My comments below will be familiar and redundant. Those they are meant to counter are ever new. I hope they better refine my tedious apologetics to make them less dense and more generally accessible. If not, I am still having a good time following Peter 3:15 and will endeavor to do so more courteously and respectfully of my audiences.

pax,
jb

Home Alone: Jeff W. Dahms

Metanexus: Views. 2003.01.27. 2195 words
"The universe as a manufactured object, no matter how subtly conceived, is unbearably depressing," writes today's columnist, Jeff Dahms, in his article Home Alone-about the thoughts and motivations behind the existential positions of naturalism and nontheism. Dahms also observes that "the science/religion discussion arena seems to have more than its appropriate statistical share of atheists--though still a very modest proportion."

I would beg to disagree with Dahms, however; for, at last count, approximately 30% of Metanexus:Views columns were written by those holding a non-theistic or naturalist position. And I suspect their reasoning does follow along the path as laid out below by Dahms:
"Why would I want to live in a universe that is about me? That kind of universe is just too small. A universe built on purpose to generate complexity or life in some form or primates or humanity (or me?) is a cosmically impressive act, particularly if no tweaking is allowed after the initial roll of the dice. But, no thanks; I'd rather find another place to call home--a place that has no purpose--a truly wild place--yes! A universe that spawns life and consciousness without instruction, and just because it is. Ah! Now that is really something one can get excited about. It's the difference between inconceivably awesome cosmic skill...and pure magic. Magic is just that much better. The very contingency of life is then what makes it so unbearably sweet and precious."

Today's columnist, Jeff Dahms, is an Australian physician-surgeon and research scientist associated with Sydney University's teaching hospitals. His scientific interests are in mind/brain evolution and the philosophy of science, particularly in the fundamental areas of physics and biology, and in relational areas such as the science religion discussion.
-- Stacey E. Ake

Subject: Home Alone From: Jeff W. Dahms Email: <jwdahms@wisdoc.net>
'Atheist dies in Texas.'
The New York Times page two article was a surprise it seemed only to me. I asked a sample of fellow New Yorkers if they thought the headline odd. No, no one else thought so or even understood why I had asked--which just heightened that 'stranger in a strange land' feeling. It was as if I'd pointed out an article with the trivial title, 'Blonde dies in Texas.' The explanation of course was cultural. In very religious America, 'atheist' actually can be a relevant personal descriptor in the public arena.

In contrast to Texas, the science/religion discussion arena seems to have more than its appropriate statistical share of atheists--though still a very modest proportion. Their more usual self-description is 'non-theist' or 'naturalist' as 'atheist' often seems to carry personally aggressively anti-theist overtones they eschew. The camaraderie between these polar philosophic opposites is both very warmly encouraging and unexpected. It is surprising because on all the big questions naturalists have an orientation so different as to seem like a subspecies of 'regular' humanity.
In what follows for simplicity I'll contrast naturalism with supernatural theism as the vast bulk of theists are supernaturalists. Of course there are obvious exceptions such as pantheism and late night debate might weigh whether some forms of deism or process theism should be termed naturalism. A lot of philosophic wriggling goes on at the borders and has ever since Descartes figured he had it down. Supernaturalism has always been a cultural winner, but philosophers are loathe to take it home. So we have a lot of philosophic crossdressing going on--"my supernaturalism is actually a kind of naturalism but don't look too closely." Naturalists are very easygoing and tend to be lax about patrolling their philosophic borders, so it sometimes is a little confusing.

Supernaturalists tend to share very public worldviews. Naturalists are often understood in terms of their absence of such well-understood views--defined by the negative--rather than the positive structure of their alternative vision. It might further reinforce the group camaraderie and perhaps even help the philosophic discussion if naturalists were a little more personally forthcoming about their psychological and metaphysical underwear. So the following is the start of a series of attempts at beginning this kind of revelation.

Again for simplicity I'll use the commonest broad notion of supernaturalism. Supernaturalism divides the scheme of things into two kinds. On the one side (M) we have everything that is causally linked in common parlance (picky physicists might want to substitute notions like the web of relationship or suchlike for the notion of causality). It includes everything that is connected in principle whether or not we currently have some scientific account of that principle. On the other side of the divide are God(s), souls, spirits etc. (S) which have an independent existence. The critical distinction is that M and S are discontinuous. That is if (M) ceased to exist (S) would continue. The supernatural is separate in principle and thus is not merely a label for undiscovered (M). Naturalists live in a world of only one kind, and hence it is completely meaningless to label it M or S (as is commonly done) as these terms only mean something when defined in contrast. Science is a special way we have of construing aspects of M but of course it is not what defines M--another common misperception.
Just like their supernaturalist brethren, naturalists deal with the psychological netherworld in the wee small hours--the questions of life and death, meaning and moral choices, slow dancing and how to get through the night. So what are they on about and how differently do they feel about things? It's always a safe start to label difference as pathology, immaturity etc.

So.

Perhaps naturalists are just phase locked adolescents forever living out pointless rebellion. Maybe it is just a juvenile grab for 'cool'--a little identity achieved cheaply by wearing one's philosophic baseball cap backwards. Perhaps they really are just emotional Republicans, Charlton Hestons who stand defiantly bare-chested staring unblinking into the void. Or maybe they are just regular folk. Here are some of things they think and feel.

Home alone.

Their relationship to the scheme of things at large marks one of the biggest differences. What kind of universe is a worthy home? To many naturalists a theistic universe would feel like a secondclass universe not worth calling home. How would someone feel like this about what for theists is usually the ultimate comfort?
The universe as a manufactured object, no matter how subtly conceived, is unbearably depressing. Why would I want to live in a universe that is about me? That kind of universe is just too small. A universe built on purpose to generate complexity or life in some form or primates or humanity (or me?) is a cosmically impressive act, particularly if no tweaking is allowed after the initial roll of the dice. But, no thanks; I'd rather find another place to call home--a place that has no purpose--a truly wild place--yes! A universe that spawns life and consciousness without instruction, and just because it is. Ah! Now that is really something one can get excited about. It's the difference between inconceivably awesome cosmic skill...and pure magic. Magic is just that much better. The very contingency of life is then what makes it so unbearably sweet and precious.

The naturalist philosopher.

Some naturalists with too much time on their hands are philosophers.

Philosophic naturalists are rarely simply failed believers--just couldn't in any conscience do the faith and belief thing. They didn't take philosophy courses and figure the great syllogism. Nontheists just like theists can provide philosophic rationales for their views. Of course, they no more come to these views because of these rationales than their believer brethren. Philosophic reasoning and moral argument are almost entirely after the event rationalizing phenomenon rather than determinants of belief or action.

For whatever it is worth the simplest naturalist philosophic argument is an alternative aesthetic response to the usual end stage theistic argument. What is the ultimate explanatory cause of the natural world--the reason why there is something rather than nothing?

One can hypothesize (believe in, postulate, if you wish) a supernatural God as the independent cause but for this explanation to work this God has to be imbued with the property of self explanation otherwise one is simply starting an infinite series of explanations. The issue then is that if it is OK to arbitrarily ascribe this property to God it is alternatively equally OK to ascribe this property to the natural order. The issue then comes down to the ultimate Occam's choice. Is the scheme of things one kind of thing (self-sufficient) or two kinds of things, one contingent and the other its self-sufficient primary cause. Philosophic naturalists think the aesthetic choice is a no brainer, but then the other guys....

Yeah, you've gotta be wild eyed professional philosopher for it to grab you.

The big jump

And what of death in the naturalist's world? We fight as hard as any other creature driven by the great impulse to stay alive. There is a naturalist alternative to an afterlife with pie (in the sky), but it is not 'look the other way' or a papering of flimsy ideas about death being part of life, the great cycle and so on. Death sensibility is the sum of a set of psychological features.

Squarely in the middle is the brute fact of death and the associated emotional response. Without in any way avoiding the central fact or denying one's inner responses, over time one can acquire additional emotional sensibilities as substantial as chief issue. This not the addition of an idea but the gradual development of oncrete emotional connection with the source of our arising and return and our sense of death in the cycle of everything. Ideas on their own are irrelevant in the face of an emotion as potent as the impulse to stay alive. But mind's discovery of self and the universe at large over time can generate correspondingly powerful emotions.

Why not matter.

Naturalists of course are on good terms with matter.

We are always a little distressed to hear it referred to in such disparaging terms. 'The merely physical, just material....' What's so inadequate about material that we've got to invent the supernatural?

Very simply we have two sets of abstractions that we can't fit together--mind, subjectivity and consciousness on the one hand and, well, matter on the other. It just seems to many that matter couldn't be doing the job. This judgment is quite extraordinary when you look closely. With scientists really struggling to model and describe both of these domains many have already decided they are incommensurate based on our everyman's mental handle on them. Part of the problem is the powerful bias of the human mind in favor of the visual. Say the word matter, and we conjure visual images abstracted from the everyday world and high school textbooks. The hypnotic power of the visual is that it really feels like we've captured the material world in these images. The best we can usually admit is that they are approximations, perhaps a little naive in the physicist's world, but adequate for philosophic evaluation.

