Father Richard Rohr at Science and Nonduality Conference
Richard Rohr is a Franciscan friar, author, teacher and mystic. I first encountered him through his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life in 2012.
Hereunder is a video of a recent talk of his at Science and Nonduality.
Points that I found interesting: the idea that 'unitive consciousness' was fundamental to the early Church, but has become fragmented due to the emphasis on language (especially since the advent of printing.)
The discussion of 'apophatic and cataphatic' modes of knowing at around 10:00. (This resonates with me as it maps well against Buddhist meditation.)
Also the discussion of the nature of the Trinity towards the end of the talk.
Hereunder is a video of a recent talk of his at Science and Nonduality.
Points that I found interesting: the idea that 'unitive consciousness' was fundamental to the early Church, but has become fragmented due to the emphasis on language (especially since the advent of printing.)
The discussion of 'apophatic and cataphatic' modes of knowing at around 10:00. (This resonates with me as it maps well against Buddhist meditation.)
Also the discussion of the nature of the Trinity towards the end of the talk.
Comments (188)
Do you have any actual evidence for your confidence that he is a rich man?
Seems to me you are being quite unnecessarily judgemental. After all, his target audience is not professional or even serious amateur philosophers. There is no point in 'over-engineering' your intellectual rigor and philosophical sophistication; it's 'horses for courses' if you ask me.
Even if he is wealthy; and he has earned it, then so what? Would you turn away wealth if it came your way?
Cry me a river.
Quoting John
A Franciscan would. I don't give two figs if someone's wealthy.
Some traditional (or even contemporary) Franciscans might. You cannot possibly speak for all of them. Are you saying there can be no change within religious institutions? In any case you don't even have any evidence he is wealthy. Who say he owns the Center for Action and Contemplation? He might have donated the royalties from his books to the Franciscans.
Religious organizations in general are having to adapt to the needs of their prospective constituents if they want to survive, to be considered relevant to modern life and continue to exert any influence. Are you saying that is somehow wrong? How do you know it is "new age"? Have you been there to confirm that?
To be honest, your attitude seems to be lacking in subtly, unsophisticated and snobbish.
No, that's how they wither and die. See mainline Protestant Christianity.
Quoting John
Been where? Watch his damn videos. The man has the Om symbol equaling mc2 behind him in the one above, for goodness' sake.
Quoting John
Well, there are plenty more rivers to go cry in.
Rubbish. It's adapt or become extinct.
Quoting Thorongil
His videos are not the Center..doh!
Quoting Thorongil
If that's your penchant, then off you go...
:-}
Nah.
Quoting John
And I never claimed they were....
I said "How do you know it is "new age"?", referring to the Center he founded and you said "look at his videos". Since, as you admit, his videos are not his Center then even if his videos are new age, this gives you no warrant for concluding that his Center also is new age.
Have you got any argument to support your claim that religious organizations escape the common condition constraining all things such that they must adapt to survive? Things may be able to survive (increasingly poorly) for some little time without adaptation, but not over the long term.
I thought you meant what he says, not the center.
Quoting John
I just gave you an example.
Sure there's phoney new age, there's phoney gurus, there's phoney religion of all kinds, but there would be no fool's gold, if there were no real gold, as the old saying has it.
I think Richard Rohr's teaching is quite 'new age' - but that doesn't necessarily invalidate it. From everything I have read and listened to, I don't think Richard Rohr is a phoney. If you want to believe that, bully for you.
But then, also arguably, one of the reasons the 'new age' exists is because of the shortcomings of the Christian mainstream - it's authoritarianism, inflexibility, dogmatism, and the rest. So, many of these types are rascals, tricksters, sometimes even charlatans. But that's maybe because God is not actually Super Commandant, the divine boss in the chain of command, which the institutions of the West used to legimize their political power for centuries. (However, notice that Francis was also subversive of that.)
Sorry, I missed that.
In any case, from Wiki:
"Mainline Protestants were a majority of all Christians in the United States until the mid-20th century, but now constitute a minority among Protestants." Shrinking?
However:
"Mainline churches share a liberal approach to social issues". Adaptation to a liberal society?
"While in 1970 the mainline churches claimed most Protestants and more than 30 percent of the population as members,[25] today they are a minority among Protestants; in 2009, only 15 percent of Americans were adherents."
It does sound like they have adapted to some extent in the past, but have now failed to adapt to a growing penchant for fundamentalism among the faithful. Fundamentalist churches have obviously adapted to meet people's desires and needs or they would not be so popular (relatively speaking) today. The New Age movement has probably taken many of the more liberal minded away form the Churches altogether. It is a fact that adherence to organized Christianity is diminishing pretty much everywhere in the modern western world.
In any case, it seems obvious that the general rule is adapt or languish and perhaps die, however slow that languishing or death might be. Even if there were one genuine counterexample that would not contradict the general rule, since sociological and even biological trends are not as hard and fast as physics or chemistry.
If I say 'thirdness', it might invoke the Pierceans to engage a little in the doctrine of the Trinity, or of id, ego and superego. Note, by the way, that that particular doctrine is that of the ego - one might as well call it the superego and the subego. God, man, nature.
Necessarily, one makes a distinction. And there is the triad; one, and the distinguished this and that.
The unseen seer, the ego, the crucified, the invisible storyteller, or even the visible but neglected storyteller about whom the story is not, unless by happenstance it is, but even then it is -by time - distinguished, the protagonist from the storyteller, and still I haven't progressed beyond the subject of the sentence, I, the speaker, (you know who that is stolen from), indulge myself in a deliberate confusion of language, because there is a folly of wisdom that thinks it can encompass even itself, let alone the world, let alone God.
I hope I will be forgiven for talking - even thus loosely - about what the wretched monk says, rather than the despicable 'ism that he embodies. You are all fake philosophy, arguing about who is fake philosophy rather than exposing failures of thinking and conceptualisation. Start playing the fucking ball, not the man.
(Y)
This is likely the most difficult issue of religion, to establish compatibility between the idea that the human being has real freedom of choice, yet there is also real objective authority. The answer is not to oppress freedom of choice with authoritarianism (as Agustino implies), because we must respect the fact that the human race progresses through advancements in knowledge, and evolution, such that what was once believed as true, in the past, may not be believed as true anymore. Nor is the answer to proceed forward with completely unprincipled decision making.
So there is a very awkward need to allow the free thinking human mind to reach out into the fringes, groping in the dark, as it may be, grasping at straws in the realm of the unknown, in order to find principles to cling to, as leverage, to pull the unknown into the realm of becoming known. This is the activity through which knowledge progresses. But this activity, whereby the unknown becomes known, which can only be carried out by the freest minds, must itself be principled in some way.
These are precisely its strengths that have allowed it to endure for 2000 years. You no longer have a universal church when you take such things away.
Quoting John
You're using the word "adapt" so that you always come out in the right. What you're effectively saying in the quote above is that those churches that stress more traditional values and beliefs are doing better. Okay, but that's not exactly "adapting to modern life," which was the phrase you used. When I think of "adapting to modern life" I think of precisely what the mainline churches have done, which is to get in bed with progressive politics. This has caused such churches to decline.
One can use Buddhism in Japan as another example. When it abandoned the traditional monastic code during the Meiji restoration, ever since then it has largely become a funeral business that is irrelevant to most people's lives.
At the time, I had declined confirmation in the Church (I had been raised Anglican, albeit in a very secular household). I didn't believe, at the time, that enlightenment (whatever it was) had anything to do with what I had been taught about 'religion. Of course, that was a very long time ago, and my attitude has changed since, but I still think it's the case that the mainstream of Western religion doesn't really accomodate the idea of enlightenment very well. I have the idea that this was something that was suppressed very early in the Christian era.
As it happens, there is a confluence between the teachings of mystics from many traditions - this is the basis of books such as William James' influential Varieties of Religious Experience and Huston Smith's Religions of the World (and many others). So, you can find similarities between Zen Buddhism and mystical Christianity, which was written about at length by D T Suzuki. (Two of the main influencers at the time were Alan Watts and Suzuki. They both had a generically theosophical approach to religion - Suzuki's American-born wife was a leading figure in Theosophy. I also think theosophy played a large role in my spiritual path.)
So they are the kinds of books I started off reading. After some time, it seemed to me the most practical approach to the whole enlightenment business was from Buddhism, through the well-known book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. That book is from S?t? Zen, and emphasises the key importance of 'just sitting' (shikantaza) without any attempt to gain an experience of any kind. It was a very simple method: just sit, maintain clear but relaxed alertness (like a frog waiting for a fly to come along, was the instruction) - and repeat every day.
Somewhere along the line, I realised that to commit oneself to such a practice - sitting every day - was actually 'religious' in the sense of 'something one does religiously'. 'Abandoning any idea of gain' was actually a very difficult thing to do, because naturally it seems like enlightenment would be something you would want. But if you wanted it, it wouldn't happen! There's the rub. And that, I learned, had a lot to teach about the meaning of devotion. It was something you had to devote yourself to, 'without any gaining idea' - which turns out to be the key to the spiritual path.
Later I read To Meet the Real Dragon by Nishijima, which is also a S?t? Zen book. I am not a formal member of a S?t? Zen sangha or any other Buddhist religious organisation, however have been practicing that form of meditation since then along with reading and reflection. I have found that what you learn from meditation is very subtle, but definite. A part of it is 'the way of unknowing' - the negative way, neti neti. That understanding is also predominant in Christian contemplative prayer. Hence the confluence between different traditions. And that is why I can relate to teachers like Richard Rohr. But the other thing I really like about Rohr, is his teaching that imperfection and failing are an indispensable part of the process of spiritual maturity; that is what he calls 'falling upward'.
So, I feel very drawn to Christianity, or, should I say, Christ, but via a very 'inner path' approach. Suffice to say, I am uncomfortably theistic for some of my Buddhist friends, and uncomfortably Buddhist for some of my Christian friends. I really don't think about going back to the Church, although I think I'm probably part of the 'invisible Church'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Spot on, MU. Agree with everything you say in that post. ;-)
Yes, but organized religion as a whole has declined insofar as it has failed to adapt to the prevailing modern scientific worldview. Now, maybe such institutions simply cannot adapt adequately to ensure long term survival in their traditional forms, or maybe various sects can more or less adapt. But the glaring fact is that the percentage of people who hold a theistic worldview has been declining since the 17th Century. There has also been the influx of religious ideas from the East to consider; many of which are not based on any strict conception of theism.
Failure to adapt is not necessarily a willful thing; it may be due to sheer incapacity. If there remains a portion of conservative humanity who want to cling onto traditional forms or simple-minded literalist interpretations of scripture, then to provide that in order to hang onto a fundamentalist constituency is also an act of adaptation.
That is 'instructively mistaken'.
First in respect of overall growth vs decline of traditional religion - it is true that in advanced industrial economies, membership of church organisations is declining. But globally, membership is increasing and shows no sign of fading away (this is backed by research).
Second, many of those who don't identify as 'religious' still express some belief in a 'higher intelligence'. This actually goes for at least some people who identify as atheist. Many others identify as 'spiritual but not religious' i.e. consider themselves religious but don't attend churches.
Third, the understanding of God as 'not some thing amongst other things', whilst formally true, is certainly NOT the understanding of many mainstream US Christians. That is why, I think, Richard Rohr talks about the similarity between 'deus' and 'Zeus' - he says that many people believe in a 'sky-father-god' who hurls thunderbolts, designs beetle-wings, and the like.
There have been a few debates over the years between Ed Feser (neo-Catholic philosopher) and the ID people at Uncommon Descent over this question. They're very long-winded debates, but basically it comes down to them saying that Feser's view (which is orthodox Catholic) is too near to atheism for their liking. (I've long since given up reading anything the ID people say, because among other things, they're total climate-change deniers.)
Regarding your first point, I was referring specifically to the the decline of religious belief in the advanced industrial societies, because that is where the traditional scientific worldview has had its greatest impact. I mean it hasn't even eliminated widespread belief in traditional medicine in India and China.
As to your second point I was specifically addressing traditional theistic religious belief. The fact that alternative spiritualities, which might be imagined as being more in accordance with science, does not weaken, but only strengthens my point as far as I can see.
Sure there might be some uneducated fundamentalists who still hold the "sky-father' view. But even then I doubt that means that, if asked, such people would say they truly believe God is a 'big man' somewhere in the universe. The view I was referring to is the one actually proclaimed in the Gospels; not so much the vision we might find in a literalist reading of the Old Testament.
Speaking of thirdness, that's Kant's right there. The transcendental illusions, the three transcendental objects that we can't help but posit, but can never be possible objects of experiences (according to Kant): the soul, the world, and God.
I think a great number of religious believers believe that. I'm certain that is what New Atheism believes they believe.
If I haven't mentioned it before, I loved Terry Eagleton's review of The God Delusion, Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching. He says:
X-)
Well I find that simply incredible, but since I haven't gone to personally ask "a great number of religious believers" to explain precisely what they believe; I will have to remain reliant on my incredulity. All I can say is that if they truly believed that, then they must be either hopeless morons, or have failed to gained any decent education beyond about year 5.
The New Atheists are either being tendentiously uncharitable ("surprise, surprise, surprise" [visualizes Gomer Pyle]), or are themselves morons for imputing such a belief.
Nice quote from the ever ascerbic Eagleton!
True, but I know some highly intelligent well-educated people, who are extremely disaffected with the modern global democratic market machine who have been sucked in by his rhetoric, so it is hardly surprising that less intelligent, less well educated 'heartland' Americans, who really are doing it tough (unlike the well-educated people I referred to) are affected by it.
1. Latin 'religio', 'an attitude of awe and reverence to the Gods'. (This was the sense of the word in respect of which Socrates was accused of atheism)
2. 'religare' - derived from ligare (ligament, ligature) 'to join'; in this context, 're-joining' So the meaning here is closer to that of the Sanskrit 'yoga', meaning 'binding' or 'joining' or 'uniting'.
I think a great deal of popular discourse, and even educated discource, about religions, assumes the first meaning and/or is unaware of the second.
Quoting John
Or perhaps most religious believers are not adherents of the sort of hot air suffused word salad that Eagleton spews here. If the typical Christian, say, believes that God is merely "the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever" (whatever that Mad-Libs of a sentence may mean), how to account for intercessory prayer? Are those so engaged aware that they're praying to a non-existent entity?
(I would also ask: did Jesus exist? Is or was Jesus God? If a Christian answers "yes" to those questions, what of the claim that it is somehow theologically naive to say that God "exists"?)
On the personhood of God, I will quote Plantinga and Tooley:
http://afterall.net/quotes/alvin-plantinga-on-god-and-personhood/
But, the upshot is, that perhaps this reality is quite capabe of manifesting as a being, because its actual nature is intelligent or alive (or even life itself). So, it's personal in the sense of not being a thing or force or material energy, but it's not a person in the sense of being a 'supersized human'. (I don't agree at all with Plantinga's depiction in the quote above, I think it's blatantly anthropomorphic.)
As for 'the condition of the possibility' etc - of course, it's a highly awkward phrase. The trouble is, the subject matter is such that it resists any kind of easy verbalisation. Look at the rhetorical knots that get tied around the so-called 'hard problem of consciousness' - and there, you're talking about something which is ostensibly obvious to anyone engaged in the conversation. (After all, we're all conscious.) Whereas, here, you're ostensibly talking about 'the first principle' or 'the origin of all that is'. So getting it wrong, misunderstanding or misrepresenting it, goes with the territory.
So the fact that
Quoting Arkady
Doesn't really mean anything about the truth or falsehood of Eageton's critique of Dawkins. The fact that millions of people might believe something to be the case, doesn't mean it's true, as atheists like Dawkins never tire of telling us.
It's like: don't try and use fancy philosophical analysis to talk about what it might really mean; what it really means is what the believer-in-the-street says it means. And what they say it means, is a sky-father-god figure, who throws thunderbolts, and designs. Therefore a 'lowest common denominator' criticism of religion is all that's needed, as that is the only kind of religious sensibility that needs to be discussed.
Or, he isn't really a Franciscan.
Or, it's detracting from social conservative institutions.
All about identity and ultimately "no true Scotchman" arguments. Boring.
All good reasons to stay stupid. You can disagree with the content of his speech but rejecting what he says out of hand based on personal perceptions is a sure way of only reconfirming what you already know. I'm an atheist and I thought the speech was interesting. He's an entertaining speaker and I agree with his critique on the trinity (I'm a raised catholic) and also recognise the need to operate on a different level to connect with the divine.
I wasn't aware that one could be confirmed as a "Christian." (I've heard of, for instance, Catholic confirmation.) Whichever denomination you were at the threshold of joining, do you not find it instructive that a prerequisite of joining was that you accept a personal conception of God? It would seem to be an important part of Christian doctrine or dogma, wouldn't you say? That being the case, why get all hot under the collar when critics of religion describe the monotheistic God as a personal being?
Thank you for agreeing that that is an awkward phrase. I might go further and say that it's meaningless obscurantism (I have little familiarity with Eagleton's primary works, so if he provides a clear explication of such phraseology elsewhere, please feel free to point me to it).
I've repeatedly ask what phrases such as "ground of all being" mean, and have never been given a good answer. I suspect that it's a term of art among certain post-modern-aligned theologians which is more often stated and repeated than understood. While all philosophical subfields (phil of mind included) has its jargon, cant, and technical terminology, I don't know that they're all obscurantist.
Ok. So if we're in agreement that "millions of people" hold the conception of God which Dawkins critiques in The God Delusion and elsewhere, I will ask the same question I've asked of you many, many times now: why fault Dawkins et al for engaging with beliefs people actually hold?
