Is America Falling Apaprt? Review of Charles Murry's New Book

lazy poor person at work

This is about the new book Coming Apart: the State of White America 1960-2010. by Charles Murry. Since I haven't gotten the book yet I'm taking my knowledge of it from an article by the author in on line Wall Street Journal, "The American Divide." The Saturday essay. Jan 21, 2012. Charles Murry is librarian with Enterprise Institute. He's best known for co authoring The Bell Curve which was highly criticized as making racist assumptions.

In the new book he argues that America is falling apart, just in time the elections, what a condense. The reason we are falling apart is becuase rich people are out of touch with society and no longer share their superior acuity with poor people as they once did in that well known golden age when things used to be perfect. In the article he states: "The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. "

As with most conservatives he points to a mythical golden age when things were perfect and this was based upon some social fabric that he imagines his social class held together.

"When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity."

In arguing that this social fabric is coming apart he points factors such as:

(1) marriage

Marriage: In 1960, extremely high proportions of whites in both Belmont and Fishtown were married—94% in Belmont and 84% in Fishtown. In the 1970s, those percentages declined about equally in both places. Then came the great divergence. In Belmont, marriage stabilized during the mid-1980s, standing at 83% in 2010. In Fishtown, however, marriage continued to slide; as of 2010, a minority (just 48%) were married. The gap in marriage between Belmont and Fishtown grew to 35 percentage points, from just 10.

(2) single parenthood

Another aspect of marriage—the percentage of children born to unmarried women—showed just as great a divergence. Though politicians and media eminences are too frightened to say so, nonmarital births are problematic. On just about any measure of development you can think of, children who are born to unmarried women fare worse than the children of divorce and far worse than children raised in intact families. This unwelcome reality persists even after controlling for the income and education of the parents.

In 1960, just 2% of all white births were nonmarital. When we first started recording the education level of mothers in 1970, 6% of births to white women with no more than a high-school education—women, that is, with a Fishtown education—were out of wedlock. By 2008, 44% were nonmarital. Among the college-educated women of Belmont, less than 6% of all births were out of wedlock as of 2008, up from 1% in 1970.

(2) industriousness

The norms for work and women were revolutionized after 1960, but the norm for men putatively has remained the same: Healthy men are supposed to work. In practice, though, that norm has eroded everywhere. In Fishtown, the change has been drastic. (To avoid conflating this phenomenon with the latest recession, I use data collected in March 2008 as the end point for the trends.)

The primary indicator of the erosion of industriousness in the working class is the increase of prime-age males with no more than a high school education who say they are not available for work—they are "out of the labor force." That percentage went from a low of 3% in 1968 to 12% in 2008. Twelve percent may not sound like much until you think about the men we're talking about: in the prime of their working lives, their 30s and 40s, when, according to hallowed American tradition, every American man is working or looking for work. Almost one out of eight now aren't. Meanwhile, not much has changed among males with college educations. Only 3% were out of the labor force in 2008.

(3) employment

There's also been a notable change in the rates of less-than-full-time work. Of the men in Fishtown who had jobs, 10% worked fewer than 40 hours a week in 1960, a figure that grew to 20% by 2008. In Belmont, the number rose from 9% in 1960 to 12% in 2008.

Crime: The surge in crime that began in the mid-1960s and continued through the 1980s left Belmont almost untouched and ravaged Fishtown. From 1960 to 1995, the violent crime rate in Fishtown more than sextupled while remaining nearly flat in Belmont. The reductions in crime since the mid-1990s that have benefited the nation as a whole have been smaller in Fishtown, leaving it today with a violent crime rate that is still 4.7 times the 1960 rate.

(4) religiosity

Whatever your personal religious views, you need to realize that about half of American philanthropy, volunteering and associational memberships is directly church-related, and that religious Americans also account for much more nonreligious social capital than their secular neighbors. In that context, it is worrisome for the culture that the U.S. as a whole has become markedly more secular since 1960, and especially worrisome that Fishtown has become much more secular than Belmont. It runs against the prevailing narrative of secular elites versus a working class still clinging to religion, but the evidence from the General Social Survey, the most widely used database on American attitudes and values, does not leave much room for argument.

The first thing that needs to be said is that this is not some new great revelation. Back in the mythical golden age when this harmonious society supposedly enjoyed the instruction and wisdom of rich guiding poor the classes rubbing shoulders and a christian poor humbly accepting their inferiority and the superior class nobly leading by christian example, the truth of the case was that no one was noble, no one was leading by example, the rich were no more Christian than hypocritical. When I was a sociology major in the mid 70s my professors lectured on on classical prejudices against the poor. Even in this alleged mythical golden age the poor were singled out as having lower morals and being poor because they are lazy, which is basically what he is saying now. Murry is arguing that the poor are poorer becuase they quite going to to chruch and getting married, rather than quieting going to chruch and getting married because the economic opportunities have dried up. That's especially obvious in his alaysis of employment. He complains about the fact that more men in lower economic bracket have let the labor force, he's trying to imply the connection to morality of marriage and that they have become lazy because they don't go to chruch. He presents no economic analysis at all about shifts in the labor market or the availability of opportunity. The shift from a manufacturing economy to a service economy that requires a high priced education to complete for even lower level management jobs and no employment opportunity or security for the working class. He totally ign9ores Reagan's labor busting strategy or the growth of the rust belt in the 80s.

He's making a causal assertion that morality has fostered laziness with no ability to check the possibility that what he sees as laziness is discouragement and economics is really to blame. People leave the labor force when they are constantly rebuffed from finding anything. No one has tired to factor in the effect of so many having their homes stolen over the past decade. Unemployment has been record numbers for several years running, and we have been told form both side, liberal and conservative that the statistics are really not reflective of the much higher group that gave up on looking because they opportunities aren't there. Murry is putting together old prejudices and unfounded assumptions about laziness, morality, and poverty and presenting a superficial look at the statistics that aren't all that relevant because he leaves out the most crucial ones.

He makes no effort to deal with changes in moral concepts. The big cultural taboo on children born out of wedlock was removed in the sixties as a result of "mew morality." Was that something people brought into effect, was the working class that changed this? I think was the children of the rich and the upper middle class, college educated counter cultural types. Similar taboos on living together without marriage and so on were also removed. The children of the upper class invented the coutner culture, and when they did so they had a renaissance ethic backed by fancy educations to go with it. It was then emulated by working class kids who did not understand its meaning and lacked the cultural acumen to be renaissance hippies so it became working class party time. Yet we had one decade of counter culture and four decades of corporate greed. It's much more obvious which had the real effect. Nixon's allownce of Japanese dumping on the American economy, followed by the decline of the steel industry. When Reagan tax cuts could have potentially propped up the steel industry corporate greed chose short term profits by investing in non labor intensive ventures such as oil rather than re-tooling the steel. Then of course we had the big shift in the 90s to the internet bubble. That means loss of manufacturing sector.

