Langauge and Concrete Gesture: Re-examing Dave's Challenge

 
Fritz Mauthner

I've put in a lot of effort on Dave's Challenge because I think it's important. I'm not going to keep the reader's attention focused on it forever. After this I will do a piece on an Indian theologian who has radical new ideas, then I'll give it a rest for a while. In the mean time I want to make a small point about the core idea of Dave's challenge that Christian terminology has beccome worn out. There is a German thinker, a philosopher and Theater critic called Fritz Mauthner (22 November 1849 Horschitz, Bohemia.– June 29, 1923, Meersburg, Germany). I remember him because he figured prominately in a paper I wrote in graduate school about Samuel Beckett (Waiting For Godot). Mouthner was important to Beckett and some of his core ideas influenced basic concepts Beckett used as that motivated him. It is said that Beckett read Mouthern to the blind James Joyce. Mauthern is still unsung. His works have not been translated out of German.

He is best known for his work: Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache (Contributions to a Critique of Language),

Wikipidia:

His philosophical endeavour deals with the psychology and science of language as well as the role of grammar and logic. It is a response to the perceived misuse of language and is preoccupied with the implications of language. He believed that words have pragmatic social value, but, because they are applied subjectively and are ever changing, they represent sense experience only (and that imperfectly). The word as such is a metaphor, a transposition of definite terms on indefinite impressions, and that it is enclosed within an image that can only refer to other images. Words cannot adequately express concepts, and they necessarily misrepresent reality by encouraging philosophers to anthropomorphise events through their use of language. He argues that philosophical endeavour is redundant as language cannot be used to create an overarching concept that is abstracted from a collection of distinct entities. In philosophy, doctrines are built out of abstract ideas that can often lead to nonsense if removed from their context. According to Mauthner, thinking never allows access to reality but is always mediated by language. Language sanctions universal meanings, ideas whose validity seems to be due to a cause, to something real. In fact, it lends its protection to a metaphysics given over to what Mauthner calls “superstition” or “word fetishism” (Mauthner, 1901–1902). For the fact is that our vocabulary gives an illusion of a supernatural, ideal world. For example, he denigrates the metaphysical concept of being as "merely a word, a word without content" (Worterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. III p. 171) and extolls that "being is not a genuine concept as genuine concepts must be reducible to something representable" (Worterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. III p. 176).

I first discovered Mauthner back in the 1990s. I was in a seminar class on Samuel Beckett. It was a grand project, two semesters. Semester one was an academic seminar on all things Beckett, and the second semester our class actually staged a play by that author, "All that Fall," not one of better plays either. I was the "dramaturg." Meaning: they didn't trust me to act or do anything else so they had me gather meaningless obscure academic research on the background of the play, no one read it and no one cared about it. Yet at the end of semester one I did a great paper on Mauthner's  influence upon Beckett. Unfortunately I don't have the sources any more. So the reader must take this with a grain of salt, because it's all coming form my memory. The authors I read at that time suggested that Mauthner believed that language began as concrete gesture. A cave man makes a sipping gesture with open hand and mouth, to indicate 'drink' then points, to say "I have found water." Or maybe "give me water." Over time language becomes abstract. We create worlds beyond our knowing, beyond reality perhaps, in the could of our abstractions, and language ceases to have concrete meaning. We must begin again reinforcing language with concrete gesture.

Reinforcing with concrete gesture is a hard thing to understand. In a nutshell it might mean shooting the finger instead of calling names. What value is that? I think it has a more metaphorical meaning the Dave's Challenge is a good example. It's not just Christian phrases that are worn out and trite and cliche. All of language has become worn out. Here we are in very pragmatic territory, a well worn cliche might explain: less talk and more action. This is bound to be the cure for what ales Christianity. Stop trying to communicate the Gospel in the proper words and start acting it out by loving our neighbors. The expression of Christian love as opposed to descriptions of what love entails, that's probably the only thing that will save it.

That leads to a couple of other matters, the issue of right doctrine, and creating an unreality in the clouds of our metaphysical verbiage. This is not a matter of creating a false world out of arm chair ideas. It need not be construed as a reductionist diatribe, but the failure of all language to convey the actual experience of being itself. That is not a matter of disparaging academic theology, but of disparaging the very notion that we can understand transcendent divine reality though logic and reason. That is the bread and butter of the mystic. God is beyond our understanding we are not going to pin him down by the illusion of technique. That's what all our reasoning and everything we do with language comes down to the fashioning of a technology, and what we do with technology is manipulate and control. We cannot manipulate or control God. This doesn't mean don't talk about theology any more, we have to do that. It means we have to live our theology as well. We have to experience (through divine encounter--chiefly through prayer) and we have to take it into the world and show to other people by acts of love. After all that's the major aspect of the atonement that says more than the proper doctrine of atonement, Jesus' modeling the character of God first hand.

As for proper doctrine, yes that's important, and a right understand of doctrine is important. Yet "right understanding" is not conveyed solely by the proper words, or by properly academic words. I think it's more helpful and more to the point to model it by acting out, that can only amount to the demonstration of love. Words by themselves can obscure truth. Words can hide aspects of truth that only actions can bring out. That's the point at which faith enables us to open up to the guidance of the spirit. That's where faith becomes a living reality. The best way to describe the gospel is to mode it, through living it.

__________________

Performance of Waiting for Godot

University of Maryland, directed by Beckett himself.

Jesus' "Client Centered Apppoarch" Spiritual Therapy (back to Dave's Challenge)

 Remember Dave wanted me to describe Chrsitain message without using any conventional language because he consider all the Christian terminology to be worn out, to have become so often used we don't think about it anymore. I thought I did pretty well but Dave didn't think so. I'm working on the premise that granting the problem Dave finds, worn out language, the other approach we can do, besides Dave's approach (which is chucking traditional terms and re-describing) is to re-define the old terms.

I said: "I've already demonstrated how one might expand upon God talk without referring to God per se."

Dave answers:

You've touched on the edges of how one might do so, but still firmly rooted in a heavily theological framework and philosophical perspective. There's still the issue of Christianity.

 No offense to my friend Dave, who is a professional academic and very intelligent but he's not a theologian, it's only because you know the theology  that you think so. Ok obviously it's rooteded in a theological framework, got that right, that doesn't mean it's worn out and imprinted as wrote and imprinted so we don't think about it becuase it's not even known the public. The vast majority of Christians dont' even know what process theology or liberal theology says. The wouldn't know Paul Tillich form a hole in the ground.

In terms of christian specifics I think I've been discussing two issues that seek to redefine the meanings of classical Christian terms. I've been discussing these terms for years it's making less than a surface scratch. There's one of me. If I had a whole army of evangelists doing the same thing we might get somewhere. Ministers come out of seminary eager to talk about what they spent four years learning, then get it taken out of them in the next four years by having to fit their learning around the community and focus upon things like organizing chairs and cleaning toilets. Yes, more than one old friends from theology schools tells me when no one cleans the toilet at a small chruch its' the Pastor's job. Enough chair arranging and toilet cleaning will knock the ground of being right out of you. The two issues I have in mind are my view of the atonement, and the meaning of the supernatural. I have blog pieces and pages on my websites on both issues. Atonement is here. My take on the supernatural is here.

The first issue, Atonement, we can start with the issue of the term itself. We think we know what it means, it means Jesus died on the cross for our sins. This phrase sill illicit thoughts of compassion and empathy for Jesus' pain from believers, it's a symbol of ridicule form atheists who say things like "but he was son of God it wasn't really a sacrifice." The whole concept has become a mark of derision. Also they question "how could it do any good to die for someone else s sins?" Not that these are cogent criticisms by any means, not that we should change the terms at the first sign of ridicule, but the point is well taken that the concepts have become such cliches they have lost their cultural capital. Or maybe not since the 80% still find it meaningful, but for that reaming 20% perhaps they have.

