Byzantine Dream

Fairy Tales

2012-02-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

Great article here by William Cavanaugh. Fairy tales are alive and well. So much conventional wisdom is just that. The idea that "religion" is the cause of violence in the world now, or historically, is suspect to say the least.

We have bought into the idea that we cannot disagree about fundamental matters without violence. I see no reason, historical or otherwise, why this should be so. In a democratic and pluralistic society, people should be free to give any reasons for their positions that they see as significant, even if such reasons are theological.

Society would be much freer if secularists dropped the idea that their reasons alone are "worldly" and therefore fit for public consumption. It would be much more refreshing if atheists like Blackford just abandoned the pretence of neutrality and said that they find many Christian ideas batty. Then we could perhaps have an interesting conversation about the ends of human life and best political ways to attain them.

Right v. Wrong

2012-01-19T09:35:00.000-08:00

The only thing funnier than this is that it is where many naturalist's views on morality (power or majority decides what is moral) should logically take them.

Links for the Weekend and New Year

2011-12-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all!

The myth of religious violence here.

Peacemakers in the religion v. science myth here.

The virtues of Christian morality from an agnostic here.

Polkinghorne on faith and science here.

On the origins of modern science here.

What looks like a nice read regarding scientism here.

One Life

2011-12-24T14:46:00.001-08:00

I've posted this before (or a variant) but it is always pertinent on this eve of gift giving. If you give a gift to someone today or tomorrow, or receive a gift, a ripple started 2000 years ago from one life has also touched you regardless your feelings or thoughts about that life. Gift giving is a good thing. Therefore know, even in this simple sense, that you have been affected in a good way by this life. Yes, I know, you're welcome. To all I wish a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

One Solitary Life

Nearly two thousand years ago in an obscure village, a child was born of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village where He worked as a carpenter until He was thirty. Then for three years He became an itinerant preacher.

This man never went to college or seminary. He never wrote a book. He never held a public office. He never had a family nor owned a home. He never put His foot inside a big city nor traveled even 200 miles from His birthplace. And though He never did any of the things that usually accompany greatness, throngs of people followed Him. He had no credentials but Himself.

While He was still young, the tide of public opinion turned against Him. His followers ran away. He was turned over to His enemies and sentenced to death on a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – the simple coat He had worn. His body was laid in a borrowed grave provided by a compassionate friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today the risen Lord Jesus Christ is the central figure of the human race. On our calendars His birth divides history into two eras. One day of every week is set aside in remembrance of Him. And our two most important holidays celebrate His birth and resurrection. On church steeples around the world, His cross has become the symbol of victory over sin and death.

This one Man’s life has furnished the theme for more songs, books, poems and paintings than any other person or event in history. Thousands of colleges, hospitals, orphanages and other institutions have been founded in honor of this One who gave His life for us.

All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the governments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned have not changed the course of history as much as this One Solitary Life.

(Author Unknown)

No Longer an Atheist

2011-12-24T12:19:00.000-08:00

The holidays and work have given me little chance to reflect much upon the passing of notorious atheist Christopher Hitchens.

Out of all the many written reflections out there, I would have to say Glenn Peoples’ perspective comes closest to mine own.

Neutrality?

2011-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

This essay is interesting because it reveal how many, even when they think they are being objective and neutral, only reveal how biased and subjective their thinking really is.

The writer also makes this important point:

This evokes the ideal of a scientist brooding over her data, thoughtfully analyzing it, subjecting it to various tests, looking for patterns, seeking theory. There is much to be said for such a tack. It is rational. It appears for all the world to be fair and balanced. Yet it is not self-evident that this approach, which works so well at the lab bench, works as well everywhere else.

Moreover, as Hutchinson might remind us, the notion that one can stand above the fray of competing worldviews, carefully analyze them, and eliminate all but the best is itself the product of scientism, a distinct worldview with its own values, history, and biases.

Intention?

2011-11-29T10:07:00.001-08:00

Here is an interesting essay. Now, there is a lot here one could take issue with as this writer does. But, what interests me is that the writer clearly thinks it would be “better” if existence were not “accidental, purposeless, and doomed.” But why think such? If such is exactly what existence is, then why hope for something different? Or better, why would that “hope” or longing even exist? Clearly it does. This, in and of itself, should give any atheist pause. How is it we have longings, hopes, and desires, for something than doesn’t exist and, as such, can never be fulfilled? Even if one tried to explain these longings, desires, and hopes (the same with morality) as arising from evolutionary forces, it still doesn’t explain why we would be programmed to believe in or long for illusions. Even if one then proposes that we can “create” meaning and purpose and such—it only confirms they are illusionary. Santa Claus is a “creation” of the mind—meaning he does not exist—and the same would then go for meaning, purpose, and such things as morality. If we’ve created such out of thin air, then we would be, of all creatures and life, the most to be pitied. This is the problem the writer is missing. He doesn’t want the world to be accidental, purposeless, or doomed and he also doesn’t want to equate any such desire with God, which always means the most entertaining theories will then be proposed and none with any more evidence than proposing God. All this demonstrates is that, again, none of this has anything to do with the “evidence” but the way one is willing to “interpret” the evidence. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to go where naturalism will logically take someone, which is nihilism—that much he knows.

I find it very interesting that many atheists/humanists do not want the world (existence) to be what they claim it must be. How odd.

False Narratives

2011-11-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

That the Modern Liberal West is quickly becoming an Emperor shedding his clothes (or already has?) can best be seen perhaps in a couple of essays by two very different thinkers. Or, are they that different? Slavoj Zizek is an atheist and a Marxist, although he doesn’t fall into either category smoothly. John Milbank is an Anglican theologian/philosopher (Radical Orthodoxy) who is certainly orthodox but, similarly, not in a conventional sense. Both have brought hammers to the foundations of western modernity (The Secular), especially in its economic aspects.

Zizek’s essay is here. An interesting conclusion:

According to Kant, as I have already mentioned, the mechanisms which will bring about social peace are independent of the will of individuals as well as of their merits: "The guarantee of perpetual peace is nothing less than that great artist, nature (natura daedala rerum). In her mechanical course we see that her aim is to produce a harmony among men, against their will and indeed through their discord."

And this is ideology at its purest. One can claim that the notion of ideology only became possible in the liberal universe, with its founding distinction between ordinary people immersed in their worlds of meaning - of (what appears from the properly modern perspective) the confusion between facts and values - and the cold, rational observers who are able to perceive the world the way it is, without moralistic prejudices, as a mechanism regulated by laws (of passions) like any other natural mechanism.

It is only in this modern universe that society appears as an object of a possible experiment, as a chaotic field on which one can (and should) apply a value-free theory or science given in advance - a political "geometry of passions," or economy, or racist science.

Only this modern position of a value-free scientist approaching society in the same way as a natural scientist approaches nature, is ideology proper, not the spontaneous attitude of the meaningful experience of life dismissed by the scientist as a set of superstitious prejudices - it is ideology because it imitates the form of natural sciences without really being one.

Milbank’s essay is here. Some interesting quotes:

The "modernity" of liberalism has only delivered mass poverty, inequality, erosion of freely associating bodies beneath the level of the State and ecological dereliction of the earth - and now, without the compensating threat of communism, it has abolished the rights and dignity of the worker, ensured that women are workplace as well as domestic and erotic slaves, and finally started to remove the ancient rights of the individual which long precede the creed of liberalism itself (such as habeas corpus in Anglo-Saxon law)...

...Only such measures can correct the mistake of our current politics: namely to suppose that the free market is a given, which should be either extended or inhibited and regulated. For if the upshots of the free-market are intrinsically unjust, then "correcting" its abuses through yet another welfare economy is little more than a form of resignation. Moreover, any such corrections are the first to suffer with the onset of every new economic downturn.

I've been arguing that we need a different sort of market, which would require that in every economic exchange of labour or commodity there is always a negotiation of ethical value at issue. Indeed, economic value should only be ethical value, emerging from the supply and demand of intrinsic gifts of excellence.

What is interesting to me though is how both those on the Right and those on the Left seem unable to see the symbiotic relationship they have created. The reason they are unable to perceive it is because they both buy into the presuppositions of modernity as understood and explicated by the Enlightenment. Thus, they do see much of our current politics as “givens” or that things are the way they are, because, well…that’s “just the way things are.”

Of course, things are never “just the way they are.” We weave narratives that become the reigning paradigms of meaning that tell us this is the way things “should be.” But, there can be false narratives. People who believe that things are just “givens” are usually those who buy into the reigning narrative without even knowing it. They have never examined the underlying presuppositions of that narrative. They have a sort of “well, everyone knows that is true…” type of take on these questions. It is only when we are forced to examine those presuppositions and justify them that we can begin to see the cracks or even the outright falsity of the foundations. When we have two such differing figures telling us that Modern Western Liberalism may be a false narrative, perhaps it’s time to listen.

Freedom

2011-11-14T13:41:00.000-08:00

From Halden Doerge’s blog:

To become and to be a Christian is not at all an escape from the world as it is, nor is it a wistful longing for a “better” world, nor a commitment to generous charity, nor fondness for “moral and spiritual values” (whatever that may mean), nor self- serving positive thoughts, nor persuasion to splendid abstractions about God. It is, instead, the knowledge that there is no pain or privation, no humiliation or disaster, no scourge or distress or destitution or hunger, no striving or temptation, no wile or sickness or suffering or poverty which God has not known and borne for [humanity] in Jesus Christ. He has borne death itself on behalf of [humanity], and in that event he has broken the power of death once and for all.

That is the event which Christians confess and celebrate and witness in their daily work and worship for the sake of all [humanity].

To become to be a Christian is, therefore, to have the extraordinary freedom to share the burdens of the daily, common, ambiguous, transient, perishing existence of [humans beings], even to the point of actually taking the place of another [person], whether he be powerful or weak, in health or in sickness, clothed or naked, educated or illiterate, secure or persecuted, complacent or despondent, proud or forgotten, housed or homeless, fed or hungry, at liberty or in prison, young or old, white or Negro, rich or poor.

For a Christian to be poor and to work among the poor is not a conventional charity, but a use of the freedom for which Christ has set [humanity] free.

~ William Stringfellow, My People is the Enemy, 32.

Science is so Important…Except in the all the Things we Truly Care About

2011-11-12T11:10:00.000-08:00

A good essay here on the limitations of science.

Who loses? We all do, of course, but perhaps it is science itself that takes the worst damage. Ironically, the more we look to science to do jobs it was never meant to do—bear the full weight of our moral systems, demonstrate the existence of a “designer,” define personhood—the more we fall under its sway, the less we understand what it can and cannot do, and the less willing we are to let our (non-scientific) moral and religious traditions speak.

I am not one to insist that morality requires religious belief, but I have a hard time seeing how any morally serious worldview can persist without some kind of appeal to ultimate things. And so long as science remains the sole arbiter of ultimate things, our public moral lives will remain impoverished.

At Least He is Honest

2011-11-07T17:16:00.000-08:00

When we hear the giddy almost embarrassing announcements that "science" is getting close to solving the "problem" of consciousness, it is nice to read a more honest assessment.

A Cross at the Top of the World

2011-11-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

This essay is just another example of how a narrative actually builds a culture and creates meaning. We hold certain ways of understanding our world and how we should live in that world as opposed to others. And we come to believe these ways are TRUE as opposed to false. And we mean it in a way that is more significant than saying 2+2=4 is true also, and that is what a narrative does if powerful enough.

A person can be right about 2+2=4 but wrong about humility. In other words he could be right about his math but be a complete jackass in the doing of it and how he parades his “rightness” around. Thus, he is wrong in a sense that far outweighs his rightness in number gathering.

We can thank the Judeo-Christian narrative for that sensibility.

But just as astonishing as the early description of Jesus as "God" is the fact that these first Christians could in the same breath say (or sing) "God" and "cross." The idea that any great individual, let alone one "in very nature God," could be associated with a shameful Roman crucifixion is just bizarre.

Contemporary Christians may find the thought easy enough, but that's only because of two thousand years reflection on this narrative. Western history is now utterly "cruciform" - shaped by the event of Jesus's crucifixion.

What we read in the above text is evidence of nothing less than a humility revolution. Honour and shame are turned on their heads. The highly honoured Jesus lowered himself to a shameful cross and, yet, in so doing became an object not of scorn but of worship and emulation:

My point is not that Christians alone can be humble; rather, as a plain historical statement, humility came to be valued in Western culture as a consequence of Christianity's dismantling of the all-pervasive honour-shame paradigm of the ancient world.

Today, it doesn't matter what your religious views are - Christian, atheist, Jedi Knight - if you were raised in the West, you are likely to think that honour-seeking is morally questionable and lowering yourself for the good of others is ethically beautiful.

That is the influence of a story whose impact can be felt regardless of whether its details are believed - a story about greatness that willingly went to a cross. Our culture remains cruciform long after it stopped being Christian.

Following the Evidence Indeed

2011-10-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

It is often assumed that believers or theists, people of faith, believe in God’s existence in spite of evidence to the contrary or that they believe with no supporting evidence. Now, we know what people mean when they make this claim and there is no doubt this may actually describe some person’s faith or belief. However, I have never met one and I’m unaware of any prominent or respected believer (I am narrowing this down to Christianity) presently, or over the last two thousand years, who would describe their view as such.

Putting that aside, as any first year philosophy student can tell us, no one believes anything (I am speaking of serious people reflecting upon serious matters) in spite of the evidence. The truth is they interpret the evidence differently. They “see” it differently. The question should always be, “Why do you interpret or see the evidence that way?” It should never be, “You have no evidence for your beliefs.” And of course, I am putting aside for now the whole other issue of what counts as evidence.

The truth is we interpret or “see” the world through a meta-physical framework, paradigm, world-view, faith, narrative, etc, that causes us to “see” the world, the evidence, in a certain way. These frameworks are built by a consortium of causes and influences. We were all born into a certain family, in a certain place, in a certain time. We were all “educated” a certain way by certain teachers. We were all influenced by certain friends, families, and net-works of communities. We all had certain experiences that influenced us. We all had (have) a unique temperament and personality—we are all bent or shaped a certain way. We all, hopefully most of us, at some point began to reflect, think, and meditate upon what it was we really believed about this thing called existence. We began to question a lot of the “received” wisdom. At some point, we sort of ventured forth and “owned” for ourselves what it was we believed. The truth however is that, even after that process, we have still been shaped and influenced by all those factors I mentioned plus many others. And that is okay. We can still be our own person with our own take on things even as we know we are, indeed, our mother or father’s son or daughter. The fruit, as they say, does not fall (for good of bad) far from the tree. In fact, knowing this can cause us to strive to be more objective, not less. It can cause us to question ourselves and be humble in our own beliefs, knowing that we are, in fact, biased in many ways. It is the person who cannot see the faith-based and (situated in time/context) community based foundation (or non-foundation) to his beliefs who should worry us. These are the TRUE BELIEVERS, the fundamentalists, and we find them in both their secular (Dawkins) and religious (Falwell) counterparts.

Related to this fact of always being situated is the matter that these frame-works/narratives are ultimately faith-based. It is not as if we were robotic empirical detectives from birth up to say 20 or so, just objectively analyzing the evidence, and then “poof” based upon that dispassionate investigation, “I believe such and such…” That is simply not reality. The truth is that from the time we could even begin to think about and contemplate our world—all those influences were in play. They are always already a part of our evidence gathering and precede all else simply as a matter of nature. Of course these frame-works evolve and change. There is a double-side to all this. New information, new experiences, can open us to new paradigms (narratives), which can then help us “see” the same evidence in a new light, thus leading to a change in our minds. It is an interactive process. We are always bumping up against reality, but we can only “see” that reality differently through a different narrative or paradigm and sometimes that “bumping” leads to a new narrative. Did reality change? No. But my mind did. Thus, in a way, reality did change. A paradox but one we are all familiar with. It’s called growing up. If we are old enough we have all experienced that moment when, perhaps visiting a house we lived in when we were very young, and we noticed that it is much smaller than we remembered. Did the house dimensions change? No. Our perspective changed. We “see” it differently now. That is why the ridiculous mantra of “just show me the evidence” becomes so tiring. Besides missing the point, what it really reflects is the fear of changing one’s mind. It provides a safe place as it were from growing up. When we hear from the atheist, “Show me the evidence,” its origin is in the same sort of fear animating the religious fundamentalist who cries, “Show it to me in the Bible.” The atheist has his view of the evidence, which he believes is “sacred” to an extent; we must view it the same way he does—just as the religious fundamentalist believes we must view the Bible or other sacred scripture the same way he does.

The other area this plea for “evidence” falls flat is in the very nature of the matter being discussed. One cannot apply the guide of empiricism to questions or matters that simply fall outside its pay-grade. If we are planning a trip to the moon, then yes, empiricism is the way to proceed. But if we are plumbing the depths of those questions regarding existence itself, purpose, God’s existence, the good, the true, and the beautiful, life’s meaning, love, and so on (in fact, the only matters that anyone truly cares about), then empiricism may play a minor role but it is in way over its head as to the understanding of these types of questions or in their resolution. When a person tells us he has been searching for God only to find nothing (no evidence) and we find out he was searching for a being similar to Big-Foot or Santa Claus, what can we do but shake our heads in embarrassment. Empiricism has a way of reducing grown adults into immature children.

Anyway, let us have none of this nonsense that some only consider the evidence while others follow their faith in spite of the evidence. Believing something by faith does not equal believing without evidence or in spite of the evidence. Faith (or the grand narrative/ story of the world we believe) is simply the way we choose to “see” or interpret the evidence. In this sense, everyone is a “believer” in something. Philosophical naturalism/atheism/materialism/scientism is a faith (narrative) like any other. The only way it differs from other faiths is that it masquerades as something else; it cries “We have the only truth!” which is the cornerstone of every type of fundamentalism. They interpret and “see” the evidence the only way they can, given their presuppositions. But we all see and interpret (existence/the world/our experiences) the same evidence. This essay brings out some of these points. A snippet:

This is the first ever scientific paper to identify what we now speak of as the "Big Bang." The term however was not Lemaitre's, but came from Fred Hoyle, who used it as a term of derision.

Hoyle was a constant opponent of the notion of the Big Bang, because he disliked its metaphysical implications- Hoyle was an atheist and to him the notion of a Big Bang implied the existence of a creator, God.

Together with two other physicists, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, Hoyle developed a theory of a "steady state" universe in which new matter was continuously created to fill in the gaps formed through the expanding universe.

Of course, there was no empirical evidence for this theory, just the need to avoid the metaphysical implications of Lemaitre's account. Both Hoyle and Gold maintained their opposition to the Big Bang, while the rest of the scientific community had long moved to Lemaitre's position, simply because of the overwhelming evidence for its correctness. There are now no serious competitors to Lemaitre's scientific position.

What is important in this vignette is that it was the man of faith, a Jesuit priest, who provided the theoretical account that matched the empirical evidence, while it was the atheist who resisted that account because of his ideological commitment to atheism, developing an alternative account with no empirical basis, and holding on to it well after conclusive evidence had convinced most in the field of his error.

This is not a story of atheistic and scientific reason slaying the irrational man of faith, but quite the opposite. Hoyle's atheism blinded him to the evidence and caused him to reject the scientific advance made by Lemaitre.

Many commentators have indeed suggested that Lemaitre's faith made him more open to the possibility of a universe with a finite existence, and hence more open to follow where good theory and mounting evidence took him.

The Modern Mind

2011-09-15T12:47:00.000-07:00

This is a very nice essay by Scott Stephens. He points out many areas often overlooked when thinking about the “new atheists.”

It is just as apparent why such an atheism - with its cartoon versions of history, its theological illiteracy, it fetishisation of science, its hostility to the humanities and aesthetics, its flattened-out brand of morality as mere "well-being," its cheap gags and mode of incessant piss-taking cynicism - should appeal so powerfully to a culture that has grown accustomed to the vulgarities and trivia enshrined in the modern media.