He's also managed to guide his inquiry along the lines that would suggest those prejudiced connections to begin with. Why include marriage and single parenthood and leave out major economic shifts unless he already expected to argue that there's a connection between not being being married and being lazy? While there's some truth in his assertion about single parent households, several studies have indicated that fatherless children come under the five times rule that proof people come under; five times more likely to go to prison, be drug addicted or alcohol addicted, live in poverty and so on. Of course Murry assumes the causality from correlation with nothing to back it up but his prejudice. Rather than see the choice of single parenthood as influenced by the economic plight he sees the economic plight as the consequence of the choice of single parenthood. As though all those high school girls are saying "o I can't wait to be a single parent. I'm going to run out and get preggers so I can be on welfare, what a glorious future watching re-runs of the Beverly hillbillies and getting drunk before lunch." In the glorious golden age of the American way of life a guy got a woman pregnant he would go get a job at the bowling ally or washing dishes and marry her. Now there's no job at the bowling ally and working at McDonalds wont put enough on the table to fund a family. While it's true it would be something, it wouldn't be much and one needs two or three such jobs at the same time just to get by. The alternative is either let your kid starve so you appear to be honest and hardworking, although a fool, or take welfare and save your kid but raise them in poverty. While it's true that his probalby has resulted in lowering of standards about marriage, so what. The reason we are in this fix is because the old way only produced bitter impoverished hypocrites who still didn't undersatnd economics.

Why use marriage as a guide line for morality? Suppose he chose giving to charity? Giving is a Christian virtue, so is charity. In fact America's poor give more than rich do according to:

McClatchy, My 19,2009

The generosity of poor people isn't so much rare as rarely noticed, however. In fact, America's poor donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What's more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.

"The lowest-income fifth (of the population) always give at more than their capacity," said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. "The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give."

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/19/68456/americas-poor-are-its-most-generous.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/19/68456/americas-poor-are-its-most-generous.html#storylink=cpy

Church attendance is not down but has remained steady since the 50s. He has not bothered to consult the best study, Pew Religious landscape or it's take on historically black churches. What does this study tell us about historically black churches and chruch attendance?

CBS Minnesota, Feb 10, 2011

According to Pew, 59 percent of those who say they belong to Historically Black Protestant Churches go to church at least once a week. That compares to 58 percent of Evangelical Protestant Churches, and 34 percent of mainline Protestant Church members.

The historically black Churches beat the culturally elite evangelical whites by one percent, what that do to Murry's theory of religiosity in the working class? Just think those histrionically black churches according to Pew are 66% democrat and only 7% republican and they still manage to go to chruch a bit more than their white upper class counterparts.

There's evidence that the percentage of Americas that regularly attend chruch is really more like 26% and the polling questions have been asked in the wrong way, and when the researchers go more deeply they find the percentage is only half. The problem is that data is not specif to class. So that could be more the fault of white evangelicals as working class or minority.

Here's a game changer for Murry to consider. Half of Americans overall are now poor!
CBS News, Dec 15,2011

WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too `rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

what does this do to Murry's theory? I think it pretty much tells us that the trends he's worrying about are caused by the economic shifts and not the other way around. It means that a huge portion of people who are now poor weren't before. So why didn't they exemplify the goo odl AWOL and thus save themselves from this fall into poverty? IF they were in God's favorite class how did they get out of it? If it was by abandoning marriage and work why didn't their middle class status tell them not ot do that?

Sociologists have long rejected the "culture of poverty" theory that Murry's books trades in. It's not that these guys are becoming poor becasue they give up on America's way of life and righteousness in order to be lazy and have sex, it's that those behaviors follow the ravages of economic trends that breed hopelessness after years of unsuccessfully trying to get back to the blessed state of middle class. Who is responsible for these economic trends? that's probably too complex to say, but I'm wiling to bet that Bush and the Republicans didn't help it any.

Most U.S. Unemployed no longer receive benefits:

CBS news nov 5 2011

WASHINGTON - The jobs crisis has left so many people out of work for so long that most of America's unemployed are no longer receiving unemployment benefits.

Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further.

So all these middle class people just lost industriousness over night for no reaosn? Why didn't their middle class training from going to chruch and being conservative save them? What the children they raise learning? Some political party is preventing them from getting help. It must be those tax and spend democrats wanting to give more unemployment benefits makes them more lazy so they are they not looking for work.


Over all it looks like this book by Murry is another political propaganda piece like the bell curve that's been trotted in time for the election to terrify the conservative evangelicals and motive them through their cherished prejudices.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Being itself, and the Personal God.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

Balthasar one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.[1] He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.[2] He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century.

Balthasar was unable to work as a full fledged Jesuit priest due to the war years and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the 40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio. These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by the Vatican. The major avenue to his success was his books and his lectures.[3]

Balthasar’s overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.[4] Balthasar openly and obvious equates being with God. In his work about Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”[5] He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being. This does not necessitate asserting God up fornt although he’s not concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.[6] He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being, yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary? The solutions that he ponders seem to end in one way or another with an indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what we would think.

The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.[7]

Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.

Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[8] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:

(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[9] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[10]

In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.

Balthasar confirms for me so many things I thought but didn't have the courage to say, or that I "sort of thought" but didn't have the intellect to formulate. I think he boldly and unabashedly resoled the problem of paradox between personal God and being itself. He was the first to show me the link bewteen being and love (although Tillich does mention it but I saw it in Balthasar first). He capitalizes "B" in "Being" and speak of Being a "he." The idea that God created not becasue he "needed to" but becasue his nature is creative.

---

[1] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm

[5] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[6] Ibid, 1

[7] Ibid., 3

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

Hume's Misconception about Miracles

David Hume (1711-1776)



Hume is revered by the atheists as though he is the only philosopher they will listen to. Even those who say "Philosophy is bs" love and laud Hume. One of the most cherished things that Hume had to say was his misconceptions about miracles. Atheists treat that famous passage as though it has canonical status, for them it does. But Hume gets it wrong on both counts: he doesn't understand miracles, nor does he understand "laws of nature." Both observations are apparent form the opening line of the passage:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature;

The problem here is that science no longer regards nature as run by prescriptive laws. Every time I would argue that physical laws prescriptive, the atheist guru HRG (CARM ath) would tell me that this no longer the case. They are just descriptions of what happens. They are not real laws. But this in fact contradicts completely what their other guru, Hume, tells them. In fact they have to take this contradictory position if they want to argue against my third God argument Fire in the equations. It's also necessitated in their argument against final case. In fact Has was exaggerating, it's not as though no scientist still holds for prescriptive laws. the truth of it is there is a dispute in science between "regulaterians" and "Necessitarians." Nevertheless, those who say they are not prescriptive are contradicting Hume and rendering his point null. How can miracles violate laws if they only describe what happens? If they only describe, then miracles could just as well be part of the description, so there is noting to prevent them.