The New Atheists don't engage with your notion of God, and so they're wrongheaded, in your view. If this view is so wrongheaded, why are you not equally vituperative towards those religious believers who believe in the "wrong" sort of God? The New Atheists are but a handful of people (and they're down a member in the last few years). Surely the flock in the pews laboring under such misconceptions are much greater contributors to this theological confusion?
I've never seen Eagleton offer any sort of analysis in any of the works which you've quoted. He offers discourse and assertions, but no real arguments. He says, "Doesn't Dawkins realize [word salad, word salad]," and then calls it a day. Unlike, say, a theist such as Alvin Plantinga, who offers myriad arguments for his view (Plantinga also had a scathing review of The God Delusion, if you want to check it out).
As for the LCD-criticism, natural theology has a long pedigree in philosophy, and cosmological and teleological arguments for God's existence (yes, existence) abound today. Again, simply because it's not the sort of God which you prefer doesn't mean that it's wrong, and it doesn't mean that Dawkins is committing any sort of error in criticizing it.
Right, you're merely proving my point. Anything a church does to gain members is to "adapt," so you can't ever be wrong. I don't dispute what you say.
There's a ceremony called confirmation in Anglicanism (and I'm sure the other denominations.) It's the standard rite-of-passage into the Church. It takes place at early adolescence. You have to learn a Catechism and go to a set number of services. It seemed like a lot of work to me, I was a poor student anyway, and my family was not at all encouraging about it, so I didn't go ahead with it. But that was also because I didn't know if I really believed it. I've never been atheist, but I also don't have any kind of image or idea of what God is. (That is why, later, I found the 'way of unknowing' congenial.)
Quoting Arkady
I think that's because of the spirit in which you ask the question. As you're naturally inclined to scepticism about anything religious, your questions are of the 'clay pidgeon' variety, i.e. elicit a response which you then proceed to shoot at.
There is a description of 'the ground of being' in Paul Tillich's books, and other books by recent philosophers of religion. An example:
This plainly diverges from the depiction of the 'god as person' given in the Plantinga quote. It's more like the approach in classical theology, which says that God is not actually good, but that 'goodness' is an analogy, likewise the other supposed attributes of God. But to really explore the question, takes at the very least an open mind towards it, as it is the kind of question that can only be explored by contemplation. It doesn't concern a crisp definition which gives a finite and obviously measurable output, like a formula.
Quoting Arkady
I think that simply conveys your own inability to comprehend his review (and yes, it's a review, rather than a philosophical analysis.) I personally found his criticism perfectly lucid. (Thomas Nagel's review, entitled The Fear of Religion, was much more along the lines of philosophical analysis.)
Quoting Arkady
Partially because they're inclined to be beyond argument, and partially because you're a lot less likely to encounter them on philosophy forums. But people who really do believe in biblical creationism are so immune to reason, that it is clearly pointless to argue with them. They argue with or about the fossil evidence. //ps// Although I've also come to the view that to argue against religion on the basis of fossil evidence, is a type of fundamentalism.//
Quoting Arkady
I am well aware of that. But at issue is a very difficult question of ontology - what does it mean to say that 'God exists'? As the Tillich quote above indicates, the very term 'existence' implies 'separated, standing apart'. There's another great column I quote from time to time by Bishop Pierre Whalon, God does not Exist, which has a similar perspective - that 'what exists' is of a different order to the source of existence. (Whalon's article is very much in keeping with Platonic Christianity, which in turn is very much at odds with general Protestant philosophy of religion, in my view.)
This type of 'hierarchical understanding' used to be represented in the Great Chain of Being, versions of which are found in many different cultures. It differentiates between the mineral, animal, human, angelic and divine realms, which all exist on different levels or 'modes':
The Great Chain of Being - traditional woodcut.
In early theology, this differentiation of levels was articulated by John Scotus Eirugena. Very hard to present summarily, but a key point is as follows (from the SEP entry)
In subsequent centuries, this hierarchical ontology became progressively 'flattened', until we arrive at modern philosophy, when it was decided that only the material layer exists (which is scientific materialism). So Dawkins, et al, can only conceive of that level or mode of being, and then says 'it is ridiculous to believe that there is a God' - which it is, if that is your understanding of the nature of reality. You can fire up the LHC, or the Hubble, and he's not 'out there somewhere' or 'in there anywhere'. In the sense in which Dawkins, et al, understand the meaning of 'existence', then indeed, God does not exist.
Yes, I'm familiar with confirmation with regard to, for instance, the Catholic Church. I just found your post somewhat confusing because you said you'd almost been confirmed "as a [generic] Christian." (I subsequently saw that in an earlier post responding to someone else, you had mentioned that you were almost an Anglican.
I think this unfairly (and pointlessly) impugns my motives. Yes, I am skeptical that "ground of all being" has any substantial meaning, but my interlocutors could alleviate this skepticism by providing a meaningful definition (of course, such a definition would not necessarily convince me that (1) there is indeed a being called God, and (2) that said being actually is the "ground of all being," but it would be a start...).
It's unclear to me whether the passage beginning with "Although..." is part of another quoted source (as it refers to Tillich in the third person). I will consider it as such, but it doesn't really matter, as you again have not provided me with a definition of the phrase, but only a quote which contains mentions of it.
As for God being "beyond the finite realm," etc., I will again ask of putative Christians: (1) is or was Jesus (Christ) God, and (2) did or does Jesus "exist"?
Again, you smuggle in a rhetorical dig at me in lieu of providing an explanation or definition, by insinuating that my mind isn't open. My mind isn't closed, but it doesn't mean that I swallow just everything I'm fed. I submit that if a definition of a term such as "ground of all being" can't be provided (whether or not said definition is "crisp" we can discuss after the fact, I suppose), then the term is meaningless. I'm not asking for a formula.
The portions of the review which you quote do not lend themselves to comprehension. There is of course much of philosophy which is opaque or hard to understand, but Eagleton provides no analysis or arguments, which I would expect to find if he is to rebut Dawkins's claims. Otherwise, it's just argument by assertion.
Well, one can certainly argue against Biblical literalism using fossil (and archeological) evidence, wouldn't you say?
Sure. It's a thorny question to ask what it means to say that anything exists. That's part of philosophy. But we don't reach answers to that question by muddying the waters with obscurantist jargon.
Is God capable of hearing (and answering) prayers? Did God send his son to Earth to die for the sins of mankind? Did God imbue the first man and woman with an immortal soul? Does God stand in judgment of the dead? Is Christ to return at the End of Days, as foretold in Revelation? A Christian would seem to be hard-pressed to answer in the negative to these questions; that being the case, I don't think it can be said that God stands totally apart from His creation.
Yes, I am familiar with the "Great Chain of Being," a version of which originated with Aristotle, if I'm not mistaken (who obviously predated the Christian era)? My response to your lengthy post is itself getting lengthy, so I will leave it here for now...rest assured, I'm not ignoring your remaining points.
"Ground of being" is Christian mysticism. It goes back at least to Meister Eckhart. It's pretty much what it sounds like. As opposed to God being on high like the Great Architect, God is a primal source of all being. Maybe the quantum theory picture of a possibility field is similar. Christ is more an image than a person. Christ is an intermediary within every person through which they can connect in some way with God.
Bernard McGinn wrote a book about Eckhart. Worth the read.
Apologies. You're a tough adversary, but I need to get off my high horse. Will refrain from that henceforth.
Quoting Arkady
Well, obviously, these are theologically vexed questions; in the early part of Christian history, there was a huge conflict over them, such at the Arian controversy, and various other disputes over heresy.
Anyway, Rohr's point is that Jesus' saying 'I and the Father are One' are what he calls 'unitive thought', which, he says, is directly comparable to the now-popular 'non-dualism' of Eastern philosophy, which has entered cultural discourse through Vedanta and Buddhism. However the full quote he's referring to is:
John 14:10 (KJV)
Here I myself will venture into heresy, or at least comparative religion, and refer to the Indian belief in avatars (another word that has entered the popular lexicon). An avatar is an 'incarnation of diety'; of course, in India, there was an abundance of both deities and incarnations. It's a different matter in Christianity, where there is precisely one deity and only one incarnation of it; but, the 'incarnation of the spirit', or, 'God made flesh' is certainly the orthodox Christian view.
A point that I encountered in Indian discussions of this subject, was that when Jesus says 'I speak not of myself', he is referring to his person, ego, self - the person of Jesus. The 'father that dwells within' is the spirit, which is depicted in Hinduism as Brahman. Theologians will of course quibble, but from a comparative viewpoint, I think it holds up.
Whether Jesus lived - I personally believe so. I have read something of the 'critical scholarship' and agree that story that has been subject to a lot of mythologising, but I believe there is a reality behind the myth.
Quoting Arkady
Eagleton's review read like it was written off the cuff. But I find it quite intelligible. It starts with Dawkins' lack of knowledge of the subject he's critiquing - 'Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is theBook of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.
He then picks out a few examples ('a molehill of instances' out of a mountain of them) - i.e. that all faith is blind faith, that to believe is to believe unquestioningly.
Then, the claim that belief in God is a 'scientific hypothesis'. He says it's not, and then proceeds to try and say what it actually is.
All makes perfect sense to me.
Quoting Arkady
As I said, I declined confirmation, at least in part because I dared to doubt these 'articles of faith'. I didn't end up atheist, but, in the Christian view, apostate.
Quoting Arkady
Again, it's not obscurantist, it is consideration of a, or the, foundational question of metaphysics and ontology, i.e. 'what is the source of being'. How do you think the natural sciences are going with that question right now? Have you been following it? The arguments about bubble universes and multiverses and whether such theories are falsifiable, and so on? Seems plenty 'obscurantist' to me.
And yet, here we are.
Trying to come to a point here: what is the subject of spirituality? It is, in my book, establishing and living in a relationship with the intelligence behind the Universe. Rohr says this at the end of his lecture: when you treat everything in existence as Thou, then how can you ever be isolated, separated, or alone? That is very much the spirit of his order's founder, St Francis. That, I honour and respect.
Quoting Mongrel
McGinn's books are on my list, although I have to be careful reading the Christian mystics, as they tend to draw me in. ;-)
Perhaps I'm just obtuse, but "ground of being" has no intuitive meaning to me...saying it's "just what it sounds like" doesn't help much. It likewise doesn't clarify things much to say that "God is a primal source of all being."
Allow me to posit a couple of possible explanations, and let's see if we can't get it figured out:
(1) God created the heavens and the Earth, therefore, everything which exists - at least with regard to contingent, concrete objects and entities - owes its existence to God, either directly or indirectly. Once created, however, such beings require no further intervention by God to sustain their existence.
(2) God continuously acts in the world to sustain the existence of every contingently-existing entity. That is, were it not for the constant intervention of God, such beings would simply wink out of existence.
Would you regard either of these statements to at least roughly encapsulate what it means to claim that God is the "ground of all being"?
Thanks (I think), but for the record, I don't consider us to be adversaries.
Sure. But would you not agree that accepting some version of the Trinity is a prerequisite for being called a Christian? After all, if Jesus were a mere mortal, without a hint of a divine nature, then he wasn't resurrected, he won't be returning at the end of days (thus negating virtually every form of Christian eschatology), etc. One may as well consider him to be just another prophet (as he is regarded in, for instance, Islam).
I also agree that Jesus was probably a real, historical person. Scholar of Christianity (and atheist, to boot) Bart Ehrman has written an interesting book on this subject (his viewpoint has brought him into conflict with "mythicists," who believe that Jesus was in fact not real).
But, again (and this seems to be a central plank of our disagreement on this issue), Dawkins may well be unacquainted with the sources which you (and Eagleton) prefer, which seems to be theology of a highly rarified bent, incorporating certain aspects of modern and post-modern thought, but it is not incumbent upon Dawkins (or any author) to grapple with the entire corpus of thought with regard to the God question (which, of course, is not even limited to Christianity in particular).
Dawkins, being an evolutionary biologist, is especially opposed to creationism in all its forms, and thus it's expected and reasonable that his critiques (whether or not we deem them to be successful) are more oriented towards those who do treat God as a scientific hypothesis, e.g., natural theologians, intelligent design creationists, and creationists-lite such as Francis Collins.
And, as I intimated before, if you find the idea of God as a scientific hypothesis (or at least something whose existence is amenable to empirical confirmation) to be so odious, you may begin by directing your ire towards those religionists who promulgate such notions. Perhaps start a thread picking apart the arguments advanced by the Answers in Genesis website, for instance, and then move on to their somewhat more benign brethren Answers in Creation. You can then rebut the claims that so-called irreducible complexity is a signal of God's handiwork in designing certain complex biological systems. You might then move on to those such as Francis Collins, who attribute mankind's supposed moral sense to the touch of a divine, and who believe in "theistic evolution." Perhaps you can then tackle arguments such as the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, which posits that humans' very ability to reason serves a defeater for the claim that evolution (at least of humans) could have been a wholly naturalistic process, devoid of divine intervention. Perhaps then you can address modern cosmological-style arguments as advanced by William Lane Craig and others of his ilk.
Or you can simply continue to complain about a book that a popular science writer wrote over ten years ago.
Was it Misquoting Jesus? I read that, t'was good.
I suppose so, although Universalists don't necessarily. But one thing I noticed is that the idea of a trinity is found in Hinduism and Buddhism also - in the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, and the 'three bodies of the Buddha'. I suspect the 'triune nature of divinity' is an archetypal reality.
But, my reading of Advaita Vedanta very much changed my idea of what 'mortal' and 'divine' signify. Ramana Maharishi, who in my view was a bona fide Hindu sage (unlike the many bogus and spurious imitations that sprung up over the ensuing decades) is instructive in that regard. The thrust of his teaching was 'Who am I'? That when the mind traces its origin back to its source, it discovers its true identity as one with Brahman. That is the teaching of non-dualism (advaita) that Richard Rohr says is 'unitive thought', 'I and the Father are One'. But when the Church became an authoritarian institution, then God became in some way an authoritarian ruler, and so the whole question takes on a different hue.
Quoting Arkady
Before Ken Ham went to Kentucky, where he found an audience (which he never could in Australia), he had a billboard I used to drive past quite often. I would thinkg, arguing with anyone who believes those ideas is an exercise in futility. But Dawkins is a mirror-image. He is also a fundamentalist. Actually I am inclined to think that anyone who believes science proves that God exists is a fundamentalist, anyone who thinks that science proves the opposite is a materialist. There is no ultimate proof, one way or the other.
If Dawkins did confine himself to campaigning against creationism or the abhorrent practises associated with some forms of religion I would cheer him on. But he patently, obviously, and loudly generalises from those views to religion is the source of all evil and humans are totally the product of the 'selfish gene'. So he's become a fanatic himself - many of his ideas are just as crackpot as those he criticizes, but as he wears the 'lab coat of authority', he takes in many people. Personally, I think the consequences of his ideas will be more insidious in the long run than Ken Ham's. (I've picked up a few of Bart Ehrmann's books, but never brought one home. As for Biologos and Francis Collins, I have no objection to their outlook but I don't feel much affinity with them as people, to be honest. They're all a bit too nice ;-) )
There are some very insightful Christian philosophical apologists - the ones I have in mind are the Catholics (Jesuits, typically) such as Robert J Spitzer and Stephen M. Barr. I also like Keith Ward a lot. Their analyses of scientific materialism and the case for faith is quite cogent. But no Catholic should ever believe that you can prove the reality of God through scientific means. The ultimate truth is over our cognitive horizon. But that doesn't mean clinging determinedly to dogma, either. The approach Rohr talks of, 'the way of unknowing', is the way to go, and is found, again, in many different faith traditions. Scientia is only one cognitive mode, a very useful one, but it has to be directed by sapience, and they're fundamentally different faculties.
No. It was called Did Jesus Exist?. I agree, though, that Misquoting Jesus was a good book (as are all of Ehrman's books which I've read, which admittedly tend to skew more towards the "pop-religion" side of things; I've not read his more technical scholarly works).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_Jesus_Exist%3F_(Ehrman)
I only read the one, and also watched a couple lectures he did.
I regard this as a gross false equivalency, to regard Dawkins as a fundamentalist on par with the likes of Ken Ham.
I don't know why you would regard a person who believes that the existence of God to be empirically demonstrable to be a fundamentalist. In my understanding, a "fundamentalist" is one who takes an extremely strict (up to and including literalistic) interpretation of a given religion's (or ideology's) tenets, texts, or dogma, who generally wishes to foist these beliefs and practices upon unwilling parties, who has little tolerance for religious plurality or diversity, who is extremely closed to any contrary evidence or argumentation, etc. While these traits could apply to those who seek to demonstrate God's existence by appealing to empiricism, these traits don't seem inherent to such a position.
I also think that your position on materialism is a non-sequitur. One can (at least in principle) disbelieve in the existence of God, and yet still believe in non-material entities, as such a conjunction of beliefs entails no contradiction (unless one takes materialists to claim that God is only candidate for a non-material entity).
This is false. Dawkins does not believe that religion is the source of all evil. He says exactly the opposite in The God Delusion. Perhaps you are thinking of the BBC documentary about religion titled Root of All Evil?, in which Dawkins starred? If so, you should know that that title was not of his choosing, and he neither liked nor agreed with its insinuation (I say "insinuation" because the question mark at the end perhaps softened it a bit).
Given that you are a non-dogmatic, non-fundamentalist, open-minded inquirer, I expect that, in light of this contrary evidence, you will accordingly revise your view of Dawkins being a crackpot.
