Rot and Stink

"In a criminal society, goodness is a crime. We have no moral obligation to tell the truth to the devil. To do so is likely to be actually immoral." --Dee

I was in a conversation with a well-spoken activist--at least, that's what I'll label him for the purpose of ease--and we were enjoying an exchange about the principles of anarchy (see quote above).  For example, anarchic philosophy calls for non-violence; anarchic philosophy emphasizes the sovereignty of the individual over above the collective; the responsibility of the individual is to provide for his own needs by the work of his own mind and hands, not by leeching off of the handouts of infrastructure when he is capable of doing otherwise.

However, our current socio-political climate does not allow for non-violence.  Consider our nation's involvement in wars that have nothing to do with us (e.g., Iraq).  Consider, also, that in Canada each person is in a holding pattern so far down in the lattice-work of control that considering yourself a 'sovereign' (solely over your own life, mind, and no-one else's) comes across as "eccentric" or "idiotic" or "crazy."  Or, consider that taxes are enforced: you earn your living, your country takes money from you it didn't earned, puts it towards ends you may not support, and then threatens you with fines and possibly jail-time if you don't give over a portion of your money.  This last example has the same rot and stink about it that the medieval church's enforced tithing did.

Whether or not I agree with these principles, I was given pause to think about who I am in contrast to the larger collective (society), and what the nature of our present collective is: are we living in an actual democracy?  Is democracy defined simply by being able to vote at elections?  Or is there something more to it that isn't being effected in Canadian culture?  If I were to consider myself a sovereign, how would that effect my participation in the common-place infrastructure of society?  Is it "criminal" to not give your money to a bigger group of people (the government) when they haven't earned it, and simply because they declare it criminal to not give money to them?  Should the government be re-labeled Big Vinny, and considered a sophisticated leg-breaker?

I don't know.  At the very least, I was forced to think of some very interesting alternate points of view.  And, being the curious person that I am, I appreciated the mental exercise said activist gave me.

Parsing Original Sin P. 1

Ayn Rand rocked the literary world with her anti-altruist writings.  In particular, her epic novel Atlas Shrugged gave full berth to her philosophy, Objectivism.  In said novel, the ultimate protagonist, John Galt--a figure who is intitially so enigmatic his name becomes a byword--questions, indicts, and redefines the very nature of humanity.  Galt's soliloquy toward the end of the book drives a proverbial knife into the heart of modern Western values; he attacks their religious root, specifically located in the doctrine of original sin.

As quoted from Galt's speech, original sin is an impossible reality that "begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice."  Original sin, as set out by the first Christians, however, suggests that human beings are deprived of their natural connection to God because Adam and Eve, humanity's representative couple, disobeyed God thereby setting all people forever at a distance from their Creator.  Thus Adam and Eve, and everyone after them, suffer the burden  of godlessness--the void between God and man--which is hopelessly incurable except by the movement of God across that void.  And, as Christians claim, God spanned that void in the person of Jesus Christ.

Everyone born into the world then, according to classic Christian formulations, inherits the burden of being simultaneously in God's image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27) and also separated from God by original sin.  Rand's vicarious observation that the Christian "code" damns man for his godlessness and then demands man be good--which is to say that man is to be godly--points at a fatal flaw in Christian conceptions of the nature of man.  Namely, if by original sin man is unable to be godly because of his godlessness, why condemn man for living in the condition he was predisposed to?

More alarmingly, the demand of the Christian believer is that he recognise how damnable he is without proof, or even a shred of evidence to firm-up the case.  Virtue is not allotted man until he confesses not only his vice, but also his utter inability to extricate himself from a condition he cannot point to but is guilty of anyway.

That man was created 'good,' even 'very good' (Gen. 1:31) is simply a nod to a time well behind him.  The post-Edenic reality is that man is "evil" (Matt. 7:11) and exists in a subordinated position; a position that does not act on his innate inclinations of being a free, noble creature but binds itself to the self-deprecating notion of being "depraved," or "distorted," or "disordered."  Man, to be 'good,' must first lie to himself that he is, in fact 'bad,' will himself to believe his lie, and then plead the pity of the Creator who would save him from himself.

From the start, man is damned, if not by his own belief that he has to lie to himself to set up the conditions for salvation, then by the inheritance of representative man's sin (through Adam and Eve) which places him at odds with God.  In essence, man is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

How could anyone get on with such of wave of contradiction and catch-22's?  How could anyone understand their place in reality, their identity as a human being, given such misfit logic?  Clearly,

"It does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence ato any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man."

According to such a "monstrous absurdity," original sin means man is not 'good,' he is evil (cf. Matt. 7:11).  Since a double-bind is placed on man--inherit a sinful condition and/or commit evil by lying to oneself and therefore make yourself evil--his whole moral condition, the opportunity for will, his very freedom is predetermined for him.  Man has been deemed guilty without his choice even before he exists.

There is no sense in that conclusion, obviously, but that is what the doctrine of original sin requires a person to believe for it to have any psychological hold.  A person cannot be bound to a creed that has no discernable impact on his psyche.  No-one is passionate about the banal.  No-one is driven to deliver themselves from ineffectual and meaningless propositions.  Such things are easily discarded  by the very act of choosing to.

For a concept to lay hold of a person fully, and to generate enough fervor that he is irrevocably compelled to seek salvation from the subjective realities of that concept it has to strike hard and deep at the core doubts, fears, and needs of a person; it must demean a person's sense of life and moral confidence.

Original sin does just that.

Religion and Teapots

Bertrand Russell

It's certainly no secret that people do horrific and absolutely insane things as an expression of devotion to their particular religion.  Christians conjured up regrettable notions of witchcraft and slaughtered thousands, sometimes purely on suspicion and without a shred of evidence.  Muslims have had their historical share of swinging the sword and tossing rocks.  And there seems to be no end to the number of fringe-group religions and eccentric cults enacting wanton violence on others simply because they think they're under some mysterious, divine fiat that only they know about, and that only they can confirm comes from their god/gods.

Whatever the peculiars of the case, one underlying question, in particular, undergirds any helpful criticism of such fanatical religious stupidities: how can the God/gods purported be proven to be in any way real?

One philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), proposed that, in matters of the supernatural, the person who states there is a divine super-reality (including divine beings) has the responsibility to prove their statement(s) are evidentially true.

Russell used the analogy of a teapot in orbit around the moon:  anyone can say there is a teapot encircling the moon, but the person who states such a thing has the burden of proving that their statement is true by showing the evidence for their claim.  This responsibility for furnishing a positive position or proposition with accomodating evidence has become known as the "burden of proof."

