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The Forum > Article Comments > The Enlightenment? > Comments

The Enlightenment? : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 1/10/2007

We need deconstruction of the Enlightenment narrative to reveal what it is: a consistent polemic against the Church.

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Lots of ideas in here. Some are pretty valid, such as the paucity of atomistic orthodoxy in classical liberalism, or the one-sided narrative of enlightenment science and epistemology. Neither are as uncritically accepted as Mr Sellick alleges, with the typical strawman secular university bogeyman, but it is true that the popular narrative fails to credit thinkers in the Scholastic tradition, for example, and does not recognise the regression in some so-called enlightenment thinking.

But I can't help but feel many of the other jabs at secular modernity are just the same tired flailing we're come to expect from certain insular elements in the theological profession, who've long since abandoned any attempt to come to grips with what actually gets taught at philosophy departments.

Mr Sellick rages against the ontology of liberalism, and primacy of rights theories, which ignore the communal preconditions of moral and epistemological horizons, but the same critique is taught in any philosophy department. Anyone reading this wouldn't know, for instance, that Perfectionist Liberals like Joseph Raz and Communitarians like Charles Taylor have demolished the false atomism of Locke more comprehensively than any religious thinker and established a different ontology for liberalism.

But I have little doubt Mr Sellick has never studied those critiques, won't be interested in learning, and will continue to harbour the mistaken assumption that only the parochial religious tradition has a monopoly on methodological holism.
Posted by BBoy, Monday, 1 October 2007 9:51:27 AM
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BBoy
Now this is what I am looking for in this section, real comment. I confess that when I read the article as posted I winced at my uninformed bashing of “secular universities” and am glad that they do no live up to my prejudiced comments. I do read Taylor, in fact I am rereading his chapters on Descartes and Locke in “Sources of the Self”. Most of the ideas in the article come from reading for a doctorate in theology which deals with the doctrine of the Trinity in Modernity so I am not surprised that someone with a more professional experience is critical of my faltering and often unformed ideas.

On the other hand I am not as closed as BBoy thinks. My background is in neuroscience and I am still part of a NH&MRC research team. This may explain my ignorance of what goes on in the Humanities depts at Australian Universities, I have never been part of one or taken their courses. Nevertheless I am grateful for any corrective on these lines but without the personal smears. For example I am not sure what BBoy refers to by “parochial religious tradition”. The world scene in theology is far from parochial. For myself I welcome any conversation with the philosophers.
Posted by Sells, Monday, 1 October 2007 10:31:12 AM
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Great to see writer/thinker of this calibre & a learned commentator/poster engaging in debate and explanation in such a constructive & thoughtful way in the spaces of this Forum. Perhaps others could learn from their splendid example ....
Posted by Dan Fitzpatrick, Monday, 1 October 2007 10:41:37 AM
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Another exercise in dismal left brained reductionism, trying to "prove" that the Biblical parental deity exists or has bad publicity over the past 300 years or so.

1. http://www.dabase.org/rgcbpobk.htm

Not a hint of Lightness, or Happiness, or Radiance, or Grace to be found.

What if all of this is floating in an Infinitely Radiant Sea of Conscious Light?

What does the word en-LIGHTEN-ment really mean?
It means to become en-LIGHTEN-ed, that is to be filled with light.

None of the usual fruitless shouting matchs between the equally reductionist proponents of scientism and the dim-witted exoteric religiosity such as Sells, even begin to talk or even think about Real God and REALITY, including the Reality of what human beings Always Already are altogether, as Radiant Conscious Light.

"Happiness is the now-and-forever Mystery that Is the Real Heart and the Only Real God of every one".

This essay addresses the origins & consequences of this unresolvable war between adolescent scientism and childish (parental deity) exoteric religionists. 1. http://www.dabase.org/noface.htm

Plus related essays.

1. http://www.dabase.org/dht6.htm There Is Only Light
2. http://www.dabase.org/dualsens.htm the Dual Sensitivity
3. http://www.dabase.org/christmc2.htm on Christ as all pervasive Conscious Light/Energy
Posted by Ho Hum, Monday, 1 October 2007 10:52:28 AM
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Which trinity is Sells talking about?
Perhaps the tooth fairy, santa claus and the easter rabbit?
Or Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck?

Speaking of the "trinity", the actual "trinity" that really governs every aspect of each one of us and modern "culture" altogether, including those that prattle on about religion, are these three closely interweaved (and unexamined) presumptions about Humankind and Reality altogether.

Namely that we are inherently separate from:
1. Real God or Reality and Truth
2. The world process altogether
3. All other human and sentient beings.

There is a profound sentence in one of the Upanishads: "Where there is an other, fear arises"

Altogether then we live in a "culture" which is saturated with fear. Every aspect and dimension of our individual body-minds is also saturated with a hell deep fear and trembling.

This fear-filled "trinity" really rules to here and inevitably produces the unspeakably dreadful politics & "culture" described thus:

1. http://www.dabase.org/coop+tol.htm
Posted by Ho Hum, Monday, 1 October 2007 11:07:56 AM
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Thanks for taking the time to respond Mr Sellick. I hope you can excuse my bullish tone. I was in broad agreement with your project to deconstruct the enlightenment, but found it grating when the more nuanced picture at the start began to lose out in the tract against monolithic liberalism. My background is in political philosophy, and particularly contemporary liberalism. Having analysed and written similar critiques myself, but from a liberal secular perspective, I just felt you were being uncharitable about the big tent of liberalism and what can be found in modern Australian universities. I can only really speak for Monash Clayton, of course, but I do not think there is much reason to suspect that the robust treatment of liberalism I encountered there would not be found in the top universities elsewhere.

I am very happy you've read Charles Taylor. I think his essay on atomism stands out as a turning point in my life, which managed to focus my attention on the flaws in doctrinal system with such an asymmetry between the imperatives of rights, without their grounds in duties and community. FYI – I read the piece in a second year politics subject called Modernity in Crisis, although given how many people failed that subject, perhaps it wasn’t understood by all. Anyway, I didn’t truly come to grips with the argument until I was doing political & legal philosophy at 3rd year level later on.
Posted by BBoy, Monday, 1 October 2007 11:30:43 AM
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BBoy
I first read the term atomism from Isaiah Berlin’s book on the Enlightenment referred to by Shouls’ book on Locke. Can you give me the reference for Taylor’s article? I am glad we can agree that Modernity is in crisis. It was an eye opener to me to read Descartes and Locke in the original (or some of it) particularly having attended seminars on Medieval thought. I was astounded that so much was dismissed but taken up again under a new guise and claimed as original. Surely Locke’s method of abstraction from observation to produce universals of an empiricist nature is a thinly disguised borrowing from William of Ockham!

Taylor’s Sources of the Self was very good but Buckley’s At the Origin of Modern Atheism I think gives a better theological perspective. I would welcome a more private correspondence if you are interested.
Posted by Sells, Monday, 1 October 2007 11:56:14 AM
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"An uncritical and positive view of the Enlightenment is orthodoxy at Australian secular universities to the extent that few have departments of theology even though the history of the West is unintelligible without such knowledge."

Two utterly false propositions. 'The Enlightenment' is constantly under criticism at Australian universities; whether it is through to combination of the Protestant work ethic and capitalism, through scientism as an ideology, or whether it is on the contextual value of universal rationality. A history of "the West" (how's that for use of "Enlightenment" discourse!) is quite possible without theology; these days we use comparative religion, sociology of religion and - although it must pain our author - philosophy!
Posted by Lev, Monday, 1 October 2007 11:56:23 AM
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The horrors of 20th century were only different in scale from those of the Crusades or the Inquisition or the Spanish activities in South America, all examples of tyrannical behavior on behalf of religion.
The R.C. Church supported Mussolini's murderous efforts against the North African countries and entered into a pact with Hitler, seeking advantage for the church. For centuries that religion, which claims to be THE church, preached that all Jews inherited the responsibility for deicide. Attributing collective responsibility is inherently immoral and the gospels do it often. To futher quote Christopher Hitchens, "For emphasizing tribe and dynasty and racial provenance in its holy books religion must accept responsibility for transmitting one of mankind's most primitive illusions down through the generations."
If we could stop religious indoctrination of children we might be able to give a genuine thinking secular society a fair chance of success.
Posted by Foyle, Monday, 1 October 2007 12:11:47 PM
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"Such a view of God lies at the heart of modern atheism"
Now that made me laugh. Sells you seem to have missed the point. Modern thought comes down to some very basic ideas. While science has become the tool of modern thought it is grounded in the idea that man can only know the natural world. The supernatural can not be tested, the various ideas about the supernatural can not be compared in any purposeful way. So the question is why bother, why believe in the unknowable. You being a christian is most certainly more to do with your place of birth and your parents then any great truth you may have uncovered
Posted by Kenny, Monday, 1 October 2007 12:31:56 PM
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Who does Peter Sellick pray to? Does he pray? And why?
Is there such a thing as a theological mental illness?
Posted by Rainier, Monday, 1 October 2007 3:05:52 PM
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"The most damaging heritage from Descartes and Locke is modern liberalism."

Big statement. I'm not exactly sure where the writer thinks the Enlightenment took place but you'd better out the French such as Diderot, the Encylopedists and the brilliant Scottish philosopher, David Hume. Way after the 16th C.

I was taught that the Church was actually one of the places of light and learning.

I would have thought that the persecution of both protestants and catholics across continetal Europe from 1640- the middle 1800s, would have been enought to turn the average punter off religion for life. But not so.
Posted by Cheryl, Monday, 1 October 2007 4:46:54 PM
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This article is a nitpicker's dream! First up, is that etymology of the phrase "Middle Ages" reliable - or is "Middle Ages" merely a convenient term for the period between the Dark Ages (which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, according to what I remember of my high school history) and the Tudors and the Elizabethan era in England and the Renaissance jhust about everywhere else in Europe (broad brush strokes, but I'm sure you get the picture).

While we're on the subject of the Middle Ages, theology isn't the only subject that's needed for an understanding of that era that isn't - as far as I know - on offer in our universities. How many Australian Law graduates know about scutage, the murdrum fine and the difference between high justice and low justice? The proper rate of compensation to a feudal proprietor for killing one of his Irish? Where are the heraldry courses - how nay Arts graduates would know what a "lion rampant, gules on a field argent" is? What about crop management under the three field system and other aspects of medieval agronomy?
Posted by Paul Bamford, Monday, 1 October 2007 4:54:01 PM
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What God?
Posted by Ponder, Monday, 1 October 2007 5:08:06 PM
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Peter, an interesting article and conversation with BBoy, (with less interesting obligatory contributions by those who need this forum as a psychotherapeutic couch on which to air their anti-Christian, anti-theology, or even anti-religious, bias bordering on paranoia, as irrelevant as it is to the topic of the article).

Nevertheless, in retrospect, whatever Enlightenment was, I think rather than seeing it in opposition to Christianity, contemporary Christians should regard it as an inevitable and challenging outgrowth of Christianity (its "illegitimate child"), a correction to the Medieval interpretation of Christ's message. Arguably, no other civilisation was capable of this self-correction.

In particular, Enlightenment gave rise to science which can provide the background of a modern "God of the philosophers and scientists", a model which complements, rather than stands in opposition to, the Christian model of God seen through scripture, tradition and liturgy.

Referring to John Locke you say "Knowledge of the essence of things (what Immanuel Kant called "das Ding an sich") could never be certain because we could only have sensible knowledge of them. However formal propositions like two plus two equals four were certain."

This reminds me of Einstein's "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality" which I once paraphrased as "As far as religious symbols (and norms) refer to observable reality (and rules that can be enforced) they are not certain; as far as they are certain they do not refer to observable reality (and rules that can be enforced)."
Posted by George, Monday, 1 October 2007 5:51:23 PM
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Ponder, him, up there, yeah that’s right, look up – the geezer with the long white beard hanging out with gorgeous angels fluttering about on pillow soft clouds - as against him down there with the pitch fork and red body suite and horns. Don't you know anything!! LOL
Posted by Rainier, Monday, 1 October 2007 5:53:32 PM
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Kenny,

The senses provide us with raw data about the world around us. That data is incomplete, often inaccurate, fragmented and in itself meaningless. Only by application of memory and the imagination, individual and shared, do we begin to form meaningful connections between these fragments of sensory data. The imagination links the data into narratives which add direction and meaning to the 'picture' of the world provided by the senses.
Knowledge, wisdom, virtue, meaning and purpose derive from whatever story we have constructed over the sensate data of sounds, images, textures and so on that bombard us through our waking day.
Scientific knowledge, or the story that science tells, is strictly limited by a set of rules which prohibit notions of purpose and meaning, right and wrong. Science can never tell the whole story.
Likewise humanism is nothing other than a particular set of stories that lack any sense of the sacred.
History and literature (including all forms of story-telling) provide the narratives which justify our political systems, our sense of justice and our idea of community. History, for example, tells us what a dubious creature the church is.
At the same time the story of the humiliation and torture of the god-man suggests a life full of purpose and dignity that goes beyond the physicality of flesh and blood and is not lost in death. It is universal in its orientation to death and life.
It is not necessary to 'believe in' things supernatural to hear the story of Jesus or even the story of God. Western society is deeply imbued with the Jesus story, to the point that it is quite incomprehensible without it.
If the enlightenment is anything it begins with some serious attempts to reinterpet life without reference to the supernatural. Here is the flaw in the 'enlightenment enterprise'. It is not necessary to dispense with the supernatural any more than it is necessary to believe in it.
Posted by waterboy, Monday, 1 October 2007 7:09:24 PM
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Sells, I will try to confine my comments to a few specific areas, your article is far too discursive to grapple with in 350 words.