The deep physical scheme of course has no correlation with these images. Early in the twentieth century, we cut an intellectual deal with the devil that we understood very poorly at the time and have struggled with ever since. Here was the deal. There were a few fundamental problems in experimental physics that we had no way of handling. We were offered the physicist's dream, extraordinary mathematical tools which could handle all of the experimental anomalies--the most powerful and successful scientific model of all times--but it was to be a Faustian trade. We had sold our imaging soul, to surrender forever the capacity to picture in any way whatsoever what was actually going on in the material world described by this magical mathematics.

It is completely uninformative to say that we cannot picture matter generating/being mind and consciousness. We cannot picture matter doing anything other than by using metaphors of convenience--waves, particles etc.--even though the deep world is none of these things. It is not the case as is commonly assumed that early twentieth century physics replaced particles with waves. What we discovered was that the same material substrate could be construed perfectly (not as approximations even) in wave terms in one circumstance or particle terms in another. That has very deep implications for our understanding of the nature of the material substrate. Something that can be perfectly captured by metaphors that are completely incommensurate is not some mix of these nor some half way blend. It is not picturable in our mental framework at all. The mathematics tells us only about the outcomes of experiments and says nothing about the thing-in-itself. (As there were and still are some famous holdouts against this understanding). Naturalists are as surprised as anyone else at our evolving understanding of the universe but their philosophic bet is that wild as the intellectual ride is the scheme of things is single and coherent rather than dual in nature--that matter is not mere.

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A Comment by John Sylvest

On Home Alone: Jeff W. Dahms:

Apparently, as Mr. Dahms was travelling to the St. Ives of Metaphysics, he met seven existentialists; each existentialist had seven ontologies; each ontology had seven epistemologies; each epistemology had seven hermeneutics; each hermeneutic had seven worldviews. From his accounting of various worldviews, one might get the impression that he used Occam's Razor to debit their noetic ledgers while exclusively using his own aesthetic sensibilities to make any credit entries. Dahm, however, has no warrant to claim that anyone else's aesthetic sensibility sacks are empty or that others' ontological books are out of balance.

One misapplies Occam's Razor to problems that are inherently insoluble. Because primary questions of being are occulted in principle, the ontological riddle is insoluble.

Sufficiently nuanced, the proper application of the razor requires, not just the simplest explanation, but the simplest explanation that can get the job done. Therefore, another reason that Dahm's razor doesn't cut it, philosophically, is that he's swiping at a problem that can't be rationally sliced. Assuredly, the cosmological and teleological arguments of Aquinas, the ontological arguments of Anselm and Augustine, the moral argument of C.S. Lewis and even Tillich's being itself, are not coercive proofs for supernatural origins of existence. However, equally assuredly, Stenger's quantum vacuum fluctuation , Dawkins' unweaved rainbow and Sagan's cosmos, which is all that is or was or ever will be, do not solve the ontological riddle.

To the extent one buys into the notion that we should use magic and excitement as criteria to evaluate what is in the aesthetical sacks of fellow existential travelers, as Dahm seems to be suggesting, I think a compelling case can be made to label such criteria mystical , because the mystical is not the exclusive province of the theist, nontheist, agnostic or atheist. It is, rather, ubiquitous, especially to one who takes the counsel of Wittgenstein's *not how things are but that things are which is the mystical* . It has been said that the true mystic is one who cannot quite get past the mere fact of existence, that, even for the theistic mystic (implying there are other types), the positing of a Creator only postpones the problem and leaves the intital fact of any existence, whatsoever or Whomsoever, question begging. We thus all remain excited, positively stupefied, once giving any proper consideration to this question of primal origin, whether naturalist or supernaturalist, or even non-naturalist (Why does everything outside of the space-time-matter-energy plenum that might be nonspatial, atemporal, immaterial or nonenergetic have to be super?).

Quite a plurality of hermeneutics have converged on the mystical throughout the millenia and have come up with different conceptualizations for Wittgenstein's *that things are*. Testimony to humankind's ongoing fascination with the ontological riddle comes from such as Rudolf Otto's *mysterium tremendum et fascinans* , Chesterton's *mystical minimum of being* , Thomas Aquinas' *esse and essentia* , Maritain's *intuition of being* , Heidigger's *why is there something rather than nothing?* , Zen Buddhism's *ontological identification* and Spinoza's *natura naturans* (unmanifest Nature) and *natura naturata* (manifest nature). It may be too early to tell for sure but, to me, it seems quite possible that modern day conceptualizations of the inherently mystical questions of primal origin, paying proper Wittgensteinian homage to the *thatness* of reality, may be in their nascent state as coined in the terms *open space* by Willem Drees, *sacred depths* by Ursula Goodenough and *uncertain reality* by Hans Kung.

If Jeff Dahm feels alone in his travels, perhaps he should stick to simpler riddles, that is to say of the soluble variety? If the masses who are passing him, going in the opposite direction, on the metaphysical highway seem to be a tad merry and excited, themselves, then perhaps his isn't the only existential sack full of *mysterium tremendum et fascinans* ?

Respectfully,

John Sobert Sylvest

p.s. Which epistemological sacks have the greatest modeling power in terms of logical consistency, internal coherence, external congruence, cognitive-affective consonance and interdisciplinary consilience, all with manifold auxiliary hypotheses constellated around their ontological core commitments, all at least indirectly verifiable and falsifiable, however fallibillistically, yielding increasingly compelling inferences for humankind --- is a whole other consideration.

A comment by John Sylvest - 2nd in a series of 4

On Home Alone: Jeff W. Dahms:

Dahm asks of the wildeyed professional philosophers:
�And what of death in the naturalist's world? We fight as hard as any other creature driven by the great impulse to stay alive. There is a naturalist alternative to an afterlife with pie (in the sky), but it is not 'look the other way' or a papering of flimsy ideas about death being part of life, the great cycle and so on. Death sensibility is the sum of a set of psychological features.

Squarely in the middle is the brute fact of death and the associated emotional response. Without in any way avoiding the central fact or denying one's inner responses, over time one can acquire additional emotional sensibilities as substantial as chief issue. This not the addition of an idea but the gradual development of oncrete emotional connection with the source of our arising and return and our sense of death in the cycle of everything. Ideas on their own are irrelevant in the face of an emotion as potent as the impulse to stay alive. But mind's discovery of self and the universe at large over time can generate correspondingly powerful emotions.� [end of quote]

Well, I'm no professional but I am a wildeyed philosopher. Let me comment further.

Perhaps there is no pejorative connotation intended in the above reference which characterizes the supernaturalist�s belief in an afterlife as *pie in the sky* but allow me to challenge any implicit notion that the idea of the supernatural is solely driven, historically or contemporarily, by the cognitive dissonance that the fact of death brings about, because I come across this often. At least in this consideration, the author did consider additional factors that motivate believers in the supernatural, unfortunately, however, no less readily dispensing with them on similar aesthetic grounds, rather than availing us of a more rigorous analysis of their comparative epistemological modeling power vis a vis our mental mapping of the whole of reality.

My counterpoint will always be that there is a web (and a plurality) of auxiliary hypotheses, the cosmological, teleological, moral, ontological, epistemological, nonenergetic causation, and others, that exist in a constellation around such a core hypothesis as affirms the supernatural and that this constellation is held aloft by internal coherence, logical consistency, external congruence with reality, interdisciplinary consilience, cognitive-affective consonance, etc

To take one of these elements, in this instance, the desire for an afterlife, or, as in our previous consideration, the causal argument , and use it as the most salient reason for both the origin and the tenacity of humankind's belief in the supernatural is the erection of a strawman argument and not borne out by anthropological data. Death, like birth, may have been an ordeal and an ontological curiosity but conquering death was neither the sole nor main motivator for either belief in the supernatural or, for that matter, ethical behavior. The desire for an afterlife may be dispositive but it is certainly not exhaustive as an anthropological explanation of humanity's religious or ethical behaviors. Neither should it be given centrality (notwithstanding that believers in the supernatural might be the most pitiable people per St. Paul or that everything, ethically, would be permitted following Nietzsche).

Although humankind, at large, may not be able to articulate or intellectualize it, I think humankind is in touch, existentially, with that profound intuition of being, an intuition that gets articulated as an ontological riddle and gets experienced as a depthful mystery, forever occulted. Our response to this mystery is the construction of a meta-rational framework and the articulation of a super-reasonable metaphysic as a justification of that leap of faith in human reason that all critical realists take, naturalists and supernaturalists, alike.

I don't think anthropological studies would conclusively show that an afterlife belief figured prominently in the development of either religious or ethical human behavior.

Let me suggest that Hans Kung's epistemological hypothesis , what I like to call the search for modeling power , which ultimately derives from the ontological riddle, holds much more sway, especially in conjunction with a constellation of other auxiliary hypotheses, in the tenacity of humankind's belief in the supernatural than any afterlife beliefs taken alone, although assuredly such contributes in some measure to that tenacity. I simply assert that afterlife desires don't deserve the prominence they are too often given in ad hominem arguments against supernaturalists, fallacious as they are. There is nothing in Buddhism or even in early Judaism that incorporates an afterlife belief either doctrinally or meta-ethically.

This url, http://www.near-death.com/religion.html , is hit #1 on Yahoo when searching with this syntax: +afterlife +religion . Without sourcing my intuitions further, I standby my claim to the noncentrality of any meaningful afterlife in the emergence of both religion and ethics in humanity. One can read there what the author says about the ancient Greeks, Mesopotamia, the Egyptians, Hebrews, Buddhism, the Sadducees, Judaism, etc

I intend to address one more issue --- and that concerns what Dahm describes as our *Faustian trade*.