My point is just choosing an new term wont help, because we would still define it in the same way. We could say "Jesus exhibited a client-centered approach death-wise." what does that mean? Means he died for your sins. Back to the standard usage. How do we reflect that in a new way without changing the meaning? I don't propose this just for the sake of the 3% of atheists, in fact atheists are totally un-taken with my approach. My approach is to look more deeply at what God was doing in setting up the atonement. Why did he use it? I use Jurgen Moltmann's term "solidarity" to describe the atonement.[1] That is not a standard description. That same concept is also expressed in Matthew Lamb's book Solidarity with Victims. [2] Jesus death on the cross is God's statement of solidarity to humanity.  It's not a magic incantation of sympathetic magic, it's a logical statement of God's attitude toward us. By becoming human and dying as one of the lowest in society God says "I am willing to identify with you to the point of sharing your fate. I care about you, I'm one of you, mean so much to me I'm willing to be you." When we place ourselves into Christ's death by giving our lives to Christ and reckon ourselves dead to the world but alive to Christ, we accept solidarity with God. The Cross is God's statement of solidarity with us, and our stepping into that death is our statement of solidarity with God. The grounds upon which sin is forgiven is created by that solidarity. Solidarity is just another way of expressing the concept of covenant.

..all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were Baptized into his death.? We were therefore buried with him in baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection.For we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.--because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.Now if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him; the death he died to sin he died once for all; but the life he lives he lives to God. In the same way count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.(Romans 6:1-5) [NIV]

I have never heard anyone in any chruch express it this way. It was expressed this way a lot at Perkins School of Theology (SMU).

As to the second issue, the supernatural, that requires a complex history lesson and a complete exposure of the hijacked meaning which was coopeted and ruined by the enlightenment. The term "supernatural" is certainly over used, chicle, worn out, because its' not even used correctly anymore. In modern times, based upon the enlightenment high jack it came to mean something like a realm of magic, the place where all the wired stuff is kept. Atheists have come to use it to mean "all that pertains to the things we hate and disbelieve." They use "natural" to mean "without God" and supernatural means "with God." They also throw in psychic power, ghosts, magic, Bigfoot and whatever else they can't explain or don't believe in. This is not the historical meaning of term. I urge the reader to read my article linked above (here) because it's a complex topic that requires a lot of understanding.

The term supernature was invented by Pseudo-Dionysius the Arieopagite (around 500AD). The term referred to the power of God to raise humanity to the higher level of understanding and spiritual reality. It referred specifically to that form of experience known as "mystical experience." This is all it refereed to. It was not about miracles or magic and it was not removed form the realm of nature. It happened in the realm of nature. This is a recovery of the original concept that I'm advocating not inventing a new description. Yet it's not worn out of cliched rather the "new" version is the worn out version and the original is fresh.

At this point we have what I call "the Tillich twist." This is a twist on the concept of supernatural that invovles Tillich's understanding. This is controversial, of course the atheist told me I'm totally nuts to think of this, I can't think of a better endorsement. Tillich said his mission to was shut down belief in the supernatural. He hated the supernatural.

And I even speak of "breaking in," which has a supernatural sound but is not supernaturalism. You approach something here that is fundamental to all my thinking — the antisupernaturalistic attitude. If you would like to prepare yourself, I recommend the one section about reason and revelation in the first volume of my Systematic Theology, where I deal extensively with miracle, inspiration, ecstasy, and all these concepts, and try to interpret them in a nonsupernaturalistic — and that would mean also a nonsuperstitious — way.

Student: Well, in catechism in Sunday school, we learned that miracles imply a "suspension of the laws of nature." I suppose that is as good a definition as any.

Now if you define a miracle like this, then I would simply say that this is a demonic distortion of the meaning of miracle in the New Testament. And it is distorted because it means that God has to destroy his creation in order to produce his salvation. And I call this demonic, because God is then split in himself and is unable to express himself through his creative power. In truth, of course, there are many things that are miraculous, literally "things to be astonished about," from mirari in Latin, to be astonished. And if you refrain from defining miracles in this distorted, actually demonic, way, we can begin to talk intelligently about them.
Dr. Tillich: Where did you learn this? It is very interesting. Because this is precisely the idea which I fiercely combat in all my work, whenever I speak of these things. Was that really taught in your catechism, or by the Sunday-school teacher, who could not do better because she had learned it from another Sunday-school teacher who also could not do better?...

Now if you define a miracle like this, then I would simply say that this is a demonic distortion of the meaning of miracle in the New Testament. And it is distorted because it means that God has to destroy his creation in order to produce his salvation. And I call this demonic, because God is then split in himself and is unable to express himself through his creative power. In truth, of course, there are many things that are miraculous, literally "things to be astonished about," from mirari in Latin, to be astonished. And if you refrain from defining miracles in this distorted, actually demonic, way, we can begin to talk intelligently about them.[3]

I contend he was talking about the phony version. He may not have understood that it was phony, so in rejecting it he's also moving back to to the original even he may not know that's what was happening. He did endorse and wrote sympathetically of mysticism and mystics. The concept of supernatural (ala original version) is not "breaking in" to nature but a harmonious two-sided relationship. This concept expressed by Fairweather [4] might be seen to relate to what Tillich is saying.

Now the next point I want to make is that actual miracle stories are always in danger of being brought down to a kind of rationalistic supranaturalism. By this I mean that they are thought of as supranatural in the sense of the breaking in of a causal power from another realm. But miracles operate in terms of ordinary causality. To think of them as involving an objective breaking of the structure of reality, or suspending the laws of nature, is superstition.[5]

The traditional language is important because it points to continuity. Theology is about tradition, but the theology of the last hundred years has been about new perspectives and enfranchisement of those with no voice. In turning back to older perspectives and applying them to modern context we are reinvigorating the language and finding new nuances.



sources


[1] Jurgen Moltman, The Crucified God:The Cross of Christ as The Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Minneapolis, Minnesota :Fortress Press, 1993.
on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0800628225/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=16274691927&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13991023451003997032&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_603e6hpw60_b
[2] Matthew Lamb, Solidarity With Victims: Toward a Theology of Social Transformation. New York:Crossroads publication company, 1982.
[3] Donald Mackenzie Brown, Ultiamte Cocnern: Tillich In Dialaogue. New York: Harper & Row,1965  This book was prepared for Religion Online by Harry W. and Grace C. Adams.http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=538&C=604
 accessed 8/6/13.
Donald Mackenzie Brown is Chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
[4] Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1.  New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256.

[5] Tillich, ibid.

Pruss: trade fine tuning argument for POE? Why?

 



 Alexander Pruss Philosopher at Baylor
on October 8, 2012 10:40 AM |

the prosblogian a philosophy of religion blog 

Admits we can't have a valid piror on theitsic arguements but we can have non numerical reasoning from comparing stength of evidence.

For instance, we might have the judgment that the evidential strength of the Problem of Evil (POE) as an argument against theism is no greater than the evidential strength of the Finetuning Argument (FTA) as an argument for theism. Two thoughts in support of this: (1) the low-entropy initial state of the our universe has been estimated by Penrose to be utterly incredibly unlikely (my paraphrase of his 10^(-10^123)) and some of the other anthropic coincidences come with what are intuitively extremely narrow ranges; the theist has proposed various theodicies--they may not be convincing, but it seems reasonable to say that the probability that together they answer the POE is no less, indeed quite a bit greater, than the incredibly tiny probabilities that FTA claims; (2) just as thinking about naturalistic multiverse hypotheses significantly decreases the force of FTA, thinking about theistic multiverse hypotheses significantly decreases the force of POE (cf. Turner and Kraay's work); (3) just as in the case of FTA we might worry that there is some nomic explanation of the coincidences that we haven't found, so too in the case of POE we have sceptical theism.

