential to the definition of a “cat” that it be a mammal, then we know that wherever cats exist, even if they exist in distant galaxies beyond the reach of our empirical investigation, they will be mammals.  It is even easier to see the validity of this method of knowing when we are dealing with very simple concepts with clearer essences.  For example, by definition, a “triangle” has three sides.  If something doesn’t have three sides, then by definition it is not a triangle.  Therefore, we can know that wherever triangles exist, even if they are beyond the reach of our empirical experience, they will certainly have three sides.


3. There are two fundamental categories of “being.”  In other words, there are two basic kinds of beings that can exist.  (And by “being” here we mean not just living things but “all things that exist.”)  The two basic kinds of beings are “contingent” beings and “self-existent” beings.  A contingent being is a being that depends on something else for its existence.  It gets its existence from something outside of itself.  (For example, I am a contingent being because I got my existence from my parents.)  A “self-existent” being is a being that does not depend on anything else for its existence.  It simply has its existence; it doesn’t get its existence from anything outside of itself.  The classical theistic concept of God is an example of a self-existent being, since God did not get his existence from anything else and is not dependent on anything else for his existence.  His existence is simply a rock-bottom foundational reality, not dependent on any deeper level of reality from which it comes.


4. George holds that all beings cannot be contingent because then there would be no ultimate explanation for anything.  If everything that exists is dependent on something else for its existence, then there is no final source for existence, so we have all things ultimately coming from nothing at all.  Picture a circle of people with a marker.  They are all passing the marker back and forth to each other.  None of them is the owner of the marker; they’ve all borrowed the marker from each other.  If this circle of people were all that existed, there would be no explanation for where the marker came from.  If they are all marker-borrowers, there is no one from whom the marker was originally borrowed, and so the marker has come from nothing ultimately.  If you imagine an infinitely long row of marker-borrowers, each person in the row borrowing the marker from the person on his left side, this still will not solve the problem, because there would still be no marker-owner from which the marker was originally borrowed.  A marker-borrower cannot ultimately explain where the marker came from.  Similarly, a contingent being cannot explain where being came from.  A reality full of nothing but contingent beings would be a world with no ultimate explanation for where existence came from.  There must be a self-existent being who is an owner and not a borrower of being in order to avoid being coming from nothing.


5. George holds that we cannot get something from nothing because “nothing,” by definition, has nothing to give and can do nothing.  For example, if you ask me where I got my marker, and I say, “from nothing,” this will not provide an adequate explanation for where my marker came from, for nothing, being nothing, cannot produce a marker or give one to me.


6. George calls the self-existent being that is the ultimate foundation and explanation for all that exists the “First Cause” because it itself is the cause or source of everything else but is not itself caused by or derived from anything else.  He holds that the First Cause must be timeless–or be outside of time, or not have time as a part of its experience–because time is a contingent property.  That is, to be in time is to be a contingent being.  If you are in time, you have a past history, and so every moment of your existence has come into being and has to be explained by whatever existed before it in the timeline.  So your existence is made up of a series of moments which are all contingent.  A being like that must be traced back ultimately to a being which is outside of time and so could be self-existent.


7. George argues that the First Cause must be single and simple–that is, that there can only be one First Cause and that it cannot be divisible into parts–because if something has parts, those parts are pieces of a larger reality and have to be explained by whatever is the source of that larger reality.  Imagine a puzzle.  A puzzle is made up of pieces.  None of the individual pieces explain the other pieces or the larger puzzle they are all a part of, nor do they even explain themselves as pieces of the larger whole.  In order to explain the puzzle, we have to refer back to the puzzle-maker–the one who designed the puzzle and created the pieces.  Only the puzzle-maker can explain the larger whole that all the pieces are parts of.  So the highest reality from which all things come cannot have parts; it must be single and simple.  Anything that is divisible into parts will have to be traced back to a more ultimate single and simple reality that can explain its parts and the unity of those parts.


Related to this, George points out that all pieces of a larger whole are defined in relation to each other.  A puzzle-piece, for example, cannot be understood without reference to the other pieces of the puzzle and to the puzzle as a whole.  “Being part of a larger puzzle” is part of the definition of a puzzle-piece.  But a First Cause, by definition, cannot be defined in reference to anything else outside of itself, because, being a self-existent being and not contingent, it is not dependent on anything outside of itself.  It does not get its existence from anything else, and so, being completely self-sufficient, it would be defined only in relation to itself and not to anything else.


Another argument George makes is that whenever you have multiple objects, or an object made up of multiple parts, those parts are all in different places only relative to some observer, some particular point of view.  For example, I look out on the classroom and see multiple desks.  Those desks are in different places relative to where I am standing and looking out from.  My viewpoint creates a grid on which the desks are in different places.  If you remove the particular viewpoint from which things are being observed, you lose the grid and so lose the reality of multiple things existing in extended space.  This means that multiplicity and divisibility exist only in connection to limited, particular points of view.  If we imagine reality as it exists outside of a limited point of view–from the perspective of an unlimited point of view, a point of view which would see all reality in a complete view–there would be no multiplicity or divisibility, but only one single and simple essence, for there would be no limited or particular vantage-point from which some things would be more distant than others, some more to the left or to the right, etc.  Therefore, ultimate reality–or the First Cause–is single and simple, and all multiple and divisible reality is limited and contingent, derived from a more ultimate and unlimited state of reality.