I think you're seriously misrepresenting Aristotle. Surely Aristotle's empiricism is the foundation of the scientific method? Aristotle's method involved consulting all the experts and written texts and cataloguing their ideas, he would next observe as much phenomena related to the inquiry that he could and then derive laws from his observations. Post-Renaissance science gradually rejected much of Aristotle's science, but not his empirical methods.

You conclude by saying "It is my contention that we need deconstruction of the Enlightenment narrative to reveal what it is: a consistent polemic against the Church that has robbed us of the key narrative that formed us. It is only in the absence of that narrative that the bloody 20th century could have happened." Fell free to contend this Peter, but it seems to me a rather long bow to draw. My own view is that the horrors of the last century had more to do with the mechanisation of warfare than with the abandonment of Christian doctrine. Even if we blame all the ills of the 20th Century on Enlightenment values, we must set 20th Century scientific and medical advances on the credit side of the ledger.

Peter, I would be interested to see you develop your deconstruction of the Enlightenment. Most specifically, how would your deconstruction differ from that of the post-modernists?
Posted by Johnj, Monday, 1 October 2007 7:12:18 PM
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Since Sells is taking the rare path of actually discussing the thread rather than just leaving readers to flounder, as usually happens at blogsites, I hope he will spare just a couple of moments to answer a previous question concerning Aristotle and empiricism. Also perhaps a comment concerning the Leibniz Clarke debate as to underlying stakes also, from a slightly different perspective than already offered. Tried to come to make sense over some time concerning Clarke/ Newton and Leibniz, but was defeated utterly.
Posted by funguy, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 2:29:40 AM
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Lev
I have already apologised for my misrepresentation of what is taught in Australian universities, although, conditioned as I am by science departments, it is not such a big mistake. Teaching comparative religion or the sociology of religion is a far cry from a sympathetic treatment. Traditions can only be really understood from the inside. I am certainly not averse to the study of philosophy, I am doing quite a lot of it myself, it is just that it is not theology and when it tries to be it makes an arse of itself.

George.
The Enlightenment as the bastard child of Christianity. Certainly there is much truth in this. Linear view of history, progress, etc. What I was trying to get across was the multiple nature of the phenomenon we call the Enlightenment. It seems to me that science and technology would have done very nicely without Descartes and Locke who are the real bugabears. We could have had natural science without the idea of autocratic epistemology and the subsequent isolation of the individual and fragmentation of community. Theology and philosophy were coming along quite nicely as well. Of course this is a broad thing to argue but the early astronomers had done a lot without Descartes and Locke with the help of William of Ockham and Francis Bacon. Newton himself was at first a Cartesian and that did orient him towards mechanism and mathematics but he did not take up Locke’s extreme epistemology.

Waterboy
Nice precise of the centrality of narrative to human self understanding. I like the bit about “what a dubious creature the church is” . Having been involved with the church for 20 years I can vouch for that. I comfort myself by knowing that although the church is pretty awful its Lord is not.
Posted by Sells, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 11:04:11 AM
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Johnj
Aristotle is not a man to be written off lightly. For example, his ethics has become important in the works of the philosopher Alasdair Macintyre. However his attempts at natural science were limited by his understanding that the world was inherently purposeful. The Greeks thought that the cosmos was the product of mind or contained mind. This gave them a teleological view that limited their investigation of causality. If an apple fell to earth it did so because it is the nature of apples to do so. Christianity used Plato’s scheme of transcendent ideas to hold that these ideas existed in the mind of God. If God were creator he must have had some idea of what he was going to create. William of Ockham suggested that for God to be absolutely free then he could have created any world that he like and could reverse his decisions. This made the world contingent, i.e. it was not necessary as it was for Aristotle. That means you can not simply think your way into the causality of the cosmos because you did not have knowledge of the ideas of God, you had to actually go out and observe and perform experiments. For Aristotle the world was not contingent, it was ordered towards a telos, a goal. This is why he is blamed for holding up natural science for 2000 years or so. I am always willing to be surprised, so if you know anything about Aristotle that I do not please let me know.
Posted by Sells, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 1:13:30 PM
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Sells,

The "Enlightenment" is part of the age a reason, an age where we learned to challenge all and any assumptions. Descartes' and Locke take this to the extreme and challenged the assumption of their own existence. A better understanding was gained through identifying which assumptions were or were not worthy of being made. I'm not surprised that you feel Christianity is harmed by it. As with many religions, it is based on blind faith and baseless assumptions, which usually vanish in the light of question and reason.

Your criticism of Descartes' "Discourse on Method" that it was published after the start of the scientific revolution could be equally applied to the gospels, as they were published well after the time of Christ. The value lies in the clear articulation of ideas, reasoning or stories not in the assertion that they are the absolute beginning.

Autocratic epistemology does not form the basis of natural science but is rather an application of the scientific process on to thought and knowledge. Like astrology yields a better understanding of the stars, autocratic epistemology yields a better understanding on the application of thought and reasoning.

"I comfort myself by knowing that although the church is pretty awful its Lord is not."

Then why do you champion the traditions and heritage that is the 'dubious creature' rather than seek your own way to the Lord?
Posted by Desipis, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 2:49:39 PM
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Historical Enlightenment simply means that Christian Faith without reason could not have brought on the Enlightenment that produced the Liberal or Democratic existence that the West now lives under.

St Thomas Aquinas fore-saw this in the 11th Century after agreeing to the Search for Enquiry, peddled through Europe by Christian monks who were influenced by Muslim scholars who still believed in a mixture of Islamism and Socratic Reasoning.

Thus from Aquinas’ thesis grew the Rennaissance, then the Age of Reason and Age of Enlightenment, which in the early stages triggered the English 1688 Glorious Revolution which after rendering religious autocracy to a semblance of its former power, led the way to the Western ruling institutions we now exist under.

The historical tragedy was that while the barbarian Germanic West did greatly profit from Christian leaders like Aquinas, accepting Greek philosophy to balance faith, the Muslims, as the West grew stronger, descended into a Dark Age similar to what the Western Christians had existed in before Aquinas accepted the need for Christian faith to be toned down by reason.

It is so interesting that many liberal Jewish thinkers accept the above, as do most modern Christians and it is a pity that the most warlike persons on both sides today are those that are strictly fundamentalist, not using the pure simplicity of reason as Nelson Mandela has done in South Africa, both he and Bishop Tutu forgiving those who practiced elitist arparthaidism.

Indeed, foregiveness is a mental jewel so precious, and it is said that to find pure reason in Christianity we have to go back to the Sermon on the Mount, whom some say that Socrates the former militarist Hoplite could have preached the same doctrine which hundreds of years later could have found its way into the Great Library of Alexandria where the wise men who influenced the Nazarene Jesus might have learnt their wisdom.
Posted by bushbred, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 5:07:00 PM
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Sells,
"science and technology would have done very nicely without Descartes and Locke ". I think one of the disadvantages of history, including history of ideas (as opposed to much of natural science) is the impossibility of laboratory experiments, to see what would happen if you left out one ingredient. It is hard to tell how 20th century Europe would have looked like without Lenin, Stalin and Hitler.

I certainly cannot imagine how mathematics would look without Descartes' idea of co-ordinates in geometry, and probably the same could be said about his philosophy: For instance, the mind-body dualism served us well for centuries although today we see it as a simplification of a more complex problem, not unlike Newton's physics turned out to be a "simplification" of Einstein's. Nevertheless, I believe without Newton there would not have been an Einstein, without Descartes (and Kant) no contemporary philosophies of science, and the Christian world view (including the variety of theologies associated with it) would not have evolved from its Medieval form.

The "isolation of the individual and fragmentation of community" as you put it is an extreme or degenerate form of what has become the crucial characteristic of the western civilisation: a respect for the individual, or rather person. It somehow expands on the promise "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise. " (Lk 23:43) made to an individual, which, as far as I know, He never made to a community.
Posted by George, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 5:56:46 PM
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Desipis

For all its faults the Church has faithfully told the story of Jesus for 2000 years, even if it has not always 'lived' that story. The Church exists to tell the story of Jesus and the only flaw that would be fatal to the Church would be if it failed to tell the story faithfully and appropriately. The Jesus narrative is so compelling that there will always be people willing to do the Church's work, in spite of its human weakness and failings, just for the sake of telling and hearing once more of the God-man and the injustice that was done to Him and the way that His death gave ultimate meaning to His life.
For many of us who choose to embrace the Church there remains some degree of ambivalence to her and her history but the story is always worth telling.
Posted by waterboy, Tuesday, 2 October 2007 7:20:40 PM
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Religion is hierarchical codification of spirituality.

Corruption.

Enlightenment cannot be explained, dictated nor sermonised. If you need to be told, you wont understand.

A church is the last place to find enlightenment.

Fundamentalists, idealogues and true believers hold onto their illusions for dear life.

Truth is too real for them, too mundane, too scarey to acknowledge and too far beyond their received recipes of consciousness. If its easy, and nice, and all laid out for you, its unlikely to yield enlightenment.

If it requires a suspension of your capacity for logical thought and rational contemplation of the perception that yields a true appreciation of reality... it will never be enlightening.

Logic and reason are the foundations of conceptualisation. Anything short of a rigourous application of those fundamentals of conciousness will yield spiritual nothingness.

Maybe the light will come on in the room, but its still only a room. This is religion.

Letting go is the hardest thing to do. Then one can hope to become enlightened.
Posted by trade215, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 12:24:11 AM
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waterboy,

You seem to have missed my point. You don't need the church to spread the "Good Word". You don't need to tithe to tell the story of Jesus. You don't need to attend mass to be a good Christian.

I can understand the desire to form a community based around common beliefs, however a thorough examination of the church reveals it has little to do with sharing the faith. It is structured around gaining wealth and power for those in charge, and has continuously twisted the message of Jesus to suit it's needs and desires. "Spreading the word" and "charitable" missions are simply methods of gathering new members into the church to increase the wealth, power and influence of the church's elite.

The world would be a better place if Christians would practice their faith independently from any church and the old robed men trying to play god.
Posted by Desipis, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 11:00:31 AM
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Desipis

Perhaps you have not entirely grasped my point. The Church is made up of those who choose to participate in that 'community'. It is not a matter of necessity but choice. What is your motive in 'advising' us to abandon the Church?
As I said the Church is a human institution subject to many of the faults of humanity. Your characterisation of it, however, as essentially motivated by greed and desire for power is not true. That is, while there may be elements of that in the Church, it is not 'characteristic' of the whole Church.
In our society unions play a very important role in ensuring justice prevails in the workplace. The fact that some of them have mixed motives and are tempted to participate in the political power game does not invalidate their essential role in our society. No more do the Church's faults invalidate its role.
There is a naivety about the idea that individuals can each live by their own story. At some level stories must be shared, ie communal. We are social animals. We need 'common stories' in order to make sense of our place in society. Why do you think the Israelis and Palestinians cant get on with each other? What was the basis of apartheid for all those years? Why can't Australias, America's, Canada's indigenous people just simply assimilate into our western culture?
Your suggestion that every individual should be an island of meaning is simply impossible, a recipe for pain, suffering and the deepest form of loneliness imaginable.
The Church might not be perfect but it is a community of purpose and meaning. It does address the most fundamental of human needs.. the need for common understanding and shared purpose.
The story that is not shared is called a delusion and those who suffer from delusions rarely manage to plumb the depths of human experience or live life to the full.
Posted by waterboy, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 6:46:06 PM
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Funguy
I own to taking the Clarke-Leibniz correspondence out of the library and that is as far as I got. However, and others in this thread may correct me, I think that the debate was really between Newton/Locke and Descartes/Leibniz and is fundamental to the establishment of natural science. Descartes believed that clear and certain knowledge could be arrived at by the thinking mind. This was basically because he clung to a by then outmoded idea that God had planted innate ideas in us. Since God was the creator he must have ideas about what he was going to create and I think Descartes thought that we had access to those ideas via rationality. This means that you could be an armchair scientist and deduce the ways of the world without actually going out and observing it. Such a mode led Leibniz to construct a theory of the solar system which relied on vortices that moved the planets. You can see Newton’s view of that in the beginning of his final edition of the General Scholium of the Principia. On the other hand Clarke, taking Newton and Locke’s side argued that the only clear and certain ideas were formal, i.e. mathematical and if you want to know about objects in the world you had to actually do experiments and observe and induce a mathematical description. This knowledge was only ever probable and could be overturned by more observations. As you know Newton/Locke an Clarke won the day and Leibniz’s physics have been abandoned. Einstein’s thought experiments seem to belie this scheme so I guess we have ended up with a strange mixture
Posted by Sells, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 7:09:14 PM
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waterboy, thank you for this excellent defence of the Church's raison d'etre, and Desipis for your constructive criticism which I find mostly justified in spite of your exaggerations. I certainly agree that "you don't need to attend mass to be a good Christian", nevertheless I think there are situations when a "global" Church and mass attendance can serve a purpose which a local church/community with ad hoc celebrations can not.