Dawkins is certainly brighter than Ken Ham, all the more reason he should be less dogmatic. Besides, even Peter Higgs said he was 'almost a fundamentalist himself' and that his polemics against religion were 'embarrasing'.
Quoting Arkady
I was referring to those who claim to 'prove' that God exists with reference to science. As science is always changing, this is a two-edged sword. Karen Armstrong, in her book The Case for God, shows how the idea of referring to science to 'shew the handiwork of God' backfired in the long run, as science discovered more and more, and the 'gaps' became less and less.
It also makes the mistake of 'objectifying' deity as a player on the stage, or as director of the show, rather than, in David Bentley Hart's words, the
That is closer to the classical theological understanding, and is also why both Hart (Orthodox) and Catholic philosopher Edward Feser, who are both adamantly anti-materialist, will have no truck with 'intelligent design' arguments. (Interestingly, both are sometimes accused on those grounds of being 'close to atheism' by their ID antagonists.)
So, my point is that attitude which seeks to scientifically prove the literal truth of biblical creationism, is 'religious fundamentalism'; but the opposite tendency, to argue on the basis of biological evolution to disprove the Bible, is a product of that same kind of misunderstanding, because it takes Biblical literalism to be the normative view. But for the many Christians who never believed in the 'literal truth of Genesis' in the first place, the fact that it is not literally true, doesn't entail that it is literally false.
(Incidentally, there is no mention of anything like 'intelligent design' in the Articles of Faith of the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and Darwin's works were never put on the 'index of prohibited books' by the Catholic Church.)
Quoting Arkady
He most certainly does. Do you know that the TV series that Dawkin's made that was eventually broadcast as 'The God Delusion' was originally titled 'The Root of All Evil'? He says in many places that he believes religion is evil or the source of evil.
I will agree that 'crackpot' was a poor choice of words, but
I don't see how Peter Higgs's views are relevant. This doesn't even rise to the level of a fallacious appeal to authority, as Higgs is no more an authority on religion than is Dawkins. I could likewise produce laudatory quotes from scientists regarding Dawkins. What of it?
I agree that the "god of the gaps" strategy is a poor one, given that the advance of science has been almost exclusively unilateral in demystifying phenomena once thought to be so complex or mysterious that they would never admit of a natural explanation.
However, it is a non-sequitur to claim that it therefore follows that empirical arguments for the existence of God are inherently misguided. If a physicist devises an experiment to search for a particular particle and fails to find evidence for it (in, say, the predicted range of mass), it doesn't mean that the test was inherently flawed: it simply means that the experiment did not detect what it was looking for. Indeed, empirical tests which can't be disconfirmed by evidence are worthless, as they are unfalsifiable.
If God acts, or has acted, in the world, there should be evidence of this action in some form. Unless one wishes to maintain that God has zero causal interaction with the world, then there should indeed be detectable signatures of God's handiwork (contra Armstrong). Indeed, are we to believe that God is omnipotent, but never acts?
Not all evidential arguments for the existence of God are promulgated by biblical literalists. Most of the main proponents of intelligent design creationism, for instance, are not biblical literalists. So, it is still a non-sequitur to say that they're fundamentalists (not that I think they're correct, mind you...).
No, but it doesn't mean that some Catholic scholars, for instance, aren't sympathetic to the intelligent design project (Catholic scholar Robert P. George has made approving statements of it, for example). And while the Vatican's official statements on evolution seem to be more agreeable than those promulgated by, say, evangelical Christians, even a Catholic must assert that there was some teleological design underlying the (seemingly random) evolutionary process, a design which would eventually yield humans (or at least some sentient beings, even if they were insectoid or reptilian or whatever).
I do know that, and you would know that I know that had you read my above post carefully enough. As I said, that title was not one that he chose or one with which he agreed. This is what he says about it in The God Delusion, after mentioning that documentary, and saying how he fought the title:
[quote=Dawkins]Religion is not the root of all evil, for no one thing is the root of all anything.[/quote]
Believing that something is evil, or leads to evil, is not equivalent to believing that it is the root of all evil.
What "insights", pray tell, have been proferred by theology? As for the rest of this quote, it is complete hogwash. Dawkins nowhere rejects the value of the humanities, and has spoken favorably about the arts. This is just woo from people who wish to appeal to "other ways of knowing" as a means of trying to justify nonsense. If one is making a claim about reality, there is either evidence to support that claim, or there isn't. I'm sorry, but it's really that simple: this applies whether we're speaking of history, science, journalism, religion, or whatever. I'd be hard-pressed to devise a greater caricature of Dawkins's position if I tried.
And your argumentative strategy of offering a litany of quotes in lieu of arguments is wearing thin. As I said, I could produce approving quotes of Dawkins, but what of it?
They're inherently misguided, because the question of the existence of God is not an empirical claim.
Quoting Arkady
As you have already said you believe that Jesus actually lived - would you regard that as evidence?
Quoting Arkady
That is exactly what I mean by a 'clay pidgeon'. You have no interest in any possible answer, save as something to shoot down.
Quoting Arkady.
Well, that's hogwash, too. Dawkins never tires of telling us that humans are lumbering robots whose only real purpose is the propogation of the selfish gene.
Quoting Arkady
I agree, but thanks for playing.
The 'hogwash' quote was from here. I generally agree with it, so there's obviously little point in going on.
Argument by assertion and begging the question. And, as I stated, if God has interacted with the world, there should be signatures of his handiwork. The empirical search for God's existence is fruitless only if one has reason to believe in a wholly non-interacting God, which a Christian would be hard-pressed to accede to.
I believe that the existence of Jesus makes it at least possible that the core doctrines of Christianity (as understood by, for instance, the Trinity) are true, as Christianity of virtually every stripe would be a nonstarter were Jesus mythical. But, no, from the mere existence of a historical Jesus, it does not follow that that person was God, or the Son of God, or anything of the sort.
Nothing was even presented to shoot down. I might say the same of you, as your rabid hatred of Dawkins has led you to attribute things to him which are patently untrue (as with the "root of all evil" comment. Please feel free to admit your error on that score, as you clearly committed an error). You are dealing with strawmen caricatures.
This assertion is so confused I don't even know where to begin. Even if your characterization of Dawkins is accurate, how does it follow that he believes the humanities to be worthless? (I do agree, though, that he believes theology to be worthless.)
I don't really care where the quote was from. I complain about your usage of quotes from like-minded parties as a form of argumentation, and you link to the source material? Why? Shall I link to Jerry Coyne's blog and suggest you read it?
He represents the view that the foundation of Western culture and civilised ethics is basically delusional, but, as his many critics point out, does not have the philosophical acuity or historical insight to understand what this means. He will agree that Darwinism is a lousy basis for any kind of social philosophy, but at the same time declare that it has dissolved the basis for traditional philosophy in the acid of 'Darwin's dangerous idea'. Then he will attempt to erect 'Science and Reason' as the basis of an alternative. Perhaps you pitch in. He has a lot of work to do.
Please don't tell me you are ceding the entirety of civilized ethics to Christianity? Give me a break. While Christianity has done immense good in the world, it has also done immense harm, and to say that religious dogma has a lock on prescribing ethical behavior is absurd at best. Ethics has been one long, miserable slog from humanity treating each other extremely horribly to treating each other very slightly less-horribly. If you think Christianity has anything close to clean hands, then you are the one ignorant of history.
As for the "foundation of Western culture" cant, I will simply say that the fact that Christianity was a powerful and organizing force in shaping the West does not speak one iota to its truthfulness, any more than the truth of the Greco-Roman pantheon is attested to by those cultures' immense influence in the ancient world.
This sounds more like Dennet than Dawkins, actually. As for the book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Dennet makes some good points, but there are also many able critiques of it (I believe I've previously mentioned H. Allen Orr's critical review, which is excellent - and this from an atheist or agnostic).
For better or for worse, that is pretty much the case, although I mean it in the broader sense of the Judeo-christian tradition.
When I was finding my own path, I had the view that Christianity had in some ways 'locked up' much that was spiritually edifying in the traditions it had incorporated - for example, Neoplatonism - and then made acceptance of Christian dogma the price for accessing it. I still think there is some truth in that, but my views have changed somewhat since, mainly because of having found writers and teachers like Richard Rohr, who are within the tradition.
But I also understand the dark side of Christian history (in fact I think I have a book by that name.)
However, I'm certainly of the view that books like Dawkins' anti-religious polemics, along with many of Dennett's polemics, are a symptom of the general deterioration of Western culture.
Furthermore while I accept the facts of biological evolution, I think evolutionary naturalism is invested with far too much signifance as a kind of replacement creation myth for the secular age. (That is a point that Michael Ruse has written a lot about; for which he too has also been declared persona non grata by the new atheists.)
This appears to be a commonly expressed opinion now. Especially with the rise of religious fanaticalism, there are many people who openly state, and most likely truly believe, that religion is the source of evil.
Quoting Arkady
There is a lot more to ethics than learning how to respect others, there is also learning how to respect oneself. And with that comes learning how to think and be intelligent. Respect for others is dependent on knowing how to be reasonable.
Christianity has a spotty moral record at best, and the Old Testament is likewise extremely morally spotty. I don't know why you would cede the entirety of ethical thought to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Our modern notions of ethics arguably owe as much (if not moreso) to Enlightenment thinkers than to religious ones.
I could trot out the usual parade of horribles when discussing Christianity's impact upon the world, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the Conquistadors' treatment of Native Americans, etc. But, I think there are more subtle and somewhat lesser-appreciated aspects to consider. Take, for instance, the brutal treatment of children in Catholic-run Irish orphanages in the 20th century, which has recently come to light. Take also the Church sexual abuse scandal, which has inflicted untold suffering around the world (and the evils of which have possibly only begun to come to light).
The point is not so much that there are some bad actors in an organization as vast as the Catholic Church (that is more or less inevitable). The point is that when these abuses are perpetrated by an institution whose authority is taken to be unquestionable, who claims to speak infallibly when it speaks ex cathedra, which has a long history of squelching dissent (sometimes by quite brutal means), which threatens believers with acquiescence under the threat of eternal damnation, then this is not an institution which lends itself to questioning, debate, and accountability, which are the hallmarks of an open society. For all of the ecumenical overtures in some quarters in modern times, organized religion has never been something to invite debate and questioning, which are the necessary prerequisites of progress in intellectual life.
I have no doubt you are aware of it, given how well-read you are, which makes your claims regarding ethics all the more puzzling.
If one identifies Western culture with widespread religiosity and general respect for or deference to religion, then yes, any diminution of this attitude would signal a decline or "deterioration." However, if Western culture is so identified, then I can only say that I would welcome such a deterioration. If religious belief of any sort is unable to prosper in the free marketplace of ideas, then consign it to the flames, along with other failed ideologies and institutions of history (Communism, Social Darwinism, etc).
Having said that, I agree that the rise of secular attitudes may be a mixed blessing, at best, at least regarding certain beneficial institutions whose importance was reinforced by religious doctrine (e.g. marriage, bearing children in wedlock).
You bang on quite a bit about evolution's supposedly being a replacement for religion. I find that quite a dubious position, especially since (as I've pointed out to you at least once, in the old place) that the majority of Americans do not even accept unguided evolution: at most they adhere to a sort of quasi-theistic evolution of some sort.
Poor fellow. Did he not get invited to the office happy hour? Does Dawkins hold barbecues and invite Sam Harris but not Michael Ruse?
I don't regard self-directed actions to be particularly morally relevant. I will leave that to those who obsess over squelching the scourge of masturbation and the like.
Being moral requires self-control. No, you don't agree? Do you think that we are caused to be moral by others, not ourselves? If so, then wouldn't you see this as justification for a religion's oppressive actions? Or do we apprehend morality as self-control, and see a religion's oppressive actions as unjustified?
How can one adopt a middle ground on this position? Either morality comes from within, or it is caused by external forces. If it's the latter, then how are religions not justified in using force to create morality.
Thanks for bringing the video to my attention. I recently became acquainted with someone who is into restorative justice and social justice. And he is also a big fan of Rohr, specifically his book Falling Upward.
When I say the JC tradition, I just don't mean Christianity or the Church, but the Western cannon in the broader sense. The way scientific materialism understands it, which is hardly at all, it is all based on illusory premisses, because even if it's not overtly Biblical, it still comes from a religious culture which sees the Universe as being the sign of a higher intelligence - exactly the premise which in their thinking, science has now undermined.
If you believe that the Universe is dumb matter, life is fluke, and human beings accidents of evolution, then what philosophy follows from that? Considering that the traditional idea of philosophy, the 'love of Wisdom' what does 'wisdom' comprise, for evolutionary materialism? It can only ever be a ruse. That's why I think Dennett's book on Darwin's Dangerous Idea is so important - it actually spells all that out. He shows quite clearly how everything previously understood as philosophy has been 'dissolved in the acid'. (Quite why he thinks this a good thing still eludes me, though.)
That's what I mean by 'undermining the JC tradition'. I don't mean necessarily defending the institutions. I too have to admit to being pretty dubious about the churches.
Quoting Arkady
It's indubitable. Amongst the secular intelligentsia, such as your good self, the above views about the nature of the universe are the default view of 'how the Universe works'. That is not a religious view, actually it's an anti-religious view, but it occupies the place formerly occupied by religious views. As Pinker says in his essay on the subject 'the worldview that guides the moral and spiritual values of an educated person today is the worldview given to us by science. Though the scientific facts do not by themselves dictate values, they certainly hem in the possibilities.'
Whereas, I don't believe science ought to be 'a worldview' as such. It's an attitude, a methodology, and a way of finding things out and getting things done. It's absolutely indispensable, but when it becomes the basis about beliefs about meaning, or lack thereof, then it segues into a quasi-religion. And it happens very easily.
It's always been a bit of a shock to conventional Christians who have accepted the creed as taught when they eventually realize they are actually polytheists. People like this man are then very comforting to them. I don't think he has any deeper message.
As I indicated above, even if morality requires an external force to impose it upon us (who, then, imposes it upon the imposers, I wonder?), ceding this control to organized religion would be a catastrophic mistake.
So, by the Western canon, you are including secular works, both literary and philosophical, I presume?
Hmm...the universe as being the sign of a higher intelligence. Sounds a lot like a supposedly empirical confirmation of the existence of God.
I don't see that evolutionary "materialism" (by which I will here take to mean "naturalism" - the terms are not necessarily synonymous, and thus not interchangeable) takes away philosophy. Most philosophers are atheists, and yet seem to find plenty of work to occupy them (in any event, your above complaint is nothing more than yet another appeal to adverse consequences: even if evolutionary naturalism was a universal acid which dissolved everything it touched, and even if we regarded this as an unwanted outcome, it in no way shows that evolutionary naturalism is false).
Glad we are in agreement.
Again, if evolutionary naturalism occupied the social niche formerly occupied by, say, Christianity, I would expect it would have at least a comparable degree of penetration in society. But evolutionary naturalism enjoys nothing of the sort. If this worldview is one held primarily the "secular intelligentsia", then it seems you needn't worry about this plague spreading to the population at large (indeed, in the United States, and increasingly so in some other developed nations, it is evolution which is denied, distorted, and rejected, not religion).
In any event, I believe that Pinker has a book-length exposition of the thesis propounded in that essay coming, so you will soon have another target-rich work by a well-known scientist against which to direct your ire. :D
The answer to your question (who, then, imposes it upon the imposers, I wonder?), is inherent within your statement. Organized religions assume the existence of God, and for them, God is not just some imaginary super-being, God is very real. Therefore the real God imposes morality upon us.
Without the real God, there is nothing to impose morality upon the imposers. Morality is defined according to whatever the imposers are capable of convincing the imposed, is rational. But we know that morality cannot be defined as "rational" according to "rational" as defined by scientific principles, so the scientifically minded individual might not have the capacity to properly judge what is rational in relation to morality. It appears to be totally irrational, that if one believes truly in a real God, this real God will act to impose morality on this person.
The real catastrophic mistake then, is to be found in taking this control away from organized religion, which has inherent within it, the means for self-control, by recognizing the true, real existence of God, as the ultimate imposer. That is because all of those who believe that morality is imposed by an external force, must be forced to be moral according to that belief. Because they believe that they must be forced to be moral, then they must be forced to be moral. Therefore we must assume an external imposer, God, as that which will force these people to be moral.
Those who do not believe that morality is forced by an external force, who believe that morality comes from within, from an internal self-control, are in a completely distinct category. They seek reasons for self-control and morality in a completely different way from those who believe that they must be forced, by an external imposition, to be moral. If we all naturally, and instinctually believed that morality comes from within us, is not caused by an external force, and we apprehended the need to be moral, then perhaps we would not need the organized religion. But this is contrary to our instinctual selfishness. Furthermore, it is contrary to the ever-pervasive scientific way of thinking, which assumes external forces as the causes of things. So how can we convince everyone that morality is one's own responsibility, and that it must come from within oneself, as a strong desire (stronger than the desire for anything else) to be moral, without some sort of organized system? That's what organized religion is meant to be, the external force, which causes one to apprehend, and therefore believe, that morality must come from within.
Criticism is not complaint. Please don't trivialise the issue. I have Pinker's book The Blank Slate and think it's a terrific book, and there are things about him I like, but not his materialist philosophy.
Actually I suppose I really meant the Western classical tradition - the Western Canon is a particular book.