The emergence of a form of chic atheism, precisely as a media-fuelled and driven phenomenon, was anticipated by Hilaire Belloc with staggering clarity. Writing in 1929:

"the 'Modern Mind' dislikes thinking: the popular Press increases that sloth by providing sensational substitutes. Disliking thought, the 'Modern Mind' dislikes close attention, and indeed any sustained effort; the popular Press increases the debility by an orgy of pictures and headlines ... In all these ways and twenty others the popular Press as we have it today thrusts the 'Modern Mind' lower than it would otherwise have fallen, swells its imbecility and confirms it in its incapacity for civilization and therefore for Faith."

And this atheism, I believe, will continue to flourish to the extent that moral disintegration, nihilistic capitalism, anti-aesthetic liberalism and a kind of ubiquitous piss-taking cynicism remain the dominant forces in our common life.

I often hear atheists insist that they do not need God in order to be good. But if I am in any way accurate in what I have argued here, we are faced with a far more destructive possibility: that without God, there simply is no Good.

Most new (or even old) atheists get all worked up when they think someone is saying they cannot be "good" or "moral" without God, and of course no one is saying such. What they usually miss (Nietzsche didn't!), is that a deeper critique is being made--namely that without God or transcendence, there can be no "good" "moral" or perhaps more importantly "evil." Thus there is no hierarchy, everything is flattened out. There becomes no ontological or difference of any significance between building a concentration camp and an orphanage. Life then is a series of meaningless events with a gloss of some sort put on it by humans because of some strange effect of evolution, but one completely divorced from reality. We then end up in an absurd universe, because we actually experience caring about such things. And this is passed off as "science" or some other authoritative tag of some sort. Crazy.

Beyond that, he rightly points out that the "new" atheists are exactly what one should expect in our time, when thinking is so disliked. We just learned why so many of their books are indeed popular.

There is Only Narrative

2011-09-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

This piece by Paul Wallace is spot on. He points out, as anyone who knows me well, something I have been saying for some time now. And of course it is nothing original with me—it is the cumulative work of many others—but it remains the current starting place for talking about what it means to do philosophy.

What anyone is doing when they are philosophizing is telling stories. This is true of the atheist as well as the theist. But, we should never think such means that one is not telling the truth or giving an accurate account of the world. More importantly, the fact we tell stories in inescapable. If one were to tell us why this whole idea was nonsense, he would have to tell a story to do so! It just is.

What many who are shaken by such a prospect do is default to a sophomoric position that goes something like this: “Well, the fact the earth is a certain distance from the sun is not a story such as the Prodigal Son.” Of course, what could this ever confirm except the person was missing the point? This would mean the person was thinking a measurement was the entire story or sum of a question or of what every interlocking facet of reality were to mean. It would be like asking someone what their economic philosophy was and for them to take the change out of their pocket, count it up, and say: “There you have it.” It works it you are ten years old, but not otherwise. Every fact and piece of evidence is an INTERPRETED fact or piece of evidence. Even calling something a “fact” or piece of “evidence” requires interpretation.

And if you think this is the case (and here I’m addressing myself to my confirmed atheist readers)—that the only true truth is energy and matter in motion—how did you come to believe that? I’m betting that you came to believe it because you believed in the truth of another story.

Now, this is a story just as surely as any other. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t for a moment doubt the basics of evolution and thermodynamics. But Myers was not forced by the facts of nature into these beliefs he so forcefully espouses. Instead, he has done exactly what storytellers do: He has told us a story. That is to say, he has added his own stuff.

The problem is that not that Myers is telling us all a story, but that he insists he is not. “Reality,” he writes, “is harsh.” His story is the story you absolutely must believe if you absolutely insist on not believing in stories.

Most stories are spiced with irony, but not this one. Here, irony is all you get.

There is only Faith

2011-09-09T08:54:00.000-07:00

A nice interview here with Bruce Ledewitz, Professor of Law at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh regarding his book, Church, State, and the Crisis in American Secularism.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic?

"The misuse of terms like “reason.” All human beings employ faith commitments of various kinds. It cannot even be conclusively established that there is a mind-independent reality “out there.” So, when secularists claim that they live lives based on reason whereas religious believers base their lives on faith, they are just fooling themselves. We would do better to examine our faith commitments with humility and try to understand ourselves better."

Indeed.

Quite

2011-09-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

Good interview here, or as blogger Arni Zachariassen put it: "Jarod Longbons interviews the quite badass Conor Cunningham."

Beautiful

2011-08-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

This Guy Gets It

2011-08-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here:

The trouble with this approach is that once we have admitted that there are some absolute moral facts, it is hard to see why we shouldn’t think that there are many — as many as common sense and ordinary reasoning appear to warrant. Having given up on the purity of a thoroughgoing anti-absolutism, we would now be in the business of trying to figure out what absolute moral facts there are. To do that, we would need to employ our usual mix of argument, intuition and experience. And what argument, intuition and experience tell us is that whether we should slurp our noodles depends on what the local conventions are, but whether we should abuse children for fun does not.

John Stott Goes Home

2011-08-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

I always admired John Stott. He was the perfect picture of the scholar Christian gentleman. He was a man for all seasons—a true renaissance man. More than that, he was a pastor/priest not only to his church but to a generation. Although a scholar, he wrote mostly for the layperson. In doing so, he touched more people than he ever would have in an ivory tower somewhere. Now he belongs to the ages. We will miss him. We are the poorer for his passing. There are not many John Stotts around today.

The Nation Gets It

2011-07-31T16:55:00.000-07:00

Did the New Atheists (and many old ones) get the memos regarding the 20th Century and the demise of Positivism?

Interesting Quotes

2011-07-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind… This is a somewhat ridiculous situation… [I]t is just as irrational to be influenced in one’s beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist. (Thomas Nagel)

Secular theorists often assume they know what a religious argument is like: they present it as a crude prescription from God, backed up with threat of hellfire, derived from general or particular revelation, and they contrast it with the elegant complexity of a philosophical argument by Rawls (say) or Dworkin. With this image in mind, they think it obvious that religious argument should be excluded from public life... But those who have bothered to make themselves familiar with existing religious-based arguments in modern political theory know that this is mostly a travesty... (Jeremy Waldron)

Due to the typical attitude of the contemporary naturalist… the vast majority of naturalist philosophers have come to hold (since the late 1960s) an unjustified belief in naturalism. Their justifications have been defeated by arguments developed by theistic philosophers, and now naturalist philosophers, for the most part, live in darkness about the justification for naturalism. They may have a true belief in naturalism, but they have no knowledge that naturalism is true since they do not have an undefeated justification for their belief. If naturalism is true, then their belief in naturalism is accidentally true. (Quentin Smith)

What makes these quotes interesting is that Nagel and Smith are atheists and while I don’t know what Waldron believes, he hardly seems a zealot either way. But Nagel and Smith are what I call honest atheists. Unlike Nagel and Smith, the typical atheist and, for instance the creationist, will both tell you they are simply following the evidence. That both are unwilling to admit there is something greater and deeper going on here than simply their appeal to the evidence reveals their lack of any sort of sophisticated sensibility about such things, let alone their complete disregard for philosophy or science.

These True Believers who have never met a doubt they couldn’t easily dismiss live in that land of certainty and know-it-all blather. That the world may not be as simple, as plain, as straight, as linear, and as sequential as they believe is lost on all fundamentalists whether of the secular or religious stripe.

Dear Human

2011-07-22T08:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=2223#comic

More on the Power of the Christian Narrative over the Secular One

2011-07-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

A very interesting story here on the rise of Christianity in China. It wouldn’t shock me to see a peaceful revolution within the next 25 years whereby we wake up one day to find China one of, if not the largest Christian republic in the world.

The Christian Narrative to the Rescue—Why?—because the Secular Narrative Sucks and it certainly Inspires No One to Change Anything

2011-07-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Here

To achieve the moral goal of equality of opportunity for future generations and distant peoples we have rapidly got to change our way of living now and in the present. This will require the committed actions and participation of billions of people in every home and organisation on the planet.

This is not something that the mechanistic target driven culture of our politicians can achieve, any more than it has achieved higher quality education or better health care.

The moral climate that the ideology of the "free market" has engendered throughout the West is one in which commitment to the common good is no longer a respectable goal for public policy or private lives. Instead, each individual is called to act rationally in his or her own interests and by the magic of the market can selfishness be turned into increased welfare for all.

This mechanistic politics, like the mechanistic cosmology of Newton, and the instrumentalism of coal-fuelled industrialism, has committed us as a nation to an idolatrous simulacrum of political and social life that is also endangering the very future of human life on earth.

And so even when a government and parliament attempt to take the moral lead on an issue like climate change they cannot escape the disabling infection of the very monetary morass that is dragging the earth ever closer to irreversible climate change.

The Christian moral vision begins in the commandment to love God above all things and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Liberalism and neo-liberalism both promise that we can fashion a just society and collective welfare without the people sharing a conception of justice or acting for the common good. The government or the market - or some combination of the two - will siphon off some portion of collective goods to conserve a minimal common life while private companies and individuals are free to pursue their own interests without regard for the common.

But the climate system is a vast commons and our fossil fuelled civilisation commits every one of us to daily rituals that are continuing to lay waste to this commons.

Selling rights to carry on polluting it is not a Christian or a moral solution to this problem. Only by engaging the head, heart and hands of every citizen and every community and every corporation in every nation can we hope to turn our civilisation from its collision course with the carbon sinks of the earth.

And here is the telling point. When we hear people talking about “game theory” or “mutual conduct toward one another” or “utility” or “rational” and “logical” conduct, we see an approach (modern) of believing that information is the answer. That if one simply pours enough information into someone’s head, they will then go and do “good.” Well, the 20th Century is a testament to that failure of thinking. It is also very ironic that those who claim morality is subjective and we can rely simply upon our "feelings" to sort out "good" and "evil" tell us this within a narrative that is so boring, unimaginative, ugly, and wooden that it could hardly inspire a person to get out of bed in the morning let alone care about global warming.

Unless one can move people’s hearts, no amount of “theory” or information will matter. And the only thing (witness Martin Luther King, Jr. or any other movement of moral change) that moves people’s hearts is a grand narrative held to be objective and true for everyone. Obviously we need education and information, but such has to be given in the context of a narrative that makes it meaningful or significant. The Secular (as informed by materialism) robs information of any such value, because there can be no “ought” only an “is.” A sure recipe for cultural disaster and exactly where the secular has brought us.

Oh, and I forgot to mention in my title that the secular narrative also happens to be false. So there is that too.

Eagleton Gets It

2011-07-12T14:31:00.000-07:00

Terry Eagleton is my favorite Marxist. Why? Because he is honest. I also think he would just be a great guy to sit down and have a beer with.

Here he notes the rather shallow arguments of those who praise the “secular.” My only gripe is his treatment of postmodernism in only its secular guise. He is correct that the secular postmodernism first to come out of France was of the type to call all meta-narratives into question, even the modern meta-narrative, which of course is what bothers Eagleton. But, one could argue that such was the logical outcome of the “modern” anyway as it destroyed any objective basis for “Truth” in the first place. Once that “acid” as Dennett called it begins to eat away at meta-narratives (I’m sure he was only thinking of religious meta-narratives) it is only a matter of time before it eats yours too (and why Dennett’s idea is so self-defeating). Clearly though there are other types of postmodernism and ones I think Eagleton himself would agree with.

Another interesting point he makes is that the very usage of terms such as “good” “evil” and “moral” in the West are invested with and refer to the Judeo-Christian narrative as to their meaning and once that narrative is “smoked” out and we are rid of it, it turns out we empty our moral vocabulary of any meaning or significance. I would say that “Moral” then becomes marks on a paper or a sound one makes with his mouth when voicing the word, but nothing more—there is nothing behind it—we might as well say or write “boo.” Secularists thought the words alone would do—like magic incantations. They forget the words only make sense when invested with and tied to a powerful and moving narrative people actually believe to be true. A word like “evil” must have a referent more powerful than, “I really don’t have a good feeling about this, but I can’t tell you why. Oh, wait a minute—I feel differently now—never mind.”

He ends his piece with the same thought I have had many times and have posted here, and that is how both the religious fundamentalist and the secular fundamentalist are simply the two sides to the same coin. If only that coin could roll into a drainage pipe, wash out to sea, and be lost forever in the greater ocean of moderation and rational thought.

Kitcher asks himself why people should need to be united by a belief in some "transcendental entity" (his use of both terms is inaccurate) rather than by their mutual sympathies. "What exactly," he enquires, "does the invocation of some supernatural being add?" A Christian might reply that it adds the obligations to give up everything one has, including one's life, if necessary, for the sake of others. And this, to say the least, is highly inconvenient. Anyone, even a mildly intelligent badger, can entertain "mutual sympathies". The Christian paradigm of love, by contrast, is the love of strangers and enemies, not of those we find agreeable. Civilised notions such as mutual sympathy, more's the pity, won't deliver us the world we need.

Secularisation is a lot harder than people tend to imagine. The history of modernity is, among other things, the history of substitutes for God. Art, culture, nation, Geist, humanity, society: all these, along with a clutch of other hopeful aspirants, have been tried from time to time. The most successful candidate currently on offer is sport, which, short of providing funeral rites for its spectators, fulfils almost every religious function in the book.

If Friedrich Nietzsche was the first sincere atheist, it is because he saw that the Almighty is exceedingly good at disguising Himself as something else, and that much so-called secularisation is accordingly bogus. Secular thinking, too, had to be demythified. "God had in fact gone into hiding," Robbins observes, "and now had to be smoked out of various secular terms, from morals and nature and history to man and even grammar." Even Nietzsche's will to power has a suspiciously metaphysical ring to it.

Maybe the New Atheists Need to Read More Literature?

2011-07-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

This piece is interesting because the writer is “a staff writer and book critic at The New Yorker and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. He is regarded as one of the world's finest and most influential literary critics…” and so comes from a different perspective—and actually a perspective (literary) that I have a great deal of respect for.

“The God of the New Atheism and the God of religious fundamentalism turn out to be remarkably similar entities. For Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, among others, the God most worth fighting against seems to be the hybrid of a cheaply understood Old Testament, a prejudicially scanned Koran, and the sentimentalities of contemporary evangelicalism - He created the world, controls our destinies, resides in heaven, loves us when He is not punishing us, intervenes to perform miracles, sent His only son to die on the cross and save us from sin, and promises goodies in heaven for the devout.”

“God is like the teapot. But it seems to occur neither to Dawkins nor to Russell that belief in God is not like belief in a teapot. The referent - the content of the belief - matters here (as does the metaphor).
God may be just as undisprovable as the teapot, but belief in God is a good deal more reasonable than belief in the teapot, precisely because God cannot be reified, turned into a mere thing, and thus entices our approximations. There is a reason, after all, that no one has ever quite worshipped a teapot: it is not big enough for us to pour the fluid of our incomprehension into.”

“The third weakness is related to the second. The literalist obsession with killing off a literal God, who is only ever seen as a dominating old father up in the sky, brings with it a startling lack of comprehension and sympathy for what William James called ‘the varieties of religious experience.’”

“Since faith is interpreted, again, on the evangelical or Islamic model, as blind - a blind leap of faith that hurls the believer into an infinite idiocy - so no understanding or even interest can be extended to why people believe the religious narratives they follow; little or no understanding can be extended to what so gripped Wittgenstein - that is to say, the loyal, unthinking, relatively undogmatic embeddedness of daily religious practice.”

“I would rather that the New Atheists refrained from speculation altogether than plunge into their flimsy anthropological-quasi-neuroscentific-evolutionary-biological kitbags. It is peculiar indeed to read Dawkins's superb descriptions of evolution, and then to find that very evolutionary theory being applied in the most hypothetical, rampantly unscientific ways to the question of why we have believed in God for so long.”

Again though, this is a testament to how small the world is of the “new” atheism and how they fall into that same sensibility of religious fundamentalism, creationism, and other radical fringe thinking.

The other very relevant point the writer makes is the fact that the god the new atheists rail against is nowhere to be found or believed in, but perhaps by that small rather pathetic group of people we call fundamentalists. This would be analogous to an adult boasting to his adult friends that he had just bested everyone in his karate class only to learn that everyone in his class was twelve years old. “Look at me everyone; I’m an Oxford Ph.D. who took on a country preacher with a high school diploma—and won!”

Forgive us if we are not impressed.

A True Revolution

2011-07-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

Some historical facts here.

"Over the centuries, Christians can certainly be accused of failing to live up to their principles. But the very accusation is revealing. Pagans could hardly be accused of failing to achieve standards they never recognized."

"embarrassing incapacity"

2011-06-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

A nice piece here on the “new” atheism by Ian H. Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The designation “New Atheists” has been gaining ground as a name given to this century's best-selling authors, Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens and company, who attack religion. I greatly prefer the designation “Militant Atheists". It is far more accurate. There is very little new in their critiques. Their militancy is the distinctive feature of their writings. Calling them “Hysterical Atheists” is funny and makes the same point, but it is a bit too provocative to be useful.

Engaging their arguments has been undertaken already by a very respectable variety of commentators, including both Christians and unbelievers.1 it is not altogether a rewarding task, because while the militants' writings are fluid and stylish, the arguments are often silly. David Bentley Hart's tone is more disdainful than charitable when he refers to their “embarrassing incapacity for philosophical reasoning ... that raises the wild non-sequitur almost to the level of a dialectical method”2, but his criticism's content is right on target. Terry Eagleton, no Evangelical apologist, begins his blistering critique in the London Review of Books “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology”.3 There is plenty in the militant atheist writings to criticize.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if people from as different backgrounds and educations as Hutchinson, Eagleton, and Hart can so readily see and dismiss the utter and patent nonsense making up the new atheist “reasoning” such reasoning can hardly be described (as my intrepid interlocutor does) as a “universally compelling logic.”

I'm just saying.

They Just Keep Coming

2011-06-28T19:40:00.001-07:00

Here is another great review of Cunningham's book, Darwin's Pious Idea.

At Last--An Interesting Atheist

2011-06-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

The power of the Christian narrative here.

One of the interesting things I’ve found from reading your blog is that you are in fact an atheist. What relevance do you see this theory having for atheists?

Well, first I want to hedge on this atheist question in some way, and say I’m not a traditional theist; but if I’m an atheist, I’m at least a Christian one.

In any case though, I think that a lot of work by secular philosophers recently has been reclaiming the Christian tradition, and theological concepts, that provides some prima facie evidence for its relevance—people like Slavoj Zizek or Alain Badiou or Georgio Agamben. My work’s been very influenced by them as a way to reclaim the Christian heritage in a more convincing way than simply rejecting it because it has religiousness all over it.

At one point theologian Thomas Altizer posted on your blog that we haven’t really thought through a proper atheism yet.

Right. I think that you can see this with the New Atheists. Dawkins’ and Hitchens’ and Dennett’s books are a kind of simplistic critique of religion that’s basically not going to change anyone’s mind. I think there has to be more to say about religion other than the fact that it makes no sense as an empirical claim. That’s just too obvious to be interesting. I think that we as a society deserve a better form of atheism.

And to that we can only say, amen.

His point about empiricism is apt. Unbelievably we have these new atheists out there basically positing that because we haven't found the foot-print of God (as if we were looking for Big-Foot) or picked him up on radar, there is no God and that is the extent of their argument. As they sit down and congratulate each other, what can one do but laugh in embarrassment at the sheer idiocy of such notions. Congratulations, you've disproved a god no one was asserting! Good job!

Well, at least this guy gets it.

Opening the Mouth and Removing all Doubt

2011-06-25T16:13:00.000-07:00

Is the “new” atheist echo chamber so small they really don’t have a clue as to the key influences that brought us Western Civilization? Really? Have they read anything other than Dawkins or Dennett? Do they live in caves? Do they ever venture out? From this, one would guess not.