Actually laws of nature are not the confused with scientific laws or natural law.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be the scientists' attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article. Instead, this article explores issues in contemporary metaphysics. Within metaphysics, there are two competing theories of Laws of Nature. On one account, the Regularity Theory, Laws of Nature are statements of the uniformities or regularities in the world; they are mere descriptions of the way the world is. On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the "principles" which govern the natural phenomena of the world. That is, the natural world "obeys" the Laws of Nature. This seemingly innocuous difference marks one of the most profound gulfs within contemporary philosophy, and has quite unexpected, and wide-ranging, implications.



That throws up an even greater problem for the atheist. How many atheist told me that metaphysics is just fairy tales and that we don't need philosophy? Yet here is their great guru Hume using philosophy and Metaphysics no less! Be that as it may, here is a contradiction for them. If laws of nature or "laws of physics" in science (ether one) are merely descriptive, then where is the basis for standing against miracles?

Moreover, I say that Hume says miracles are a violation of the laws of Nature, but that is a misconception of the concept of miracle. First of all, it's a misconception of the supernatural to believe that supernatural means "breaking into the natural," or a "contradiction" to laws of nature. Supernatural is not a contradiction to the the laws of nature, they are framework in which the laws of nature make sense and in which the laws of nature have their warrant. The concept of the supernatural has been misconceived in modern times. It was first degraded in the Renaissance, and this process began with the dissolution of the medieval synthesis. See my pages on the Supernatural, (Doxa). Thus miracles are not violations of anything. They are, as C.S. Lewis put it occasions where the lower law bends to the higher (see his book on Miracles, sorry I don't have a page number or link). An example of what he's talking about is seen in Martin Luther King's speech ("I have a Dream") where he says "The arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Justices." what is the talking about? The Supernatural is the ground and end of the natural. That's the framework, when I the SN is a larger framework in which the natural plays out, that's what I mean. The natural is rooted in the SN as it's origin and it is moving toward SN end which are set by the higher protocol. Thus when SN effects happen, it is because the lower is obeying the higher, not because the higher is breaking in.

Miracles are also contextual.It's almost meaningless to talk about them. Miracles could naturalistic because the dichotomy between SN and N is artificial and the creation of this modern era which sought to destroy religious thinking and to create a fixed standard of science as the umpire of reality and rule out all that is not part of their naturalistic ideology. The difference between miracles and "anomalies" is merely that miracles have a religious connotation. When an anomalous event happens and produces verification of a religious belief it's a miracle.

The nature of science as paradigm driven is also a major theoretical reason to quite thinking in terms of this dichotomy between N and SN. Science is not cumulative, scientific facts are stacked up until they equal truth. As Thomas Kuhn says, When the paradigm shifts the former anomalies in the old paradigm become the proofs of the new paradigm. The facts of the old paradigm become anomalies under the new. So facts are not stacking to equal progress, they are relative to the paradigm. The current paradigm is naturalism; that will change in some way eventually. when it does change the arguments and facts used to back naturalism will be extent,t hey will no longer be regarded as facts but useless anomalies. Hume's statement can't hold any real cogency for us because its entirely relative to the paradigm. It's already looking pretty out of date since the prevailing wind seems to be blowing in the direction of the descriptive laws of nature crowd. If laws are only descriptive, miracle can be part of the description. There is nothing to prevent them.

Hume goes on:

and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.




Here we have the essence of circular reasoning. Now any atheists have to tried to sell this passage on the basis that he's not saying that laws of nature are prescriptive laws but that our experience of them is unalterably. In fact he is saying nothing more than, as they would have us believe: we never see miracles so we must assume they never happen, they are not part of the description. I think it's clear he's not saying that. I think it is clear that he's saying laws of nature (and thus "the laws of physics") are prescriptive and unalterable. He speaks of unalterable. Now it's true he says the experience is unalterable. But it's the experience of the laws he says. So he is saying that the laws are unalterable and thus our experience of them is as well. If not, then there could some day be an exception. If one saw a miracle at some point that would still have to invalidate all the observations of the past, unless one assumes that there is a prescriptive element and that's why the observe rations are always the same.

The circle in reason is here: we do see miracles. There are thousands of claims of miracle. There are 4000 remarkable cases at Lourdes. That means they are amazing, they can't explained. They fail to be declared official only because of some technicality. But Hume would, at least in the interpretation of most atheist, we must discount hose cases because according to our experiences they don't happen. So those must be hoaxes. Yet, they do happen according to our experiences, becasue these are the ones' that people have experienced.

This is so obviously circular reasoning:

X doesn't happen because we never see X

we can discount claims that people have seen x because:

we never see x.




Hume:

Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them?



Here he clearly appeals to the authority of the laws of nature, they prevent them, to happen they must be agreeable. That means his views are metaphysics, they validate the need for metaphysical observation. They are also outmoded and relative to the philosophical discussion still progressing. I've seen atheist vow and declare that his argument is totally about the regularity of our observations, not prescriptive laws. Here he clearly says whatever happens must agree with the laws.

Hume:

Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature.



Here I take issue on the grounds that he doesn't understand the true concept of the supernatural.Miracles are contextual not "factual."


It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen.



Here he intentionally blurs the discretion between the perspective nature of laws and the observation of frequency of behavior. I think he is purposely blurring the distinction. He shifts it back over to what he sees happen because it's the only basis he has for denying the resurrection. He can't argue that there's a physical law against it, except by the implication that we never see it, as argument from sing. He has the weight of common experience, and yet it is only argument from sign, thus dangerously close to fallacy. There is no "structural reason" from the laws of nature that would prevent it.

But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation....




Doubly fallacious because miracles are supposed to be contradictions to what we see. In trying to say it can't happen because it's not naturalistic he's merely evoking the ideology of naturalism in order to impose the circular reasoning that naturalists accept axiomatically.

Hume's logic:

Atheist: The Res couldn't happen because it violates what we observe

Believer: but some people did observe it, so it is part of what we observe

Atheist: no it can't because we never observe such things.

But of course, we did that time. It's a circular reasoning that is used to ignore counter proofs on the premise that they can't exist because if they did they would be counter, we can't have that! The truth of it is there are millions of claims that miracles are seen and that they happen.


The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....'



