Written Creed, Statement of Faith, or Summary and Beliefs

 

The primary Tenet of “The Church of the Best Possible World” consist of an Objective Morality and Epistemology.

Our church is founded in the faith-based position that there is another fundamental force in nature which is the “Moral Force”. Our belief in this Moral Law is a faith-based position. There is no scientific evidence confirming the existence of objective morality to date.

 

             “Faith” is defined as an epistemically unjustified belief.

 

We believe this force is a law of physics like any other. The Moral Force is weakly interacting and so is only felt by moral agents when they have sufficient intellectual development and sufficient resources, so their mind is free enough from other preoccupations to experience it. This is why as humanity has been progressing intellectually and has produced ever more resources, we have a clear pattern of moral progress through time. Ending slavery, women’s rights, workers’ rights, child labor laws, veganism, etc., we can see a clear pattern in how the morality of agents has progressed over time in the same particular direction. We can come up with principles that attempt to describe this pattern and/or where it is leading, and these will be our moral principles which give us a definition of moral and immoral. The pattern seems to be that as we increase in our aptitude for morality, we begin to see certain actions which were once required by our limited resources to promote a successful society as now immoral. And the common feature in these actions is that they all entail involuntary impositions of will. Thus, we can derive our moral principles from this commonality.

 

Church Purpose and Goals

The primary goal of “The Church of the Best Possible World” is to move our world towards becoming a morally perfect world. Our mission statement is, "Lower the cost of living for as many people as much as possible." Currently the most pragmatic way to move closer to such a world is by lowering the cost of living for as many as possible. This can be done in many ways such as providing affordable housing.

A Secondary goal of “The Church of the Best Possible World”, is educating people about the rational epistemology endorsed by “The Church of the Best Possible World”, in which claims can only be justified by evidence proportional to their entailments.

Morality

Objective Morality is defined as: Voluntary assistance of will.

Objective Immorality is defined as: Involuntary imposition of will.

In this context “Objective” is defined as true independent of any mind, opinion, intuition, feeling, or any such subjective criterion. If a moral law of physics exists, then it would exist objectively like all other laws of physics.

 

“Your will” only applies to yourself and your property, “your will” does not apply to others or their property. E.g., it is not an involuntary imposition of will, i.e., your will, for you to be unable to harm another without their consent and therefore is not an example of an immorality.

 

A Justified Moral action is an action done that someone would most likely want assistance with, but you are unsure. If it turns out the person did not want assistance, then you have done an immoral action.

 

An Unjustified Moral action is an action done that would most likely be an involuntary imposition of will, but you are unsure, and if it turns out the individual in question actually wanted the action done then you have done a moral action, through your motives are suspect.

 

A Justified Immoral action is an action which is an involuntary imposition of will, i.e., immoral, but that is done to prevent a greater involuntary imposition of will. E.g., putting someone in prison to prevent them from harming others. Such actions are necessary yet are still immoral, and you should atone for the immoral action.

If someone is unable to give consent, e.g., a child or someone mentally impaired, their will is still morally valuable, but we may need to violate or ignore their will to prevent greater involuntary impositions. E.g., forcing children to get a vaccine or other shot which they may not consent to doing. This is still immoral (justified immoral action) as it is an involuntary imposition of will, and you should atone for it. Note: it is never justified to do things which cause overt harm to children that are obviously inappropriate such as sexual or physical acts.

 

Consent given while under duress is not genuine consent.

 

An Objectively Moral Action is any action which is factually moral independent of opinion.

 

THE Objectively Moral Action is the most moral action possible for any logically possible being for any given situation.

 

In this context “Objective” is defined as the best that can be done by any logically possible being, which would include a being that is infinitely powerful and infinitely knowledgeable.

 

A Subjective Moral Action is an action which is moral and may even be the most moral action you subjectively can accomplish; however, it is not the most moral action that any logically possible being could accomplish.

 

Moral and immoral acts are always separate and never cancel each other out. Even if you were to do one million moral acts, and one immoral act you have still done one immoral act that you should atone for.