Of course the most ironic point made in this undressing of Pataki, is noting where the foundations of empiricism should be located. How amazing that most of these new atheists wield what they think is some sort of hammer against “religion” and theism, forgetting the hammer was handed to them by others. They certainly never came up with it. In fact, they have never come up with anything, ever. All they can do is flail about with tools someone else produced and perhaps they wield them so incorrectly because of the intellectual laziness inherent in their own worldview and the poverty of vision that comes from being so ignorant of that which they critique. As the writer notes:

The methodology of empirical testing fundamental to our Western intellectual tradition did not come from the Greeks. Indeed, it could not. The Greeks closed the door on verification through experience. "The whole business of testing for truth," says Professor Edwin Judge, a specialist on the reception of Graeco-Roman culture into the modern world and founder of Macquarie University's Ancient History Department, "was explicitly rejected in classical culture as being illogical.

Why? Because the Greeks believed the universe operated according to a fixed, eternal logic, which was accessible to the logical mind of human beings. What was needed in order to comprehend the world, whether the movements of the stars or the circulation of the blood, was not testing but careful reasoning from unchallenged axioms.”

This revolution in the path to knowledge was the result of the shattering of the Greek worldview by the Judeo-Christian worldview. And we can date it precisely. In AD 529 the Christian philosopher John Philoponus published his Refutation of Proclus echoing his Refutation of Aristotle. These were a stunning dismantling of the Greek doctrine of the rational, eternal universe in favour of a philosophical defence of the biblical notion of the universe as a created object with a beginning. And this gave us science as we now think of it.

The Oxford Classical Dictionary states things plainly: Philoponus "influenced subsequent science to Galileo by replacing many of Aristotle's theories with an account centred on the Christian idea that the universe had an absolute beginning."

The breakthrough was immense. If the world is not an eternal, logical system but a creative work of art, we cannot simply think our way to understanding reality.

We must humbly inspect what the Creator, of his own free will, has produced and apply our rational powers of testing to comprehend what He has manufactured. Testing of what is, not rationalizing from first principles, will lead us to the truth about the physical world.

Conor on Materialism

2011-06-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

Nice essay here on materialism/ultra-Darwinism by Conor Cunningham.

"I read recently in the newspaper that Richard Dawkins has funded a children's summer camp, one that will encourage atheism, or what Dawkins would probably spin as "open-mindednesses." The problem being, as we shall see, is that most atheist philosophy denies the existence of mind; open mindedness is, therefore, an oxymoron, for it is so open, it has fallen out altogether."

Review of Darwin's Pious Idea

2011-06-24T09:01:00.001-07:00

Here is a good review of Conor Cunningham's book, Darwin's Pious Idea by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Narratives will Always Trump “Facts”

2011-06-24T08:38:00.000-07:00

The writer makes what is really an obvious point if we think about it. If you are older than 21 and think about your life experience, rarely do “facts” or bits of information change people’s minds regarding anything significant (Yes, it may change their minds if the argument is about how far the sun is from the earth, but rarely if the argument is over gay-marriage or what is moral). Narratives and stories change people’s minds.

A “fact” means nothing and no one cares about a “fact” until such is woven into a context, a story, a narrative that gives the “fact” meaning and significance such that it moves the person’s heart. The people who will change the world are story tellers. The people who will follow are the “fact” citers.

Does this mean one side doesn’t know the “facts” and the other doesn’t know how to tell stories? No. It means that the story tellers know the “facts” but also know such is not enough. The “fact” citers are unaware they are actually story tellers. Since they think they are just telling us the “facts” and are clueless as to what they are really doing (telling a story), they invariably come off as my-way-or-the highway type jerks (After all, how can you argue with the “facts?”). We see these people on both extreme sides of the Left/Right political divide and among religious and secular fundamentalists. They are the “know-it-alls” whom everyone tires of at a dinner party and spends most of their time trying to avoid…as they make their way to the story-teller in the room.

More From Singer

2011-06-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

More are beginning to see that it is hard to propose that we care about something, and expect others to care about the same, when we can't even tell them it is true, right, or good and that if we were to do the exact opposite it is no more true, right, or good.

Once the plane is even, with no higher or lower, as to morals--then nothing matters no matter how we might wish to dress it up (and since the person suggesting we lift one ideal or notion higher than the others, while stating at the same time he doesn't believe any are higher or lower--it is dressing up!) We should rightly call nonsense by its name.

Even those unwilling to believe in a transcendental source, realize the need for objectivity in morality. What can this mean except that no one really believes nothing matters and they believe such for reasons that always exceed survival or emotional subjective preference.

Brown on Brains

2011-06-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

How easily one can push aside the obfuscation, the scientific jargon, and the smoke to point out the rather obvious.

"So when we're discussing thought and conscious processes, talking about minds is precise, and even measurable (what else do public opinion pollsters do?) while talking about brains is just hand-waving. It is, in fact, an expression of religious opinion – partly a statement of social belonging and partly an expression of faith in the sufficiency of a particular world-view to explain everything."

"Is this scientistic faith well justified here?"

We would answer no.

Martin Nowak

2011-06-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

Well if this is any indication of where this conversation is moving, we can perhaps begin to see more light at the end of the tunnel. Martin Nowak is herein described by a Harvard colleague as “the greatest evolutionist ever.” I would suppose then that his voice and views on such matters would at least carry some weight with other evolutionists. I see nothing of substance in this report of his talk that I disagree with. Here is a sampling of some of his statements:

“Science is no replacement for religion.”

“We are confronted with many questions that do not have a scientific answer. It would be naïve to think that every aspect of human life could be addressed by science.”

“The biggest challenge in the discussion of Christianity and evolution, says Nowak, is ‘scientific atheism, which says science is all that is needed for understanding the world… Religion is false or absurd.' ”

“To this, Nowak said, ‘The God concept of well-formulated theology, certainly of Catholic Christian theology, is more sophisticated than what is rejected by most scientists. The god that is rejected by scientific atheists is not the God that is taught by the Catholic Church.’ He said scientific atheists are ‘overstepping a purely scientific interpretation.’”

“So what is the proper interaction between science and religion?” asked Nowak. “Scientists should admit that science does not provide every answer… Religion and science must work together.”

Wow. Think about it. This would be like Billy Graham telling creationists they misunderstand both evolution and atheists and that the biggest challenge in this discussion was their ignorance.

Competing Myths

2011-06-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

There is a very good essay here regarding comprehensive narratives or explanatory frameworks. The writer correctly notes that both creationism and evolution are really myths that function in this way for their adherents. He notes:

“There are two contrasting accounts of the cosmos and its multitudinous life forms that are widely disseminated in American culture today: the “creationist” narrative and the “evolutionist” narrative. Each of these accounts makes distinct epistemological claims, authorizing a radically different vision of the world, the place of human beings within it, the relationships between humans and other life forms, and the nature of time and history. Despite their differences, however, both accounts function as authoritative narratives that have the power to mobilize communities—that is, both are examples of Lincoln’s mythic discourse.”

It is interesting that both claim they are “scientific” or that “science” is on their side. Of course, both are deluded but for different reasons.

The writer quotes creationist Ken Hamlin:

“As AiG’s president Ken Ham put it at the 2007 opening of the Creation Museum, AiG’s monument to young earth creationism, ‘belief in every word of the Bible can be defended by modern science.’”

What Mr. Hamlin clearly doesn’t understand is two-fold. First, if the Bible need be or even if it could be, defended, by modern science (whatever that means!), such would mean that “modern science” were the authority and not the Bible. In other words, he has just bent his knee to an idol. Second, the writers of the Biblical narratives were not modern nor where they writing for moderns, so to now impose our modern view back on to the Bible is to entirely miss something that transcends all time periods and is timeless. It is really to try and control, to master, the Bible and to box it in, which is impossible.

Where the evolutionists delude themselves is in not understanding the difference between methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. I noted the difference in an earlier post. The writer alludes to the difference in a footnote:

“One could legitimately object that by treating evolution as a myth I effectively concede one of the major claims of the creationist movement: that evolution and creationism are equally persuasive and thus are equally valid understandings of the natural world. To this I would argue that insofar as science itself does not mystify its claims by appeal to a superhuman realm it is not a mythic discourse in the same way as creationism. However, the popular understanding of evolution and the kinds of claims that proponents make about it invest evolution (and by extension the scientific method) with a set of transcendent moral values that, strictly speaking, lie outside of science proper.”

When he writes of science not “mystify[ing]” its claims, he is noting its methodological naturalism, which is a good thing and the reason that scientists who also happen to be Christian, agnostic, Hindu, Buddhist, or any other number of faiths can and do pursue science with no problem whatsoever. His “however” is very important though and is what puts the ontological naturalist in the same camp as the creationist. And this is why appeals to the “facts” or the “evidence” are pointless. Both sides have the “facts” and the “evidence,” (I have yet to hear a creationist or evolutionist exclaim “Oh my Gosh, I didn’t know that—that changes everything!) and both sides appeal to correspondence type theories of truth.

The problem lies within their interpretive frameworks—their explanatory narratives from which they view the evidence and facts. At the end of the day, a “fact” or piece of “evidence” is nothing until someone says it is something more than “nothing.” If it is “nothing” then no one would say anything at all, because to even say something “means” nothing is to give it meaning and the game is given away. And what falls under “facts” and “evidence” is existence itself (how could it be otherwise?) and everything we can know. Methodological naturalism cannot speak to the “why” of existence and doesn’t even attempt to, knowing its place. Ontological naturalism does, however, attempt to answer the “why” question and the “what does it mean” question, and quickly leaves “science” behind and joins philosophy.

The problem is that the Ultra-Darwinist fundamentalist and the Creationist fundamentalist will never admit that “science” supports neither one in the way that they think it does or should. If they did, it would be game over. I think deep down they know this, and therefore shout all the louder.

It is good to see though that more and more people are beginning to understand that the whole evolution/creation debate is not really about science; it is about competing myths or narratives of meaning.

More on Singer

2011-05-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Here is more on Singer's change of mind.

Good News

2011-05-27T12:50:00.000-07:00

This new finding is good news. Perhaps as these young people come into their own in society and culture, they will bring a new (actually an old) understanding to these two areas of knowledge.

What is that understanding: There is no conflict between science and religion (or spirituality). There is only a conflict between secular fundamentalists and religious fundamentalists. A pox on both their houses. They deserve each other.

Singer Looks into the Abyss and Finally Blinks

2011-05-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting essay by notorious bioethics professor Peter Singer. What is interesting is even Singer has realized over time that either morality has an objective basis or one is logically led to skepticism regarding any ethical assertion, even one’s own. This becomes somewhat ridiculous. We are stuck with philosophers who have destroyed any rational basis for ethical assertions, but who are constantly asserting what they believe to be ethical!

“If I deny that normative claims can be true or false, then I cannot assert that this claim is true. It too could be treated as just one preference among others - except that now there is no basis for saying that we ought to maximize the satisfaction of preferences.”

“The denial of objective truth in ethics thus leads not, as I had tried to argue, to preference utilitarianism as a kind of metaphysically unproblematic default position, but to skepticism about the possibility of reaching any meaningful conclusions at all about what we ought to do.”

Of course what he does with this change of mind is to still seek a purely materialistic ground and cause for an objective morality and I think he fails, but he certainly gets points for facing up to the intrinsic problems with believing morality can simply be reduced to subjective preferences.

Bill Maher is an Idiot but Idiots can be Right Every now and Then

2011-05-23T10:36:00.000-07:00

Many Christians will not like this Bill Maher rant, but my sense is they will not like it because it hits too close to home. They will also not like it because they don’t like hearing the truth when it comes from someone as idiotic as Maher—someone who understands religion about as well as Charlie Sheen understands moderation. Well, they should look past that and consider if there’s not some truth here.

We should not want to be like Maher, but he notes that we too often are just like him. I have often thought that, while perhaps pacifism is not entirely and always correct in some contexts and situations, it may be the vast majority of the time. And Evangelicals are simply too eager to support violence and violent means as long as it is done by Americans.

And I know Christians will try and parse this by noting the difference between an individual person loving their enemy and a state/government acting on behalf of millions of people loving their enemies. Look, I understand there are deep and well-thought out arguments on both sides of the pacifism and “Just War” disagreements and the disagreements over what it means to “love your enemies.” But one would think that Christians on every side would consider torture, at the very least, unwise and would certainly not gloat over the death of anyone—even an enemy.

Because when we do, we sound and think like Bill Maher. And he’s an idiot. He is funny though.

Forget May 21st—Materialism Already Ended Existence

2011-05-18T21:26:00.000-07:00

Many a naturalist (all?) lives under the spell of thinking he is simply noting “facts” and throwing his objective gaze around robotically and as if he had appeared without birth, family, culture, education, or influence. Science lends itself to this unfortunate naivety, because of its striving for objectivity and distance. In and of itself, this is laudable. Taken further however, and actually believed, it is damaging and especially to science.

One’s methods, processes, algorithms, and frame-works as they are applied to objects and phenomena do not capture, freeze, or reduce those objects or phenomena. They do not generate ontology or meaning—they only describe. They are not a first philosophy; they are in fact derived and only possible because of a first philosophy and thus their efficacy in their limited but important role.

What confuses many naturalists is their belief that a process (methodology) can take the place of being, existence itself (ontology). These are two different areas, entirely, and never the twain shall meet. Methodology is always derivative. Continuing on with Darwin’s Pious Idea, Cunningham speaks to this difference:

“There are two mains types of naturalism: methodological and ontological. The former is the approach that science must take when it engages with the universe insofar as it will fail to make any progress unless it brackets the divine. The latter holds that bracketing the divine is not merely methodologically necessary but constitutive of reality as such. A certain methodological naturalism is commonsensical. It would not be very helpful when making a cup of tea if, when the kettle boiled, we became overly entranced by the mystical wonder of the emission of steam, thinking it was the communication of the spirits of our ancestors. Science must preclude this, and thus it seeks to explain phenomena in purely natural terms. This is eminently sensible…”

And here we would add that this is what makes science workable and approachable by scientists, who also happen to be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, or any other faith we might add.

“Ontological naturalism goes further. While methodological naturalism issues no philosophical or metaphysical opinion on what exists, ontological naturalism suffers no such shyness. It tells us not only that science must stick to what we take to be natural but also that the natural is all there is, indeed all there ever could be. Moreover, ontological naturalism deposes philosophy’s ancient position as the final arbiter of our understanding of existence to which even science is subjected (what is called first philosophy).”

“This is commonly known as scientism, the perspective of which Richard Lewontin captures in one pithy sentence: ‘Science is the only begetter of truth.’ Leaving aside that this proposition is extrascientific—it is a philosophical thesis and not a scientific one at all—we might be inclined to inquire why he asserts something so question begging.”

In my many conversations with atheists and agnostics, especially those with science backgrounds, this is the most common (and certainly most fundamental) error they make. They usually have no idea they are spouting philosophy and not “science.” The moment one begins to articulate, unpack, talk about, and tell us what something “means” even if it is to say that such-and-such means “nothing” or that “this, whatever “this” might be, means there is no God or spiritual aspect to the world, he has left “science” and joined philosophy. It is fine to do this, but own up to it man! Quit hiding. Quit trying to privilege your take on things as “objective science.” But the more incredible realization is that many have no idea they are doing it. They actually think they are pointing out something obvious or that there is a direct one-to-one correlation between their observations and their take on its meaning in a Meta- narrative sense as if collapsed into one. Good grief!

Cunningham continues:

“When it comes to human nature and culture, scientism and ontological naturalism would contend that we are guilty of what John Ruskin called the ‘pathetic fallacy.’ We commit this fallacy when we attribute emotions to what quite obviously cannot have ‘emotion’—as in ‘the wind cried’ or ‘the trees wept’…we are left in a world that consists solely of the physical or the material. Consequently, what we see before our eyes is merely the agitation of matter; now thus, now so. That remains the case whether such agitation is murder, rape, cancer, war, famine, love or joy, birth or death…How do we discern real difference if all events and objects—all change—seems to be wholly arbitrary? To account for real difference, surely we must appeal to something besides matter—yet any such appeal is prohibited in what amounts to a monistic philosophy (the notion that existence is composed of only one type of substance, which we call ‘matter’). As John Peterson puts it, ‘If matter is the ultimate substrate and is identified with some actual thing, then all differences within matter must come from something besides matter.’ Consequently, the materialist must admit that his description is metaphysical; it tacitly invokes something that transcends what is basic at the level of immanence, or the merely physical. The only other option is to deny all change, just as one must, it seems, deny objects themselves.”

“As Peter van Inwagen writes, ‘One of the tasks that confronts the materialist is this: they have to find a home for the referents of the terms of ordinary speech within a world that is entirely material—or else deny the existence of those referents altogether.’

One constantly sees this when a materialist will note a description as “better” or a goal as something to make us “happy.” It is almost painful. It is like watching the teacher have to remind a student over and over that he cannot use that tool now that his philosophy has banished it, when the student continually reaches for it to explain his position. When one cuts off the branch on which he was sitting, the only thing remaining is to watch him fall, which leaves the materialist in an almost constant state of free-fall. Cunningham finishes with a very sobering assessment:

“Those that celebrate scientism and ontological (restrictive) naturalism do so because they have set out to achieve the banishment of the divine, no matter what the cost. These fundamentalist atheists will bring the whole house down so as to leave no room for God. Once again, they are willing to cut off their faces to spite their noses—willing to leave us all faceless. And make prisons into cultural artifacts, and eccentric, unjustified ones at that. Moreover, and shockingly, we all become Holocaust deniers. For we find it impossible to provide a metaphysics that can notice real difference. All wounds become impossible—cancer is removed from the vocabulary and is no longer to be eradicated—for this is radicalized democracy, the very flatlining of reality. All such notions now appear only in folktales. We are, therefore, beyond good and evil, as Nietzsche foresaw. And if this is true, naturalism, rather than occupying the high ground of the enlightened, is more damaging than all the wars, diseases, famines, disasters, and crimes put together. For it is the liquidation of existence itself.”

Of course many a materialist will respond, “Oh, come now, you go too far—certainly it is not that bad.” But one can be assured that such a response is out of ignorance—it only means the materialist has never had the forethought or nerve to take his presuppositions to their logical conclusions. Materialism, I believe, is a world-view that gives some psychological comfort to its holders in its radical nature, novelty, and its “me against the world” narrative (something most grow out of—after all didn’t I just describe a teen-ager?), but it certainly isn’t a world-view anyone can live with. It’s all for show. It’s the equivalent of getting a tattoo. A materialist may believe while at the office, 9-5, but that’s the end of it. When he joins his friends, family, life partner, and social life—the life he really cares about and truly lives, as he listens to his favorite music, shares his dreams, and sips that glass of wine—he believes and behaves as if love, joy, peace, goodness, beauty, and truth were indeed real. Such is all one needs to know, to know when a world-view is bankrupt and false.

I have met the Enemy—and he is us.

2011-05-15T21:28:00.000-07:00

Intelligent Design (ID) at one time seemed to make a lot of sense to me. I finally realized, however, that I was still suffering from the modernity hang-over. ID is a still too modern understanding of nature and I began to understand that over time. Cunningham, in Darwin’s Pious Idea, also points out the short comings of ID. He writes:

“Interestingly, the I-D (Intelligent Design) camp echoes the approach of the ultra-Darwinists. They think religious notions of a deity should be demonstrable, at least to some degree. Therefore they seek to show that neo-Darwinism’s account of evolution is inadequate, arguing, for example, that natural selection cannot explain all that appears in nature…First of all, if I-D is correct about neo-Darwinism—that its accounts are not sufficient to explain the natural world—then so what? Surely that means that current science is inadequate. Current science is always inadequate… [I-D] is thus a misnomer. It should be asking not for an inference to design, but simply more scientific work.”

“In short, so-called [I-D] is scientifically wrong because it’s not science: science asks for more science, not for religion (or atheism). Yet the I-D movement does signal a significant cultural reaction to the hegemony of scientism and to the willful corruption of evolution by secularists. The problem with I-D is that it is itself guilty of scientism—it too presumes that science is the sole criterion of truth.”

