Excerpt from a work in progress: Christianity and The Death of Civilization

CHRISTIANITY AND THE DEATH OF CIVILIZATION

Chapter 1: Is Civilization in Decline?

Everyone thinks civilization is finished. We can find people from all walks of life saying so. We have right wing extremists and racists saying this: Iowa congressman Steve King is a case in point. He has been quoted as saying “Christians have contributed more to Western civilization than any other 'subgroup.' He also said that Muslim children are preventing 'our civilization' from being restored. He was actually endorsing far right candidates in Dutch politics.^[1] The themes are always Christianity built civilization, civilization is now waning, we can't restore the former glory without our politics. (insert one's group). One wonders how much any of them really know about civilization. Yet, the topic was not always the Provence of crack pots and racists.^[2] Not long after the second world war philosopher Emil Brunner delivered the prestigious Gifford lectures saying: “...if by the mercy of God we are to have some further breathing space, if He does grant us another chance to build up a new European civilization on the ruins of the old, facing all the time the possibility of an imminent end to all civilized life on this globe, Christianity has a tremendous responsibility.”^[3] The Urgency Reflected in the above quotation strikes a familiar chord in our day although the reasons for it were somewhat different. The world had just come through the second world war and seemed poised for a cold war with former allies the Soviets. The Atomic bomb was just beginning to be understood and feared, and the revelations of Auschwitz and Nuremberg shocked everyone's sense with the realization of how easily the boundaries of civilized behavior could be transgressed. We can relate to all of those concerns today, although not to the same degree (we have greater reason to fear nuclear weapons---knowing more about what they can do). Our age has it's own moral outrages and autocrats to be resisted; hopefully not on the same scale. We find rational Catholic historians echoing tame versions of the idea that Christianity was decisive for Western civilization:

... Dawson argued that every civilization relies on those who most fully represent its ideals and shape the culture through their actions. Dawson maintained that “history is at once aristocratic and revolutionary. It allows the whole world situation to be suddenly transformed by the action of a single individual.” It is this dynamic historical process that is fatal to a secular understanding of religious approaches to history....To the Christian, this understanding of historical development permits interpretation of past events in the light of divine will and spiritual forces that may be unknown even to the actors themselves. ^[4]

If Christianity contributed to the building of Western civilization in a significant way, why is it not saving western civilization from decline? This is the question this work attempts to answer.

What is this “civilization” that we are worried about? Oddly enough no one can say. In the great classic PBS documentary, Civilization, the Skin of Our Teeth, part 1, Kenneth Clark said “what is civilization? I don't know I can't define it in abstract terms, but I think I can recognize it when I see it and I'm looking at it now,” as he stared at the back of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.^[5] He spoke of comfort, order, creativity. For the purposes of this chapter I will assume loose broad terms for the definition: Civilization involves society but it is more than society it deals with the highest level of accomplishment. In the next chapter I will go into much greater detail in an attempt to define civilization. The essay is mainly concerned with Western civilization but I will explore the general concept of civilization itself.

When conservatives, especially right wingers talk about the decline of civilization they tend to focus on things that depart from the maze ways that make them feel at home. The strange, the new, things that make them feel uncomfortable. These represent decline for the right. But when liberals or leftists talk about decline they tend to to reference climate change or other devastating issues that will kill on a mass scale. Or the decline of the educational system, but that can be linked to the inability to solve these panoramic problems

Relampago Furioso writes an article for the blog Return of Kings (a masculine supremely publication):

There is a lot of discussion these days about America and the other nations comprising Western Civilization being in decline, and there is certainly a lot of evidence to support this claim. Whether it be dying populations among the Caucasian races that created the civilization, unchecked immigration rapidly replacing native populations in Europe and the United States, evidence that America is currently and has been behaving as an imperialistic empire but is now slowly losing its power around the world, a culture that seems to completely disregard the importance of family, the building block of civilization, or a loss of religiousness and sense of purpose, signs that something is wrong are everywhere.^[6]

Apparently he seems to include The United States as losing it's native population to “unchecked Immigration,” they are only about 300 years too late on that one. White people are not America's native population. They laud Oswald Spengler as prophet of decline, we will hear more about him in the next chapter. The Imaginative Conservative, in discussing “the decline of Western civilization in 10 pictures, Stephan M. Klugewicz speaks of “a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways.”^[7] Their 10 pictures of decline are even more telling. None of the pictures depict real human suffering. All of them are either about examples of bad taste or modern art, the rowdies that attend sporting events or the fact that Catholic Clergy actually allowed Obama in a church. The most we can conclude is that Klugewicz needs an art appreciation class. On a much more serious note Indian engineer Shivaji Lokam argues that liberalism is responsible for the fall of Western civilization from within.^[8] Not exactly original.

The decline of Western civilization is not merely the hobby horse of the right as now dire warnings emanate from all sides of the spectrum. “The sandwich boards have mostly gone and the world is still here, but the gloomy predictions keep coming, and not all of them are based on creative interpretations of religious texts. Scientists, historians and politicians alike have begun to warn that Western culture is reaching a critical juncture. Cycles of inequality and resource use are heading for a tipping point that in many past civilizations precipitated political unrest, war and finally collapse.”[9]Peter Turchin an evolutionary Anthropologist at the university of Connecticut began to apply equations used for prey animals to civilization boom and bust cycles. “In the late 1990s, he began to apply these equations to historical data, looking for patterns that link social factors such as wealth and health inequality to political instability. Sure enough, in past civilizations in Ancient Egypt, China and Russia, he spotted two recurring cycles that are linked to regular era defining periods of unrest.^[10]

One, a “secular cycle”, lasts two or three centuries. It starts with a fairly equal society, then, as the population grows, the supply of labor begins to outstrip demand and so becomes cheap. Wealthy elites form, while the living standards of the workers fall. As the society becomes more unequal, the cycle enters a more destructive phase, in which the misery of the lowest strata and infighting between elites contribute to social turbulence and, eventually, collapse. Then there is a second, shorter cycle, lasting 50 years and made up of two generations – one peaceful and one turbulent. ^[11]

Turchin finds peaks of unrest in 1870, 1920 and 1970. In 2010 this led him to predict that the peak would come in the 2020's. He made the prediction before Trump obtained the white house, leading Spinney to point out that the inequality and animosity of the Trump era make the prediction seem all the more acute.