In matters of religion, it is the person who states that God exists who has the burden of proof and give evidence for their claim.  The non-believer is under no such responsibility to give evidence for their non-position.  Or, to put it another way: person X claims God exists and offers evidence to prove their case; person Y makes no claim on the existence of God and therefore has no burden to prove a non-claim.

So where does this leave us?  Well, here is a clever little presentation (2 minutes) that illustrates not only the absurdity of some religious mindsets, but also incites the necessity for proving that the celestial teapot exists but only having the fanaticism of religious teapotists to point to.  Enjoy!

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for this clever little video.

Rational Warrant: A Critique, P. I

An argument for belief in God attempts to establish credible evidence for a divine overseer orchestrating, or being aback of, the universe.  The direction of all argumentation concerning God's existence is to start with what we do know and extrapolate outward to the best possible conclusion concerning things we don't know. 

For example, the Cosmological Argument proposes that from matter we can extrapolate that there must have been a designer because all of what is, is contingent (i.e., dependent on other material things).  That everything material is contingent necessitates that there must have been one non-contingent, or wholly independent beginning to everything else.  This wholly independent thing is often referred to as "God."

From the example of the Cosmological Argument, it can be seen that the argument progresses from what is known (the existence and characteristics of the material world) to what is unknown (God).  A note on that point: by 'God as an unknown', I simply mean that the argument itself does not prove the existence of a super-being so much as it illustrates a logical correlation; namely, that the material world seems to exist in such a way that it must have derived its existence from a point not dependent on it.  However, correlation is not causality, so the Cosmological Argument cannot be used as a proof proper for God's existence; it can, however, be used as a reduction to a possible conclusion; a "rational warrant", as it were.

Which brings us to the point of this article: I do not consider rational warrant to be anything more than begging the question (circular reasoning), or a cheap rhetorical trick that ends in relativism.

First, anyone reasoning along the lines of a classic proof such as the Cosmological Argument already has in mind the inevitable conclusion, which is fine if you are attempting to defend the cosmological proposition for God.  As a friend recently reminded me, all debate happens that way: the opposing sides know what their conclusions are, and they argue accordingly toward those conclusions.  But notice that the conclusions are already assumed.  Philosophically speaking then, arguments for and against the existence of God already assume the conclusion to the proofs they offer.  This is wholesale question-begging: X is true, this is how X is true, therefore X is true; or, God is real, the cosmological argument shows that, therefore God is real.

Now, as my friend stated, and I agreed, such reasoning is fine in a debate setting because it would be a little improper to go into a debate not knowing your position on the resolution.  However, for a philosophical proof and a didactic aide, such reasoning only gives a person logical permission to assume a plausible conclusion; that is, "rational warrant."  And rational warrant, is not proof.  Rational warrant cannot firm up the link between correlation and causality, therefore it is not conclusive proof.  Rational warrant is only a fancy way of giving yourself permission to believe a given plausibility clause when the hard work of reasoning through a syllogism is over.

That brings us to my second point: "rational warrant" is a cheap rhetorical trick.  Suppose I was to say to you, "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room," and you realised there was no door between you and the hungry tiger.  You would suddenly have a swell of emotions that correlate to your inward ideas of a hungry tiger, what that tiger is capable of doing to a person, and your own need for safety.  You would, in fact, have what Kant described as a noumenal experience.

Even before you encountered the hungry tiger, you would start experiencing that tiger as if it were real, and as if your life were in danger because of it.  Then you would take whatever measures you had to to ensure your personal safety.  All very logical, and all quite appreciable.  However, you still haven't received any proof of a hungry tiger in the next room, so you have effectively believed my proposition that "there is a 900 lbs. hungry tiger in the next room" because it was reasonable for you to believe me (at least for the purpose of this illustration!).  In effect, you had "rational warrant" to believe my claim.

Now let's say that two days later, you learned that I was just tricking you.  You would be right to be irritated, but you would also recognise the falsity of your "rationally warranted" beliefs concerning the 900 lbs. tiger.  And this is where the notion of "rational warrant" really breaks down: simply reasoning to a plausible conclusion is not proof, and that's all "rational warrant" is: reasoning to a plausible conclusion.  It is a stylised flash of rhetoric that gives a veneer of reason to a belief-claim.

Because "rational warrant" is a catch-phrase or byword indicating the right of every person to believe whatever they'd like based on their subjective experience of a thing, or a proposition, it reduces even further to relativism.  That is, the notion that what I believe is just as true and valid as what you believe, even if we disagree.  Objective reality (A is A) is thrown out the window, so to speak, in favour of a solipsistic encounter with the world.  Which is fine if you're a solipsist, but for those of us who don't simply assimilate external realities into our self-projections on the world, the relativism of "rational warrant" simply doesn't supply a useful tool to interacting with the world.

The idea of "rational warrant", as I recently learned, can only apply to those beliefs which are actually true.  In effect, this means that a vast majority of beliefs held through history have not been rationally warranted.  But that can only be known in retrospect because once a belief is shown to be false, it is no longer rationally warranted, and it can only be shown to be false after people have already believed a certain belief and thought themselves rationally warranted in doing so -- that was a mouthful, I know.

So for a believing Christian, say, they would consider their beliefs "rationally warranted" because they are able to determine correlations between what they experience (mysticism),  the contingencies in nature, and what they already assume about supernatural realities (e.g., that God exists).  Oddly though, a believing Christian would disagree with the beliefs derived of a Muslim experience, and visa versa, even though they may agree on a good number of things, too.  And both the Christians and the Muslims would be "rationally warranted" for both their agreements and disagreements surrounding their particular metaphysic.

Given the clash between competing belief systems, how can "rational warrant" be rationally claimed?  Simple answer: it cannot.  As I stated before, it is a cheap rhetorical trick used to prop-up the arguments of one set of beliefs, sometimes in the face of a competing set of beliefs.  And if competing beliefs cannot both be true (see: law of non-contradiction), then anyone claiming rational warrant for their beliefs has also to claim a relativistic mindset concerning reality.

In part II, I will discuss how a relativistic mindset toward reality not only denies reality but also reduces belief-sets (e.g., Christianity, Islam, religion in general) to agnosticism.

***Thank-you to AgnosticInnocence for the picture.***

Pascal's Wager: Rejected

Pascal's Wager. The notion of wagering on God's existence occurs at note 233 of Pascal's Pensées (literally, 'Thoughts').

And as one reader noted last year, the idea is that "It is better to believe in God and find out that he doesn't exist, than to not believe and find out he does." That is not a direct quote from Pascal, but it is the best summation of his famous Wager that I have heard, to date.