As for the Universe being 'a sign of a higher intelligence'. - it's not 'empiricism' because it can't be subjected to the kinds of tests that empiricists recognise - detectable by instruments or by sensory perception. I don;t think you really understand the distinction at all. It seems like you insist that 'God' must be empirically detectable, so you can then say 'but where's the proof'? Then if I try and explain the classical theological view (as far as I understand it) you say 'obscurantism'. That's just like Dawkins! It's either literalistic creationism or sophistry, and dismissed in either case.
The fact that evolution is widely dismissed by Americans is the sign of something radically the matter with culture and society. But I think Dawkins, Coyne, and Dennett are as much to blame for that as their creationist opponents, because of their notion that 'science disproves anything like a higher intelligence'. Science does nothing of the sort, and the fact that they can't understand why, is a sign of their own shortcomings.
I have been aware of the Intelligent Design movement, but there are some things I can't stand about them - one being, they are all, right down to the last one, climate-change deniers. I think that speaks volumes about their general disregard for science and an overall absence of intellectual honesty.
But, that said, the efforts of the more literate ID writers, like Stephen Meyers, and the 'biological argument for design' have created an entire genre of literature, which is nothing at all like 'saddles on dinosaurs' creationism. Add to that, the fact that the so-called 'Neo-Darwinist' paradigm is also being revised all the time - there are many porous boundaries and blurry lines. But my overall view is, Darwinian theory is a biological theory of the origin of species, nothing less, but also nothing more. There are many philosophical questions which it is unfairly brought to bear on nowadays, which is at least partially why there is such widespread scepticism about evolutionary theory.
See http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com - an evolving alternative to either side. I very much like http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people/view/stephen-talbott
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You've forgotten The Spanish Inquisition? The persecution of the Cathars? I think the time of religious institutionalism has past. But in any case, the Buddhist model is very different to the Christion one - instead of a powerful father figure (Pope) controlling the levers of ecclesiastical power, which radiates out through a hub-and-spoke model, a networked movement, which is centripedal rather than centrifugal. But then, the whole basis of the religion is also different, Buddhism being grounded in insight in the nature of experience, rather than believing according to what you're told.
The problem is not religious institutionalism itself. But I think, as I tried to describe, the problem lies in the idea that, correct belief, and morality in general, is something which is caused to exist in a person from an external cause, rather than coming from the internal cause, which is desire or willingness. The former progresses along with the development of the scientific mind, which seeks external causes for things.
Belief itself comes from within, and though we discuss "beliefs", as if they were some sort of external objects which we pass around between us, these so-called beliefs are actually useless, or meaningless, unless they are actually believed. Believing only occurs willingly, so belief within an individual, cannot be enforced, or caused by external sources. Successful religious institutions aim at growing morality from within the individual, culturing and propagating good belief, not dictating it.
The whole question of what, if anything, is known in religious modes of cognition is an interesting one. Of course atheism will insist there's nothing to be known. Religious authoritarians will generally say 'we know it, and you have to believe it'. But Richard Rohr's approach is more about finding the truth of spirituality through meditation. Of course, that requires openness to the possibility of there being something to be found; that too is belief of a kind.
There are two distinct aspects of "the institution", which are closely related in practise, but are separable in theory, such that an institution may focus more on one than on another. The one is to instill within the student beliefs which already exist in others. I'll call this dogmatic. The other is to instill within the student the sense of wonderment, or philosophy, which is the desire to understand, and create one's own beliefs. You can understand the former as a matter of dictating, and the latter as a matter of cultivating the inquisitiveness of the mind.
It might appear like it is necessary to give priority to the former. Children must learn the fundamental beliefs, numbers, letters, basic words, in order that they have a foundation, allowing them to go forward with principles of understanding, to expand their minds into the theoretical world. Then the theoretical world itself, can only be approached with a sound foundation. But I think the latter, which is a cultivating of the mind to be inquisitive, to be able to create beliefs, and to be properly receptive of existing beliefs is more fundamental, and therefore of priority. That is because even to accept into your mind, the existing dogma which is fed to you, one has to have been cultured in a particular way. But there's another particular way, which goes way back to Pyhrronism, skepticism, which is to thoroughly analyze each belief before it is accepted.
You'll notice that our society, with its institutions, is completely focused on advancing dogmas. Yes, we allow highly educated scientists to develop new theories, new ideas, but only after they are thoroughly educated in the existing scientific dogma. We have nothing within our educational institutions which aims at cultivating inquisitiveness. There are no provisions which would encourage one to question the existing beliefs, to be skeptical. In fact, as described by Wittgenstein, such skepticism is considered to be unreasonable. However, we know that it is possible to be mistaken in our beliefs. And unless we take this possibility seriously, we will not allow ourselves to reassess our beliefs, and find the mistakes which undoubtedly exist.
Let me relate this to the op now. What Rohr refers to as dualist thinking, the "I'm right and your wrong" type of thing, is derived from divisive dogmas. The feeling of "I'm right" is produced by being trained within a certain dogma, to accept as true, those beliefs. When two divergent dogmas meet in the form of two distinct individuals holding those beliefs, what Rohr describes, occurs.
But Rohr does not describe true individualist thinking, the way I do, as inquisitiveness, and skepticism. So what I would refer to as the individual separating oneself from the dogmas of society, in order to thoroughly examine the beliefs, Rohr assumes to be a type of unity. Where does Rohr derive this unity from? I see it as a true separation, a true individuation, whereas Rohr sees some form of unity here.
Where is this unity derived from? The only possible principle of unity here is the unknown, which becomes the source of the apophatic way of knowing. But there is no unity in unknowing. Unity comes about through shared principles, shared knowledge, so I think that this assumption of a fundamental unity is faulty. If an individual puts oneself into a fundamental position of unknowing, this requires one to necessarily isolate oneself. There is no fundamental unity which inherently lies there, it is pure isolation and unknowing. The unity only comes about if we assume a principle, something to unify us, and this may be God. But once we assume this, we assume something known, God, and the apprehended unity is the result of this assumption of knowledge, it is completely separate from the apophatic unknowing.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Let me question you on this point for a minute, Wayfarer. In your experience with Buddhism, meditation, and "the nature of experience", how do you relate to this separation between yourself and others? Suppose you meditate, and contemplate the nature of your own experience. Do you find yourself completely isolated from others, in need of assuming a principle of unity, in order to create a feeling of unity, as I describe? Or do you find that there is a principle of unity already inherent within this experience.
Fair point, although I think that which one you ended up with, depended a great deal on the personality of the particular teacher and institution you were enrolled in. I have been reading accounts of the formative period of quantum physics. Rutherford comes across as exactly the kind of inspirational teacher and mentor you describe here. By contrast, a lot of religious education is rote learning and repetition. Not that it has to be, but it often is, and was.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not at all. I went to the University of Sydney, never encountered such an attitude. Again, it can happen anywhere, but not because of anything peculiar to 'our society'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I naturally am inclined to agree but the reality of communicating such a subtle understanding requires that there is an institutional 'exoskeleton' to carry forward the idea. In fact that is very much what I think has been lost from Western religious institutions since the advent of modernity. It has become more and more externally focussed rather than an authentic 'encounter with the unknown'. The 'encounter with the unknown' is much more characteristic of modern spiritual movements than traditional Christianity, nowadays.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The meditation I practice has no particular format. It's simply a matter of learning to sit still, being aware of the body-mind, and returning to the breath. It's not a matter of isolation, but really the complete opposite. There is a sense that the life and breath in me, is the same life and breath in every other being. The sense of separateness is precisely what is being dissolved by such a practice.
What I am referring to is younger education, grade school through high school. This is the primary learning, where we learn our intellectual habits. We learn to accept the beliefs which are handed to us, by the authorities. We are not encouraged in the habits of being critical of the beliefs, nor are we encouraged to ask why. The educational institutions are structured such that there is consistency across the society and children are not exposed to competing beliefs, so that they might need to learn the skill of comparing and evaluating beliefs. The beliefs of the authorities are the only beliefs handed to us, so we learn to accept them as true. An environment in which there are competing beliefs in relation to fundamental issues, is one in which I think neither you nor I were exposed to as children. I agree, that in university we are encouraged to pursue our own directions, but that is only on top of the established foundation.
Quoting Wayfarer
Alright, to "encounter the unknown", isn't it necessary to go beyond the institutional exoskeleton? Wouldn't this be exactly what such an encounter would consist of, being confronted with whatever it is beyond our common speak, where words fail us. If words apply here, it must be in an innovative way, or else it is not really the unknown. To describe this experience we reach for metaphor, using words in new and creative ways. \
So to make this voyage, to encounter the unknown, and I believe you are talking about the spiritual approach to the inner experience, isn't it necessary first, to as much as possible, release ourselves from all the constraints of the institutional exoskeleton? We cannot encounter the unknown while holding preconceptions. Perhaps after the encounter, when we wish to communicate our experiences, we must turn to that exoskeleton, but then it is used metaphorically. Isn't this exactly the way of Skepticism, to free ourselves of preconceptions, then knowing nothing, anything approached is the unknown, so we can proceed with the desire to learn and understand?
Quoting Wayfarer
I haven't found this "complete opposite". In any meditation I've tried, I am overwhelmed with the sense of isolation. If sounds interfere, they are so distant. Every other being seems to be so distant, a simple voice is so far away. Where does the idea that "the life and breath in me, is the same life and breath in every other being" come from? I just can't find it in my inner experience, there is no other being there. Any other being is so distant, so separate.
Have you ever sought instruction in meditation?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Do you recall which noted maverick 20th Century spiritual teacher used to say 'the known must cease for the unknown to be?' That was Krishnamurti, who was a major milestone in my development (such as it is). But reading Krishnamurti books and listening to Krishnamurti talks only went so far, in my experience.
No, I have never had any formal instruction on meditation. But the question is, should I approach meditation with the preconceived idea that I am going to find within meditation, what some instructor tells me is there, and therefore I am looking for that particular thing, or should I approach it with a free mind, to find what is really there, within myself? In other words,, is instruction purely on the method of meditating, how to obtain the meditative state, and perhaps make the known cease to be known, or is instruction telling you what to look for, (that life and breath are the same for everyone); in which case, you haven't really rid yourself of the known.
Guilty as charged.
And don't forget the recent philosophical revival of virtue ethics which finds its roots in ancient Greece. In fact, the Christian tradition incorporated virtue ethics with its seven sins and seven virtues - so they're not even original.
There's a lot of truth in that. As I remarked to Arkady before, I have often thought that the Christian church in some ways appropriated the best of what they then described as 'pagan philosophy' only to metaphorically 'lock it in the Vatican archives' whereafter it could only be approached on their terms. I now think it's an uncharitable view, but that there's some truth in it.
What concerns me more, though, is the fact that because so much ethical theory became bound up with the Christian ethos, that in the rejection of religion, actual virtue is being rejected as well, and unknowingly.
I think there's a lot to be learned from reading the musings of various Christian scholars about ethics but I've always rejected the institutionalisation of religion. For those things we should arrive at on our own (ethical convictions) are now edicts and dogma that are resistent to change when change is called for. It's a split many cannot consistently bridge. I still remember my religious roommate when we were discussing "love thy neighbour" in relation to our gay roommate. "I love him but he's going to hell". I never could wrap my mind around that statement.
Well, I admit it is impossible to do that in any absolute sense. We each do it in our own little way, but that's why subjectivity is so important, we can get completely different perspectives of the very same thing. From my perspective, each person stripped down to the bare essentials, is a separate oasis, a point of something, existence, in a world of nothing (perhaps its the Cartesian tradition which instills this in me). From your perspective, it appears like the person actually gets reduced to nothing, and one can only find one's own being, by being a part of something.
That's what's called forgiving. In Christianity forgiving is a very important aspect of how one approaches "the sinner". To forgive is to accept the fact, you cannot change the actions which a person is guilty of, right now, and this is the label which might be given to the person, what that person has become, and is designated as being "a ...", based on those actions. If that person has done wrong in your eyes, you have no choice but to accept this fact, as a fact, it cannot be changed, so you forgive, and love that person, as a person, like you would love anyone else. From this point, of forgiving a person's past behaviour, one can consider how the person is likely to behave in the future. If it is important to you or to others, that the person not behave in the same way again, then it is important to ensure that the person releases the desire to behave in this way. In Christianity, the attitude of forgiveness is the only reasonable approach to the sinner.
It's not at all being 'reduced to nothing', it's simply seeing through your own stuff. It's also related to a sense of 'oneness with others' in the very simple sense of understanding that they are all people just like yourself, so overcoming your sense of separateness from them. Hard to put into words but very simple in practice.
This is where I can't get to, seeing through my own stuff. Suppose I want an extended period of meditation, so I tell my wife I'm going on the mountain for three days, don't expect me back until then. She says you'd better bring some food, but I don't want to bring any food, I don't want any "stuff" to interfere with my meditation. Anyway, it doesn't take long before I'm hungry, so I think about this stuff. What is this stuff, food? Why do I want it? Why do I suffer when I don't have it?
I assume you've had some training in meditation, so you may see this right away with breathing. What is breathing? Why must we breathe? What is this stuff we breathe in and out? As you described already, you see breathing in a way like it's something you have in common with others, so you make this breathing as a source of unity with others. And probably all our other dealings with stuff, like eating, you look at them in the same way, as evidence of unity.
But this is where I see things differently. I see activities like breathing and eating, as wanting to take stuff and bring it into my body, making it my very own. And that is a very selfish activity. This selfishness leaves me mystified. I want to feel, experience this unity which you refer to, but all I really feel is that suffering, that pain of hunger, which I interpret as the need for a selfish activity. How do I get beyond what I perceive as the selfishness of this activity, to apprehend it as an act of unity? That's the revelation I need.
But even to talk about it, triggers these associations of ideas and words. Here's me going off to the mountains. Three days! What does wife think? do I need food? What will happen? What does it mean? Will I be set upon by wild beasts? What is breathing? Why must I breathe.....
Meanwhile, nothing has actually happened. All that has really happened, is that you've sat down at your computer and confabulated a whole scene. What you've written is literally a 'stream of consciousness'. And actually that's a good step in the right direction. Many people will say that 'meditation' is stopping that, but you can't suppress that, or make it stop happening. What you can do is notice that you're doing it. And the best way to notice it is to sit still and watch it, simply be aware of the stream of words, images, feelings, associations, and memories, for 20 or 30 minutes. Do that every day, and you will notice.
Here is an easy guide to Zazen (Buddhist meditation) along S?t? Zen guidelines.
I find that sitting, and focusing my mind, so as not to have any particular stream of thoughts, for a short period of time, probably around a minute, is not difficult. I think of it as a mental cleanse. The mind wants to think though, feelings and sensations are interferences, distractions, especially sounds. You can close your eyes but not your ears. Here's the odd thing. I always wanted to meditate in a totally isolated, and quiet place, I thought that it would be more conducive. And maybe that's why I see it as an isolating activity, because I isolated myself to practise, just like I isolate myself to practise a musical instrument, it's a sort of shyness. But since I quit trying to meditate, I've found that it's easier to get the desired mental affect in a very noisy, busy place. I suppose that's because I don't hear every little sound as a distraction, and a reminder. But maybe it's part of that feeling of unity you refer to.
So strange, some of terms you take offense to, especially given that you seem to have fairly thick skin in general. I recall once, in the old place, I referred to God's "handiwork" in supposedly creating the heavens and the Earth, and you threw something of a fit over that term. Nothing about the word "complaint" was meant to trivialize your position, but it is a complaint nonetheless.
Quibbling over terminology aside, the fact remains that it was an appeal to consequences: Dennett's "universal acid" leaves no place for philosophy (in your view), and ergo must be false. But this doesn't follow.
Ok. And again, this "classical tradition" would include secular works?
So: the universe is a sign of higher intelligence, but this is not an empirical demonstration of God's existence? Then I take it that no particular feature of the universe points to the existence of a creator? The mere fact that there is something rather than nothing (whatever at all that "something" may be) points to a creator?
No, I dismissed the likes of Eagleton and Tillich (at last as you've quoted them here; again, I've little familiarity with their primary works) as obscurantist. I'm not sure why they embody "classical theology": they seem to lean towards a sort of post-modern (or at least modern) theological sensibility, with perhaps a dash of Heidegger thrown in. When I think of "classical theology," I think of Aquinas, Augustine, Ockham, etc., not Tillich or Eagleton.
I will also say that, despite having asked many, many times, neither you nor anyone else has ever so much as provided a definition of the phrase "ground of all being." I asked you, and you threw more quotes at me (quotes which themselves didn't even contain a definition, but merely repeated the phrase in some form). Mongrel said its meaning was just obvious, and when I asked a follow-up question, I got no further response. This just reinforces my suspicion that such phrases are mere buzzwords, which are promulgated by those wishing to convey an air of theological sophistication, but which have no substantive meaning.
Edit: for the record, I don't accept a priori existential arguments for anything, God included.
I agree. It is the sign of an advanced, first-world industrial society which is overly saturated by religiosity, which is the cause of Americans' rejection of evolution.
First, I will say that blaming three people whom most in the general public have probably never even heard of for the rejection of evolution by millions of people is ludicrous, especially since this rejection predated all of their births (the Scopes trial took place in 1925, for instance).
Secondly, Dawkins never says anything of the sort that science disproves God. You are again fighting a strawman. Dawkins believes that it is more likely than not that there is no God, on the evidence.
