Subject: (urth) Information, etc

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:56:57 +0000

On 4/12/06, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>There is a general problem with saying that the Christian *faith* is "based
>>on" miracles. Basically if you know, by whatever means, that the event is
>>possible, then it doesn't require faith at all. In its ideal form, faith
>>would admit that the event was rationally impossible, and believe in it
>>anyway.

On 4/12/06, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com >
>I think this is more-or-less true; the loophole in it is, "with God all
>things are possible." 

I wasn't going interject on this thread and now that it is 6 days later
I shouldn't. But I haven't been able to get this back and forth off my
mind. It so perfectly encapsulates the divide between modern seculars'
view of Faith as opposed to that of modern observants and virtually all
pre-Enlightenment Westerners. It is always amazing that the two world-
views are so often seemingly unaware of each other. This IS actually
applicable to Wolfe in that it is still not clear to me where Wolfe stands
in this bifurcation.

For modern seculars Faith is practically antonymous to Reason.
In Faith, we place all those things that Reason denies, but which we
require as humans. Reason says we are the product of natural forces
within a closed system. But most can't live like that so they take a
"leap of faith", a jump into darkness, that there is a divine Creator
who made us in his image, (temporarily, if they are enlightened)
suspending their knowledge of what Reason tells them. Reason says
that Love and Altruism are a natural phenomenon of evolution,
a trick of sorts by our brains and glands, that gave the genes of our
ancestors the upper hand over those of competitors. But when we
look in the face of our beloved we cannot as human beings accept
thinking of them that way: we would not give up our lives for our
genes. So we take the leap again and declare that Love is transcendent.

On the other hand, the modern observants (lets use seven-day
Creationist Christians as our guinea pigs here) see materialist
seculars as merely followers of an alternate (idolatrist) religion.
They believe Genesis, and seculars believe what some science
journalist they've never met wrote in Discover Magazine or said
on Nova on PBS. The faith of observants is founded on their
observed experience: they trust the integrity of the Person that
has so influenced their lives, and therefore believe what they
think he has told them. ("Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1)

This division was mapped (literally) by Evangelical apologist
Frances Schaeffer in "The God Who Is There" and "Escape
>>From Reason". Quoting Alfred North Whitehead's assertion that
*modern* science
could not have arisen without the world-view established by
Judeo-Christian theology, he predicted that science as-we-know-it
will end when we all follow this tact to its logical conclusion
that Reason itself (founded on the premise that human
observation is valid) is itself unreasonable.

J

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:45:09 +0000

On 4/18/06, James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net> wrote:
> ...I haven't been able to get this back and forth off my mind.
> It so perfectly encapsulates the divide between modern
> seculars' view of Faith as opposed to that of modern
> observants and virtually all pre-Enlightenment Westerners.

H'mmm. I found your post interesting and compelling, except
for one thing: if my "back and forth" with Christ "perfectly
encapsulates" this divide, then I ought to find myself in one

> For modern seculars Faith is practically antonymous to Reason.

...

> On the other hand, the modern observants ... see materialist

Yet, I do not. I do see secularism as a belief-system, but to call
it a "religion" is to abuse both words ("secular" and "religion").
And I certainly do not see Faith as "antonymouc to Reason":
complementary, rather. We are required to apply Reason to all
things; we are required to apply Faith (whether in God, or in
Luck, or in the perversity of the inanimate, or...) to make up the
deficit in those situations where Reason cannot help us but a
decision is required.

--Dan'l

--
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
                        -- St Teresa of Avila
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 18:19:09 +0000

>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> replied

Dan'l,
I assure you I did not intend to assign teams for anyone,
let alone you. Actually, (although I didn't say so) I chose
seven-day Creationist Christians as an archetype (which
I was fairly certain did not include you) deliberately to draw
a starker line. It was the discussion that I thought
encapsulated the division, not the entire world-view and
personal syntax of the particular participants (which I
cannot know). In fact, you prefaced your response with the
assertion that you fundamentally agreed with Chris, but then
went on to write several paragrahs on what you disagreed with.
Perhaps by focusing on that disagreement I have created a
magnified illusion of your particular differences with Chris.
That illusion was inadvertant.

Nevertheless, this division comes to my mind a lot when
reading Wolfe as I cannot always be sure of whether a discete
"soul" exists in his stories rather than merely a repeated pattern
and in what way the Increate/Outsider is injecting Himself in His
creation. In other words, I cannot be sure of where Wolfe stands
on the reality of materialism and spirituality. I doubt that he is in
every way "traditional" or "orthodox" (whether one means, by
that word, "Catholic" or merely "Augustinian".)

J

---

From: Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:32:22 +0000

> observation is valid) is itself unreasonable.

As Karl Popper tells it, David Hume had already reached this  
conclusion way back in the eighteenth century.  Hume, in trying to  
justify inductive reasoning, proved it to be logically invalid.  As  
Hume believed not only science, but everyday knowledge to be based on  
induction, he was forced to conclude that all knowledge is  
unjustifiable and logically invalid.

Epistemology since then has tended to either ignore this or glorify it.

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:31:20 +0000

>genes. So we take the leap again and declare that Love is transcendent.

The problem you get into there is that when you explain love and altruism as 
evolutionary phenomena, you find that what is left of "love" and "altruism", 
lacking moral/normative dimension, no longer fits the description of the 
original terms. When you say that they're evolutionary tricks, you have not 
explained love or altruism, you've claimed that they do not exist and gone 
on to replace them with two homonymous terms. And there is a school of 
course that does this, but many other "seculars" who are not particularly 
interested in "faith" don't accept this view. All that aside, I think that 
the modern secular view is, like Dan'l said, that faith and reason are 
complementary. After all, you have to get your first principles from 
somewhere, and Reason can't give them to you. Faith is one place you can 
start from.

>hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1)

It's not my habit to make strong statements like this, but I'll go out on a 
limb and say that while this view of faith is distinctly modern - in fact 
it's the one Kierkegaard railed against - it is only "faith" in a degenerate 
sense, and certainly captures little of the primordial meaning of the word. 
What you're describing is simply unreflective belief, which is a set that is 
not co-extensive with faith.

>observation is valid) is itself unreasonable.

Matt's quote of Popper was interesting on this point, although Popper was 
certainly putting a spin on Hume. You don't need Hume to know that inductive 
reasoning doesn't meet rationalist standards. Remember that rationalism 
looks for truth that is *universal* and *necessary*. Inductive reason never 
claimed to give us that. What Hume did was to place inductive reasoning in a 
more central position. You could maybe say that Hume thus showed that all 
our knowledge was somehow uncertain, but it would be better I think to say 
that he claimed that our *real* criteria for what we call "certainty" in the 
daily course of our lives is not quite so strict as rationalists suppose. 
Science has come to grips with this quite easily - you won't find many 
scientists claiming the necessary, absolute truth of their theories. But 
this can only be a gloss since Hume's move runs a little deeper than this.

In any event Reason does not become unreasonable by starting from a premise 
that itself has no rational justification - if that were so, logic could 
never have gotten off the ground even with the ancients. The same charge 
could be levelled against the very first geometers and mathematicians, it's 
not characteristic of the modern age.

---

From: David Duffy <david.duffy at qimr.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 2006 22:04:34 +0000

> that word, "Catholic" or merely "Augustinian".)

I think Wolfe has spent a lot of time on this, starting with meditating on
implications of the split-brain patients and of psychosurgery (where there
are induced changes in what we would have previously regarded as
characteristics of the soul), and continuing through all his
twinned-personality heroes, where there are hints about when a
single-souled person has replaced a more traditional possession type
situations.

David Duffy.