Cordially,
John S. Sylvest

A comment by John Sylvest

On Home Alone: Jeff W. Dahms:

This is my third comment in a series.

Dahm wrote:

�Say the word matter, and we conjure visual images abstracted from the everyday world and high school textbooks. The hypnotic power of the visual is that it really feels like we've captured the material world in these images. The best we can usually admit is that they are approximations, perhaps a little naive in the physicist's world, but adequate for philosophic evaluation.

The deep physical scheme of course has no correlation with these images. Early in the twentieth century, we cut an intellectual deal with the devil that we understood very poorly at the time and have struggled with ever since.�

He then described our metaphors of convenience and mathematical tools vis a vis our mental frameworks and the problematic of saying anything about a thing-in-itself. He closes with: �Naturalists are as surprised as anyone else at our evolving understanding of the universe but their philosophic bet is that wild as the intellectual ride is the scheme of things is single and coherent rather than dual in nature--that matter is not mere.�

He describes his materialist monist position as a philosophic bet and, to me, it has a measure of epistemological parity with Pascal�s wager , somewhat driven by aesthetics (mere taste?), but likely also driven by the sneaking suspicion, as is implicit in his ontology, that the ontological riddle is a pseudo-riddle, that for our physical system, taken in its totality, we can only model the rules but cannot explain them.

Allow me to build my own strawman for heuristic purposes. It seems to me that materialist monists suggest:

1) we cannot (should not?) take reality, itself, to be a thing in need of justification;

2) any hypothesis that requires an unachievable metasystem outside of our most basic framework cannot "explain" our most fundamental framework;

3) we cannot bypass the uncertainty inherent in any system, including the basic framework of our existence, by setting up some inaccessable metasystem without sacrificing modeling power for a rush to closure;

4) the ontological riddle is a pseudoriddle, trying to pull itself up by its metaphorical bootstraps, not just insoluble in principle, but not even a question to which a response is possible;

5) undecidability is fundamental, but so are certain a priori presuppositions, the framework for everything else. Ergo, one can model the rules, but never explain them because, as a model, the system works, while as an explanation, the uncertainty destroys it as a consequence of the system itself;

6) by collapsing the distinction between the physical and phenomenal, or even the phenomenal and ontological (using Maritain), we have uncertainty, and the greatest possible modeling power for hypotheses within the system, as well as a litmus test for such hypotheses as do not belong to the system.

Ironically, the above "rant" about the "ontological riddle" or "why is there something rather than nothing?" --- has some truth to it. As we consider different orders of emergence or different degrees of ontological density or different levels in the hierarchical chain of being, we recognize that, indeed, higher order systems cannot be comprehended by their respective lower orders. Lower order systems cannot even model their own rules much less attempt to explain them, lacking that novel emergent semiotic capacity found only in the human, capable of experiencing our minds themselves symbolically.

I think what happens is that, aware of how we can comprehend the lower orders, both modeling and explaining their rules, we are capable of conceiving of how our own level in the hierarchy might be comprehended by yet a higher level or order or system. Of course, any hypothesis about such a meta-system truly does not belong to the system, itself. Any ontological hypothesis that requires such an unachievable metasystem, outside of our most basic framework of existence at our own level in the hierarchy, indeed cannot "explain" our most fundamental framework of existence. Neither can we bypass the uncertainty inherent in the system at our hierarchical level.

The riddle of what level might yet comprehend ours is insoluble in principle and does require both metaphorical bootstrapping and an analogical imagination. Ontological undecidability is fundamental, is not testable by a posteriori empirical evidence, is not a priori graspable and remains, in principle, indemonstrable, insoluble. As a consequence of the system, itself, uncertainty does destroy any explanations of any inaccessible meta-system.

We can, however, contrary to an assertion above, take any given level in a hierarchical system to be a thing in need of justification and, applying an emergentist perspective, we can explain these levels and model their rules. We can symbolically represent our own level of existence and can, indeed, consider it just one more level in the system and attempt to justify it, even if we can only model this level's rules but not explain them.

Our novel emergent semiotic capacity can, indeed, construct an hypothesis of how our hierarchical level might be comprehended by yet a higher level and can attempt to explain how that higher level might unobstrusively but effectively influence our own level of existence as a tacit dimension within that existence. (Cf. Aristotle and Aquinas on formative causation and Arraj on implicate order and nonenergetic causation).

In hypothesizing a distinction between the phenomenal and ontological, we don't eliminate uncertainty, for we do acknwledge that this meta-hypothesis does not belong to the system, itself, that system being our level in the hierarchical chain of being and those it comprehends. By hypothesizing a distinction between the phenomenal and ontological, we can indeed achieve the greatest possible modeling power for hypotheses within the system, remaining open to such a tacit dimension as might directly but unobtrusively be influencing our own level in such a meta-system as transcends our limits and finitude (which are not identical to our boundaries).

We may indeed be increasingly able to draw increasingly compelling inferences from ever more rigorous statistical analyses regarding such anomalous phenomena as appear to have nonspatial, atemporal, immaterial and/or nonenergetic causes, however indemonstrable they remain in principle, without any sacrifice of modeling power, whatsoever. Christianity and the Greeks have done it before, gifting us with science as we know it today. The more things change; the more they stay the same.

My best,
John Sobert Sylvest

A comment by John Sylvest

On Home Alone: Jeff W. Dahms:

This is my fourth and final comment in a series (I understand they are posted reverse chronologically).

Dahm broadly defined supernaturalism:

"Again for simplicity I'll use the commonest broad notion of supernaturalism. Supernaturalism divides the scheme of things into two kinds. On the one side (M) we have everything that is causally linked in common parlance (picky physicists might want to substitute notions like the web of relationship or suchlike for the notion of causality). It includes everything that is connected in principle whether or not we currently have some scientific account of that principle. On the other side of the divide are God(s), souls, spirits etc. (S) which have an independent existence. The critical distinction is that M and S are discontinuous. That is if (M) ceased to exist (S) would continue. The supernatural is separate in principle and thus is not merely a label for undiscovered (M). Naturalists live in a world of only one kind, and hence it is completely meaningless to label it M or S (as is commonly done) as these terms only mean something when defined in contrast. Science is a special way we have of construing aspects of M but of course it is not what defines M--another common misperception."

He well set forth the idea of ontological discontinuity.

In such materialism, also broadly conceived, there is the denial of any arbitrary breaks in nature and an affirmation that everything is on a continuum with everything else, all that exists being explicable in terms of the mass-energy plenum, including our mental processes, which are also, in principle, fully explicable in terms of matter and energy. I will critique this notion by liberally paraphrasing, throughout, from Jack Haught's ideas as set forth in his __Cosmic Adventure__ .

In order to be consistent, a thoroughgoing materialist monist would perhaps not even advert to certain conceptualizations within our supernaturalistic framework or take heed to even posit it as an ontology, but at least for the sake of exploration of our common ground, they usually acknowledge that their position is not inconsistent with what others of us consider to be a *materialist monism* wherein reality is reducible to the one realm of the physical.

In a collapsing of the distinction between the physical and the phenomenal, there is at least an implicit rejection of any dualism that would give to mind a separate ontological status. So, metaphysically speaking, in that most materialists reduce reality to only one kind of stuff, they can be considered monists.

Now, at least insofar as they suggest, for instance, that we 1) can model a system's rules; 2) refrain from metaphorically bootstrapping an ontology; 3) should not hypothesize unachievable metasystems; 4) should not construct the physical from the phenomenal; and 5) should recognize other such epistemological constraints, it would seem they remain implicitly dualistic in their epistemology, that is, in their view of knowledge. They demand objectivity in our understanding of nature, and this objectivity requires our keeping our subjectivity detached from the object, nature. In their own minds, therefore, they advocate that we must remain at a distance from the object being investigated in order that an "objective" perspective becomes possible. This divorce of a subject's mind from the object being examined amounts to an *epistemological dualism*.

According to Haught, such an attempt, by a materialist monism, to hold together a metaphysical monism of matter with an epistemological dualism of mind over against matter seems to be incoherent. For on the one hand this implicit materialist philosophy asserts that beings with minds evolved out of the cosmic process and, therefore, are continuous with nature. But on the other hand the same philosophy maintains that the minds of these beings are separate from the natural world ***during any valid act of knowing***. Understandably, Haught points out that it is very difficult to piece these contradictories together from the point of view of logic.

In my view, one thus, at the least, flirts with nihilism, possibly hoisting one's epistemology up on one's own gallows, bulveristically sawing off the branch of knowledge one is ontologically nestled in. Or, as Hans Kung would say, they thus nurture a nowhere anchored and paradoxical trust in uncertain reality.

No doubt, we all wager, but I'm placing my philosophical bets on an ontology that is open to the possibility of nonenergetic causation, atemporality, nonspatiality and immaterality, to an efficacious but unobtrusive tacit dimension of formal causality that is not merely emergentistic, that, however indemonstrable, will increasingly provide indispensable explanatory ideas for such as nonlocality, superluminality, implicate order and such. Such a nonnatural realm need not be conceived as personal versus impersonal, as benevolent or evil or morally neutral, or other such attributes --- not that there are not compelling inferences that might be drawn from the human experience in those regards, but they might take us astray of this engaging and entertaining essay by Dahm.