For instance, during the Stalinist times in my native Slovakia no gathering of people - be it a church community or stamp collectors - could exist without being directly supervised by the party. However, they did not dare to close churches, which on Sundays were not only packed but often a small crowd extended to the square outside the church. That was the case at least in a larger city, where you could attend anonymously. You were jeopardising your job, and role in the society, if you were seen to have personal contacts with a priest. So for us then it was the global Church, the anonymous, "abstract" community of believers, than one felt belonging to, rather than an actual community where one knew and communicated with each other. It was an experience that I grew up in, with no RE at school, only long discussions with my father, that today makes it difficult for me to understand the mental state of people like Richard Dawkins on one hand, or emotional and irrational Christians on the other.

Yes, I agree, my experience is rather exceptional: the (Catholic) Church has learned how to flourish under physical persecution but as we see they still have to learn how to flourish, or at least survive, under psychological "persecution" and ridicule.
Posted by George, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 10:26:08 PM
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Sells, I am no historian of science but what you describe as the Newton/Locke vs Descartes/Leibniz debate seems to correspond to two (complementary) "pillars" of modern scientific research: observation, experimentation, data collection on one hand, and speculation, theory (which, at least in physics, is mostly in mathematical language, through mathematical models) on the other hand.

The one is almost useless without the other, although pure (speculative) mathematics has also its merits, see Eugene Wigner's often quoted "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." So although Newton/Locke seems to have prevailed over Descartes/Leibnitz, it is not a clear cut victory: much of contemporary cosmology and theoretical physics is pure speculation (string theory, multiverse etc.), where the plausibility criteria are only mathematical consistency and compatibility with earlier well established theories (TOE) since direct observational and experimental verification is impossible because of the very nature of phenomena studied/described.

Also Leibniz's relational theory of space - rather than Newton's "absolute container" theory, expanded upon by Kant, as I understand it - turned out to be more compatible with Einstein's model(s) of space-time.
Posted by George, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 10:28:59 PM
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George.
Ah the modesty. “I am no historian of science but” . Your contribution to this site has been remarkable particularly your introduction of the concept the introduction of "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics which had me thinking for weeks.
Posted by Sells, Wednesday, 3 October 2007 11:14:49 PM
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A question to our erudite contributors.

In reading the Translator's Introduction of Aristotle's Politics ( Penguin Classics) he talks of the staff of lecturers assisting Aristotle at the Lyceum, and that were expected to teach a variety of subjects; theoretical and practical. He related the distinction between theoretike and praktike was not at all as between theory and practice, but rather two separate branches of knowledge. The former ( theology, metaphysics, astronomy, mathematics, biology, botany, meteorology) being truly philosophical and truly scientific being based on theoria; observation plus contemplation.

What role is there for contemplation in a world where meaning and purpose are detached from measurable substance. Is contemplation merely charged up observation for us to be enlightened with facts?
Posted by boxgum, Thursday, 4 October 2007 11:34:12 AM
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waterboy,

I get the impression we're using different meanings of "The Church"; mine being focuses on the politicized administration while yours is inclusive of the wider community. My points on the church apply to the unions as well. The general notion of people working together for better conditions (or to share their faith) is good. However once that evolved into a centralised, political hierarchy I think both the church and the unions started to lose their way. The powers lost touch with the need for the masses to play a role and started dictating from above how things should run. The workers lost the ability to influence their conditions and the Christians no longer gained the 'spiritual nourishment' from challenging and hence better understanding the foundations of their religion. In essence, the focus shifted to the dogmatic 'what' from the enlightening 'why?'.

In the same way Discartes and Locke were critical of their assumptions, so too I think Christians need to be critical of their's. This includes their devotion to the political hierarchy of the church. Consider the epistemology of morality; what source of extra knowledge do the priest and bishops have that makes their moral judgment superior? I would consider it unwise to commit to a faith without understanding the meaning and it's impact on my morality. I would consider it folly indeed to grant another human the power to decide for me, what is right and what is wrong.

George,

I'm not attempting to defend the Stalinist regime, however I'm curious why you consider blind devotion to one organisation as superior to blind devotion to another. Given the chance, the Church would be just as draconian and dictatorial as the Stalinists. One only has to look at the influence the Catholic Church has on sex/abortion laws and education in African and south east Asian Christian countries.

I dare say that your religious upbringing, through discussions with your father, has lead to your apparent balanced understanding of your faith, rather than the extreme fundamentalist style that a more 'organised' force-fed education may have produced.
Posted by Desipis, Thursday, 4 October 2007 11:40:42 AM
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Not having had access to this thread for the past few days I am entering at a point where the discussion, as discussions tend to do, has veered a little from the article. However, it is the article itself I wish to address.

First: the term "The Enlightenment" is one (along with "The Dark Ages" et al) no longer used by historians. The tendency is to refer more specifically to chronology i.e. The Seventeenth Century, the Eighteenth Century etc.

It would be disingenuous to pretend ignorance of the term but I think you will find that it did not encompass the 16th century.

The period from the seventeenth century onwards is termed the Early Modern era...and yes, the persons whom you mention played a large part in the nomenclature of the era.

However, to suggest that theology took a back seat during this period, and that historians work in some kind of vacuum, all unaware of the theological underpinnings to the development of society, is not simply erroneous but shows an ignorance of which the kindest interpretation would be that of naivete. The unkindest interpretation would be of arrogance.

The theological debates and upheavals of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were monumental. These did not spring up from the discussions by the 10-15% of the educated elite who could read the works of Hobbes, Locke, Diderot, Descartes etc. etc., but began when a former mistress of Henry the Eighth introduced her sister to Court in England a century before. Societal, philosophical and theological changes were symbiotic.

As to the world getting along quite nicely without John Locke...I imagine that millions of Americans throughout the centuries would disagree wholeheartedly!
Posted by Romany, Thursday, 4 October 2007 8:48:34 PM
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Desipis,
it was not my intention to contradict you, only to point to a situation where your sweeping statements would not apply. Please quote me exactly, where I said that "blind devotion to one organisation (apparently the RC Church) is superior to blind devotion to another (apparently a Communist Party)".

I do not know what was your experience with the RC Church that is comparable with the situation I was trying to describe, but if I knew it would help me to understand your need to make such sweeping accusations. Can you name a twentieth century Catholic country where it was because of the hierarchy's totalitarian power that one had to wait 20 years (as was my case) to find an opportunity to escape that country?

The sentence "given the chance, the Church would be just as draconian and dictatorial as the Stalinists" is, of course, unverifiable, highly offensive and disrespectful to the tens of millions of Communism's victims, and can appeal only to people with an a priori bias: I see it as a statement about you, not about Stalinism (which you almost certainly never experienced) or the Church.

In countries like Australia the RC Church lobbies for its view of what is good for the society. Other groups have other lobbyists with their ideas, some with a weaker some with a stronger influence than the Church. You are right, that her teaching about sex needs modernisation (hopefully "Deus Caritas Est" was a start), and that they had a particularly strong influence "on sex/abortion laws and education in African and south east Asian Christian countries".

That was not the case in Europe and Australia, the result being that, as it appears, Europe (and perhaps also Australia) is looking towards a future with fewer secular humanists and Christians (both of the church going and wishy-washy types) and more religious, or at least cultural, Muslims. This is an unintended consequence of the Catholic as well as secular lobbyists' visions some decades ago. A demographic fact which the Europeans have to accept and adjust to, whether they like it or not.
Posted by George, Friday, 5 October 2007 2:36:33 AM
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Hi Sells,

I must say that you writing is sort of growing on me. I still disagree with some of your basic assumptions (and the conclusions you draw from them), but your work makes me think about and question my own assumptions – and what more could I ask, really?

Now, I’m certainly not qualified in theology, philosophy, or history (although I’m an enthusiastic amateur in all three areas), so I feel a bit out of depth in this discussion. However, I thought I might mention a book I’ve just finished reading, which I think relates to your piece about the enlightenment and secularisation. Its called “The death of Christian Britain” by Callum Brown. The book suggests that contrary to the common idea that religion has been in steady decline since the Enlightenment, in fact public religiosity remained remarkably strong right through to the 1950s. It was sometime in the 1960s that religion went into a sudden decline in Britain (and he mentions in passing that similar trends are evident in other nations such as Australia).

Brown deploys an impressive array of evidence to support his hypothesis (at least it impressed the hell out of this bumbling amateur), and although I found the book heavy going, there’s some good stuff buried amongst the “cultural studies” jargon.

I just thought that if you haven’t come across this book already, you might find it interesting.

Cheers!

Rhys.
Posted by Rhys Probert, Friday, 5 October 2007 8:25:58 AM
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Romany.

Thanks for your clarification of the names of eras.
You said:

“However, to suggest that theology took a back seat during this period, and that historians work in some kind of vacuum, all unaware of the theological underpinnings to the development of society,”

I certainly did not suggest that theology took a back seat in the early modern period, in fact it was all about theology. All of the major players, at least in England were deeply involved. I was speaking in ignorance about Australian academe but I do wonder about the neglect of a sympathetic study of theology in our universities and how this affects our understanding of the history of Europe.

Rhys.
I have not come across that book. There is a danger of talking so blankly about the rise an fall of religion, that is why I do not trust sociological studies to tell me anything interesting about it. I have argued before that Christianity is not a religion but in fact the denial of all religion even thought it looks like a religion smells like a religion and quacks like a religion.

George.
Your post about the Leibniz/ Clarke debate got me thinking about the application of mathematics in science. Being bad or badly taught at maths I opted for biology, the soft option. In biology you are dealing with matter that has been the subject of evolution for millions of years so the complexity is astounding. In this case maths is of little use except in very defined and simple situations or in statistical studies. Some years ago there was much effort in producing mathematical models of the vibration of the Organ of Corti mostly to little profit. Then we discovered that the outer hair cells acted like mechanical amplifiers, a completely unexpected outcome. My point is that maths is central to physics but not so central in the biological sciences
Posted by Sells, Friday, 5 October 2007 10:34:16 AM
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George,

I got a bit carried away with my comparison between the church and the communist party, and I apologize if I offended anyone. What I was trying to point out was the similarities between the two, in that they are both organisation trying to 'help' society based on their own idealogical dogmatic view of the world. It's not an accusation against individuals within the church, but an observation of the inevitable human behavior within any power structure.

You're quite right, that for an individual seeking to practice Christianity the centralized Church provided a 'safe' environment to do so. However I also think it's worth noting that it was the political power of the church that communists fear and is the primary cause of their religious intolerance.

As to your limitation to the 20th century, looking back further in history you'll find plenty of atrocities committed in the name of the Church, using the same theological basis as exists today. The primary difference being not a change in the religion, but in the 'enlightenment' of society. It's my understanding that it is this erosion of power and challenge to the Church that enabled people to challenge the religion itself during the social change of the 60's, that Rhys refers to.

As for my own history with the church, I've grown up in Australia and enjoyed the life in 'the lucky country'. What I consider one of the few negative impacts on my childhood was the influence of the church on the adults (parents, teachers, etc) that I had contact with. Being a free thinking and bright child I often challenged the cause of the church and as a result was punished and called, quite literally, 'evil'. In addition there's the thousands of hours of education 'wasted' on religious indoctrination, rather than invested in skills and knowledge based in reality or spent simply enjoying childhood.

Sells,

I've heard the Atheism is a religion argument before, however I've never heard the "Christianity isn't" line. I might have to see if I can find the article in which you bring that up.
Posted by Desipis, Friday, 5 October 2007 12:16:32 PM
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Sells, o.k., I stand corrected. However, I still have difficulty with your wish for a "sympathetic" study of theology in relation to the Early Modern period.

To understand the philosophy and theology of the era it is necessary to have cognizance of that which went before and shaped the age. Thus the study of the works of Martin Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Wyclif etc.is intrinsic. The great transubstatiation debate of the sixteenth century,The Council of Trent, Ignatius and the Jesuits - these and many more aspects of theology shaped thought.

Although many lay people regard the Witchcraft trials as an obscure footnote in history the decimation brought about by this interpretation of theology helped changed the shape of Europe: - famously, in Germany, entire villages were left with no female inhabitants. Add to this the Inquisition and one begins to see how the age gave rise to different ideologies.

Then, one must come to grips with the Protestant, Anglican, Puritan, Methodist et.al. dialogues on-going throughout the Seventeenth century.

To have a "sympathetic" approach to theology and its teachings therefore throws up more questions: to which branch of theology? Do we accept one branch as being "correct" and all the others as "wrong"? Do we become sympathetic to Western or Eastern theology (remember the Catholic Church in Greece, Turkey and other Eastern countries still held great sway). Do we ourselves take sides in the multiple debates that framed the age? And, if so, how does this impinge upon our studies in relation to all other points of view.

I vehemetly disagree that a "sympathetic" study of theology in this era is either desirable or, indeed, possible. The best any historian can do is to gain understanding of these differing ideologies and stay firmly subjective.
Posted by Romany, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:01:22 PM
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Coming in on this debate at a late stage in order to follow-up Desipis who wrote:
"The "Enlightenment" is part of the age a reason, an age where we learned to challenge all and any assumptions."

Actually some centuries before the Enlightenment the Greeks (ancient) were hard at it challenging "all and any assumptions" in their day and age, and with an unsurpassed intellectual rigour.

Particularly interesting is how the Greeks grappled with the problem of getting a handle on reality. They realised that methodologies such as "logic" are useless without fixed points of reference. In other words, "use of reason" cannot function in a vacuum, there needs to be a conceptual infrastructure already present.