Thirdly, even if Dawkins et al overreach with the scope of the application of evolutionary theory, why would that lead to a widespread rejection of the core precepts of the theory? After all, one can believe in, say, the common descent of all life on Earth as it developed over 4 billion years, and yet reject the contention that evolution explains, for instance, the human moral sense, or that art has an adaptive explanation. (I will point out for the umpteenth time that Coyne himself has written about some of the more dubious overreaches of evolutionary theory as it pertains to evolutionary psychology, an inconvenient fact which you continue to assiduously ignore so that you can refer back to Coyne as a bogeyman emblematic of all you despise.)
I wasn't aware that they are all climate change deniers, but that is interesting (almost as if the religious mindset can warp one's thinking...). However, of course, their stance on climate change doesn't bear upon the veracity (or lack thereof) of their arguments regarding evolution and creationism.
You seem quite hung up on the issue of Biblical literalism. You do realize that, even prior to the advent of intelligent design creationism, there were old Earth creationists, theistic evolutionists, etc?
I'm not sure what point you're making in saying that evolutionary theory is being revised all the time: while I agree that that is true, it is true of virtually every scientific theory.
From the supposed neo-Darwinian fanatic Jerry Coyne, I give you his review of the book A Natural History of Rape by Thornhill and Palmer. One passage in particular stands out:
[quote=Coyne]Let us be clear. It is not "biophobia" to reject the reduction of all human
feelings and actions to evolution. Quite the contrary. It is biophilia; or
at least a proper respect for science. The "choice between ideology and
knowledge" is a real choice; but it is Thornhill and Palmer and the
doctrinaire evolutionary psychologists who choose ideology over knowledge.
They enjoy the advantage that people seem to like scientific explanations
for their behavior, and the certainty that such explanations provide. It is
reassuring to impute our traumas and our misdeeds to our savanna-dwelling
ancestors. It lessens the moral pressure on our lives. And so the
disciplinary hubris of evolutionary psychology and the longing for certainty
of ordinary men and women have combined to create a kind of scientistic
cargo cult, with everyone waiting in vain for evolutionary psychology to
deliver the goods that it doesn't have. [/quote]
Hmm...does that sound like the writings of a man who obsessively applies evolutionary theory to every facet of human life?
http://www2.asa3.org/archive/evolution/200004/0012.html
It's not my claim that 'it must be false'. Dennett's claim is that anything that amounts to 'a philosophy' in the traditional sense is one of the things that has been dissolved.
Quoting Arkady
The original intention of the secular state was to maintain the separation of church and state, so as to make room for a plurality of views. The meaning has changed considerably to now imply 'secular as opposed to religious'. But take for example the works of the Renaissance humanists, Ficino and Della Mirandola, both recognised as pioneers of humanism. They both skirted heresy and are poster figures for humanism, but they're not at all 'secular' in the 21st century sense; they were both indebted to Platonism and neo-platonism, which would both, I'm sure, be dissolved in said 'acid'.
Quoting Arkady
IN the sense that, even if it's true, how could it be demonstrated empirically? You think 'the first principle of existence' is something you're going to photograph? That it will show up in a bubble chamber at the LHC. (My, that would make for a headline.)
Even now, there are scientists who argue for God on the basis of science, and others who argue against God on the same basis. It will never be settled empirically, in my opinion. (Which is one of the reasons, incidentally, that Buddhism is not based on belief in God.)
Quoting Arkady
The whole book, The God Delusion, is based on the premise that scientific method supersedes religious belief. The only reason he says it doesn't disprove it, is because he understands vaguely that it's not an empirical question.
Quoting Arkady
With respect to the evolutionary explanations of such faculties as conscience, rationality, and the like, one can certainly explore the biological roots of h. sapiens without conceding thereby that the nature of such faculties can be explained in purely biological terms. I posted what I consider a very able review of that very issue, Anything But Human, by a humanistic scholar, and you dismissed it as rubbish, so no use raking over it again. Question has been asked and answered.
Creationism hails from around the 1920s in the US. Theistic evolution is another matter entirely, and, were I to choose sides, I would choose that, over Dawkin's and Dennett's materialism any day.
That quote from Coyne is interesting, and I have read some of his criticisms of evolutionary psychology elsewhere. I don't see anything to object to there. What I object to his strident 'ideological scientism'. Coyne's latest book is called Faith Vs Fact, of which science blogger John Horgan's review was titled 'Book by Biologist Jerry Coyne Goes Too Far in Denouncing Religion, Defending Science'. The subtitle of Coyne's book is 'Why Religion and Science are Incompatible':
While it's certainly true that religions embrace mythology, folklore, and also many forms of superseded knowledge, they also claim to indicate a reality 'beyond this world' - beyond the physical horizon of birth and death. That is represented in Christianity by the resurrection and the belief in Heaven (although whether 'eternal existence in Heaven' is what was originally intended by the phrase 'eternal life' is, I think, a moot point.)
Whereas the only desideratum a biological theory can really deal with is 'how species and individuals survive and evolve' (in a strictly biological sense.) So ultimately a biologically-oriented philosophy (such as that advocated by Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape) has to be a form of utilitarianism; 'the greatest good for the greatest number', the maximisation of human well-being. There's nothing else to aim for. And while there's nothing intrinsically the matter with such an aim, it fails to address the central problem of the 'human condition' in the way that religions claim to do, that problem being the transitory nature of existence.
There may indeed be a secular ethic - I have already mentioned utilitarianism - but what I am criticising is the way that today's scientific secularism equates any and all religious philosophies with superstition, or as a 'tribal bonding mechanism', or an archaic form of science, on a lower rung of the positivist view of history. And they often do that without any real understanding of what they've rejected, because their reaction is based on the criticism of a religious conception which had already ossified into dogma (e.g. Biblical creationism).
When I set out on the spiritual path, the first teachers I encountered were non-dualist Vedantins. That is a type of Hinduism, but the non-dualists were anything but starchy religious types. Actually they were quite dismissive of 'organised religion' themselves. But they were dismissive of it from a completely different perspective to materialism. They saw through it, or rather, beyond it, to the ineffable reality of Brahman. (They were dismissive of it, because they'd graduated from it, I later came to realise.)
So having investigated those and many other such spiritual traditions, I came to appreciate Christianity from a new perspective, namely, that of the 'unitive consciousness' that Richard Rohr speaks of in the video. It's not any kind of literalism or fundamentalism - in fact Richard Rohr would almost certainly have been indicted for heresy in an earlier place and time. (Nowadays it doesn't matter so much.)
So the truly transcendent elements of the spiritual traditions, point beyond themselves to a higher truth. That is neither what mainstream churches teach, nor what materialism denies, although it is categorised by materialists as part of the former. And that is what I'm complaining about.
The premise of The God Delusion is that God probably doesn't exist. The fact you are speaking of "disproof" shows that you don't even understand the nature of empiricism. He believes that the balance of the evidence demonstrates that God probably doesn't exist, not that it "disproves," God. This is not due to to any "vague" understanding on Dawkins's part, but rather is the nature of empirical investigation (unlike religionists, scientists don't speak of "Truth" - note the capital "T" which so many Christians are fond of appending to the word - but only of "evidence" which either confirms or disconfirms hypotheses which can be used to make useful predictions or retrodictions in the service of explaining nature).
In all honesty, you link to quite a bit, so I don't recall that particular work (was it in this discussion? We've exchanged a flurry of links, and my memory fails me). Anyway, in giving a quick skim at that article, I didn't see any too objectionable, so perhaps I've softened my view on it. I can view it in more detail a bit later.
Yes, and creationism entails a rejection of evolution to at least some degree, ergo your claim that the New Atheists are responsible for fomenting rejection of evolution in the U.S. to any significant degree is rather tendentious.
What would lead you choose theistic evolution over a purely materialistic conception of evolution? You reject that such things can be gleaned empirically, so what reasons do you have?
Firstly, I will say that Horgan (yet another quote!) is hardly unbiased himself. He has, for instance, made ill-informed and unsupported comments about particular fields which he simply doesn't like, such as behavioral genetics (the book Born That Way,about just such that topic, describes the author's rather frustrating encounter with Horgan on this matter).
Secondly, If you haven't read Faith vs. Fact, I'd encourage you to do so. Coyne criticizes, among other things, practices such as faith healing and religiously-motivated rejection of medical care (including for children), which I don't think any rational person can find odious.
And yes, Coyne (as well as I) do reject "other ways of knowing." This is not to say that he (or I) believes that all questions fall under the ambit of the natural sciences, but rather that claims must have some rational warrant in order to be accepted. In the case of humanities such as history, this would include marshaling evidence in support of some thesis, and crafting arguments to support this thesis.
As for the arts, Coyne does allow that the arts can be "ways of knowing" in certain ways, in that the arts can, for instance, tell us what certain historical figures looked like via their portraits. But for the most part, why should the arts be regarded as a truth-seeking or knowledge-generating endeavor? This is clearly a case of humanitiesism: the encroachment of the humanities on the domain of the natural and social sciences.
And finally, you are somewhat inconsistent in your criticism of Coyne. You seem to alternate between calling him a zealous adaptationist, who believes that every facet of human life and behavior is explainable by evolution, and by generically labeling him as "scientistic." Once I demonstrated that the former claim was unsupported by his statements, you switch to the latter tactic. But, of course, it's possible for someone to think that all questions must yield to science without believing that all questions must yield to evolutionary explanations. One could even ostensibly be a scientist and yet reject the power of natural selection to do even those things which the most sober-minded biologists attribute to it (cosmologist Fred Hoyle, for example, was famously dismissive of natural selection - he was the one who devised the 747/junkyard/tornado analogy, IIRC).
I don't need to read atheist polemics not to trust faith healers and those who reject blood transfusions.
Quoting Arkady
Capital T Truth denotes something like a 'vision of the whole' or at any rate a visionary state or encounter or epiphany. It has a vaguely religious connotation now, but in days of yore was also spoken of in suitably hushed tones by men of science.
Quoting Arkady
But it's also clear that he and you are generally positivist in your orientation, 'positivism' being 'a philosophical system recognizing only that which can be scientifically verified or which is capable of logical or mathematical proof, and therefore rejecting metaphysics and theism'.
Biblical creationism rejects Darwinian evolution holus bolus. But why I find fault with evolutionary materialism is because of the insistence that evolution 'proves' anything about God. It doesn't prove anything of the kind. Certainly it proves that the Earth wasn't created in 6006 bc. But if you're in a culture where Biblical faith fundamental, and then say 'look here, science shows your religious beliefs are superstitious nonsense', then what do you think a lot of people are going to do? They're going to reject it. That's why I'm saying these 'evangelical atheists' are doing a lot of damage to their own cause.
If I was teaching high-school biology and evolution, I would never for a minute bring intelligent design arguments into it. But if some kid asked, 'what do you think evolution says about "why we're all here"? Do you think it leaves room for a "higher purpose"?', I would never say that it doesn't. I would say, very interesting question, go and investigate - but not here. It's not a scientific matter.
So just as religion doesn't belong in science class, science doesn't prove anything about ultimate or first causes or whether there is a higher intelligence. It cuts both ways. Michael Ruse is far better at all of that, than any of the atheist writers we have discussed. And he's a professed atheist himself.
Quoting Arkady
I remember I asked you once, do you think life is really just a kind of chemical reaction, and you said, what else could it be? Well, it could be 'the manifestation of spirit' - for all we know. Of course, Darwin never thought like that, but Wallace did. Anyway, maybe for all our cleverness, life itself is something we don't really understand very well.
So much of modern evolutionary materialism is shaped by the Enlightenment attitude that religion is a superstitious yoke to be thrown off. I have already explained in a very long post before your last reply, what I think is the matter with that; I'm just about done discussing it.
There is a long history of belief in the mystical relationship between musical principles (consonance and dissonance), and the secrets to the universe. This extends back through Christianity, Platonism, Pythagorean cosmology, and further. This belief is based in sound principles which manifest today in the difference between just, or pure intonation, and equal temperament tuning. Within this little problem, which deals with the fundamental relationship between wave frequency and time, lies the secrets to the nature of time. This problem is laid bare by the Fourier transform which exposes the frequency time uncertainty relation, which is dealt with in a particular way by physicists, producing the quantum uncertainty principle.
But an artist is inclined to face a problem with the attitude of "the way those people dealt with that problem is not the way that I am going to deal with it". And this is the benefit of the subjectivity, which we find in the artist's "way of knowing". The artist has to know in one's own way, not the way of another, so the artist is always seeking more accuracy, more efficiency, just overall "better" ways of knowing the same thing. Just take a look at the "What Colour are the Strawberries?" thread, to see a discussion on the importance of subjectivity. Creativity is the means by which we advance from the unknown, expanding the realm of knowledge. Therefore artistry is the true knowledge generating endeavor.
Everything is subjective to some degree. Even when scientists verify each others' observations, they do so by means of experiencing the requisite qualia (if one finds this term contentious, please feel free to substitute its closest synonym with which you agree) for themselves. However, one of the cornerstones of the scientific method is the replicability of results, which lends science its objective force. Given appropriate circumstances, one should (at least in principle) be able to replicate an experiment and obtain similar results.
As for artists striving for accuracy and efficiency, I can only wonder what is the basis for that contention. While accuracy of some work's representation of reality may be a desideratum of some artists, I don't see how accuracy is a goal inherent to the artistic process (except in the fairly trivial manner that artists often seek to realize their mental vision or concept of the art in executing it). How would one gauge the "accuracy" of, for instance, Beethoven's Fifth?
Non-sequitur. The scientific process requires creativity, sure (one must be creative in conjecturing hypotheses, devising empirical tests of said hypotheses, etc), but it doesn't follow that all creative endeavors are artistic in nature. The aims and goals of science and art are completely different.
I see. So you will happily quote scathing reviews of a book when said reviews comport with your views on religion and the "New Atheists," but you decline to read the actual book before opining on it? That sounds a bit, dare I say...close-minded. Coyne touches on a number of other issues, including demolishing Gould's "NOMA" arguments. Might be worth checking out, since you are so interested in this sort of thing.
Just curious: you have read The God Delusion, right?
Well, we're no longer in days of yore, and every encounter I've seem to have had with the word "Truth" has come from a religious person (probably generally of the evangelical Christian variety). Once again, I'd ask who is the arrogant party here? Atheists and scientific rationalists must at least honestly admit that they are ignorant of some of the greatest mysteries of the universe: but it is religionists who have ready answers to these questions.
Well, logical positivism is itself more or less moribund, wouldn't you say? As for metaphysics (which no doubt at least overlaps with theism), I am at a loss as to what a "verification" of a metaphysical thesis might look like. It seems the most that metaphysicians can do is try to find contradictions in opposing theses while trying to tighten up their own. The fact that debates over the veracity of universals, say, have raged for millennia in some cases does not make me optimistic that metaphysical debates are ever resolved in a timely and definitive matter, if they get resolved at all (through rational means: one can of course forcibly silence one's opponents, or ban their views, etc).
Quoting Wayfarer
Your concern for the cause of "evangelical atheists" is touching, but they are not politicians. They don't soft-peddle their positions for mass appeal.
We have dissected life down to its constituent atoms, and found no "spirit" to speak of. I know you hate when I call you a "vitalist," but if it quacks like a duck...
None of this answers why you think that theistic evolution is probably the case, as opposed to purely naturalistic evolution. You have several "very long posts" (not that I'm complaining, mind you: I appreciate the time you put into them), so you will have to be more specific about where you laid out your reasons for believing that theistic evolution comports better with the facts than its naturalistic counterpart.
But, here is a broader problem with your position. When you wade into theistic evolution, you are saying something about the causes and forces operative in the world, ones which shape the course of nature and life on Earth. And, as with any other cause, we can tell a counterfactual narrative about it ("had the asteroid not struck the Earth 65 MYA, then the dinosaurs wouldn't have died out," "had sewage not contaminated the drinking water, then the cholera outbreak wouldn't have occurred", etc). That is, if God is involved in the evolutionary process, then the world looks different than it would had God not gotten involved at all. And yet, when asked for evidence to support this claim, you retreat behind the wall of crying "scientism", and saying that it's not a matter for empirical investigation. So, you want it both ways.
Borrowed it when it came out. Read the first three chapters, skimmed the remainder, read many reviews. I think I'm thoroughly conversant with the philosophical arguments in it. It is the book that triggered my interest in Forums, as I signed up with the Dawkins forum when it was still in business. I think it's a terrible book, and his brand of atheism is based on many basic misconceptions about the subject.
Quoting Arkady
I don't need to read Das Kapital to have a view on Marxism. Jerry Coyne's reputation is terrible, outside anyone who isn't part of the new atheist scene. I could provide hundreds of quotes but I don't want to bore you. *
Quoting Arkady
Spirit is not an ingredient. There's the problem right there: if you don't know what you're looking for, how can you look for it? The idea that an elan vital is something like an ethereal essence or substance in the material sense is the whole problem. There's your scientistic modus operandi - first, define it in terms then science can comprehend. Then say: no such thing!
An analogy:
1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has.
2. Therefore what metal detectors reveal to us is what is real.
Quoting Arkady
I didn't say 'logical positivism', I meant 'positivism' as an overall historical and philosophical orientation, which is obviously the position you take. It's not intended as a pejorative, it's a description that applies to many secular and scientific philosophers.
A quote on the origins of positivism and Auguste Comte:
Within that framework, the 'idea of heaven' is now replaced by the quest for interstellar travel, and science has replaced religion as the 'arbiter of truth'. 'Cosmos', said Carl Sagan, 'is all there ever was, is, and will be'. The Cosmos now occupies the place that was formerly occupied by God.
Find me anything in that, that you, Coyne, Dawkins, etc, would disagree with.