8. George argues that the First Cause would have to be a conscious being–that is, a being which has 1st-person experience–because consciousness cannot be derived from non-consciousness.  If you start out with non-conscious stuff, or mind-independent matter (MIM), no matter what you do with that stuff–put it together into complex patterns, cause the pieces of it to interact with each other and affect each other, etc.--it will never be anything more than arrangements of MIM.  You cannot get something in the product that is not explainable in terms of the ingredients and the relationships between the ingredients, for that is to get something from nothing.  If all we have starting out is MIM and non-conscious MIM interactions, then no matter how large or complex we make those interactions, they will not become something fundamentally different from what was there before.  Just as if I start out with red marbles, no matter what I do with them–build large and complex structures out of them, cause them to bump into each other or move each other around in complex ways, etc.--I will never end up with anything other than red marbles receiving and causing red-marble-type effects.  So, since consciousness exists in this world, the First Cause, from which this world comes, must itself possess consciousness and be a conscious being.


George also argues that the very concept of a “material object” or a “physical object” is derived ultimately from consciousness.  Physical characteristics–texture, color, taste, size, position, length, shape, etc.--are nothing other than experiences had in the 1st-person conscious experience of beings.  If you remove everything from the concept of a material object–say, a chair–that exists only by means of being experienced by a mind, you will remove every characteristic of the chair altogether and have nothing left.  So consciousness is the fundamental reality, and physical objects and effects are simply modes of conscious experience.  Therefore, the First Cause, which is the ultimate reality and the source of all other reality, must be a conscious being.  At this point in his argument, George feels that the First Cause can be called God.


9. If God exists, there will be an objective moral law–that is, an objective standard defining “good” and “bad.”  This is because God’s viewpoint defines and is identical to objective reality, for he is the source and ultimate context of all reality.  By contrast, our subjective viewpoint is distinct from and can be in conflict with objective reality.  (We call that “being wrong.”)  Therefore, whatever God views as “good” will be good objectively, and whatever God views as “bad” will be bad objectively.


10. God must be omnibenevolent–that is, he must love the happiness of beings in general and hate the suffering of beings in general–because he, being all-knowing and experiencing all things in reality, would have an absolute foundation for empathy.  It is not possible to delight in the suffering of any being if one experiences the pain of that being, nor is it possible to be indifferent to the happiness of any being if one experiences that happiness.


11. God is infinitely more valuable than his creation.  This is because he is the Supreme Being, the one who is identical to objective and ultimate reality.  We are infinitesimal beings by comparison, our experience and viewpoint being a mere point in a universe that extends out from us with potential infinity in all directions, with a potentially infinite number of other possible particular vantage points.  Although we exist in our own sphere, we are nothing in comparison to God, and all we have is derived from him as well.  Since God’s being is the complete and sufficient source of happiness, and we are nothing in comparison to him and without him, he is infinitely more important than we are.  We have value in our own sphere, and we can be greatly valuable to God insofar as our existence contributes to his plans and purposes, but we are valueness in comparison to God and without God.  (Note:  In salvation through Christ, we are raised up and given a value infinitely above our natural worth, for we are made partakers of the infinitely-valuable divine life itself.)


12. “Moral evil” is evil of the will, as opposed to “natural evil,” which is something bad outside of a will.  If I hate what I should love and love what I should hate and so choose something of lesser value over something of greater value–for example, I choose the value of eating a cheeseburger over the value of respecting human life–this is an example of moral evil.  If a tornado knocks down a house, this is an example of natural evil, for no evil will is involved.  Since all value comes from God and is defined in relation to his objective moral law, all moral evil is ultimately against God.  An act of moral evil is ultimately an act of rejecting God and choosing to put our happiness in something else.  We choose to treat ourselves as if we are God and thus the definer of good and evil and so attempt to oust God from his place, going our own way instead of God’s way.  Since God is the Supreme Good–the source of all happiness and so a being of complete or unlimited value–to reject him is to commit an act which deserves and attains the consequence of complete and utter misery.  So moral evil, in its nature, tends towards misery.


(Note:  We can distinguish between what Catholic theologians call “mortal” and “venial” sin.  Mortal sin is an act like that described above.  It is an act of the will which involves a rejection of God as the Supreme Good.  Venial sin is also a kind of rejection of God, but it is one that does not come up to a full and definitive act of the will.  It is a kind of limited inconsistency within a person who still chooses God as their Supreme Good.  I still choose God overall, but there are smaller pockets or areas of inconsistency in my life where I am not living consistently with what supreme love to God should imply.  For an analogy, think of getting an infection.  By its nature, all infection tends towards death.  Some infection actually causes death because it affects the vital organs of life, while other infection does not actually cause death because it does not affect vital organs.  Similarly, all sin involves a kind of rejection of God and so tends towards misery, but some [“mortal sin”] leads to complete misery because it involves the will’s fundamental rejection of God, while other sin [“venial sin”] does not lead to complete misery because it is a limited or partial inconsistency in the will rather than a fundamental rejection of God.)


The fact that moral evil leads to misery is bad news for us because all goodness comes from God.  We have no goodness of our own and can only receive it as a gift from God, for we are completely contingent and dependent upon God.  Without his sharing his own goodness with us, we are doomed to fall into moral evil (even “mortal sin”) and suffer the infinite consequences.  And we can see the reality of this fact empirically all around us as we look at all the moral evils that are committed by us and by others in this world.