Many thanks,
John Sobert Sylvest

I disagree!

---

JB, I've just browsed this so far and wish to affirm your tenacious efforts to dialogue with this pivotal group. You certainly are bringing the Gospel to the marketplace of ideas and holding your own very well and with great civility.

Thanks for archiving this here.

Thanks, Phil, for the affirmations. Thanks, w.c. for a most depthful engagement, including some generous personal sharing.

In brainstorming a response to this question: In other words, do you think it is possible to hold a strictly atheistic position while at the same time having a conscious degree of inner sensing/intuiting of one's being/soul? , I have wondered whether or not a personality typology of nonbelief could be constructed.

It does seem that we can broadly conceive some categories that might be descriptive of the personalities I have encountered during my cybersojourns through the metaphysical hinterlands. With your knowledge of depth psychology, you are already aware of the perils and pitfalls of such an exercise. Beginning with that caveat, perhaps in the same manner that Maslow analyzed historical peak performers, we might attempt at least a cursory analysis of the more famous nonbelievers of our time?

Of course, we face a dual challenge here because, as you also know, we are not dealing with categories of mere intellectual assent/dissent but rather existential orientations. I do not know how I will proceed but will throw some stuff out for your consideration in the spirit of brainstorming and in a free association mode (not that this will give you a rare Rorschachian glimpse into the jb-psyche inasmuch as I possess no unpublished thoughts) .

So, let's begin with the existential categories from our own Christocentric inclusivistic perspective. Here, we have the divide between those who live good and upright moral lives and those who do not. Although we cannot judge, I would hazard a guess to say that most all nonbelievers I have encountered are decidedly on the side of good and not that which is evil. Who may be invincibly ignorant due to early deformative experiences, due to not having truly heard the Good News , etc is a whole other matter but, many of the fallen-away nonbelievers seem to be in some type of reactionary mode. Those who were raised in fundamentalist religions which could not countenance evolution, for instance, often bolted religion entirely. Others were scandalized or abused, etc

Of course, we have the obvious categories such as nontheist, agnostic, theist and atheist. Truthfully, I find atheists hard to come by except in sophomoric chatrooms and listservs. Quite simply, most academicians find outright atheism either too strong a philosophical position to defend or positively eschew the anti-religious rhetoric and venom of the more well known militant variety.

Hans Kung's characterizations come to mind, also. He talks of those atheisms that are mere intellectual arrogance or snobbish caprice and that would correspond to the sophomoric college chatroom variety. He also talks of those who, if they are quite serious, are quite exposed to thoughts of total menace and decay, to nihilistic tendencies. Those whom I have met who are quite serious are usually agnostic or nontheists and do admit to being exposed to some taint of nihilism, though they deny any outright nihilism and they despise radically deconstructive postmodernism as much as believers (for it sweeps away their metaphysical infracture along with ours, that being a form of critical realism). They have their sad moments, like all people, by their own admission to me, and sometimes envy believers while saying they just can't go there. They are courageous people and not uninvolved in societal transformation. They truly emulate, at least to me, a radically unconditional love, not motivated by the promise of future reward. They have left me glad to have known them. (Well, actually, they stay in touch.)

Of course there are the nontheistic Buddhist types. They emulate the folks I was just writing about, in my experience.

In summary, yes, I think it it is possible to hold a strictly atheistic position while at the same time having a conscious degree of inner sensing/intuiting of one's being/soul --- because, in their self-reflective awareness, they can label this experience in Jungian terms (of a nontheistic interpretation), neurophysiological terms, or what have you and they do.

Long ago and far, far away ... just kidding .. Phil wrote a book called __Faith and Doubt__ (I think I got that right). In that book he inventoried some of the modern day causes of nonbelief, such as scientific materialism, hedonism, and such. It gives me pause, also, to think of how many practical atheists are sitting in our pews.

So, we have the militant types: I would number Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan. We have the intellectual types, say, like Bertrand Russell. We have the types that are hard to pin down as either agnostic or deistic, like Stephen Hawking and E.O. Wilson. We have those who coyly remain silent but who are implicitly nontheistic and/or agnostic, like some religious naturalists , though some are clearly atheistic. Then, there are Freud and Marx and their ilk.

There are few, however, who, according to Tillich, could be said to lack ultimate concern and, if one accepts that faith and doubt are a single polar reality, then there are many sincere believers who, because of sincere doubt, don't know they are indeed believers. [Of course, we have Eric Hoffer's true believers , too.] If we accept Hans Kung's characterization of faith as a fundamental trust in uncertain reality, sometimes justified and sometimes nowhere anchored and paradoxical, then most are believers in this broadly conceived notion, too.

We also have the doubters within the faith like the Apostle Thomas and the Little Flower, Therese.

Some have faith and hope --- but the greatest of the theological virtues is love. Yes, indeed, one must admit, there are a LOT of anonymnous Hindus living in the world today, especially in this New Age

I suppose I have met enough characters to write a modern day Dostoevskian epic, representing every conceivable existential orientation. But wait --- wasn't just such a novel published here, not very long ago, at Shalomplace?

Pax,
jb

I like your description of these various groupings/positions, JB, and, especially, your emphasis on Tillich's notion of faith. This naturally leads to a point we've been over many times, which is the matter of implicit and explicit faith, and the difference the latter makes. I think you noted very well how, in many cases, explicit faith was so poorly presented/shared/modeled that its rejection is actually a movement toward greater authenticity.

Only . . . I do wonder about some of this. It seems to me that it should be obvious enough to any thinking adult that the parenting they received might not be the way they want to do it with their children, that the values they were taught might need modification, and even that the faith-content passed on to them might be in need of revisiting as well. How long can one hide behind the excuse of poor formation to reject out-of-hand the possibility that religions actually do give testimony to a greater Truth.

What does I can't go there really mean, I have wondered? That it would be a sacrificium intellectus?

Hardly! Christian intellectuals can hold their own with others from any field. That's obvious enough.

Without wishing to sound judgmental, I truly do wonder if pride and arrogance aren't often motivating factors in the I can't go there position. To go there would entail drastic changes in one's intrapersonal life, none the least of which would be the de-throning of one's personal Ego as the final arbiter of meaning and duty. It would also call for changing certain moral priorities, perhaps even "playgrounds and playmates." And, most of all (and I am convinced this is really the sticking point for many), it would mean joining a Church and becoming one of "those people," who, after all, are obviously hypocrites as are the institutions which attempt to help guide their formation and development.

Now if this all sounds like the False Self system, well . . . ahem. . . what else? If its presence constantly screws up the ongoing growth of even highly committed Christians, then why not the coming to faith of those who are not even working within a paradigm of explicit faith?

I believe that there is a power at work in the universe whose goal is to frustrate God's plan. The False Self is the internalization of this dynamic in certain patterns of conditioning, but it does not explain it fully. I also believe there is Evil Spirit at work in some of this, which is not to deny the goodness of people everywhere, only it is not to minimize some of the powers at work in some of these dynamics. What greater temptation than the idea that one can be good and virtuous and even holy on one's own, and without the "complications" of religious faith and all that comes with it?

In that old book of mine that you mentioned, JB, I had a quote by Bishop Sheen, which says it all: The new atheism is not of the intellect, but of the will. . . There is no one in the world who knows there is no God; but the modern atheist wishes there were no God.

I'll stop here. And people ask why I haven't written any books lately?

re: It seems to me that it should be obvious enough to any thinking adult that the parenting they received might not be the way they want to do it with their children, that the values they were taught might need modification, and even that the faith-content passed on to them might be in need of revisiting as well. How long can one hide behind the excuse of poor formation to reject out-of-hand the possibility that religions actually do give testimony to a greater Truth.

No simple matter this developmental deformation business, as w.c. has testified quite expertly. Your various points and counterpoints are well made. Some people make up their minds and their wills and then devise their reasoning or rationalization, on both sides of any divide.

Whole countries do this. Take France and Germany as recent examples: Michael Jackson had plastic surgery; the French don't believe it and the Germans were not impressed.

pax,
jb

"In that old book of mine that you mentioned, JB, I had a quote by Bishop Sheen, which says it all: The new atheism is not of the intellect, but of the will. . . There is no one in the world who knows there is no God; but the modern atheist wishes there were no God."

That about captures the existential crisis I was trying to describe.

No simple matter this developmental deformation business, as w.c. has testified quite expertly. . .

I didn't mean to minimize that, for I've seen just how deeply the emotional scarring can go, and how that interferes with any openness to giving the Church/Christian faith another look. Only I have seen so many who've been so badly abused in the name of religion come to terms with it and move on to a healthy, adult faith.

JB, we know that for many who say I can't go there, it's often not at all about childhood religious abuse. What's your "take" on this? What are the "obstacles" to "going there"? My wife has described a coming to a place in her life where faith seemed a possibility, and yet on the other side of a chasm of sorts. She wanted to "go there" but didn't know how, then discovered that in an instant she had somehow crossed and was "home." As the Church has always taught, explicit faith isn't just something we talk ourselves into, but is evidence of a grace which infuses this supernatural virtue into the mind and heart. Are those who say "I can't go there" somehow lacking in this grace, or is it that they do not desire to cross the chasm? I've shared some thoughts about this in my above post, but am wondering how you, w.c., and others understand it?