For example, the much-vaunted "rationality" and "scientific method" are useless if they are not rooted in honesty and integrity, which in themselves are contingent upon a moral and stable society. Try basing the "use of reason" on the shifting sands of situation ethics and see where you end up.

Examples abound in the scientific world of reason being used without reference to moral values. Statistics can be made to prove anything you want, all in the name of reason. Data can be fabricated to "prove" the theory of evolution such as in the case of Piltdown man. Unspeakably inhumane experiments can be carried out on human beings to further aims of medical science when the Hippocratic oath has been abandoned. Weapons can be invented with the capacity to maim which go far beyond the legitimate excuse of self-defence. The list goes on and on.

Ironically, certain styles of education that evolved from the Enlightenment and which are still very much current at the present time are responsible for a lopsided emphasis on "rationality" and "facts" to the detriment of character-building. Such a minimalist and utilitarian approach has ensured that Greek (and to a lesser extent Latin) has been banished to the extreme fringes of education, and the multi-faceted richness of Greek writings with their deep exploration of the human person are a closed book for the masses. Great pity.
(to be continued)
Posted by apis, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:11:37 PM
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(continued)
The following quote that I came across quite by coincidence seems apposite to the topic. Unfortunately at this stage I have not been able to find the name of the author.
Entitled The Sleep of Reason it says:
"Modernity speaks of the eighteenth century Enlightenment as the “Age of Reason”. But proponents of the Enlightenment were often dubious about the ability of the human mind to understand man and nature and more interested in limiting the scope of rational activity than increasing it. Much of their labor ended by declaring the universe to be the mere plaything of the human will and passion, while practical backing for many of the Enlightenment’s goals came from strange combinations of mystical speculation and calls for the exercise of Machtpolitik.
Posted by apis, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:13:55 PM
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Romany.
By “sympathetic” I mean that some things have to be accepted on trust in order to proceed in any intellectual endeavour. While it may seem that this is not needed in natural science, in that hierarchies of knowledge are built on firm foundations, this is not the case. It is rather the case that the foundations are more like piles driven into a swamp that become firm enough to support other structures. There is no bed rock. Foundationalism has had a hard time of it in theology as well, there is no way we can build a rational structure from the ground up. Anselm coined the phrase “faith seeking understanding” to describe the discipline of theology. For example one must accept that God has revealed himself as Father , Son and Holy Spirit, or as Barth would have it “The revealer, revealed, revealing”. This is dogma in a similar way that the theory of evolution has become dogma for biology. This is not to say that it is suspended in mid air, with no visible means of support, there is a rational basis, the piles are driven into the swamp.

Academic theology is not as denominational as you suppose. At Murdoch Catholics take the same lectures as Protestants. This is not to say that there are no denominational differences, but at the level of academe, these tend to be minimal. For example at the Melbourne College of Divinity Catholics and the Uniting Church share facilities and teaching in a very peaceful fashion.

Apsis.
There is no doubt that the philosophers of the early modern age had an over optimistic understanding of the power of reason. Reason in maths was fine but how do you decide whether to follow the Duke of Monmouth or Charles II
Posted by Sells, Friday, 5 October 2007 1:51:31 PM
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Although could suggest how the commentaries give great insight into our Western progress since Christianity was lifted out of the Dark Ages not long after the turn of the first Millineum AD - do find that as with the RC Church, vey little credit is given to St Thomas Aquinas who heralded the change with his acceptance of earthly progress as being impossible without the infusion with faith of both philosophical and scientific reasoning.

Further, pleased to have John Locke given mention as one who gave prelude to the American War of Indpendence with his statement after the English 1688 Glorious Revolution that any proleriat has the right to rise up against autocratic elitism - as such.
Posted by bushbred, Friday, 5 October 2007 2:06:25 PM
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Sells,

You have managed to rattle my cage again. This time on the subject of biology and mathematics.

You cant study populations without counting. Statistics is fundamental to the study of behaviour. Calculus is fundamental to understanding nephrology. Hydraulics (physics with strong mathematical underpinnings) is surely necessary in vascular studies. And so on and so on.

Although we are still a fair way from connecting all the dots there is a growing sense that the mathematical study of complexity is going to make significant contributions to our study of biological systems.
Again it is a fairly long chain of argument but surely an understanding of chemistry is fundamental to understanding physiology and metabolism.An understanding of physics is fundamental to understanding chemistry and maths to understanding physics.

If studies in symmetry do not make a major contribution to biology in the future then I will eat my calculator. It will only happen, however,when biologists with facility in algebra bring those skills to bear on their work.

Is there no relation between the study of neural networks and our understanding of the nervous system?

My medical friends assure me that those aspiring to study medicine should skip biology and concentrate on chemistry, physics and maths. What does that say about biology?

I would venture to suggest that those biologists who have no need of mathematics in their work simply have not YET made the necessary connections to bring mathematical studies to bear on their work. (The fact that some attempts to do this have failed hardly invalidates the enterprise.) Perhaps that is because so many biologists dropped out of maths too early.

This thread, focussed as it is on theolgy, history and philosophy, revolves around a discussion of the likes of Newton, Lebniz and Newton. . . Mathematicians. There is something about the 'rediscovery' of mathematics and the historical shift commonly designated the 'enlightenment'.

Philolaus, a student of Pythagorus, said it well when he said "Were it not for number and its nature, nothing that exists would be clear to anybody either in itself or in its relation to other things.. ."
Posted by waterboy, Friday, 5 October 2007 2:28:27 PM
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Oops.. I should proof read my posts more carefully that should be "Newton, Lebniz and Descartes"
Posted by waterboy, Friday, 5 October 2007 2:31:21 PM
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Romany,

I think Sells has a point, in that someone with a Christian background and strong theological understanding is more likely to have insight into the many theological views and their significant impact through European history. That said, any sympathetic view holds the potential for biased influence and hence any analysis or conclusions should be done from a neutral stance.

apis,

I agree that the "Enlightenment" could certainly be called the "Re-enlightenment". Logic and reason are tools used to link or create relationships between different concepts or ideas. Yes, you need to start somewhere, make some assumption to seed the process with an idea(s). However in order to have a meaningful discussion or form a worthwhile argument, it would be best to make assumptions that a reasonable to all involved. This is where epistemology comes into it, in identifying the ideal 'pure' basis for arguments, an assumption that should be common to everyone.

Your examples of 'bad' science simply highlight the assumption of the absolute value of science. It is the failure to challenge this assumption that leads to scientific work that can cause harm.

The common misapplication of statistics is not the fault of the discipline itself, but of those that misuse it. In the same way that common misquoting of the bible wouldn't imply the bible is at fault. When properly applied (through thorough logic and reasoning, challenging assumptions, etc), statistics do provide evidence of 'truth'.

I guess to summaries my view on morals would be to suggest that they represent empirical knowledge that has evolved over the generations that can be better understood with a rational/logical approach, rather than merely accepted as absolute truth.
Posted by Desipis, Friday, 5 October 2007 3:42:09 PM
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Waterboy.
I think you are overoptimistic about the power of maths in the biological sciences. It reminds me of a similar optimism in Locke’s time, after the dazzle of Newton’s Principia many got on the bandwagon of maths, thinking that the certainty it offered in all manner of fields would bring in a new age. Samuel Clarke prefaces his first Boyle lecture with his desire for his demonstration of the being and attributes of God be as mathematical as possible. The result was unoriginal rubbish. But you have made me pause. A colleague of mind who has an engineering and therefore mathematical background did some work years ago on the phenomenon of temporary threshold shift produced in the human subject (himself) after exposure to loud sound. His mathematical analysis of this phenomenon was groundbreaking. However, a similar attempt at modelling the behaviour of a single outer hair cell has limped along and finally, I think, petered out without result. There are many biological phenomena that do not yield to a mathematical treatment. They are just too complicated, they contain unimaginable processes.

But having said that I rue my poor mathematical background that I think has limited my perception of certain phenomena.

While we are on the subject of reason I have been reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose justice? Which rationality”. He makes the point early on that it is not a matter of rationality but rationalities. Rationalities cannot be divorced from the historical traditions that nurtured them. Reason was not invented by Enlightenment figures, Medieval philosophy and theology were eminently rational, that was their whole point. As has been pointed out, Aquinas used Aristotelian logic. What we have in the early 18th century is a rationality without a tradition, it is a word that is used to bludgeon every one else senseless while having itself feet of clay.

Again we come up against propaganda, it was not the “age of reason” it was the age when reason was disconnected from any historical tradition that engendered it.
Posted by Sells, Saturday, 6 October 2007 12:22:11 PM
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Desipis,
Again, I have to agree with most of what you say. I am also aware that yours was not such an exceptional experience with the way the RC Church was handling its mission before Vatican II. No doubt, Vatican II was a necessity, the question is only whether some people in their resentment of the past are not in danger of advocating the “throwing out the (2000 years old) baby with the dirty water“.

Through centuries the Church was spreading not only what you call “idealogical dogmatic views” (and worse) but for many people it also served as a psychological haven. My grandmother, who had hard times during WWI, spoke a lot about her priest, how he helped her, and it was clear to me that what she was getting in the confessional was something that today we would call psychotherapeutic counselling. However, gradually the pastoral practice became so much divorced from the psychological needs of a modern individual that Vatican II became an absolute necessity. Today the priest can at best be a counsellor-amateur, and he is, or should be, aware of his limitations. I was always wondering why the newsletter of my Melbourne parish contained advertisements for Catholic tradesmen but none for Catholic professional counsellors.

What you describe as your childhood experience is certainly not something the Church should be proud of, though I sometimes try to understand it through the following parable: A “ thinking and bright child” (or technically unsophiscated adult) might ask questions about how his TV set is functioning, going beyond what is in the users‘ manual. The answer, “you first have to learn about Maxwell’s equations of electromagnetism“ would not be very helpfull, and the technician or salesperson probably does not know much about Maxwell’s equations anyhow. Only the good teacher, who should have a better knowledge of physics than the salesperson, can try to bring his knowledge down to the child‘s level, which, however depends on his age, education, inquisitivness etc. so it is not an easy task. (ctd)
Posted by George, Saturday, 6 October 2007 9:11:41 PM
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Sells

Iguess it depends what you expect maths todo foryou.Mathematics provides a language,abstract concepts and procedures for manipulating symbols.Its about transforming and matching patterns.Inits pure form its goal is not directed towards explaining thisor that phenomenon.It isa self-extending language whose sole purpose isto explore the imaginary world ofall possible patterns.Its the Glass Bead Game.
Biological systems,however complex they mightbe,exhibit certain patterns that fall within the range ofall possible patterns.A biologist with a very small repertoire of mathematical patterns at his/her disposal can hardly be expected to make the connections.The curious thing about many biological systems that are underpinned by hugely complex mechanisms is that they often exhibit simple regularities at the'macro'level of observable phenomenon.Life would not be possible if not for this stange quirk of complexity.Consider the phenomenal complexity of the human genome.DNA is complex enough.The incredible interaction of'genes'so-called which determine the mix of proteins that can/are produced in every cell produces a picture of'unimaginable complexity'and yet at the level of observable phenomena there are many simple regularities such as having two eyes,four limbs,five senses and so on.This meta-pattern of simple,regular patterns emerging'over the top of'immense complexity is now on the mathematicians radar.
A typical biologists question is"How can I predict the behaviour of a certain biological system".If the mathematical answer to this is you cant because the calculation requires infinite knowledge or infinite calculation time then,on the face of it you have a system that is not amenable to mathematical study.But,in fact,you may have proved that predictability is not a property of the system and your question actually is answered.
What story the mathematician can tell you is very much dependent on the questions youare asking.If the explanation of Divine justice begins with the mathematical study of quanta then I grant you that enterprise is doomed.But observe thesimple regularities ofthe business.Divine justice is summarised very simply inthe story ofthe one truly human man.Hereis mathematics inits most elegant form.The complexity is completely stripped away,achild can understand it.The culmination of the whole of creation,inall its complexity,is rendered comprehensible to all.Not predictable,not amenable to manipulation but comprehensible.
What was your question again?
Posted by waterboy, Saturday, 6 October 2007 9:14:33 PM
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(ctd) When you have to explain not “how to make the best of your TV” but “how to live your Christian life” this is even harder. So many teachers chose, and some still choose, the shortcut “just follow the instructions, and do not ask questions about things you cannot, and do not have to, understand“. Of course, this is a simplification, but I hope you understand what I mean.

Since Dawkins it has become fashionable to call RE “religious indoctrination”.

I have to confess that I was also indoctrinated, not only into a Christian outlook but also to three languages (that I allegedly spoke at the age of five), into counting apples and bunnies before I have developed any knowledge or critical thinking about mathematics, languages, religion etc. However, I am grateful to my parents and the school for having given me these skills at an early age when one is not yet critical, but easily learns new “propensities”.

Teaching children facts (or dogmas) without teaching them how to think about them can be compared to feeding a computer with data without giving it a program to run them on: raw data without a program are useless, but so is a computer program without input data. Educators (not only RE) in the past sinned on the side of “data without program” whereas today it is often the other way around: teaching children to think critically without giving them enough facts (which includes moral guidelines and dogmas i.e. symbolic facts) to think about.

