Subject: (urth) Information, etc OT

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:29:41 +0000

Alright then, I shall unabashedly walk out into the weeds...

>Chris said:
>The problem you get into there is ...When you say that ["love" and
>"altruism" are] 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. 

Agreed. However...
In recent years the natural origin of altruism has become an
extremely popular branch of evolutionary biology, complete with its
own ecosystem of competing theories naturally selecting for grant
money and attention. I've never before met a 'secular' who claimed
such scientists were engaged in a lark. Perhaps you are the first.

>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.

Yes, Faith is one place to start from...but I said: to observants all such
sources of first principles are matters of Faith of one sect or another.

There's two things going on here in the alternate or "moderate" secular
view of Faith as you describe it. 

1) While, it does view Reason and Faith as complementary, it ascribes to
Faith the role of mental caulking for gaps that Reason cannot or *has not yet*
fully delineated. That's not a great difference from the secular position I
described. 

Of course, if one means by that that "God gave us a brain and expects
us to use it" then it is totally beside the point since the most literal-minded
fundamentalist believes that.  

2) It is true that many seculars retain a firm belief in the *objective
reality* of transcendence, but in doing so they are taking advantage of a
religious heritage to which (one can reasonably argue) they have no right.
When one diminishes Faith as superstition, as a "God"-meme, as device
to ameliorate our moral, emotional, or human definciencies, as mental caulk,
or as George Carlin described it "like lifts for your shoes", it is inconsistent
to simultaneously latch on to something as subjective as Love or Altruism
as uniquely transendent. Someone in that case might not admit that he is
choosing to do something flatly *contrary*, not complementary, to Reason
(as he would define it under other circumstances), but he is.

>It's not my habit to make strong statements like this, but I'll go out on a 
>limb and say that while [the view of Faith that James Wynn described]
>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.

I don't consider the observant view of Faith as I've described it modern
at all, nor am I certain it is the faith Kierkegaard railed against (although
I am well aware that the view of Faith I have ascribed to seculars is very
much *derived from* Kierkegaard and Existentialism). I confess I am
ignorant of the "primordial" meaning of Faith you are talking about.
However, surely the Egyptians truly believed they would literally be
judged by Osiris. Surely the Icelanders of the sagas believed they
would actually share in a special favored fate for dying bravely in battle. 

The Faith of observants I've described is also not unreflective at all. It
is starts with a first premise (as you agree all must do) --in this case
I'll continue to use seven-day Creationists as an archetype-- that the
Bible, all of it, is plainly true in the original text, that the writers
did not intend to deceive, and then to come to a conclusion based
on a reading of of the first chapter of Genesis that the mostly like
intention of the author was to describe seven 24-hour days
(this despite lots of evidence contrary). It is no more unreflective
than to start with the premise that the universe consists entirely
energy influenced soley and uninteruptedly by natural forces,
despite the fact that he persists in attesting his love for his girlfriend
or his country.

My point is that observants (as I'll persist in calling them although I
realize many secular-minded people attend church regularly and many
who do not attend still believe in revealed Truth) believe Faith and Reason
will *validate*, not merely complement, each other...that they both exist
equally in the *objective* world, as do "means and motive" to
criminal investigator. Their Faith IS a continuous intellectual
endeavor. However, their Faith tends toward the Scholastic view of
Faith and Reason: they are adamantly against
giving human *reasoning* a trump over Revealed Truth (or Faith),
since they argue (rightly, it must be admitted) that
humans can rationalize absolutely anything.

>it would be better I think to say 
>that [Hume] 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.

Heh, heh, heh. I've heard many secular scientists *remind* us that science
does not ascribe absolute truth to its theories...but only when comparing it
favorably to religion. As a voracious reader of popular scientific literature,
I am pretty certain that that caveat is not mentioned otherwise.
One only needs to look at the current Climatology debate or read
transcripts of conferences on competing Darwinian theories to see that,
for those who make a name for themselves in research-related endeavors,
hubris in advertising one's theories and pig-headedness and nasty politicking
in defending them are the norm. One does not get grants or attract attention
to one's published articles by concluding "Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm right". 