I'm not a fan of the Wager, personally, for a number of reasons, one of which is that citing the options of polar opposites (belief and unbelief) is not a reasonable premise for me to choose either of those polarities. I already know as much.

On top of that, however, I question the relevance of determining whether this-or-that thing is 'better' than another without having any real content to demonstrate such a claim. For example, simply stating that cheese is better than non-cheese tells me nothing about cheese that I should consider it 'better'. Similarly, telling me belief is better than unbelief tells me nothing about the content of 'belief' or 'unbelief' that I would consider one or the other 'better'.

As a conclusion to a well defined argument, the Wager can have its place. Still, Pascal's Wager is wholly dependent on having a rational, well-placed argument to render any meaning or purpose to wagering at all. And, incidentally, Pascal was not attempting an argument when he penned his famous wager, nor did he consider his Wager to be a sufficient premise to bring about salvific understanding. Pascal simply intended the Wager as an observation of the fact that people ultimately make choices; and the existence of God is just another choice about which someone can be right or wrong. Thus it is a wager, and not an apologetic.

Unfortunately, the Wager has been used as an apologetic in and of itself to coerce people into making a decision for or against Christ. Sadly, the few times I've seen this tactic used one of two results occur:

1. The person feels anxious and afraid that they may choose wrong and suffer some terrible consequence -- hell, or some other uncertainty about death and after-death.
2. The person becomes riled and considers Christians to be a batch of noisy idiots.
   

So, as a tool for evangelism, I've yet to see Pascal's Wager have a postitive net effect. It's simply too confrontational on a deeply instinctual level, and people feel deeply insulted to find themselves in the position where they have to gamble on eternity without any real understanding of why they're gambling. As a finishing pen-stroke for a well-honed apologetic, it can be used, but it does beg certain philosophical questions that weaken its seeming strength.

Alright...

...I've put some of my philosophical readings on hold to concentrate on fictional literature. Admittedly, I'm feeling the pangs of withrawal. I absolutely love reading philosophy, social commentary, and religious history. But I also love reading fictional literature. In fact, I think that Christopher Hitchens is entirely right when he notes that philosophical themes, and morality are best meted out in fiction.

So, because I am a nerd, and because I don't want to stray from my healthier habits (philosophy) and immerse myself entirely in fiction (which can be a negative form of escapism for me), I have settled on some philosophical fiction. Specifically, I am going to embark on two modern classics by the wonderfully innovative and insightful philosopher, Ayn Rand.

To begin with, I will tackle the massive story (1070 pages), Atlas Shrugged.

From there, I will read The Fountainhead.

And finally, I will take on a much shorter novel by Rand, Anthem.


This should be quite a trip down Philosophy Lane, while at the same time being a purposeful break from heady academics. At the same time, I'll be learning about Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, and growing in my understanding and appreciation of how other's look at the world around them.

I'll leave you with this penetrating quote from Ms. Rand.

"Damnation is the start of your morality, destruction is its purpose, means and end. Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accepts his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not.

It does not matter who then becomes the profiteer on his renounced glory and tormented soul, a mystic God with some incomprehensible design or any passer-by whose rotting sores are held as some explicable claim upon him - it does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence to any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man.

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man's sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man's nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a 'tendency' to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge - he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil - he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor - he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire - he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy - all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man's fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was - that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love - he was not man.

Man's fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he's man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives. They call it a morality of mercy and a doctrine of love for man."

Thank you to Atheist Media Blog for bringing this to my attention.

Now off to reading...

Religion and Philosophy

Does it ever occur to you to be entirely random? Does such a notion defeat the point: plan to be random? Part of me wonders if that's what happened when people started dreaming along lines of what we now understand as 'religion'. I think there was a measure of spontaneity involved in the philosophic meanderings on reality that easily makes a lateral step into religion.

Mind you, this begs the question of which came first: religion or philosophy. But I don't see the two as separate. I think they are conjoined twins. A person can't hold religious views without adopting the particular philosophical biases that undergird them. For example, Christianity sprang out of Hellenistic and Stoic philosophies. That is, the undercurrent of thought in Christianity is primarily Platonic. Christianity, as it were, is founded on Platonic thought.

Many is the objector to that notion, believe me. But there's no denying the parallel between Plato's perfect and derivative forms theory within Christianity. The core doctrine of Christianity, the incarnation of God in the man of Jesus, is exactly that: God, the perfect being, takes on the skin of a man, an imperfect and derivative (image and likeness) being. Yes, the notion of imago dei pre-existed the neo-Platonic Christian teaching of the incarnation. Yes, the Hebrew peoples saw humanity as directly linked to God. But this overlap doesn't invalidate my point, it affirms it: religious and philosophical querries are inseparable; they reinforce and build on each other.

So, Plato, being the philosophically savvy individual that he was, looks at the world around him and comes up with a speculation for what, why, and how things are. Hundreds of years later, the Jewish peoples host that same idea, but couch it in the notion of God dwelling with his people. The same ideas were birthed in the stories of Horus, Mithra, and Vishnu, to name a few. There is a common element amongst these religious views: the idea that the perfection that is God willingly reduces to the imperfection of man to show man how to behave and play well with others.

Great! But some burning little questions now heat my mind: what's to say that God simply isn't just a product of philosophy? That is, when human reason meets its limitations but intuits there may be more, is the notion of 'God' just a dumping ground, so to speak, for future speculations? Speculations that might carry with them more of the collective human experience; more of the newer, more refined attempts to understand what we haven't understood before? Might 'God' just be a linguistic application we employ to say "I don't know" but at the same time keep an empathic connection with our fellow creatures?

It's an interesting idea to think about. For me, at least. You can take it or leave it as you see fit. For now, however, I'm not so sure that 'religion' and 'philosophy' are creatures of a different kind. I think they're versions of the same thing: a cultural narrative.

God and Morality

A while back, over at Pilgrim Not Wanderer, Edward posted an interesting article entitled Humanism, Morality and Belief in God. Here was my response to that article:

"I think the idea of the poster (which is a poor representation of the humanist position) is simply that morality, as such, proceeds from people.

The popular notion among fundamentalists is that morality proceeds from God to the imago dei. This view can only be upheld propositionally because it cannot be verified evidentially.

However, human solidarity and propagation could not have been maintained if people were not moral creatures regardless of religion. We simply are moral, no matter what religious matrix we impose on ourselves.

Plato sums up the question of morals and God quite well when he has Socrates ask: 'Are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God?' I'm sure you know this as the Euthyphro Dilemma, and it is a key question in humanist ethics."