Robert Skidelsky tells us “Though prophecy is delusive, an agreed point of departure should be falling expectations. As Ipsos Mori’s Social Research Institute reports: 'The assumption of an automatically better future for the next generation is gone in much of the west.'”^[12] Ipsos Mori connected a survey across 20 countries showing the pessemistic mood of people in the west “more think it will be worse than better (42% versus 34%) – but this hides wide variation, and a split between Western/developed countries on the one hand and developing/Eastern countries on the other..In Britain, just 20% think the today’s youth will have a better life than their parents – over half (54%) think it will be worse.in France seven in ten people think young people will have a worse future…. People are also very negative in countries like Belgium, Spain, the US and Britain. ” ^[13]

Journalist Chris Hedges has written book , America: The Farwell Tour, (August 2018), in which he argues that the structure of our society is unraveling and is being merged into a privatized corporate empire.^[14] Hedges traes the history of one example of decline in the demise of what was once major corporation in Scranton Pennsylvania. He shows that the economic crissi of 2008 wiped out 40% of the cities investments. The city invested in Wall Street, Hedges tells us, pooled assets in subprime loans, mortgages, credit qd debt even when the banks new they were toxic, but the risk was deemed acceptable due to the high return, except when the bubble burst! As he puts it the risk had” an acceptable degree of credit worthiness, which of course evaporated with the bubble. Assets plummeted. He alludes to Marx's warning that capitalism has a built in boom and bust cycle, we are in a major bust. Unable to expand and continue to generate more and more profits, unable to seek out new markets, end game capitalism will consume he strictures that sustained it. in the final stages it will prey on the working class and the poor, as Hedges shows is the casein Scranton.^[15]

Paul Ehrlich, Of Population Bomb fame, is now warning “Collapse of Civilization is a Near Certainty within Decades” An article by that title cites in The Guardian.^[16] He says a “shattering collapse” of civilization is “a near certainty” within the next few decades. He discusses three major factors that, taken together, render the outcome virtually certain; they are Population (the optimum is 2 billion for the planet we are several times over that), environmental degradation, and redistribution of wealth. “ unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen ” ^[17]

It is the combination of high population and high consumption by the rich that is destroying the natural world, he says. Research published by Ehrlich and colleagues in 2017 concluded that this is driving a sixth mass extinction of biodiversity, upon which civilisation depends for clean air, water and food....He estimates an optimum global population size at roughly 1.5 to two billion, “But the longer humanity pursues business as usual, the smaller the sustainable society is likely to prove to be. We’re continuously harvesting the low-hanging fruit, for example by driving fisheries stocks to extinction.”Ehrlich is also concerned about chemical pollution, which has already reached the most remote corners of the globe. “The evidence we have is that toxics reduce the intelligence of children, and members of the first heavily influenced generation are now adults.”^[18]

Ehrlich listed ecological devastation and he peaks of mass extinction. The United Nations has released a study involving hundreds of scientists showing that Earth is facing another mass extinction; one million species are threatened with extinction due to human activity. The study consists of a distillation of 15000 previous studies.^[19]

Without “transformative changes” to the world’s economic, social and political systems to address this crisis, the IPBES panel projects that major biodiversity losses will continue to 2050 and beyond. “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide,” says IPBES chair Robert Watson, an atmospheric  Agricultural activities are also some of the largest contributors to human emissions of greenhouse gases. They account for roughly 25% of total emissions due to the use of fertilizers and the conversion of areas such as tropical forests to grow crops or raise livestock such as cattle... The next biggest threats to nature are the exploitation of plants and animals through harvesting, logging, hunting and fishing; climate change; pollution and the spread of invasive species. The IPBES report finds that the average abundance of native plants, animals and insects has fallen in most major ecosystems  by at least 20% since 1900 because of invasive species.^[20]

“The report draws inextricable links between biodiversity loss and climate change...Earth could lose 16% of its species if the average global temperature rise exceeds 4.3 °C.”^[21] Ecology itself is not civilization but with such loses, the ability of nature to reproduce life impaired civilization would no doubt crumble. The report urges that we can reverse the process but “ doing so will require proactive environmental policies, the sustainable production of food and other resources and a concerted effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”^[22]

Notes

[1]Gre Toppo, “Rep Steve King Blasted for oir civilization Tweet,” USA Today (March 12 2017) on Line URL: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/03/12/iowa-rep-steve-king-muslim-children/99099712/ (accessed July 3,2018).

[2]Matthew Haag, “Steve king Says Civilization Can't be restored with 'somebody else's Babies” The New York Times, (March 12,2017) online URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/12/us/steve-king-white-nationalism-racism.html (accessed July 3, 2018). King's endorsement of white nationalism is documented.

[3]Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilization: First part: foundations.NY: 1948, Charles Scrkbner's Sons, 1948 Gifford Lectures, University of St. Andrews, 1947. prefce V.

[4] Christepher Dawson, quoted by Gerald J. Russello, “Christopher Dawson: Christ In History.” Crisis Magazine, (December 27,2011) Originaky sublished in April 1996 editiion. https://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/christopher-dawson-on-christ-in-history (accessed 3/12/19)

[5]Kenneth Clark, Civilization - The Skin of our Teeth (Part 1), tv documentary, BBC, 1969;Kenneth Clark, Civilization - The Skin of our Teeth (Part 1), viddeo You Tube, published by Karl Hungus, (Oct 30, 2016) . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6qYjisp51M

(accessed 3/13/19)

[6]Relampago Furioso, “How a German Historian Predicted The Decline of Western civilization 100 years ago.” Return of Kings Blog, (Feb 11,2016) http://www.returnofkings.com/77942/how-a-german-historian-predicted-western-decline-100-years-ago (accessed 3/14/19).