I've yet to read an article by a scientist (I might have missed it) in which any
consideration is given to the fact that scientists themselves (the fields they
study, the conclusions they draw, and the overall scientific consensus at
any given time) are as subject to environmental pressures and natural
selection as the colors on a butterflies wings. 

The science writer Richard Dawkins came up recently. Nothing in his books
betrays any self-doubt on the subject of Religion. He is an extreme example
of a typical mindset.

On the subject of Hume, both Francis Shaeffer and Alan Bloom ("Closing of the
American Mind") have fingered Hume as a prophet of skepticism toward Reason
however both name Neitzche as the one who irretreivably stripped human
understanding of its pretenses. Schaeffer said he "crossed the line of despair".
Bloom (writing over a decade later to a different audience) said he "pulled the
floorboards from the basement and found nothing underneath", even when
applying his own theories of human understanding to his theories themselves.

I don't agree that Science has truely come to grips with concept that there
is no empirical reason that human observation is anymore valid than
mitochondrial observation. Secular scientists merely ignore it, since they
have to. It is simply not an issue for observant scientists since most believe
humans were created by a reasonable God who made them to appreciate
his work. It certainly would become an issue if educated people affirm, as a
matter of course rather than idle speculation, that the concepts of human
observation and understanding belong in the category of abstract nouns
like "God" and "Soul".

>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.

No, no! I don't agree with this at all. The ancients were of course notorious
believers in the trancendency of Reason. It was --like the definition of a
triangle-- beyond justification, and therefore beyond subjective influence.
The Pythagoreans in fact believed that mathematics itself was
a trancendent, holy thing, full of divine secrets. 

Hmmm...I sense here the presence of unknown preconceptions
about observants that I will not be able to allay in an email.

J

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 03:36:02 +0000

>such scientists were engaged in a lark. Perhaps you are the first.

I am I suppose what you would call an anti-church Christian (not against one 
particular denomination, but all the organized forms on general principle). 
As such I admittedly make a very poor example of either "secular" or 
"observant". That said I wasn't strictly speaking for myself.

You're correct in that it's sort of popular to think in terms of 
evolutionary biology. But *very* few people, in secular circles or 
otherwise, are particularly comfortable with the aftermath of the whole 
Social Darwinist phase. And on a more abstract level the philosophers who 
deal specifically with such issues are very cognizant that evolutionary 
biology gives an account of "what we DO", but that "what we OUGHT to do" (if 
anything) is another question which scientific theories don't really speak 
to. There are arrogant and ignorant scientists out there, of course, but I'm 
not especially concerned with them here any more than I would be any other 
arrogant or ignorant person.

>sources of first principles are matters of Faith of one sect or another.

Perhaps. And perhaps they're actually right about that... but only if what 
they mean by "faith" is a weaker notion than I prefer.

>fully delineated. That's not a great difference from the secular position I

I have to say that this is absolutely not what I was getting at, and I think 
that this misunderstanding probably gets right to the root of our 
disagreement here. It is not at all a matter of filling in gaps; the roles 
of the two are not even of the same type at all. The important point is that 
Reason alone is *empty of content*. Nothing at all can be concluded from it 
alone - nothing - if you want to talk about gaps, it is ALL gap and no 
information. Actual content is dependent on your axioms.

>will *validate*, not merely complement, each other...

I don't at all dispute that there are a lot of people who think so, and who 
have thought so, going a long way back. However I think such people paint 
themselves into a corner in which there is nothing left to have faith IN: 
you are left with only flat, known facts. Recall that you (rightly) brought 
up the biblical quote calling faith "the evidence of things UNseen".

>humans can rationalize absolutely anything.