Obviously it is a little silly to suggest that if there is a God, then that God has nothing to do with morality. For who could reasonably support the notion that the ground for being itself (i.e., God) would have no impact or influence on the way people have been, continue to be, and will be? Even if we rationalise by way of a deistic God, that God is still impeachable because that God set the motion of our moral mechanisms going. If those moral mechanisms are somehow deficient in their motions, isn't the God who made them still to blame for his/her/it's design flaws?

Nevertheless, if a person holds the point of view that God doesn't exist, then morality proceeds from a seemingly instinctive desire to self-organise, self-perpetuate, and maintain solidarity and altruism. Morality simply obtains to the human condition. Morality without God is morality in, with, and for the human community.

Thoughts?

What Is Religion?

An erudite reader commented in a recent article that he was calling me (and another commenter) out on the term 'religion'. It was not an aggressive manoeuver, but a considerate action meant to help clarify conversation. Rather than leave it within the context of that exchange, however, I thought it appropriate to bring this subject up-front and centre, since it is a defining issue in so many people's lives.

So, what exactly is religion?

Anyone can look around and note the various rituals, genuflections, processes, and events that religious people regularly attend to. But to note religion simply as a set of rituals and practices not only undercuts the driving importance of religious devotion, but it also relies on superficial observations of those things that are external to the religious anyway.


For example, everyone knows that Christians have a cultus for the sacraments, but that is where a good deal of understanding stops. It would require a little more effort to investigate the history, meaning, and respective differences in the sacraments, and further, the differences between varying communities of Christians. More effort would be required again to appreciate the aesthetic application of the sacraments to the religious life, and the nostalgic desire for transcendence that believers seek when they partake of the sacraments.


All this is to say that by observing that the religious have definite practices, we cannot then conclude that 'religion' is what we've observed: rituals, genuflections, proceses, and special events. Such a definition loops back on itself, and gets us nowhere. How much sense does it make to suggest that because we've observed people going to church and praying that religion is therefore going to church and praying? It doesn't make sense at all. All we have concluded with that kind of definition is that religion is what religious people do. The same logic is made memorable in the movie Forrest Gump: "Stupid is as stupid does." It may be the case that religion is what religious people do, but no-one is the wiser for such a definition.


Our work is still ahead of us. Thankfully, many people have proposed definitions of 'religion' that cut a little deeper than a wistful glance at Merriam-Webster. Here (thank you to Dr. Irving Hexham) are some of those definitions:

• William James: "the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."
• Alfred North Whitehead: "what the individual does with his own solitariness."
• George Hegel: "the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind."

James' definition approaches an appreciable definition of 'religion' but comes short; it only observes that people believe stuff and order their lives accordingly. I can observe the invisible quality of friendship just as much as I can observe the religious believing in an "unseen order". But observing friends being friends, or the religious being religious does not answer what 'religion' is anymore than noting that "stupid is as stupid does", as was mentioned earlier.

Whitehead's definition seems to dismiss the point altogether. People masturbate in solitude, but that hardly makes masturbation a religion. What one does when no-one is looking (i.e., in solitude) exorcises the very obvious fact that religion is a public phenomenon, a social event, a world-wide extroversion of beliefs. In this sense, solitude can be argued to work against religion; a social assent to a set of beliefs is quite the opposite to what one does in solitude, for what one does in solitude quite obviously lacks participation in public affiliations.

Hegel seems to want to relegate religion to a purely abstract realisation of the mind. That is, a singular, limited and mortal mind apprehending the fact that its essence, its very being, is unrestrained or unlimited; i.e., absolute. I think Hegel's definition anticipates his dialectic system more than a working definition of 'religion' proper. One thing Hegel's definition does intimate, however, is transcendence. This is helpful insomuch as it will aide in attempting a definition of religion later in this essay. For now, however, it is appropriate to note that one of Hegel's driving points was that the recognition of a boundary implies the possibility of going beyond it (which is the literal meaning of 'transcend', to go beyond). As such, for Hegel, religion is the implicit recognition that because a perceiving mind is finite, there must therefore be infinite, or absolute mind.

Where Hegel breaks down is in the practicability of his definition. Religion focuses on what is beyond the human condition, what is supernatural, and how those things can be invoked in human affairs. To state that a finite mind apprehending an absolute mind is 'religion' only tells us that religion is a recognition of a quality of being beyond our natural senses. That much is already assumed by the religious, though in far less philosophical terms. So Hegel's definition doesn't get us much further than to remind us that religion deals with the transcendent.

It seems we need to examine the original question again: what is religion? We have noted a few examples of what religion is not. Religion is not merely a list of things religious people do. Religion is not simply a lifestyle adjustment to an unseen order. Religion is not what you do when you're alone. And religion is not just an intellectual recognition of contrasts in reality.

Religion, it would seem, is quite hard to define. I think this is true in part because of its inherently vague grammatical application. Austin Cline notes that,

"Definitions of religion tend to suffer from one of two problems: they are either too narrow and exclude many belief systems which most agree are religious, or they are too vague and ambiguous, suggesting that just about any and everything is a religion."

Saying 'cancer' is an umbrella term that connotes some form of auto-immune disorder. Similarly, 'religion' is a catch-all phrase that connotes the dispositions of certain groups of people toward a set of propositions concerning the supernatural. Then again, certain religious people (those who claim a 'religion') are not supernaturalists so much as they are idealists (e.g., some forms of Buddhism are described as atheistic; Mahayanic Buddhism comes to mind). Thus the word 'religion' can run us adrift of helpful understanding.

Some people consider the word 'religion' to be notional. It does not denote anything actual, or real. Jonathan Z. Smith writes in Imagining Religion:

“...while there is a staggering amount of data, phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religion — there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study. It is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no existence apart from the academy.”*

Smith's observation on the classification and definition of religion is keen and helpful. 'Religion' is a blanket term used to quickly, and easily categorize an area of experience and activity obvious in all human cultures. Given Smith's observation, using the term 'religion' at once expresses a common understanding without drawing attention to any one particular faith-claim (e.g., Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Bahá'í, et al.). But for the purposes of conversation, small qualifications are certainly needed. I would do poorly to speak with a Muslim about religion while not clarifying whether I am speaking in the context of his/her religion.

If the term 'religion' is a bit of a chimera made understandable by its attachment to academic generalizations, then whatever definition I give will necessarily enjoy the same attachment. Be that as it may, here is what I understand 'religion' is: the practice of specific, systematized cultural beliefs usually, but not necessarily, attended by the enjoyment of liturgical rites that anticipate communication with the supernatural, and invite an aesthetic experience of transcendence in the believing subject (person).

My definition is practical only in one sense: it finds a place in the academy Smith refered to earlier. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone can adequately define such a term as 'religion' without getting hung up on definitions that are too wide, and therefore fail to regard differences in varying religious claims; or definitions that are too narrow, and therefore inadequately refer to specific faith-claims.