13. Only God can save us from ultimate misery and bring us to ultimate happiness.  This is because, as we saw above in #12, God is the source of all goodness and therefore all happiness, and without him there is no goodness or happiness.  If we contingent beings are to receive happiness, therefore, it can only be by means of God uniting himself to us, absorbing onto himself our limitations and our evil and misery and filling us with his divine life, goodness, and happiness.


14.  George’s fundamental argument for Christianity is that it is the only worldview which gives us a complete and accurate picture of the fundamental nature of reality.  All other worldviews–whether they claim to be some kind of supernatural revelation or simply human philosophies–fail either by fundamental inaccuracy or at least by fundamental incompleteness.  Only Christianity gives us a reality where there exists one God, a Trinity, who is the Creator of all other beings and the source of an objective moral law.  Only Christianity teaches that all happiness comes from God, that we are made for God and to be happy in God, but that, left to ourselves, we have fallen into a condition of sin and misery, and that we are doomed to complete misery (hell) unless God saves us.  He has done so by means of God the Son–the Second Person of the Trinity–coming into this world and taking upon himself a human nature in addition to his divine nature.  Absorbing our limitations, he also absorbed our sins and sufferings upon himself, dying on the cross.  But, being divine, he was able to overcome sin and death.  He rose from the dead on the third day, becoming the source of eternal salvation as he fills us with his own divine life, goodness, and happiness.  Since Christianity, which claims to be a revelation from God, is the only worldview existing in the world which gets reality fundamentally right, the world is clearly set up in such a way as to associate Christianity with God’s fundamental revelation of himself and his truth to us.  Since God is ultimate reality and knows and loves himself supremely, and therefore he created the world as an extension of the manifestation and enjoyment of his own perfections, the world which comes from him will reflect his actual nature and not be designed to exhibit that which is false.  But if Christianity is not a revelation from God, then the world has been set up in such a way as to associate the revelation of God and his fundamental truth with falsehood, which is something God would not do, and so we can be sure that we are warranted to accept Christianity as an authentic divine revelation and therefore as true.

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

The Difficult Balance of Justice, Empathy, Truth, and Freedom in Social-Political Discourse and Policy

The idea of "cancel culture" has been producing a lot of discussion in recent days.  The term itself is relatively new to me, but the idea behind it is something I've thought a lot about over the past few years (really more than a decade now).  There is a lot of complexity going on in this idea, and I wanted to write something to try to sort it out and examine its component parts more carefully.  As I think about it, I can see two main distinct issues in the idea.  One issue has to do with the tone of our modern social-political discourse.  The other issue has to do with how we draw the line between freedom on the one hand and protection of the good on the other.  Let's look at each of these.

The Tone of Our Modern Social-Political Discourse

First, the issue of tone in modern discourse.  Here is especially where I think the critics of "cancel culture" make a very strong point.  Our political discourse over the past few years seems to me (and to many others) to have become increasingly shrill, and increasing lacking, I would say, in the virtues of love, empathy, and honesty/thoughtfulness.  It's almost as if we've drawn a dichotomy between standing up for what is right on the one hand, and loving our neighbor, viewing our ideological opponents with empathy, and recognizing the nuances and complexity of the issues on the other.  The authors of a recently-published open letter criticizing "cancel culture" describe it as "an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty."  I think that's well put.  Here is how I myself described the situation on a recent Facebook post:

It is my observation that we are an incredibly judgmental culture.  We are top-of-the-notch Puritans, in the worst sense of that word (and not one that is fair to historic, actual Puritans, by the way).  We have our moral codes that lay out incredibly intricate and detailed rules about who can do what, who can say what, who can think what, when they can say, do, and think it, when they can't, what words are proper to use, what words aren't, etc.  And we ruthlessly judge others on the basis of whether they are living perfectly within our rules or not.  If they step outside of them by just a fraction in any direction, we gasp with shock, call them moral monsters, and decide it is our moral duty to demonize them, ostracise them, marginalize them, label them and call them names, ruin their reputations, careers, and lives as much as we can, and then, to finalize their punishment, we unfriend them from Facebook, without giving any hope of reprieve or forgiveness for all eternity, and then when we've done that we pat ourselves on the back and loudly proclaim to whomever will listen how amazingly just and righteous (and compassionate and tolerant, of course) we are.  Our self-delusion that we are compassionate and tolerant is almost cartoonish in its absurdity. 
If we could manage to learn and practice real empathy across the board, instead of our fake or selective empathy which really means favoring people we like and demonizing people we don't, we would find ourselves living in a much more just and pleasant society.

That pretty much sums it up.  Many people in our society have become very concerned about matters of social justice, which is a good thing (provided that the things they are fighting for are in reality good things, which I think is sometimes the case and sometimes not).  But we've developed a culture in which fighting for social justice matters has taken on what might be called almost a berserker (look it up) or crusader (in the stereotypical bad sense) mentality, where we nail in on a particular issue, define that issue in a clear and simple way, and then systematically refuse to tolerate anything from anybody other than an immediate, one-hundred-percent submission to everything we think is right.  Once we've declared victory (which we do as soon as we jump on the wagon of "the right point of view"), we announce that all reasonable discussion is now over.  There are to be no more questions, no doubts, no alternative points of view.  Frequently, in my observation, this attitude tends to the vehement suppression even of reasonable questions and nuances and complexities that really need to be discussed.  This is what I mean by saying that "cancel culture" not only has a problem with love and empathy but also with honesty and thoughtfulness.