Well, just to fit this in with what I said above about the suspected focus 
of our disagreement, I think that when most people talk about a conflict 
between faith and reason, what they really mean by "reason" is combination 
of reason with certain everyday empirical assumptions/premises that we need 
to get by in our everyday lives - reason itself being empty of content. A 
conflict between faith and "reason" in that sense would be one where to 
believe in the object of faith would be rationally incompatible with the 
everyday premises which nonetheless one cannot dispense with. To continue to 
hold to both in the face of the rational impossibility of this is what 
provides the real difficulty of faith.

>selection as the colors on a butterflies wings.

I suggest Polanyi and Kuhn. These scientist/thinkers are not at all marginal 
figures, and their thought has been more or less incorporated into the 
modern idea of what science IS. This weighs more heavily with me than talk 
from guys like Dawkins, whose scientific work itself may be brilliant 
enough, but...

>to one's published articles by concluding "Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm 

Well, one shouldn't have to SAY it - it should be implicitly understood by 
everyone involved. After all, scientists do bother to spend the effort to 
try and reproduce the experiments of their colleagues, so they seem to have 
some grasp of the idea.

Of course, whether they choose to make a point of relaying this to the 
public is another point entirely. But I think they have to understand it 
themselves perfectly well.

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 17:15:04 +0000

Chris said,

>A conflict between faith and "reason" in that sense would be one where to 
>everyday premises which nonetheless one cannot dispense with.
>To continue to hold to both in the face of the rational impossibility of this
>is what provides the real difficulty of faith.

I think you have described the "secular" view of Faith quite nicely here.
It is greatly influenced by the founding Existentialists who said that true
Faith must be "absurd" -- by definition. But that definition of Faith is barely
even concievable to modern observants and would not have been prior
to mid-late 19th century.

>evolutionary biology.

It is evidence of the robust quality of the theory of Natural
Selection, the true engine of Darwinian evolution, that it useful
for explaining (though rarely predicting) activity in biology,
psychology and the changes in teddy bears. Almost any field
of research, really.

>But *very* few people, in secular circles or 
>Social Darwinist phase.

Well, Social Darwinianism is dead. I didn't say anyone was backing *that*.
Eugenics was never really gone...only dormant for two or three decades,
but that is not relevant, I think, to considering the 'secular' 
or 'observant' side.

>And on a more abstract level the philosophers who 
>biology gives an account of "what we DO", but that "what we OUGHT to do"
(if anything) is another question which scientific theories don't really speak 
>to.

Observants will point out that what we ought to do is greatly determined by
where we come from. That, I think, is at the heart of the debate over "big-E" evolution.

I said:
>My point is that observants believe Faith and Reason

Chris said
>Perhaps... but only if what 
>I have to say that [speaking of Faith as mental caulking for Reason] is
>absolutely not what I was getting at, and I think 

I think it is very astute of you to identify this difference as an
important key to this discussion. I wonder if you realize (as it seems to me)
that your definition of Reason in this context causes you to come to the
same conclusion about Faith? Let me explain.

If you tell me "I think my wife doesn't love me anymore" or "My son
admires me", those statements can be critically examined. I can
respond "Why do you think that?", and that question will make sense
in our conversation. For observants, the statement "I believe in God"
belongs in that category. The observant has an effable definition of
the words "believe" and "God" that he can communicate to us. It does not
require that he believe his definitions detail every thing about those words.
However, it does mean that he will assert that he believes to be *untrue*
any definition contrary to his definition. 

For the seculars whom I am describing the statement "I believe in God"
is simply not of the same category as "I think my wife has fallen out
of love with me" or "My wife thinks I hang the moon". 
Thus, they have a moral repugnance to "supersessionism" or
"absolutes" in matters of Faith. 

Allow me to take the observant side and attempt to show its value.
For an egregious example, when Bishop John Shelby Spong used to
chronically speak of "the Christ", it was NOT typically clear what he
meant by that. It was only clear that he was not referring to any 1st
century Jew who was executed in Jerusalem, nor even to an unnamed
prophsied leader expected by some Jewish adherants. "The  Christ",
for him, had fallen into the category of ineffable qualities that mean
many things at once and never the same thing to two people.