Quoting Arkady
If they say they know, they're usually wrong and not to be trusted. Most of the time they're reciting dogma. Religious belief is not an alternative scientific hypothesis. That is the whole point of Richard Rohr's (remember him?) teaching on 'un-knowing'. To 'know God' is not to come up with a formula or hypothesis that explains phenomena on the level that science does. The idea that it does, is the whole problem that grew out of early modern scientific Deism - Newton, Descartes and so on. In that conception 'God' became an abstract equation, and finally 'a ghost in his own machine' (Ted Dace). But by that stage, the whole meaning had already become hopelessly lost.
So if the religious bludgeon others with dogma, then yes, they're arrogant. But they're also not being true to their own tenets.
Quoting Arkady
Theistic evolution doesn't posit a 'designer god' on the level of an engineer or director. Theism is an explanation at a very different level - much more like the level of the fine-tuning argument. i.e. why is the Universe such that stars>matter>life evolves at all? Why is it not simply chaos or nothing? That is not a scientific issue, because science itself doesn't explain natural laws, it simply discovers them and then uses them to make predictions.
Quoting Arkady
A theist would say, that if God had not created it, we wouldn't be here to discuss it! But that still doesn't make their notion of 'higher intelligence' part of a chain of efficient causes of the kind that positivism can identify. That's why classical theism doesn't have any truck with ID (a good essay on that topic [url=https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/aquinas-vs-intelligent-design]here[url]).
Quoting Arkady
A theist would say the universe is evidence. Your pointing at the whole cosmos, saying 'where is the evidence?' The believer will say 'you're looking at it!' Look at the current scientific 'creation story': the universe explodes into existence, from a single point, at a single instant. You know when the Pope learned this, he said 'That fits right into our story!' Georges LeMaitre, who had actually discovered it, was embarrased by that, and enlisted the Vatican Science Advisor to lobby him against saying it, as he believed the scientific and religious accounts ought not to be conflated. (But LeMaitre was a Catholic nonetheless!)
But, again, this debate can't be adjudicated - that is why ultimately it is a matter of faith - not the faith of 'clinging to dogmas', but of one's essential orientation towards existence. I think 'belief in God' is not properly a debate about 'something that does or does not exist', but about the meaning of the cosmos.
Quoting Arkady
That's because, again, your positivistic attitude is such that you only recognise certain things as 'evidence' - if you are to believe that God exists, then He must be, in principle, the kind of thing that science can understand. It's exactly the same problem that Eagleton 'complained about' (to use your terminology) in his review - which is why, I expect, you can't understand his criticism.
Quoting Arkady
An important point. Galilean science does that by reducing everything to the quantitative, i.e. what can be numerically represented, as being the 'primary qualities', with qualitative attributes being dealt with as secondary (and, since Darwin came along, as derivative of the former.) It does indubitably have much objective force, but that's all it has. As a philosophy, per se, it's inadequate, exactly because it relativises and subjectivises the domain of values.
--------
* One typical comment:
Here's our difference of opinion right here. My dictionary defines "art" as "human creative skill or its application", and that's how I generally use it. If we maintain this definition, your claim that "it doesn't follow that all creative endeavors are artistic in nature" is false by contradiction to the definition. All human creative endeavors are artistic, by definition. So it appears to me like you are trying to produce a highly restrictive, and contrived definition of "art", to support a claimed separation between science and art. But the fact is that science uses art as much as any other human endeavor, and where it uses art is in its approach to the unknown, conjecturing hypotheses, devising empirical test, etc..
If we can agree, that this is art, and that it consists of the same elements as any other art forms, subjectivity, experimentation, trial and error, etc., then we can look at how art actually is a knowledge generating activity.
Quoting Arkady
The same type of replicability, and objective force, which you associate with science, exists throughout the arts. There are objective principles concerning mixing the paint colours, and there are objective principles involved with musical scales. But in the arts, we learn to distinguish two distinct types of objectivity, one associated with truths derived from the nature of reality, and the other associated with truths according to convention. The latter is sometimes referred to as inter-subjectivity, so it is not true in a purely objective way, it is a subjective based objectivity, something which is true by agreement. So for example, that blue and yellow paint will mix to produce green is an objective truth. But that this type of green is more pleasing than that type of green, or that this type of theme is more likely to sell your artwork than that type of theme, is more likely just an inter-subjective truth, something which is true by common taste, the current trend, or conventions amongst the artists.
We find the same principles in music. There are objective truths, based in the nature of reality concerning the principles of the octave, and harmonies. But within the accepted scales, there are many conventions as well which have no such objective base. They are just subjective preferences, produced from pragmatic principles, or ancient practises which have obtained universal acceptance. Consider theatre and movies, the principles followed in those arts are overwhelming inter-subjective. But notice that inter-subjective truths are no less "true" than pure objective truths. That following a certain formula sells your artwork, because this is what people like, is no less of a truth for the artist than the objective fact that blue and yellow make green, or that the fifth is in harmony with the tonic. Nevertheless, in philosophy we can learn to distinguish between these two types of truth, and we can find them intermixed, but identifiable as distinct, in the arts.
Quoting Arkady
Any time that human beings use art, there is always a concern about accuracy. And this is primarily accuracy in relation to pure objective fact. When the musician wants a harmony, that harmony must be as pure as possible. Tuning is critical, and a slight difference in frequency is repugnant to the trained ear. The same is the case in mixing paints, the artist wants to be able to precisely replicate the colour which was produced before and is now desired. This is no different from the art involved in the sciences. The scientist wants accuracy in relation to the pure objective facts.
However, inter-subjective objectivity mixes and intermingles with pure objective fact, in all of the arts. So even in the scientific arts such as conjecturing hypothesis and devising experiments, inter-subjective principles will enter, sometimes under the guise of being objective truths. There is a problem which is very peculiar to science, and this problem exists because science is the means by which we distinguish pure objective fact from inter-subjective fact. The problem is that because science is validated by empirical evidence, it has no mechanism within its own principles, which would allow it to distinguish between pure objective fact, and inter-subjective objectivity, within its own body of scientific knowledge. "Empirical evidence" implies agreement with respect to a judgement drawn from the experience of numerous human beings. But this is exactly what inter-subjectivity is. So the means by which the scientific method judges something as pure objective fact, is simply inter-subjectivity.
I don't know that my definition of art is overly restrictive: in fact I offered no such definition (nor do I plan to, as such a quest can only be doomed to failure). Philosophy by dictionary definition is generally not advisable (nor am I bound to accept the dictates of a dictionary if I believe the definition is at odds with a term's general usage; dictionaries are authoritative sources, to be sure, but no authority is infallible).
I think you're missing the point in saying science is a "creative endeavor." The aim of art is to create. However, the aim of science is to explain. The fact that science involves some degree of creativity does not mean that it's art. Engineers, for instance, use quite a bit of creativity in their jobs in finding solutions to problems under the constraints of time, materials, and budget, but it doesn't follow that engineering is art.
I'm talking about "using" art: i'm talking about creating art. Beethoven didn't have to worry about producing or replicating a particular note: he worried about writing it. There is no issue of accuracy there, hence the difference between a composer and a musician.
I think the underlying issue here is the prior rejection of the idea of forms that previously informed Western philosophy. The idea of 'forms', which was essential to the Scholastic tradition, but also a general tenet of many other schools of philosophy, provided a sense of purpose in the Aristotelean sense of 'telos', 'why' something exists, but not in the sense of 'why does iron rust'.
For example: in answer to the question 'why is the water boiling', one can either explain the action of water boiling at 100 degrees c, or one can say 'in order to make tea'. Both are valid answers, but assume a different kind of question.
That is very similar to Huxley's remark, and indeed the general basis for rejecting Ă©lan vital
So I don't believe the Ă©lan vital is anything that exists in the material sense, but it describes something real, albeit abstract from a physical point of view. It's not any kind of object of cognition, something that will actually be found by analysis.
Perhaps it is analogous is whatever causes the placebo factor to work (and it definitely does work). If you went looking for the 'placebo factor' in a pathology lab, you would, I think, be doomed to failure. That's not because placebo's don't work, but they don't work the way drugs work; they are dependent on the subject's belief which in such cases has an actual medical impact. But the nature of that dependency is still not, and may never be, something amenable to scientific explication.
Insofar as science is creative, it is an art. Of course all creative endeavors are examples of artistry; does that mean they are artistic in nature? I would say so, even if to say so seems to be somewhat out of keeping with common parlance. The aims and goals of architecture and music are completely different, and yet they are both arts. Science is partly art and partly craft as all the various arts also are. Of course I am not arguing that science is "normally" considered to be an art, but to the extent that it is not an art then it must be a craft, which is to say a discipline, and it is most certainly not unique in that.
It seems that you don't understand musical composition very well. There is certainly a critical kind of accuracy in choosing the best possible note at every point in a musical composition, just as there is in choosing the words that make up a poem or the tones and colours in a painting. It is like the accuracy of the archer hitting his mark perfectly. If you don't understand that it just shows your lack of experience.
A comment I made earlier about 'the enlightenment narrative' is one such clarification. According to the enlightenment narrative, religion has been superseded by science, and religious belief by scientific reason. Individuals are responsible for themselves and are self-determining in a way our religious forbears couldn't have envisaged.
I was reading a column by David Brooks today, reflecting on the Enlightenment, in which he says:
Hear hear, I thought. But then, I'm someone who never accepted Nietszche's 'death of God' - but I also realise that the kind of syncretic approach which brings in ideas and insights from all kinds of different sources to create a religion of my own, is not what 'the Enlightenment project' had in mind when it criticizes religion, and for that reason not really the kind of target Arkady has in mind a lot of the time.
And that's why we're always talking past each other! Scientific rationalism has a very 17th century view of what religion ought to be- it ought to be very much as the Churches said it was back then. As such, it's a relatively easy thing to criticize. 'Stand still, where I can see you!' But the modern (or is it post-modern) kind of synthesis that I am interested in is a completely different kind of beast; much more like another David Brooks column, from quite a few years back, called the The Neural Buddhists, which is much closer to the kind of attitude that I have. And that, too, is perhaps an offshoot or development of the Enlightenment, albeit one that the sceptical French philosophes would have foreseen.
So anyway, all that said, I find that I agree with quite a few comments made by Arkady on subjects other than this one, on which I'm afraid we will never see eye to eye. But it has been, as I say, a constructive kind of disagreement, on the whole.
If my understanding is lacking, perhaps it's because my interlocutors' position has not been explained very well. Of course a composer strives to choose "the best possible note," just as a painter strives to choose the best possible combination of colors (which is no doubt part of the reason the great artists go through draft after draft of their work, rather than just tossing something onto a page or a canvas and calling it a day).
But, how is this a matter of "accuracy"? In my mind, "accuracy" denotes a statement or representation's degree of conformity to its object of reference. As I said above, an artist will attempt to realize his mental vision or concept of a piece in trying to execute it, so, in this trivial sense artistic works strive for "accuracy," but I don't see that "accuracy" is a desideratum of art in general. I remain to be convinced, however.
All I can say is, if science qualifies as "art", then virtually any human endeavor so qualifies. A plumber who devises a creative solution to stem a leak has thereby become an artist. Perhaps we should display his work in a modern art museum (it would have the added benefit of constituting a natural experiment as to whether anyone could tell the difference).
I see. So, in other words, you haven't even read the Book of British Birds.
This is really quite petty. "Art" is a very general term. Yes, the aim of art is to create, but there is no limit to the number of different things which artists aim to create. If some artists aim to create explanations, how is that creative act, as a creative act, essentially different from the creative act which aims to produce a building, a bridge, a computer, a car, a movie, a piece of music, or a painting? These are all acts of human creativity, artistry.
Quoting Arkady
In agreement with John, I think you have a poor understanding of the act of composing music. There is an idea within the composer's mind, and the composer must reproduce that idea in musical notes. The effort is in producing the required musical notes, memorizing it, and building on it. The writing down is an aid to memorizing the parts. Sure, one could compose a piece of music, simply by writing it, according to a mathematical formula or something, but this would be a lifeless piece of music. The real act of composing is to bring an idea from the mind into the realm of musical tones.
Accuracy is very important, because the composer proceeds from an ideal within the mind, and works to replicate that in sound. You should not underestimate the fact that the composer is working from an ideal, trying to replicate that ideal in physical sound. If the sound does not fulfill the conditions of the ideal, the composer is dissatisfied and will continue to work, through reference to mathematical principles, as well as intuition and trial and error, until the sound becomes what is expected of the composer. Judging by the intricacies, and complexities of Beethoven's music, I would say that he was an extreme perfectionist. In fact, I believe many artists suffer through psychological problems involved with perfectionism. Artistry works with ideals, and the process of trying to bring to reality different ideals which are apprehended as there, somewhere, but very difficult to grasp. The process of grasping these ideals, and bringing them to fruition in the physical world is not easy.
But all this is a diversion from the point, which was your statement that Coyne doesn't believe that the arts should be regarded as a truth-seeking or knowledge-generating endeavor. You supported this position by separating the creative aspect of science, from art proper, with complete disregard for the fact that all human creative activities are by definition, art. Adhering to this unwarranted division will prevent you from taking what we know about artistic activities, which can be gleaned from studying the activities of the pure arts, and applying this toward understanding the creativity within science. By means of your imposed division, you have disallowed any association between the pure arts, and the creativity of science. This greatly impedes our ability to understand the use of creativity in science. So unless you rescind this imposed separation we will have no way of understanding the use of creativity in science because you will not allow comparison to any clearly exposed examples of creativity in the pure arts.
I think your intent is to separate the subjectivity of art from the objectivity of science. Your desire is to misrepresent the creative endeavour of science, which seeks to expand knowledge into the unknown, as some sort of objective activity. But clearly this is a misrepresentation. This creative endeavour, found within science, is no different from any other art, it is a purely subjective act. In fact, since this act serves as an approach to the unknown, it is the most purely subjective act of any creative act. Within the realm of the unknown, there are no objective guide points, no objective principles whatsoever, as "unknown", it is the completely untraveled road. This is the most purely subjective form of creativity. To approach the unknown requires the highest form of subjective discipline, and this is an artistic skill. if you disallow reference to the pure arts, to learn this skill, you have done yourself a great disservice.
As I already explained, "accuracy" in the case of the arts consists in 'hitting the mark'. Perhaps you could provide some concrete examples that show the way you want to use the term. "A statement or representation's degree of conformity to its object of reference" seems impossibly vague except in the most prosaic, mundane or everyday contexts.
As I said all human activities are both art and craft. They are art insofar as they are innovative, imaginative and creative and they are craft insofar as they are technique. I'll leave it to you to figure out what proportions of art and craft you want to assign to all the various human disciplines, unless you want to offer an actual argument as to why it should be thought that science or any other other disciple contains nothing at all of art.
Earlier you stated that science and art have very different aims. I pointed out that all the various arts have very different aims. I am not claiming that we should not think that the activities commonly known as the arts should not be considered as being, in their various ways, first and foremost art, and secondarily, craft. On the other hand, activities such as furniture and violin-making are generally thought of as 'craft' first and foremost, and that is because of the relatively constrained range of size and form violins and items of furniture must take lest they exceed the bounds of function.
This actuality of technical constraint is an aspect, to some degree, though, of all artistic disciplines as well. I have heard music variously referred to as 'the highest of the arts', and as the most craft-like of the "pure" arts on account of the precisely formulated harmonic and rhythmic constraints it must work under. So, there is really no simple, black and white distinction between art and craft.
Well, there you go. Perhaps Dawkins could likewise claim that the "tenets and main arguments of the classical theists can be adequately communicated in a couple of paragraphs," thus absolving him of his failure to read all of that wonderful theology he's supposedly ignored? What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
Of course, the problem is you presume their arguments are fatally flawed, but you don't read the source material you criticize, or even favorable reviews, it seems (as those are under the spell of the "new atheists", and thus not worth paying attention to), so you know little to nothing of the reasoning underlying the authors' conclusions.
You have virtually obsessed over The God Delusion, and yet you haven't read it. You have criticized Faith vs. Fact without having read it, dismissively referring to it as an "atheist polemic." You know virtually nothing about Coyne (erroneously saying that he has a "terrible reputation"), and are seemingly ignorant of what his book contains, beyond the fact that he's mean to religion and believes it to be incompatible with science. You seem to understand almost nothing about The God Delusion, as your statements regarding what the book is even about are erroneous, and you attribute things to Dawkins which he not only doesn't say, but which he unambiguously denies in that book.
Your mindset is both an instantiation of the close-mindedness which you'd ascribed to me, as well as a perfect illustration of the aphorism that people learn nothing from books which they don't already know.
If pointing out obvious differences between radically different spheres of human activity is "petty," then I'm guilty as charged.
Then, again, virtually any human activity whatsoever which requires even the slightest creative aspect would qualify as "art." Creativity may be a necessary condition of something's being "art" or "artistic," but it doesn't follow that it's a sufficient condition.
What, in your opinion, delineates artistic human activities from non-artistic ones? As I asked above, if a plumber devises a creative solution to stem a leaky pipe, has he thereby created art?
I think you have a poor ability to read, as I at least twice acknowledged that artists strive for "accuracy" in trying to realize their mental vision of a piece when they actualize it in the creative process (though even this is not a hard-and-fast rule, as it does not allow for spontaneous changes to a piece which the artist hadn't originally conceived of). If that is all that is meant by "accuracy," with regard to the arts, I'm on board. But you and John seem to adhere to some stronger notion of the term.
What's the "mark"?