Religion is a cultural motif. It is an on-going narrative that necessarily changes as the cultural climate changes. Some critics would argue that religion should determine culture (e.g., certain Christian academics feel this is an important action for Christians to undertake, and it is certainly a sentiment that runs quite deep within evangelicalism and American right-wing politics). Others argue that religion should be utterly removed from culture altogether by way of science, another blanket term (e.g., Sam Harris). Both positions on the nature of 'religion' in our on-going cultural narratives miss the point altogether: they are interdependent; we cannot force a religionless culture without removing culture and religion altogether. Both our culture and our religions provide an overarching story of our human experiences, aspirations, failures, growths and setbacks, and future history.

'Religion', as difficult a term it is to parse, is, despite its connotative nature, a very useful word that both binds and separates people, intimates a shared understanding, and provides many fascinating hours of stimulating contemplation.

*Smith's quote can be found in this article.

Speck, Meet Log

When does it become acceptable to change your mind? I've been thinking about this recently.

Obviously, there are a great many things a person can change his mind about. No-one would really be concerned if I changed my mind about wanting old cheddar when I had stated previously that I wanted medium cheddar. There would be very little outrage, if any, if I waffled over reading Ayn Rand or Leo Tolstoy, and then finally decided on Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Obviously these are morally neutral scenarios unless imposed upon by contexts I haven't listed here (e.g., avoiding college assignments on Rand and Tolstoy, and opting for a personal interest in Dostoevsky).

Even more so, if I were to change my mind and, say, reject existentialism in favour of solipsism, people might be curious as to why, but I'd wager there wouldn't be an outcry, or a feverish reaction to my decision. At best, I could reasonably guess that people would question my reasons, politely disagree, and we would move on amiably with our lives.

The same affability does not extend, however, to issues concerning family, friends, psychological boundaries, schooling, politics, lifestyle, religion, or even diet. These particular affiliations, dispositions, and alliances seem to balance precariously on most people's breaking points. That is, if I were to change my mind about eating a low fat diet to eating a high fat diet, I would have to endure the criticisms of most of mainstream culture. Suddenly, what I put in my mouth would become many people's moral issue de jour. Were I to balk at libertarianism, I would find myself in the favour of the world's majority; most people believe implicitly that they want to be regulated because that is what is marketted to them. If I were to change my mind, however, and advocate minarchism, or even anarchism, I would then be reprobate and immature (as was recently expressed to me).

Issues of religion, politics, sexual habits, diet, and parenting techniques certainly have the potential to be morally charged topics. However, I can't help but wonder if people shouldn't set aside their personal agendas, their inconsiderate crusading tactics, their implicit need to proselytize without invitation, in order to first listen. People naturally incline towards others who are like them. But when one of us changes minds on an issue, affiliation, or what-have-you, shouldn't the first moral issue that arises be the one that would prompt the need to crusade against the change? That is, shouldn't each of us first take up our own indignations as the first moral issue before moving on to examine the motivations of another's change? Christ summed this up well when he stated,

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye."

Believing and Knowing P. II

In the first part of Believing and Knowing, I stated the following:

"For how can conversation happen when belief is taken to be knowledge? In other words, how can anything intelligible be conveyed about any one of the tenets of Christianity if a Christian is convinced that what s/he believes is what s/he knows? The dissonance this creates in the mind of the observant listener shuts down any chances of mutually beneficial dialogue since this blurring of distinctions results in wrong-headed dogmatism, fanatacism, and extremism."

Wrong-headed dogmatism. First, what is 'dogmatism'? The common understanding is that it is "unfounded positive assertion in matters of opinion; arrogant assertions of opinions as truth." However, in the history of the Christian religion, 'dogmatism' has been defined quite differently. Christian dogmatism is understood, basically, as "core principles that must be upheld by all followers" of Christ. For example, one cannot be a Christian unless one believes in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ; one cannot be a Christian if one does not believe in the Holy Trinity; one cannot be a Christian if one believes that all religions are basically the same, and lead to the same place. And just to advance this a little further, the Catholic church denotes 'dogma' as the following:

"But according to a long-standing usage a dogma is now understood to be a truth appertaining to faith or morals, revealed by God, transmitted from the Apostles in the Scriptures or by tradition, and proposed by the Church for the acceptance of the faithful. It might be described briefly as a revealed truth defined by the Church — but private revelations do not constitute dogmas, and some theologians confine the word defined to doctrines solemnly defined by the pope or by a general council, while a revealed truth becomes a dogma even when proposed by the Church through her ordinary magisterium or teaching office. A dogma therefore implies a twofold relation: to Divine revelation and to the authoritative teaching of the Church."

Even in the Catholic definition of 'dogma', the emphasis is placed on the disposition to believe as if what is believed is what is known.
This is a dangerous mistake to make, in my estimation, since the disposition to believe a certain set of propositions does not entail knowing those propositions to be true. It may very well be the case that my baptist friend believes dancing is evil because it inevitably leads to sex. But he may just be relieved to know that most of the dancing population of the world finds itself coitally-challenged at the end of the tango just as much as at the end of a harlequin. There is simply no correspondence between what my baptist friend believes and what is known. To therefore make a dogmatic assertion that 'dancing is evil because it inevitably leads to sex' is an empty, and useless proposition unless it can be backed with actual knowledge. And what is more, the assertion above begs the question of whether 'sex' itself is considered evil because of its association with dancing (which is believed but not known to be 'evil'). Nothing is actually known in this case except that a certain young man believes a useless and empty-headed proposition that masquerades as a known truth, but has no knowledge to substantiate its claim.

That being said, believing such a proposition is a dangerously wrong-headed thing to do. It is a wrong-headed dogma unfit for the thinking Christian. But how many other dogmatic assertions can come under the same scrutiny? For example, what is actually known about Mary's purported assumption? Quite literally, nothing. It is simply an assertion from tradition that is believed en masse because it has always been believed. But the glaringly obvious fact of the matter is that nothing is known about Mary's assumption, not even whether it happened or not. It is a dogmatic expression ardently believed by billions of Catholics that has no factual basis in reality. It is a wrong-headed dogma disguising itself as a known truth.

A little more, and we'll move on. If it is the case that Christian dogma is essentially propositional assertions that Christians believe but do not necessarily know, how much of what we take to be 'truth' is actually true? I don't mean to continuously pit belief and knowledge against each other; they are certainly not opposed in all ways. However, to figure out where belief and knowledge coalesce we must be willing to visit the possibility that they don't simply agree with each other because it would make things less difficult otherwise. There is no reason to dogmatically hold to mere propositions as if those same propositions were not only their own context but their own content, too. What is believed has a direct impact on what, and how you come to know things. And conversely, what you know will impact what you believe.