Return of Kings self description: Return Of Kings is a blog for heterosexual, masculine men. It’s meant for a small but vocal collection of men in America today who believe men should be masculine and women should be feminine.ROK aims to usher the return of the masculine man in a world where masculinity is being increasingly punished and shamed in favor of creating an androgynous and politically-correct society that allows women to assert superiority and control over men. Sadly, yesterday’s masculinity is today’s misogyny. The site intends to be a safe space on the web for those men who don’t agree with the direction that Western culture is headed. If you are new, check out our top 35 posts of all time.Women and homosexuals are strongly discouraged from commenting here.

[7] Stephan M. Klugewicz, “The Decline of Western Civilization in 10 Pictures.” The Imaginative Conservative. (Feb. 27,2018) https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/02/decline-western-civilization-10-pictures-stephen-klugewicz.html (accessed 3/16/19)

[8]Shivaji Lokam, The Fall of Western Civilization: How Liberalism Is Destroying the West From Within. India: Entropy Works, 2018, 3.

[9] Laura Spinney, “End of Days: Is Western Civilization on The Brink of Collapse?” New Scientist, (Jan. 17,2018) 558,https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731610-300-end-of-days-is-western-civilisation-on-the-brink-of-collapse/(accessed 3/14/19).

[10]Ibid.

[11]Ibid.

[12]Robert Skidelsky, “Is Western Civilization in Terminal Declime?” The Guardian, (Nov 17,2015)https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/17/is-western-civilisation-in-terminal-decline(accessed 3/30/19)

Robert Skidelsky is professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, a fellow of the British Academy in history and economics, and a member of the House of Lords

[13]Ipsos MORI, “People in Western Countries pessimistic about Future for young People,” Ipsos (April 14,2014) https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/people-western-countries-pessimistic-about-future-young-people (accessed 3/30/19)

[14]Chris Hedges, America: The Farewell Tour, NewYork: Simmon nd Schuster, 2018, 7.

[15]Ibid,, 4.

[16]Paul Ehrlich, in Damian Carrington,“Collapse of Civilization is a Near Certainty within Decades,” The Guardian, (March 22,2018)

[17]Ibid.

[18]Ibid.

[19]Jeff Tollesfson, “Humans are Driving One million Species To extinction,” (May 6, 2019) Nature: International ournal of Science , 569,171, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-(accessed 5/8/19)

[20]Ibid.

[21]Ibid.

[22]Ibid.

Is the phrase "God Exists" a meaningful statement? NO!

The Internet Infidels blog Secular Outpost
 6/09/10

 A discussion is launched by Bradley Bowen over the concept of alleged incoherence of the statement "God exists."

In The Coherence of Theism (original:1977, revised ed.:1993), Richard Swinburne argues that the sentence “God exists” is a meaningful indicative sentence that expresses a coherent proposition. He does this by raising objections to arguments that have been given against this view, and by also making a detailed positive case.

For the negative or defensive case, Swinburne starts out by raising objections to some general arguments against this view, and later in the book he raises objections to more specific arguments that focus on the alleged incoherence of specific characteristics or combinations of specific characteristics that are used to define the word “God”.

The main general argument against his position that is examined by Swinburne is a logical positivist argument about the sentence “God exists”, derived primarily from A.J. Ayer’s book Language, Truth, and Logic (1936).

This is how Swinburne interprets the skeptical argument presented by Ayer:

(1) If the sentence "God exists" expresses a coherent statement, then the sentence "God exists" expresses either an analytic proposition or else it expresses a synthetic proposition.
(2) The sentence "God exists" does not express an analytic proposition.
(3) The sentence "God exists" does not express a synthetic proposition.
Therefore,
(4) It is not the case that "God exists" expresses a coherent statement.

The logic of this argument is fine, and Swinburne accepts premises (1) and (2), so his focus is on the question of whether premise (3) is true or well-supported.

This skeptical argument is basically a modern version of Hume’s fork. Hume divided claims into two categories: (a) relations of ideas and (b) matters of fact. Hume argued that all claims fall into one or the other category, so since metaphysical sentences do not express either “the relations of ideas” or “matters of fact”, such sentences do not express claims or propositions.

 It seems unclear to me why this would have anything to do with Hume's fork. This concept says that one cannot derive an ought from an is. This would seem to have nothing to do with the attempt to make a coherent metaphysical statement. Moreover, the idea that metaphysical claims do not express relations of ideas seems absurd and ridiculous. First of all if that were true than science si incoherent. We have known since days of A.E. Burtt and well before that, that scinece is based upon metaphysical assumptions. See Burtt's great famous book The Metaphysical Foundations of Early Modern Science. Most aspect of modern knowledge relate to metaphysical assumptions, any attempt to organize an understanding of the world and group sense data under pre conceived categories is basically a metaphysical assumption. In this connection one might enjoy Edward Feser's commentary on "Recovering Sight After Scientism."

Nor is it logical that Metaphysical claims cannot be matter of fact. If that were the case then scinece would be unable to assert matters of fact. The assertion of materialism (physicalism) is a metaphysical assertion. Come to to that the assertion that Metaphysical claims cannot be matters of fact is a metaphysical claim. The whole concept is meaningless and the reason for this is because one runs a huge risk when basing one's views on Hume. Atheist worship Hume as the great thinker who launched modern atheism not realizing the was the considered the Derrida of his day. That is to say an opportunistic game player more concerned with his own greatness with truth, and hankering to be known as a genius at all cost, and advocating radical concepts he could not pull off. He was brilliant, but not serious, not truth seeking, obsessed with his own advancement. Moreover, Hume's take on religion is nothing short of amateurish and bombastic and nonfactual. In fact I would use the term "propaganda" in relation to this description. Most of the great ideas Hume stumbled on to came from Bishop Berkeley whom he admired (even though he was a Christian so even atheist in that day could recognize that Chrsitians were intellectually valid). Hume set's forth an empiricist understanding that defines religious thought in straw man terms as jaundiced and silly but takes the most absurd view as it's point of attack. Where does he come off asserting that metaphysical claims are not matters of fact when his assertions of empiricism must of necessity be metaphysical? The Empiricist brackets all knowledge but his own perceptions and that is a metaphysical move because it asserts that all sense data but be herded into pre conceived categories.