For example, take J. K. Rowling's recent comments on transgenderism and the response she's gotten.  Whether or not one agrees with Rowling, it seems to me that, at the very least, she has some plausible, reasonable concerns.  She has a point of view worth taking seriously and treating with some respect.  Transgenderism is a pretty new idea, at least in terms of something that has been discussed seriously in mainstream culture.  Our culture has undergone a radical shift on this issue very rapidly over a very short period of time.  Surely this is a time when it would make sense to expect a lot of civil dialogue and debate to be going on in our society on this subject.  But, instead of this, the "cancel culture" attitude says that since transgenderism is a "social justice issue," the only moral thing to do is declare loudly and firmly that transgender ideology is correct, announce complete and total victory in the culture wars over the issue, and then engage in a systematic refusal to tolerate any alternative point of view or even any slight hesitation or question about it anywhere, short only of literally making that alternative point of view illegal (and I think that even that barrier is rooted, for some people, more in inertia from our historic American climate than any attitude of respect for people's rights; I strongly suspect that a lot of our "cancel culture" proponents would be quite happy to declare alternative views illegal if it wasn't for the influence of that inertia.)  Are there questions?  Are there nuances?  Is the issue complex and multi-faceted?  Is it difficult to know exactly how to deal with these things in public policy decisions (like the famous bathroom wars)?  We won't hear of it!  There is no complexity!  It's quite simple--we're right and good, and you're wrong and evil, and anything less than total gung-ho support of every single tiny component of our platform is a moral obscenity that cannot be tolerated in civil society!  And you can't possibly be asking questions or doubting what we say out of any good will!  There is no good will except the will that agrees with us!  Everyone who disagrees with us in the slightest is a selfish, evil bigot who is simply motivated by hate!  There is no serious recognition that one's ideological opponents are human beings with complex ways of seeing things, and that even people of good will can disagree about complex issues.  There is no attempt to have any empathy, any understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or concerns of one's ideological opponents.  Those people are the oppressors, and that's all there is to say.  They're transphobes, or homophobes, or racists, or whatever.  The proper response is not to listen to anything they have to say but to call them names, insult them, and make sure they are publicly shamed so that no one, anywhere, will ever listen to them and we can just basically write them out of our society as much as possible.

For another example of the type of nuance cancel culture tends to reject, take an article I just read from John Piper's Desiring God website.  The article is by Greg Morse, a black writer, and is called "Seeing the World in Black and White: How Much Do Assumptions Divide Us?"  This article, being on a website that is not likely to get much broad public exposure beyond a small minority of the population, will probably receive little response.  But I thought it was a very thoughtful, helpful article.  The author asks some questions about how we decide when we're seeing racism in our society.  He asks whether or not perhaps sometimes (important word there) people are too quick to judge other people as racist without due warrant by interpreting certain cues or actions as racist that, in reality, could have multiple interpretations, thus being guilty of rushing to unfair judgment about people.  I'd encourage you to read the article.  The author is very careful and nuanced, and he does not claim that there is not a problem of racism in the country.  He just wants to make sure that in our zeal to deal with racism, we don't run to another extreme of treating other people unfairly.  That's a concern I can get behind.  But, based on what I've seen, I'm pretty sure that many anti-racism advocates in our culture would call this article and its author "racist" for even daring to suggest any nuances or balance.  A lot of people see any kind of willingness to stop and talk about these kinds of nuances as the equivalent of betraying the anti-racism cause and exhibiting racist tendencies oneself--even if, as in this case, the author is himself/herself a member of a racial minority group.  There is a strong push to "listen to the narratives and testimonies" of oppressed racial minorities, which I think is a great and important thing, but it's interesting that whenever racial minorities express anything other than the accepted party line, they seem to be shouted down.  Do we really want to hear everyone's testimony, or just those testimonies that agree with our social-political platform?

I remember a conversation I had once where my interlocutor was insisting that when there is an altercation between a police officer and a black person, we should assume that the police officer is to blame.  I asked her if we should assume the police officer to be at fault even if we have no evidence of fault, and she said that we should--presumably on the grounds that we should err on the side of the minority, who has had lots of disadvantages historically.  I found this chilling, as it seemed to imply the complete overturning of what I would consider a central principle of social justice--the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty.  This concerns me also when it comes to accusations of rape or other forms of abuse in our society.  While we should definitely work hard to ensure that allegations of rape and abuse are listened to and taken seriously, and properly dealt with rather than being dismissed, and while we should work to ensure that people in positions of power are held accountable, yet we must never sacrifice the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."  I fear that some of the extreme forms of cancel culture tend to obscure this by calling for so much deference to the accuser that the legitimate rights of the accused are no longer adequately preserved.  One of the forms that cancel culture's thoughtlessness tends to take is a kind of one-sidedness, where some particular value or issue becomes the center point of concern to such an extreme degree that all other balancing concerns and values are drowned out in an obsessed frenzy to focus all attention on the one chosen issue or value.

On the Right side of the political spectrum, "cancel culture" often takes the form of mocking any idea considered "liberal" and refusing to give it any consideration.  The one-sided characteristic of cancel-culture is manifested on the Right in the tendency to see everything in terms of free-market, capitalist values and to neglect consideration of those who fall through the cracks in a system that puts too much emphasis on the free market.  There is a tendency to make light of those who are suffering in our culture--immigrants (documented or otherwise), the poor, racial minorities, etc.--to fail to listen to their stories, to explain away their problems as being their own fault, as if it is thought that if only these people would act like good, hard-working conservatives instead of whiny, lazy liberals they would be able to attain the wealth, the justice, and the equality they need.  The poor aren't working hard enough.  Immigrants just need to go through the proper channels and be patient.  If blacks wouldn't act so hostile and wear such scary-looking clothing, the police would leave them alone.  Everything tends to be read through this kind of scornful, overly-simplistic narrative, with no real effort to exercise empathy and come to understand the depth and the complexity of the issues.