So which, if any, of the Christian dogmas are knowably true? And which, if any, of the Christian dogmas are simply believed to be true? It's a frightening question to ask, really, for it opens up the possibility that what you may believe may, in fact, be wrong. And, in fact, those beliefs may be wrong because there's no way to know if they're true. And to suggest that that's why we have to take the Christian testimony on 'faith' is to suggest the same thing as simply believing without knowing.

Scepticism Is Immoral? I Highly Doubt It.

In a recent conversation with a good friend, I admitted that I'm sceptical about some of the claims of Christianity. My friend was not offended, but did respond that scepticism is "immoral" because scepticism is doubt in the face of Truth (i.e., God). I want to examine this line of reasoning momentarily.

Dictionary.com provides the following definition of scepticism:

"skep⋅ti⋅cism  /ˈskɛptəˌsɪzəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [skep-tuh-siz-uhm] Show IPA
–noun
1. skeptical attitude or temper; doubt.
2. doubt or unbelief with regard to a religion, esp. Christianity.
3. (initial capital letter) the doctrines or opinions of philosophical Skeptics; universal doubt.

Also, scepticism."

The first definition seems apt to my intention behind the word. I hold an attitude of doubt concerning some of the claims of the Christian faith. This is a non-committed position that is left open for the purpose of critically examining issues and claims. A sceptic working along this trajectory has simply reserved judgment until s/he has had sufficient time and research to come to a reasonable conclusion. We might also call this kind of scepticism "critical thinking".

The second definition may also apply to my position. That is, by inference from the first definition, I doubt, even disbelieve some of the claims of the Christian religion. For example, I disbelieve the creation mythology in Genesis. And, as Karen Armstrong has pointed out in her book The Bible: A Biography, most Christians have disbelieved the Genesis claims on creation until roughly 150 - 200 years ago with the rise of fundamentalist biblical literalism. Disbelief though, is a little less nuanced than doubt, however: it is a conclusive position, whereas 'doubt' is being undecided, or not willing to commit without further evidence.

The third definition does not fit my outlook. Universal doubt calls itself into question. Doubt as a principle, it would seem, becomes the object of its own examination. It is therefore a self-defeating position, much like going solo on a teeter-totter, trying to pick yourself up unaided, or sawing off the branch you're sitting on. (And to all those teeter-totter fans out there, yes, I know you can straddle the fulcrum, but that's called 'balancing', not teeter-tottering.)

So the next question in keeping with the thrust of this article would be, 'Why would holding claims in doubt be considered immoral?' Well, as my friend suggested, human beings are imago dei, created in the image of God. We therefore have an intrinsic understanding of his existence. Combined with the Christian concept of revelation, and God's incarnation, we have no right, room, or reason to hold any doubts about divine reality, or, in my friend's case, the claims of the historic (read, 'Catholic') church.

I object.

Dictionary.com defines 'immoral' thusly:

"im⋅mor⋅al  /ɪˈmɔrəl, ɪˈmɒr-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [i-mawr-uhl, i-mor-] Show IPA
–adjective

1. violating moral principles; not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics.
2. licentious or lascivious.

Origin:
1650–60; im- 2 + moral

Related forms:

im⋅mor⋅al⋅ly, adverb

Synonyms:
bad, wicked, dissolute, dissipated, profligate. Immoral, abandoned, depraved describe one who makes no attempt to curb self-indulgence. Immoral, referring to conduct, applies to one who acts contrary to or does not obey or conform to standards of morality; it may also mean licentious and perhaps dissipated. Abandoned, referring to condition, applies to one hopelessly, and usually passively, sunk in wickedness and unrestrained appetites. Depraved, referring to character, applies to one who voluntarily seeks evil and viciousness. Immoral, amoral, nonmoral, and unmoral are sometimes confused with one another. Immoral means not moral and connotes evil or licentious behavior. Amoral, nonmoral, and unmoral, virtually synonymous although the first is by far the most common form, mean utterly lacking in morals (either good or bad), neither moral nor immoral. However, since, in some contexts, there is a stigma implicit in a complete lack of morals, being amoral, nonmoral, or unmoral is sometimes considered just as reprehensible as being immoral."

Since what is 'moral' is generally decided upon through religious constructs, social systems, and special interest groups, thrusting the term 'immoral' on a person who doubts, or is sceptical about certain claims, teachings, propositions, philosophies, etc. is simply enforcing expectations external to the sceptic, or doubter. We have an ethical dilemma at this point: who is acting immorally? The one who cannot reasonably believe something without further convincing? Or the one who happily defines the parameters for belief and then charges others with immorality when someone doesn't ante up to those parameters? To put it differently, it would seem to me that the immoral person in this kind of situation is the one who blindly cascades dogmatic assertions over the doubter's head. Similarly, we would not call the person who is smacked in the head 'immoral', but we would call the person who did the hitting 'immoral'.

Given that I remain sceptical about some of the claims of Christianity, even religion in general, I have now been put in the position by my friend of being 'immoral'. Metaphorically speaking, he has smacked me in the head, and told me I'm immoral because he hit me.

With all due respect to my friend, I find his claim that scepticism is immoral dubious, at best. And that is not simply a clever turn of phrase. I sincerely think that calling doubt 'immoral' is constructing a pyrrhic victory that only gives the sceptic more reason to doubt. And by that measure, how much more immoral is it to cause more of the 'immorality' you're trying to stamp out by claiming doubt 'immoral'? It would seem to me that such an accusation achieves the opposite of its intention, and must therefore be dropped in favour of more intelligent dialogue.

Believing and Knowing

'Belief' is a bit of a dirty word in polite society. 'Knowledge' seems to carry a little more weight. The word 'belief' carries with it connotations of thoughtlessness, credulity, and irrationality. Whereas the word 'knowledge' fosters a sense of confidence, credibility, and accessibility; what one knows, another can get to know. However, what one believes is isolated, and another would have to leap, or make a series of leaps (nonrational, often unverifiable assumptions) to express even a modest association with a claimant's beliefs.

Religion, say, the Christian religion, fixes definite doctrinal qualifications on its adherents. A Christian, in order to be a Christian, must assent to historical articles of faith, which is to say s/he must agree to 'believe' formulations concerning divine realities that s/he may not 'know' to be true or false. For example, a Christian has no other recourse but to believe in the incarnation of Christ. That same Christian, however, also has very little, if any, recourse to actual knowledge of the Christ s/he states belief in.