Of course this is meaningless prattle. It's more circular reasoning. He is saying that because miracles contradict our ordinary observation (which of course they should because that's their definition) then to establish it it would have to be more amazing that it would not be true." But of course if that was the case then would would have to say "that X isn't true contradicts our regular observation of the world." Now how could it be that miracles not being true could ever be so obscure a condition that they would contradict our normal experience? In such a case our normal experience would be miracles. thus they would not be miracles. This is so like the dictum about extraordinary evidence. I'm sure that's Sagan got it. The problem with that is it's absurd because no one can say what "extraordinary" evidence is. It's just a trick so atheists can keep raising the bar. Of course this what they always do. No evidence is ever good enough.



When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed, that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to shew, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence.



In fact this quote basically says "our ideology rules out miracle a priori so ignore any evidence because it's ideologically improper." By the circular reasoning of the ideology any contrary evidence must be ruled because it is contrary.

Clearly the more rational standard would be to take whatever cannot be explained, having been documented with sufficient evidence to establish veracity, as assumed miraculous if violates our sense of "normal" reality, with out any biased pre determination as to the possibility of such events. By definition miracles are anomalies. Anomalies are absorbed into the paradigm until so many have been absorbed that the paradigm can no longer hold them, then the paradigm shifts. Kuhn establishes that when paradigms shift the supporters of the old regime defend it just as though and in the same way as supporters of the old guard stave off a mounting resolution. For this reason we can expect the paradigm to be defend by an ideology, and one that unfairly rules out any change. Such is clearly the case. We see that the paradigm has shifted from "materialism" to naturalism and physical ism. This is because materialism couldn't hold the anomalies. The paradigms they are shifting from physicalism to property dualism and other smile face versions of physicalism which are closer to being miracle friendly. This I will take up next time.

Finding God is not like finding a new animal in nature

the so called "God particle."

As long time readers know that I have this idea of God as Being itself, as Paul Tillich, John Macquarrie, and Has Urs Von Balthasar discussed. Atheists are slow in learning the nature of it. Those I've argued with over the years still make the same mistakes they made about it years ago becuase they don't listen and they don't care. I have evoked in my understanding of the nature of God and reality to the point that I don't think of God as a single think separated from other things and put over against reality as an item on a list in nature, like a single tooth brush or a single rock or tree; I see God as more like a category. That doesn't mean I think of God as unreal or unconscious. I still relate to God as a loving father. I am aware that my image of "father God" is metaphor for I can't possibly understand in it's entirety. For me God is the eternal necessary aspect of being; the part of being that has always been and will always be; we are temporal products of being produced by that eternal aspect. The eternal aspect itself is a mind. We are like thoughts in that mind.

The Corollary to this idea is that being is not merely a surface level affair which can be understood by summing up the existence of individual items. As Tillich says "being has depth." the full quote goes:

Paul Tillich, The Shaking of The Foundations

"The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not."

That being has depth means that belief in God is not merely adding a fact to the universe. Being is more than just surface appearance but has hidden aspects. God is the foundation and thus the depth of the depth. God is not just another thing in creation alongside a hunk of cheese or a swizzle stick. God is the basis of what it means to be. Thus we can't compare proving God's existence to that of finding an new species of animal. For this reason amputates such as those of Dawkins or Victor Stenger to set up conditions hey think are initiative of a God and then showing that other things account for it, no more disprove or summarize the odds of their being a God than disproving the existence of Bigfoot could disprove biology. Yet one still finds atheist speaking as though scinece can rule out god merely by realizing that it doesn't provide proof for God. Karl Popper tells us that scinece is not about proving things. Popper is the one philosopher of scinece who scientists actually seem to respect a lot. On this latter point see also. Yet there ar still plenty of atheists who are involved in scinece and should know better, who take this approach:

science is the only trust worthy way to know reality

science doesn't prove to us that God is real

therefore, we should assume God is not real.

Yesterday on CARM I had an exchange with one of them. Harry C is apparently or claims to be a real Zoologist who works with primates. This began as his denunciation of the validity of Philosophy. Many atheists think that since God arguments are primarily philosophical arguments then if they trash philosophy they trash the ability to prove God exists. He latter shifts his argument when it's made clear that naturism is a philosophy.Instead he tries to argue that God is not a proper object of knowledge for philosophy. He begins to imply that philosophy is ok it just can't talk about God. That is a total shift form his original position.


Originally Posted by Harry C View Post

Philosophy is a completely inappropriate method to determine the existence of any being, supreme or other.

Meta:
that's because you concept of what is being done as "determine a being" is foolish. that is not the nature of belief in God.

(1) God is not a being

(2) we don't determine his existence a though he's a bug under a microscope.

that's the whole point of this depth of being jazz. it's not adding a fact to the universe it's not like proving Bigfoot. It's coming to an understanding of the nature of being and our place in it.

It's no different then discovering zen. It's awakening to a different orientation to being.


Originally Posted by Harry C

Im a I’m a zoologist who works with gorillas. Ten or twelve years ago an expedition to the central Congo reported that they had found chimp/gorilla hybrids. The photos they took were not all that good as they couldn’t get close enough.
I would really like to know if such beings exist but no one has gotten back there since. I’d love to go but it is too dangerous and frankly I’m too old.
So tell me, if philosophy is an appropriate method to determine if beings exist or not what philosophy should I use to find out if these apes are what is claimed or not? You would save me the trouble and expense of doing the science.

the mistake you are making is in trying to make God the object of knowledge as though he's thing in the universe and you are going to go examine him. you can't treat the foundation of reality as a thing in the unites like toothpaste or a a money or some object that you can examine.

Meta:
Your statement would be like saying "I'm going to examine nature to see if it exists."

I say "but nature is all around, everything is nature."

You say "I don't see a label saying it's nature, how do you know it is? until i see nature under the microscope I can't believe in it."


Originally Posted by Harry C

And I answered you by requesting that you name a philosophy that was appropriate.

for what? no aspect of philosophy is going to tell you about the hybrid chimp. That doesn't mean that tit's not good for the questions it's designed to answer.

Meta
One that I would suggest for you is philosophy of science. You like Popper? he's a philosopher. do you like Denntte? He's doing philosophy.

Harry C

My car has a perfectly fine speedometer . The fact that it is inappropriate to use this speedometer to determine if it is raining in no way takes away from its value.

why don't you consider the way analogy backfires? you are the one trying to use the speedometer to see if it's raining. you are trying to measure Philosophy by scinece.

The fact that philosophy cannot be used to determine if a chimp/gorilla or if a God exists likewise in no way takes away from its value. You need to use appropriate methodology. In these cases a barometer for the rain and science for the apes and the God.