You are right about the communists copying the organisational and other external structures from the Catholic Church. Lenin himself wrote somewhere that the final showdown will be between Communism and Catholicism. What I was objecting to was what I saw as you equating the two institutions: airplanes and birds have common external features, nevertheless the airplanes constructors did not (and could not) copy the biological functioning of the bird.

Sells (and others)
it is very interesting what you are saying about mathematics, unfortunately I have to wait 24 hours before I can offer my own modest contribution.
Posted by George, Saturday, 6 October 2007 9:15:28 PM
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George,

I don't think I've been critical of the local parishes (or local priest). I think it was the centralised power structure of the church caused (as you put it) the pastoral practice to become divorced from the people's needs.

In reference to your TV example, I think a common, and quite reasonable response would include an "I don't know". Yet this seems to be something that is quite uncommon when discussing religion. Most people, seem quite unwilling to admit that there is something they don't know in matters of faith, presumably because this would weaken their ability to push their views on morality. They don't want to lose that power to control others.

The simple fact is that there is no absolute correct way to live a Christian life. It's all a matter of how one interprets the teachings of Jesus, or rather how one interprets the translations of the recordings of the re-tellings of the stories of the teachings of Jesus. The correct answer is "we don't really know". An organisation or person, no matter how well studied, having the arrogance to claim that their view is right to the exclusion of all others is just ridiculous.

I wasn't referring to RE classes when I said "indoctrinated"; they seemed reasonably based in history and ethics, although with strong faith based overtones. It was the masses, liturgies and sacraments that I object to. The meaning behind coercing a mere child into religious 'confirmation' is lost on me.

I do agree with you that there is and has been a lack of balance in the education system. There is the need to teach both reasoning and facts, and including the recognition that either one can be learnt through the other.

As for Communists vs Catholics: They are have centralised political structures based on a philosophy of improving society by imposing that philosophy on all aspects of life, through force if necessary, and have a history of appalling and devastating policies. Can you explain the fundamental difference between the two?
Posted by Desipis, Sunday, 7 October 2007 1:49:54 AM
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Just happens that I've always felt quite uncomfortable with people's need for worship and for that matter linear narratives. i.e. I cannot comprehend enlightened awareness as a narrative not simply because love is the essential feature of intrinsic motivation, but because love always maintains critical functions. Worship is a closed control system and always maladaptive, fragile, inhibited, stressed and a love free zone.

For so many people our human mind has this tendency to think with finite closed systems and impose this notion onto everything. The problem here is one of the deductive mindset where it tries to solve but makes things worse because it doesn’t comprehend that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates. Certainly this worship is a pathway to disenchantment.

Isn't it much better to build up from some observed facts using induction .... where it is find and ye shall seek. Isn't this where true imagination is found as you comprehend infinity and infinite possibilities?

My question for Peter is if as a theologian and scientist you believed that a certain effect had no material cause, would you then ever be motivated or capable enough to find a cause and comprehend some enlightened awareness?
Posted by Keiran, Sunday, 7 October 2007 8:58:10 AM
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Waterboy.
I do follow your argument especially about mathematical patter. However I am not convinced that things like symmetry etc are of much used when you are trying to found out the mechanism by which, for example silencing RNA is incorporated into the mechanism of the cell so as to turn off the production of a particular protein. So much of molecular biology now is plain description so that means are found to make certain things happen that we want to happen. Thus the inductive method is tops. Trying to model such a system a priori is difficult because it contains unimaginable processes that will always escape the modeller. When I was at the University of Sussex there was a group that tried all sorts of mathematical descriptions of the simplest biological processes. They were generally figures of derision being seen to be ideologically driven.

George.
I like what you said about the change between data with no program and program with no data to describe educational practice particularly in RE. Hauerwas says that students cannot make up their own minds because they have no minds to make up. His aim is to teach them to first think like him, then they can go their own way. Another criticism of “the age of reason” there is only your own voice.
Posted by Sells, Sunday, 7 October 2007 10:00:19 AM
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Sells,

I agree with you totally that trying to create mathematical models of biological systems 'a-priori', as you say, can be quite futile.
What I am saying is that a facility with mathematics will greatly extend the biologists repertoire of recognisable patterns and relationships between patterns. Sometimes it will give you predictive power, sometimes it wont. History should tell you that time and again scientists of all sorts, armed with solid mathematical training, have found mathematical patterns even where they least expected them.
I do not go along, however, with Voltaires optimism when he says "What our eyes and mathematics demonstrate we must take as true. In all the rest we can only say: we are igorant." This reflects the guiding principle of the enlightenment that human reason alone can deliver true knowledge.
On the contrary when we limit ourselves to that which can be 'seen' or demonstrated mathematically then we remain in ignorance. These offer us no reason for being, no dignity, no freedom, no humanity and no wisdom.
The enlightenment represents a paradigm shift away from the idea that knowledge derives from some external source and without doubt the rediscovery of scientific scepticism has contributed to the rapid expansion of knowledge of the the last few hundred years. I agree with you, however, that it has probably driven us backwards in our appreciation of justice, wisdom and our sense of the sacred.
There are, however, a few theologians who seem to me to be pointing a way forward that has some real promise. I am particulary inspired by McFague's "Metaphorical Theology", Tracy's "Analogical Imagination" and Ricoeur's narrative theology. They suggest approaches to the sacred that are contemporary, intelligent, constructive and sensitive to our deeper traditions.
Posted by waterboy, Sunday, 7 October 2007 1:07:19 PM
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Could believe that the discussions while accepting reason, have failed to promote the importance of as both Aquinas and Kant wrote so much about, the importance of faith and reason working together.

No doubt both Aquinas and Kant, even though hundreds of years apart, while establishing the dire necessity for faith to be tempered by reason, still found it difficult to prove a reason for God.

Maybe it is when too much science is brought into it?

Possibly the term Grace is missing, a feeling hard to talk about, and one who has experienced the feeling after the death of a loved one .....?
Posted by bushbred, Sunday, 7 October 2007 4:33:30 PM
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Sells,
Of course, “maths is central to physics but not so central in the biological science”. However, I also sympathise with waterboy saying “there is a growing sense that the mathematical study of complexity is going to make significant contributions to our study of biological systems“, although as a “mathematical Platonist“ (where I am in company with many famous 20th century mathematicians, religious believers or unbelievers) I would not place maths at the end of the chain biology-chemistry-physics but above, or at least outside of it.

Having had no formal RE, mathematics or mathematical physics became the “rational catalyst” of my faith because I realised that in our days not only faith was “seeking understanding” (was it Anselm, or Augustine who first formulated this?) but also science, notably cosmology and nuclear physics (QM, string theory etc.) are in search of philosophical understanding.

When physics “seeks understanding” the crucial role of mathematics is obvious, and Platonists claim that it lives in a world of its own: it is a difference whether you say “photons, quarks exist“ or “Hilbert spaces, the Mandelbrot set exist”. So it is easier to accept also a third kind of existence, namely of a spiritual world referred to by the statement “God exists”, a world that can be reached neither by science nor by maths.

As a working mathematician, sometimes I felt I was discovering things, sometimes I felt I was creating things. Sometimes mathematics felt like really being just “out there”, sometimes it felt like famous mathematicians created it, sometimes I even felt I was contributing myself.

This helped me to understand also, that although as a Christian I believe there is a spiritual world “out there” that the human condition is dependent on (the “God created man” feeling), sometimes however I feel that what we can grasp of this existence depends on the human condition (the “man created God” feeling) or even just on my personal “I and Thou” (Martin Buber) approach to Him.

Sells, I hope you are not horrified by my amateur “natural theology” but I think I better stop.
Posted by George, Monday, 8 October 2007 12:57:19 AM
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Desipis,
The “fundamental difference between Catholicism and Communism“ is clear to anybody who himself/herself experienced Communism, or understands the difference between what the Church taught through centuries (as often distinct from what they practised) and what Lenin taught. It was certainly not the political but the spiritual power of the (underground) Church that Communists feared.

As to their methods, there are, of course, similarities, because one is a plastic (godless) replica of the other. You have a similar difference between a patient having his leg amputated without an anaesthetic in 21st century Australia and in Medieval Europe: Whereas the first case would be an outrageous medical practice, the second one was something quite common in those days. You obtain another measure of the difference when you compare the number of people wanting to escape the Communist rule to live in a “free” country where the Church had an influence you disliked so much, with the number of people wanting to escape in the opposite direction, e.g. from Australia to the Soviet Union.

Let me repeat, there is much to the point in your criticism whether aimed at the Church locally or at its centralised “power“. As already mentioned, all my RE came from my father who - when I asked about something the (marx-leninist) teacher said about religion, Church etc. - never reacted with “the teacher is wrong, the truth is this” but tried to explain that the issue was much more complicated. A brief “I do not really know“ would certainly not have satisfied me. Perhaps this “indoctrination”, which helped me to see some of the problems in their complexity (yes, in the unconscious background, also liturgy and sacraments played their roles), makes me so irritated when somebody utters sweeping statements about the 2000 years old Institution, be they positive or negative.

To summarise: All I wanted to point out, while accepting your criticism, was that the Church can be seen and evaluated from different angles, points of view, different personal experiences and emotional dispositions, but always in their proper temporal and cultural context.
Posted by George, Monday, 8 October 2007 1:00:02 AM
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I think waterboy has made his point.

Anselm is famous for his “faith seeking understanding”. This was a key axiom for Karl Barth who had to turn his back on modernist philosophy in order to write his dogmatics.

I am a bit worried about George’s Platonist tendencies. We live at the end of centuries long history in which universals have been well and truly brought down to earth. If that had no happened with Ockham and Bacon then the scientific revolution would never have gotten underway. There is nothing “out there” in Christianity, certainly not in some ideal Platonic space. The whole point of the history of Israel and the incarnation of the Word is that Christianity happens “down here”, as I keep saying, the medium of revelation is human history, that is what the bible is all about, obviously.

If there is no “out there” in the spatial realm there is a “out then” in the temporal. The spatial orientation of much medieval (that word again) theology is now understood to be a mistake. This is a large part of the crumbling of the medieval world brought about by the early astronomers. It is now agreed by most commentators that the tension in the bible is a temporal and not a spatial tension, it is not “here-out there” but “now-then”. This is most obvious in the gospels but also present in the Hebrew scriptures. The kingdom of God is an earthly reality that is even now glimmering on the horizon and is present proleptically at every celebration of the Eucharist. The idea of progress is the secularised version of this but is brought about by our means rather than God’s. Now I had better stop in case I have insulted your intelligence.

This thread is coming to an end and has been the most interesting yet. Most of the contributors have been polite and this has made all the difference. I had gotten to the stage where I ignored this page because it was just full of abuse. Thank you for a brilliant thread.
Posted by Sells, Monday, 8 October 2007 9:23:15 AM
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Keiran

The linearity of narrative is not really the point. That is simply the skeleton upon which the flesh of meaning may hang. Without the skeleton the flesh is formless. A narrative may be one-dimensional and empty but it may also connect with the universal patterns of human existence. If it does connect with experience and prompt one to re-imagine ones being then its linearity, having done its work, ceases to be the point. The 'leap of imagination' which connects images, sounds, events and textures into 'linear', causal chains that we might call narratives is but the beginning of the process of exposing meaning, wisdom and things that we can call ultimate truth.
Our being is constructed from many narratives, not all necessarily consistent with each other or with those of others around us. The stories rub against each other disturbing our existential space. They may harmonise with each other or blend together contrapuntally but they may also be discordant and disturbing. Sometimes a new story will clash so violently with the old as to prompt a major re-imagining of our being. A religious conversion, for example, may be an event of this sort.
Please do not misapprehend that I believe that narrative represents some sort of absolute explanation of all things or that it is somehow beyond criticism. It offers a way of talking about being human or about being itself. Within a language framework such as this it becomes possible to talk about meaning and purpose. It is also possible within this framework to see how the divine and the sacred can be so intimately caught up in our being. It exposes the futility of conceptual speculation about God using the languages of science or mathematics. It is a powerful alternative to those languages.
Posted by waterboy, Monday, 8 October 2007 10:28:32 AM
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Sells,

I think you misunderstood me. I used the term “out there” inspired not by medieval theology but by the biologist David Hay’s book “Something there”, where he discusses the possibility that “mystical experiences”, spirituality, are not reducible to physiological processes in our brains.

I am aware of the Transcendent and Immanent approaches to God, which I think are complementary rather than mutually exclusive, and that panentheism - which, I understand, tries to combine both, with emphasis on the Immanent - has become a fashionable trend in theology. I also think that the “God of philosophers” (today we can add “and Christian scientists”) should not be played against the “God of Abraham and Jacob”: they are, again, two complementary views needed for the “faith to find its understanding”.

All I wanted to show was that since I can “enter” the world of pure mathematics, and be at home with my conceptualisation and reasoning, although it is quite different from the physical/material world, it is easier to accept that there is an existence outside and/or beyond the material world studied by science. This one, however, I cannot enter it with my reasoning and conceptualisation.

Roger Penrose (and others) speaks of the mental, mathematical and physical worlds, and their interaction, expressed as the “unreasonable effectiveness (for understanding the physical world) of mathematics (seemingly constructed in the mental world but possibly belonging to a world of its own). Of course, this distinction of three worlds is only up to a point, after all mental processes depend on the physical world etc. This model of reality with its limitations, is accepted, by many mathematicians as a working hypothesis, believers or unbelievers. So I used it as a model for understanding the triplet: the mental world, the sacred or numinous world, and the world of our concepts and reasonings modelling the latter. But, you are right, I am a theological dilettante.
Posted by George, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 6:35:55 AM
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Waterboy I don't mind reading your thoughts here even though from my perspective they are full of funny stuff like this absolute belief .. "Without the skeleton the flesh is formless." All that I can offer are my own assumptions with some explanations as to why and where they evolve.