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BTW, this is an excellent thread topic, but there's not much in the thread title to let on about its subject. Would you consider renaming it and then posting your existing Subject at the top of your opening thread?

w.c., I do understand what you're saying, and would add to this my own struggles with the lack of a sense of Christian community that I have in our parish, not to mention the lack of significant enrichment. So there are also very real "I don't get much out of it" kinds of experiences which hold sway, here, I'm sure.

What might be helpful is to recognize that belonging to the Church means much more than being active in a parish. There are all sorts of other ways of connecting with the mission and ministry of the Church, the most meaningful in my own life being retreat ministry. That is where I find community, enrichment, and a living experience of Church.

The important thing, I believe, is this commitment to the mission and ministry of the Church, and the recognition that one is a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, blessed with gifts to use for the building up of the Body. There are all kinds of ways of doing that, I'm convinced.

I just still do wonder how much "I can't go there" is really of the "rich young man" of the Gospels type, only with the riches being intellectual instead of material. If, perhaps, a "yet" would be added to the end of that phrase, it could be viewed as a more authentic position.

Sorry if I'm coming off judgmental about this, and there's no intent to offend anyone.

The psychospiritual terrain of modern disbelief is a vast expanse and I am so very pleased to traverse it with such great explorers as participate here at Shalomplace.

The Fulton Sheen quote is a good one but would obviously have been more accurate if it had read that for some modern atheists it is a matter of the will and not the intellect, that perhaps some wish there were no God.

Let me reiterate that the only atheists I have encountered, personally, precisely come across as characterized by Kung as engaging in either thoughtless superficiality or snobbish caprice. There is a sophomoric arrogance that they seem to exude. They fit the profile of your average bulletin board troll, who seems to be crying for attention.

Most disbelievers I have encountered, either in person or in extensive correspondence, are classical agnostics. This is not to say that they aren't thus, practically speaking, close to being nihilistic or atheistic, for while they may be quick to concede by saying for instance: I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm simply saying I just cannot go there. , at the same time, many are in fact actively proselytizing their position with a zeal that betrays their underlying a priori presuppositions.

They clearly think the world would be better off without supernaturalistic belief systems and they clearly have an agenda to advance their naturalistic, materialistic views as all we've truly got to work with. They sincerely hold their beliefs and, as has been said about Bertrand Russell, they are decidely on the side of good and not that of evil.

There can be no denying that, even if their faculty of the will prevents them from intellectual assent, their wills are nonetheless surrendered by any definition of implicit faith. We simply cannot rely on such a facile definition of the will as might be implied in Sheen's clever phraseology.

So, as I have hinted at before, using Rahner's anonymous Christian (strictly for internal dialogue), Kung's fundamental trust in uncertain reality , Tillich's ultimate concern and the recognition of faith and doubt as a single polar reality , then conceding every benefit of the doubt and using every possible nuancing of the concept of invincible ignorance, we might suspect that only rarely do we encounter what would equate to a completely culpable disbelief. We do see what we would impute as an active though implicit cooperation with Grace.

When it comes down to what difference it makes (or how we might overcome any insidious indifferentism) what one believes, intellectually, as long as one lives a good and upright moral life, some have suggested to me that it boils down to what prescriptions we will devise for societal transformation in the way of ethical codifications, for instance.

This is not clear to me, however.

When it comes to general norms for behavior, we have such as the Golden Rule excursis and the Perennial Philosophy, which transcend culture, religion and historical time. Also, when it comes to specific norms, such as thorny biomedical issues, such as dealing with abortion, euthanasia, just war, the death penalty, cloning and the seamless garment of life slate, it seems to me that there is enough of a plurality of approaches just within Christianity, much less cross-culturally or inter-religiously or interideologically, that, (and this is a sad thing to suggest, I know) at the margin, I truly wonder what novel prescriptions the nontheists and materialists might contribute?

After all, there are already movements within Christianity that hint at cosmocentrism over against anthropocentrism, theocentrism versus Christocentrism, moral relativism versus absolutism, etc etc etc There are already movements within Christianity that tear at the facric of the seamless garment. Admittedly, the materialists can add to any impetus vis a vis this or that cultural imperative or societal prescription, but I seriously doubt whether they can add any truly novel ideas.

On the other hand, I am not suggesting that we have not witnessed an ongoing secularization precisely because of the influences of modernism and postmodernism, precisely as rooted in the Enlightenment and the Reformation and such. I only mean to evaluate what is taking place here and now, in this day and age. At this juncture we might be cross-threading with w.c.'s ongoing analysis of why Islamic and tribalistic cultures are so resistant to democratization and pluralism?

Thus, when we speak of modern disbelief, I think we can only speak in terms of centuries. When we speak of disbelief, there are as many species of that as there are people on the planet who have engaged it down through the millenia. I think the fruits of the Spirit per Galatians 5:22 remain the best point of discernment for the presence of Gospel virtue and the commitment to life-enhancing values. Such a discernment cuts through the superficial layers of intellectual arrogance and snobbery, sets the totemistic belief system apart from the authentically spiritual belief system, reveals where an individual or a society may be developmentally vis a vis transformative processes and what have you.

Creedal recitations and scriptural quotations can be done by the Devil.

My chief argument, therefore, against indifferentism, is not so much rooted in what ethical codifications or moral formulations different individuals or peoples might prescribe, for clearly God has inscribed His Law on all people's hearts. Rather, it is rooted in one's commitment to Right Speech and to devising the most perfect articulation of the Truth as one possibly can. This then becomes an epistemological enterprise, which further derives from one's ontological speculations. To me, this is intertwined in one's search for modeling power, for an accurate mental mapping of reality that does not confuse the map with Reality, itself, nonetheless, still, with a realism that is critical and self-critical, fallibilistically obscure but existentially certain. Benedict Groeschel, a great psychologist and theologian, notes that early faith is clear but tentative while later faith is certain but obscure.

Those who have said to me: I can't go there , I believe are struggling with metaphysical issues, primarily epistemological and ontological ideas. Most remain open though some rush to closure. They rush to closure as rationalists but are no more intellectually culpable than those who rush to closure as fideists and, folks, there may be no too few fideists sitting next to you in the pew and I suspect they far outnumber the rationalists in our society.

Not to worry, this is the intellectual dimension which I have attempted to deemphasize anyway. When it comes down to the will to love , that is a phenomenon which transcends ideologies and religions and cultures and societies even as failures to cooperate with Grace and cooperation with evil are similarly ubiquitous.

Properly defined and nuanced and understood, many agnostics would discover that they indeed are people of faith. Many in the Religious Right might be equally surprised to realize that they have indeed, like fundamentalists of all religions, committed intellectual suicide and the world would be decidely better off, in my opinion, if more people nurtured at least some measure of self-doubt. This intellectual commitment issue is a knife that slices in two directions where modern belief and disbelief is concerned. There are those too uncritical and too willing -- fideists. There are many too unwilling and too critical -- rationalists.

Did I ever mention the johnboysian epistemological holism? Well, there is epistemological holism, an ontological pluralism and an existentialistic orientation toward being here, now in love ... and the greatest of these is ... the existentialistic orientation. There is the movement of the understanding to faith, of the memory to hope and of the will to love. How they are intertwined and coordinated is very problematical, but, in another way, very simple. Love is the answer.

Love,
jb

These are rich, rich replies which speak for themselves.

My response . . . I think I'll change the style template for this forum. That green and brown is getting to me.

. . . later . . . ahh! much better!

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I should note that the Sheen quote in my book was used in the section on selfishness as an obstacle to coming to faith, and so it makes more sense in that context than in one where scientific materialism, secular humanism or other contexts which create struggles regarding faith.

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Your comments about shedding the false self and the increased vulnerabilities and problems fits my experience, w.c. I do believe that we need to retrain ourselves to meet our needs, set boundaries, etc. as we grow, and that doesn't always keep pace with the deconstruction of the false self. Sometimes things are a little bit messy, which is why, in my experience, short, pithy focusing statements help a lot.

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JB, I very much follow your points and they resonate. You've taken a lot of time to nuance what "I can't go there" means to different groups and, indeed, in the end, that needs to be nuanced individual-by-individual.

Yet I am not able to shake free completely of the distinctive importance of the Gospel and its invitation. If what Christianity teaches about the resurrection of Christ is true, then this is the singular most important event in the history of the human race! Nothing comes close . . . unless it's not true . . . in which case it's the greatest hoax/lie. I understand that this gets obscured because of difficulties people have in consenting to various aspects of the creed or Christian theology, and lots of other things, and that's most unfortunate. But the central Christian message is not simply on the same level as the various philosophies. If one accepts the resurrection as truth, then this determines certain parameters for theological and philosophical affirmations. Without this focus, however, it seems things can go off in many directions. This is not to deny a variety of theological schools in Christianity itself on just about every major area, only these all do, in the end, have a distinctive, historical foundation which is lacking in other schools of thought.