Meta:

Philosophy does prove God I've demonstrated this. It also warrants belief I've demonstrated that several thousand times.

stop trying to approach God as he's just another fact in the universe. look at your words?you put it right in the same sentence with the chimp. those are two totally different things.

what you are saying is like comparing finding the hybrid to finding God. that's comparing finding the hybrid to finding nature. Or finding the turth of zen.

I find it surprising that he admits some value to philosophy the way he was talking it seemed like he saw none.

Originally Posted by HRG

"The task of philosophy is not to establish the truth of propositions, but to clarify their meanings" (L. Wittgenstein). IOW, how do we distinguish "good" philosophical arguments from "bad" ones ?

Of course that's Wittgenstine, who felt embarrassed about not being taken seriously by scinece. He tired to work out an anti-philosophical philosophy that would be of use to scinece without having to embrace anything messy like metaphysics (which of cousre is a metaphysical approach to thinking) and wound up destroying all value in art, literature, philosophy, science, any kind of knowledge.

Poly

A sensible distinction is that the former make use of plausible premises and conclusions which necessarily or probably follow from those premises, whilst the latter do something else. I would have thought that this was not in need of clarification.

Originally Posted by Harry C

Then you would have already had to know which premises and which conclusion were plausible and the philosophy would only be telling you what you already know.

You are using philosophy every time you think scientifically. When you decide finding a new chimp is your job and not that of some other discipline your using codes of taxonomy that exist becuase the inverters of modern scinece were also philosophers.

Meta:
why has it not occurred to you that the reason you don't see the use of philosophy is because you haven't studied it enough or learned to use it right?

One problem is that apparently you decided the only kind of question worth asking is the that you can pin down and get a precise answer to according to your field and nothing else matters.

why would you decide that philosophy should be used in zoology? you are not even willing to consider it on it's own turf. as though your field is the only valid way to think.


Originally Posted by Harry C

We aren’t talking about “belief” we are talking about science & philosophy and what each is capable of.

"belief" is code for atheists meaning "the straw man." In reality you use belief every single day. You have belief in reductionism and naturalism and you work on the premise of that belief all the time.

You are talking about God as an inappropriate object of knowledge and what I said was that it's not the same kind of knowledge that zoology gives us.

Yes, we are all familiar with you new age who ha that the Supreme Being isn’t a being…and no one cares.

you are calling to "new age" to make fun of it, but you are totalitarian truth regime is not valid and you can't make it valid by calling my things names.

Harry C.

The scientific mythology is the only viable method to determine whether or not this God exists. That the answer we get doesn’t appeal to you is your problem.

The position they really employ is the "second rate" understanding of life. That's my name for it it means something similar to "default." "this is the best we can do, it's not good but it's the best we can do." Yet the whole reason for being the best we can do, science and naturalism and ruling out God o the premise that we can't prove it with scinece so it we can't trust it, this the true pessemistic postion lurking behind the forthress of facts. that's why I call it "second rate." They usually come on first with the proud arrogance of the fortress of facts, then settle for this second rate position when the fortress of facts has been exposed. The fortress of fact is the idea that science is fact finding and we stack up a huge pile of facts for materialism and none for God belief. Yet confronted with Poppoer's relaity that science is not about proof but disproof into the second rate position, this is the best we can do. Not even the Dawkins and Stenger kind of thinking is real. This appraoch is clearly window dressing for the second rate option. They want us to think they are ruling out the only possible avenue for God to exist by showing that God is not needed to explain the universe as we know it. When we peal back the layers of provado and realize that they merely advacing their own straw God arguemnts by second guess what God would do if he was stupid enough to things they way they would have him dot them, we see what they are really arguing is "this is the best we can do..."

The problem with the second rate appraoch is it's not the best we can do. It's the best we can do if we accept the premise that being is only surface level and the question about the existence of things in reality on the surface is the end of inquiry about existence. By "best we can do" they mean "and prove it by the methods we accept as valid and final." Yet those methods are not about proving things but disproving them. Science cannot disprove God it has no business even separation of God. God is beyond the domain of scinece. So the second rate approach is begging the question and creating a straw God argument in the first place. Trying to compare finding God to finding a new animal species is like comparing finding a single species to finding nature. If i said "science can't find nature so nature must not exist" that would be more analogous to finding God. Now the skeptic might say "that's nonsense, we know nature exists and it's all around us, everything proves nature." Well being is all around us and we are part of it, and we know it exits, things exist. So the foundation of being must exist too but you can't "find it" anymore than you can find nature. That prefectly analogus becuase I am saying God is not a thing in the world along side other things but is the basis of all things, being itself.

God is Transpersonal: My Dialouge with Dave and Kristen

Dave and Kristen are two of the long time readers of the blog who have contributed comments on and off throughout the years. In this lattest round of disaluge with the two we have piled up a huge aount of text, far too much to use more than just one passage from each. I will focus on one issue, the personal/impersonal nature of God. Dave accuses me of sneaking anthropomorphism in through the back door with the concept of "trans-personal" (God is at least personal but on a higher level) While Kristen just reverses the charge: Dave is sneaking in an impersonal God. He's not sneaking it he's making frontal assault really.

Dave said...

Yes, analogies can be over-extended, but it still leaves "believers" with the inability to claim that others just don't want to find God, which is Metacrock's basic position. And it also begs the question of how important finding God is to God if God doesn't make such communication readily available to all.

I deny that my basic position is that others just don't want to find God. How could I claim that and also claim that God is working in other cultures? My habit is probably colored by my struggles with atheists over the last thirteen years. It's primarily the kind of people I find on CARM that I'm speaking of when I say things about how they don't want God. I do have good valid social scinece behind me to assume that atheists have a negative image of God connected to their own self images. The studies of Leslie Francis is a good start toward suggesting this. There's even more fundamental research on self image and God image done before Leslie.

Dave then asserts that if God doesn't make such communication viable, whatever he means by that(?) maybe he doesn't care about it either. My argument based upon the research of William James and of Robert Wuthnow assumes that revelation is primarily at a subliminal level and that there's a continuum of religious experience that can be most subtle at a level barely more overt than a tear drop or a warm fuzzy, all the way up to the kind of visions Isaiah had. This sort of communication is there all the time. Now for some it may be manifested through meditation. We think of meditation as an active thing, something we do. It's really listening. Maybe we just need to learn the language God is using to speak to us individually? Remember the Psalm "be still and know that I am God" (46:10). The first step there is "be still." It's a matter of listening to something that is unfolding in our own consciousness. It's a realization. Not "be still and hear" it's "be still and KNOW."