The concept of an analytic proposition can be viewed as a clarification of Hume’s notion of statements that express “the relations of ideas”. The concept of a synthetic proposition can be viewed as a refinement of Hume’s notion of statements that express “matters of fact”. Given the assumption that all coherent propositions can be categorized as either being an analytic or a synthetic proposition, a dilemma simliar to Hume's fork can be constructed for the sentence "God exists".

Posted by Bradley Bowen at 9:27 PM

 There are some problem's with using Hume's categories. One such problem is was well before the problems of positivism and A.J. Ayer so he was totally out of the loop when Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) proved that the verification principle caused to wither everything other than the verification principle, including scinece, history, knowledge in general. There's a good article by Thomas F. Torrance on Polanyi's Christian faith. That move spelled the beginning of the end for the Ayer form of positivism as a force able to accomplish its task being so valuable to scinece.. See Polyani's book Personal Knowledge: Toward a post critical Philosophy. Hume lived before any of this, before Phenomenology, before positivism and before the modern and post modern understandings of philosophy of since. In fact it's monumentally crucial that Hume never knew anything about Heidegger's Metaphysics. In Hume's day Philosophies and skeptics were reacting against Scholasticism and agaisnt views of the Church that had been shaped by Austine and Aquinas. They were not cognizant to any degree of the people of science and knowledge, they were trying to dig themselves out from under the middle ages. They were busy destroying the intellectual roots of Western culture which were planted firmly in the soil of the Christian faith. So I suggest that Hume's categories are antiquated and that is pronouncements are irrelevant.

This further bit is in the comment section. Bowen talks about Swinburne's philosophical background.

Bowen in Comment section:

Bradley Bowen said...Uzza said...

does Swineburn ever define what he means by "god"?
===========
Yes.

Swinburne is a modern analytic philosopher. When he was a student of philosophy, he took courses from Ordinary Language philosophers, including John Austin.

Swinburne provides a general definition of the term "God" and then also provides clarification and analysis of each word or phrase in that general definition.

One of the main tasks of his book COT is to describe circumstances in which each of the alleged characteristics of "God" would occur. He does this in order to demonstrate that each characteristic is coherent in itself, and then he procedes to try to describe circumstances in which combinations of these characteristics occur together in one person.

Here is the general definition given by Swinburne in Part II of the book ("A Contingent God"):

"In this part I shall consider what it means to claim that there exists eternally an omnipresent spirit, free, creator of the universe, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and a source of moral obligation, and whether this is a coherent claim." (COT, revised edition, p.99)

 That's all fine and good and I would assert that Swinburne can handle himself in a fight. There's an even bigger problem with this whole discussion and the very concept of the argument, it's a problem that would outdated even Swinburne's answer. The very question itself "the existence of God" is wrong headed and asserts the wrong concept about the nature of God of Christianity.  The problem is the atheists are right here, but they are right for the wrong reason. Yes I said they are right! They don't know why they are right. "God exists" is a theologically inadequate statement, at least in the view of Paul Tillich, which I agree with. The atheists take it to mean that there is no God. But in reality it's just that existing is something that only "things" do, contingent things that is. So God is not a thing in creation, but the basis of reality. So the atheists are wright that "God exists" is not coheent as a statement but not becasue there is no God.

Duan Olson explains:

FAMOUSLY OR INFAMOUSLY, TILLICH DENIED THAT GOD EXISTS, OR THAT GOD IS A BEING, AND IDENTIFIED GOD WITH BEING-ITSELF.  IN TYPICAL QUOTES, HE SAYS, “IT WOULD BE A GREAT VICTORY FOR CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS IF THE WORDS ‘GOD’ AND ‘EXISTENCE’ WERE VERY DEFINITELY SEPARATED,” AND “GOD IS BEING-ITSELF, NOT A BEING.”[III]  WHAT OFTEN GETS OVERLOOKED IN DISCUSSIONS OF TILLICH’S IDEA OF GOD IS ITS THEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION.  I BRING THIS JUSTIFICATION TO THE FORE IN MY ANALYSIS.

Tillich denied that God exists, or that God is a being, in order to preserve the notion of God’s aseity.  In traditional theology, for God to be “a se” means God is neither derived from nor dependent upon anything.  Tillich points out repeatedly that if you take this idea seriously, then no aspect of finite reality and no category of thought can be applied literally to God[iv].  If some characteristic of finite reality applies literally to God, it means that aspect of reality is greater than God in the sense that God relies on it being there in order to be.  It is unconditioned, and it conditions God.  God is dependent upon it, and is not a se.  Finite reality and all of its parts must be made possible by God, but if anything in finite reality is literally applied to God, or if we can subsume God under any categories applicable to finite reality, this shows that God is subject to some part of reality and is not a se. 

(III:Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 205, 237. IV: Ibid, vol 2, 6).(From "Paul Tillich and the Ontological Argument" Quodlibet Journal, vol 6, no 3, July 2004).