This means that the theist can simply sacrifice FTA to POE: the FTA either balances POE or outbalances POE (I think the latter, because of point (1) above).
Then the theist has a nice supply of other strong and serious theistic arguments, such as the cosmological, non-FTA design arguments (e.g., Swinburne's laws of nature argument), ontological, religious experience, moral epistemology (theism has a much better explanation than naturalism of how we can know objective moral truths), etc. The atheist has a few other arguments, too, but I think they are not very impressive (the Stone and other issues for the Chisholming of divine attributes, Grim-style worries about omniscience and infinity, worries about the interaction between the physical and nonphysical). At least once POE is completely out of the picture, even if FTA is lost, the theist can make a very strong case.

I don't think we have to lose either. While we can't know the ultimate reason for God's creation will probably always allude us, all we need to do is supply a logical reason for the allowance of pain to see that there is a logical reason. Even if our reason is totally speculative it's still illustration of the fact that there can be one. Thus we need not assume God is indifferent or non existence merely becuase he allows evil, pain, and suffering.

Logical Reason for POE/P/S

One such logical reason is my Soeteriological drama argument. This is the idea that God wants us to search for truth. The search doesn't have to take a life time, it could over very quickly. That is a matter that is up to the individual becuase some people are more stubborn than others. Here's what the argument looks like:

Basic assumptions


There are three basic assumptions that are hidden, or perhaps not so obivioius, but nevertheless must be dealt with here.

(1) The assumption that God wants a "moral universe" and that this value outweighs all others.


The idea that God wants a moral universe I take from my basic view of God and morality. Following in the footsteps of Joseph Fletcher (Situation Ethics) I assume that love is the background of the moral universe (this is also an Augustinian view). I also assume that there is a deeply ontological connection between love and Being. Axiomatically, in my view point, love is the basic impitus of Being itself. Thus, it seems reasonable to me that, if morality is an upshot of love, or if love motivates moral behavior, then the creation of a moral universe is essential.


(2) that internal "seeking" leads to greater internalization of values than forced compliance or complaisance that would be the result of intimidation.

That's a pretty fair assumption. We all know that people will a lot more to achieve a goal they truly beileve in than one they merely feel forced or obligated to follow but couldn't care less about.

(3)the the drama or the big mystery is the only way to accomplish that end.

The pursuit of the value system becomes a search of the heart for ultimate meaning,that ensures that people continue to seek it until it has been fully internalized.

The argument would look like this:


(1)God's purpose in creation: to create a Moral Universe, that is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the Good.

(2) Moral choice requires absolutely that choice be free (thus free will is necessitated).

(3) Allowance of free choices requires the risk that the chooser will make evil choices

(4)The possibility of evil choices is a risk God must run, thus the value of free outweighs all other considerations, since without there would be no moral universe and the purpose of creation would be thwarted.


This leaves the atheist in the position of demanding to know why God doesn't just tell everyone that he's there, and that he requires moral behavior, and what that entails. Thus there would be no mystery and people would be much less inclined to sin.

This is the point where Soteriological Drama figures into it. Argument on Soteriological Drama:


(5) Life is a "Drama" not for the sake of entertainment, but in the sense that a dramatic tension exists between our ordinary observations of life on a daily basis, and the ultiamte goals, ends and purposes for which we are on this earth.

(6) Clearly God wants us to seek on a level other than the obvious, daily, demonstrative level or he would have made the situation more plain to us

(7) We can assume that the reason for the "big mystery" is the internalization of choices. If God appeared to the world in open objective fashion and laid down the rules, we would probably all try to follow them, but we would not want to follow them. Thus our obedience would be lip service and not from the heart.

(8) therefore, God wants a heart felt response which is internationalized value system that comes through the search for existential answers; that search is phenomenological; introspective, internal, not amenable to ordinary demonstrative evidence.


In other words, we are part of a great drama and our actions and our dilemmas and our choices are all part of the way we respond to the situation as characters in a drama.

This theory also explains why God doesn't often regenerate limbs in healing the sick. That would be a dead giveaway. God creates criteria under which healing takes place, that criteria can't negate the overall plan of a search.


This argument doesn't have to prove as the "actual reason" for God's actions. It only has to be thought of as a plausible reaosn, that's enough to know that there is a valid reason. One of the major objections has been that many people have short lives, die in birth or in childhood thus they are cheated out of the chance to have the search. The problem with that is mitigated when we realize those who die as children are not subject to miss the rewards of after life, they are not blameworthy for sin becuase they have not reach age accountability. That they are cheated out of having life is a great tragedy but a necessary consequence since the perimeters of the search much be kept in a state of neutral seeming world. In other words if God intervened all the time there would be need for a search. No  one would internalize the values of the good. The same is true of those who die after childhood but still in their youth. They don't have to a full life span. They would not get that anyway if there was no God. It's really just a complaint that life doesn't come with a guarantee.

Then of course atheist resort to the brilliant suggestion that death is so much better than life why don't we kill our children so they have a free pass to haven. Do we really to go into that one? They want to complain about missing the search on one hand but then get out of having to do it on the other.

One might question the basic concept that we need to internalize the values. That goes back to that universal atheist attitude, why doesn't God just make life to be  perpetual summer camp where I'm allowed to do whatever the hell I wish and it never has to matter? That's just the necessity of taking love and morality seriously. If we take morality seriously then we want to be moral. WE don't want to just get out of having to be good. Unless we internationalize that value we would resent God's authority. The more one delivers lip service to something in which one does not believe, the more resentful one becomes. Through the search one comes to conviction that God is real, it's not just thrust upon us, and through conviction one comes to appreciate God's grace and to care about being good.

Then of course the exit ramps have to be kept intact. In other words there must be a way for the search to pay off and the truth to be found. One such way is the clues that one can pick up on and use to make God arguments. One such clue is the fine tuning argument. So there's no need to abandon a fine arguemnt when we can answer the problem of evil.

One of the major arguments against this theodicy is the short lives argument. There are so many who die in infancy or childhood or when they are young, they never get to do much searching. There are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, that I believe in the age of accountability. Children and infants die before they reach a level off maturity such that they are accountable for sin. They are not in eternal danger. Of course it's a tragedy. Tragedy is part of the world, it's part of life. Secondly, some people don't need to do that much searching. A lot of people are ready to make the leap of faith without prolonging the battle of the wills to resist God. Thirdly, if the search means anything the world must be kept open ended. It must be the kind of world in which one must be able to draw conclusions form the nature of the world but not the kind in which all doubt is removed. Again, this may not be the right answer, but that's not important. What matters is the possibility that there is an answer.

The fine tuning argument need not be given up, there is no trade off. It's not a dead give away as it would be if God worked a miracle to end all pain. It's a warrant from which one might draw a rational conclusion but it's not beyond all doubt.

An Atheist Discovers the "God Beyond God"

 

I am Plying for time while I seek to come up with better answers for Dave on his describe the Gospel challenge. I came across this stuff which is tangential to some of the problems of standardized symbols and meaning. It might good to reflect on some of this in thinking about that challenge.
I came across an interesting article by Marlene Winellon the atheist blog "Debunking Christianity. This person is a therapist of some kind. Her profile says that she offers therapy to those traumatized by religion. What I find interesting about this that her statement about the alternative to religious belief that she has found for her own personal world view is none other than Paul Tillich's notion of The ground of being! this is in fact my very understanding of God!

Winell indicates some basic misunderstanding about theology. In her statement she tries to attack religion. Although, this is not meant to be an attack. I can see some value in her attempts to help traumatized ex fundie s move forward in their lives. I do think religion can be very debilitating if it is not done right. Half truth is a very powerful weapon. But in making these theolgoical mistakes Winell is contributing to the half truth. The half truth of which I spoke is that of the fundamentalists, the way they distort the Gospel. Windell says:

Thursday, November 01, 2007

I keep getting asked, So Do You Believe in God?
So do you believe in God?