This is the kind of extremism "cancel culture" tends to promote, and that I find very problematic and dangerous.  As a Catholic Christian, I know we are called by God to love our neighbors, even our ideological opponents.  And love involves being willing to develop empathy towards other people, which means we try to understand and take seriously the complexity of who they are and of their ideas and life situations.  It means we don't oversimplify them, dehumanize them, insult them and demean them, hate them, try to ruin their lives, and refuse to forgive them--even when they hold positions we think are wrong and even abhorrent or when they do things we believe to be very immoral.  And I also know God calls us to honesty and thoughtfulness.  To ignore or oversimplify aspects of reality is to bear false witness against God, who is the author of reality.  We must be honest, and we must try to understand something with all its complexity before we draw conclusions about it and go promoting those conclusions to others.  We need to be willing to listen to evidence about reality, from whatever source that evidence comes from--even from one's ideological opponents, and even when that evidence, that nuance or complexity, sometimes frustrates our desire to have a very simple, very clear moral line to insist upon.  Of course, none of this means that we should not come to clear conclusions at times, including moral ones, or that we should not stand up strongly for what we think to be right.  But we don't have to compromise love, empathy, or honesty in order to do that.  It's a false dichotomy to put social justice on one side and a full-orbed and balanced love, empathy, and honesty/thoughtfulness on the other, and we shouldn't fall for it.

Some might argue that we have to have a strong, angry tone sometimes in order to get a point across that tends to be dismissed or ignored.  We might have to resort to "in your face" tactics.  I grant that there can be some truth to this.  Think of Jesus, or the Old Testament prophets, who sometimes spoke with strong language and strong actions.  I'm not opposing this, but I say that even when we must use strong language or strong actions, we must still keep in mind an appropriate balance between concern over the moral issue we are focusing on and the empathy and respect we owe to those with whom we disagree.  No matter how difficult it may be to get people to listen to what they need to listen to, they are still human beings and we must love them as ourselves (yes, even the oppressors!).  And we must not allow the justice of a strong message to wash out the fact that we must always be concerned to get reality right with all its complexity and nuance.  We can't whitewash truth just to make a sharper point.  And we must always be willing to learn from everyone--yes, even from those horrible people who are promoting injustice (intentionally or unintentionally).  Truth is truth, whoever is speaking it.  There is a whole spectrum in terms of how strongly we ought to speak or what forms our speech or actions ought to take in different circumstances.  But we must always speak and act with respect, love, empathy, justice, and fairness.

Freedom vs. Protection of the Good

"Cancel culture" is about the tone of social-political discourse, but it is also about concrete actions.  It gets into how much tolerance should exist for disfavored views in society.  The "Open Letter" I discussed earlier talks about how cancel culture wants to shut down and exclude people who don't toe the line in terms of favored points of view.  "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."  An example I just came across last night:  Gillian Philip, one of the writers of the popular Warriors children's book series, was fired by her publisher because she added “I stand with J.K. Rowling” to her Twitter profile (expressing support for Rowling's controversial views on transgenderism). 

This kind of cancel culture is active in academia as well.  Last summer, I read about a graduate student who had decided to leave the field of academic Philosophy because there were some among her (I'm using her preferred pronoun here) colleagues who held what she labeled "transphobic" views and talked about them.  She published a statement in Medium describing why she was leaving.  You can read her statement here and an article about her (and the broader debate) here.  Here is a sample of her language:

Secondly, I do not feel safe or comfortable in professional settings any longer. . . .  Not only do I have to sit with the knowledge that people who are supposed to be my colleagues actively deny my gender identity, I might even encounter these people in a public space. . .  How can I be expected to attend professional events where people deny and question such an integral part of my identity and act like that is tolerable or normal? . . . 
My gender is not up for debate. I am a woman. Any trans discourse that does not proceed from this initial assumption — that trans people are the gender that they say they are — is oppressive, regressive, and harmful. It comes at a huge cost to me and other trans people both mentally and emotionally to engage with transphobes, whereas it’s easy for transphobes to write transphobic arguments. So, trans people shouldn’t have to engage with transphobes and constantly attempt to legitimize their existences. (t philosopher, "I am leaving academic philosophy because of its transphobia problem," published on Medium on May 30, 2019, bold-type in original)

Here is another example (arising out of the same specific controversy) of such language from a joint statement by Minorities and Philosophy UK and Minorities and Philosophy International:

The right to promote hateful ideas is not covered under the right to free speech. Thus, we resist the charge that this is simply an attempt to silence and stifle philosophical debate. Nobody is entitled to unlimited and unopposed speech in academic philosophy - and we need to identify and call out forms of speech that target, oppress, and silence marginalised groups.  
Not every item of personal and ideological obsession is worthy of philosophical debate. In particular, scepticism about the rights of marginalised groups and individuals, where issues of life and death are at stake, are not up for debate. The existence and validity of transgender and non-binary people, and the right of trans and non-binary people to identify their own genders and sexualities, fall within the range of such indisputable topics.  ("Joint statement in response to the Aristotelian Society talk on 3rd June 2019," published on the website of MAP UK on June 3, 2019)

So, basically, what this graduate student and this joint statement are saying is that academia should exclude people who don't agree with their views on transgenderism.  Such people should not be given academic jobs, and presumably they should be fired if they already have such jobs.  No transgender person should ever have to listen to anyone who disagrees with them, and society should be crafted so that they never have to run into such people.  Here is the concrete side of cancel culture in a nutshell.