This is  aspect of Tillich’s work that really baffles and angers atheists, his denial that God “exists.” Many have claimed that he is actually an atheist, but that’s because they don’t bother to understand his ontology, it doesn’t occur to them that he’s using the term “exist” in a specialized way. Even though he doesn’t explain it this way, what he’s really saying is that “existence” is for contingent things. Contingencies exist and necessary things have being, or be or they are “part of reality.” Look at the terms he uses in the quotation above as alternatives to “existence.” He speaks of “the validity of truth of God.” Another term he uses as an alternative for God’s’ mode of being is “reality.” God doesn’t exist but he is real none the less. Existence, for Tillich is part of the “surface” of things, the level at which things merely exists. Another aspect that both skeptics and believers alike have trouble with is the notion that God is not something (he means some thing) or someone.  What he means by that is that God is not a thing or an individual entity. God is not just another thing in creation alongside “things:” if we made a list of everything in the universe, stop lights, tooth brushes, swizzle sticks, fish, bananas, Petula Clarke albums, we could not then put God on the list alongside those things. Nor is God a “he” or a “she” or a “someone.” God blows away your conveniently understood categories; God defies our sense of the appropriate nature of pronouns and grammar. God transcends our understanding, there is no analogy that is totally appropriate but all religious language is analogical because that’s the only way we can approach something beyond our understanding. The idea that God is not someone is anathema to a lot of believers, and I can sympathize with them. But this does not mean that I don’t related to God as my “heavenly father” or that I don’t feel intense intimate love emotions connected with God, both from God to me and me to God. Nor does this mean that I think God has no will to be followed. The nature of God and the problem of mind and consciousness will be dealt with in a latter chapter. The important point right now is that the hall mark of Tillich’s view of God is that God is the unconditioned! 

To insist upon the ordinary use of the categories in relation to God would be equally misleading, as to use Tillich specialized sense and not explain it. We can't speak of God as "existing" and properly understand God as the basis of reality, as something transcendent of thing hood. The basic problem goes all the way back to that of using Hume and his categories as a critical tool in evaluating belief in God in the first place. Hume was just ill equipped to understand the concept once the trashed the categories of Christian thought that has been set up by  the original mystics who famed concepts like Being itself in the first place. The real problem here is making the assumption that if empiricism is the basis of modern scinece then it must be the only valid basis for knowledge and thus we can subject all aspects of reality that basis. The problem is you can't subject the foundations of reality to any sort of study as though the foundation is just another piece of qualia or a side effect of the whole. That really sums up the whole mistake of atheism in the first place.

Mind is not rediuceable to Brain part 1

            This topic is of great importance for believers in God because it encompasses almost every facet of the territory upon which the battle over belief is fought. It impinges upon what one believes about the ability to be good or to refuse sin, the freedom of belief vs. the view that belief is just a side effect of bad psychology, the nature of religious experience and its veracity, even the after life. This topic should be of great importance to non believers as well as it impinges upon our ability to understand ourselves as free agents capable of governing ourselves, and as individuals who would seek the meaning of our lives and the expression of self in art. I suspect also that the determinist/reductionist view point encourages atheists in their materialism and rejection of the soul.

Brain/Mind

            Ideological and philosophical types of reductionism seek to reduce human consciousness to a level of side effect produced by brain chemistry; to do this reductionsts will lose the phenomena that describe an irreducible consciousness. This is done by employing the standard reductionist tricks of re-labeling, re-describing, and bait and switch. The bait and switch is primarily a replacement of consciousness with brain function. Phenomenoloigcally consciousness might be thought of as the awareness of self, others, nuance, place, time, ambiance, and the feel of perception. In place of this the reductionist places the way the brain functions, and puts it over as consciousness. The reductionst, assumes there is nothing to consciousness that is not produced by the physical apparatus of the brain. This just puts in place the outgrowth of the physical apparatus minus the aspects of consciousness the consciousness supporters talk about then points to those brain function aspects as proof that this is all there is; after all this is consciousness. Whereas in fact all they are doing is removing consciousness and pointing to the aspects they want to support as proof because those are the aspects they can get at through their methods. This is something like a prosecutor at a trial replacing the evidence with his own briefs then saying “well see the evidence is so in line with my briefs that it proves my case.”

            The debate about consciousness stacks believers in unique irreducible nature of human consciousness against those who think that consciousness can be reduced to mere brain chemistry. This is not an issue of theism vs atheism; major positions allied against the reductionism are also materialist positions, as well as God-believing positions. On the side of the mind are materialists such as property dualists, Functionalists and supervenience theorists. Property dualists are often mistaken for theists by the term “dualist,” yet they are not true dualists they don’t believe there are two levels of reality but that each property can have dual aspects. Functionalists hold that mental states are functional states but mental properties cannot be identified with mental biological properties. Supervenience says that mental life correlates with physical body.[1]

            Perhaps the major source for this kind of reductionism where brain/mind is concerned is the now classic work Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett.[2] Dennett is a master of the bait and switch, using a vast amount of data about all sorts phenomena based studies dealing with brain function, all the while asserting that it’s explaining consciousness with which he does not even deal. I urge the reader to see the article by my friend Lantz Miller who wrote it for the academic journal that I once published; Negations: an Interdisciplinary Journal of social Criticism.[3]  Dennett seems to say “we are all zombies, no one is conscious.”[4] Kevin B. Korb seems to think this is just Dennett’s attempt to motivate the reading, sort of a shock effect by taking an extreme position.[5] Be that as it may Dennett represents the functionalists position. Functionalism, introduced by J.J.C. Smart and U.T. Place, is the thesis that mental states are identical to some particular brain states.[6] If the goal of Dennett is the old positivist’s dream of clearing away the clutter so science can get on with its work, the clutter he seeks to clear away is twofold, two positions stemming from the brain/mind questions as dealt with by philosophy: (1) mental states cannot be shared since the physical make up of our brains cannot be shared (Korb uses the term “goo”).  (2) the dualistic homuncular theories which had been advocated by many dualists. That idea suggested something like this, there is a part inside us that has the true brain function and that part really understands our motivations, even though we don’t. This gives way to an infinite regress as there has to be a homuncular thinker inside to give the powers to the first homunculus and so on.[7] This latter view can work out to be one of the tricks of reductionism, redescribing an otherwise valid position in terms of “homuncularism.” Atheists on the internet tend to call anything that involves internal states “homuncular.”