As a therapist working to help people recover from the damage of religion, I get this frequently. So I’ve decided to make a better effort to reply. To be honest, I don’t like the question because it presumes we know what those words mean. Here are some responses, touching on more or less serious aspects of the topic.

Yes I think I know what the words mean. She further demontrates lack of understanding in the nature of God in terms of necessity and contingency.

1. Which god? Do you mean Zeus, Baal, Athena, Shiva, Allah, Jehovah, or some other? If you mean one of those, then no. I am not a theist. I don’t believe in an individual being that created and now controls the world.

When people say things like this, which ;God, as though they are all so much alike, I see a read flag. It usually means a lack of theological sophistication. The similarity is in the metaphor suggested by ancient concepts of suzerain authority, the big man on a throne,t he ruler the potentate. That's a literary metaphor and that's where the similarity ends. The God of the Bible is totally different from these other little human figures because they are contingent.
They had parents. Zeus was the son of Saturn (Chronos in Greek set up). Athena was the daughter of Zeus and sprang from his head fully grown. Allah is the same God as the God of the Bible the Muslims just think he wants different things. that's not an argument about how he is, except they literaize the metaphor and just make him the real guy in the sky. Of course Jahova is the corrupted name of the God of the Bible. So clearly she doesn't understand the Christian concept of God. Like so many atheists they just take the literal version as the whole thing. This means basically that atheists are fundamentalists. Then she does something staggering. I really can't understand this, she denies that belief itself is an intelligible concept.

2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached basic on logical consideration of evidence? That would assume I have access to all the information, and I do not. Is it an emotional feeling for something beyond myself? Well, my emotions vary, and some days are hopeful, other days are dark. Emotions are a rocky basis for “belief.” Do I make a leap of faith, not knowing anything really, but simply wanting to “believe,” and putting stock in a “scripture” to give it support? This is also difficult because knowing about the origins of “scripture,” I know the complexity; they were not simply dictated. Also, the strength of my blind faith can also vary and I’m not sure how completely I am supposed to convince myself in order to say I “believe.”

Here we see the typical atheist conception of faith; just blind leap into the darkness with no evidence. We really need to talk about this some time. These people have have just got to start looking thing up. The proper source to use would be Westminster Dictionary of Christian theology. You would not use a refrigeration manuel to define automotive standards or weighs and measures for agriculture, so you would not use a popular dictionary to understand theology. You would use the dictionary made by theologians to explain the way theologians use their specialized terms. See my recent blog piece on Faith is not belief without reason.
After questioning the concept of belief as a coherent concept she then speaks of what passes for belief, and for God, in her world view.

4. If I must use the concept at all, I would equate it with the “nature of being.” This is close to “ground of being,” a phrase coined by John Robinson many years ago in Honest to God. For me it involves a perception of existence grounded in the profound science of modern physics. Most ordinary people do not know much about this. Yet, we now know from findings in both relativity theory and quantum physics, that the universe is much more strange and incredible than we ever realized. It calls for massive humility because there are things no one understands, yet we now have good reason to question all of our basic assumptions about “reality.” The difference is bigger than finding out the world is not flat. We have evidence for questioning our ideas about matter, linear time, cause and effect, and more. String theorists agree there are eleven dimensions. Yet the general population operates all day every day assuming things that are completely out of date. The knowledge has not reached the masses. This is akin to having everyone act as if the earth is still flat. The issues are intensely profound, with implications for everything we do. The big words for me are “mystery” and “possibility.” Feelings are humility, awe, and excitement. There is no religious description of “god” that matches the grandeur of the universe as it is – elusive, ever-changing, impossibly mind-boggling. And this includes us. We are part of the fabric; there is no separation. If this is believing in god, then by all means, a hundred times YES! But I’m still not drawn to the language.

First of all, John Robinson did not coin the term "Being itself." It is found as far back as the intertestamental translating of Exodus by the Rabbis who produced the LXX. In Exodus 3, 11-21 they translate the phrase often rendered "I am that i am" in English bibles, as "I am the being." Since the definite article (ego o' ami) carries a sense of quality when used in this way, "I am being " or I am being itself is the best translation. By the way John 1:1 should be translated "the word was deity" not "the word was the God." The concept is picked up by John of Damascus in the eighth century AD. Robinson got it from Tillich, it is also used by Ware in The Orthodox church to describe Eastern Orthodox beliefs about God, and John MacQuerry uses it extensively.
Secondly her tak about knowing beyond langauge is just coming out of Christian mysticism. People are seeking God like it or not. She is a believe in Gdo even though she doesn't know God, ust as Paul said of the Athenians in Acts 17: 11-21.
She quotes a couple of notables to back up her view:

A couple of quotes that I find consistent with this:

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”`
-Carl Sagan

The actual fact is that atheists have stunted their spiritual growth. they tend not to understand Christian views at the higher level of sophistication. Of course its hardly their fault. liberal theology gets almost no air play, one never sees clearly references to it and even on PBS they give it short shrift. There are concepts by Christian thinkers which dwarf anything short of Einstein Process theology certainly is as sophisticated s anything Sagan ever thought about. Greater scientists than him have been Christians, even in the modern age.

“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
-Albert Einstein

He was wrong about the uncertantainty princple too.
We need to be careful that in our attempts to move beyond the traumatizing aspects of our lives that we don't miss the valuable things. I was traumatized by my fundamentalist environment as a child. I think it caused no end of problems for me. I think the "sucky" parts of my personality can be traced to that era of my life. I and my brother used to stand up in church and lead singing, or help. we really weren't we were jut waving our arms, people thought it was cute and encouraged us. They would go "good job leading sining today." One day I thought "I think I'll preach the sermon today." I stood up, faced the guy sitting right behind me, (I was about five or four) looked him in the eye and shouted "You are going to hell!" He was horrified and didn't know what to thin.. I will never forget the look on that guy's face. As "luck" or "fate" or god whatever would have it, he was a visitor so he didn't know about the two little twins leading sining and how everyone encouraged us. What's interesting about that is that acting out my idea of what a sermon was I immediately went right ot the condemnation and threats of hell. Now no preacher had actually done that in our church. How did I know to do it? I probably saw something on tv, but it fit the mentality of the church.
My point is I can understand the problem with religion. I have more air curling stories than that that I could tell. One thumbnail example, I once dreamed that I was at one of the old churches we went to when I was in high school int he dream it was a center of satan worship. In another dream of the same era the little religious private school I attended in eighth and ninth grades was ran by a secret cult of vampires where sucking the kids blood. That might give an idea of ho these places affected me. Yet, I found healing when I found Jesus. My solution to the bad religious experince was to have good religious experiences.

Not only does Winell throw the babby out she watns to kill the whole concept of God.

5. Dispensing with the “god” word, it makes a little more sense for me to address “spirituality,” although this word has often meant a focus on other-worldly things. I prefer to describe spirituality as a way of living which is here-and-now. These are attributes rather than a definition. They involve feelings and perceptions and experiences which depend on openness. This openness can be chosen and developed. Rather than escaping into a different realm, I think of spirituality in terms of how we live our lives – the choices, the consciousness, the texture of daily life. There are several aspects of this:

I don't totally disagree there. But the interesting thing is she wants to do away with the term "God" and yet her alternative to it is the more sophisticated concept of God that is less known, but no less Christian. The idea that the reality of God is beyond words and must be explored experimentally is hardly new in Christian thought, ti is the stuff of which Christian mysticism is made. The idea that the reality of God is something beyond our cultural constructs of God is explored by Tillich in his book The Courage to Be, in the chapter "The God beyond God." I highly recomend it.

Do religious experinces shrink part of the brain?