A painting or drawing of the Statue of Liberty which adequately resembles the Statue of Liberty is an "accurate" representation of that object. Saying that J.S. Mill was a utilitarian is an "accurate" description of his position on ethics. Saying that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater is an "accurate" statement about history.
I notice that none of what you've said on this thread pertains to the video that the thread is about. Can I presume you've already discounted what's likely to be in it, as it is by a minister of religion?
Then art describes anything and everything humans do, there can be no distinction between art and non-art, which makes the term useless.
Nice try, but we're not going all the way back to the video. I didn't watch the video, but nor did I comment on it, much less condemn it.
Wow, that is a colossal non-sequitur, and once again needlessly impugns my motives by insinuating that I've been posting in bad faith. Whom have I "baited"? I daresay that you baited me, with your usual Dawkins-obsessed ranting over the New Atheists (you do realize that you are likely responsible for the vast majority of Dawkins references on the forum?).
Where you came into this thread was with this statement:
The quotation you were commenting on was my response to John talking about 'literal belief in a Sky Father figure', and I think it made the point very well.
Then you referenced Plantinga to establish what your view of 'normative Christian belief' amounts to. But the reason you did that, is to demonstrate that Christian faith as you portray it, is baseless - in other words, to set up the argument so as to be amenable to atheist polemics. So you insist that religious ideas must interpreted in a certain way, purely because that enables you to line up your new-atheist BB gun and take shots at it - which is what I said were 'clay pidgeons'. Then you complain about my pointing that out, and I had the good grace to apologise for it (unwisely, it now seems.)
During this thread, I have composed several very long posts, which explain why I have the view towards the matters that I do, and trying to point out how it varies from the caricature of religion that you have arrived at. In doing so, I have made a lot of points which either have sailed over your head, or you have chosen to ignore (mostly the former, I'm sure). So before you fire off another shot, go back and review what I've actually said, because the only parts you ever notice are what fits into your procrustean bed. (Or not. I really don't care.)
Yes, I recall you saying that. That right there is worrisome, as your entire motivation for joining is tainted by a negative goal, defining yourself by what you're ideologically opposed to. Not a great start, I should say, but really neither here nor there with regard to the substance of your posts.
Well, I admit that the phrase "ground of all being" sails over my head, yes. You remain unable or unwilling to explain it (beyond producing quotes which contain it), so I wonder whether you understand it yourself.
As for your other claims, I will simply flip the script on you: you ignore the fact that most Christians believe in a personal God in order to insulate Christianity (and religious belief generally) from Dawkins et al's attack.
What is a person, according to Dawkins et al? Do they believe in a personal person? I find myself struggling to defend the notion of personhood at all at times.
In music the optimum note, in painting the optimum tone and colour, in poetry the optimum word. We've already been over this.
Quoting Arkady
All but the first are the kinds of "prosaic, mundane or everyday" examples I already referred to, and which are simply matters of conventional usage, and thus uninteresting. Also, the latter two examples are more aptly thought of as being either correct or incorrect statements rather than as more or less accurate, as there is no obvious possibility of degree of accuracy in them; and degree seems to be intrinsic to the notion of accuracy, just as it is with perfection.
As to your first example; just what does "adequately resemble" consist in? I sense a looming circularity of reasoning...
Why ask Dawkins? You can ask some Christian philosophers, starting with Alvin Plantinga who I quoted earlier in this thread (he is not the "right" sort of philosopher, however).
God is apparently a being with intentions, desires, mental states (love, anger, likes, and dislikes), who was even literally embodied as a human being for a time (spoiler alert: didn't work out so hot for the fleshy part of him), and is capable of hearing (and occasionally answering - when he's not otherwise occupied with planning for the Rapture and such) intercessory prayers. Sounds like a person to me. You are probably also aware, though, that Jesus (who is God, but not God, if you get me) was "fully divine" and "fully human" (much in the way that contradictions of any sort can be true - don't believe me? - you must be scientistic).
Much hinges on this: whether this conception of personhood renders it permissible to abort God, for instance. I myself think that God wasn't really a person until 8,359 BC, and thus was able to be aborted up to that date. This matter was decided when Kentucky's statute forbidding aborting God was sent to a U.S. Court of Appeals. Make sense now?
I have bent over backwards, written essays, to explain it. I have a degree in comparative religion, and have worked as a teacher in Buddhist Studies. I think the problem is at your end. You see, 'belief' is not simply a matter of reciting the dogma - it is being open to the idea that there might actually be something to be understood. That is absent in your case. So if I produced a reference or a document, all you would do is shoot at it. Clay pigeons.
Have you read that Eagleton review of Dawkins that Arkady thinks is 'hot air'? If not, I recommend it, it's a riot. Paragraph six addresses your question.
Plantinga is a highly-respected Christian philosopher, but he is a 'confessional' Christian, i.e. his philosophy assumes that you have accepted the tenets of the faith. I am trying to get a perspective from outside that requirement. But it's significant that Alvin Plantinga and Thomas Nagel reviewed each others books, even though they obviously part company on the confessional aspects. But they also find common ground, even though Nagel professes atheism. But in the case of Arkady, this would be unlikely, because the entire polemic is dedicated to reducing Christianity to a contemptible superstition and then excorciating those who profess it on those grounds, as per the remainder of the post I've quoted from. Like Jerry Coyne, one of his exemplars, the whole outlook is predicated on the 'science v faith' dichotomy, that 'all of science is incompatible with all of religion', so if you have any religious beliefs whatever, it follows that you reject climate science, vaccination, and evolutionary biology.
You have written an essay to explain it for my benefit? I must have missed that. Could you point it out to me?
I am open to it. I even proposed some candidate explanations which got no traction or substantive feedback. If you're not even going to meet me halfway, then you're the one who's not trying.
In other words you keep moving the goalposts. Creationists aren't "real Christians," Plantinga isn't the right sort of Christian, etc. Sounds like No True Scotsman to me.
You do realize that there's a difference between "optimality" and "accuracy", correct?
You asked for concrete examples, and I gave them. I'm sorry they weren't sufficiently exciting or avant-garde for you, but conventional usage tends to be mundane.
Come now, let us not play games. A portrait adequately resembles its subject when it is recognizable as such. You know what a portrait which resembles its subject looks like.
Pretty much for the same reason, Freud never uses the word "subject", thinking it too philosophically-laden, and implying a unified single thing, which he didn't think people are.
Also just pretty much Plato's notion of the tripart soul, the plant the animal and the god.
I think the answers to those questions should be obvious to you. What delineates an artistic human activity from a non-artistic activity is creativity. And of course, the creative plumber who devises a new solution to an old problem, is artistic. I gave you the dictionary definition, and whether you like referring to such definitions or not, the dictionary generally indicates accepted usage.
You , for some unknown reason, want to separate out certain types of creative acts from other types of creative acts, to say that those are acts of art, and these are not acts of art. Since it is you who is wanting this division within creative acts, you should be the one putting forward the principles by which you would maintain such a division. And it will not suffice to outline an arbitrary division, nor will it suffice to make a division based in some inter-subjective conventions. I want to see real objective principles whereby we can judge particular creative acts, and differentiate between artistic and non-artistic creative acts.
The point being, that if there are no such objective principles dividing these creative acts, then we can categorize them together and analyze them together. Then when we observe acts in which creativity is at the forefront of the act, we can derive a good understand of the nature of creativity, and apply this toward understanding the creative aspect of other acts, acts in which the creative elements might not be as well exposed.
Quoting Arkady
The point is, that "art" refers to human activity which is creative in nature, and this type of activity extends throughout all the different spheres of human activity. Creativity, and therefore art, is a common aspect of many different human actions. You might call these "radically different spheres of human activity" if you like, but we know that they all have something in common, creativity. And as much as composing music is radically different from painting a canvas, which is radically different from producing an hypothesis, I see nothing other than arbitrary assumptions, to indicate that any of these are not forms art. If they truly are similar, in the sense of being creative acts, artistic acts, then we can classify them as such, analyze, and attempt to understand these acts as artistic acts.
Do you believe that it is generally accepted that plumbers qua plumbers are artists when they exercise creativity?
The best of them are also flush with success! X-)
Is this the specialized form of creativity which would constitute your understanding of "art"? Things created for aesthetic, rather than pragmatic purposes would constitute art?
You appealed to the "general acceptance" of the dictionary definition, which I had contested. I didn't ask whether plumbers are proud of their work: I asked whether it is likewise generally accepted that the work of plumbers constitutes "art".
Yes as far as I know, it's well accepted that these trades people are artists. If someone said to you, "I am an artist", by what principle would you argue "no you are not an artist"?
Nonsense.
Actually the nonsense is in your passage which I first responded to:
Quoting Arkady
To think that art is not a knowledge generating endeavor is simply ridiculous beyond words. Instead of facing the reality of this mistake, and moving toward apprehending the true nature of art, and the role which it plays in human existence, you attempt to define "art" off into a corner somewhere where it becomes an irrelevant sideshow.
What, do you mean to say that the optimal portrait (for purposes of identification, at least), would not be the one that represents the features of the subject most accurately; or in other words the most accurate portrait? If all you mean to say is that it is possible, in different contexts to make different distinctions between optimality and accuracy, well then, yes of course. In fact that is just what I have been arguing: that it is in fact also possible to make distinctions between different kinds of accuracy, as well as different kinds of art, and, for that matter, different kinds of knowledge, all of which is apparently contrary to your own much more simplistic view.
Quoting Arkady
Recognizable by whom? That seems like a very loose subjective definition of accuracy. I'm not playing games, as much as you might like to think I am merely on account of my questioning your very questionable definitions.
Quoting Arkady
It seems to me you are the one playing games, resorting to sarcasm instead of answering the questions that present difficulties for your narrow, "black and white" view of things. I'm not going to decide your arguments are intelligent just on the strength of your trying to make them sound intelligent, you will actually have to deal with the difficulties that are proposed by your interlocutors to be entailed by your standpoint, if you want to achieve any such accolade.
I have said there is a general distinction between the elements art and craft in any human activity, where the first signifies the creation of novelty and beauty and the second signifies technical prowess. I have already acknowledged that certain activities, writing poems, plays and novels, composing music and painting pictures for a few of the main examples, are generally considered to be pure arts or "art(s} for art's sake".
Does that mean that everything that is produced by people who purport to be practicing a "pure art" should qualify as art? This is where the distinction between art and non-art really comes into play; within the disciplines that are generally counted as the pure arts. Does the writer of a potboiler or a penny dreadful qualify as an artist? The distinction between art and non-art in this proper sense is not relevant when comparing disciplines but only when comparing the kinds of work produced within disciplines. It is not as though art is non-craft and craft is non-art; to claim that would be too facile, and would constitute a failure to do justice to what is an extremely complex and subtle question..
I suppose 'artisanship' is a midpoint between the two - that probably originated with metal crafts, wood carving, and the like, of artefacts which served some utilitarian or ceremonial purpose but which also required artistry to create.
Well If one is going to attack the notion of a personal god, it is reasonable to ask what a person is. Now if it turns out that a person is nothing but an expression of genes, a mechanism, then the the idea of a personal god is ridiculous; a mechanical god is simply of no interest. One needs some idea of a person being an end in itself, or a locus of freedom, or a seat of consciousness, or some other rather unscientific term, or so it seems to me, so I am asking science what is a person. I don't think there is an answer, and if there is no answer, then science has nothing to say about a personal god, because it does not know whereof it speaks.
I've already answered: a personal God is a being with mental states, desires, intentions, and one is capable of hearing intercessory prayers and interacting with this world, including sending his son to die for the sins of mankind. How does any of this not qualify for personhood? And why must we ask science? The notion of personhood falls as much under the ambit of philosophy as science. Is science now hermetically sealed off from philosophical concepts? Because that's no science which I recognize.
In any event, you may want to ask the philosophers and theologians who believe God to be a person. If theologians can assert personhood for God, then atheists can attack it.
As for the notion of persons being "nothing but an expression of genes," I don't know where you are getting that from (or if you are just spitballing as to how you believe a scientist might define personhood).
Argument by assertion. You claimed that plumbers were artists, and that this view was generally accepted (which is entailed by the dictionary definition of "art" which you claim is the generally accepted one). To me, that says we are not even living in the same world, and thus there can be no hope of rational discourse here.
I'm not sure how my view is simplistic. My worldview distinguishes between "art" and "non-art." Yours claims that virtually everything is art, and is thus more parsimonious and thus simpler.
Recognizable by those who know what the object of reference looks like.
If you claim not to know what it means for a portrait or painting to resemble its subject, then yes, you are playing games.
Again, you ask for concrete examples, and then complained that they were mundane. I never said that my definitions were not mundane.
I have no "black and white" view between art and non-art, as I offered no definition to that end, as any single definition which seeks to encompass something as ancient, variegated, and multifarious as "art" is doomed to inadequacy. I have merely denied that creativity is a sufficient condition for an activity qualifying as "art" (I believe that it is a necessary condition).
I am inclined to agree. However, the non-utilitarian criterion would rule out, for instance, architecture as art (at least as it pertains to the overall design of a building; presumably certain architectural elements could still be considered art, provided they were non-utilitarian in nature).
âWe are survival machines â robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.â
? Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
If there is no such thing a a person, then there is no such thing a a personal god.
Yes, I am aware of that view. How does it follow that Dawkins (or scientists generally) believes that persons are nothing but the expression of genes?
I'm not interested in Dawkins' beliefs, but in his writings. There is no science of persons, because science is concerned only with mechanisms. You suggested that my characterisation was unfair, I gave you a quote to support it. I dare say the man is humane enough to his wife, but that is not what he writes about.
His beliefs as expressed in his writings do not support the contention that he believes that persons are nothing but the expression of genes.
From The Selfish Gene (underlining mine):
[quote=Selfish Gene]As an analogy, think of the influence of a fertilizer, say nitrate, on the
growth of wheat. Everybody knows that wheat plants grow bigger in the
presence of nitrate than in its absence. But nobody would be so foolish
as to claim that, on its own, nitrate can make a wheat plant. Seed, soil,
sun, water, and various minerals are obviously all necessary as well. But
if all these other factors are held constant, and even if they are allowed to
vary within limits, addition of nitrate will make the wheat plants grow
bigger. So it is with single genes in the development of an embryo.
Embryonic development is controlled by an interlocking web of
relationships so complex that we had best not contemplate it. [u]No one
factor, genetic or environmental, can be considered as the single 'cause'
of any part of a baby. All parts of a baby have a near infinite number of
antecedent causes[/u]. But a difference between one baby and another, for
example a difference in length of leg, might easily be traced to one or a
few simple antecedent differences, either in environment or in genes. It is
differences that matter in the competitive struggle to survive; and it is
genetically- controlled differences that matter in evolution. [/quote]
As I said, the notion of defining personhood is a philosophical question, but it doesn't follow that empiricism can't study or evaluate claims pertaining to persons, including whether or not they exist. Julius Caesar (as described in historical sources) was undeniably a "person," and yet a historian, employing the methods of empiricism, is perfectly poised to study whether or not Julius Caesar actually existed, or whether he was a mythic figure, etc.
If science is concerned only with mechanisms, then by your lights science also cannot study fruit flies, because a scientist is in no position to describe the necessary and sufficient conditions of what is a fruit fly.
Firstly, even if divinity is not a matter for the natural sciences, it doesn't follow that they idea can't be at all critiqued by empirical investigation, e.g. historically.
Secondly, in following Un's reasoning to its conclusion, science cannot study anything, as science can apparently study only what it can define, and, as it is concerned solely with mechanisms, it cannot define anything.
Sorry, I was rushed and didn't explain myself well. Let me just clarify what I mean. The plumber, qua plumber, is not an artist, because they are taught to follow specific techniques, building codes, and practises dictated by the union. Trades people qua trades people, are not artists, for the very reason that they must follow specific dogma to be accepted as part of that trade. But if a plumber is in a particular situation which requires creativity, I think it is generally accepted that in this particular instance the plumber is acting as an artist.
Quoting Wayfarer
The issue is with how we, as human beings approach the unknown, and seek to bring the unknown into the realm of the known, what is called in Arkady's words the "knowledge generating endeavor". I believe this is a purely subjective activity best described as art. Arkady clearly denies art from this process, but does not offer anything else as a replacement.
Quoting Wayfarer
I was hoping I might get to this point in discussion with Arkady, because this brings us to the metaphysical divide between "beauty" and "good". If we ask, what is X good for, in a pragmatic sense, we are looking for the end, "that for the sake of which", is how Aristotle is commonly translated. This produces a chain of causation (final causation), X is good for Y which is good for Z etc.. So in his ethics, Aristotle argues that there must be an ultimate end, something sought for the sake of itself, and the other goods are sought for the sake of the ultimate good, which acts as an end to the chain. He proposed happiness.
Other philosophers have proposed that we can avoid this chain of final causes, "goods", by assuming "beauty" as the ultimate end, that which is sought for the sake of itself. From this point, it appears like we have a division between aesthetics and ethics. But exactly how this division exists depends on how we define "beauty". And, if "beauty" is proposed as the ultimate good, the end to the chain of final causes, we need to demonstrate a relationship between "beauty" and "good". If we maintain a pure division, that some things are sought for beauty, and some things are sought for good, then we have an ethical dilemma because unless we can show that "good" is higher than "beauty" we have no means to bring ethical principles to bear upon activities which are carried out for the sake of beauty.