"It seems that both I-D and ultra-Darwinism are guilty of “the devil of the gaps.” They look at current science (or some sample of it) and extrapolate a metaphysical position. This is wholly illegitimate and does science a great disservice. We say “devil” because such inferences are opposed to good practice generally, and theology specifically. For instance, someone like Dennett will look for a Cartesian soul, and because it cannot be found (that is, it is missing), he concludes that there is no soul and that atheism is true. So his devil lies in the gaps, that is, the absences of banished concepts. Likewise, Dawkins will point to, say, an apparent imperfection in the biological world; the absence of “perfection” leads him to conclude that “God” is absent. So also with the advocates of [I-D], who point to a current gap in science, or the inadequacy of a mechanism to give a full account of the biological world, and conclude that a designer exists."

"There too the devil lies in the gaps, for, as we pointed out earlier, any such designer is more Homeric than Abrahamic. Indeed, if Dawkins should turn to I-D to help discourage religion, then, conversely, I-D would do better to turn to the work of Dawkins et al., who have long argued for just such a “watch-maker,” blind or otherwise—namely, natural selection (at least when it is taken to be all-powerful). For the ultra-Darwinist interpretation of natural selection is indeed the god of [I-D], whom orthodox Christians find diabolic. Moreover, we can find no nonarbitrary reason why Dawkins does not worship it, imperfections and all. Against all this, science must be understood to be an open and endless discipline, never extracting (or forcing) philosophical conclusions, since this would be to employ the very same logic of the God of the gaps (but in the name of the “devil”). By contrast, in the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, 'The appeal is not to a ‘gap’ in scientific explanation but to a different order of explanation that leaves scientific explanation intact, that explores the conditions of possibility of there being any kind of scientific explanation.'”
(Ernan McMullin, “Natural Science and Belief in a Creator”)

That Science Which Would Marry the Age Will Soon Find Itself a Widower

2011-05-14T10:56:00.000-07:00

To follow up with my last post, from Darwin’s Pious Idea, in addressing materialism/naturalism we come to the area of physics and what we might learn as to how our current understanding addresses materialism. Rather than provide much commentary, I am simply going to quote many of the pertinent passages. I may provide more commentary in another post if necessary and time allows. Hopefully, the quotes will speak for themselves. The bottom line is that materialism doesn’t understand matter; naturalism doesn’t understand nature. It would be like theologians learning they had fundamentally misunderstood the nature of God.

The rumor that there is nothing but matter turned out to be fraudulent, but there is another, more serious rumor around, one that is altogether true scientifically, philosophically, and theologically. It is that materialism is dead. It is dead because it is incoherent at every level of analysis; what we find in its place today is a combination of ideology and wishful thinking. To invoke matter today as the most basic term of our philosophical worldview is equivalent to saying “God did it.”…Why has this fate befallen materialism? Because matter has been found out, its pretense crumbled—because matter, quite simply, does not exist, at least not in the manner materialism requires. In short, matter is inscrutable. Likewise, bodies are no longer available in any simplistic sense. As Noam Chomsky says, “Newton exorcised the machine, not the ghost,” that is, the Cartesian understanding of mechanics was found to be wrong; in its place it was “necessary to invoke what Newton called an ‘occult quality’ to account for the simplest phenomena of nature, a fact he and other scientists found disturbing and paradoxical.

As Crane and Mellor point out, “The ‘matter’ of modern physics is not at all solid, or inert, or impenetrable, or conserved, and it interacts indeterministically and arguably some times at a distance. Faced with these discoveries, materialisms’ modern descendants have—understandably—lost their metaphysical nerve.” Materialism has just rolled over, remaining only a slave to a theoretically complete physics, which now defines the empirical world. In other words, materialism is a misnomer. It is so weak and paltry that it cannot even hold onto its one primitive term, matter. This once laudable philosophical tradition is now more like a prostitute who will go by any name science wishes to call it, not that science pays it much notice, mind you. Crane and Mellor continue: “Those for whom reduction to physics is the touchstone of the physical do not propose to do it in practice. They simply insist that it can be done ‘in principle.’ But what is the principle? It cannot be physicalism. These sciences cannot be reducible in principle because they are physical, if reducibility in principle (RIP) is supposed to tell us which sciences could ‘in principle’ be reduced to physics.” It seems there is no principle involved; there is only dogma of ideology, in this case “no theology.” “Reducibility to physics or to microphysics is a hopeless test of the ontological authority of science: a test which not even a physicalist can apply consistently.” The whole appeal to the physical is one purely of emotion and not argument. (Crane and Mellor, “No Question of Physicalism”)

As Stapp points out, “The conflating of Nature with the impoverished mechanical conception of it invented by scientists during the seventeenth century has derailed the philosophies of science and of mind for more than three centuries, by effectively eliminating the causal link between the psychological and physical aspects of nature that contemporary physics restores.” (Henry P. Stapp, “Mindful Universe”)

As Hans Primus says, “Today nobody defends Newton’s atomistic ontology any more. Nevertheless, the naïve reductionism which tries to explain all phenomena in terms of entities at a supposedly lowest level of theoretical description is still popular. This approach fails simply because the presumed lower level entities do not exist in a theory-independent sense. Modern Quantum mechanics put an end to atomism. The so-called fundamental entities (such as electrons, quarks, or gluons) represent patterns of reality yet they are not the building blocks of reality. They are not primary, but rather secondary and derived.” (Hans Primas, “Complementarity of Mind and Matter”)

For example, Dennett’s understanding of the mind rests on the idea that “a brain was always going to do what it was caused to do by current, local, mechanical circumstances.” But as Stapp points out, by “making this judgment he tied his thinking to the physical half of the Cartesian dualism, or its child, classical physics, and thus was forced in his book Consciousness Explained to leave consciousness out.” Sensibly, and correctly, Stapp points out that this old-fashioned materialist view of the universe destroys the basis of ethics and of personal responsibility.

Mind once again takes center stage and is no longer exiled to the land of impotence (where it existed but was epiphenomenal) or to that of illusion (that is, eliminated). The assertion that “modern science is premised on the assumption that the material world is a causally closed system” is simply not correct according to Hans Primas. This idea is “in striking contradiction to experimental science. Every experiment requires an irreversible dynamics. No experiment refers to a closed physical system. In a strictly deterministic world it would neither be possible to perform meaningful experiments nor to verify the partially causal behavior of a physical system. We conclude that science neither assumes that the material world is a causally closed system, nor that physical laws imply the causal closure of physics…The empirically unfounded idea that the physical world is ‘causally closed’ and that physical laws have a universal validity is related to the failure to distinguish between tenseless laws and tensed phenomena.”

A consequence of the division between tenseless laws and a tensed “Now” is that physical laws—which are, to repeat, related to homogenous time—do not offer a complete theoretical scheme. “Fundamental physics gets its laws by artificially postulating a principle of the uniformity of nature…thereby suppressing indexical and intentional features. That is, the laws of physics are not laws of nature, but they prompt scientists to act.” Once again we must not make the mistake of privileging the objective, forgetting that it is a moment of life and not life itself. Likewise, laws prompt experiment and do not replace it. “There is no fundamental physical principle that is related to the concept of a Now.”

Dennett and his ilk appear to completely ignore current science. They remain beholden to bygone days of old, perhaps to avoid the apparently philosophical and theological implications of current science. For example, Dennett insists on both the conservation of energy and causal closure, both of which rule out dualism: “A fundamental principle in physics is the expenditure of energy…This principle of conservation of energy…is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has been endlessly discussed since Descartes’ own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable flaw in dualism.” But this relies on identifying standard physics with the now defunct classical physics. Thus Stapp tells us that Dennett’s argument “collapses when one goes over to contemporary physics.” Moreover, asks Stapp, “what is the rational basis of the claim that the physical description is causally closed when the classical physics description, from which the notion of causal closure of the physical arose, dissolves into mere potentialities, and the realities—as opposed to potentialities—that are to be found in the phenomenally validated conventional quantum theory are described in psychological rather than physical terms.”

Stapp chastises such philosophers (Chalmers, Pinker) who masquerade as spokespersons for science when in fact they are no such thing, for they are presenting to the public a “grotesquely inadequate old scientific theory.” When we pay attention to current physics, we realize how irrational it is to assume that, to account for understanding, we must understand the brain. This assumption is a relic from a time that, in terms of truth, never actually was.

Let us end this section with a final quote by Stapp: “A radical shift in the physics-based conception of man from an isolated mechanical automaton to that of an integral participant in a non-local holistic process that gives form and meaning to the evolving universe is a seismic event of potentially momentous proportions.” The problem is, no one seems to have told naturalism about this seismic event.”

Evangelical Atheism

2011-05-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

John Gray gets it. And his take on memes seconds my thoughts on the subject in an earlier post:

"Dawkins's "memetic theory of religion" is a classic example of the nonsense that is spawned when Darwinian thinking is applied outside its proper sphere."

"Unfortunately, the theory of memes is science only in the sense that Intelligent Design is science. Strictly speaking, it is not even a theory. Talk of memes is just the latest in a succession of ill-judged Darwinian metaphors."

We Must Have Free-Will or We Wouldn’t Care One Way or the Other

2011-05-09T21:14:00.000-07:00

Continuing in Darwin’s Pious Idea, we come to naturalism and the “hard problem” of consciousness, of which is bound up all the problems (if one is a naturalist) of free-will, agency, morality, and others. Reading through this section brought to mind a blogger-friend’s recent post on the subject of free-will and morality. Besides begging the question, which is the majority of the post (which is fine, it is a blog post after-all and not a formal paper), we finally come across, what I suppose is the main point:

“Thankfully, the answer is no- it doesn't [does no free-will, mean no morality?]. The reason lies in another aspect of our programming, which is that we are not just physically-bounded no-free-will flesh-bots. We are physically-bounded no-free-will flesh-bots that can learn. Learning is the crucial ingredient in a moral universe, rendering us different from inanimate and non-learning beings.”

I challenge anyone to read that paragraph (in the context of the post) slowly and ponder it for more than two seconds. If you can contain your “Huh?” or your, “But, wait…?” reflex you are a better person than I.

Beyond the glaringly obvious matter of simply removing the problem one step by positing “learning” where would one even start? We could “learn” cruelty after all. We could learn many things, good, bad, ugly, or indifferent...so the point? We are certainly entitled to feel like something is being left out here! It is all about learning, but what are we to learn? And why? The Nazi Youth movement was about learning too. The Ku Klux Klan is about learning. The Neo-Nazis that survive in pockets are all about helping their children to “learn” to hate. The Mafia is about learning. Gangs are about learning. The CIA is about learning. The information extraction methods used at Guantanamo and other hidden places are about learning. All this came from “learning.” Simply positing learning tells us exactly nothing.

Further, how does one, after telling us the universe is causally closed, then talk about a crucial ingredient needed for a “moral” universe? If the universe is causally closed, then it is an amoral universe. This is what happens when that crucial ingredient—logic—is missing. One could go on and on. The idea of learning as a way out of the “whence morality” problem even fails at the most practical level when we remember that computers can learn if what we mean by learning is adjusting for new information, which is all the materialist can mean (which basically drains the “wisdom” component from knowledge, in fact the idea of “wisdom” disappears). The same could be said of a zombie. But no one ascribes morality to computers or zombies. One might as well say that since the Nazis “learned” if they built big gas chambers and big ovens they could kill Jews faster and more economically, then such is an example of “morality.” The writer notes the goal of happiness, but the Nazis were seeking happiness too. We Americans are seeking happiness as our drones patrol the skies looking for targets and as our snipers pick out what might be a terrorist or, well, we think it was a terrorist. Again, the point?

Another obvious problem is with the idea of “programming” mentioned. Think of all the assumptions bound up in that fairly loaded word—assumptions that are immediately done away with in the conclusions! The philosophical gymnastics required here are amazing! Programming assumes purpose, intelligence or mind (otherwise don’t use the word—use something like, “boom”). And how would we even know whether the programming was rational or moral to begin with (and in fact, it cannot be in a causally closed universe)? If one really believed we were “programmed” but in an accidental, purposeless, process that was causally closed, so that free-will and morality are illusions, then the idea of “difference” between humans and other objects becomes at least irrelevant if not impossible. This should be rather obvious to say the least.

Consciousness, the mind, is a problem for the naturalist the same way fossils are a problem for creationists. If the world were as the naturalists tell us it is, the problem would never arise, just like it would never (and will never) arise in computers (unless one believes the Terminator movies are on to something), zombies (if we were to consider ideas abstractly or conceptually), lice, or worms. Creationists have to explain away fossils and evidence for an old earth just like the naturalist has to explain away consciousness, the self, and morality. Neither fit into their ideology, so the facts be damned. Just as some creationists have postulated that God planted the fossils to test us, the naturalist might as well say the devil planted consciousness in us to test our commitment to atheism. The suggestion of “Learning” is a god-of-the-gaps idea to the problem of mind and all that comes with it. Many creationists have never laid eyes on a fossil, but imagine the poor naturalist—he has to have a huge reminder his physicalism is problematic, every waking moment, in his head! Talk about never getting a day off!

The naturalist, however, must address the problem and such is “natural.” The reason this impetus (to resolve the “problem”) is “natural” and the reason the naturalist needs to have-his-cake-and-eat-it-too is to avoid nihilism (Gee, I wonder why?). This is “natural” because materialism is not true and we know and must believe we have true selves and are free-agents (we need these to even make the argument against free-will and morality!). And this is where the “naturalist” destroys nature. After he is done, there is nothing left but atoms in motion and even this is destroyed because one day the universe will die. All disappears. Moreover, he also needs to pronounce on all the things out there (Republicans, Corporations, Religionists, Right-Wing Economists) he thinks are “evil.” To do so, he needs to have a moral vocabulary that actually means something more than, “you say tomato I say tomato.” That he has completely undermined his ability to have a moral vocabulary is glossed over so he can still pronounce on such matters—which of course, is “natural” because we are moral creatures. The price of this cognitive dissonance is not high enough at this point because so much of it (naturalism) is still myth. But the need, which again, is natural—is always present and must be accommodated. The great irony here is that naturalism ends up destroying nature. We end up with no persons or reasons to care about anything. But this is impossible, thus we blog!

Getting back to Cunningham’s book though, he makes some points that go to this whole area and they involve the current understanding of physics. Let’s put aside the Grand Canyon (too small?) size philosophical problems with naturalism/physicalism and just consider physics. My friend notes this issue, but then quickly dismisses the problem and it is no wonder why. He writes:

“The quantum revolution throws a minor wrench into the situation, because the fundamental uncertainty it finds at small scales means that, however much we know, we can never predict where the full set of physical causes is going to take us. Everything may be caused by prior events, but that doesn't mean everything is determined to a singular fate, as Laplace tried to argue. Some of our prior events are truly random, and thus unknowable in advance. Yet that hardly gives us any more agency- it only leavens the causes that determine our decisions with a bit of comedic randomness.”

I wonder if my friend would consider Guantanamo a case of comedic randomness, but let’s put that aside for now. Ummm, it is much more that a “minor” wrench. That would be like Osama bin Laden suggesting to one of his wives that the dark clad people in his compound might be a “minor” setback. I will discuss this area of physics in my next post.

Secular—I am Your Father!

2011-05-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

In Darwin’s Pious Idea, we come to one of the still prevalent modern myths—the religious v. science myth. Well, what can one say? There are people out there who still believe President Obama was born somewhere other than U.S. soil. People will believe what they want to believe, the facts be damned it would seem. Cunningham on this myth:

“This contrived nonsense—the very invention of an urban myth, but one that formed a new niche that would accommodate a form of cultural colonization—was accompanied by a number of other, now well-known but utterly erroneous, myths.”

He then goes on to list some of these, that medieval people and earlier believed the world to be flat, that Copernicus was persecuted by the church for his findings, that Huxley bested Wilberforce in their famous debate (“Frank James says, ‘the myth was created twenty years later and, despite the best efforts of historians, is still trotted out uncritically to this day.’), and so forth.

He writes: “The evidence against such nonsense (Religion v. Science) could fill a library.”

Of more interest is the origin of the “secular” and this space the materialist inhabits as he casts stones about. The materialist believes this space to hover in the air so to speak, like a city in the clouds. But it has an origin and genealogy. Cunningham notes:

“…we point out that science as we know it in the West is very much a child of religion. Religion may not have been its only parent, but its parentage is indisputable, and incontrovertible. The only suspicion of cuckoldry—of those left to bring up another’s child thinking it to be their own—is that of secularism. In short, science is not the child of secularism, if by “secular” we mean nonreligious. And it cannot be for many reasons, but let’s take just two. First, the secular is not an atheistic accomplishment but is itself a child, another progeny, of religion. Second, historically speaking, science, as understood in Western culture, emerged from the soil and womb of monotheism. Homo sapiens are intrinsically religious, but it would not help the cause of science—or rather, we would never bother inventing science—if our religion was not monotheistic.”

He then goes on to point out the difference between a polytheistic world, where spirits and gods inhabit the very warp and woof of the elements, meaning every brook, wind, tree, and rock and something like the Christian narrative. With countless deities running loose and controlling everything by whim and fiat, what would be the point of studying such a world for there is no reason to suspect or have a presupposition of regularity or causal chains within nature. It is only with the narrative of a single God creating a world separate and apart, distinct from that God, that we begin to see the fertile soil being laid for the sprouting of modern science. In other words, to take apart a plant, a beetle, a frog, a stone, was not to offend the gods anymore, but was rather to study the very work of an artist, where the painting and the painter were two separate things. But this also created a "secular" space. Cunningham notes:

“In other words, the world was not God, for it was created, and in this way it was secular. Moreover, it was finite, which meant that we could in a sense get our minds around it.”

What does the materialist have to show for his continuing blather? Nothing. He can’t even account for the space he inhabits. He looks around, casting stones at everything he doesn’t like, and yet the stones, the house, the neighborhood, the conceptual machinery, everything, was built by others, thank you very much. It is infantile. It resembles the spoiled brat who prattles on about his independence as his parents drive him to high school, clothe him, feed him, shelter him, and marvel at his zero contribution to said independence. The best we can hope for the materialist, the believer in scientism, is that he would simply grow up for God’s sake. Go out and build something like Western Civilization…and then come talk to us. In the mean time, shut up and eat your vegetables.

Cunningham finishes:

“In sum, the science versus religion trope is a conveniently contrived invention, not at all based in historical fact. Also, religion is one of the parents of science, just as it is the source of secularism. The modern-day creationists and fundamentalists [read secular fundamentalists] are just that—modern--…”

Memes: Explaining Everything and Nothing all at Once!

2011-05-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

Continuing on in Darwin’s Pious Idea, we come to “memes.” Susan Blackmore describes memes this way—a meme is a:

“unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation…examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”

It is amazing what is attributed to these “units” of transmission. That thing called the “self” no less. But hang on, it (the self), it turns out, is an illusion. As Blackmore tells us, “each illusory self is a construct of the memetic world…my beliefs and opinions are survival tricks used by memes for their representation…my creativity is really design by mimetic evolution.”

Daniel Dennett is also a big proponent of memes. These “units” depend upon the human mind and these “parasites” build us, form us, and trick us into thinking we actually exist. Wow, who knew? Free will, an acting agent, it’s all illusory.

So, the question immediately leaps to mind, just how do Dennett and Blackmore know this? Did they catch the scientism meme? Cunningham notes:

“There are so many problems with Dennett’s account of memes that one struggles to understand how someone actually published this morass of conceptual confusion. First, where do memes come from? Do they come from the mind? If they do, then they are dependant upon the mind and thus cannot make the mind…the most telling criticism against memes, however, is quite simple and obvious. Indeed, it is the elephant in the room; Memetics is self-defeating. For if there is such a thing as a meme, then there is only one meme. In other words, the only good candidate for a meme is the idea of a meme itself (closely followed by the selfish gene). But if it did succeed, then all ideas would be mere tokens, or instances, of this one meta-idea, namely, the MEME. It would truly be the selfish meme, absorbing all real difference. Thus is the concept evacuated of all meaningful content, as it becomes a mere tautology.”

Further, it is not as if one has seen a “meme” under a microscope or noted it being born out of a mathematical equation. A meme hasn’t been weighed, counted, poked, smelled, or heard. It hasn’t been picked up on a radar of sorts or detected by a “meme” spectrometer of some type. What is it, really? It is an abstract concept—a narrative—a way of talking about a phenomenon. Like natural selection, it is platonic.