 


Two new studies suggest this may be true. The first article is published in Scientific American and is by Anderw Newberg, [1]author of Why God Wont Go Away. [2] Newberg is a pioneer in the field of studying the brain to understand the result of religious thinking. The research is by Amy Owen at Duke University. "The study, published March 30 in PLoS One, showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation. It is a surprising result, given that many prior studies have shown religion to have potentially beneficial effects on brain function, anxiety, and depression."

 The Owen study used MRI to measure volume of the hippocampus, in the limbic system. This structure is involved in memory as well as emotion. Sample size inckluded 268 men and women, 58 and over, who suffered depression and were taken from a sample of elderly studied for depression. The study only looked at religious involvement and divided the group into those who were born again  and who had life changing religious experiences. "The results showed significantly greater hippocampal atrophy in individuals reporting a life-changing religious experience. In addition, they found significantly greater hippocampal atrophy among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again.."

 The Theory proposed by the authors is based upon the idea that those involved in struggle over their beliefs are involved in higher levels of stress. Stress results in shrinkage of the hippocampus. Such conflicts release a stress hormone. Newberg, elucidates upon the theroy in stating that

  There is evidence that members of religious groups who are persecuted or in the minority might have markedly greater stress and anxiety as they try to navigate their own society. Other times, a person might perceive God to be punishing them and therefore have significant stress in the face of their religious struggle. Others experience religious struggle because of conflicting ideas with their religious tradition or their family. Even very positive, life-changing experiences might be difficult to incorporate into the individual’s prevailing religious belief system and this can also lead to stress and anxiety.

Newberg is less than enthusiastic about the findings, points out several flaws in the study, such as small sample size.

Thus, Owen and her colleagues certainly pose a plausible hypothesis. They also cite some of the limitations of their findings, such as the small sample size. More importantly, the causal relationship between brain findings and religion is difficult to clearly establish. Is it possible, for example, that those people with smaller hippocampal volumes are more likely to have specific religious attributes, drawing the causal arrow in the other direction? Further, it might be that the factors leading up to the life-changing events are important and not just the experience itself. Since brain atrophy reflects everything that happens to a person up to that point, one cannot definitively conclude that the most intense experience was in fact the thing that resulted in brain atrophy. So there are many potential factors that could lead to the reported results. (It is also somewhat problematic that stress itself did not correlate with hippocampal volumes since this was one of the potential hypotheses proposed by the authors and thus, appears to undercut the conclusions.) One might ask whether it is possible that people who are more religious suffer greater inherent stress, but that their religion actually helps to protect them somewhat. Religion is frequently cited as an important coping mechanism for dealing with stress.
This new study is intriguing and important. It makes us think more about the complexity of the relationship between religion and the brain. This field of scholarship, referred to as neurotheology, can greatly advance our understanding of religion, spirituality, and the brain. Continued studies of both the acute and chronic effects of religion on the brain will be highly valuable. For now, we can be certain that religion affects the brain--we just are not certain how.

 There are more devastating criticisms to be made. First of all, the sample is taken from a study that was done on elderly and depression. Thus while people may have had a valid life changing experience at some point in the past, they were now depressed. That might either cause or indicate stress and would shrink the hippicamus. It masks the ability to determine the causal relationship between religious experience and shrinkage. Experiences do run low. In Wuthnow study the experience faded after one year.[3] While Maslow speaks of some effects lasting a life time, there are those who need a renewed experience (and renewal is possible). More importantly, we are not told what constitutes "life changing religious experience." We don't know if the M scale was used or if some comparable scale was in sue, or were these experiences just subjectively judged as "religious" and "life changing" because they resulted in a conversion.[4] So again they can't even prove they are talking about the kind of religious experiences that are associated with the most dramatic effects. Moreover, the article alludes several times to "Many studies have shown positive effects of religion and spirituality on mental health, but there are also plenty of examples of negative impacts." We are not told if the negatives are related to the actual experience or to some intervening variable such as persecution. Or even if they are among those with mystical experience or if that's the pile where any conversion is considered life changing.

 The important point to to made is religious experience is so consistently positive and good that even clinicians in institutions encourage their patents to seek it for therapeutic effects.[5] Wuthnow and Nobel both found numerious positive results (negative results--which were about stress and anxiety--were short term). [6][7]


 Wuthnow:

*Say their lives are more meaningful,
*think about meaning and purpose
*Know what purpose of life is
Meditate more
*Score higher on self-rated personal talents and capabilities
*Less likely to value material possessions, high pay, job security, fame, and having lots of friends
*Greater value on work for social change, solving social problems, helping needy
*Reflective, inner-directed, self-aware, self-confident life style

Noble:

*Experience more productive of psychological health than illness
*Less authoritarian and dogmatic
*More assertive, imaginative, self-sufficient
*intelligent, relaxed
*High ego strength,
*relationships, symbolization, values,
*integration, allocentrism,
*psychological maturity,
*self-acceptance, self-worth,
*autonomy, authenticity, need for solitude,
*increased love and compassion [8]

 This is just the tip of the iceberg. There's a huge body of empirical research going back 50 years demonstrating the positive effects of these experiences it's not logical assume they damage your brain. For years I've searched for examples of detrimental or pathological effects that resulted in transformation (dramatic postiive change for the better). It doesn't happen that way. No form of brain damage results of a really over all better life.

 The Second study is in Science Daily "Selective Brain Damage Modulates Human Spirituality, Rsearch Reveals," (Feb. 11, 2010).[9]  There is no "by" line to the story, it just points to "cell press." So it's by a staff writer for a popular publication specializing in scinece news. The actual research is by Dr. Cosimo Urgesi from the University of Udine in Italy, in February 11 issue of the journal Neuron. This is not too impressive. It leads off with an ideological statment that is little more than pledging allegence ot materialism:

Although it is well established that all behaviors and experiences, spiritual or otherwise, must originate in the brain, true empirical exploration of the neural underpinnings of spirituality has been challenging. However, recent advances in neuroscience have started to make the complex mental processes associated with religion and spirituality more accessible."Neuroimaging studies have linked activity within a large network in the brain that connects the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortexes with spiritual experiences, but information on the causative link between such a network and spirituality is lacking," explains lead study author, Dr. Cosimo Urgesi from the University of Udine in Italy.

In other words theoretically we assume that there's nothing more to spirituality than brain chemistry but it's been real hard to prove it. This study focuses on the phenomenon known as "self transcendence" (ST) as a measure of spirituality. Changes in ST among patience who had been treated for brain cancer so they changed the changes in ST made by brain lesions. The nature of ST was charted by scores obtained before and after on a test. Self transcendence is the sense of one's own unqieness as a person and one's place in relation to the rest of reality. The results are surprising:

The group found that selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions induced a specific increase in ST. "Our symptom-lesion mapping study is the first demonstration of a causative link between brain functioning and ST," offers Dr. Urgesi. "Damage to posterior parietal areas induced unusually fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness. Thus, dysfunctional parietal neural activity may underpin altered spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviors."

 I would have expected the opposite. Make a lesion and it reduces ST but actually makes it stronger. So they are assuming that ST is the result of damage to the brain rather damage merely impairing it. That's grossly ideological because they are actually saying that our sense of self, the individuality that makes us who we are, the thing that gives us a sense of nobility and makes us human is a mistake, the result of brain damage. This fits with the trans human movement. People who now seek to be robots and who actually disregard their own human rights. That's just clearly wrong. All the positive steps we've taken as humanity since the Renaissance have come as a result of having a concept of self transcendence. If this finding is true than all of civilization is a huge mistake. Every postie step we have taken, including the development of brain science the understanding of neurology is a big accident not just an accident but a travesty, the result of brain damage. Doesn't imply that in some sense are true "design" if we can call it that would be to retard our sense of who we are to keep us from growing as people. Thus making the discipline of psycholgoy into a crime. So it undermines the very sciences that aruge for the finding. Of cousre the original research doesn't say if it's talking about positive or negative aspects associated with ST. Leading me to conclude this may just be a biased telling of the result, conditioned by ideological need.