This leads to a confusion in terminology wherein the distinction between belief and knowledge is blurred. Some well-meaning Christians think that because they believe a given proposition -- e.g., there will be a mid-tribulation rapture -- they therefore know that proposition to be true. Conversation, at that point, becomes stunted. How can I discuss things intelligently at that point if the person I am talking to equates belief with knowledge? Crudely put, it is possible to believe that elephant ears act like wings when no-one is looking, or that cats house the souls of dead philosophers, perhaps that Darwin didn't die but underwent a rapid acceleration to a new evolutionary stage. It is not possible to know any of that.

So then, what is belief? Belief is, as the English philosopher Colin McGinn put it in Jonathan Miller's A Brief History of Disbelief:

"...what you'll act on, what you'll take for granted, what you'll assent to, what you might gamble on. That means you're committed to that being the case. 'Belief' is really just an umbrella term that covers all the varieties of assent, of takings to be true."

As such, a person can validly use the term 'belief' to state that s/he believes in eco-awareness, democracy, liberal politics, the existence of God or gods, or what have you. To state a belief then, it would seem, is the formal expression of implicit or informal trust in this-or-that phenomena or noumena on a case-to-case basis.

But to carry the definition of belief forward a little more, both Miller and McGinn acknowledge belief as a disposition. This is an important qualification since it realises the difference between what one knows and what one takes for granted; that is, believes. A Christian simply takes for granted the resurrection of Christ because it is a belief stacked on top of another belief that what the Bible states about Christ is revelation from God himself. However, belief in the resurrection comes with no actual knowledge of its truth or falsity. It is a willing leap based on a pre-disposition (i.e., already assumed belief) that what the Bible says is actually true. Belief is therefore dispositional, continuous and assumed, non-episodic, or second nature.

This is in contrast to knowledge. As Miller puts it:

"Although 'belief' resembles 'knowledge', there's a very important difference between the two. In the case of 'belief', you can say that someone believes X and that he was wrong. But it sounds rather odd to say that someone knows X and is wrong. It's part of the definition of knowing something that it is the case. Whereas believing something is a state of mind about which you could be proved to be wrong."

To 'know' something then, is to suggest that something is incontrovertably what it is, and not something else. To 'know' a thing is to perceive its correspondence to testable, communicable reality. But to 'believe' something is to take on trust what might, at some point, be shown to be false.

This puts Christians in a precarious situation not just amongst unbelievers, but amongst themselves, too. For how can conversation happen when belief is taken to be knowledge? In other words, how can anything intelligible be conveyed about any one of the tenets of Christianity if a Christian is convinced that what s/he believes is what s/he knows? The dissonance this creates in the mind of the observant listener shuts down any chances of mutually beneficial dialogue since this blurring of distinctions results in wrong-headed dogmatism, fanatacism, and extremism.

Even if a religious believer is benignly fanatical -- e.g., Catholic assertions about Mary's perpetual virginity, Baptist promulgations on the dance-leads-to-sex scenario, Pentecostal insistance on the gift of tongues -- the fact of the matter is that believing is not synonymous with knowing. As long as the insistance that "because I believe" is directly proportionate to "therefore I know" continues, most, if not all table-talk about religion will be mostly notional and not actual; connotative and absent of the denotative ingredients necessary to intelligently describing a belief, or sharing some actual knowledge. In essence, confusing 'belief' and 'knowledge' makes conversation almost meaningless.

That would be shameful for a group of people charged to "give a reason for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15, ESV).

Where I'm At #2

My article, Where I'm At, met with some interesting comments and questions. Most notably, one respondant, Nick, has expressed curiosity about my religio-spiritual developments. Nick makes note that,

"I'm mostly interested in where you are at, what you believe about religio-spiritual matters that are important to you, what ideas you are newly exploring, that sort of stuff."

I think that's a fair expectation for conversation, so what follows is some of the stuff I've been trying to work through in the past while.

First, I've been trying to figure out just what criteria legitimize the scholars. It's one thing to suggest that so-and-so is the foremost scholar in a certain field. It's another thing to realize that unless you are experiencing the physical data of the empirical sciences, all scholars are simply telling a story. And they're telling that story through a certain lense. Does that invalidate, or illegitimize their narratives? Certainly not. But it does bring into question the relational capacity of truth-telling.

That is, how does one determine the truth of another's claim? We could formally parse logic for a while. That sounds like fun. Kind of. But in the end, structuring another's claims along our own limited understanding and experience, and then charging bravely along the line of linear rationality commits a grievous fallacy: it assumes an objectivity that doesn't actually exist. What we think we know, we only know on our own. Other people may agree, but none of us actually have another's experience with the information being presented. Truth claims have no co-inherence from one person to the next; that is, there is no kindred connection, no 'fellowship' of knowing, if you will.

I'd be happy to be wrong about this, but I see no way around it without actually parsing the formal logic of the problem, and thereby dedicating one's self to the same problem while trying to solve it. And that's the problem with circles: if they're not broken, they just keeping going round and round, round and round.

Second, if truth-claims are non-relational, it would seem a person has to terminate on radical skepticism, or faith. But from where I sit right now, radical skepticism seems rather juvenile: there's no way to support such a view since it calls itself into question, and is thus self-defeating. Faith seems both noble and novel: noble because it means that a person is willing to trust even though they might not 'know' with any measure of certainty; novel because it provides a convenient excuse to abdicate one's responsibility to pursue knowledge, all the while looking pious and moral in the process.

Given these two things -- that truth seems non-relational, and skepticism and faith don't offer helpful answers -- how is a person to trust that anything they are exposed to in scholarship is actual, and/or beneficial? We can go the pragmatic route and suggest that 'whatever answers the most questions with the least amount of problems left over' seems trustworthy, but that fails to recognize itself as a useful tool. In a sense, it's like utilitarianism: how does one determine what is morally good for the most amount of people? And what is 'good' in a pragmatic scheme? In the same way, how does one determine what removes the most amount of problems while answering the most amount of questions? If we're all coming at a situation or issue (say, like, theodicy) with individual minds and experiences, it would make sense to suggest that all answers are questions marked by a period.

The Principle of Parsimony seems to fail, too: it doesn't take itself into account.

So, given that truth-claims aren't relational -- that is, they don't straddle the divide between your personhood and mine -- they can't be believed by virtue of another's authority on a subject, they don't terminate on skepticism, are not made relational by 'faith', can't be experienced mutually via pragmatism, and seem to transcend Occam's razor, what is left?

Nihilism is plain stupid. Existentialism is short-sighted.

So, where am I at, Nick? I don't know.