Perhaps this is why Michael Ruse “argues that a Darwinian can indeed be a Christian…and also does ‘not see why a Darwinian should not hold to the Platonic vision as much as a Christian.’” Ruse is wise enough to see that the whole project depends upon it.

And what can one say about this concept of “memes?” Once we get past the almost immediate reaction of, “how silly” and “so what,” if we plumbed deeper, we might ask ourselves how someone could so confuse what they thought they were doing, which wasn’t science, but rather platonic day dreaming created by an absence or, better, the refusal of a first philosophy.

Hart on Rand

2011-05-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

Wow. Hilarious. Does anyone actually know a Rand Disciple?

"But I suppose I have circled back on myself. Where Rand’s fiction is concerned, I suppose aesthetic and ideological revulsion are not really separable. What made her novels not just risibly clumsy, but truly shrill and hideous, was the exorbitantly trashy philosophy behind them. Taken solely as a storyteller, she had many of the skills of the proficient pulp writer. Her overwrought plots, her comically patent villains, her panting, fiery, fierce yet quiescent heroines—all of that would be quite at home in lushly bad romance fiction. Had she not mistaken herself for a deep thinker, she might have done well enough, producing books that filled out that vital niche between Forever Amber and Valley of the Dolls. Sadly, though, her ambitions would not let her rest there."

"Rand was so eerily ignorant of all the interesting problems of ontology, epistemology, or logic that she believed she could construct an irrefutable system around a collection of simple maxims like “existence is identity” and “consciousness is identification,” all gathered from the damp fenlands between vacuous tautology and catastrophic category error. She was simply unaware that there were any genuine philosophical problems that could not be summarily solved by flatly proclaiming that this is objectivity, this is rational, this is scientific, in the peremptory tones of an Obersturmführer drilling his commandoes."

Unfortunately, that last paragraph could describe the approach of many bloggers to their philosophical musings.

Hydra

2011-04-20T18:42:00.000-07:00

Ahhh, we spoke too soon. Like the many headed Hydra, as the head of sociobiology fell to the ground, another rose in its place—the head of Evolutionary Psychology. From Darwin's Pious Idea:

“Whatever happened to Sociobiology? The answer is that it went underground, where it has been eating away at the foundations of academic orthodoxy.” (Robert Wright, The Moral Animal)

Evolutionary Psychology (EP) has been described as “a matured version of 1970’s Sociobiology with a better sense of history.” (Marek Kohn) The thrust of EP is maintaining the distinction between adaptation and adaptiveness. Unlike sociobiology, EP noted the difference between adaptation and adaptiveness, striving to include the environment in which a trait had developed. One had to reverse engineer, as it were, to discover a trait’s original environment—the context of selection’s working.

EP held that, against Locke, the mind isn’t a blank slate, but rather the mind is modular. Each mode is “domain-specific” and dedicated to a specific task—and is hard wired for such from the beginning (whenever that is?). Jerry Fodor is probably the leading light in this area and he, strangely enough, is probably the best critic of modularity as well. The main feature of this idea of modularity is the insensitivity to information that might exist in other parts of the brain. We might picture the brain then as a large skyscraper containing individual offices spaces and each office (or module) is involved in completely different types of business having completely different types of information—and each office is not interested in what information the other office might contain.

One criticism Fodor makes of those who employ this concept is their tendency to go modular mad, where we begin to have modules for modules on top of modules! Cunningham notes:

“Lewis-Williams seems to be on to something when he argues that ‘We have no direct information of the possible modularity of ancient minds. As a result, evolutionary psychologists are free to invent historical trajectories that move repeatedly between modularity and access between modules for as much as 100 million years.’ It does seem that at times evolutionary psychologists have a dues ex machine in the form of natural selection, and this god bears the same qualities as an ultimate creator.”

I will post some more on EP, but will stop for now with these quotes from the book:

Underlying all the biological and social sciences, the reason for it all, is the “need” (how else to express it, perhaps “drive” would be better) for genes to perpetuate themselves. This is a metaphysical claim, and the reductionism that it entails is…best labeled as metaphysical reductionism. Because it is metaphysical it is neither right nor wrong nor empirically testable. It is simply a statement of belief that genes count above all else.—Henry Plotkin

Evolutionary Psychology in its present state is not a science but at best an emerging science and at worst a piece of science fiction.—Mario Bunge

Sociobabology

2011-04-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Continuing on with Darwin’s Pious Idea, Sociobiology was introduced to the public in 1973 with E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. It was really an attempt to subsume all the behavioral sciences under the all encompassing canopy of biology, and, of course, an ultra-Darwinian version. It really had grander goals that those, as it even wished to displace philosophy itself, especially in the area of ethics. Cunningham notes beautifully what it really amounted to:

“From our poetry, our sorrows, our desires, sexual and otherwise, there now echoed another accompanying meaning, for there, within each bunch of roses offered on Valentine’s Day, lay the worm of natural selection.”

The critical failure of Sociobiology was its belief that it could leave out mind and culture in its algorithm. But let’s give credit where credit is due. Even those hardly enamored with transcendental, platonic, or theistic theories of being or biology, saw the problems inherent in a project like Wilson’s.

“In response to Wilson’s work, some of his closest Harvard colleagues, including Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin, formed the Sociobiology Study Group. They published a letter denouncing his work, feeling no need to show it to Wilson beforehand, their main criticism being that it was not science but politics, reminiscent of social Darwinism. As Rose, Lewontin, and Kamin put it, sociobiology ‘combines vulgar Mendelism, vulgar Darwinism, and vulgar reductionism in the service of the status quo.’ Indeed, in the 1980s the British philosopher Mary Midgley referred to sociobiology as the biology of Thatcherism. Her point was that sociobiologists appeared to look at everyday life and read it through a Darwinian lens—competition, for example—only to arrive at just what we would expect in a Darwinian world. So the worry was that it was somewhat of an apologist for capitalism…largely due to the reaction it received, sociobiology went out of fashion pretty quickly.”

Good riddance.

Everything is Spiritual

2011-04-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

Even the economic.

Modern scientific materialism, on the other hand, is the dangerous illusion that all is reducible to the merely material, and that science can eventually overcome any limits that the merely material might put in our way. Davis calls this kind of thinking magical:

"For, despite its ostensible grounding in science, this form of materialism is strangely oblivious to what may be the most readily observable and nonnegotiable characteristic of our material world, namely, finitude."

The Dark Side of Darwinism

2011-04-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

One of the darker responses to Darwin’s theory was the eugenics movement. The term was coined by a cousin of Darwin’s, Francis Galton, and it means “born well.” Galton founded the Eugenics Education Society of London in 1907. Looking back now, it amazes us that such views gained the traction they did and especially in the more “progressive” segments of the Western world. But, after all, it was “science” so it had to be true, right?

During World War I, a fellow named Robert Yerkes was charged with the task of analyzing the intelligence of American soldiers. Cunningham notes: “After the war President Coolidge accepted his findings and passed the 1924 Immigration Act restricting immigration to people of favored races and nationalities. In terms of negative eugenics, Indiana was the first American state to pass a law permitting compulsory sterilization for the “unfit” in 1907.”

Cunningham continues:

“Just as eugenics lost its popularity after the Wall Street crash, it again lost its appeal after the Second World War and the discovery of the Holocaust—six million casualties of an effort to purge the biologically weak (Jews) so as to allow the naturally stronger (Aryans) to excel. According to National Socialism, the system had interfered with the natural order in the first place, thus letting Jews flourish, while at the same time letting the homosexual and the disabled live. The Nazis, upon taking power in 1933, promulgated a law allowing for forced sterilization, a law based on the work of the American eugenicist, Harry Laughlin, whose ‘Model Eugenical Sterilization Law’ has already appealed for the mass sterilization of the socially inadequate classes, including those of feeble mind. Eugenics was not the purview of the extremist but rather formed part of the cultural backbone of Western, enlightened society. It is maybe worth noting that no Roman Catholic country ever passed a law permitting any form of eugenics, positive or negative. It is fair to say, then, that social Darwinism died with Hitler. Yet it did bear offspring—sociobiology and evolutionary psychology—offspring that may have only half the genes of its parents but still, as children bear some similarity.”

Materialists often make an appeal to “reason” as if it were some ethereal “thing” or law that like gravity is universal and objective (which, as an aside, shows their platonic commitments and reliance). And yet, the scientists, the elite, the progressives, and the educated at that time felt that such a way of thinking (Eugenics) was “reasonable” or “rational.”

The materialist must wonder: Given this past, what other ideas or beliefs do I presently hold, ones in which we all agree are “rational” and “reasonable,” that could be just as dangerous and untrue as eugenics? He may need to look beyond his own narrative to those outside his strict materialism/rationalism to answer this question.

If you Don’t Mind, it Doesn’t Matter

2011-04-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

Chapter five of Darwin’s Pious Idea is entitled, Matter over Mind: “We Have Never Been Modern,” and it starts out with these quotes:

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.—Henry Miller

Evolution does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man.—G.K. Chesterton

Go ask your genes what to do. You might as well ask Zeus.—Louis Menard

Evolution is to analogy as statues are to birdshit.—Steve Jones

The Natural (including evolution) Presupposes the Platonic

2011-04-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

The third chapter of Darwin’s Pious Idea is entitled, Evolution: Making Progress? And, the answer is “yes.” Of course the chapter fleshes out what “progress” might mean and why some people (Gould) don’t like using that term. But at a very simple level, taking into consideration all the missteps one can make when using a term like “progress,” we can say that what is inherent in human consciousness and what it is capable of producing is “better” than what was possible shortly after our emergence from our primordial bath.

Part of that progress is what we have learned or been able to reflect upon. We have learned (conceptualized) that even more important than natural selection, DNA, genes, and all the rest is the initial environment from which these components arise. Going down even further, even more important than the environment are the physical laws that make the environment a platform from which life can exist and thrive. There is a symmetry and relational matrix evident that seems to bind and bound all things together, and yet, we cannot really see, touch, smell, or taste whatever that “thing”—or those laws are, we can only experience the evidence for them. Those laws and our ability to conceptualize them and narrate theories from and about them are platonic. And we are led there (the platonic) by the natural world. One points to the other.

Man’s knowledge, Wandschneider, tells us “transcends the possibilities of nature…because the laws of nature have a completely different character than the being of nature. The law of the motion of planets is not itself in motion; the law of the earthworm is not itself a worm…[T]he laws of nature are rather like the logic determining the process of nature: they do not exist in time and space like a stone or an earthworm but possess real character.” (Darwinism and Philosophy—Notre Dame Press)

Cunningham notes:

“This ideal structure underlying nature made manifest from the laws of protein folds, to the potentialities in matter for complex life since the beginning to time, is revealed in evolutionary theory: ‘the ideal underlying nature prosecutes its own self-revelation (Wandschneider).’ Maybe, somewhat surprisingly (at least for the ultra-Darwinist), the natural scientist is a priest of this revelation, for ‘The natural scientist makes the immanent logic of nature visible qua knowledge of nature; in the Darwinian view, he himself is a product of this logic that he makes visible and reveals itself in man at the same time (Wandschneider).’”

Cunningham quotes Thomas Nagel, from The Last Word:

“The recognition of logical arguments as independently valid is a precondition of the acceptability of an evolutionary story about the source of that recognition. This means that the evolutionary hypothesis is acceptable only if reason does not need its support… [T]he basic methods of reasoning we employ are not merely human but belong to a more general category of mind. Human minds now exemplify it.”

To sum up, Cunningham writes:

“Oaks makes the fascinating proposal that, ‘If wings evolve against and in response to air, and eyes against and in response to light, then brains must evolve against and in response to something like ‘mental air.’ By that admittedly metaphorical term, I mean those a priori ideal structures already part of the universe that makes a mathematical-capable brain possible in the first place. In other words, Darwinism is not only compatible with Platonism but presupposes it.’” (Edward T. Oakes: Fitness of the Cosmos for Life)

Everything is Narrative

2011-04-09T17:37:00.000-07:00

From Darwin’s Pious Idea:

“Not only does an organism cause emergent features in the world (just as it too is an emergent entity), there can be no a priori limitation to what in fact emerges. We know that natural selection is derivative—a product of evolution itself—otherwise Paley’s god would be back to haunt us.”

Cunningham’s point is that what nature may select might lead to types of evolution beyond the control of simple selection and that leads to this point:

“Natural selection has given birth to a selection process that has floated free…Cultural selection can be more powerful than biological selection…[T]houghts spread faster than human beings reproduce.” (Elliot Sober)

Cunningham notes that we must then see culture to be an “emergent” phenomenon with causative powers of its own. This does not mean we create another dualism or an either/or between nature and culture; rather, we need to understand each as unstable terms. He writes:

“There is no pure nature (as Henri de Lubac notes) just as there is no pure culture (as Hegel rightly argues). Consequently, it is probably less surprising that narrative plays such an important in biology, as Lewontin says, ‘ a great deal of the body of biological research and knowledge consists of narrative statements.’”

Some further quotes:

“Narrativism in biology is one way of acknowledging the ineliminable complexity.” (Depew and Weber)

“Darwinian evolution is neutral with respect to the –possibly indefinitely many—physical bases that might support reproduction with heritable variation and hence evolution by natural selection. The possibility that evolution might run on multiple ‘platforms’ undercuts the claim that explanatory arrows from physics are necessary and sufficient for explaining biological phenomena. To say everything that can physically said about a biological process still leaves it less than fully explained. Darwinian adaptive evolution is agnostic with respect to the precise physical mechanisms of reproduction and heritable variation such that natural selection can act to yield evolution…[T]his fact means that Darwinian selection is not reducible to—and hence cannot be explained by—any specific set of lower-levels explanations.” (Kauffman and Clayton)

“If reductionists cannot find some way of accommodating the theory of natural selection to physical science, then, ironically, it appears they face a dilemma of surrendering physicalism, or embracing eliminativism (or surrendering reductionism). For natural selection certainly appears to be a biological process and the failure to show how it could even in principle be fixed by physical facts leads to the surrender of physicalism.” (Rosenberg and McShea)

Dennett’s Idea is Dangerous

2011-04-09T11:32:00.000-07:00

From Darwin’s Pious Idea:

“Dennett’s idea is dangerous: It is another instance of functionalism, according to which the material substrate is irrelevant to the function of the system in question, because all that would matter is the “logical form of the process.” Yet if not only evolution but also…life and mind are allegedly substrate-neutral, then not just the theory of selection but all corresponding theories can be “lifted out of their home base in biology…as well as biology.” Such a formalist and immaterialist conception of biology seems attractive to some, as sparing them the task of learning anything about biology…as well as about other adjacent fields such as biophysics and biochemistry. Ultimately, it is the idea that biology can be pursued by pure mathematicians, nay, that all factual sciences are reducible to the formal sciences, which are indeed substrate-neutral, since they deal with conceptual objects, not material ones. This is a dangerous idea—not Darwin’s but the functionalists’.” (Bunge and Mahner)

Physics Envy

2011-04-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

More from Darwin’s Pious Idea. One of the problems Darwin and early biologists had to contend with revolved around the group/individual selection problem. Did natural selection only work individually or did it work within groups?

Cunningham notes:

“Advocates of the modern synthesis of Darwinism, especially in its ultra-Darwinist mode, sought to approach this question by moving the goal posts of the unit of selection debate, because they refused to advocate group selection in any pure sense. Yet they moved away from individual selection also. Why were they so against group selection? One can speculate that it was probably because it went against nominalist ontology. In other words, they wanted a deflated account of biological existence in which only individuals existed. But even individuals were too complex, too inexact. They too had to be discarded, especially if this somewhat nascent science (biology) was to achieve its desired wish to qualify, not only as a fully professional science, but as a hard science. And for that, biology needed its ‘atom.’”

He goes on:

“The level of “group” having been rejected, the individual soon followed. But if the individual is discarded, what could evolution by natural selection be about? What could now be selected? Enter the ‘gene.’”

The hope was that the gene would be to biology what the atom was to physics. This, of course, is not how it turned out, which we see from these quotes.

The Truth is that the science of biology has never been weaker; it is in crisis, and that crisis is made worse, not better, by the extraordinary success scientists have had in discovering the structure and basic mechanisms of genetic material. (Richard Bird, 2003).

Molecular biology has profoundly transformed many aspects of the life sciences, not least itself. Genes did not “command,” nor did proteins execute their orders. The informational flow from DNA to proteins was not unidirectional, as the central dogma of the 1960s would have had it. It is incorrect to say that the specificity of proteins is determined by the nucleic acid sequence to determine the amino acid structure of proteins. In the form of chaperonins, proteins are often required to determine the tertiary structure of proteins. (Jan Sapp)

Paradoxically, the more we have learned about the genetic material from molecular genetics, the less we seem to know about what exactly a gene is. (Mario Bunge and Martin Mahner)

So, the physics envy continues as biology still looks for something to hang its hat on that is weighty and concrete—something that would make it a “hard” science, as it were.

Talk about chasing after windmills. I hate to break this to scientists and biologists everywhere, but there is no “hard” science and there never will be. There are only observations, tests, formulas, equations, methods, and a myriad of other empirical work that is all done, reflected upon, articulated, discussed, and woven and spun into abstract metaphorical language, which ends up being the narrative, the story, of how we think things came to be, are, and what it might mean.

Mythbuster

2011-04-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

This looks like a great book.

From the Amazon page we learn this:

Here are some facts you probably didn't learn in school:

People in the Middle Ages did not think the world was flat--in fact, medieval scholars could prove it wasn't;

The Inquisition never executed anyone because of their scientific ideas or discoveries (actually, the Church was the chief sponsor of scientific research and several popes were celebrated for their knowledge of the subject);

It was medieval scientific discoveries, methods, and principles that made possible western civilization's "Scientific Revolution".

If you were taught that the Middle Ages were a time of intellectual stagnation, superstition, and ignorance, you were taught a myth that has been utterly refuted by modern scholarship.

And this:

In The Genesis of Science you will discover:

Why the scientific accomplishments of the Middle Ages far surpassed those of the classical world;

How medieval craftsmen and scientists not only made discoveries of their own, but seized upon Eastern inventions--printing, gunpowder, and the compass--and improved them beyond the dreams of their originators;

How Galileo's notorious trial before the Inquisition was about politics, not science;

and Why the theology of the Catholic Church, far from being an impediment, led directly to the development of modern science.

Darwin, meet Smith; Smith, meet Darwin

2011-04-06T17:29:00.000-07:00

I’m currently reading Darwin’s Pious Idea, which I have referenced before. So far it is superb. As I make my way through it, I plan to post those bits and pieces I find interesting. The first chapter is entitled, Introducing Darwinism—The Received View: Disenchantment.

When most people read about the history of a scientific discovery, they rarely think about the fact that the discovery did not happen in a vacuum. There is always a historical context to any discovery or event. Every “discovery” is situated. And it would be fairly naive to believe that any “discovery” wasn’t being articulated in a way that was heavily influenced by that very context in terms of the culture and the reigning philosophical and intellectual paradigms of the time.

Thus one of the interesting points in the first chapter is the parallels between Darwin’s conception of natural selection and Adam Smith’s economic theories. After all, there is only about an 80 year difference between when “The Wealth of Nations” was published (1776) and Darwin’s “On the Origins of Species” (1859). Darwin, while growing up and especially during his education, would no doubt have been very familiar with Smith’s theories.

As Cunningham notes:

“Another major influence, in terms of analogy, was the work of economist Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations (1776) was to some degree itself an attempt at a Newtonian theory of economics. Three points of comparison come to mind. First, one finds in Smith the veneration of self-interest—‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their self-interest, buying cheaply and selling high’ (book 1, chapter 2). Second, according to Smith this self-interest could be sustained or articulated only if based on a world of individuals, rather than groups. Third, Smith’s ‘invisible hand,’ if left alone, was said to bring balance and prosperity to the economy—it, rather than us or governments, would run the show (hence his call for laissez-faire). That Darwin based natural selection on the self-interest of species we have already seen. Also like Smith, Darwin (or at least Darwinism) adopted an ontology that posited only individuals…Natural selection operates in a strikingly similar manner to the invisible hand as it selects the winners and eradicates the losers in the economy of the struggle for existence. Thus Gould is certainly correct to argue that Darwinism is ‘The economy of Adam Smith transferred to nature.’”