            Even though dualistic options are no longer defended, hold over ideas remain and obscure the valuable reductions. Korb sums up:

Dennett shows that the homuncular concept retains a powerful grip on the imaginations of many, perhaps most, cognitive scientists. While explicit dualism and homuncularism are (no doubt properly) `endangered' theses, a great many theories and judgments advanced by cognitive scientists rely at some point upon there being a magical place in the head where everything comes together---in what Dennett calls the Cartesian Theater. This concept is pernicious in a variety of ways. For one thing, it leads to lazy analysis: if we can rely upon some arbitrarily complex central process to clean up our functional loose ends, we needn't be very careful about specifying whatever functional processes we do provide. But worse, this Cartesian Materialism (functionalism with the Theater at the center) again leads to infinite regress: if there is a theater where consciousness is `projected', then there must be an observer viewing the projection (else why bother with the theater?). As before, we will find it difficult to understand this observer: if the theater and its audience are needed to understand conscious processes,

then an `inner' theater and `inner' audience will be needed to understand the observer, and so on. But if the theater and its observer are not needed to understand conscious processes, then why introduce them in the first place? As Dennett notes, the best place to stop an infinite regress is usually at the beginning.[8]

The opposition of the functionalists to the Cartesian theater is the opposition to a center of internal control where the subject makes a conscious decision or carries away an awareness of his own internal states. As an alternative to the ‘center’ (the Cartesian theater) Dennett proposes the idea of “multiple drafts.” This idea says that the version of what is perceived is contrastingly re-written. The drafts are edited and reedited endlessly and passed along through endless processes.[9] So there is no one key center perception. While this is highly reductionist, it takes out the conscious control of the subject. It loses phenomena of consciousness as our own experience tells us that we do take part in editing some of the drafts. It’s also problematic because it’s a reprise of the homuncular concept. Who is writing the drafts, a little reductionist inside the brain?  The true position of Dennett is ambiguous, although no doubt he does believe that consciousness reduces to brain chemistry.

We know this from 150 years of neurology where you damage areas of the brain, and faculties are lost… You can cease to recognize faces, you can cease to know the names of animals but you still know the names of tools…What we’re being asked to consider is that you damage one part of the brain, and something about the mind and subjectivity is lost, you damage another and yet more is lost, [but] you damage the whole thing at death, we can rise off the brain with all our faculties in tact, recognizing grandma and speaking English![10]

Atheists on the popular level use this argument quite a bit. From that premise, that brain damage means destruction of consciousness, they conclude that consciousness is reducible to brain chemistry and imagine a complete factual basis for the supposition. They have created a bogus science of neurology which they imagine has already answered all questions and proved conclusively that consciousness is reducible to brain function. This is far from a done deal. Science is just getting started on understanding the brain, despite what popular atheism wants to believe. This fact is stated bluntly by one of its expert teachers, Vitzthum in his lecture to the Atheist culb: “Since how the brain actually works is today one of the least-understood and most hotly-debated subjects in science, I'd like to explain briefly the most promising of these theories and in the process finish my discussion of philosophical materialism.”[11]

            The position that mind is reducible to brain and that it is proved by neurology is far form a proven position. Moreover, the brain damage argument is a weak argument. There are better arguments to be made by documenting brain function through neurological evidence, even though that is not proof. The brain damage argument is almost separate from any scientific evidence as we can observe the connection between damage and loss of consciousness without any scientific equipment. Either way the bran damage argument proves only that brain is essential to accessing consciousness, not that consciousness is reducible to brain function.  The access argument can be illustrated with the following analogies. We can destroy computer hardware such as the monitor and that eliminates or blocks our access to soft ware but it doesn’t’ mean that soft ware is hardware or that software is erased by the damage of hardware. The logic of the brain damage argument can be applied to prove that television programs are not broadcast through the air waves but originate in the tv box. After all if we damage the box, take out parts or what have you, we don’t get the picture or the sound or the program. By the logic of the brain damage argument proves that he signal originates in the box.

Mind irreducible to brain function

            By way of explanation of the two sides, I will take property dualism as representative of the pro-mind side, on the proviso that it’s not the only position. Panpsychism can be thought of as a subset (one of four types) of property dualism.[12] I will compare them with John Searle’s article “why I’m Not a Property Dualist.”[13]

            Searle summarizes the property dualist position:

(1)  Empirical reality exits in two categories, physical and mental.

(2)  Because mental states are not reducible to physical states they are something over and above the physical. The irreducibility in and of itself is enough to demonstrate that there is more than just the neurobiological.

(3)  Mental phenomena do not constitute separate objects of substances but rather are features of properties of a composite, such as human or animal. Thus humans or animals have two types of features or properties, mental and physical.[14]

Searle takes issue with this in that he ascribes the categories to just one world. There are not two sets of characteristics. We have one world, everything is physical, but we can describe it in a number of ways. Searle may be thought of as part of the pro-mind side, but he is not a property dualist. He explains why in terms of the problem of the mental and the causal. If the mental is removed from physical then it can’t play a causal role. Ultimately he’s going to argue that the conventional terms are the problem because they invite us to discuss the issue in dualistic ways. So Searle accepts the premise of the reductionists that everything is physical and material but he can’t be called a reducationist because he also recognizes the importance of ontology. He says in terms of neurobiology there is one world and consciousness is a product of the causal process. On the other hand, since descriptively our mental states are not reducible or accessible by others there is an ontological dimension that can’t be reduced. He seems to take the ontological as a descriptive dimension. As argument against the ramifications of Property dualism he lays out a dilemma. If consciousness is closed from the physical realm its not part of the causal mechanism and that means our behavior has nothing to do with consciousness. The alternative is that if the conscious is part of the causal it creates a dualistic causality in which case each action has two explanations, the mental and physical.[15] It seems rather coherent to me to appeal to the mental as motivation for movement and to the physical as the actual mechanics of carrying out the “enabling legislation” so to speak.