You know all this, I know. I am just remarking on it in the context of reflecting more on the meaning of "I can't go there." It seems to me that every thinking person who is exposed to the Gospel ought to, at some time, make a decision with respect to the central claims of Christianity. I'm groping to say something about how this makes all the difference--one way or another--but am unable to be more clear about that at this time due to excessive noise in my home by my kids and their friends. Can't think! Ugh. Later . . .

re: It seems to me that every thinking person who is exposed to the Gospel ought to, at some time, make a decision with respect to the central claims of Christianity. I'm groping to say something about how this makes all the difference--one way or another--but am unable to be more clear about that at this time due to excessive noise in my home by my kids and their friends. Ugh. Later . . .

Implicitly and explicitly, billions of people have been making such a decision for centuries and they are people of the Eastern religions and of the other Abrahamic traditions, as well as other religions and secular humanists.

Why do we seem to focus moreso on the nontheistic rationalists and scientific materialists when expressing our incredulity at their nonbelief vis a vis the Resurrection Event and other central claims of Christianity, while seemingly better abiding with the disbelief of the Eastern religions with respect to the very same tenets of our faith? Or do I exaggerate this case? For instance, how much time will you and Jim and Tyra devote to disagreements that Eastern religions have with Christian dogma at your summer institute?

When exploring human transformative processes, we need engage alternative worldviews not only at the level where our spiritual technologies converge but also at the level of underlying metaphysical, ontological and epistemological presuppositions. Buddhists and agnostics, as nontheists, have more in common at these fundamental philosophical levels than do Buddhists and Catholic monastics. You are already aware, as is Thomas Keating, that intentionality is primary and that the relational is of over-riding importance.

With Merton, we know that the East has a relationship with primal being that is immanent and impersonal and apophatic and existential. Our Christian heritage includes this relationship but is also transcendent and personal and kataphatic and theological. On one hand, at a very important and fundamental level, the materialist monists and the pantheists have more in common with one another than either of them have with Christianity. On the other hand, at another important level, theists of any type have more in common with one another, whether pantheistic or panentheistic or classical theistic, than any of them have with nontheists, whether they be agnostic or atheistic or Buddhist.

My question is this: Do we open interreligious and interideological dialogue with the truth claims of Christianity, such as the Resurrection Event? Or do we start at the level of metaphysical presuppositions?

My rhetorical answer is that this is not an either/or situation. We can dialogue at many levels. No matter what one's epistemological stance and worldview, the central claims of Christianity deserve being dealt with. As Josh McDowell says: This is evidence that demands a verdict! At the same time, how many of us have bothered to investigate the truth claims of Mohammed? or of Joseph Smith? or of the Jews, conservative or reformed? Or of Martin Luther, for that matter? Or of Jehovah's Witnesses?

Let me quit and leave the questions open-ended, so as not to imply I am firmly set in my answers. This is worth exploring.

I look forward to your ruminations when peace descends on your household, but please send my very best regards to those who are making the noise! They have been great friends of mine

pax,
jb

Another excellent reply, JB. Thank you!

Speaking to the essence of the part of this issue I've tuned into, you wrote: My rhetorical answer is that this is not an either/or situation. We can dialogue at many levels. No matter what one's epistemological stance and worldview, the central claims of Christianity deserve being dealt with. As Josh McDowell says: This is evidence that demands a verdict! At the same time, how many of us have bothered to investigate the truth claims of Mohammed? or of Joseph Smith? or of the Jews, conservative or reformed? Or of Martin Luther, for that matter? Or of Jehovah's Witnesses?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact I have, but you're right, many Christians haven't. If they do, however, they'll discover that Christianity is unique in that its founder is the only one among all the world relgion founders who is said to have risen from the dead. This, it seems to me, confers a legitimacy to the theologies and philsophies which flow from the implications of the resurrection that just can't be found anywhere else. Not that the resurrection can be validated any more than Mohammed's visions or Buddha's enlightenment experience can . . . only, to recognize, here, that even if all of the above *were* validated, the resurrection trumps in significance concerning what it reveals to us about God's priorities and the ultimate destiny of human nature. And this is grounded in more than mythology or mystical experience; it has an actual historical foundation as well.

Knowing all this, Paul the Apostle nonetheless chose to dialogue with the Greeks by referring to their teaching about an "unknown God." He met them where they were, validated what could be validated, and invited them to the next step. I see you doing much the same, JB, in your dialoguing with natural philosophers, scientific materialists, and other related groups. I hear you saying that they can go along with you up to the point where, with Paul, you invite them to enter into serious consideration of the next step. Like the Greeks who laughed at Paul (well, some of them), some of them say they can't go that next step, and I've been trying to understand why? You've given me a lot to think about in your responses, and I'll continue reflecting on them.

Let me inject, at this point, the criteria that I have bought into in order to critique disparate epistemologies.

In Pursuit of Modeling Power for Uncertain Reality � A Critique Checklist

In order to draw more compelling inferences in both the natural & theological sciences, and in our search for a privileged epistemology, the following hypothetical criteria have been recommended for our physical and metaphysical models:

Does the model possess:

� logical consistency
� internal coherence
� external congruence
� interdisciplinary consilience
� hypothetical consonance
� cognitive-affective consonance ?

Does its methodology employ:

� alternating conjecture & criticism
� critical realism & fallibilism ?

Does the model nurture a creative tension between an:

� epistemological foundationalism and a
� non-foundationalistic epistemological holism (versus either premodern or modern hubris or excessive postmodern humility and a nihilism, which hoists itself on its own gallows) ?

--- in a progressive research program wherein hypothetical core commitments are surrounded by a constellation of auxiliary hypotheses, such as the:

� cosmological
� ontological
� moral
� teleological
� epistemological ?

--- honoring both:

� creatio ex nihilo
� creatio continua

--- yielding ever-increasing:

� intelligibility
� interpretability
� meaningfulness
� explanatory adequacy
� comprehensiveness
� insightfulness
� relevance
� predictability
� testability
� confirmability � direct and indirect (eschatological & temporal)
� corroboration
� verifiability
� falsifiability
� fecundity ?

I compiled these lists using the ideas of Barbour, Polkinghorne, Haught, Peacocke, Nancey Murphy, Phil Hefner, Pannenberg, van Huyssteen and others, mostly from two major resources: 1) Theology and Science: Current Issues and Future Directions by Robert Russell at http://www.meta-library.net/rjr/index-frame.html and 2) Theology and Natural Science by Ted Peters in The Modern Theologians, edited by David F. Ford ((Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp. 649-665

Come on JB!! I haven't even finished my first beer, perched out here on my lawn chair . . . thought I'd get a good run on next Saturday

Now, to recap where I think we are in the discussion thus far: Basically, I have focused on engagement with nonbelievers at a very fundamental level, namely epistemology (what is it that we can know and how can we know it). A person's epistemic outlook is influenced by their ontological presuppositions (what one believes about primal being, about the very nature of being itself), especially following that adage that epistemology models ontology.

It has always seemed to me that, if we disagree with anyone at the fundamental level of basic premises or foundational presuppositions, then to argue about logical conclusions and inferences one finds compelling based on those fundamental outlooks is unproductive. That is to say that we will only argue past one another.

For instance, if we don't agree about what can be known and how it can be known, then we cannot explore and debate the evidence for the Resurrection Event. The good news is that most of the nontheists and scientific materialists I have known happen to be critical realists, just like Roman Catholics, for example. They are, in fact, our allies in guarding against any radical deconstructionism born of postmodernism. They don't buy, wholesale, into the postmodern critique but have responded to its legitimate elements in much the same way we have --- accepting the fallibilistic nature of our progress in knowledge per Popper, for instance.

These nonbelievers do have a fundamental trust in uncertain reality but, as Kung has said, it is a nowhere anchored and paradoxical trust, an unjustified confidence. They experience our advance in knowledge, albeit a problematical and fallibilistic advance of alternating conjecture and criticism, of verification and falsification, but don't feel the need to explain, pre-philosophically or philosophically or metaphysically, or to justify, meta-rationally or super-reasonably, why this advance is possible. They are essential pragmatists in this regard; it suffices for them to know that, for instance, the scientific method works and works very well.

Believers have the same confidence in the scientific method and the same fundamental trust in uncertain reality. They know that advance in knowledge is possible. They know that we cannot tender rational explanations for why we can know anything at all, that any attempt to justify our fundamental trust is a metaphorical bootstrapping, but they nonetheless proceed to give an accounting for being, itself, and for knowledge, itself. They construct a framework that is meta-rational, super-reasonable, meta-physical, which yields explanatory ideas and compelling inferences.

The nonbelievers see this meta-framework under construction. They listen to our justifications. They understand what we seek to explain with our ideas and with the inferences we draw from them. I think their basic response is that:

1) Our meta-framework (of metaphysical and meta-rational notions) is only metaphorical and there is no way to test it against reality. This is true as far as direct evidence is concerned but we make a strong case for the use of indirect evidence, I think.

2) Our justifications don't actually ground or support reality or primal being. They are merely linguistic exercises using our uniquely human semiotic capacities. That is to say, in one manner of speaking, that we can reflect on our ability to reflect but that doesn't substantiate anything ontologically vis a vis the mind-matter debate.

3) Our inferences aren't compelling.

4) Our explanatory ideas are not indispensable.