Quoting Arkady
Wow, what a retort, coming from someone whose entire engagement with me has been nothing but argument by assertion. First, I gave you the dictionary definition of "art". Then you asserted that we shouldn't go by dictionary definitions, and you knew of some other way that "art" was used. All you have done is continuously assert your believe that there is a difference between the creativity of an artist, and the creativity of a scientist. I ask you for principles to define this division, but all you do is repeatedly attack my definition which is well justified by the dictionary, asserting that I am wrong.
Ok. I believe I understand your position, and you give a good account of it, but I just don't think we're coming from the same place on this issue.
Yes I see we're definitely not coming from the same place. That's why I brought to your attention, how absurd your opinion appears from my perspective. Your claim is that art does not take part in the knowledge generating endeavour. From my perspective, the knowledge generating endeavour can only be described as art, being a creative act. My opinion is that you really need to take a good look at the knowledge generating endeavour, and adjust your perspective accordingly.
I think that it is an important point epistemologically, because objectivity, is what we seek in knowledge, but it does not naturally inhere with the principles of knowledge. Objectivity is created by the human beings who create knowledge. When the act of creating knowledge is seen as an art form, then subjectivity is seen as inherent within knowledge. Then generating objective knowledge is a matter of ridding knowledge of subjectivity. But as I described already, we have a distinction between pure, true objectivity, and inter-subjective objectivity, the latter being objectivity by convention, is inherently subjective itself.
Know that your opinion appears equally absurd from mine. X-)
This is a herring the colour of ripe strawberries in good light. Whether Julius Caesar existed or not is an entirely separate issue from what it means to be a person. The method of science is to eliminate the subjective and personal; it does not and cannot take account of them. Dawkins mistakes a methodological assumption for a proven fact, and your quote simply adds a little 'complexity' to the mechanistic reduction of the person. Empiricism cannot evaluate claims pertaining to persons unless it recognises the existence of persons as something other than the existence of bodies and mechanisms. But it cannot do that.
And? You made the non-sequitur claim that, because defining personhood is best left to philosophy, that therefore science can't study claims pertaining to persons. That doesn't follow.
One can speak objectively about persons, including whether or not they exist. Whether Caesar was a real person is a question for science to answer (with "science" broadly construed to mean empiricism), and is about as objective as anything else.
In other words, you made an erroneous claim about what Dawkins believes (i.e. that persons are solely a result of their gene expression), I refuted that by means of a quote, and you toss that off as it merely adding "a little complexity." Please feel free to admit your error.
Sure it can. Julius Caesar was a person. Science can evaluate, for instance, the historicity of his existence. Ergo, science can evaluate claims pertaining to person. QED.
And, as I point out above (and which you seem to have ignored), by your criterion science cannot study anything, because science is merely concerned with elucidating mechanisms, and defining an object doesn't qualify as such, and science is supposedly unable to study what it can't define.
What is a person?
But this is where I came in, and so this is where the argumentative circle is complete, and since you nor Dawkins have an answer, there is no content to your pontifications, and this is where i leave you to it.
Again a non-sequitur. Your claim boils down to: it is not within the domain of science to define X, therefore science cannot study X. At the very least, you need to provide some argumentation for this position.
You might also address my point that, given your criterion, science can study nothing at all.
I might, but I won't. Your boiling is a straw man. Science can study causes, mechanisms, bodies, and jolly good it is for doing so. It does so by methodically eliminating the subjective, which is personhood. This method disqualifies it from talking about persons, as distinct from bodies.
If Dawkins and you are claiming that there cannot be a god that is a complex expression of genes and environment plus whatever other mechanisms you wish to add, then there is probably not a theologian on the planet that would disagree.
This is non-responsive. As I pointed out, by your criteria, science cannot study anything at all, as it is in the business of only elucidating mechanisms, not in offering definitions, and it cannot study what it cannot define. Ignoring this reductio won't make it go away.
Likewise, you have failed to deal with my point that one can make objective claims about persons. The fact that persons are subjects doesn't render the very concept of personhood subjective (if it were, there would be little point in philosophers arguing over it). Julius Caesar was purportedly a person, complete with consciousness and its attendant subjectivity, and yet it's perfectly possible to make objective claims about him.
Dawkins says that, on the balance of the evidence, there is probably no God.
One can make objective claims about bodies.
Quoting Arkady
I have not talked about definitions, that was you. Whenever I ask about persons you point to bodies, because science can recognise bodies but not persons. I haven't defined persons myself, and I have not asked you to.
1. If persons are bodies or bodily processes, then science can study persons.
2. If persons are not bodies or bodily processes, then science has a problem studying them.
3. So science necessarily assumes that persons are bodies or bodily processes.
And then after much study of the evidence, and some complex theorising, it concludes that persons are bodies or bodily processes. And from that circularity, we proceed, to announce that there can be no personal god. Which is true IF persons are bodies or bodily processes, but untrue if they are something else.
Now how about you try to engage a little with my points rather than your re-boiling of them into your points.
Yes. If you ask a religion scholar what the word means, he or she will probably first want to identify what culture and what time period you're interested in.
Science is a community endeavor. Terminology has to be pinned down for obvious reasons.
Why do you say science can't define anything?
Again, you are committing a simplistic reading of my view. I am not claiming that "virtually everything is art", just that all human activities exemplify elements of art. I also do not deny a valid distinction between art and non-art; any product of human activity which does not find itself in a context where it is claimed to be art is therefore, in that very definite sense, and by mere definition, non-art. However even here, what constitutes art is a controversial question; and many critics question the idea that something is art simply by virtue of being presented as such in an appropriate context (gallery, museum, etc). And here I am also somewhat narrowly speaking only about the plastic, visual arts.
In any case this question about the status of objects as art is not relevant because the discussion has been concerned with whether human activities qualify as partly art or not, and not concerned with the question as to which products of human activity genuinely constitute art. So, the question is much more complex and multi-layered than you are attempting to paint it as being, and my position is also more complex and nuanced than you are attempting to portray it.
Quoting Arkady
No, I know very well what the words "this portrait resembles its subject" mean, because I have of course experienced seeing portraits that I thought resembled their subjects. But I have also heard others deny that those very same portraits did resemble their subjects. I have been involved with painting and drawing through my childhood and adolescence and all my adult life, so I have heard a wide range of other's opinions about art works. So, I know very well what it means for me to think that a portrait resembles its subject. And I know it is always a subjective experience and opinion. Can you explain what it means for a portrait to resemble its subject beyond such subjective opinions; in other words can you give an explanation in purely objective terms?
Quoting Arkady
Again you merely display your narrow view on the meaning of the term 'art'. This is going around in circles now, and you have attempted to answer none of the difficult, more salient questions I posed for you; so I'm done with this 'conversation'.
It's just the way the discussion has evolved; discussions often show a creative tendency not to remain within the narrow confines of imposed ideas concerning what they should stay focused on or be about. There will be a connection with the OP if you go back and look for it.
So architecture is not one of the arts, then?
The Selfish Gene says something perilously close to that, although Dawkins qualifies it by saying we are obliged to struggle against it. But the problem is that he and his confreres have methodically dissolved the alternative templates for human nature in the acid of biological reductionism; he doesn't seem to understand that at all. (But then, his acolytes will say, 'he's only a biologist'.)
Quoting John
Interesting. I would say not. Built structures may or may not have artistic merit, but unless a building is designed solely as an artwork, i.e. serves no other purpose, then I would say not. Of course, the Sydney Opera House is high art, but it serves as more than an artwork. So overall, more artisanship than art per se.
Quoting unenlightened
Arkady linked to a blog page, with a quotation from Alvin Plantinga (here), which I said I found anthropomorphic
My interpretation is that such descriptions are only true by analogy, i.e. God is like a person. I understand the classical theological view to be that all statements about the attributes of the divine are analogical.
A further explanation of the notion of 'ground of being'.
...
I contend that this is the 'image of God' that is in the sights of the so-called 'new atheists'. That is why I can affirm that I too don't believe in the God that Dawkins doesn't believe in, but that it doesn't make me atheist. (Frustrating, I know.)
Edward Feser has a very thorough analysis of Tillich's 'God beyond God' in this blog post (athough he finds him too muddleheaded, too modernist, and at times beyond the pale of Christian orthodoxy.)
One can also make objective claims about minds, on which the entire science of psychology is based.
As you said above, science can study causal processes. If the person known as God has interacted with the world in a causal manner (say, to drown the sinful in a great deluge, answer intercessory prayers, or help the Patriots win the Super Bowl), then there ought to be evidence of such interactions. Your talk about "bodily processes" is a red herring.
If I am failing to engage with your points, perhaps we are talking past each other because the argument you summarize above is quite puzzling, and doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to what I am claiming.
I agree that this has not been the most productive conversation. Perhaps the fault is mine. No hard feelings.
I'm not qualified to comment on the nature of God. It doesn't look like it's intended analogically though. But I seem to recollect that it was said that we were made in His image, rather than the other way round, so perhaps we are analogical rather than Him.
Well if God wanted to intervene in this discussion, to get His message across perhaps, He might do it by inspiring one of the participants to post something intelligent, rather than bothering to register and contribute on His own behalf. Hard to detect that sort of thing, but even harder if He chose to make an intervention such that we did not after all blow ourselves to kingdom come in 1969. Even Dr Who is hard to spot when he meddles with history, and he's not even trying to be inconspicuous.
Personally I see the Biblical narrative as a mixture of myth, legend, and history, with some eyewitness testimony, but I have also come to believe that the term 'revealed truth' really does mean something. However I don't believe the 'inspired word of God' ought to be interpreted to mean that the Bible is literal truth, as much of it is plainly symbolic.
There's an interesting book on this very topic, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, Christian Smith:
You know, sometimes I push too hard, especially when I think, rightly or wrongly, that the other person is misreading, or being stubborn, pedantic or evasive, and I admit I'm not always as objective about those things as I could, and should, be, so it's probably as much my fault as yours. Perhaps each of us has simply been talking past the other.
In any case, certainly no hard feelings!
You seem to be contradicting yourself here by saying both that architecture is not art and that the Sydney Opera House is "high art". Is it the only case of architecture that is high art, or even art? Also what is artisanship if not craftsmanship? It is certainly undeniable that all arts rely on various forms of craftsmanship.
It's ironic, but there is no such thing as "literal truth". "Literal truth" can only be taken metaphorically, because all literature needs to be interpreted, and any interpretation is just that, an interpretation. There is no such thing as "the objective interpretation", because every interpretation is produced by a subject, and therefore there is no such thing as the literal truth, because no interpretation is "the interpretation". Every interpretation is subjective. We can all read Biblical stories, and get some meaning out of them. Whether you look at them as true stories or not depends on your interpretation. But it is nonsense to ask if the Bible is the literal truth, only because "literal truth" is a nonsense notion.
It's more that it's not an open and shut judgement. But some architecture is obviously of higher artistic merit than others.
OK, sure, but under the idea that a thing may be of higher or lower artistic merit, then paintings, musical compositions or poems, also may be more or less art, and may even not be art at all. So this would apply to any activity which might be thought to either be an art or to at least (ideally) involve artistry.
So, your reason here would not seem to be adequate to justify denying that architecture is an art, any more than it would be to adequate to justify denying that musical composition, painting, or literature are arts.
Interesting point, but I don't quite agree. You might recall the big debate on the old forum between myself and Landru among others - I think you also - as to the historicity of the Resurrection. My view is it is an historical fact, it is something that really occurred, not only a myth. I am not going to get into that debate again, but it was about a similar point.
I think, overall, one of the better hermenuetics is the one offered by Karen Armstrong about 'mythos' and 'logos' - that mythos is not and was never intended to be read as a literal truth, but embodies an insight in a way that one can imaginatively comprehend it. It's all about meaning. Whereas logos (the logical/analytical/historical) is all measure, control, how to function in the world. They were recognised in most traditions as complementary, but current Western culture is definitely unbalanced in favour of 'logos', whereby the Dawkins of this world attempt to reinterpret 'mythos' as 'logos', which makes it seem ridiculous, and the ridicule those who believe it.
Quoting John
There is a lot of crap art around, especially nowadays. But if it has been created or composed AS art, then it has no other purpose - it's not a building, or a hat-stand, or a spigot. You don't use it FOR something.
As for whether 'architecture is an art', it's a vexed question, and also (once again) beyond adjutication (as who could have the final word?)
OK, but many novels are written to be merely entertainment, paintings are painted just for interior decoration and music is composed to make money, to serve for for social activities, like dancing and sexual bonding, drug-taking. military parades, and so on.
If it has been created as art, then what exactly is its purpose? Does the fact that it has been created as art mean that it is art? Does it guarantee that the artist has no other purpose in mind, such as making money, or finding a place in history, or simply establishing his or her identity as artist?
What is art's purpose? Very general question, isn't it? I think one thing I can probably say, is that it is a hallmark of h. sapiens. The Caves of Lascaux and Altimira are said to be quite beautiful and highly evocative - I haven't seen them myself - but what is their purpose? I dare say there are many books about that, probably many a PhD thesis, so I wouldn't want to try and sum it up in a forum post. But surely it must originate in wonder and mystery, and probably also a sense of the sacred, and also with the artist's ability to evoke those, and to create new things, to actually create art. I'm a songwriter and composer, albeit not at all commercially successful, but the original pieces I have composed are among the most important thing in my life - and for no particular reason, other than they express something, and that they're new, they're things I have brought into existence.
So-called primitive art always had purposes that were really nothing like what we might consider the purpose of art. For that matter what about the difference between religious art and secular art? The rise of the portrait genre in Europe, for example? Those who commissioned Rembrandt probably had very definite purposes in mind.
I can relate to your sense of pride about your own compositions, as I have also composed music, written poems and produced many paintings and drawings, but I also know that a garden designer, builder or architect can feel the same sense of pride about their creations.
That's why "purpose" is a red herring and the subject of much wasted energy amongst philosophers and critics. It's nothing more than a reduction or art or work to a particular concept, a sort of status game where someone's creation of effort is lauded for an idea considered relevant? or cool.
Art is not a purpose. It's a living action or presence, not some mere plan or intention.
Sure art "is not a purpose", it transcends purpose and that's why architecture can be art, and science or mathematics can be an art. But it's also true that nothing is produced without any sense of purpose at all.
But what is "historical fact"? It is just memories, and memories are fleeting. We reinforce our memories by revisiting them, going over them again and again in the mind. We must recollect or else the memory disappears. But each time the memory is reinstated through recollection, there is an opportunity for change. I meet up with my old buddies once in a while, and we sometimes discuss events from back in the 80's, or even the 70's. We each have a completely different perspective to begin with, and when we piece them together, we always have to deal with contradictory memories. That's the nature of "historical fact", it is loaded with contradictions, and untruths.
But we can't underestimate the ingenuity of human beings, who have developed this great memory aid, which is writing things down. However, we also must not overestimate the power of this tool. Language changes over time, substantially. Even my children use many words in ways completely different from the way I use them myself. So even the written material has to be brought back up, and reinterpreted, in order that the memory, or "history" is not lost within the shifting meaning of words. Some written material has been found which we do not even have the capacity to interpret, because the connection, the continuity, has been lost.
That should provide an explanation as to why I believe that "literal truth", and even "historical fact", are not meaningful phrases when referring to something documented a long time ago. These are like vague memories from your childhood, which are being revisited. And, even though writing things down has greatly increased our capacity to extend the memory time period, we also need to recognize the problems with this extended time period. Imagine being fifty or sixty years old, having memories of when you were five, if your language underwent substantial changes a number of times throughout your life. Each time your language changed, you'd have to reinterpret your memories, a radical change would require translation of your memories. And since the evolution of language is a continuous process, this reinterpreting of your memories, if it is to maintain accuracy, must also be carried out continuously. If you wait five or ten years, while your language is changing, then recollect your memories, you may have lost the capacity to produce an accurate interpretation.
Quoting Wayfarer
There is an artistic mode of writing, common in poetry, which we need to respect as existent, and also well used by writers. This mode of writing intentionally utilizes the ambiguity of words. That is how the author appeals to the widest possible audience. Strong words, words with "strong" meaning, are words which are meaningful to everyone, but what that word means to me, might be quite different from what that word means to you. Using such strong words will allow that a piece of poetry will be very meaningful to a wide variety of different people. But if we compare the meaning, we will be at odds. In other words, if the written piece has a very specific, and unambiguous meaning, it will be meaningful to a very specific group of people, having a narrow audience. If it is ambiguous though, different people will derive different meaning, such that the piece will be meaningful to a much wider variety of people. Under this premise it becomes even more meaningless to look for a literal meaning in something which was intended for a mass audience, because that was never intended in the first place. Not only is there shifting meaning through time, but there was never intended to be a fixed meaning.
This mode of writing brings us as far as possible from "literal truth", but ironically it is the most meaningful writing because it appeals to the widest possible audience. This is how the artist obtains a massive following, by distancing oneself from literal meaning. The artist's ability to obtain a massive following may also play into the field of politics. It may compete with politicians and this principle of vague meaning might be at odds with the fundamental values of democracy. But now the importance of the distinction you make between "mythos" and "logos" should become evident. Literal truth, logos, is quite opposed to the artistic writing of mythos, metaphor, parable, allegory. But in comparison to the other, literal truth is quite useless for dealing with the masses of people.
Quoting John
The purpose of art is probably one of the most difficult things to define. It cannot be defined by the intent of the author because generally the author doesn't even clearly know one's own intent, in producing art, it's just a matter of inspiration. So to define its purpose we would have to look at what it does. I would say that it has a certain type of mystic power over people, that is what it does, influences people in a mystical way.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
To say that "the purpose of art" is not an important question, is like saying that the purpose of life is not an important question. Some think this way, some do not.