In Pursuit of Understanding

Following up on my post of August 23rd, "What If I'm Wrong?" it would be remiss if I were to simply adhere to the proposition that I might be wrong every time I'm faced with a possible conclusion. In all honesty, it would be a bit of lugubrious position to truly consider all answers as questions marked by a period. Radical skepticism is, in the end, radically untenable.

That does not remove the necessity to research, learn, and reassess what I've held this long to be true. To that end, these are the books I am presently devouring, and enjoying quite thoroughly.


Quite honestly, Ehrman's book, far from being polemic or argumentative, is heartfelt and personal. At the same time, he is not short on insights surrounding the issue of theodicy. Ehrman examines not only the philosophical issues surrounding theodicy, but also examines the answers proffered in scripture, and the historical context those answers were couched in. I have learned quite a lot from this pleasant little volume, and will re-visit it in the not-to-distant future.

Karen Armstrong is, quite literally, a phenomenal researcher and writer. Her clarity, wit, and depth of understanding, combined with her report-style narrative is refreshing in a history book. Armstrong is not without her biases (no-one really is), but her attention to detail and ability to synthesize vast domains of religious and philosophical understanding into a historical context is, as far as I'm concerned, almost without parallel (J.N.D. Kelly, Henry Chadwick, and Horace Hummel being other notable exceptions).

I'm almost finished Ehrman's book, and am part way through Armstrong's account of God. To be honest, the more I'm learning from these people, the more I'm enjoying the necessary challenges they bring to my beliefs, and the changes those challenges imply. Refusing to challenge my beliefs, to face the doubts and accusations levelled at a set of beliefs, renders me insincere. I'm not willing to believe dishonestly, or ignorantly. And if the propositional, historical, and physical evidence invalidates my beliefs, then I will have a decision to make: continue to believe despite evidence to the contrary, or, in pursuit of understanding, admit that something other than what I presently believe must be true.

What If I'm Wrong?

Today, I dumped some reflections on a Facebook site that note some of my recent personal faith challenges. Most notably, I'm concerned about the character of God (Yahweh) in the Old Testament. Here is what I wrote:

"God afflicted Moses' sister with leprosy because she was jealous of said Cushite. God also turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt because she got a little too curious about the fireworks happening behind her. Sure, she was 'disobedient' but the comparative morality of the situation in a larger context seems entirely disproportionate.

God also seemed to entertain Jephtha's foolish declaration to sacrifice as a burnt offering the first living thing to walk through his front door after his defeat of the Ammonites. How heartbroken was Jephtha when, upon his victorious return, his daughter greeted him at the front door (Judges 11)! Nevertheless, the great general cooked her, and apparently that's okay by God.

It would seem to me that God's moral character needs some vindication if the Old Testament stories are literally true: how wide is God's mercy if He's fine with accepting indecent sacrifices by blowhard, battle-ready, genocidal generals? And if it's all just allegorical, what moral decency can we gain from such a story?

Today I am heartbroken at the seeming depotism of the Old Testament stories. I'm also crushed to learn that archeological proofs show Yahweh as a local god of a small tribe of Israel, and that El was considered the god above Yahweh (who was simply a mountain god) [see Karen Armstrong, "The Great Transformation"]. If this is true, how much of what we believe is simply a tapestry of tangled tales, and primitive sophistications obfuscated by time, translative change-overs and blatant forgeries?"

I'll be honest and say that daring to ask the question, "what if I'm wrong?" leads to a frightening conclusion: you might just be. In my case, I'm beginning to wonder if I am. The New Atheists are a good deal of stentorian emotionalism, and strident protestation written with the rhetorical flavour of witty academia. In the end, they are just as fundamentalist in their objections as the religious are in their assertions. They can balk all they like at that observation, but their books bear out the viability of my conclusion.

When we draw on historical research, however, we find a different landscape. Certainly religious historians like Armstrong are not without their biases, but a tad more creedence can be placed on their findings. And its these findings I find most disturbing. For example, the Old Testament god, Yahweh, seems to be an amalgamation of a localized mountain god, Yahweh, and the competing Jewish conception of god as El (crudely put, the Sky-god), who was, logically above the mountains, and therefore above Yahweh. Apparently Yahweh was portable, too. So, when they couldn't agree, Yahweh was moved around Israel in company of the Axial peoples before eventually being combined with El. Thus a polytheistic notion of god became monotheistic, and Yahweh's name won the day.

And given that Yahweh was portable -- no longer just a mountain god, that is -- it seems a little more understandable that Jesus would quip that "if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain 'get up and move', and it will" (para. of Matt. 17:20). It also makes more sense now to echo with the Psalmist "I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?" (Psalm 121).

Given all of this, however, I am faced with the question, "are my beliefs in the literal, historical Judeo-Christian faith wrong?"

My answer: I don't know. I'm declaring a temporary epistemological agnosticism on this issue. I need to research, learn, and reassess. For now, I'm wondering if Tom Harpur is right when he declares that Christ is a spiritual consciousness all humans have by virtue of the indwelling of God in all of us (see The Pagan Christ). This conclusion, while poking at the fringes of so-called gnosticism, rings consonant with the notion of imago dei. But is a purely spiritualized version of religion right? Admittedly, if I took on that perspective, I'd still have to visit the question, "what if I'm wrong?"

I don't know if I'm ready for what that might imply.

Faith and Knowledge

I was just thinking about epistemology while trying to fend off the ill-formed thoughts of a grammatically challenged teenager when the following insight occured to me: all epistemology boils down to what you believe about your own experience with reality.

What does that imply for all our dramatic attempts at truth-claims? What does it say for religious systems? What does it do for the sanctity of scientific methodology? And does that mean that all of us, like I've stressed before, operate from a foundational assumption of faith; that knowledge itself assumes a faith base?

Nathan Jacobson Speaks

You listen.

A History of Philosophy

Just this morning I woke up (well, really, I resigned to opening my eyes, actually) and realised that I've been going about some of my studies on atheism and theism quite wrong. You see, I've studied theology formally, and have pursued it as a personal interest for a number of years now. In the midst of that, I've taken up philosophy almost incidentally: in the long run, you can't really study theology without dealing with philosophy.

So, in light of my academic shortcomings (which are many), I've decided to nuance my studies with a thorough-going study of the history of philosophy. My former philosophy professor, Dr. van der Breggen would be quite happy, I'm sure.

My choice for study? A 9 volume set I've been holding on to for a number of years, and have not ever read: A History of Philosophy, by Frederick Copleston, S.J. The first of the volumes is a compilation of three books, and looks as follows:
I'm looking forward to rounding out my mind with the thoughts of the intellectual giants of history. And it should prove entirely useful in my pursuit of understanding the academic thought life of the popular atheists en vogue these days.