On the other side, shortly after the flair up over this graduate student, another twelve scholars put out another joint statement calling for toleration of different views on transgenderism in academia:

We, all scholars in philosophy at universities in Europe, North America and Australia, oppose such sanctioning. The proposed measures, such as censuring philosophers who defend these controversial positions or preventing those positions from being advanced at professional conferences and in scholarly journals, violate the fundamental academic commitment to free inquiry. Moreover, the consequent narrowing of discussion would set a dangerous precedent, threatening the ability of philosophers to engage with the issues of the day. . . . 
Policy makers and citizens are currently confronting such metaphysical questions about sex and gender as What is a man? What is a lesbian? What makes someone female? Society at large is deliberating over the resolution of conflicting interests in contexts as varied as competitive sport, changing rooms, workplaces and prisons. These discussions are of great importance, and philosophers can make an essential contribution to them, in part through academic debate. Philosophers who engage in this debate should wish for it to be pursued through rational dialogue, and should refuse to accept narrow constraints on the range of views receiving serious consideration.  ("Philosophers Should Not Be Sanctioned Over Their Positions on Sex and Gender," published on the Inside Higher Ed website, in the Views section, on July 22, 2019)

On the other hand, these twelve scholars recognized that there is a tension between the call to free speech and academic freedom and the call to public protection of the dignity of persons, but they argued that, in this case, the real problem lies in the damage done to free speech and academic freedom:

We acknowledge that philosophical arguments can lead to pain, anxiety and frustration when they challenge deeply held commitments -- whether pertaining to gender identity, religious conviction, political ideology or the rights and moral status of fetuses or nonhuman animals. Moreover, some of us believe that certain extreme conditions can warrant restrictions of academic speech, such as when it expresses false and hateful attitudes or incites violence or harassment. 
Yet none of the arguments recently made by our colleagues can reasonably be regarded as incitement or hate speech. . . . 
Academic freedom, like freedom of thought more broadly, should be restricted only with the greatest caution, if ever. While the respect due to all people -- regardless of sex, gender, race, class, religion, professional status and so on -- should never be compromised, we believe that contemporary disputes over sex and gender force no hard choice between these commitments.  (Ibid.)

So these scholars acknowledge that there are times when speech should be restricted, such as when it "expresses false and hateful attitudes."  This is because "respect for all people . . . should never be compromised."

In another recent article, Michael Hobbes, a cancel culture proponent, acknowledged that the kinds of social sanctions against disfavored views Rowling and others have complained about do indeed take place, but he pointed out that people are still legally allowed to express their contrary views, and he argued that the kind of shunning cancel culture engages in is not the suppression of free speech but simply a natural part of how it works:

Public figures certainly have a right to express their controversial views. Readers have the right to react accordingly, and publishers have the right to take these views into account when deciding which books to publish. That’s why it’s called, as “cancel culture” critics love to point out, the “marketplace of ideas.” . . . 
The actual debate over free speech is about how to decide which of those views deserve space and attention. Outlets like The New York Times and Harper’s bestow credibility on the opinions they publish. Their employees and their readers have the right to argue that some views do not deserve such credibility. That is not the suppression of free speech; it is the exercise of it.  ("Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam," Huffington Post, 7/10/2020)

I can see both sides of this issue.  It is an extremely complicated issue.  It is also a perennial debate in any society--where is the line of toleration?  There is a tension here between two groups of virtues:  Freedom and respect for persons of diverse views and the value of free inquiry on the one side, and the duty of social and political institutions to protect the values justly held dear by society and to keep their people free from harm on the other.

This is the central issue in the classic debate over so-called "hate speech regulation".  Imagine that a person wants to purchase billboard space on a public highway to make insulting, denigrating speech about black people.  Should he be allowed to do it?  Should the law protect his freedom of expression in this case, or should the law limit his freedom of expression in order to protect the well-being of black people who are likely to feel great pain from living in a society where some public space is taken up with insulting and demeaning them and making them feel they are not welcome as dignified and equal members of society?  One might argue that the black people aren't experiencing any physical harm from having to drive past such billboards, but this response ignores the fact that "harm" is broader than merely "direct physical pain or injury."  We want to live in a society that protects us from those things that cause a significant diminution of our quality of life.  That's why we want laws against murder, physical assault, theft, etc.  But surely living in a society where I am constantly demeaned and hated and treated in an undignified manner, only allowed to live there by a kind of "toleration" that involves people holding their noses and agreeing that "I GUESS we have to let these people live here" is a source of great and real harm as well.  But then, again, if we try to limit such harms, we can only do so by limiting people's free expression, their ability to broadcast their own views in the public square.

This is also at least one of the key concerns in the infamous controversies surrounding bakers and florists being required to provide services to people they disagree with or don't like--such as bakers who hold homosexual acts to be unethical being required to bake same-sex wedding cakes.  There is the freedom of the baker or the florist on the one hand, but there is the harm of a hostile public square on the other.