Dave imagines that what I mean by that is if you sit and think about it you have to be a Christian. I think no such thing. I've said before many times that we experience this communion with God at a subliminal level and then to talk about it, since it is beyond words, we must filter it through cultural constructs. That means that the Dalai Lama and Billy Graham are both experiencing the same reality but understand it in two radically different ways. The difference is in culture not in the divine. For a fuller explanation and Biblical evidence see my essay on "Salvation and Other Faiths." Yet, this does not preclude that reality manifesting itself in the flesh as a man from Nazareth. The man form Nazareth modeled divine love for us so we can see it up close and expressed in a human way. At the same time he never said "Join my social club."

Dave:

Thus it makes much more sense to not think of God as a being with a personality and a personal will, because all the problems people have with God (from theodicy on down) stem from this image. "God wants", "God thinks", "God feels", "God wills". It's just human projection onto the divine that makes God either impotent, incompetent, incoherent, or immoral. If these personified views of God were themselves seen as over-extended analogies of the divine, God would have no qualities of planned action or volition except as realized in sentient beings.

I've said in the past that I don't use the term "personal" as it complicates the issues by dragging personality into it. This is hinting at the nature of trans-personal. Personality implies personal hang ups. In psychology personality theory is about what's wrong with people. That casts God in the role of big man in the sky and reduces him to human dimensions. So don't disagree with Dave here except in two ways: (1) there's a distinction between "personal" and conscious; (2) there's a distinction between willfull will or arbitrariness, and purpose. We speak of the will of God that's party an attempt to communicate the grandeur of the monarchical model of God's presence. Yet that is just a metaphor. If God was literally a king it would be a great come down from "that which nothing greater than can be conceived." Consciousness can be other directed and has to do with awareness; yet it does include self awareness. If God can distinguish between himself and us then he has a will different from our own. Purpose is not reduced to mere "will" becuase will can be stubborn and arbitrary and petulant, but purpose can be elevated and eligant and unselfish.
Dave:

If "God" is instead a reaction to a recognition or realization or perception of some more inclusive and profound aspect of reality, that is, a cultural construct or image to capture the reaction to this new orientation to existence, then these other problems are avoided. God really does go beyond human language and categories of "personal" and "impersonal". Unlike mere claims that God is beyond these things which then turn around and try to sneak this anthropomorphic, personified "God" in through the back door: "Oh, God is beyond human categories and labels, but God wills this and God does that."

Here I think Dave is trying to herd all consciousness phenomena under the same rue-brick. He's not distinguishing between cultural constructs and consciousness itself. Nor is he being fair about the concessions we have to make to our own corporeal nature, or that God would have to make for us to understanding something. We can escape the need to understand and communicate by just falling in too silence and having mystical union. That's more than merely communicating, ti's communing. Yet we are still sentient beings, we are still social beings, we have to talk about it. We should put the "personal" in trans-personal. We have to deal with God through the construct or ewe can't talk about "him" at all. We can only related to things that can be said in words. All thinking is words, all words are culture. Everything that we can put into words is a cultural construct. That means even mathematics is such as this. I don't think Dave would suggest that doing mathematics si sneaking anthropomorphism in through he back door.

Then of course there is the concept of Godprophorphism. Can't some aspect of our consciousness and awareness be the image of God we think we are made in? That's not a real word by the way, that "Godpromorphism." If real term in Christina context is Imago Dei. I see not reason to exclude totally the Imago dei from an understanding of God. Both major types of musical experience are constant throughout all cultures and faiths. There is the sense of the numinous. This includes the Idea of the Holy and the all pervasive sense of love. Even eastern mystics go through a stage where they experience love and Bhuddists make a big deal out of the compassion of the Bhudda. No doubt they don't build it up the way we do as the expression of a personal God. Yet it's hard to see how love can exist apart form a mind or a consciousness or a purpose. The purpose of love is the will to the good of the other, definition of agape. So love very much involves purpose. There is also the the mysticism proper where one senses the undifferentiatd unity of all things. That's what westerners emphasize most in the east. That tends to be impersonal and to see like a void. Yet both are experienced by the same mystics all over the world. That is an absolute contradiction unless we realize that ni the trans-personal we have "personality plus," rather, getting away form personalty, consciousnesses and purpose and univeral mind (so that god is in all our minds--but not directing our thinking all the time) and yet behind all of that. God is conscious and beyond consciousness. This love is in God and he can relate to us (slumming) but he can also transcend our level and be totally beyond anything we can know. I can play with my cat, Vincent. Oddly enough he actually seem to understand the difference in a book (which he has not torn up yet) and a scarp of paper which he loves to tear up. Even though he has not torn up a book (if he touches one Legion of Superheroes out he goes) he's nto much a dialogue partner, he never discusses Tillich with me. The dog Arnie he wa a great dialogue partner. Everything I said about Tillich he agreed with and licked my face to prove it.

Dave:

Lastly, some scholars suggest that belief in an afterlife and in resurrection became popular in Judaism after the Babylonian captivity because it was clear that the righteous weren't receiving justice in this life. Hence a new life was needed to settle accounts. But even in the time Jesus taught, as I am sure folks who read this blog know, there were still many in Judaism who did not believe in an afterlife.

I try to live in an eternal now. I relate the present moment to eternity. Now is what matters but now has a place in relation to forever.

Dave:

Even among those who favor some notion of an afterlife in the Judeo-Christian tradition, before the whole "this world is nothing only the next world counts" attitude became common among some Christians, it was (and in many cases still is) very important not to make too much over such distinctions. As one monk said, what matters isn't whether you live in the next world but whether you are alive in this one.

That attitude is an ancient part of historic Christianity. We can trace it back to the 300s and St. Anthony the first monk in Egypt. I think i'ts a hold over from Gnosticism.

Dave:

And to to some extent that is important even for those centered on the "next life". That is, either one must come to know God in "this life" to have an afterlife (or one without torture) or one actually comes to know that there is no afterlife per se, simply finding the true depth of life within this temporary bodily experience.

Anything we say about this is pure speculation, that goes as much for eastern models as Western. I invision it in a number of differnt ways. I hope it's a replay of my childhood but I doubt it. I think it may feel that way. Who cares? that can't be anything more than speculation. I envision a sort of eastern Nervonic unity with Christ in God.

Dave:

Even those who favor the "this life"/"afterlife" scenario without hell or eternal damnation recognize the value and importance of what people learn and how much they grow and mature in "this life". So claims that everyone will come to know God, even if it isn't in this life, ring hollow. It sounds just like the claims of those who needed to believe in divine justice by believing in an afterlife or resurrection so that they could maintain a view of God consistent with their pre-established beliefs.

We need to be careful not to mistake our own sense of disillusionment with eastern maturity. We can talk about what others "need to believe" that's a way of hiding what we need to believe. I don't necessarily agree with the universalist senerio that everyone will believe and be saved. Yet I don't see why it would ring hallow?