            I agree with Searle that a large part of the problem is the dualistic nature of language. We are forced into categories of dualism by the way we are led to speak about the distinction between physical and mental. I can accept Searle’s position, even as a Christian, with the proviso that we can’t understand God and God is obviously an exception to what we know and could contradict all of it. The qualities in humanity that make us “eternal sprits” and put us above the realm of the mere physical can be described in functional terms rather than taken as “essentialist.” That is to say, we can see “spirit” as mind, and mind as mental phenomena without positing a discrete entity or ghost in the machine. On the other hand I hold back from commitment to Searle’s position due to one question that he doesn’t seem to answer. When we say “consciousness” do we mean the actual awareness, or even the texture of mental awareness that comes with mental states, or do we mean the apparatus that makes that texture possible? That seems crucial because if we mean the apparatus then I would agree with his position in so far as we stipulate for biological life only; for biological life consciousness is rooted in the neurobiological. We need not confine our understanding of the texture of awareness or the function of awareness to biological life. If the texture is what we mean by “consciousness,” then it could be much more vast and irreducible to the neurobiological. This is an explanation of the term “source of consciousness.” That term I apply to God.

            I think Searle is wrong in assuming that two dimensions of human being (mental and physical) make for two causes in every action. One cause beginning with the motivation (mental) and working itself out as a cause over two dimensions of our being. That argument is not proof that mental can be reduced to the physical, nor does the threat of being dualistic disprove the reality of dualism. David Chalmers has an argument, or several arguments, for the irreducealbity of consciousness.[16] Chalmers observes that consciousness escapes the reductive net and is not easily reduced to the physical by the assumptions reductionists make. It’s natural to assume that everything reduces to the physical that consciousness supervenes upon the physical. No physical explanation can wholly account for the nature of consciousness. The argument is in what I call the “texture” or the “conscious nature” of consciousness itself.[17] Chalmers argues that consciousness does not logically supervene upon the physical. The reductionists pull a biat and switch by demonstrating the reduction of brain function to the physical, obviously, then speaking as though they have demonstrated that consciousness is the same as brain function when in fact they have no such demonstration. The very nature of consciousness resists such a demonstration, yet the reductionist is often blind to this fact because they can’t stop identifying consciousness with brain function.

            Chalmers full argument entails the theory of the supervenient but he also makes arguments without it. He says one can do it either way. I will avoid the complex and highly specialized issue in order to keep it simple; otherwise I am apt to become confused. He sets up the arguments so that they can be made and make sense without the supervenient analysis.[18] The basic argument is grounded in the nature of consciousness which is seen in the so called “hard problem,” the inability to explain the nature of consciousness without losing the phenomena of consciousness. To illustrate the hard problem Chalmers constructs the notion of the philolophical zombie. Philosophical zombies differ from Hollywood zombies in that they are not mindless automatons who can’t think wondering about doing someone’s bidding. They are identical to us in every way so they cannot be identified as such externally. The only difference is they don’t have mental states or the “texture” of consciousness. They can think they can react logically and reason but they don’t have the mental experience going on inside. The zombie can’t feel the good morning but she can say “good morning” and in a way that implies that she means it. It doesn’t matter weather such zombies are actually possible or not. This is not a possible worlds argument its really more of an analogy that illustrates the distinction between consciousness and brain function.[19] The upshot of the zombie thing is that one could have all the brain function to memic everything humans do, but still lack consciousness and that illustrates that consciousness is not explained by brain function. If the organism with all the brain we have lacks the texture of consciousness then the two don’t share the same properties one is not dependent upon the other.  Of course the opponent will argue that we are making more of consciousness than we should and that in imagining a world of such zombies we are inherently putting in the mental states just in ascribing to them our behaviors. The burden of proof is on them to prove that there is nothing more to the texture of consciousness than behavior.[20]

            The epistemic asymmetry of consciousness affords Chalmers a powerful argument. Conscious experience is a complete surprise given the relationship between mathematics and the rest of reality. That is to say, if not for our actual experience of consciousness we could never theorize or guess as to its’ existence just based upon scientific knowledge about brain function or the physical world. A world of philosophical zombies in which there was no experience of consciousness with all the scientific understanding we have could never come to realization that consciousness must exist for some beings somewhere.

From all the low-level facts about physical configurations and causation, we can in principle derive all sorts of high-level facts about macroscopic systems, their organization, and the causation among them. One could determine all the facts about biological function, and about human behavior and the brain mechanisms by which it is caused. But nothing in this vast causal story would lead one who had not experienced it directly to believe that there should be any consciousness. The very idea would be unreasonable; almost mystical, perhaps. It is true that the physical facts about the world might provide some indirect evidence for the existence of consciousness. For example, from these facts one could ascertain that there were a lot of organism’s that claimed to be conscious, and said they had mysterious subjective experiences. Still, this evidence would be quite inconclusive, and it might be most natural to draw an eliminative conclusion—that there was in fact no experience present in these creatures, just a lot of talk.[21]

If consciousness was dependent upon the physical entirely as a shared property of the physical it would be deducible immediately by its relation to the physical. We should be able to deduce anything that is physical by understanding its physical break down. We can’t even get at a definition of consciousness that doesn’t exclude the mental qualia and reduce to brain function. That is not an explanation (though its taken for one by reductionists) it’s nothing more than losing the phenomena and re-labeling.

            What Chalmers calls the most vivid argument against the logical supervienence of consciousness upon the physical is ‘the knowledge argument’ put forth by Jackson (1982) and Nagel (1974). The example he uses is that of a woman he dubs “Mary” who is the world expert on neurophysiology of color vision. She lives in an advanced time when science has all knowledge of the physical realm. Mary has been raised in a black and while room where she has never seen color. She understands everything there is to know about the physical processes of producing color but she does not know what red looks like. No amount of reasoning from the physical facts can tell her how red appears.