 

Some actions can assist a will(s) while at the same time being an imposition for others. Such actions are not to be calculated as a net sum; the assisting acts do not cancel out the impositional acts. Instead, each assisting act is its own moral action and each impositional act is its own immoral action, that you should atone for.

If we take these principles to their extreme we can describe a morally perfect world, i.e. “The Best of all Possible Worlds” or Best Possible World/BPW for short.

 

“The Best of all Possible Worlds” is a world where there is no involuntary imposition of will, and furthermore involuntary impositions of will are impossible. In other words, the morally perfect world is—a world where it is impossible to force anyone to do anything they do not consent to doing. In the BPW, there will be no Justified Immoral Actions as no action can cause the greater imposition on anyone who doesn’t consent, therefore there is no justification to impose lesser immoral actions on anyone.

 

In this context “Impossible” applies not only to other agents being unable to force you to do nonconsensual acts, but also nature/reality will also be unable to force you to do nonconsensual acts. This would also apply to a God—if such a being exists, in a morally perfect world it will also be unable to force any other being to do anything they do not consent to doing, because if were to do such an act that would be objectively immoral.

 

Best Possible World (Heaven)

We may be many millennia away from making our world into a morally perfect world, though Artificial General Intelligence may expedite the process, it is still important to try and imagine what such a world would be like. So, to attempt to give a general description of what a Morally Perfect world, the BPW, might be like—imagine everyone would get their own universe which they can design however they like with whatever laws they like, and which can be changed at any time by the will of the individual. You may also choose to fix the rules permanently if you so choose. This would include the ability to stop; aging, weight gain, sickness, depression, disease, death, or transform your universe into that of your favorite story line, etc.—anything you can imagine. The inverse is also true, you may choose to create a very harsh universe, even one identical to the world in which we live today.

 

Any conscious agent which exists or comes into existence, by any means, would get its own universe and be required to be given some minimum level of intelligence and freedom to be able to make rational and free decisions.

 

At some point you may want to experience what it is like to be a child, in which case you can limit your intelligence and freedom if you so choose, as you may also do with any of your personal features.

 

When I say everyone, I mean everyone. All conscious entities including animals, insects, and anything that is conscious. This includes the best and worst among us and they all have equally as much freedom to design their universe however they like, no matter how cruel. However, no one can create conscious agents in their universe, as any consciousness must be given their own universe. Nor could anyone create conscious agents with a predetermined mindset, such as making them with an uncontrollable desire to enter your universe and be subservient to you. Though you can create artificial consciousnesses in your universe to do anything you can imagine.

Anyone can make their universe publicly available to view and open to others entering it, but only if those entering knowingly consent to the rules and laws of the universe in question. However, you can never force anyone to enter your universe without their knowing consent of all the rules. You can also make new universes with different rule sets jointly with other individuals or communities.

 

If an all-powerful, all-knowing God existed and created the world with conscious agents in a way that was not the Best of all Possible Worlds, i.e. a world where it is impossible to force anyone to do anything they do not consent to doing, then such a being would be objectively immoral.

Epistemology

Justification of any claim requires evidence proportional to its entailments, i.e.:

Conceptual claims require conceptual evidence,

Empirical claims require empirical evidence,

Metaphysical claims require metaphysical evidence.

 

Conceptual, refers to all things which exist as thoughts of a mind.

 

Empirical, refers to all things which can be demonstrated to exist via novel testable prediction, e.g. science.

 

Metaphysical, refers to the fundamental nature of reality and absolutes, e.g., knowledge of your own existence, “I think therefore I am”.

Moral Relativists/Anti Realists

For those of you who do not believe in Objective morality, that is a perfectly rational position to hold as all empirical evidence we have indicates that morality is a product of evolution.

 

However, ask yourself if we came across a magic djinn who said he would create an objective law of morality and apply it all through the universe, consider this document to be a proposed model of what we should give to the djinn to make this objective morality.

 

This analogy is not so far removed from reality, as artificial general intelligence is developed, we will need to give it a model of morality to act upon, and I believe the model I have presented in this document to be the best candidate for creating an AGI to best benefit the world.