Dave:

Again, if "God" is just a personified construct of some deeper experience of consciousness and if consciousness is the ground of being, then all of these rationalizations and theological assertions about why God would or wouldn't do X, Y, Z become moot along with much of the distinction between "this life" and an "after life".

Why rationalizations? He seems to just be condemning the "known" end of the spectrum of analogical language. All religious language is analogical. Does he think the east get's it literally right and we are the only one's with a metaphor? The Buddhists are literaizing the metaphors too. They hav etheir fundies. If you think not you should hear Sakai Goki devotees talk about eh Hinayana style of Buddhism. We have endless string of metaphors that lead inexorably close and closer to the literal truth of God and yet never get there. We can't go thinking that we are so much closer than the others just becasue your metaphors are different. We can't stop using the metaphors because that's what we have to navigate by. That's why they are there so we can relate to something we know.


I meant to deal with Kriesten's statements but I'll have to do that next time.

Answering Atheist Divide and Conquor: Why so Many Different Views of God?

I find atheists making htis mistake all the time, willfully. They base a strategy on it. They try to divide differing religious views so it looks like they are not 3% of humanity trying to dictate to 90% what they can believe, but dividing and conquering they reduce the 90% to the nearest and most objectionable 10% of fundamentalism. They treat any difference in views of God, however trivial, as a belief in a totally different God.

This is in response to a post on CARM by "Lance." Part of what he says is this:

This is quite damning for organized religion, though, since it's very very rare that the lay man religious folk makes any attempt to defining or clarifying their concept of God. Why would we even consider two people who believe in "God" to be of the same religion, merely because they've named their beetles by the same word?

This is merely arguing from ignoarnce. It's a dedicated refusal to examine the basic concepts that animate almost all religious belief around the world and to impose upon them a phony sense of rigor that they neither need nor illicit. That is to say that is totally uncalled for and is antithetical to what religious belief is about. The concept of God is standard and unified through religious belief. The same reality of the divine stands behind all religions. The problem is God is beyond our understanding. Religious doctrines are merely verbalization of a particular form of religious experience known as "the feeling of utter dependence" (Schleiermacher). Since we can't know about God directly we fill in the gaps. Most of those fill-ins are based upon cultural constructs. We experience God at a non verbal level and to talk about it we filter the experience through cultural constructs. It's the culture that makes religions different form each other, and makes views of God different. Yes I am saying that even people who don't believe in God experience God as some level, however slight, they don't pay attention. That is not far form what William James said about levels of experience.

crash course in the nature of comparative religion:

all religion is about three things:

(1) identifying the "human problematic" the problem at the heart of being human;

(2) resolving the problematic by means of ultimate transformational experience (UTE) and;

(3) medicating between the two with some form of ceremony or consciousness raising devise.

To that extent anything that a religious tradition identifies as the object of UTE is a prori the object of the tradition. That is to say the Transcendental signified; the thing at the top of the metaphsyical hierarchy that defines all meaning and makes things what they are.

The UTE is in relation to the TS. TS brings the UTE. That means that whatever does this is a prori God. "God" is the short hand term for this function.


Basic assumption:

We experience God at the subliminal level, beyond words. This is a prelude to the transfomative state. So we can't speak of it directly because it's beyond words. To speak of it we load the experience into constructs. The constructs in our minds come to us form culture. So we filter God experience through culture. It's the cultural elements that makes religions different. This is also what makes it hard to make different concepts of God stack up. There constants.

(1) Creator

the most basic constant is that of creator.

(2) Transcendental Signifier

the term "God" is used to mark the transcendental signified. that is to say the thing at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. This is true for all religions. the thing at the top can be correlated to that religions understanding of God. Even in religions where there is no clear God concept per say, Buddhism or Vedanta, there is a TS.


(3) eternal

All religions have an eternal God. due to problem of English language there are some that have little g "gods." These would be the Olympian gods in Greek myth (also nature gods such as Pan as well as Titans). they all have one big creator God who is at the top of the metaphysical hierarchy. What the NT calls "'O theos." We could replace the term "God" with 'O Theos and be saying the same thing. (pronounced "haw Th-ae-os" with hard a in the middle). rough breathing mark at the beging has H sound.

(4) Being itself.

All religions correlate in some way their object of ultimate concern, with being itself. In Buddhism the notion of Buddha mind is correlated--Tillich himself says this.

All of these corrolations of different religions with 'O Theos can be understood easily by looking at their concept of the top of the metaphsyical hierarchy functionally.

Lance's comments about my ideas

It' plainly obvious that there is no one conception of "God" that is held by most Christians.

again why should there be? Anything that is beyond our understanding is going to veg and interpretations will vary. The constants are all there they can all be accessed functionally. Look for what that group thinks created all things and makes all things what they are, defines all truth and stands at the top of any metaphysical hierarchy.

Lance Kierkegaard would tell you that you are the man regarding the wig rather than the man.If you don't know that story it's just that simple, you are looking at the trappings rather than the person.

Consider how different Metacrock's 'ground of being' is to a fundamentalist Christian's big man in the sky. Or a God that loves everyone, and a God that loves only a few.

That is just a difference in sophistication. For both of us God created all things and makes all things what they are and determines the nature of right and wrong, is the origin and source of love, meaning and truth. No fundies will ever deny those things.

Remember what I said about the M scale. when you take the words out the experience are all the same.

A God which is so powerful he can bring about contradictions, and a God who's so powerless he must use human actions to guide history.

I agree with fundies that God is powerful enough to guide history, and probalby is in some sense. Although I'll let you know after the elections if I still agree.

Fundies believe that God can do logical contradictions that doesn't prove that the Christian tradition says that. You are trying to base your understanding of the tradition upon its' most ignorant representatives. that really makes your argument a straw man. That's really the old atheist move of the atheist straw God argument.

There are some who's beliefs, upon analysis, turn out to be practically atheistic; like someone who believes God is everything or everyone. What is the difference between the atheist who says there is no god, and the theist who says their god is everything there is? Clearly the difference between the two is how comfortable one is in having an object of worship, but not one of any metaphysical nature.

you are trying to create a theological norm that favors your debunking rather than trying to understand the true nature of theological norms. You figure if some ignorant group think god has a mustache then any hint that he doesn't means they have a different God in mind. That's just trying to create a theological institution where there is none. who says those are the issues that determine the difference between a doctrine and some idiot's misunderstanding?

If you try to write an authoritative definition of science you find there is none. They all differ and some of them can take one into opening up philosophical fissures that question the very nature of science. I don't know if you understand Derrida or not. You are basically employing the first step in Derridian deconstruction and it can be used to disentangle and undo all verbal connections. So any idea even the most solid seeming can be deconstruct i this way.