Further on Cunningham quotes Vittorio Hosle regarding Dawkins:

“The suspicion that Dawkin’s interpretation has been influenced by unconscious fascination with the modern glorification of selfishness (in business, for instance) is not unfounded, indeed, one might say that Dawkin’s interpretation of Darwinism as been influenced by the dominant meme operational in capitalism, namely, egoism, just as Darwin was influenced by the work of Adam Smith.”

Many biologists believe they are simply learning “facts” when they are actually imbibing philosophy and often philosophy from quarters other than the natural sciences.

There is also the irony here. It would be interesting to see how many biologists feel that Smith’s theories are true and if they should be followed by governments. If they felt the theories to be false or unethical, one would have to wonder why, given their commitment to an impersonal “force” that seems to govern all life and rewards the “fitter” over the less “fit.” Why would one break away from this clear correspondence of reality with truth (as if there were such a thing!) and not apply it across the board? Interesting. It would mean one would have to appeal to some abstract principle, something added, something that exceeded the “evidence” and the “facts.”

"Outside the Church There is no Death"

2011-04-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here Adrian Pabst interviews Peter Candler regarding a paper he presented at the recent Telos Conference in New York.

Darwin's Pious Idea

2011-04-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the second part of the interview with author Conor Cunningham regarding his book, Darwin's Pious Idea.

The Selective Acid

2011-03-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

There is a good interview here with Conor Cunningham regarding his new book, Darwin’s Pious Idea: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get it Wrong.

Some thoughts:

To the assertion by Daniel Dennett that evolution acts as a “universal acid” to our traditional concepts, Cunningham notes: “Lastly, if there were such a thing as universal acid, how would one “Daniel Dennett” know? Is he wearing a special acid-resistant outfit?”

Dennett suffers from the same need of all fundamentalist however and that is the need to show they are exempt, they are special, they have some insight lost on the uninitiated. It is here where we see some parallels between ultra-Darwinists and Gnostics. The flip side though is the need to share this secret. In other words, Dennett was “lost” until he heard the “good news” of Evolution and was “saved” from the fires of hell or the “universal acid.” He now is an evangelist telling how we too can be saved.

Only, this news is not so good. The news is basically that everything we ever thought or were taught about free-will, good, evil, and the soul, was all wrong (even our experience of those qualities!). Of course, someone will say, but if it’s true then we must face it regardless. It would appear we are not saved; we are damned it turns out.

However, how a theory of physical changes over-time could ever touch upon the validity of free-will, good, evil, the soul and such is lost somehow on believers like Dennett. The irony I guess is that Dennett would tell us that he “freely” believes and “chooses” this view and thinks it “good” that we know this and adopt his view and “bad” if we did not. That he has just told us in the same breath that the “acid” has destroyed those traditional concepts is why we can still note the positive aspects of ultra-Darwinism and that is its entertainment value.

The Mind-Body Problem

2011-03-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

There is a very interesting conversation that’s been going on here in the thread of responses. Much of it is ground well traveled, but interesting none the less. I also came across this book review, which revolves around the same issue, which is basically the hard problem of consciousness or the mind-body problem.

As to the thread of responses, a few comments regarding some of the responses that I thought significant. Many of the objections to Keith’s (one of the respondents) line of reasoning went something like this: “If one were to take your view, there would be no reason to investigate or experiment in the area of neurology.” But all such a charge reveals is that the greater point is being missed. It would be like someone asserting that because he had just learned that God was not going to be seen with a telescope or found sitting on a planet somewhere that we should give up astronomy and close down NASA. It also completely overlooks the fact that some of the most prominent and influential people in science and medicine have been people who were theists and believed that the mind could not be reduced to matter-in-motion. It is a ridiculous charge because it is so false to the history of science and medicine. The Christian belief in the soul or spirit has hardly hindered the progress of modern science or medicine.

Another interesting comment was made by Bernard, another respondent. He wrote: “Actually, you (Keith) are taking your pre-existing prejudice on the matter and dressing it up as an argument.”

“This has a close analogy to your approach to free will. There's nothing wrong with doing this. I'd just ask you to own it, instead of pretending you have discovered some compelling philosophical argument in theism's favour. In the end, what we do here is construct stories, and admitting this allows us to pay due respect to the stories of others.”

First, in response, it appears to me, on the surface anyway, that Bernard, JP, and clearly Burk (the other respondents) argue or strongly imply that their philosophical naturalism/scientific naturalism is more than a story—that somehow it is a one-to-one correspondence with reality and the “Truth”. They often say something like, “well since we all agree the sun in hot,” then this confirms that aspect of my materialism as being “truer”. But clearly we can all agree the sun is hot and such in no way gives “materialism” an advantage in its grander narrative about reality in general.

In other words, we could all simply say that Bernard, JP, and certainly Burk are “taking [their] pre-existing prejudice on the matter and dressing it up as an argument.”

Further, I’m not sure JP or Burk agrees with Bernard as to the narrative nature of their worldview. They certainly do not argue that way. It is something they need to own up to much more than Keith does and, in fact, I think Keith does own that aspect to his worldview.

Now to the book review. The reviewer, Colin McGinn, basically gives a favorable review and takes us through some of the extremely fascinating findings of the author, V.S. Ramachandran. But then he asks this question and elaborates:

What should we make of all this? It is undoubtedly fascinating to read of these bizarre cases and learn about the intricate neural machinery that underlies our normal experience. It is also, in my opinion, perfectly acceptable to propose bold speculations about what might be going on, even if the speculation seems unfounded or far-fetched; as Ramachandran frequently remarks, science thrives on risky conjecture. But there are times when the impression of theoretical overreaching is unmistakable, and the relentless neural reductionism becomes earsplitting. This is progressively the case as the book becomes more ambitious in scope. Ramachandran will often qualify his more extreme statements by assuring us that he is only proposing part of the full story, but there are moments when his neural enthusiasm gets the better of him.

And I would add that this “enthusiasm” also gets the better of Burk, JP, and Bernard. And then the reviewer goes on to point out the key problem:

Ramachandran acknowledges no limit to neural reductionism, but there is a very big issue here that he slides over: the mind–body problem. His suggestion that by identifying the part of the brain involved in voluntary decision we turn a philosophical problem into a neurological one could only be made by someone who does not know what philosophical problem is in question—to put it briefly, whether or not determinism conceptually rules out freedom of the will. That question cannot be answered by pointing to one case of brain damage or another. Learning about the parts of the brain responsible for free choice will not tell us how to analyze the concept of freedom or whether it is possible to be free in a deterministic world. These are conceptual questions, not questions about the form of the neural machinery that underlies choice. His book has all the charm of an enthusiast’s tract—along with the inevitable omissions, distortions, and exaggerations.

Third, all this talk of the marvelous and superior is not scientific talk at all; it is evaluative talk, and not susceptible of scientific justification. Ramachandran is not functioning as a neuroscientist when he asks what makes us special in the evaluative sense; he is making judgments of value on which his scientific expertise has no inherent bearing. That is fine—but he should acknowledge what he is doing and defend it appropriately. He is just not clear what general question he is seeking to answer, eager as he is to delve into the brain and share its wonders with us.

And it is exactly this failure, “His suggestion that by identifying the part of the brain involved in voluntary decision we turn a philosophical problem into a neurological one could only be made by someone who does not know what philosophical problem is in question…” that explains why Burk, Bernard, and JP do not understand what Keith is pointing out.

And of course none of this is to say that the brain, mind, and body are not one. They are inseparable. No one is suggesting that the mind is a ghost in the machine as it were or an invisible cloud hanging over our heads like thought balloons. The mind, the spirit, the soul is life itself. I’ve noted this before from a quote by Davd B. Hart:

It is something of a modern habit of thought (strange to say) to conceive of the soul—whether we believe in the soul or not—as a kind of magical essence or ethereal intelligence indwelling a body like a ghost in a machine. That is to say, we tend to imagine the relation between the soul and the body as an utter discontinuity somehow subsumed within a miraculous unity: a view capable of yielding such absurdities as the Cartesian postulate that the soul resides in the pituitary gland or the utterly superstitious speculation advanced by some religious ethicists that the soul may “enter” the fetus sometime in the second trimester. But the “living soul” of whom scripture speaks… [The soul] is a single corporeal and spiritual whole, a person whom the breath of God has awakened from nothingness. The soul is life itself, of the flesh and of the mind; it is what Thomas Aquinas called the “form of the body”: a vital power that animates, pervades, and shapes each of us from the moment of conception, holding all our native energies in a living unity, gathering all the multiplicity of our experience into a single, continuous, developing identity. It encompasses every dimension of human existence, from animal instinct to abstract reason: sensation and intellect, passion and reflection, imagination and curiosity, sorrow and delight, natural aptitude and supernatural longing, flesh and spirit…the body must be regarded not as the vessel or vehicle of the soul, but simply as its material manifestation, expression, and occasion. This means that even if one should trace the life of the body back to its most primordial principles, one would still never arrive at that point where the properly human vanishes and leaves a “mere” physical organism or aggregation of inchoate tissues or ferment of spontaneous chemical reactions behind. All of man’s bodily life is also the life of the soul, possessed of a supernatural dignity…

The talking past one another in the post noted comes from a failure of scale, in the sense of the distance or depth behind observations. To say that if I pull this pin, there is a chemical reaction that leads to an explosion, as if that alone somehow sums up what happens during a suicide bombing, is to miss the distance and depth behind the mechanics in relation to everything else. When Burk, JP, and Bernard tell us we should just wait and science will solve the mind-body problem, it would be like suggesting that if we just watch enough pornography and break it down further we will finally figure out love. And of course no one is even suggesting that science or medicine not fully and comprehensively pursue every lead and charge full steam ahead, but none of that has anything to do with Keith’s or the reviewer’s point.

There is a distance and depth behind neurons firing and my awareness of my life, my hopes, my dreams, my sense of love, beauty, and even good and evil. To suggest that by breaking the mechanics down further and further we should somehow account for that awareness and sense is to miss the forest for the trees and to display an egregious failure of reflective imagination not to mention an embarrassing failure of philosophical aesthetics.

Happy New Year

2011-01-08T15:46:00.000-08:00

I am in the midst of several significant transitions. I am both starting a new job and still delving into possible Ph.D. work. Trying to balance all that with a family and other commitments becomes very interesting. I am excited, but extremely tired. Needless to say, I might not be posting as often as before. Peace and Happy New Year to all.

What Child is This?

2010-12-24T21:48:00.000-08:00

Once again we come to that season of wonder. Yes, it has been hijacked and co-opted by the market like everything else, but at least most thoughtful people realize that. It’s interesting that a common complaint and critique running as a theme through essays, articles, movies, and television stories involving Christmas (each year) is the need to go back to its original meaning and the realization that what we celebrate is not about materialism and “getting” stuff. Most people get that underneath all the flashing lights and materialism there is a story that remains. No serious person believes that Christmas is about buying stuff and materialism. Such is the power of the original event.

What can one say about the underlying event? A birth. Such a small thing. People are born every second. But this birth is different. Every time we write the date, 2010, we recognize an event that somehow caused time to be reconfigured. Most of us woke up this morning in a world we didn’t have too much to do with as far as producing. We live in a culture and a civilization built by others and one that would make no sense whatsoever without taking into consideration the birth we will celebrate on the 25th.

If we even did a cursory, surface, inventory of how that birth impacted our world, we might be surprised. Here is just a short list:

Literacy: After the fall of Rome it was Christian missionaries, intent on sharing their faith, which led to the translating of the Bible into other languages. Even more striking is the fact that some people groups at that time didn’t have writing at all. In some cases alphabets had to be created from the ground up. Wherever the Christian narrative has taken hold, reading and writing follow, which always raises the quality of life for any culture (to say the least).

The Arts: It was the attempt of the early church to capture, in physical images, the person of Christ and the spiritual realm that led to the proliferation of art in churches and eventually in public. When we think of Renaissance artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo, it was the Christian narrative that inspired their work and it was their intent to capture that narrative in their work. It was the Christian teaching of the inherent spirituality of nature during the Renaissance that led to the pursuit of “realism” or the attempt to present people and things as or in “themselves” which became a key feature of art ever since. Wherever the Christian narrative took hold in the ancient world, the arts proliferated as “art” and not simply as propaganda or as a tool of communication—a sensibility that we cherish and still try to cultivate.

Music: As the Christian liturgy grew more complex, its hymn (something it took from its Jewish heritage) singing also grew more complex. It was during the Middle Ages that Gregorian chant (Pope Gregory I) took hold and where the basis of modern written music was created. As the music became more complex, one could not simply remember what was coming next so a written language was created for each to read. If you can read music, you can thank those early worship leaders of the Christian liturgy. The basis for choral singing, in the classical sense, was also developed in the church. It was from a 8th Century Latin hymn to John the Baptist, which began with, “Ut queant laxis, Resonare fibris, Mira gestorum, Famuli tuorum, Solve polluti, Labii reaturn,” that we get the naming or language for the six tones of the octave. An Italian monk took the first syllables of each of the song’s lines—Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, from which we get our modern scale. Later on Ut became Do, and Ti was added to the end.

The list could go on and on. There is not a single significant area of western knowledge or endeavor, whether science, law, education, literature, political philosophy, or philosophy in general, that has escaped this story and its influence. Further, the modern idea of hospitals, orphanages, and the elevation of the weak to a place of protection rather than forgetfulness or exploitation flows from this story.

Whether believer, atheist, or the ignorant, we live out and breathe in a culture and civilization that is inconceivable and would make no sense at all but for a narrative flowing from a single birth, in a small town, in an unremarkable part of the world in an even more unremarkable setting, a stable. Indeed, “what child is this…”

Merry Christmas to all.

The Modern and Zombies

2010-12-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

There is an amusing essay here about the deadness of modern life and our culture’s fascination with zombies and how the two may be related on some levels. It is an interesting connection because the modern, in relation to its streams of naturalistic influence (philosophical naturalism) has a way of reducing everything to the point of “deadness” really, for want of a better word. What is the difference between being alive and being dead? At first glance the question appears obvious, rather dumb even. But if life is just matter-in-motion, if it is just chemistry, if it is only signals from our brain to raise an arm and such, then is that “life.” Certain brain injuries leave people in just such a state of “life.” If anyone remembers the scene in the movie “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” where the character played by Jack Nicholson is lobotomized, we see the difference between being alive and just existing. Bacteria, worms, and maggots have the same sort of “life.” What is the difference between that type of “life” and what we as humans normally experience? One would probably say “consciousness” is the difference. But materialism reduces this down to chemistry too. It is an illusion really. Modern life tends to reduce us to machines, where our “humanness” our “spirit” is only an illusion. But we are not machines, we are flesh and blood—thus the better analogy may be we are reduced to, if not zombies, at least a zombie type existence.

People on the street don’t normally give this much thought, but the zeitgeist, the world-view operative at any given time in a culture, has a way, like fog, of seeping in and coloring they way we view ourselves and the world. I think in much of the modern escape into endless entertainment, over-eating, consumerism, drug and alcohol addiction, sex addiction, and even the mindless violence one sees, for instance after a city’s team wins a sports championship, or more apt in the endless military adventurism and war drum beating, we see an attempt to “feel” to truly “live” because of this “deadness” bequeathed to us by the modern related to its materialism. These acts are almost done in rebellion to the disenchantment of the world and ourselves. The modern, in its technological aspect, allows all the conveniences for an easy life and the ability to acquire, but no narrative of purpose, no over-arching noble goal, no romance, no love, no redemption, and no forgiveness. Thus, there is living, and there is living. Without such aspects as love and purpose, we simply become the living dead, walking around, consuming, defecating, reproducing, and then becoming food for worms. In a billion years, if not sooner, if humans and the earth are gone, there will be only silence and no one will care and nothing will have mattered. If so, then consuming and living for one’s self becomes quite easy, which is so obvious—just look around. I mean, if there is no point, then what the hell?

It is hard to imagine why anyone would believe in something that reduces us to zombies really and blurs the line between truly living and simply existing, especially when it is a choice to believe that way. There is no “evidence” or “fact” or new discovery that would force or compel one to believe such a thing. It is a chosen faith, which makes it all the more amazing. What ramps it up to incredible is that it flies in the face of our experience. Even if we had been duped into thinking the “facts” demanded we believe this way, we know deep down, that we are more than chemistry and matter-in-motion; we know that we do exercise free-will, that without love, grace, purpose, redemption, and forgiveness, most nothing else much matters in this life. We live for all the things the naturalist tells us are illusions—which should have been our first clue it was a bankrupt and false view of reality.

If we think of this on a larger scale, internationally, as a nation, it becomes rather depressing. The modern in its materialism translates to a hollow and shallow age. Thus, the best we can muster as a culture in nobility of purpose and adventure is to consume the world's resources and make the planet safe for corporations to do business, while the people doing the work are entertained by Hollywood and Las Vegas. And, if you challenge or disagree with us, we will bomb the living hell out of you. We offer the world two choices: You can be dead--or you can be the living dead. You choose.

Be Thankful for the Atheist

2010-11-30T08:28:00.000-08:00

While the Thanksgiving holiday is over, I must bring up an issue I’ve noted before during this time of year and that is: Can an atheist be thankful? Now, the answer is, of course she can. I doubt there is an atheist alive who is not thankful for something. But is a sense of “thankfulness” reasonable or rational given the premises of most atheists? What happens if we dig deeper?

A sense of “thankfulness” requires a certain perspective toward the universe as a purposeful economy of meaningful gift and giver, that escapes a selfish motivation (the giver) and demands a humility on the part of the receiver (I did not do this nor do I necessarily deserve it).

If we believe that the ontological core of life and the universe itself is founded upon a “selfish” disposition, gene, or that such is the prevailing feature or driving force, then no motive can escape this taint. Even if we were to posit the notion we had “evolved” to move beyond selfishness, one would then wonder how we knew this was a move “beyond” or forward and not a move “backward” or a regress. Unless one assumes some objective standard for what “forward” and “backward” meant in this context, then how would he know this was an “evolution” and not simply a meaningless change or devolution? No matter how we might “psychologize” our way to thinking we were giving or receiving without a selfish motivation, we would simply be kidding ourselves, whence “thankfulness” then?

Further, if we believe the universe and life to be a deterministic iron cage of cause and effect, then whether we believe we are solely responsible for our station in life and what has come our way, or if we believe it is simply the determined end result of matter-in-motion, then to whom or what are we thankful? To ourselves? To an impersonal chance universe? To other humans who share this same fate and whose founding feature is selfishness? The very idea of being thankful becomes meaningless with such a view.

Being thankful means assuming a gift and a giver of gifts. Being thankful comes from a sense of the gratuitous part of life that bestows something called a “blessing” which is something we did not do ourselves and is done for us without any expectation of return. We normally don’t envision the good things in life as accidents, but as gifts given by something other than a roulette wheel like universe.

What does it say about a world-view that can make no sense of, or has no place for, this sense we call “thankfulness”? But never mind. The atheist can believe whatever she wants, but since she has to live in this reality, in this world, she must live (and she does) being thankful (which she is), and believing all the other things she has a hard time accounting for like free-will, grace, redemption, and what is meant by the “good” and the place of “evil” in the world. The atheist will always actually live his life as if those qualities and ideas mean something and truly matter, even if he then decides to spill much ink telling us they are cultural imaginings no more real or factual than our ideation regarding dragons and fairies; and, if we had imagined the very opposite, that would be “true” also. The atheist must talk and his talk reduces everything away and into nothing but he must live as well. And it is in the living that the game is given away. The atheist is thankful, loves, forgives, receives redemption, and is acutely aware of good and evil.

Let us be thankful for the atheist. What better testament or evidence could we ask for as to the strength of the Judeo-Christian world-view, than a contrary world-view that posits a view of life one cannot truly live, only talk about?

