Expert: Jeffrey Eldred - 12/1/2011

Question
i believe at the end of time, when judgement day comes, which tests all that should be tested, who is the greatest one of all?   is it a scientist, god, an average joe, etc.?   life should not be some endless game of one upmanship.   it should be the greatest one of all who should reign.   if there is no "the one" then life has no meaning.

what is your thought on this?

Answer
Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner, I have been having technical problems with my email.

Judgment Day:
Just like I don't believe in God, I don't believe in Judgment Day either. So I don't believe there will be an ultimate series of tests and I don't think anyone will reign over Earth. There has been a long history of failed doomsday prophecies [1][2] and the doomsday predictions that have been made by "Christian" sects are not even Biblically accurate [3][4]. Sometimes people make vague predictions that seem to be proven true, but as I explain in an earlier article [5], it is just a trick and nothing more. I am not aware of any real evidence for any natural or supernatural calamity occurring anytime soon.

Suppose we could know there is a God, there is a Judgment Day, and that we will receive no prior warning for the Judgment Day. Then the only information that we could use to predict to when Judgment Day would occur is to estimate how frequently it is and the only way to do that is to use how much time has already passed without it happening. We can do this with a formula called Laplace's rule of succession[6], as special case of Bayesian inference [7][8]. Because the universe has been around for 13.75 billion years (or if you are ignorant of scientific and historical facts, take 6000 years) we can expect that it will continue to exist for at least that long. Specifically, we can expect the probability that the universe in the next 100 years to be less than 1/(137.5 million)=0.000000007 (or less than 1/60 for the Young Earth Creationist) because we have already survived 137.5 million (or 60) intervals of 100 years already.

So I don't live my life based on any opinions about Judgment day, because I don't think it will ever happen. I think that people should judge themselves and each other for their actions, but I don't think there is a special day of testing. Hopefully some of this analysis convinces you that thinking about Judgment Day is at best an interesting thought experiment and at a worst engaging in superfluous counter-factual thinking.


The Greatest One of All:
I don't think there is any person who is the greatest one of all. It's completely possible for their to be a right and wrong, but not have any greatest person (mathematically this is called a partially ordered set [9]). Suppose you were in a classroom of people and all received the same test - then you could say the greatest (at taking that particular test) was the person who scored the highest. But suppose each person in the class got a completely different test - then you wouldn't know if the person who scored the highest was truly the greatest or whether they just did well because they got an easy test. To me, life is like that second example. Everyone has different life experiences so everyone gets "tested" differently.

It doesn't bother me that there is no person who is the greatest (or no good way to figure out who the greatest is) and it doesn't bother me that I couldn't definitively be called greater than anyone else (or have a good way to know who I am greater than). I still try to do my best (that is, my best is comparison to myself if I were hypothetically do something else) at every opportunity. True morality is not about receiving recognition or rewards for doing the right thing, it's about doing the right thing because it's the right thing. It's what you do when no one is watching and there are no consequences. Maybe its stunning to you that people can be ethical without coercion by the Almighty or praise from their peers, but its absolutely true and I can produce an endless number of examples of atheists doing completely altruistic acts of their own free will.

I would also argue that holding the ego to be the ultimate meaning in life is also a bad idea for religion. If the only reason why people do good is too get some sort of recognition in the end of days or in the afterlife, than they are simply making a selfish transaction and not really engaging in any real compassionate behavior. It is also makes hypocrites out of those religious people who would then turn around and condemn people for the sin of pride. If the purpose of people in the world to worship God, than He really has created a meaningless universe. Or to put it in the words of Hume (Dialogue's Concerning Natural Religion [10], Part XII):
"It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause. It is an inconsistency to believe, that, since  the Deity has this human passion, he has not others also, and, in particular, a disregard to the opinions of creatures so much inferior".

So I'm not really sure what point you were making about ranking mankind and identifying the greatest one of all, but my meaning in life has nothing to do with ranking people or sorting people. This AllExperts post is where I make my most comprehensive description of how I think the world works and how I find meaning in it [11].


Who Should Reign:
At first glance it may seem like the ideal world where there is someone is in complete control and that person is the most competent being possible. But if we already live in a world where God is in control then it means that all the bad things that happen are deliberately caused or deliberately permitted by God. This is know as the Problem of Evil and I've written on that subject many times [12][13][14][15]. In particular, however I want to highlight something called the Problem of Action that I have previously mentioned in an AllExperts post: "If God can do everything that should be done, there should be nothing left for us to do, what do we do and why did God make us?" If we are simply competing with each other to succeed at God's tests but can't actually impact the world in a way that makes it a better place than it is this scenario that actually implies that "life has no meaning".

So to me the only tests that truly ever could ever truly count are not the ones that are Man vs. God, or Man vs. Man, but Man vs. Nature. There is meaningful progress to be made in improving this world by making it a better place for people to live and place in which people can be good to each other. And we've discovered that the best way to guarantee a thoughtful and inclusive society is distribute power (in the form of a liberal democracy) so that no one reigns but everyone gets a voice. If there is no God than we can get by just fine by ourselves if we can learn cooperate enough to create a healthy, scientific, and artistic society. And if there is a God intent on bringing down earth-shattering judgment, maybe we can manage to build something he won't want to destroy.


Links:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/End-World-As-Know-Apocalypse/dp/0814792839/ref=pd_sim_b_2
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Prophecies-Complete-Guide-World/dp/1573926906/ref
[3] http://freethought.mbdojo.com/2ndcoming.html
[4] http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Delusions-Whats-Wrong-Predictions/dp/0830816216/r
[5] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2009/7/intuition-predictions.htm
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_succession
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_inference
[8] http://ronpisaturo.com/blog/2011/06/29/longevity-argument/
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partially_ordered_set
[10] http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm
[11] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2011/8/questions-meaning-purpose-destiny
[12] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2011/3/strange-theodicy.htm (This is particularly relevant to the question of whether or not anyone has a right to "own" the world.)
[13] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2009/12/Best-best.htm (This has the most discussion of the Problem of Evil.)
[14] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2010/8/Soul-making-theodicy.htm (I introduce the related problem, the Problem of Action, in this link.)
[15] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2011/2/Theodicy-endurance.htm