Sources

 [1] Andrew Newberg, "Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain." Scientific American, May 31, 2011. on line copy: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=religious-experiences-shrink-part-of-brain accessed 7/31/13

 [2]______________ and  Eugene D'Aquili Why God Wont Go Away:Brain Science and The Biology of Belief. New York: Balantine Books, 2002.

 [3] Robert Wuthnow, "Peak Experiences: Some Empirical Tests." Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 18 (3),  1978. 59-75.

 [4] Metarock, "The M Scale and Universal Nature of Mystical Experience." The Religious A prori
website, http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-m-sacle-and-universal-nature-of.html accessed 7/31/13.

see also Ralph Hood Jr. “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism.” In Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion.  Patrick Mcnamara ed. West Port CT: Prager Publications, 2006, 119-235.

Google books on line version: URL http://books.google.com.cu/books?id=0bzj3RtT3zIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true  visited 8/20/2012

 [5]Lorraine S. Allman, et al. "Psychotherapists Attitudes Toward Clients Reporting Mystical Experiences." Psychotherapy, Vol 29, no 4, (Winter, 1992), 564-669, 564. on line copy

http://psychres.washington.edu/syllabiandreadings/spirituality_culture/article_allman.pdf 

 accessed 7/31/13.

[6] Robert Wuthnow, Ibid.

[7] Kathleen D. Noble,  ``Psychological Health and the Experience of Transcendence.'' The Counseling Psychologist, 15 (4), 1987, 601-614.

[8] findings of Wuthnow and noble summarized by the council on spiritual Practices, "State of Unitive Conscoiusness Research Summary. website URL:

http://csp.org/experience/docs/unitive_consciousness.html

Accessed 7/22/08

[9] Science Daily "Selective Brain Damage Modulates Human Spirituality, Research Reveals," (Feb. 11, 2010).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100210124757.htm  accessed 7/31/13

Come post with me

 

I have a great message board community, Doxa forums. It's a totally unique community becuase we no trolls, we have no BS yammering, no bickering. I just don't allow trolls. We do have free speech, we have good serious discussion. We are all friends. We have intelligent atheists (Yes! I told it was rare) and intelligent Christians.

Now input is welcome. It's gotten down the same few people and need new ideas and new voices. We will welcome atheists as well as Chrsitians or anyone else. Please come and see:

Doxa forums.

Challenge: Describe the Gospel using no Standard Christian Langauge

 


This is not an indication that I actually think we should abandon talking about God. Nor does it mean that I'm giving up Chrsitain doctrine of any kind. It might be a useful exercise. I think Dave had a good point that Christian language has become stigmatized. What do you think of when I say "Jesus love you and a plan for your life?" I think of you think "ho hum." Dave put up a  challenge at a chruch he attends sometimes he told me about it. I said Ok I'm going to try it. It's just an experiment. To describe the Gospel with no standard Christian words about God or Jesus or being saved or anything. Here's Dave's thinking:

"Dave" on peaceful turmoil blog

Why Western Christians Need "no God."

What do you think of when someone mentioned the God of the Bible?

A fickle sky deity worshiped by a collection of allied city states from Bronze age Palestine that merged to become the ancient nation of Israel? Perhaps an image of an old white haired sovereign on a celestial throne?

Perhaps you think instead of socially conservative religious leaders and their political allies and the things they say in the name of God. Or various injustices of history committed in the name of God.

If you do think of such things, you are far from alone. But like my unsolicited advice to Western convert Buddhists (1), one can ask what may be obscured by such reactions.

This kind of reaction is something many Christians seem to be at a loss over. Here is one take on that loss.

All human knowledge and experience is mediated through and embedded within symbols and analogies, especially in the shape of metaphors. Knowledge and experience is also mediated by and has embedded within it moral (how things are/how things ought to be) and emotional content. This is all woven together into narratives or stories at the level of individuals, communities, and societies.

We are more likely to trust someone whose narrative has a structure and interpretation lines up with our own in key ways, or with whom we have more intimate social and emotional connections. Its reciprocal. If I trust you, I trust your worldview. If I trust your worldview, I trust you.

Religion offers, among others things, a communal response to the spiritual impulse (seeking connection and purpose through integration into higher orders of structure and meaning) rooted in an existential narrative (a story about why we exist). This narrative takes the forms of myth, a story connecting an ahistorical origin of a people ("Long ago..." "Before the world began...") to a moral vision of the contemporary world -- how the world is, ought to be, and will be.

In many contemporary, industrial, post-Enlightenment societies the symbols and images associated with Christianity, its mythology, and its ritual institutions have become problematic.

For those with little knowledge of the religion itself or of its theology and history, the symbols, images, and references to Biblical and non-Biblical stories of faith hold little meaning except for their association with the most visible aspects of Christianity such as televangelism, homophobic and sexist political tirades, and the sex abuse scandals.

For those with limited but intense exposure, such as people who grew up in a socially conservative and fundamentalist evangelical form of Christianity and abandoned it as ignorant, deceptive, or intolerant, the moral/emotional association with the symbols, images, and stories can be downright toxic.

Then there is the fact that some symbols and images and allusions to Biblical stories are so ubiquitous that the over-exposure dilutes anyone but the loudest/most visible interpretations, feeding into and reinforcing the views already described. Add in that this does not come with the widespread and developed sense of cultural literacy needed to make sense of or engage these ubiquitous elements the social smog surrounding Christianity becomes even thicker.

So is Christianity doomed? What can the Church try that it hasn't pursued already? Jump below the break to find out. (read more of Dave's essay)

 Dave is an anthropologist. That explains it right? Here goes:

The nature of this religion thing is to discover and understand the basic problem or set of problems at the hart of being human. Human life is fraught with a problematic nature but it seems like the general brunt of our problems go back to the basis of being human. We are moral, we have a sort time then we are gone. While we are at it we are prevented form enjoying it not so much because we are too weak to get what we want but becuase we can enjoy what we have since we are wrestles and board and always worried.

 Humans come to different ideas about the nature of the problem: imbalance with nature, sin that separates us form some sort of ultimate power, our relation to the stars or to higher powers, the size of our brains, or whatever. Yet the point is we all come to some idea that that there is a problem in "the human condition." A lot of it is grounded in human nature; greed, seeking power, violent nature, narrow minds. We seek a vantage point which can make sense of it it all and give us a way to overcome the constraints. Many find that sense of vantage point in the ultimate transfomrative experience. Studies show that such experience is effective in eliminating our depression, fear of death, sense of want or sense of meaninglessness.

These sorts of issues are not dwelt upon in our society today as they were several years ago. In the 60s it was considered all important to find a sens of identity, today that sense is ready made in the social class, ownership  of possessions and knowledge of technology. I still think that if we scratch the surface those issue are just beneath.

The sense of transformation is mediated through narrative and ritual. This is where the specifics of the Christian tradition come into it.  But before getting into that (which has to be spoken in standard Chrsitain parlance) we still need to cover certain ground, the nature of the transformation. Transformative effects can be found in many traditions but in the Christian tradition it's very specific. Of cousre transformation is related to what Paul Tillich called "the object of ultimate concern." This is exactly what it sounds like the thing we care about the most. It's not a material possession. We can't say our motorcycle is the object of ultimate concern even if that's where we put our focus. Obviously the ultimate concern is death, or perhaps eternal life. Tillich also links this sense with Being itself. That is to say the aspect of being that is eternal and necessary and that produces or creates all the contingent temporary aspects.

The transformative effect comes from a particular attention to the eternal necessary aspect of being. That particular relationship to the eternal necessary aspect of being is one of a realization of dependence upon that aspect, and a conscoiusness awareness of the sense of love connected to the consciousness of that aspect. This sense of love fosters commitment on our part; commitment to goodness and to values associated with such positive aspects of being.