The Liberal Arts and the Secular

2010-11-24T21:58:00.000-08:00

Einstein once said, “The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks."

Since we live in a time of surface utility and pragmatism, anything that can move us beyond this flat plane is welcome. We are a nation that loves facts, but not wisdom. We are a nation that loves information, but not knowledge. We are drowning in minutia—a regular trivial pursuit of a national conversation, while a deep sensibility of grace, love, forgiveness, and redemption, no longer seems to appear on the radar screen of our national life.

Given where we are, it is no wonder there are those in higher education who wonder if students can, it would appear, waste their time on a liberal arts education instead of investing in those areas that might lead to more lucrative rewards.

This post gives us some hope that such a short-sighted view will be countered. It also gives us hope in the sense that we might continue exposing the “secular” for what it is, another metaphysical narrative and certainly not one that names anything fundamental about reality.

“From the start, this project was motivated by the tremendous reevaluation that the notion of the “secular” has undergone over the last two decades. It is now well acknowledged that the American academy, at least from the standpoint of theory, has been in a full-blown period of recovery from the dominance of the secularization thesis. One of the remarkable things about this conversation has been the tremendous variety of theorists—of different political and religious convictions—who have come to agree on one thing: that it is both philosophically incoherent and phenomenologically inaccurate to posit a secular scrubbed free of religion and committed to a neutral and rational public discourse.”

To Ph.D. or Not to Ph.D., That is the Question.

2010-11-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

I have been offered an opportunity to begin a Ph.D. program with the department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

This all came about because of a paper I presented at a theological/philosophical conference in Rome a couple of years ago. One of the fellows on the same panel as I, a Romanian professor of theology, in response to my ruminating about possible Ph.D. work, suggested I pursue it and mentioned the University of Groningen and how I should go about contacting them. So, after the conference I sent the paper I had presented in Rome to the department of theology and religious studies at U of G and, frankly, forgot about it. I really didn’t expect a response. I wasn’t sure that was a mountain I really wanted to climb anyway.

Well, they responded and thought the paper had the seeds of a Ph.D. dissertation in the ideas presented. They asked for a proposal, bibliography, some sample graduate papers, curriculum vitae, and my transcripts from undergrad and graduate school. So I sent all that, thinking, well, they’re going to require further classes or graduate work (neither of my degrees are in pure philosophy or pure religious studies) and I can bow out at that point noting the time difficulties it would create to add all that on top of dissertation work.

But, again, the response was positive and they want me to fine-tune the proposal and begin moving forward. Wow. What in the world have I gotten myself into? I never thought my paper would be accepted for the Rome conference and it was. I never thought a school would accept my paper as a spring board for a Ph.D. dissertation and it was. My bluff has been called at each point. I am a terrible poker player, clearly. What to do now? Any suggestions?

An Atheist Who Gets It

2010-10-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

A very good series of posts here and here by the atheist Angus McDonald. McDonald sums up the problems with the “new” atheists and the problem is not with their belief that there is no god (something he agrees with), it is really with their sensibility and stance toward the world and others in general. His is really an aesthetic critique and as such is always the most devastating. The types of atheists he is speaking of come to the table with what they feel are piles of “facts” and “evidence” which they think have been strewn together with “reason” and “rationality.” Convinced that everyone is going to be impressed, they are actually surprised when people respond, “Yes, we see and know all that too, but remain skeptical.” What is the difference? Well, I think McDonald notes the difference here:

Rather than attempting to decipher the god code, the atheist activists opt for a literal reading which makes for rich satire but which really only reflects the beliefs of a fundamentalist rump. It is astonishing to hear leading public intellectuals in the twenty-first century characterise religion as a fixed and discrete entity, stored in institutions as if in glass jars. Separating religion from human discourse, given that the two have intermingled since the dawn of culture, is about as feasible as extracting the brandy from a Christmas cake.

Here he hits on the true problem, which is that the new atheists “read” or “decipher” everything through a literal and wooden lens as do all fundamentalists. This is a “reading” problem really. It would be as if when Hamlet reflects, “To be or not to be…” for one to suggest that he was simply talking about when his heart were to stop beating or become brain dead. There is no depth, no wisdom, no experience, and no sense of anything below the surface of things and they “decipher” the physical world this way as well. They forget that all evidence and every fact is a “deciphered” fact or piece of evidence. The new atheists don’t know how to read; or, rather, they mistake reading for a one-to-one correlation between the dictionary meaning of a word (or the empirical evidence) as if that could possibly sum up or exhaust the meaning inherent is what is being written, spoken about, or observed silently. It is really what we think of as immaturity.

They are perplexed. We have all the “facts” they say; we have all the “evidence.” And yet, the majority goes on believing. The new atheist must feel at times like the boy who is trying to make his case to girl he’s smitten with. He goes through the list of “evidence” and “facts” for why she should give in to his overtures. It is all very rational and matter-of-fact. And, it even makes sense. By all counts, on paper, he really is the one that would provide for her, be stable, and be the safest and most conventional of mates. And yet, she does not love him. She loves the boy who in many respects is “bad” for her. He doesn’t have near the things going for him as does the other, but what he does have—she wants above all else. What can one say of love, mystery, and the complexity of this life? It certainly doesn’t boil down to “facts” but rather our loves, desires, and the mystery of being.

Here are some quotes:

The atheist critique of religion as 'irrational' discounts the fact that powerful secular agencies including government, the media and the advertising industry make irrational interventions into public life every day of the week.

Conversely, about a fifth of the world's population already inhabits a space where the exclusion of religion from public life has been an accomplished fact for decades. That state is, of course, the People's Republic of China, whose policies are not noticeably more rational or functional than anyone else's.

Maintaining the separation between church and state is the duty of secularism, and it could certainly be doing a better job, particularly in countries like the United States. But atheism must be somehow different from secularism, or no one would be talking about it.

The difference is that secularism assumes tolerance. Political atheism defines itself against religion, casting itself as scientific fact and religion as superstitious fiction. Atheists must therefore always be right, and the religious always wrong - a formulation that sounds just a little dangerous.

Non-belief by itself can propose no ethical system, so atheist activism must borrow its positions from other codes, a process that is not always rational or even conscious.

Faith is far from exercising a monopoly on intolerance and abuse, suggesting that the problem is not really religion, which at this level is just another fallible social institution in urgent need of reform. The problem is absolutism, a position which the atheist pamphleteers flaunt as happily as any fundamentalist.

The most signal failure of the atheist project is not that it insists on analysing religion in narrowly scientific terms, or that it cherry picks history in support of its case. It is that with its evasions and its incuriosity, its sloppy arguments and its unwillingness to question its own assumptions, it debases the currency of rational inquiry that it so claims to champion.

As the Post-Modern World Turns

2010-10-24T19:15:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting post here on global Christianity. It touches on many issues and points, but what caught my eye was the nod to the continuing postmodern turn and especially in relation to the idea of "progress". The West, since at least the Enlightenment, has bought into the myth of “progress.” Basically taking a page from evolutionary biology and applying it to morality and culture (to everything really—as it became a meta-narrative), the idea being that history can be viewed as a time-line where one can actually “chart” as it were the movement from the "simple" to the more "complex." Obviously there is some truth to this, especially in the areas of technology, but it hardly applies in other areas of knowledge—or it at least is much more nuanced and complicated than any simple theory of “progress” would allow. The point here is that much of the secularization thesis is really bound up in the myth of "progress" and the recognition that it (progress) is a myth is part of the post-modern turn. What partly shattered the myth of course was the 20th Century with its two world wars and, clearly, the Holocaust. Yes, we put a man on the moon but when the back drop to that is a landscape littered with bodies, it tends to take away something. What is, after all, "progress?"

But the piece on global Christianity is another example of those in academia recognizing that the idea the West would move from a simple (read: religious) to a more complex (read: secular) understanding of the world has indeed been “greatly exaggerated.”

Here are some quotes:

Striking changes are afoot in the way intellectuals address Christianity. Long seen as a largely Western tradition steadily losing its cultural influence in the West, Christianity has recently been re-installed at the center of debates that concern academic specialists and public intellectuals alike.

Christianity has overwhelmed the secular levees that used to channel its course. And as a source of new models of revolutionary action that do not depend on determinist assumptions, Christianity is enjoying a moment of high-cultural centrality the likes of which it has not seen in many decades.

The second current discussion of Christianity to which we draw attention is primarily philosophical and has moved to make Christian categories and materials central to new projects of philosophical and cultural critique – projects once thought to be firmly rooted in secularist (and largely atheist) assumptions. The most prominent names connected with this discourse are Giorgio Agamben [who was a speaker at the Rome conference I attended a couple of years ago—a theological conference no less], Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Gianni Vattimo, and Slavoj Žižek.

These types of trends may explain the shrillness and scare-mongering displayed by those like the “new” atheists. One can understand their frustration. It is always unsettling when one sees what he thought were settled questions now being challenged and to the point where his very world-view is even called into question.

Even Michael Ruse Gets It

2010-10-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

Michael Ruse reviews the new Harris book here. I laughed throughout the review. First, I laughed because Ruse is witty. Second, I laughed because Harris really believes he is on to something, when he is just rehashing the sort of nonsense freshman philosophy students assert to one another after imbibing too much beer and pizza. At some point, a professor usually disabuses them of their shallowness. Clearly, a professor or two failed Harris.

Here are some good quotes:

If God wanted to destroy New Atheism, getting this book written was a good start. Although, as I said at the beginning, perhaps the first divine move was making Sam Harris so famous he thought he could get away with it.

So what is the secret that has eluded David Hume and G. E. Moore, and just about every professional philosopher of the twentieth century, including the present writer? It seems to be a matter of “well-being.” We value well-being and we therefore ought to promote it, both for ourselves and for others. That is all there is to it, Harris thinks, although of course a lot more is required to get well-being in every particular case. But essentially well-being is everything, and science can tell us whether we have it or not.

Well, hang on a minute. Before we go off and celebrate in the bar that two-and-a-half thousand years of moral philosophizing can now be brought to an end, let’s ask a few questions—the sorts of questions that one might ask of a first-year undergraduate who comes up with an answer like this.

Science alone just cannot do it. It cannot decide questions like these. I don’t know what Harris studied in his philosophy courses as an undergrad at Stanford, but they don’t seem to have penetrated very deeply...

Ruse then goes on to reveal how much people like Harris just assume. After 2000 years of living is a world built by the Judeo-Christian narrative, the new atheists just assume that this is normal and what happens when people are reasonable. The historical, religious, and cultural ignorance is amazing.

People like Harris remind of the spoiled children of the multi-billionaire. As they lay around the palace sipping wine by the pool and checking their stocks on their phones or laptops, as they live and move in a world they had nothing to do with creating, they glance at each other and remark, "This making money stuff is easy--we should write a book." Well, that's what Harris did.

What is Needed? Disbelief

2010-10-12T20:42:00.000-07:00

There is a wonderful essay here by Paul Wallace. One could quibble with Mr. Wallace here and there, but his over-all take and his tone is refreshing and encouraging to say the least. Here is a guy who "gets" it. More importantly, I think this probably reflects the way a great many, if not most, scientists truly feel about the relationship between "science" and "religion."

The telling point he makes, which is all too evident when reading the comments he takes issue with, is that most secular fundamentalists haven't a flipping clue as to what Christianity is or teaches. These people are fighting against phantoms. The ignorance would be funny if it wasn't just so embarrassing. At least serious Christians know something of philosophy, science, and the thinking of serious atheists of the past. Serious Christians have been to the brink with these thinkers and dared to look down. Today's secular fundamentalists/atheists have dared nothing but to congratulate themselves for slaying figments.

He also points to what "myth" really means in these sorts of conversations. And in this context, it is what postmodern philosophers mean when they speak of "narratives" "world-views" and really, metaphysics in general. As such, secular humanism and philosophical materialism are "myths" which may or may not be true, but they are myths nevertheless.

Here are some good quotes:

First, Christianity is in fact compatible with evolution and the “closing of the gulf between humans and other animals.” There are many extraordinarily intelligent Christians who have freely admitted that evolution poses challenges to Christian theology and have freely chosen to not ignore them or sweep them under the rug. They have a deep knowledge of Christian history and theology as well as evolutionary theory. And they have reconciled the two and find joy living and working on the boundary between them. These people are not uncommon. Many of them are parishioners in Catholic and mainline churches, many are teachers and professors, and many of them are ordained ministers. What is evidenced in this comment is a failure to pay attention to the fact that Christianity is a complex and intellectually grown-up tradition.

And, Oh my! If only Christians would wrap themselves tighter in the mythology! That would be a good and even glorious thing, so long as we all understand what is meant by “mythology.” To say something is a myth is not to say it is false. Myth tells truths that are not expressible in discursive language. Myths can be true or false. A false myth, like a bad scientific idea, is quickly discarded because it does not speak the truth about the world. A true myth survives because it resonates deeply with lived human experience. A true myth brings one face-to-face with reality and has nothing to do with literalism or the ignoring of scientific evidence.

I would like to ask a favor of the atheists and secular humanists who wonder how to approach us religious people. Please do not “accommodate” us. Please do not “confront” us. Instead, get to know us. Please do not presume to know us already...Get to know some of us. And then, at some point, do the unthinkable: Take the risk of disbelieving—just for a moment and as a truly live option—the ideas you think hold you and your world together. Disbelieving is one of the most vitally important things people can do. Without disbelief there is no growth. To disbelieve is to live.

And what I am aiming for is much more modest: For at least one person to think twice before making a caricature of Christianity. Doing so is sloppy thinking and, more often than not, doing so has no effect beyond making serious people write you off. People should criticize Christianity all they want, but they should do so in knowledge—knowledge won by the act of disbelief—and not in ignorance of the thing criticized.

The Politics of Atheism

2010-09-29T21:28:00.000-07:00

John Milbank has written here of the link between atheism, the Left, and nihilism. Regardless of Milbank's greater point, underlying his theme is the reality that the secular, politics in general, and the Left and Right are all imagined and theory-laden metaphysical narrative frame-works that deal with life in community.

There are no neutral or theory-less ways of asserting how one should live in community. And yet, for most these theories generally go unexamined and are asserted as "just so." The greatest thing that could happen in the West would be for the fundamentalists of both the secular and religious Left and Right to have that moment which comes to every person old enough and wise enough--that being the moment when one learns that something he just believed was true, something taken in simply as the air one breathes (everyone knows that! It's common knowledge!) was false.

Odd and Modern

2010-09-25T14:17:00.000-07:00

Relative to my last post, here is the book the essay noted came from and it looks like the entire book would be an interesting read. Although environmentalism isn’t an area I’ve spent much time with, it is a good example of where how we think and theorize has applicable and practical consequences within every area of knowledge or endeavor.

Here you can read several portions of the book. From the essay by Bruce V. Foltz, here are some interesting quotes:

The idea of a universe that is self subsistent—standing entirely on its own, fully operational and intelligible, independent of anything outside itself—is both odd and modern…It is today commonly taken to be one of the great achievements of Western Culture, paving the way for modern science and an enlightened understanding of nature in general. Environmentalists, too, pay tribute to this concept, feeling that it somehow honors nature to regard it as self-subsistent. But this essay shall maintain that it is instead one of the disastrous ideas of modernity, inimical to any salutary relation between humanity and natural environment.

It is indeed an “odd” and “modern” way of thinking and it is surprising how many people simply take it as a given or just “true.” This book was published in 2004, so it is good to see where we might be going, what people are talking about, and the direction that new ways of thinking might open up for future possibilities.

Look around, we do need to "rethink nature." Clearly the modern, "scientific", naturalistic way (which the market is happy to coerce and co-opt) has not led us to a healthy and harmonious relation between nature and humanity. We need a new way and the essays in this book seem to point toward a better way.

What Hath Continental Philosophy to do With Environmentalism?

2010-09-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

There is a very interesting essay here in the area of continental philosophy and environmentalism. The essay also highlights many of the areas discussed on this blog and also on Eric Reitan’s blog.

Here are some good quotes:

The issue of global warming was framed by natural scientists who “called unselfconsciously for deterministic social-scientific predictions of human inputs to the climate system for up to centuries ahead…. Human society and culture was thus in effect reduced to a behavioral stimulus-response mechanism.”43 Naïve natural-scientific assumptions about “brute facts” not only mask the extent to which environmental problems have social and cultural roots, we are told, but also unduly privilege technocratic expertise in a way that ignores the extent to which local people have superior knowledge of environmental issues that directly affect them.44 For postmodern social theorists, nature is best regarded as a socio-cultural construction, not as an independent given.

A constructive postmodern theory would also contribute to a re-enchantment of the world, without thereby fostering personal, psychological, or social regression. The world was dis-enchanted when modern natural science persuaded Western elites that the universe is a meaningless totality of matter-energy, and that humankind is an accidentally evolved species that invents gods as comforting, but pathetic illusions in the face of an ultimately pointless existence. Environmentalists often accept the validity of such naturalism in part because they want to align themselves with modern natural science, and in part because they think that denying transcendent domains will protect nature from arrogant anthropocentrism, humanity-nature dualism, and otherworldly contempt for nature. Unfortunately for environmentalism, Ken Wilber argues, the same naturalism is the basis for “the modern industrial ontology,” according to which “nature is the ultimate reality, nature alone is real.” 63 Dressing up naturalism with systems theory does not differentiate it from the very same naturalism that portrays nature as a complex mechanical totality that humankind can analyze and dominate.

In addition to having difficulties in accounting for human consciousness, naturalism has struggled to account for the ethical “ought.” Environmentalists who adhere to naturalism, however, often claim that humans “ought” to curb their striving to maximize fitness by gaining control over most of the Earth. If we are merely one kind of organism among countless others, however, why “ought” we—apart from merely prudential considerations—to limit our strivings? 20 One way to answer this question is to admit that reflective consciousness and morality are extraordinary phenomena that transcend naturalistic categories. Humans can and ought to reduce suffering, to respect life, to care for one another. Postmodern theorists rightly criticize naturalism for its inability to account for human experience.

The last sentence of that last paragraph is striking. It is, after all, the most important aspect of what we call being alive. This thing we call being “human” and the experience of that “humanness.” All that is summed up when we think of irony, humor, our sense of beauty, love, peace, morality, joy, thankfulness and gratitude, and our making of art, music, poetry, and literature and all the other terms we use to describe those and similar qualities or conditions—all those things are what make life “life” and beautiful and good. At the end of the day, no one cares about the often more mechanical and rote parts of life, but what we do care about and live for are all that is summed up by what it means to be “human.” Now, imagine a philosophy or world-view such as philosophical naturalism that is, not only incapable of accounting for the “human experience” but when it makes the attempt, tries to explain it away by reducing it to neurons firing and matter-in-motion.

It boggles the mind really. Why on earth would anyone believe something so contrary to our own experience, the history of cultures, and to the very sensibility of the best that has been offered by every culture in the areas of art, music, poetry, literature, architecture, science, philosophy, or theology? It is one of the great mysteries of modern times.

More on Belief and Evidence

2010-09-16T21:25:00.000-07:00

Alister McGrath has a simple but good short essay here on the subject of science, belief, and evidence. It goes to many of the issues discussed on Eric's blog. A quote:

In its rigorous sense, "proof" applies only to logic and mathematics. We can prove that 2 + 2 = 4, just as we can prove that "the whole is greater than the part." And yet science proceeds by inference, rather than by the deduction so characteristic of mathematical proof.

A series of observations is accumulated, forcing the deeper questions: What must be true if we are to explain what is observed? What "big picture" of reality offers the best fit to what is actually observed? What is the best explanation of these observations?

All the World is a Text

2010-09-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

There is a good discussion going on over at this blog. One of the issues under discussion is the role of “facts” “evidence” and science in how we come to recognize what is “true” in a “big-picture” or ultimate way. My view is that noting some “fact” or piece of “evidence” rarely if ever changes anyone’s mind in these sorts of conversations, because most everyone is aware of many if not most of the facts and evidence. Unless the dispute is how far the sun is from the earth, noting some fact or piece of evidence is not going to move these types of discussions forward. Nor does it do to claim that one has all the “facts” and “evidence” on his side, while the other just believes by faith. The truth is that each side is considering the facts and evidence, the physical world, history, and their experience of the world. The question is why do we come to different conclusions?