Cancel culture is partly based on the concern that our social institutions should be ones that promote and uphold certain values and reject others.  If equality in race is a great good to be valued and protected, then our social institutions ought not to treat expressions of racial equality and racism in the same way.  If transgender proponents are right in their transgenderist views, then it is argued that our social institutions ought not to tolerate people who demean transgender people by refusing to recognize things that are at the core of their personal identity.  Opposition to cancel culture is partly based on the concern that if we go too far to protect people from uncomfortable and difficult viewpoints and rhetoric in society, we run the risk of creating a kind of dominating, intimidating society in which orthodox opinions are enforced on people and unorthodox opinions are punished, making people afraid to speak their minds for fear of reprisal.  And this kind of situation is not only held to be harmful to free inquiry, but it seems incompatible with the very idea of a pluralistic society full of people with truly diverse viewpoints all participating together in spite of their disagreements.  What does it mean to say we value diversity of thought and want people of different views to "coexist" (I'm thinking of that bumper sticker) if we immediately add that diverse views will only be tolerated and respected so long as they don't veer off in any important way from the beliefs and values considered important by those with the greatest power and influence in society?  We can't have our cake and eat it too.  A pluralistic society, by definition, is a society full of people who disagree about important things but live and work together anyway.  We can't praise the idea of a pluralistic society and at the same time insist that diversity be limited to views that we don't seriously disagree with or find problematic.

An interesting, and, probably to some, surprising comparison might be made between the debate over cancel culture and the question of the treatment of heretics entertained by the Catholic Church over her history.  In the Middle Ages, the prevailing trend in the Church was that heretics should not be tolerated within society.  The reason for this is that, in the Catholic view, God is of supreme importance.  Heresy, being false doctrine that contradicts the core teachings of the Catholic faith, is greatly dishonoring to God and harmful to the souls of people because it has a natural tendency, if imbibed fully, to turn them away from God.  So the non-toleration of heresy was a corollary of the concern of medieval Catholics to foster a society in which the values of society--such as the public honor of God and the temporal and spiritual well-being of the people--are protected against that which would harm them.  However, in more recent centuries, as the Catholic Church has found herself existing in the midst of an increasingly pluralistic society where Catholicism does not hold sway, the emphasis of the Church has changed towards a greater focus on the importance of toleration and coexistence with those of non-Catholic views, even though she still holds that false religious views can be very harmful and dangerous.  The Church came to put great emphasis on the fact that even people of good will can get confused about what the truth is and can embrace erroneous positions.  Not all who hold non-Catholic views do so out of a conscious rejection of the truth.  The Church also came to place a greater emphasis on freedom of conscience.  She had always taught that people must embrace the truth with their reason and voluntarily, but she came to emphasize this fact more and more and to put greater recognition on the importance of allowing people immunity from civil coercion in religious matters to a significant degree in order to allow them room to form and to follow their consciences, hopefully ending up finding and embracing the truth.  Interestingly, it is the proponents of cancel culture whose position parallels the concern of the Church, particularly in medieval times, to be intolerant of heretics, and it is the critics of cancel culture whose position parallels the concern of the Church, especially today, to emphasize coexistence and respect for conscience and freedom.  Of course, the parallels are not exact.  For one thing, cancel culture proponents generally emphasize social rather than legal sanctions against their modern heretics (although this is not always true, considering the arguments over hate speech regulation, requiring bakers to bake same-sex wedding cakes, etc.)  (By the way, it's easy to make more of this difference than is warranted.  Sometimes there seems to be the attitude that if there are no legal sanctions, there is no harm being done.  But social sanctions like the ones we discussed earlier--getting fired, being marginalized and ostracized, public shaming, etc.--can be quite harmful, just as we saw in our earlier discussion of hate speech regulation.  It's easy to oversimplify the concept of "harm" so as not to notice how one's attitudes and actions negatively affect others or to lightly dismiss such harms as not important.)  But, nonetheless, despite the differences, at the heart of both the modern cancel culture debate and the Catholic debate over how to deal with heretics, there is an important parallel.  There is the same, fundamental question being asked:  How do we balance freedom for people with different views with society's duty to protect what is good and keep people from harm?

Conclusion

To summarize, then:  With regard to our first topic--the issue of the tone of our modern discourse--I feel like our way forward ought to be pretty clear.  We need to stop the trend towards lack of love, empathy, and thoughtfulness in our public discourse.  With regard to our second topic, however--the question of freedom and toleration--I find the questions more difficult.  There are serious concerns on both sides, and none of those concerns should be neglected or superficially dismissed.  Cancel culture proponents are right to be concerned with creating a social climate that is just and respectful towards all people.  Cancel culture critics are also right in their passion to make sure zeal for the good does not turn into a kind of totalitarianism that would stifle necessary freedom and equality for people of diverse views engaging in free inquiry in a pluralistic society.  The balance is a difficult one, and it cannot be decided in a blanket sort of way.  We have to look at the particulars of different situations to see what is best in each case.  And our evaluations here will depend partly, of course, on what we believe to be true and on what values we hold.  For example, personally, I am opposed to racism and in favor of racial equality, but I am not an advocate of transgender ideology.  So, all other things being equal, I'm going to be more likely to consider as positive attempts to protect racial equality in social institutions, but I'm not likely to be as supportive of attempts to banish alternative views on transgenderism from public debate, from the academy, from the workplace, etc.  Here, as in other areas, we must remember that there is no such thing as worldview neutrality.