Here is how that sort of thinking can go seriously wrong.
In Monica Lewinsky's televised interview, she was asked
if she felt any guilt over having an affair with a married man. Her
response was "Well, I'm not a religious person. I'm a spiritual
person. But I'm not a religious person." Exegesis: "Religion", for
Lewinsky, represented a communicable structure of sin,
righteousness, and a real live God whose existance requires
something from us. To be "Spiritual" represented a respect for
ineffable qualities that have no content in themselves.
"I am a spiritual person" might realistically mean only
"I believe in Love" in which the words "believe" and "love"
are not only undefined, but *cannot* be ultimately defined.
While we can agree that her response and point-of-view was
shallow, it was also philosophically correct.  

>I don't at all dispute that there are a lot of people who think
>[Faith and Reason will *validate*, not merely complement, each
>other], and who have thought so, going a long way back. However
>I think such people paint themselves into a corner in which there
>is nothing left to have faith IN: you are left with only flat, known
>facts. Recall that you (rightly) brought up the biblical quote
>calling faith "the evidence of things UNseen".

Well, the quote says "unseen", not unknown. And in fact
verifiable *knowledge* is an important underpinning to
almost the entire New Testament canon. I suspected this
was true and did a quick search on the words "know"
and "known" in the NT. The fact that
Jesus of Nazareth lived and died in verifiable history and
geography was very important to early Christians, to the
4th century seekers of relics, and to every religion that was
founded even in part on NT writings. It still is today. 

It is also why the pagan authorities considered it
"superstition" rather than "religion".
Yet, even such ancient pagans would not have considered the
basics of true religion ineffable even though they were often
kept secret.

>I suggest Polanyi and Kuhn. 

Thanks I'll check them out.

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 20:11:58 +0000

>same conclusion about Faith? Let me explain.

Yes and no. If what you mean is that the two are incomplete by themselves, 
then yes; if what you mean is that Faith is empty of content, then no. What 
you would lack if you take faith without reason is the ability to draw 
inferences - logical relations - between your premises. Your thought would 
have content, but it would be "blind" in that your core premises would not 
give you access to anything more than you already believed. Euclid's axioms, 
taken in a vacuum so to speak, would not give you Euclidean geometry - but 
you would nonetheless have the axioms themselves, even if you could 
construct no theorems from them.

Of course, you never actually *do* run into one of these without the other.

Note that this point really is mostly about the notion of reason, and not 
necessarily the notion of faith (if one remains agnostic on the subject of 
whether all axioms are taken "on faith", or whether faith requires something 
more than what we do most of the time).

>"absolutes" in matters of Faith.

Well, of course many people are not systematic about such things, but the 
logically consistent version of what you're talking about is some kind of 
non-cognitivism or emotivism, and it isn't so much about faith, it's about 
value statements and normative propositions in general (and thus the second 
sentence about love would get put in the same category as the first). Of 
course religious issues are value issues, but not all value issues are 
religious, and this doesn't essentially have to do with faith. [This also 
connects directly back with the evolutionary biology thing earlier, because 
an easy way to deal with the objection that you haven't explained normative 
concepts is to claim that they're not really concepts, or at least not of 
the same kind as our other concepts].

>founded even in part on NT writings. It still is today.

Knowing that a guy named Jesus lived in about that place and time has little 
to do with having faith that said guy is the savior and son of God. His 
disciples could see him, they didn't need faith to know he was physically 
there; nonetheless they needed faith that he was the Messiah, which is 
something that could not be seen/proved.

When you're holding a newspaper in your hand your evidence is right there in 
front of you - you SEE it - faith is not required. When your mailbox is 
closed and you have no evidence as to whether a newspaper is in there or 
not, then you might nonetheless believe there was a newspaper in there. And 
if someone asked you why you believed that - on what grounds - you might say 
that you simply have faith that there is. (Or, of course, if your belief 
isn't of that kind, then you might modify your statement and say that you 
believed there MIGHT be a newspaper in there, etc.)