At this point it's all been pretty veg and general. I think the price we pay for an economy language that shucks off baggage and tired images is that it become general and veg. That's not necessarily a failure of the experiment. It may not be possible to speak without standard phrases and not be veg and general. From this point one must introduce the concept of God and the Bible and Jesus if one's discourse is to verge into specificity.

 How did I do?

Going on Vacation

 

Sorry do this but I'm going on vacation. I have ran kind of dray. I've been doing this steadily since I moved into this house. that was five years ago and that was last real break I've had from doing it. I will be gone for about 3 weeks or so. Maybe more. I'll be back. don't stop following.

Atheism's Assualt on all forms of Knowledge

 


 Jerry A. Coyne* is on the war path against all forms of thought that are not science.On his blog, "Why Evolution is True," he defends scientism as the only from of knowledge. He doesn't defend science but "scienTISM." The thing about that is that term has always been used to refer to an phony exaggeration in the confidence one places in scinece. It's always meant a sort legalistic worship of science. Apparently those adjectives accurately describe Coyne's feelings about the subject. For him there's only one form of knowledge. He goes after Eric MacDonald who is actually opposing religious obstacles to the right to die. He runs a sight called Choice of Dying. Whatever his site is about he makes the satement oppossing scientism:

 I won’t go into the detail of the arguments (or non-arguments) presented in this thread. That was not the focus of my concern, which remains even when everything said here has been said. Certainly, for example, to say that Mozart is a greater composer than Hummel requires evidence, and the people who would be the best judge of what constitutes evidence in this case would not be scientists, but experts in music, composition, direction, performance, and appreciation. I don’t think that a study of the structure of music as related to brain structure or response would tell us very much. I may be quite wrong about this, but I think there is more going on here than simply those things discoverable by science. And that is precisely my problem with what I am here calling “scientism.” It is, basically, a “faith” position, since it is not in fact based, and cannot, in the nature of the case, be based on empirical evidence, for it is, essentially, a meta-claim about such evidence, and the belief that only those beliefs based on the kind of evidence in question constitute knowledge.

 This is too much for Coyne. He summarizes MacDonald's battle plan thusly:

 As I pointed out in the first part of my critique, these pieces espoused three themes: the failures of New Atheism, especially its inability to replace what religion gives people; the dangers of scientism, which Eric apparently sees as a pervasive and destructive attitude; and the fact that there are Ways of Knowing other than science.  Yesterday I analyzed—and disagreed with—Eric’s claim that New Atheism is an abject failure because it a). criticizes simplistic caricatures of religion rather than serious theological thought, and b). tears down religion without replacing the essential human needs that religion meets. This morning I’ll address “other ways of knowing.”

 MacDonald is saying that experiential forms of knowing are required and are valid forms of knowledge in their own right apart form the formal scientific collection of data. You can't really know music just by  knowing a lot of technical data about sound waves, without actually hearing the music. That's not good enough for Coyne. He complies a short list of forms of knowledge MacDonald says require other froms of knowing than just scinece and it includes:

• Aesthetic judgments
• Moral judgments
• Law
• History

 He points out that science is not a collection of people with Ph.Ds or a body of results but a method. In the broader sense that method invovles evidence that can be deduced systematically and can be tested by others. "Evidence that cannot be tested and confirmed by others is not reliable evidence: it falls into the purview of things like religious revelations, which many theologians do see as “evidence.” He asserts that construing scinece broadly one can include things like auto mechanics and plumbing. Well of course he fails to distinguish between using scientific methods or approach and applying them to problems rather actually doing science; something has to be said about science as inquiry. It's not just a pragmatic tool fo re-roofing your house it's about actually learning for the sake of knowledge itself. It has has something to do with knowledge about the workings of natural world not the workings of anything, so the workings of impressionists painters are excluded. If we make he definition too board in encompass everything then it's not even meaningful to distinguish bewteen science and not science. Of cousre he actually knew something about theology he would know that some aspects of it can be appraoch through replicable methods that yield evidence which can be checked by others, such as textual criticism.

 Then there's no reason why theology should produce that kind of knowledge. The purpose of theology is not mirror scinece. It's to answer problems and understand developments in religious tradition. the first thing scientistic types always do when they see anything about other forms of knowledge is hold up to scinece and assume that their purpose must be to imitate scinece. For them that's all life is about, science, its not about experiencing things its about collecting data. This gimmick of reducing everything to science is followed by Coyne until he incorporates all of the "other forms" into scinece. History and archeology, he argues, test hypotheses so they are scinece."Archaeologists and historians often act as scientists when trying to determine truth about the past. Indeed, that is the only way they can be credible.."

He does acknowledge that aesthetic and moral judgements are not in the same category (not scinece) because they can't be verified determined objectively. A set of criteria that might render a judgement true in that sense is nevertheless set up subjectively. But not only are they not reduced to scinece but they are not true either. So he reduced truth to that which suits the scientific method. He repudiates moral thinking on the same ground because it can't be given the official stamp of scinece (even though as we have seen there are schools of thought that think they are doing that). He accepts Math and philosophy as uses of logic that are "almost scientific." So he makes a small niche for something that is not scientific per se (no replicable, no empirical data). It's still on the basis of being able to discern an objective basis through the use of logic, making it an alley of science (he doesn't use that phrase). He says,"I think philosophy and mathematics are “ways of understanding”, and come close to science in that one can demonstrate truths within an accepted system of logic."

Literature she shuns because it tells us nothing external until scinece is use (again scinece in the loosest sense of anything that's not subjective) to confirm it. By that way of thinknig then psychology is out. Psychology ceases to be scientific. Of course individual judgement is out.

He reduces all to naturalism:

What I argue, then, is that anything that is claimed to exist in our universe can be verified only with the methods of science, broadly construed. I don’t see that Eric has convincingly demonstrated that there are real and objective moral and aesthetic judgments that can be demonstrated by “evidence.”  How can you test your claim that Mozart is better than Hummel by checking it against the real world? All you can find out is that many people think that Mozart is better than Hummel. But others may dissent, and who can prove them wrong? How can you prove someone wrong who says that it’s immoral to abort babies after the first trimester?

 Mozart vs. Hummel was MacDonald's example of a time when you listen to the music rather than gather data. He totally glosses over the meat of the point and reduces everything to data collection. There is no experience;  experience of the world doesn't give us truth, truth is nothing more than the simulacra that results from having put data through the process of replication. We are not getting reality, he's divorced truth from reality. Just as he's divorced music from listening. Of cousre he assume it has to be subjective, there can't ever be any kind of subjective value, which is no wonder he's just eliminated the arts completely. Then concepts like personal enlightenment wouldn't even appear on his radar. Whole traditions like Buddhism and some forms of Christianity and other oriental religions will just be left out and even confiscated,consigned to the nether world of "the subjective" and the 'not truth' because they seek the kind of verification he can control. Finding what people think about Mozart based upon actually hearing his music is good enough. After he's eliminated the concept of inter-subjectivity, but why should it be when it is verifiable? We have a sense of checking the subjective machinations of each others world views by comparing notes on the subjective. That all carefully designed to steer us into avenues scientists control and ordinary people can't have access to. His final statement says it all:

Finally, although this isn’t Eric’s aim, much of the “other ways of knowing” palaver is used to advance the “truth claims” of religion. But I hardly need to add that I don’t think religion is a way of knowing anything about the real world. That’s simply a truism, for our understanding of any divinities, transcendent beings, or “moral truths” derived from faith alone has not advanced one iota since the ancient Greeks. Hell, after millennia of apologetic and “proofs” of God, we don’t even know whether there is a god, much less one god or many, or what said gods are like or want us to do.