Why we come to different conclusions is indeed the question and it really sums up the modern post-modern divide. Those coming from a modern perspective and those coming from a post-modern perspective usually talk past one another and even when they think they are agreeing or saying the same thing, often it turns out they are not. Both wonder why the other person cannot “see” their point or understand what they are trying get across.

Well the reason is hermeneutics, which is the science of interpretation. The entire world is a text, which we “read” and interpret. The only way we can do this though is through a “narrative” or story that makes sense of all the “facts” and “evidence.” A meta-narrative is another word for “faith” or “world-view”—it is meta-physical. It is shaped from the rock-bottom core of what we really believe about life and the world. It is the TRUTH we bring to bear upon the “facts” and “evidence.” This is also true of everyone; both the theist and atheist interpret the world through world-view or faith. I believe in God by faith; the atheist believes there is no God, by faith as well. Doubt is simply belief turned in the other direction. We are all believers in something and agnostic toward the opposite.

Here is a very good essay that brings much to bear upon this whole area. What makes it especially interesting is that it’s in the area of geology. One would think the matter of rocks and plate tectonics would be quite resistant to a “narrative” understanding. The essay also touches upon the difference between the “Analytical” school of philosophy and the “Continental” school of philosophy. If anyone is really serious about conversations like the one on the blog noted above, they really need to understand these two schools and the historical context of the discussion. Here he describes the Analytic perspective:

“Early Analytic philosophers such as Russell(1914), Carnap (1937), and Reichenbach(1928, 1958) developed a powerful characterization of the scientific method.
Their conclusions may be summarized by the following three claims. First, the scientific method is objective. This means that the discovery of scientific truth can and must be separate from any personal, ethical/political, or metaphysical commitments. This is the basis of the celebrated fact/value distinction, which holds that the facts discovered by the scientist are quite distinct from whatever values he or she might hold. Personal or cultural values must not enter into the scientific reasoning process.”

“Second, the scientific method is empirical. Science is built upon a rigorous distinction between observations (which again were understood, at least ideally, as being factual and unequivocal) and theory. Facts themselves were not theory-dependent; observation was thought to be a matter of ‘‘taking a good look.’’ The distinction between statements that describe and statements that evaluate was viewed as unproblematic.”

“Third, the scientific method constitutes an epistemological monism. Science was thought to consist of an single, identifiable set of logical procedures applicable to all fields of study. This reduction of all knowledge to one kind of knowledge proceeded in two steps, summarized by the terms ‘‘scientism’’ and ‘‘reductionism.’’ Scientism is the belief that the scientific method provides us with the only reliable way to know. Reductionism is the further claim that it is possible to reduce all sciences to one science, physics.”

This describes the perspective taken by Bernard, JP, and Burk (to lesser and greater degrees).

Here he sums up the Continental perspective:

“The claims of Continental Philosophy—the other main school of contemporary philosophy—concerning science can also be summarized in two points: (1) whereas science offers us a powerful tool for the discovery of truth, science is not the only, or even necessarily the best way that humans come to know reality, and (2) the existence of ‘‘the’’ scientific method (understood as above) is a myth. Science has neither the priority in the discovery of truth, nor the unity and cohesiveness of one identifiable method, nor the distance from ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical commitments that Analytic Philosophy claims it has.”

And this would of course sum up, to some degree at least, my perspective. Anyway, I would encourage anyone interested in the conversation taking place on the other blog to read closely the essay noted.

Tolerance: The Cheap Way

2010-09-09T20:43:00.000-07:00

Debra Dean Murphy is one of my favorite bloggers. Here, she takes up the issue of the church in Florida that is about to embark on one of the more stupid and hateful events in recent memory. But she goes to the deeper matter. We preach tolerance but Jesus preached love. One costs us little to nothing (and makes us feel so good about ourselves!), the other costs us everything.

Nine years after 9/11 most of us are tolerant of Islam but we don’t really love Muslims. We don’t really know any Muslims to love. Tolerance has kept us at a safe and sterile distance.

Tolerance is the installment program for a debt that will never be paid off and finally comes due, one day, anyway. It ultimately changes nothing. Love is the debt forgiveness plan that changes the world.

Still More on Violence and the State

2010-09-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

James Smith has an interesting post here on the writings of Andrew Bacevich. We need to listen to someone like Bacevich. Some quotes:

It's also no mistake that Frank Rich cites Bacevich in his recent, stinging critique of Obama's presidency. All of those so-called "progressive" (or "red letter") Christians who so eagerly backed Obama need to own up to the extent of his complicity in the new American militarism. Commenting on Obama's recent speech about the Iraq war, Rich appeals to Bacevich:

Of all the commentators on the debacle, few speak with more eloquence or credibility than Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University who as a West Point-trained officer served in Vietnam and the first gulf war and whose son, also an Army officer, was killed in Iraq in 2007. Writing in The New Republic after Obama’s speech, he decimated many of the war’s lingering myths, starting with the fallacy, reignited by the hawks taking a preposterous victory lap last week, that “the surge” did anything other than stanch the bleeding from the catastrophic American blundering that preceded it. As Bacevich concluded: “The surge, now remembered as an epic feat of arms, functions chiefly as a smokescreen, obscuring a vast panorama of recklessness, miscalculation and waste that politicians, generals, and sundry warmongers are keen to forget.”

Religion, The State, and Violence

2010-09-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

Here is more on the theme of religion, the state, and violence.

"Whatever the truth about how often particular Christians, Jews, Muslims, and so on, commend and practice violence, we ought to remember that the quantity of violence traceable to such commendations is vanishingly small compared with the quantity sponsored by other forms of life and produced in other ways."

"Neither ought we to forget that - first, the modern settlement of religion's place within the state is unstable and probably cannot long endure, and, second, that the hobbyist-cheerleader is a role that, if adopted, means the end of those forms of religion (particularly Islam and Christianity) that have more comprehensive ambitions for their significance for their adherents than such a pinched, impotent role permits."

Cavanaugh, Hitchens, and Violence

2010-08-27T21:08:00.000-07:00

Here is a good piece regarding how we might think about what "religion" means and also how the myth of religious violence is used to support secular violence.

Darwin's Pious Idea

2010-08-12T11:24:00.001-07:00

The Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham has posted more information regarding Conor Cunningham's new book on evolution. I would encourage anyone to download and read the promotional sampler, which explains nicely what Cunningham is trying to do with this book.

If the sampler is accurate, I would also have to say that Conor's book probably is where I find myself as well on this subject, that is, as the sub-title indicates: Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Get it Wrong.

Marilynne Robinson, the Philosopher

2010-08-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

Marilynne Robinson is one of my favorite writers. If you ever see one of her books, grab it up. She talks about her new book on the the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It sounds like a great read.

Ten Interesting Questions

2010-08-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

Debra Dean Murphy asks some interesting questions here.

An example:

8. Why do most Christians misunderstand the nature of “freedom” and fall in lockstep with the war machine’s thin, silly notion of freedom as license to pursue “the American dream”? (Why can’t we see capitalism’s direct relationship to state-sponsored violence?)

Hart: Sometimes A Guilty Pleasure

2010-08-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

Look, I know he is hard to take at times and his pen can act like a dagger, but, for sheer entertainment value alone one must read Hart. He makes me laugh. And, if there was ever a group to which laughter was the only legitimate response, it is the New Atheists. Hart is one of America’s most learned theologians and when turned to theology and philosophy his writing soars and is profound, but it can be equally biting and funny as when turned toward the New Atheists. I have to admit I find it a guilty pleasure. I’m reminded of the friend who slyly whispers at social engagements, “If you don’t have something nice to say about someone…then…come sit by me.” Enjoy.

A quote:

The principal source of my melancholy, however, is my firm conviction that today’s most obstreperous infidels lack the courage, moral intelligence, and thoughtfulness of their forefathers in faithlessness. What I find chiefly offensive about them is not that they are skeptics or atheists; rather, it is that they are not skeptics at all and have purchased their atheism cheaply, with the sort of boorish arrogance that might make a man believe himself a great strategist because his tanks overwhelmed a town of unarmed peasants, or a great lover because he can afford the price of admission to a brothel. So long as one can choose one’s conquests in advance, taking always the paths of least resistance, one can always imagine oneself a Napoleon or a Casanova (and even better: the one without a Waterloo, the other without the clap).

But how long can any soul delight in victories of that sort? And how long should we waste our time with the sheer banality of the New Atheists—with, that is, their childishly Manichean view of history, their lack of any tragic sense, their indifference to the cultural contingency of moral “truths,” their wanton incuriosity, their vague babblings about “religion” in the abstract, and their absurd optimism regarding the future they long for?

Milbank on Democracy

2010-07-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

A thought provoking piece here by John Milbank on the potential dangers of liberal democracy in our time.

A quote:

Thus increasingly, liberal politics revolves around supposedly guarding against alien elements: the terrorist, the refugee, the person of another race, the foreigner, the criminal, and so on. Populism seems more and more to be an inevitable drift of unqualified liberal democracy.

Consequently, the purported defence of liberal democracy itself is often used in order to justify the suspension of democratic decision-making and civil liberties. And so, somewhat paradoxically, it is liberalism that tends to suspend those values of liberality - fair trial, right to a defence, assumed innocence, habeas corpus, a measure of free speech and free enquiry, good treatment of the convicted - which it has taken over, but which as a matter of historical record it did not invent.

Just Die Already!

2010-06-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. I mean you at least have to give Peter Singer credit for not blinking in the face of a nihilistic suicidal worldview. At least he's honest. Like Nietzsche before him, he is willing to look into the abyss and face the logical conclusions of his worldview.

Unlike those who tell us there is no ultimate meaning or purpose to life, no free-will, no objective morality or ethics, and that what is simply is…BUT…I think we should do this, that, or the other because…well…because…ummm…at least Singer sees that if one truly believes we are a purposeless meaningless accident, and a plague really to boot, the cause of all this unpleasantness, then we might should simply exit the scene.

Of course, I doubt Singer will raise his hand and say, "Here, I will be the first to be sterilized." Interestingly, in the past, it was always suggested that someone else be sterilized, interned, or simply exterminated—simply witness the early to the middle of the 20th Century in America and Western Europe. I wonder if Singer longs for those "good-ole-days."

Imagine a worldview that offers death as possibly the best solution to our problems. One can see it now. A lonely man stands on a bridge. He has lost all hope. He sees no reason to go on. Up walks Singer. He whispers into the man's ear and walks on. The man jumps to his death. What should one think of such a person who would give such counsel. I think most people would think it reprehensible. And yet that advice is given out all the time, not for a single person, but for all people. Nice worldview.

Darwin's Pious Idea

2010-06-05T11:35:00.000-07:00

I met Conor Cunningham at the Rome conference I attended in 2008. He was basically in charge of the conference. As one of (maybe only) the non-academics presenting a paper among a room full of Ph.D.'s, most who were published professors, it was very intimidating and I felt like a fish out of water. The person who made me feel the most comfortable was Conor. A great guy.

He has written a new book that will come out this fall. It looks like a great read. The list of reviews and what they are saying about the book is quite impressive.

American Religion

2010-05-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

Peter J. Leithart has a good post here regarding a book by Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle and their claim that nationalism is a religion.

We might do well on a day like today (Memorial Day) to reflect, not only upon those who have given their lives for their country, but also upon what it is we are willing to allow the sacrifice of those lives for.

The word "freedom" has now been completely devalued and emptied of any significant philosophical content--it is a slogan now. It is no longer freedom guided by a teleology (freedom toward) that summoned one to contribute and help build something beautiful and meaningful. It has become the freedom (from) being asked to do anything that conflicts with one's own personal pursuit of the "good" life-whatever that might be.

James K.A. Smith's interview here notes some of the same issues.

We are all Libertarians now

2010-05-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Lilla has a very good essay here regarding how libertarianism has become the true defining political mindset of American culture.

For me he shows how the Left and Right are really two sides to the same modernist coin. This is one reason why liberal democracy is in trouble. It is hollow. There is nothing there beyond personal self-interest, but both sides feel they should be able to regulate the other's personal life (the Right) or the other's financial life (the Left). The problem is that both have completely destroyed any philosophical basis for asserting anything that would compel the moral imagination to the point of restricting one's personal "freedom." The atomization and compartmentalization of life flowing, partly, from the Enlightenment is coming home to roost. Lilla is really just hearkening back to the very problem noted by Alasdair MacIntyre in his ground-breaking book After Virtue. As noted in the Wiki site:

Another reason MacIntyre gives for the doomed nature of the Enlightenment is the fact that it ascribed moral agency to the individual. He claims this made morality no more than one man's opinion and, thus, philosophy became a forum of inexplicably subjective rules and principles.

We are headed for deep trouble regardless of which of these moronic/idiotic movements of either Left or Right are in power.

Here is Lilla summing up:

But the blame does not fall on Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck or the Republican Party alone. We are experiencing just one more aftershock from the libertarian eruption that we all, whatever our partisan leanings, have willed into being. For half a century now Americans have been rebelling in the name of individual freedom. Some wanted a more tolerant society with greater private autonomy, and now we have it, which is a good thing—though it also brought us more out-of-wedlock births, a soft pornographic popular culture, and a drug trade that serves casual users while destroying poor American neighborhoods and destabilizing foreign nations. Others wanted to be free from taxes and regulations so they could get rich fast, and they have—and it’s left the more vulnerable among us in financial ruin, holding precarious jobs, and scrambling to find health care for their children. We wanted our two revolutions. Well, we have had them.

Now an angry group of Americans wants to be freer still—free from government agencies that protect their health, wealth, and well-being; free from problems and policies too difficult to understand; free from parties and coalitions; free from experts who think they know better than they do; free from politicians who don’t talk or look like they do (and Barack Obama certainly doesn’t). They want to say what they have to say without fear of contradiction, and then hear someone on television tell them they’re right. They don’t want the rule of the people, though that’s what they say. They want to be people without rules—and, who knows, they may succeed. This is America, where wishes come true. And where no one remembers the adage “Beware what you wish for.”

David B. Hart

2010-05-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Whether one likes him or not, David Bentley Hart is, I believe, one of America's best theologians/philosophers. One can disagree or agree with him--what one cannot do is dismiss him.

Here are some great video interviews with Dr. Hart where he discusses a wide variety of topics including the New Atheism, gnosticism, and God and the problem of evil.

"The Secular is Religious"

2010-05-19T16:02:00.000-07:00

It has probably become obvious to anyone who knows me or reads this blog (the few who do) but if anyone has ever wondered what approach I take as far as addressing atheism it is summed up here by Jamie Smith.

God the Loser

2010-05-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

This book (Mary Eberstadt) looks like a very funny read. It is satire similar to C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. I haven't read it but it's going on my Amazon wish list. The book is a series of letters to the higher ranking Atheists from a convert to their faith. As a former "dull" she advises these "brights" in how they might improve their evangelism efforts; she gives them insider information so to speak.

This blog (Scot McNight) lists some of the items noted in letter three of the book. It has to do with the area of good works.

1. Focus on the bad works of Christians and pastors and the Catholic Church and the leaders. There's plenty to feast on there.

2. Avoid getting into discussions of the good works of Christians, for their record is amazingly good.

3. Avoid getting into discussions of the charity work of atheists, because the story is not nice.
A deadly quote: "we Atheists are much better off emphasizing what the other side has done wrong rather than emphasizing anything we Brights have done right" (40).

Why do this? "because the actual evidence for claiming that Atheism will do as much good in the world as Christianity and other religions is embarrassingly against us" (42). What, she ponders, can the atheists say about the godless atheism at work in Nazism and Stalinism? And claiming they were religious underneath all that godless violence is like thinking underneath Paula Abdul you will find a fat bald male teetotaler (her analogy).

The fact is, the Dulls take care of the sick and care for the poor and build hospitals and their "god" tells them to, while our theories and sciences teach us that such hospitals don't have Darwin's name on them and we, the Atheists, "don't want the kind of world in which Nature's rejects, the sick and the old and the frail of any sort, flourish anyway" (51).

In brief: "their highest authority, Loser, tells them to care for the sick and weak, whereas ours, Nature, tells us the opposite" (51).

All Evidence is Interpreted Evidence

2010-04-29T15:14:00.001-07:00

I've posted this before, but given the last several posts and the comments--I will post it again. Some quotes:

The reasons you must give, however, do not come from outside your faith, but follow from it and flesh it out. They are not independent of your faith – if they were they would supplant it as a source of authority – but are simultaneously causes of it and products of it; just as Harris’s and Dawkins’s reasons for believing that morality can be naturalized flow from their faith in physical science and loop back to that faith, thereby giving it an enhanced substance.

The reasoning is circular, but not viciously so. The process is entirely familiar and entirely ordinary; a conviction (of the existence of God or the existence of natural selection or the greatness of a piece of literature) generates speculation and questions, and the resulting answers act as confirmation of the conviction that has generated them. Whatever you are doing – preaching, teaching , performing an experiment, playing baseball – you must always give a reason (if only to yourself) for your faith and the reason will always be a reason only because your faith is in place.

Now, this is not to say that one cannot change his world-view/faith—his deepest held convictions regarding the big questions of life. But it is to say that there is a huge and significant difference between changing my mistaken view that the mean distance from the earth to the sun is 139.6 kilometers, when I am shown evidence that it is, in fact, 149.6 kilometers—and changing my views about why there is something rather than nothing, is there a God or not, the origins of the universe, why am I here, or what is the meaning of life. All the big questions of life—the questions most people care about—which have been summed up and reflected in philosophy, literature, art, music, and culture from time immemorial are not answered or addressed by measuring or weighing “evidence.” Frankly, does this difference even need to be pointed out? Isn’t this difference obvious?

David B. Hart put it best:

“…And this, I venture to say, is why atheism cannot win out in the end: it requires a moral and intellectual coarseness—a blindness to the obvious—too immense for the majority of mankind.”

Reason's Disenchantment

2010-04-26T17:13:00.000-07:00

This looks like a great book and one I have added to my Amazon wish list. Blurbs:

Thus, Rawlsian “public reason” filters appeals to religion or other “comprehensive doctrines” out of public deliberation. But these restrictions have the effect of excluding our deepest normative commitments, virtually assuring that the discourse will be shallow. Furthermore, because we cannot defend our normative positions without resorting to convictions that secular discourse deems inadmissible, we are frequently forced to smuggle in those convictions under the guise of benign notions such as freedom or equality.

Smith suggests that this sort of smuggling is pervasive in modern secular discourse. He shows this by considering a series of controversial, contemporary issues, including the Supreme Court’s assisted-suicide decisions, the “harm principle,” separation of church and state, and freedom of conscience. He concludes by suggesting that it is possible and desirable to free public discourse of the constraints associated with secularism and “public reason.”

No Leg to Stand on

2010-04-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

Wow, here is another gem by Fish. The bold assertion: There are no secular reasons and what reasons there are have to be smuggled in from the very sources it disdains. How pathetic. I think we can conclude that secular reason has been mostly "sleight of hand" at best--at worst, a fraud. Some quotes:

If public reason has “deprived” the natural world of “its normative dimension” by conceiving of it as free-standing and tethered to nothing higher than or prior to itself, how, Smith asks, “could one squeeze moral values or judgments about justice . . . out of brute empirical facts?” No way that is not a sleight of hand. This is the cul de sac Enlightenment philosophy traps itself in when it renounces metaphysical foundations in favor of the “pure” investigation of “observable facts.” It must somehow bootstrap or engineer itself back up to meaning and the possibility of justified judgment, but it has deliberately jettisoned the resources that would enable it do so.

But no matter who delivers the lesson, its implication is clear. Insofar as modern liberal discourse rests on a distinction between reasons that emerge in the course of disinterested observation — secular reasons — and reasons that flow from a prior metaphysical commitment, it hasn’t got a leg to stand on.