Basically, for nonbelievers, it comes down to a matter of taste, an aesthetic enterprise that is rooted in the law of parsimony as articulated by Occam's Razor: Why bother with meta-frameworks, meta-physics, meta-rational ideas and inferences, super-reasonable attempts to justify our knowledge (epistemology) or being itself (ontology), because the scientific method works very well, just like it is, without our busybody ruminations about how and why this may be so, without our attempts to drop an anchor to secure our trusting, without our attempts to eliminate the inherent paradox in our trusting. In a nutshell, what the nonbelievers are doing is staring at us quizically and asking, Pontius Pilately: What is truth?

To debate the Resurrection Event, at this point, is fruitless, because it answers an altogether different question and that is: Who is truth?

More later.

Pax Christi,
jb

Moving right along ...

Let me do a few book reviews that could help my ruminations along.

Hans Kung in 1) On Being a Christian, 2) Does God Exist and 3) Eternal Life uses nihilism as a foil against atheism. This maneuver is genius. Basically, he is arguing that, like being pregnant, one cannot be just a little nihilistic. To fail in an attempt to at least linguistically and semiotically and metaphorically justify uncertain reality, 1) whether through an authentically agnostic position that suggests that the attempt is warranted but futile, 2) whether through an atheistic assertion that the attempt is unwarranted because a merely naturalistic and materialistic reality is certain, 3) whether through a nontheistic silence, reverant or irreverant, or 4) whether through a nonsuppositional nihilism --- is to fall prey to an unmitigated, thoroughgoing nihilism.

The way this has been put to me before is: Just because there is no ultimate meaning doesn't mean there is no meaning. Relatedly, I have been asked: Other than the earliest moments after the Big Bang and the deepest structures of matter, what is it, anyway, that you believe we cannot know in principle?

To the latter question, I responded: We cannot solve the ontological riddle. It is occulted, in principle. We cannot scientifically demonstrate why there is something rather than nothing. We cannot prove that metaphysical nothingness as an initial state or condition is inherently unstable and has a tendency to decay into something, as the materialists suggest.

To the former question, one must concede that we find meaning, everyday, in life and in relationships. That it might be ephemeral, that it might all cease doesn't erase their present meaning. As has been said though (a quote from memory without attribution): The merrier the skating during the day and the ruddier the bonfires at night, the more poignantly sad it will be to take in the scene of it all ending.

These questions speak to our faith and our hope. In the question about what we can know, we are dealing with ideas about truth, about knowledge and epistemology and ontology. In the question about meaning and relationships, we are dealing with ideas about truth and also what we find beautiful, what we desire and what we value, what we hope for. I have put the question to atheists and agnostics before: Do you desire, as I do, to persist in relationship with loved ones forever? Some have cooly and coyly responded that they are grateful for what they have and don't want to be selfish or demanding or egocentric. Those with children aren't so ____________ (you fill in the blank with an adequate adjective) and respond unequivocally: Of course, I just don't see how. All have expressed to me a sincere sadness coupled with a bittersweet exhiliration at having been a conscious part of this glorious contingency . [I hope some can see a type of resemblance here with the Jewish prayer of Dayenu. I hope some can see a poignant beauty in the living of the good life without the thought for future reward.]

The thing is, there is a unity to truth and beauty and goodness, to the noetical, the aesthetical and the ethical. There can be no framing of these existential concerns in merely aesthetical terms, for instance. It is not enough, for example, to use the law of parsimony or occam's razor to choose between ontologies. It is not enough to claim that infantile illusion and wishful thinking are involved in our determinations about what is beautiful or what can be hoped for such that, just because we hope something is true doesn't mean it isn't. We must return to the question of primal ground, of primal being, of primal support, of primal origin and destiny, unfettered by ad hominem fallacies, unburdened by a priori presuppositions and 1) must ask being itself to give us an accounting; 2) must extricate ourselves from any paradox that would undeniably and unequivocally render our processes of conjecture and criticism, of verification and falsification, as foundationally arbitrary, totally capricious and inherently ambiguous, or, in a word, nihilistic.

Ralph McInerny, in his collection of Gifford Lectures, Characters in Search of an Author , tells us that we simply must fall back on reductio ad absurdum such that, any position taken to its logical conclusion that turns up totally absurd must be rejected as a fundamental premise. Either reject it or proceed nonsensically.

Jack Haught, in The Cosmic Adventure, points out the incoherency in thinking that a metaphysical monism can coexist with an epistemological dualism, that to claim that subject and object must remain detached in any valid act of knowing while, in reality, they cannot be detached, in principle, is a difficult position to reconcile.

C. S. Lewis, in God in the Dock, calls the process of sawing off the epistemological branch that one is ontologically nestled in bulverism. Those fully or partially pregnant with nihilism hoist their own rational conclusions up on their own epistemological gallows along with everyone else's knowledge claims, and are essentially self-contradictory and self-defeating, unable to logically maintain that, ultimately, nothing can be known (including the proposition that nothing can be known .

So, Kung and Haught and Lewis and McInerny are all saying the same thing: Positing a meta-rational framework that grounds and supports uncertain reality, that accounts for being and posits our origin and destiny, is not an option for anyone wanting to move forward without the threat of total menace and decay and meaninglessness, but rather is de facto mandatory and the only other alternative cannot even be coherently maintained. The questions involved might be evaded, intellectually, but no one evades them existentially. We are, all of us, already committed.

With the foundational assumption, in place, that truth and beauty and goodness, the noetical, aesthetical and ethical, faith, hope and love --- are all integral aspects of this existential commitment of our faculties of understanding, memory and will to reality, despite its uncertainty, an assumption that they are supported by primal origin, primal ground, primal being, primal support and destiny --- we might then ask:

Is this primal being material or immaterial?

Is this primal being impersonal or personal?

Is this primal being immanent or transcendent?

Do we approach primal being existentially or do we approach theologically?

In all of the above questions, do we pose a false dichotomy?

Well, following Aquinas, Maritain makes the point, vis a vis the causal argument, that any cause must be a proportionate cause. So, knowing what we know about existence itself and intuiting what we intuit about nothingness versus existence, the prime mover or first cause could not be merely one thing among other things (existence is too large) and this implies ontological discontinuity , a radical separation between existence received and existence unreceived or between contingent and uncontingent being. This satisfactorily addresses, for most people, assuming one got past the reductio ad absurdum exercise and is not otherwise mired down in quasi-nihilistic nonsuppositions of nontheism and agnosticism and atheism, the questions of whether or not being is entirely material, that is to say belonging to the space-time-matter-energy plenum as we know it and whether or not it is transcendent (has an alterity to it, an out-there-ness in addtion to its in-here-ness).

So, if we agree that being is immanent and transcendent, and also material and immaterial, do we relate to it merely existentially and impersonally, or might we relate to it theologically and personally?

IOW: Is Primal Being a Person?

Pax,
jb

Let me say here that most people don't need to do the metaphysical spadework to turn over the ideas I just examined in excruciatingly painful and tedious prose. We know all of this in our guts. We know it all intuitively. We have Maritain's intuition of being , I believe, at least rudimentarily nestled in our psyches. We know, like the song from the Sound of Music: Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could. But we must get over the silly notion, as sung by Julie Andrews, that: Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must've done something good.

Life is a free gift.

Existence is gratuitous.

So, one can begin here, with all of the aformentioned and lengthily-considered presuppositions already safely tucked away in one's subconscious by one's intuitive faculties.

The question, nonetheless, persists:

Is Primal Being Personal?

Also, let me say this, as I mentioned way earlier. One needn't begin, necessarily, with the metaphysics, but could take the truth claims of Christianity, especially the truth claims regarding the Resurrection Event, and begin an honest and throughgoing historical and empirical analysis of them. The Church welcomes and encourages this. There can be no conflict between science and religion is our presupposition.

We cannot lose sight of the fact that, by their very nature, truth claims about Christ's Resurrection and Gospel and Early Christianity, don't lend themselves to a fully detatched academic consideration because their content is of deep existential import regarding humankind's most deeply felt and urgent and insistent longings. It is not just a matter of evidence that demands a verdict . These are matters that, if they are true, will make claims on our hopes and dreams, and which will demand commitment of our entire personhood. Some shrink from such a demand, at the outset, for reasons well set forth by others, including Bishop Sheen and Phil. I will, therefore, continue my consideration of whether or not Primal Being is Personal and why?

Because of the already-established ontological discontinuity, following Aquinas & Maritain, for instance, we know that, if God is a person, this will only be true by analogy (with the exception that this could require a LOT more nuancing should God ever have decided to become, let's say, human , for instance). Hmmm. Looks like we'll be dealing with a lot more both-and concepts.

Anyway, I will stick to my metaphysical approach rather than the Christological approach. After all, Josh McDowell, Phil, Bishop Sheen and other great apologists have already exhaustively covered the latter.

So, the question remains: Is Primal Being Personal? Why or why not?

Pax,
jb

From Jacques Maritain:

quote:

Einstein belonged to the category of liberal scientists. For many years his notion of God was akin to that of Spinoza. Yet, as recent studies on him have shown, he came, with the progress of age and reflection, to consider the existence of that personal God whom he first doubted as required by the way in which nature lends itself to the rationalization of phenomena operated by science. As he said in an interview in 1950, far from being an atheist he "believed on the contrary in a personal God." Such a conviction meant in no way that the existence of God was supposedly a conclusion established by science, or a principle of explanation used by it. It meant that the existence of God is a conclusion philosophically established with regard to the very possibility of science.