The basic mistake you are making is that you are not looking for the connections. you are looking for differences only and you assume that any difference at all will unravel the whole concept. with that approach you can destroy scinece and mathematics and everything. Anything that can be put into words can be decontrolled and that's all your doing.

Language is metaphorical. all language is metaphorical. Without making the connections in unspoken and tacitly known and implied ways on can deconstruct anything that can be put into words. As long as the basic aspects are met for the primary qualities, the attributes of God that mark God as uniquely God, then we are talking about God. This is becuase they can't be shared by any other. As with Spinoza's noting of the triangle, any triangle shape is a reference to the actual shape. Multiple representations of the triangle are not different competing shapes, they are all references to the same ideal shape. A trangle on a black board, the thing you rack up the pool balls with, reference to two people competing for the love of a third person, all references tot he same shape, they are different shapes competing to exist each other.

Are We all Atheists?

There is an argument one hears atheists make quite often. It's stated as well as any by a poster on Atheist Watch:

"Jake" a poster on Atheist Watch

we are all atheists of some form. Christians are hindu atheists, Hindus are Muslim atheists, and I am an everything atheist. We all know what it is like to no believe in a certain doctrine, so the fact that we are not all born as omnireligious or polyreligious nutbags, suggests that belief is part of the indoctrination process.

The problem with this argument is two-fold: (1) it uses not the modern ideological definiton of atheists which internet atheists will always use religiously (lack of belief), but the old first century pre modern definition that was used of Christians in the beginning, those who fail to acknowledged the right gods. (2) The second problem is that the basic assumption it makes demonstrates a real lack of understanding about the nature of belief in God. I say this because it seems to me that the original statement comes out of an assumption that belief in God is about choosing between a host of little personalities. God is a big man in the sky and all beliefs about God revolve around which big man is up there; is it Zeus? Jehovah,, Juptier, Brahamin, or whomever?

This is not the basis of belief in God. Belief in God is not about choosing between a host of little personalities. All of those personalities are merely place holders, they designate something beyond of all them. God is the ground of being, the basis of all reality, there can't be two of them. It's not a context between little personality figures, those are merely place holder that point to the one true reality beyond all of them. Individual personality gods are merely personifications of concepts, all the concepts pertain to the same basic idea. The only real questions are two fold:

(1) What does God want?
(2) which tradition best mediates relationship with the divine?

The second question assumes that the first question is answered by some notion of unity with the divine.

A Hindu is not an atheist to a Christian. I don't think of Hindus as atheists, I think of atheists as atheists I think of Hindus as people with a different understanding of what God wants. That's a pretty good give away that the atheist argument is wrong, because if I don't see Hindus as atheists then they probably don't see me as one either. Of course atheists resist this kind of understanding about it because they are losing several rhetorical helps at this point. First, they are always looking for ways to bolster their numbers and this allows them the illusion that everyone is an atheist and thus their position is really dominate after all, it's just a matter of realizing it. Secondly, it allows them to play divide and conquer agaisnt religious people, which they are always doing. They try to leverage one religion against them all on the pretext that since we can't prove one is true and all others false then one can be true.

When we point out that all can be true in some sense, as I show above, they go to pieces. That is one approach they can't handle, that accounts for the atheist viciousness to all of my theological positions. They focus upon the minutia of a religious tradition, ceremonies, and formalities, theology, and ignore the experience of the living presence of God that individuals experience, which is the same all over the world.

Hand in hand with this argument that we all born atheists because we are born without belief. That in itself is begging the question. There are lots of reasons to supposes that we have an intuitive sense of God and we are born with it. I present a lot of data in my argument on religious instinct and demonstrate the position in many ways, from the dawn of per-human history to genetic evidence.

The argument actually says that the fact of a religious species is far too coincidental to be merely the product of random chance. Why why would it be that we are fit to be religious, that it is our instinct and our way of life? That would indicate that an object of religious devotion designed religiosity into humans. In summation the following factors indicate that religiosity is part of human nature:

a) Historical Tendency:

The vast Majority of Humans have been religious as far back as we have evidence of humanity (50,000 years) [see above A. 3]

b) Believers have always been vast numerical majority

That is not appeal to popularity, it's an argument about behavior which indicates an innate condition. Almost 90% currently of world population are rleigious believers in some sense.

c) Trans cultural

When anthropologists see a behavior that transcends culture they assume it is innate. There has never been a culture that was atheistic. Every culture we have ever seen or found traces of on earth going back as far as we can has been religious in some way.

Even in cultures such as China where the government attempted irradiation of religious belief there are still 51% religious and many more undecided but not "anti-"religious

d) Physical fitness for religion

Our bodies work better when we are religious, it is the major factor in health and far more of a motivator than any other trigger of the Placebo effect [see above C.3]

e) Archetypes Universal

Archetypes are natural part of the human psyche (see the next argument). Also see Jesus Chrsit and Mythology page II. Archetypes are psychological symbols which point to transcendent ideal beyond the material realm. Studies show that they are natural to all people and emerge under a broad variety of psychological techniques.Maslow says that they are found among all people using ever technqiue of psychoanalysis. [above B.3]

f) Psychologically fit for religion

Psychological factors, relgious believers have far less depression and incidence of mental illness so the human mind works best when religious. [above C]

g) Transformative power

IF the appeal of the argument were merely popularity, it would not turn on things other than popularity. Obviously these reasons I'm giving here are not popularity. But, the transformative power of religious experience is another aspect of the argument which proves that it' not merely an appeal to popularity. Religious experience transforms lives, it gives people life affirming experiences which makes them better as people and makes life worth living. Not all psychological factors are capable of doing that. We are so constituted as a species that we respond to these experiences in such a way that they do transform our lives. That proves that we are fit to be religious, and that is not an appeal to popularity.[see also point C above on psychological normality and self actualization]

h) brain wave patterns

Brain wave patterns are changed by religious experience. We go from Alpha waves to Beta and to other levels of Brain wave patterns when we have these experiences.

i) "God pod" (God module in the brain)

Scientists have identified a cluster of neurons in the brain which, when stemulated, produce feelings and thoughts about God and the transcendent. This is too great a coincidence that nature would just produce this by random chance, especially when taken together with all the other ways in which we are fit to be religious. It's an evidence of design, we are made to be a religious species.

j) Sense of the Numinous universal

the studies I've talked about intently have demonstrated that around the world mystics experince the same phenomena in the presence of God inspite of the doctrine of their traditions.

Moreover, infants should not be counted as believers in any sense. We should hold the title of "believer" in abundance for infants and young children. No one is born with an intellectual theological thesis or is capable of stating a systematic belief. But most people come closer to having innate beliefs in God than to being without of any kind of belief.