It follows that the facts about the subjective experience of color vision are not entailed by the physical facts. If they were, Mary could in principle come to know what it is like to see red on the basis of her knowledge of the physical facts. But she cannot. Perhaps Mary could come to know what it is like to see red by some indirect method, such as by manipulating her brain in the appropriate way. The point, however, is that the knowledge does not follow from the physical knowledge alone. Knowledge of all the physical facts will in principle allow Mary to derive all the facts about a system’s reactions, and its various abilities and cognitive capacities; but she will still be entirely in the dark about its experience of red.[22]

He reinforces this idea by reference to Thomas Negal’s famous article of the 70’s “What is It Like to be a Bat?”[23] All the physical knowledge about bats can’t tell us what it’s like to be one. That’s just multiplying examples at that point. We can’t know what it feels like to be a bat because we don’t have the consciousness of a bat. The texture of the experience is a point in consciousness. The reductionists sometimes substitute brain function for the actual nature of the experience of consciousness. Until they get at that they can’t get at the hard problem.  They argue, as does Dennett in Consciousness Explained, discussing the theory of multiple drafts proposes that consciousness is just an epiphenomenal illusion that results from the process of editing perception by the brain. It’s like a number of still photos shown in rapid succession that becomes a moving picture. So it is with the multiple drafts and the continuous flowing sense of consciousness. "You seem to be referring to a private, ineffable something or other in your mind's eye, a private shade of homogenous pink, but this is just how it seems to you, not how it is."[24] There’s a lot that could be said to this point, for example see Latnz Miller’s devastating critique of Dennett’s book in Negations. [25] Yet the most to the point criticism that can be made is that it’s not about consciousness. This is about the function of the brain. That doesn’t do anything to get at the nature of consciousness itself. Tending to brain function in this way does not prove that consciousness arises out of brain function and has no larger reference as a basic property of nature. The only thing it does prove is that conscious awareness is accessed through brain function.

            The issue of access is not the issue of causality. To say just exactly what is access and what is causing what, is hard to tell. It would be necessary to know that to resolve the argument either way. If there is a larger framework for consciousness than just being a side effect of chemicals in the head, such as a basic property or a principle of physical law or some such, then there must be some way in which what seems like an emergent property is actually connected to a larger principle. The fact that consciousness is communicated through brain chemistry is not a disproof.  It may be the case that the evidence for irreducibility doesn’t prove it either. It would seem that irreducibility is a good reason to think that consciousness might be a basic property of nature. While at the same time the link between access and brain chemistry is not proof that mind reduces to brain or that consciousness is wholly a side effect of brain chemistry. The organizing effect of mind also adds another valid reason to suspect that consciousness could be a basic property.

Part 2

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[1] Richard C.Vitzchum, “Philosophical Mateirlism.” The Secular Web, On-line resource, URL: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_vitzthum/materialism.html#F9 visited 4/12/2012 from lecture given to atheist students association, University of Maryland, College Park, Nov 14, 1996.

[2] Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained. Back Bay Books, second edition, 1992.

[3] Lantz Miller. “The Hard Sell of Human Consciousness part 1. (no 3, Winter 1998)

_______________________________________________part II, (no 4, Spring 2002)
this is only going to be found on line. go to this URL:  http://negations.icaap.org/  see the menu on left side bar, click on winter of 1998, and scroll to the title "Hard Sell of Human Consciousness" by Lantz Miller, part one, then for part Two go to the 2002 issue and just scroll down until you see the title then sroll further to page number. It's well worth reading. If you really care about the top you must read this article.

[4] Dennett, ibid, 406

[5] Kevin B. Korb. “Stage Effects in the Cartesian theater: A Review of Dennette’s Consciousness Explained.” Pdf file published online, URL: http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2271.pdf  visited 4/16/2012.

Korb is at School of Computer Science and Software Engineering Monash University Clayton, Victoria 3168 Australia

[6] Ibid, section 1.1

[7] ibid, section 1.3

[8] ibid section 1.5

[9] ibid, section 1.6

[10] Sam Harris quoted by Luke Muehlhauser, “Sam Harris, Argument Agaisnt the Afterlife,” blog, Common Sense Atheism, March 15, 2011 URL: http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=14919  the original quote is from a “You tube video”  URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xmvFgtKmc&feature=player_detailpage#t=92s

[11] Vitzthum, ibid.

[12] “Consciousness,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archives pages. Website URL: http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/archives/sum2004/entries/consciousness/#8.1 visited 1/22/11. Robert Van Gulick ed. and Copyright. (2004)

[13] John Searle “Why I am not a Property Dualist” originally from online document: URL: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc. from the Google Html version, propertydualismFNL.doc. November17, 2002 visited 12/6/10. URL: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Y4Fr7m7rItQJ:socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc+consciousness+is+not+reducible+to+brain+chemistry+but+is+a+basic+property+of+nature&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[14] ibid.

[15] ibid.

[16] David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a theory. England, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. 3-5.on line version: http://www.scribd.com/doc/16574382/David-Chalmers-The-Conscious-Mind-Philosophy Scribd, David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Theory of Conscious Experience, webstie Department of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Cruz, July 22 1995, visited 3/1/11 on line page numbers apply.

[17] Ibid, supervenient specialized philosophical term that refers to the necessary sharing of peripheries between two existents when one is a subset of the other.

[18]  Ibid. 84

[19] ibid.84-85

[20] ibid. 90

[21] ibid,

[22] ibid

[23] in Chalmers, 90, originally in Philosophical Review, pp. 435-50

[24] Daniel C. Dennett, op cit, 329

[25] Lantz Miller, “the Hard Sell of Human Consciousness, and the recovery of consciousness in the nature of new language. part 1.” Negations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social Criticism. Issue 3, Winter 1998. On line copy: URL: http://negations.icaap.org/ (scroll down). For part 2 of Miller’s argument see the 2002 issue on the same site.