Previously, I have been critical of what amounts to an anthropocentric mindset that gives us this reverse notion of mind or intelligence first. i.e. an extraordinary intelligence existed unsustained before any material constituents of the universe. Now perhaps we can only accept this premise or reject it but we can also claim we don't know or that the premise itself is incorrect. I hold the view and there has been a virtual consensus among many philosophers and scientists for years, that the universe is essentially physical where if all matter were to be removed from the universe, nothing would remain ...... no minds, no vital forces and no entelechies.

Materialism holds that everything in existence is a structure with a story from what is material or physical in nature. (i.e. Your "flesh" is a structure too and hardly "formless".) Materialism cannot hold to dualistic theories which claim that body and mind are distinct, and is directly antithetical to a philosophical idealism that denies the existence of matter.

On a materialist view, all codes of conduct, joy, love, grace, etc. must ultimately be human-made and socially constructed in that there are no objective moral laws existing independently of sentient beings in the way that laws of nature do.
Posted by Keiran, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 8:22:55 AM
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George.
I had the funny feeling I had you wrong halfway through my reply. Mathematicians do talk about being Platonists. Funny, I was just reading a review of Penrose’s “The road to reality” by Mike Alder of UWA that might interest you (Quadrant Oct 07). Also a lovely repost to Dawkins by Hal Colebatch
Posted by Sells, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 9:20:44 AM
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Keiran

Thanks for the reply. It seems you read any 'defense of faith' assuming it goes hand in hand with belief in the supernatural. While that is understandable, it is not consistent with observable fact. Clearly Sells is not a big fan of the 'supernatural'. Nor am I but one exception is sufficient to make the point.
Your reaction to the "formless flesh" metaphor is interesting. Are you really that concrete in your thinking?
Absolute materialism works quite well in the scientific domain, less well in the mathematical and not very well at all in the domains of culture, linguistics, ethics, politics, literature, the arts or religion.
Neither materialism nor idealism deserve to be given absolute status. They are both intellectual tools for exploring reality as we experience it. Each has its place. Screwdrivers are for turning screws and hammers are for hitting nails.
We all understand materialism. It is very useful for exploring the simpler aspects of our physicality.
Idealism is less well understood and great minds from Plato through Aristotle to Hegel, Kant and so on have been reluctant to dispense with idealism in one form or another, being aware that materialism leaves so much unexplained.
You may be satisfied with an absolutely materialist world view. I prefer to draw on a wider range of tools in pursuit of my reason for being.
Posted by waterboy, Tuesday, 9 October 2007 12:33:40 PM
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Waterboy, are you saying you hold to the dualistic hypothesis which claims that body and mind are distinct? e.g. Your "wider range of tools" seems to imply a philosophical idealism that denies the existence of matter which is best described as exceptionalism and from my perspective a delusion.

We sometimes should start with our best information by trying to forget about the historical narratives of a problem. Just remind ourselves of what we know for a fact. Well, this is what we can come up with ..... "the what", "the how" and "the why" from our earliest evolving identity.

Art is creation in the material universe that claims purposeful actions have causal efficacy. "the what"
Science is investigation in the material universe that claims purposeful actions can describe a causal "how".
Philosophy is investigation in the material universe that claims purposeful actions can describe a causal "why".

We don't need to believe that, with the advent of consciousness, we can now step outside evolution, go under it, rise above it, or stop it.... all our actions are evolutionary. We are all artists, we are all scientists and we are all philosophers. Long before the 16th century people everywhere would have asked the "how" question and concerned themselves with cause and effect investigations. It's mind boggling stooopidity to believe otherwise but I guess this is "how" these teddy (god) viruses can disable their hosts like we find with this pathetic Nobel peace prize going to Gore with his shonky ALGORithms.
Posted by Keiran, Saturday, 13 October 2007 8:49:46 AM
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Some people will never understand, let alone accept, the truth when it upsets their own blinkered thinking.

Keiran would like to have us believe he is *enlightened*.
Posted by davsab, Saturday, 13 October 2007 9:07:16 AM
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Keiran

You said
"Your'wider range of tools'seems to imply a philosophical idealism that denies the existence of matter.."
How so?

It is not necessary to equate idealism with dualism, nor does idealism necessarily deny the material.I do sympathise with your insistence that ideas be rooted in'realities'but this is not quite the same thing as being being enslaved by what you call'scientific facts'.

Since science does not explain everything about existence,an excessive confidence in its results leads us into a dilemma. How can we speak about those aspects of being that science does not touch?Either we ignore them, perhaps assuming that science will one day explain them,or we explore all of our being with all the tools available including the imagination and our narrative propensity. In short we can only explore the totality of our being through ideas,imagination and narrative. Even science depends on these. The'facts'of science are nothing more than our best explanations of causes and effects. They are just special kinds of narrative. Belief in'scientific'knowledge as absolute truth,'facts'as you call them,is what I would call a naive materialism and perhaps itself an incipient dualism in its implicit dependence on the existence of an absoluteness which is out there beyond our reach.

Idealism is the realisation that the greater part of our existence occurs in'idea space'. Certainly'physical space'is a given but'idea space'is not alternative to'physical space'. That would be dualism. Idea space extends physical space in a way that imbues life with meanings,values,purpose and so on.

"The Lord of The Rings" is obviously fantasy but it is rooted in reality without being a slave to science. Its ideas deal with the nature of being and being human. It deals with good and evil, relationships, values, justice and purposeful life that is not nullified by death. Ideas, imagination and narrative are the only tools we have to construct our meaningful world. Why would you dismiss them so easily?

Nine years of studying science at school and university did not help me construct a meaningful life. That came from elsewhere.
Posted by waterboy, Tuesday, 16 October 2007 10:59:36 AM
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George.
I remember discussing this with you before about the similarity between the concept of “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” and the doctrine of the Trinity. Reading Daniel Waterman who opposed the antitrinitarian produced by Samuel Clarke after Newton, he admits that his arguments for the Trinity are practical rather than theoretical. They are derived from the economy of salvation. If Jesus was just a creature, even the most highly exalted creature, (Socinianism) then God has a rival in Jesus for the redemption of the world. Also, redemption loses its power since it is not now based on God coming down but only a creature. Thus the doctrine of the Trinity is established on what it does, on its practical application rather than an investigation of the attributes of God a priori. The truth of the doctrine is derived from its facility to order all sorts of thing aright. The doctrine thus has an “unreasonable effectiveness” in that it is not based on a priori theory. Clarke attempted such a theory and ended up with a sterile theology with morality and reward at its base and which can only be described as pagan.

This discussion is epistemological and connects to the inductive and deductive method as has been discussed in this thread
Posted by Sells, Wednesday, 17 October 2007 11:46:20 AM
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Sells,
I am not able to comment on Clarke, and I am not sure I understand theory vs practice or deductive vs inductive method within theology, unless one means the “God of the philosophers” vs “God of Abraham and Jacob” mentioned above. Neither am I sure how one could “establish” the doctrine of the Trinity or “investigate the attributes” of God.

For me, the doctrine of the Trinity is an axiom (a mystery, because it is based on terms not clearly defined), the same about God Incarnate, etc. These are axioms that one cannot arrive at by philosophical speculation, only argue that they are compatible with the bible (arguments accepted by all Christians in distinction to e.g. the filioque axiom). Again, please keep in mind that I am a theological dilettante.

Something like you have mathematical axioms on which to build “by speculation” a rich theory ignoring its applicability, the “unreasonable effectiveness” consisting in the fact that most of this pure mathematics turned out later to be applicable. [We, pure mathematicians of the sixties, used to tease our applied colleagues by saying that 20th century applied mathematics was 19th century pure mathematics. Today, it’s not that simple any more.]

However, I do not see the analogy in theology, where you could unleash your speculations based on some doctrines ignoring its applications (compatibility with scripture, with human psychology and sociology etc.) and finding later that most of these speculations will nevertheless turn out to be applicable.
Posted by George, Thursday, 18 October 2007 4:30:41 PM
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George

Notwithstanding how the Trinitarian proposition was derived the evidence of 2000 years of History is that it has been 'effective' in subsequent theological work to a degree which is 'unreasonable'. Perhaps that is as far as we can take the analogy.

Deductive theology has largely fallen out of fashion since it has become very difficult to establish general agreement on any set of propositions which can be agreed to be the premises from which to commence work.

Inductive theology, however, while not offering rational certitude, proceeds from repeated observations of its effectiveness. The Trinitarian formula works Pastorally, Liturgically, Theologically and so on.

The danger with inductive theologies, on the other hand, lies in the subjectivity surrounding the determination of 'effectiveness'. Much of popular religion proceeds from observations of its aparrent 'effectiveness', which are never subjected to critical scrutiny. Fallacies abound!
Posted by waterboy, Friday, 19 October 2007 10:55:57 AM
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Waterboy.
Amen to that. The deductive or a priori method when used to produce a proof for the existence of God arrives at paganism. The god so proved looks very much like Zeus. As for theology beginning with induction we get “The triumph of the therapeutic” and the God of the bible disappears below human need. Or if evidence is taken from the goodness of creation we arrive at Aristotle’s first mover, again a stranger to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
Posted by Sells, Friday, 19 October 2007 3:16:29 PM
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Peter

The paths of a faith seeking understanding you disparage are just that. If they are accessible paths for people to begin their seeking of the good life, they are useful. We all start somewhere, and indeed use them along the way as paths of rest or distraction to satisfy an intellectual or emotional need.

If they come to know that the good life is one of the dust and grit of human affairs, as a consequence of the 'follow me" command, then they will have found the path set out by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

By way of observation, by the time Aristotle was engaging in his teleologically inspired methods of analysis of life around him, the last of the OT books was completed on the movement of a people, not far away, through the dust and grit of life.

Aristotle was defining the good life through virtuous behaviour and analysing the best of ways to live for citizens and their slaves in the city state. Nicely layered, and based on preceding 300-400 years of the Greek Archaic age. His legacy is a remnant idea battling with human foibles, and a disillusioned, detached distracted people.

The Hebrews' good life was one of a promise, within the Covenant with their God, over the preceding 3400 years. Their legacy is life with hope eternal as we, of faith, slog through it, with trust, in our own epochal times, to participate in Aristotle's grand project of democracy.

Our friends of the enlightened elite have been so successful in their partisan endeavours they have caused a reaction of so called "faith people" which is less subtle, but as ugly, as the former's "long march through the Institutions" (Gramsci) last century. They deserve each other.
Posted by boxgum, Friday, 19 October 2007 5:21:42 PM
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Peter,

The Journal of the History of Science Society might have an article to help you learn about the orgin of the term Enlightment. I am having database access problems at the moment, so I can't research for you.

I tend to see scientific progress more in the area of the Great Divergence (c. 1760), when Episte (theory) started to drive (Techne) knowledge. The West has a debt to the Ancient Greeks [preserved by Muslims]
Posted by Oliver, Saturday, 20 October 2007 9:29:55 PM
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Peter (Sells),

The foundation of the Elightenment is founded the Scientific Revolution a century early [Galilei, Kepler, Descartes [as you note]). It was a revolution in progress. It also has its roots in France and Germany and was quickly taken up by England.

The French mathematian d'Alembert [ held that subsequent generation should not be restrained by the reasoning of earlier generations. Onne generation would lay the foundation of the next so each "succeeding completes that [its] revolution" and passes it to the next to reason and complete [never does].

Initially, the Scientific Revolution referred to mathematica and astronomy and mathematics. Herein, Fontenelle [1699] the "Histoire" of that new Scientific Revolution could also be applied to politics, morals, literary critism and free speech, placing rational thinking on a collision with the authority of the Church, especially in Spain. "Reason was the correct method" [Hankins]. The Inquisition needed to challenged". In France, the 1700s had become the century of light [siecle des lumiieres). Very anti-clerical: perhaps not yet anti-religious.

...cont...
Posted by Oliver, Sunday, 21 October 2007 2:02:11 PM
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…cont…

The origin of the term Enlightenment however is not French but German; from Emanual Kant, whom like d'Alembert saw a revolution in progress; a reasoned way of thinking against fixed beliefs; a trespass on the langsyne affinities to authority.

When Kant asked in 1785 whether he lived in an age of enlightenment: Kant replied, "No we are living in an age of enlightenment". [Answer to Peter’s question posed]

Presumably, restrain from the churches aside, we, in the 21st century are still in the Enlightenment, as scientific method, and, latter-day philosophers, like Karl Popper, push mythologies and doctrinaire attitudes aside. We question. We progress.

The French Revolution was an example of the effect of the Enlightenment, encouraging freedom and individualism. The people became the dog not the tail.

In England, "reason" enjoined with “nature”. In fact, some religions, as you note, attempted to apply reason to Deity; for example, John Locke and Robert Boyle to prove the existence of God", based on the observable "works of nature" [Locke] and no one had shown how the inanimate could become animate [Boyle].