Heisenberg and Oppenheimer are also liberal scientists. And so was, at least virtually, Max Planck, though it was under the cloak of science that every bit of philosophizing effort in him was concealed. He believed in an "all-powerful intelligence which governs the universe," but not in a personal God, and he thought that we could and should "identify with each other . . . the order of the universe which is implied by the sciences of nature and the God whom religion holds to exist." Such statements definitely transcend the field of experience and measurable data, though they remain inherently ambiguous: for how could an all-powerful reason govern the universe if it were not personal? And the God whom religion holds to exist is a transcendent God, who causes the order of the universe, but his philosophical "identification" with this order would make him cosubstantial with the world, as the God of the Stoics was.

This was Exhibit A re: Primal Being as Personal.

Pax,
jb

Regarding Einstein , Maritain's quotation is difficult to substantiate. Nonethelss, we are not proposing an argument from authority or dealing, on the other hand, with an ad hominem detraction. The ideas are offered hereinabove on their own merits.

pax,
jb

quote:

In a review of Mysticism Buddhist and Christian: Encounters with Jan van Ruusbroec O�Leary sums up his program. "�certain of the categories governing the debate (e.g., immanence and transcendence, personal and impersonal God, Creator and creature) have reached the limits of their usefulness. For a breakthrough in interreligious thinking these categories must be historicized and deconstructed as Christianity opens itself to the critical impact of Buddhist epistemology and ontology at the level of its most basic self-understanding. Only slight beginnings have been made in this daunting task, but is sure to be a major project of Christian thought in the next century.

Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue by Jim Arraj

It is at this juncture that we have come full circle back to my earlier reference to:

Theology Institute 2003
Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Religious Dialogue
by James and Tyra Arraj and Philip St. Romain.
Heartland Center for Spirituality
Great Bend, KS
July 11-15, 2003

The central truth claims of Christianity are indeed an issue in East-West dialogue and we can incoporate approaches that are both metaphysical and Christological. In fact, it is not possible to get totally away from this both-and approach. It may be that Phil, both in this thread and in his apostolic endeavors, has been more about the Christological, while I have been more about the metaphysical, again, both in this thread and in my outreach efforts, but clearly, these are, in the final analysis, inseparable.

In a nutshell, any hypothetical Divine attributes of intelligence and intentionality, such as omniscience and omnibenevolence, for example, drive one to the conclusion that primal being is personal.

But, let's dive deeper. Where does one get the notion that Primal Being must necessarily be either intelligent or intentional? Don't we arrive here at the classical divide between those who take sides such as in the debates on Intelligent Design and Creationism versus Chaos, Chance, Emergence and Evolution? There doesn't need to be intelligence because we can explain existence as arising from randomness, chance and chaos, from the laws of nonequilibrium thermodynamics which allow for novel structures to arise as derived from permutation after permutation, bifurcation after bifurcation.

pax,
jb

Food for thought, related to critical realism and postmodernism as comes up in this thread from time to time:

quote:

What I find most helpful about Polanyi is that he describes himself as being postliberal. We could probably use the word postmodern today. He recognizes that the great Cartesian program of clear and certain ideas, of foundational knowledge true beyond the possibility of doubt, is unattainable. Yet he is not driven by that to a relativism which simply says, you have your opinions, I have mine. He seeks to find a middle way between the two, greatly aided by his experience of science, where he also recognizes that there is a certain precariousness in human knowledge. Understanding, he insists, requires a commitment to a point of view; one's point of view should be open to consideration, but nevertheless, through our acts of commitment, we have powers of understanding which enable us to make progress in gaining knowledge of the physical world. He wrote his great book, Personal Knowledge, to show how it was possible to commit yourself to a point of view, while knowing that it might be wrong. I find that a very recognizable description of the scientific enterprise. I also agree that the scientific enterprise is successful, and this encourages me to think that Polanyi's stance is one that's actually sustainable. And if it's sustainable within our investigation of the physical world, that is an encouragement also for other forms of human inquiry including theology , where to an even greater degree, we have to commit ourselves to a point of view, and where we know our ideas are going to be only partially adequate. Polanyi's stance is a very helpful way of steering a middle course between thinking that you can prove things in some logically decisive way, and thinking there is no truth to be found or knowledge to be gained.

Polkinghorne on Polanyi

One of my favorite philosophers is Mortimer Adler. This was written before his death:

quote:

Mortimer Adler (1902-) is one of the most famous scholars and broad thinkers in our day. He was director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, chairman of the board of editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica and served as a professor at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He is famous as an educational reformer. Russians will appreciate the fact that his Great Books series includes both Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Mortimer Adler: Great Thinker and What He Thought About God

Continuing with Dr. Daryl McCarthy :

quote:

Although he sharply criticized the arguments of Aquinas, he came to believe in God as a philosophical deduction. Adler concluded as a philosopher that there were sound logical reasons to believe in God's existence. His reasoning went something like this (this is my summary, not his):

1. Since something cannot come from nothing, there must be something-or someone-who has existed forever.

2. Since personal cannot come from non-personal, the universe must have a personal Being as its source.

3. Since intelligence cannot come from non-intelligence, the universe must have an intelligent, personal Being as its source.

4. This Being is necessarily infinite (without limitations), eternal (no beginning) and uncaused.

5. It can be further argued that this Being is perfect in every way-perfect and unlimited in power (omnipotent), unlimited in space (omnipresent) and unlimited in knowledge (omniscient).

Now, this comes from a philsopher who had his qualms about Aquinas and classical proofs for God's existence, although one can clearly see, above, the causal and teleological arguments. I don't view Adler's arguments as any more logically coercive than those of Aquinas and Anselm although I do view them as those auxiliary hypotheses constellated around a reasonable ontological core commitment.

The point I wish to make here, is that there is an experiential difference between believing in a personal God, such as philosophically deduced by Adler, and a personal God with whom a creature could relate.

So, if we accept that, due to intelligence at work in Creation, there must be a personal God, we haven't philosophically demonstrated the goodness of God-His benevolent love for those He created, a Divine Person who hears and answers prayers and forgives our sins. We haven't demomstrated any divine relational attribute or intentionality attribute as might be directed toward inter-relations between Creator and creatures.

My point is that, even if a great mind like Adler could philosophically come to terms with God's existence through very compelling metaphysical inferences, still, there will remain a leap of faith to take one from the deistic to the Abrahamic monotheistic conception. Adler made this leap, eventually, and one can read about it here .

It is at this point that we come to the end of the metaphysical aspect of my reflection, for we can go no further, merely philosophically -- not to say it hasn't been a grand journey of human reason, looking for God.

quote:

Mortimer Adler-philosopher and educator-came to know God as a personal Being and not just a deduction resulting from philosophical reasoning. Our challenge today is to consider the evidences surrounding us which affirm the existence of the great, infinite (unlimited), personal God-the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Dr. Daryl McCarthy

And this is the point Phil has stuck to, tenaciously, and for good reason. Again: Our challenge today is to consider the evidences surrounding us which affirm the existence of the great, infinite (unlimited), personal God-the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He has been such a good friend and an inspiration over thirty years (1973-2003) that I felt responsible for marrying our perspectives together in this thread without making him labor in his noisy house to accomplish the same thing.

I will close with this link:
EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST: A Challenge for Skeptics by Peter Kreeft/Fr. Ronald Tacelli, SJ

And I will further suggest that Pascal's Wager is nothing to be ashamed of. It seems clearly smarter than wagering in the opposite direction when placing such important philosophic bets, with such outcomes of great existential import and great moment for us all. See Pascal's Wager Redux and have a great Valentine's Day, speaking of which, remember, God is a seductress but if you don't at least try to engage Her in conversation and you cannot quite come to terms with the notion that She wants to have Her way with YOU, then you'll forever sit in your front yard in a philosophical lawn chair, sipping the insipient brewskis of a Buberlesque I-It beverage while waiting for the Empress to parade nude down your otherwise booberless metaphysical street, while all the while She already awaits you inside in the jaccuzi in your innermost chambers. In short, you have to dive in! You have to get wet! You have to at least pray: Dear God (if there is a God), save my soul (if I have a soul) and have mercy on me, a sinner.

pax, amor et bonum,
jb

Absolutely marvelous marshalling of resources, JB! I encourage anyone who's only skimmed to print out these pages at some time and read over what you've provided.

I'm not really sure, quite frankly, what I was driving at as I was having a hard time concentrating during parts of those exchanges last night. You've surely touched on my concerns in the posts above. Mostly, I was trying to understand what "I can't go there" means . . . what's the "there" and "why can't one go?" There certainly does seem to be an explicit rejection of explicit faith, even after the dialogical engagement with wise souls like you has demonstrated that Christianity is capable of affirming all that reason can affirm, and yet invites "more." I was wondering why, given such agreements, the possibility of the resurrection and the enormous implications it holds for understanding meaning and truth, could be so facilely dismissed by some. I know there are as many reasons as there are individuals, and that such a rejection does not imply a rejection of implicit faith. I was trying to understand some of the more common reasons, and, I suppose, questioning if any of them could be addressed somehow.

Your posts have touched on all this. It was good to see Mortimer Adler's work mentioned along the way. I have great respect for him and his wife; their writings were a real help to me during a time in my life when I was having deep intellectual struggles.

And wow! Yes, almost 30 years of friendship! Here's to 30 more (at least!).