But even though these questions are difficult, I think we can learn a lesson from the development that has occurred within the Catholic Church.  I think the Church (guided by the Holy Spirit as she is) has been wise to recognize the need to focus on empathy and on living together with those with whom we disagree in our pluralistic times.  In my own personal approach to various situations, I tend to favor open dialogue and debate, and even friendship, across ideological lines.  I am wary of shutting people down or trying to exclude them because of their "toxic" views.  I fear the danger that in doing this we not only tend to exhibit a failure of respect and empathy towards our fellow human beings, but we also promote the creating of echo chambers where people who think similarly congregate and never have to engage people who seriously disagree with them.  We become so sensitive to the harm of having to deal with people who disagree with us on matters we consider very important that we lose the ability to be challenged, and this is very dangerous, for it tends to breed ignorance and a lack of questioning of assumptions.  I see the danger of a society full of people who isolate themselves into little groups where everyone agrees on everything important.  No one is ever challenged, and no one ever learns anything important because everyone they allow to be around them does nothing but pat them on the back for their views and their values.  And the isolation creates a lack of familiarity, which tends to allow empathy to diminish, and thus tensions escalate in society.  A pluralistic society full of people who cannot empathize with or respect each other, and who see it as their moral duty to hate and reject everyone they disagree with, is a society that is in serious danger of greater and greater conflict and division.  Isn't that exactly what we see around us?  This is not a time for isolation, hatred, and the demand that everyone immediately surrender to everything we believe and value.  This is a time for serious dialogue and civil public debate between people who hold strong opinions but who are also capable of empathizing with and listening to their ideological opponents, recognizing each other's humanity and trying hard to work together towards the common good.  I'm not intending here to say how we should handle every particular situation that arises.  I'm not saying that there is never any value in doing a little "canceling" now and again in certain circumstances, when necessary.  I'm just suggesting that, if we feel we have to "cancel" at all, we do it very carefully, with respect, empathy, and thoughtfulness, and with a civil tone.  And, generally speaking, I'm suggesting it might be wise, particularly in our public discourse, to default on the side of dialogue rather than that of isolation and exclusion whenever we reasonably can.

Published on the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.

ADDENDUM 8/5/20:  Another aspect of "cancel culture" I didn't mention above, but which is obviously related to those I did mention, is the tendency to have an all-or-nothing attitude towards historical figures.  A good example is the attempt to "cancel" mid-twentieth-century Catholic author Flannery O'Connor (which you can read about here), or the attacks on statues of St. Junipero Serra.  If we can find anything about a historical figure that makes them anything less than an absolutely perfect exemplification of all our modern ideals, they must entirely rejected.  Buildings named after them must be re-named, we can't read their literature in literature classes, we must show no sign of respect or honor towards them at all--even if the reason they were honored in the first place was because they exhibited important moral virtues or contributed significantly to the enrichment of the world.  One perceived flaw, anywhere, to any degree, and they're out for good.

When I was a young father and my first child was about sixth months old, we were in a restaurant and my daughter was throwing a fit about something (this was twenty years ago now).  I remember my father remarking with bemusement how my daughter was upset simply because "not everything was exactly, perfectly, the way she would like it to be."  Babies and toddlers are known for this, of course.  They are content if everything is perfect, but they have very little flexibility.  If anything is off by a millimeter, they will often go ballistic.  Young children do this because they have not yet gained the maturity, learned through years of life experience, to recognize that life is complex and nuanced and that one must learn to tolerate and even appreciate circumstances that are less than perfectly ideal.  One of the things that concerns me about cancel culture is that it seems to promote a kind of back-to-toddlerhood sort of mentality, a mentality that is immature, unnuanced, inflexible, and incapable of recognizing and dealing with the complexity of the world.  In the article about Flannery O'Connor I linked to above, the author notes that "[t]he cancelling of a writer who possesses the wisdom and the power of Flannery O’Connor demonstrates our impoverished imaginations, our narrowness, and our inability to embrace complexity."  Instead of recognizing the mix that all human beings are, and how people are shaped by the assumptions, biases, and prejudices of their times (and yet often rise above them as well, though not perfectly), and how human history so often exhibits a complex scenario of great wisdom and virtue mixed with foolishness and vice, and how all of our greatest heroes, being human, exhibit the marks of humanity's imperfection, they insist that the only people in history worthy of honor are perfect people (perfect, that is, according to the standards of our own times which also contain their own biases that many of us are often blind to), people who manifest no imperfections, flaws, inconsistencies, or even deviations from any norms currently in vogue.  Taken to its logical conclusion, this would have to result in having no heroes at all, for nobody can really meet that kind of inhuman standard.  But even aside from that, this attitude misses so much of the goodness in the world, like a toddler who misses out on a time of fun or an enjoyable treat because he cannot get over the horrible slight of a world which does not meet his every immediate demand with utter perfection.  As they say, the perfect (or at least what we have narrowly and often unthinkingly defined in our current moment to be the perfect) has become the enemy of the good.

Now we do have to be careful here.  We don't want to become so tolerant we become inappropriately complacent and don't deal adequately with the injustices in our lives and in our society.  We should work for reform, protest against injustice, strive to make the world a better place.  We should point out flaws in our ancestors (and work to see the flaws in ourselves as well), and we should not give a free pass to error or vice.  But, as with so many other things, there is a balance here.  Whereas one extreme is to err towards too-great complacency, it seems to me that cancel culture tends to err to the other extreme of too-little flexibility.  Navigating the proper balance here is difficult, as navigating of balances typically is.  But the quest for virtue and wisdom requires that we seek that balance nonetheless.