As science progressed, and, our understanding of how to understand improved after the Great Divergence of Episte and Techne, we have significant advances in understanding the very nature of Nature Herself, though great scientific leaps foreward [e.g., Darwin/Evolution] applying a "reasoned" approach to nature. Humans could ask was the created by physical laws that could be understood at some indeterminate time in the future [without a god(s)] or was it through reason and nature we learn more about the "manifestation of a divine intellect" [there is a God]?

S Early-on Voltaire and others held "arguments from design" demonstrated the existence of God; however, the Science of Man [People] via Scientific Method successfully provided alternative explanations for our very being.

[p.s. William of Ockham lived c.1285-1349 and Rene Descartes lived 1596-1650. Given your discourse, perhaps you should have mentioned this history.

[p.p.s Penrose's "Road to Reality" {Hi George} is an advanced lay book on the laws of the Universe. A good loooooong read.]

Regards,

O.
Posted by Oliver, Sunday, 21 October 2007 10:56:25 PM
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...cont...

1. Please my immediately above last posts,

2." ...a consistent polemic against the Church." - Sells

- Not this straight forward. First against clerics, then, the
freedom of thought linking Episte to Techne, then, science provided. Then the results of scientific method allowed for [tentative] hypotheses to divine creation. Science is typically is equally opposed to Eygyptian mythology as its Christian equal. So the term "the [Christian] should not be accepted in isolation.

Best,

O.
Posted by Oliver, Monday, 22 October 2007 8:58:18 PM
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Sells, waterboy, boxgum,
thanks for the interesting insights and comments which I do not necessarily see in disagreement with what I was trying to say myself, namely that in any cognitive process there is a time for deductive, top-down thinking and time for inductive, bottom-up thinking (I would not dare to comment on theological, i.e. pastoral, practice), one only should not play one against the other. In physics, like in most human endeavours, theory and practical verification go hand-in-hand, and useful, acceptable theories are those that are verified by practice (observation/experimentation). In this sense I understand waterboy’s proposition that “the evidence of 2000 years of History is that (the Trinitarian doctrine) has been 'effective' in subsequent theological work.

However, the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” does not refer - as I understand it - to this usefulness of physical theories (relativity theory, quantum mechanics, etc.) but to that of “speculative”, deductive (pure) maths: The speculation “imagine the square root of -1 would exist” led to complex numbers without which there would not be any modern science and technology. I somehow cannot see anything in theology that would be analogous to this effectiveness of mathematics. So I completely agree with waterboy that “(in) deductive theology ... it has become very difficult to establish general agreement on any set of propositions which can be agreed to be the premises from which to commence work.”

Nowadays no philosopher tries to “prove God deductively” from a more general axiom (neither did, I think, Aquinas, though Descartes perhaps did). What is called “natural theology” tries to find arguments in favour of a divine presence, not to prove it like you prove e.g. a mathematical or legal conclusion. At least this is how I see the “God of philosophers and scientists” (as understood by e.g. John Polkinghorne), with a (human and humane) face of the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. In this way Christians, I hope, are in a position to communicate with Muslims who see a different face of the same God, or the Buddhists, who see Him (if at all) as completely “faceless.”
Posted by George, Tuesday, 23 October 2007 4:04:23 AM
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George.
Thank you for the balanced view of deduction and induction and the clarification of the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics. I think we are largely in agreement. But on another note I do wonder about your characterising of the God of Islam as being a different face of the same God as worshipped by Christians and Jews. There is a very good article in the Oct edition of First Things written pseudonymously (for obvious and sad reasons) about Islam. The line the author takes follows some remarks by Rosenzweig in his book “The Star of Redemption”. He accuses the prophet of plagiarism and of Islam being a pagan religion in which the individual disappears from view. I think that it is too easy to blur the differences between Judaism/Christianity and Islam for the sake of appearing to be tolerant. On deeper investigation we find that between them and us there is a great gulf fixed. Of course this only increases the demand made on us by the gospel that we should love them.
Posted by Sells, Tuesday, 23 October 2007 9:24:49 AM
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Citing Chalmers, Facts are required through observation anf laws ans and theories fomulated. Deductions should lead to predictions and explanations. This is only the basic model and it has been critised. A.F. Chalmers, "What is this thing called Science", makes a good lay read.

I guess, as was the proposition, " 'The 'Second Coming' will occur after the end of the millenium " is prediction, acceptable to science. Only it has been dispoved. Same goes for Marx extrapolating Hegel
Posted by Oliver, Tuesday, 23 October 2007 12:57:44 PM
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I've been sent to Coventry, Sells? I was taught Philosophy and Psychology at its University. One semester only offshore in Singapore.

Thomas L. Hankins has written an good little reader on the Enlightenment, "Science and the Enlightment (Cambridge University Press).
Posted by Oliver, Wednesday, 24 October 2007 1:35:45 PM
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Sells,
Thank you for the kind words. I have no access (yet) to the paper in First Things but if the author, and Rosenzweig, mean that Christianity and Judaism have more in common than any of them with Islam, then I certainly agree. Christianity sees itself as a derivative of Judaism, but I have just recently learned that Islam sees itself not as a derivative of anything but as the original Revelation that somehow precedes even Judaism.

I understand that the term “face of God” to account for different religions can be theologically misleading. Sometimes I use the term “Christian model of God”, different from the Jewish model, more different from the Muslim model and even more different from Buddhist or Taoistic models.

Here I was inspired by the scientific terms of physical/mathematical models of (some feature of) physical reality: for instance, there are models of gravitation due to Newton or Einstein, superstring theory etc. It is always the same phenomenon, gravity, that these models try to explain. The truth value of these theories is a different matter.

I believe there is a God whose nature is beyond human comprehension, modelled by various religions. It follows directly from the Scriptures accepted by both Jews and Christians, that they speak of the same God, it is not that direct with Muslims and other religions. However, I am convinced that in all these cases it is the same God that the “finger of science" (and philosophy) points to, although some “fools” can see only the finger. The truth value of these various religions is again a different matter, much more complicated than in the case of physical models/theories, also because personal, cultural, emotional etc. factors are involved that in the former case play no role (or should not play, notwithstanding some social constructivists).

So also my faith comes on two levels: a philosophical belief in a God who cannot be explained or modelled by science, and a faith in the Christian model that sees this God as the revealed God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, incarnate in Jesus.
Posted by George, Friday, 26 October 2007 1:20:15 AM
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George

Without doubt religions, cultures and even individuals have their own models. Your thesis, I assume, is based on the notion that all theistic models are related in some way by the unity of the thing being modelled. This 'system' follows a highly commendable trajectory into a form of universalism commonly expressed in the 'many paths to the one truth' principle. Its a lovely idea and world peace would be just around the corner. . . if only everyone thought this way.
I think, however, that there are weaknesses in the proposal which only become obvious when you subject the different religious models to close scrutiny. It quickly becomes clear that the models are themselves human constructs serving cultural and political purposes. Far from being unifying they are, in fact, 'identifying'.
Have you read Sallie McFague's 'Metaphorical Theology'? It has a lengthy discussion of models in science and theology.
Theological models are clusters of symbols and metaphors around one organising, defining symbol. The relationships between metaphors within a model can be concordant or discordant. The theological model is not meant to be a systematic construction based on the rules of logic. It is an exploration of being as experienced with all its inconsistencies and struggles, all its joy, disappointment, anxiety and hope.
Scientific models are used for descibing closed (though complex) systems.
Theological models work when they open up and expose the infinitude of human possibility through the organising idea of the 'divine being'. They do not 'model' God as an object of investigation.
Posted by waterboy, Friday, 26 October 2007 11:51:48 AM
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Erratum: "I've been sent to Coventry, Sells? I ONCE taught Philosophy and Psychology at its University. One semester only offshore in Singapore."

waterboy,

I think we are at least 100 years away from most of the peoples in the worl appreciating we don't need a god to be moral or to have created us.
Posted by Oliver, Friday, 26 October 2007 4:34:26 PM
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waterboy,
thank you for your interesting comment. I never subscribed to the quasi-relativistic claim of 'many paths to the one truth', I spoke of many constructs (if you do not like the term model) of the same God. Of course, even within Christianity there is a variety of such constructs as your example of Sallie McFague shows, and they do not have to be all compatible. I only said the truth value of these constructs is much more complicated - in particular, to what extent they are purely human, culture-conditioned, and to what extent there is more to them, called Revelation by Christians - than in case of scientific theories, but I did not want to elaborate on that.

No, I have not read the book, and all I know of Sallie McFague can be found in

http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/mwt/dictionary/mwt_themes_907_ruethermcfague.htm.

She obviously tackles the problem of God and the sacred from the culture opposite to mine (in the sense of C.P. Snow), but except for her feminist bias she seems to be saying the same thing, although her “models of God” are more restrictive and are a part of her personal Christian theology, whereas I wanted to describe a more general state of affairs. Namely, that as in science, one thing is the object of our concern and another our human constructs (via analogies, metaphors, models, etc.) of it, but unlike in science neither are these constructs purely rational (thus I agree that we cannot “investigate God”) nor do we have the means of sensual/experimental verification of our constructs. There is only faith, rationalised by theology that indeed goes beyond a systematic cataloguing of symbols and includes an “exploration of being as experienced with all its inconsistencies and struggles, all its joy, disappointment, anxiety and hope.”

Thus I think I can agree with you about the internal structure of theological constructs within Christianity, including the restricted use of the term model.
Posted by George, Friday, 26 October 2007 5:47:06 PM
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Sells,

I am now be treated for a stage three cancer. So there is seventy percent chance, I will find out for myself in the next five years, whether the is a God. That said, without the Englightenment, I would have been bleed, rather than retreated with chemo, ratiation and antimatter [PET} scan.I may be been alive to write this email. My chances would be zero.
Posted by Oliver, Sunday, 28 October 2007 2:02:36 PM
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George and Waterboy.
A whole lot of things here that I will not try to address. Many in our time have congratulated themselves on their tolerance and breadth of understanding by saying nice things about the world religions and it seems narrow and ignorant to depart from that generous spirit. The result is often that we do not stand up for what we believe because that looks like we are discounting other stories. The gospels are not so reticent. “I am the truth and the life”. If we are to be faithful we must turn our backs on other paths even if we do that agnostically. We must point to this one figure Jesus and say “here, in this one man, in his teaching and death and resurrection is the hope of nations”. As such he does not exist at the end of any human path towards God. Rather he comes to us “vertically from above” as the unexpected revelation of God. The man Jesus does not fit any philosophical system, that is why much philosophy about God goes its own way and ends in nihilism. This is the scandal that Paul pointed out that was just as much a scandal for the Jews and Greeks in his day as it is for modern man in ours. The avoidance of that scandal will defeat the gospel which is why liberal Protestant churches are in such a bad way, they have conformed themselves to the age. My point in the article is that when theology becomes philosophy it loses its rationality and its way and the scandal of the gospel is obscured.

Oliver, My criticism of the Enlightenment is quite specifically targeted at the theological heritage, I too am thankful for the advances in science. Be assured that my prayers are with you.
Posted by Sells, Sunday, 28 October 2007 5:32:23 PM
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Sells,

Thank you for your kind words and compassion.
Posted by Oliver, Monday, 29 October 2007 5:13:34 PM
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Sells,
I agree that theology should not become (be reduced to) philosophy (though Aquinas would probably not understand the difference); neither should one confuse mathematics with physics (though Newton might not have seen such a clear distinction). In both cases the two developed together, and only modernity saw them as clearly separate. Nevertheless, I think there is still some overlap between theology and philosophy. And neither should any of them be confused with reminding the like-minded about the centrality of Jesus in a sermon that does not say much to an outsider. Of course, I completely agree with the way you put it, and I do not think it contradicts with what I wrote.

Let me repeat for the third time, that I did not want to elaborate on the truth value of religions or faiths, but as far as Christianity is concerned, if forced, I could not put it better than Ratzinger (Benedict XVIth) in his 2003 book “Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions”. One quote (I do not have the English version, so excuse my translation from the German original): “Christian faith can concern all people only when it is the truth: when it is just a cultural variant of symbolically encoded and never decoded religious experiences, then it must remain in its own culture, and leave others in their respective cultures. However, this means that the question of truthfulness is the most fundamental question of Christian faith, and in this sense it must be inescapably linked to philosophy.“

Another quote: “Truth descends only on him who tries for it, who yearns for it, who carries within himself, pre-formed, a mental space where the truth may eventually lodge” (Ortega y Gasset). I cannot speak on behalf of waterboy, but all that I was trying to say was to argue for a “mental space where the truth may eventually lodge“ without actually defending, or even naming, this truth.
Posted by George, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 2:37:49 AM
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George,
Whenever I hear Benedict XVIth I wonder why we do not all take the central message of the Reformation and become Catholic. Hauerwas has recently preached a sermon on Reformation Sunday that I think is outstanding:

http://www.reformedcatholicism.com/?p=885
Posted by Sells, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 8:41:28 AM
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Sells,

Through contacts, I was able to flip the pages of some theology books in English at St. Marys Cathdral, Sydney. Technically, the Catholic Church regards Anglicans as [prodical] Catholics whom one day --in their-- view return to the arms of universal church. Presume, the same applies to other lost sheep, in its view.

The Enlightment is squeezed between the Scientfic Revolution & the Great Divergence. The former is about "authority/loss of authority" and the latter scietufic method, "how to discover/alternative models"
Posted by Oliver, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 5:16:44 PM
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One needs to treat Jesus, God and the Church as separate constructs. All are dynamic and their character changes over the years.