 Holy question begging Batman, so that's what it's all about? The exclusion of subjective ideas is carefully controlled to get rid of religion. Of course he's already got the ideology down, he's already opposed to religion before the deliberations even start. Everything he says in that paragraph is propaganda. It's all based upon the refusal to learn theology. He says other ways of knowing (which are just palaver) can just be ruled out because they support religion. Don't' show me the evidence, it might not concur with what I want to hear. That religion is not a way to know anything is clearly propaganda BS. First of all it's a way to know spiritual things and religious thing.s For that that "likes it" that's a good thing. Of course It's not for those who are predisposed to think of it as "the enemy." The idea that faith has not advanced, that's a matter of ignorance. the 20th was one of the most amazingly progressive times for theology. Theology made huge advances in the last century. I doubt Coyne would understand any of it as advancement because he can't control it and it doesn't advance the robot mind control ideas of atheism and reductionism and scientific.

One of the most amazing advances of the last century, in terms of religious knowledge, was the M scale, Hood's measurement study instrument or understanding the validity of mystical experience. That actually gives us a handle on empirical evdience for the existence of God, through the universal arguemnt made possible by the M scale (see the link). Speaking of that there's an interesting possibility by observing how Coyne reduces everything that can produce any kind of tangible results to scinece. Not only does that lose the distinction between science and not scinece but it also means that we can extend the same connection to religious belief and include it in the same way. Not does the M scale make this possible but also arguments like fine tuning that employ scientific data. He says we don't know if there's a good. I know there is. We have rational warrant for belief becuase we have wealth of argument and data to back them up. More importantly by employing the same strategy he does we can reduce everything to ethology. science becomes theology through the M scale and fine tuning data, God on the brain evidence, and that backs up the warrant for belief. It's can't be used with an atheist assumption since it's no part of theology. It becomes theological by the same token that all those other forms of knowing become scientific. The mediating principle that incorporates them is provide data backing the co-determinate.

The co-determinate is Schleiermacher's concept of an aspect of the naturalistic dimension of human experience that telegraphs the divine in human experience, such as the presence of God in the sense of the numinous. This fits with Tillich's concept of the correlation whereby doctrines of the faith are lined up with data from human behavior and experience. In other words do people in fact experience this presence and what does it do for them when the do? Just like a finger print this aspect is always there to  mark the presence of the other, as the print marks the presence of the finger though it is absent. In do doing, by the same logic that Coyne uses, we can make theology science and scinece theology.

 ____________________
*Jerry A. Coyne, Ph.D is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a member of both the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology.

Does Voting Belong to Ceasar?

 


New York Times, 
 6/25/2013

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by a 5-to-4 vote, freeing nine states, mostly in the South, to change their election laws without advance federal approval.

The court divided along ideological lines, and the two sides drew sharply different lessons from the history of the civil rights movement and the nation’s progress in rooting out racial discrimination in voting. At the core of the disagreement was whether racial minorities continued to face barriers to voting in states with a history of discrimination.

“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”

The decision will have immediate practical consequences. Texas announced shortly after the decision that a voter identification law that had been blocked would go into effect immediately, and that redistricting maps there would no longer need federal approval. Changes in voting procedures in the places that had been covered by the law, including ones concerning restrictions on early voting, will now be subject only to after-the-fact litigation. 

 So the question is, is this just more political hot air, or is this a time to take a stand? To answer that question I ask "what is the relationship between this questoin and the Gospel?" Is doing away with the voting rights act a matter of not living up to the truth of the Gospel? What Jesus say about politics? His statement "render unto Cesar the things that are Cesar's, and unto God that which is God's" (Mark 12:17, Mat 22:15-22) should be a clue. Funny thing about that, he didn't seem to be ready to start a tax revolt. He seemed to think they the Romans do some stuff for us, (ever see the Life of Brion?) so springing for some Taxes to pay for it shouldn't be that big a deal. Yet, what belongs to God? Human life belongs to God, so things that destroy life, or that make it impossible to preach the Gospel or keep it from being heard, one would think do not belong to Cesar. But surely the voting rights act has nothing to do with that stuff, it's just a little voting. We might think voting belongs to Caesar because it's politics, and Cesar is king of politics, politics is of the world. Is that the answer right wing fundamentalists use when they field armies for the Republicans? Caesar is not a democratic figure. He's a symbol of power, becuase the real Cesar was a dictator. Cesar is a symbol of the power elite, the temporal realm. We have to decide weather or not democracy is more than just a silly little game of politically minded pundits, or is it a sacred right and duty to allow people the dignity that goes with being made in God's image?

Paul tells us there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28). We might infer from this that class divisions and race divisions are wrong. Discrimination is wrong. We might infer that "love your neighbor as yourself" means don't take away her civil rights? We have forgotten the horrible price that was paid, the struggle, how long it took, it bitter and divisive it was for whites who watched it on tv, and for blacks and the few whites who dared who lived it and died for it in real life. The dogs the fire hoses all things of the past no one thinks about that the young of tv of today never new. I actually watched live as cops in Alabama sicked dogs on defenseless women and sprayed them with fire hoses to keep them from sharing the same rights that white men enjoy.

Of course the court denies that we will have to do this again. The court's logic is based upon a sham argument about how we have changed:

 “Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”(see NYT Link above)

 The redistricting plan that Texas is putting into effect means that the Replicans will never be out of office in Texas. It will change the balance of power in congress. Texas is notorious for Gerrymandering (we call it "Perrymandering."--that's really how Rick Perry got in office). They re-draw the distinctions every time the Democrats do better in an election.

As for the argument that the country has changed, I have a black friend who was denied a hair cut in barbershop in Farmer's Branch Texas in 1992. That is the same community that tried to start it's own immigration service to kick out Spanish speakers and tried to make English the official language. How long before decisions regarding those things get reversed? This is a right wing coup d'etat. The same kind of mentality I talked about before, perhaps a bit more rational. But the same refusal to admit the people want the other guys. We don't care what the people, we are the country not the people. We the rulers, the elite, "the good Chrsitains," the right wing, we are the real people, the poor don't count.

It's going to take a long time to build up to the point where we can have another civil rights movement. We had a election stolen from us in 2000. They did everything they could to stop blacks form voting in Floria so they could steal the election and put Bush in. 

Independent investigations in that state revealed serious irregularities directed mostly against ethnic minorities and low-income residents who usually voted heavily Democratic. Some 36,000 newly registered voters were turned away because their names had never been added to the voter rolls by Florida’s secretary of state Kathleen Harris. By virtue of the office she held, Harris presided over the state’s election process while herself being an active member of the Bush Jr. state-wide campaign committee. Other voters were turned away because they were declared--almost always incorrectly--“convicted felons.” In several Democratic precincts, state officials closed the polls early, leaving lines of would-be voters stranded.

Under orders from Governor Jeb Bush (Bush Jr.’s brother), state troopers near polling sites delayed people for hours while searching their cars. Some precincts required two photo IDs which many citizens do not have. The requirement under Florida law was only one photo ID. Passed just before the election, this law itself posed a special difficulty for low-income or elderly voters who did not have drivers licenses or other photo IDs. Uncounted ballot boxes went missing or were found in unexplained places or were never collected from certain African-American precincts. During the recount, GOP agitators shipped in from Washington D.C. by the Republican national leadership stormed the Dale County Canvassing Board, punched and kicked one of the officials, shouted and banged on their office doors, and generally created a climate of intimidation that caused the board to abandon its recount and accept the dubious pro-Bush tally.[1]

In the next election, 2004, there were irregularities that help up blacks form voting in states like Ohio and  Missouri. But as injustice mounts it will take time to prove it, time to prove the extent of it, time for the next court to conclude "ma bye things aren't that different after all." In the mean time a lot of "eschatology" is going hit the fan.

As Phil Ochs said "let it never be again." Now it will be.

 [1] For these various irregularities, see New York Times, 30 November 2000 and 15 July 2001; Boston Globe, 30 November 2000 and 10 March 2001. A relevant documentary is Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election, L.A. Independent Media Center Film, 2004. (the author's fn form his site).