The for example has fifteen Jewish Popes/Bishops. In 800 CE the Holy Roman Emperor was crowned as the successor of Augustine not St. Peter. That is secular power.

Natural philosophy became intermingled with what became science in the Great Divergence [.1760.]. That is, alternative explations for creation.

Leading into the Enlightement there were plays involving the Franch, English and Spanish Court, while the Scientific Revolution was underway. The Church secular power by leveraging religious power. And may have retained both had Spain won the The Spainish Armada [1588]?

Going back to my first paragraph when read the Bible you do do through the lense of fourth century scholarship. The Enlightenment found conflict with the body of doctrine via science vs primative natural philosophy. God [if doable] and Jesus should analysed by histirians and anthropolists, who have the skills and knowledge to analyse religions.

Kind regards,

O.
Posted by Oliver, Wednesday, 31 October 2007 2:00:36 PM
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Sells,
Thanks for your reference to the interesting Hauerwas’ lecture. As a RC I do not think I should comments on it, especially since some nuances there, as well as in the numerous comments, I could not follow. However, the following quote called my attention:

“ Protestant medicines taken without Catholic food are poison; Catholic food taken without Protestant tonics and exercises cause the body to bloat and distort.”
[“A (Somewhat) Protestant Response to Richard John Neuhaus” in Reclaiming the Great Tradition: Evangelicals, Catholics, and Orthodox in Dialogue (Downers Grove, InterVarsity, 1997) p.61.]

It strikes me as similar to my view of Protestantism as a needed correction to (Roman) Catholicism, a correction that cannot survive on its own: when Protestantism forgets about its function as a correction, rather than a complete replacement, it becomes eventually swallowed up by the “Spirit of the Times” (Zeitgeist), be it in Western Europe (and Australia?) where secularists reign, or in other parts of the world where the irrational and emotional evangelicals are gaining the upper hand within Christianity.

As mentioned before, I see also Enlightenment, in the broadest sense of the term, as a needed correction to Christianity (at least within the Western cultural realm) whose attempts to survive on its own are going to lead the West, as we have known it, into a cul-de-sac, unable to comptere with e.g. a more vigorous Islam. The food vs. medicine metaphor seems to be fitting also here.
Posted by George, Thursday, 1 November 2007 11:16:45 PM
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Sorry, "compete", not "comptere"
Posted by George, Thursday, 1 November 2007 11:20:29 PM
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George, Sells

I have just been re-reading "The Wise Man from the West". Different times have judged Ricci differently but it is fascinating to see that missions were already struggling with this issue in the 16th century. Where is the right balance between maintaining one's own integrity and honoring/respecting another person's faith/religion/culture?
Sells, you 'condemn' the liberals for going too far with accommodation and losing their 'Christian' integrity.
The counter-argument is that those who are unwilling to put their own faith at risk, those who choose to remain within their own comfort zone cannot engage the 'other' in a meaningful way. They are more likely to impose their own version of faith on others than to invite new faith into being.
The last thing we need is universal church union. That would make for a large,powerful and truly evil institution. Diversity is our salvation. Lets not bemoan it
Posted by waterboy, Saturday, 3 November 2007 5:25:29 PM
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waterboy,
I agree that we do not need a “universal church union”, presumably meaning Christianity undifferentiated and united as before 1054, though I am not sure this is “the last thing we need”. It would depend on the structuring of this union. I could imagine situations that are much worse.

The fact that there is a variety of Christian churches -- never mind that in the technical language of the Catholic Chrurch they are not “the Church“ -- makes the sincerity of dissent and open agitation suspicious when made by people who claim still to be Catholics. In this sense I see the Reformation as a blessing, an outlet for experimenting with new ideas without endangering the foundations of a two milenia “tall” edifice. I think this is compatible with “traditional“ Catholicism, although this tradition is often not to be taken literally but kept on an abstract, higher (symbolic if you like) level, something like we “keep” Genesis I and II in spite of modern cosmology. And this position is, I believe, also compatible with tolerance, i.e. an unwillingness to “impose one’s own version of faith (or conscience) on others”.
Posted by George, Monday, 5 November 2007 1:57:53 AM
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George,

I have a little trouble with the notion that the Church was once 'undifferentiated and united'. The 'unity' of the Church lies in the common confession of Christ crucified and risen, not in ecclesial conformity. Even in the early Church Paul and James held very different views on various fundamental issues. In the first century Marcion exemplifies the divergent views of different branches of the church. Why were the creeds necessary if not to clarify issues that were dividing the church? 1054 represents the final break between East and West not as something new at that time but as the culmination of a thousand years of 'differentiation and disunity' let alone the fact that there were other Christian Churches beyond those controlled by either Pope or Patriarch.
My point is simply that I am convinced that all the Churches have it wrong in one way or another and that the diversity expressed in differentiation and disputation is healthier than any sort of theological despotism. It is no coincidence that the 'reformation' immediately preceded the 'enlightenment' and it would be disastrous to 'undo' the reformation by reuniting the western Churches.
Vive la difference!
Posted by waterboy, Monday, 5 November 2007 8:35:58 AM
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waterboy,
I concede that the term 'undifferentiated and united' to describe the situation before 1054 was clumsy. Nevertheless, when I said that Reformation was a blessing I implicitly agreed that “diversity expressed in differentiation and disputation is healthier than any sort of theological despotism“, and I certainly never advocated a reuniting of western Churches into a form that existed during the Middle Ages.

On the other hand, a situation is thinkable where e.g. the pope is regarded by all Christians as an authority to formally represent them to the world, to listen to, although not necessarily to follow his advise and guidelines, where for a Catholic the only excuse not to follow would be his/her personal conscience (with an emphasis on “personal” i.e. not as an openly proclaimed opposition), whereas for a member of another Church it would also be the “collective conscience” of that Church. Perhaps something like the Queen is seen by all Britons (or Australians for that matter) as their formal Head of State (with practically no political power), respected by monarchists and accepted by all. I said thinkable, but perhaps not (yet) feasible.

Diversity is one thing, Catholic identity is another. I am not sure what you mean by “theological despotism“ so let me just comment that you cannot become a Catholic theologian (a priest), or even an informed layman, without acquainting yourself with all sorts of theological approaches and interpretations, most of them non-Catholic. The Church does not object to that, it actually encourages such a widening of the Catholic horizon. What it objects to is a presentation of personal views/interpretations by zealous, often just speculative, theologians, as part of the official Catholic standpoint or teaching. I am aware that other Churches are not that anxious to preserve their identity that distinguishes them from others.
Posted by George, Tuesday, 6 November 2007 9:00:39 PM
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George

Without doubt there is great diversity within the Roman Catholic Church and it is to be commended for its sympathetic handling of diversity. As you say, however, the Church is particularly demanding with respect to theologians 'representing' her publicly.
To the Roman Catholic mind perhaps it is 'thinkable' that the Pope might achieve some sort of universal respect as a spiritual leader.
I suppose almost anything is 'thinkable', even things that are impossible. Perhaps you imagine the Pope in a similar role to the Dalai Lama. It seems to me a somewhat romantic notion given the strength of feeling that many people feel against the Roman Catholic Church in general and the Pope in particular! There are many even within the Roman Catholic Church who regard the Pope with ambivalence.
The Church's attitude to contraception, for instance, is widely ignored by intelligent, young Catholic women and regarded by them as evidence of the Church's failure to 'keep up with the times'.
I, for one, could not respect a Church which denies justice to women by denying them the right to serve as ordained priests.
Your idea is perhaps 'thinkable' if this ideal Pope were to be a woman. Until then, to most of us outside the Roman Church, She represents a Medieval Anachronism in today's 'Enlightened' world.
Posted by waterboy, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 10:30:10 AM
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waterboy,
I can understand that you subscribe to the more or less standard criticism, not to say clichés, ignoring e.g. the Catholic teaching about the freedom of conscience (not of dissent) that I was trying to call your attention to. I can also respect that you “could not respect a Church which denies justice to women by denying them the right to serve as ordained priests”, without passing my judgement on who of us is a better Christian. Remember, what I was trying to defend was Catholic identity, and not what it means to be a good Christian. .

Part of that Catholic identity is that she sees the male-female relation as complementary not only on the biological but also on the mental and social levels, although I agree that the current trend is interchangeability on the social level, though not (yet?) on the biological. I am not a biologist but I was always wondering why in the Melbourne Cup mares and stallions compete (and win) on equal footing, whereas in athletics men and women need to compete separately. Is it not that on a higher level of evolution there is even less interchangeability of sexes? I needed both my parents to become a human being not only biologically, but also as a Christian (which includes my Catholic identity). On both levels their function was complementary, and I am sure my mother never thought of her “right” to take over my father’s function (both biologically or in my upbringing), or vice versa.

I agree that a spiritual unity within Christianity cannot be achieved with the present pope (among other things, he is over 80) and with people who express their opposition to unity in the way you did. But one can still dream about a different future.
Posted by George, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 6:54:30 PM
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George

You are right! It was a cliche and a silly generalisation.

At its best the RC Church has handled diversity wisely and sensitively. It wasn't particularly sensitive, however, to appoint as Pope one who served as the Church's chief inquisitor. It might make sense within the Church but it certainly wasnt calculated to impress the wider Church community. It was a statement about identity rather than an ecumenical gesture.

But the point is that being different we have reason for disagreement and the ordination of women issue serves well to illustrate the value of disputation. I would argue that the biological differentation of genders does not provide any sort of justification for discrimination against women. It is a simple matter of principle that denying women opportunites solely on the basis of gender is unjust. Furthermore, and it shouldnt even be necessary to say this, they have proved their ability to serve in the role of 'priests' in other Churches.

You said "Is it not that on a higher level of evolution there is even less interchangeability of sexes?" Your argument is not entirely clear to me but it seems that you are trying to say that differentiation in 'biological', reproductive roles should also be extended into differentiation in the workplace?, society and so on. This does not seem to me to be a logical argument.

The RC Church may feel that this is an important aspect of its identity. So be it. I regard it as a point of gross injustice and an offence to women. Clearly my identity lies elsewhere and I could never find spiritual leadership in an organisation that perpetrates such an injustice in these 'more enlightened' times.
Posted by waterboy, Thursday, 8 November 2007 9:31:51 AM
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waterboy,
I think we can agree on many things that unite all Christians and form the essential part of the raison d’etre of any Christian Church, leaving aside the RC Church’s claims of centrality. I think the things we share are more important than those we have to agree to disagree upon.

One of these things is apparently the question of female priests, or priestesses, the need for which has existed in many religions, including those preceding Christianity, although in no Christian Church until about half a century ago. I do not regard the Catholic emphasis on the complementarity of the role of genders in matters ecclesiastical a “gross injustice and an offence to women“, preserving these strong words for other situations that women in the third world (but not only there) have to suffer.

I am not a theologian to argue to what extent is this emphasis supported by scripture and tradition, and as a layman I have to admit that things might change in the future: what I know is only that in the RC Church changes work top-down, never bottom-up through rebellion, which already has its outlet in Protestantism. The RC Church is in a deep crisis, no question about that, so are, or even more, other traditional Churches, and female priests do not make a difference, rather the contrary.

Where our attitudes might not be reciprocal is that my version of Christian identity does not compel me to regard with disrespect other Churches just because they have suddenly developed a different view of this complementarity: I certainly do not feel any disrespect towards e.g. the Lutheran Church whose "bishopess" of Hanover appears often on German TV. I respect and try to understand her, although many a nun I have known in my life made it much easier for me to understand the female (yin, if you like) aspect of spirituality and pastoral functioning.
Posted by George, Friday, 9 November 2007 9:51:03 PM
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George

I do not reserve my 'disrespect' just for the RC Church. I share it equally around all the Churches. There is much that is good about the Churches but that is not sufficient reason to view them with any rose coloured glasses. They have the potential to great good but also to do great harm. Only in an atmosphere of healthy critique can we hope to minimise the harm that they do.
Im afraid the 'complementarity'argument does not ring true to me with regard to ordination of women. Certainly there is discrimination against women that is far worse than the Church's refusal to ordain them. I would argue that the Church's attitude to women 'endorses' much of this discrimination and that it is therefore all the more important for the Church to demonstrate true justice and lead the way in the protest against discrimination.
As for the Biblical and Theological justification for ordaining women. Firstly one needs to remember that the Bible is conditioned by the culture in which it was written. We are by no means required to mimic ancient near eastern attitudes to women simply because they found there way into the Bible. It is better by far to consider the fact, for example, that Paul's attitude to women, while still reflecting conetmporary attitudes to some extent, does represent a positive, and for the times even radical, shift away from those attitudes. Similarly one ought to consider the positive roles women have in many Bible stories. The women, for example, are the first witnesses to the resurrection.
I do not resile from my criticism of the RC Church's attitude to women either from the content or from the force of language used.
I can, however, respect the RC Church for the great good it does in many areas. Nor is my respect for you diminished by your worthy defense of your Church.
Peace be with you!
Posted by waterboy, Sunday, 11 November 2007 3:33:10 PM
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waterboy,
exactly, what is a "healthy" critique is one of those things where we apparently have to agree to disagree, although any critique, healthy or unhealthy, can serve its purpose by clarifying positions - personal or institutional - of those they are aimed at, whether they accept the critique or not.
Peace be also with you.
Posted by George, Sunday, 11 November 2007 8:32:56 PM
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