The deepest conversation in the world is emanating from the mouths of atheist scientists and other extraordinarily brainy people that we haven't been paying attention to. They are wondering aloud whether science itself is biased and if the scientific method is useful in finding all of the knowledge mankind needs. They are asking whether or not the scientific community itself can be depended upon to be rational when it comes to questions about reason and the epistemology of faith. In short, why does the mere mention of religion and God make so many scientists suddenly lose their minds?
As I mention this controversy, I have to recommend to you a new site that has some truly mindbending questions about bias. So it looks like we have forestalled the epistemological nightmare long enough and a lot of us are going to start questioning whether or not we really know what we think we know. It has the possibilities of putting us in a completely different place in 20 years, that is to say a very bad place if we don't pay attention, because if these guys start going nuts, the American academy is going to fly apart at the seams, especially if we are subject in any way to Dhimmitude. So if you're ready to dip your toe into matters of doubt on objectivity, you absolutely must bookmark and often visit Overcoming Bias.
As for me, I've always claimed to be biased and informative. Me and Oprah both. We care about what we care about and we think a lot of honesty about a very few things is vastly superior to 'unbiased objectivity' on everything. I put it in quotes because I think, and you do to really, that there's something creepy and weird about an unemotional deadpan who continually speaks in such a way never to embarrass himself or anyone else on the planet. For that we have the craft of writing reference books, thank you. Reference books are not for the decision making process of life. Who would you rather have as a babysitter, a boy whose favorite book is Tom Sawyer or a boy whose favorite book is the Guinness Book of World Records?
At any rate let's get to the incredibly hefty good stuff. I'm writing this intro to the Deepest Conversation because again it goes right back to the mind-blower of Benedict's in the recent past, 'To Act Against Reason'. Christianity is reconciled to rationality through painstaking works of theology and moral philosophy. I am working, starting this year, in trying to understand and recognize that path. Furthermore I am connected by profession and inspiration with some of the principals embroiled in this.. OK no further ado.
My mentor at a couple degree's remove is Daniel C. Dennett. It was his book, The Mind's Eye, that got me hooked into computer science much deeper than as a mere coder. As you see, I've developed some competency in writing English and that owes primarily to my understanding that my mind can influence other minds. I write for machines and people, and I am deeply concerned with how machines and people think and arrive at decisions. I endeavor to build architectures of discourse to aid in such decision making processes. This is my vocation and my avocation, they are linked directly in this regard. I see my vocation as fueled by the determinism of business - that is to say that my customers want to understand with perfection the dollars in their companies. I can build deterministic systems with an interesting set of computering tools. I see my vocation as fueled by the dynamism of the stochastics of politics - that is to say that my readers want much less exactness, they want analog push and pull, they want tao and insight, but not control. I can build narratives with an interesting set of rhetorical and media artifacts. The aim of both of these disciplines is to enable highly functional reference resources and frameworks for decision making. Dennett set the context and I've known this clearly since 1982 when I first read the Mind's I.
Dennett, however, is a large skeptic on matters of faith, as is Richard Dawkins who in this controversy has raise the ire of a number of theologians and anthropologists specializing in the history of religion. I too have engaged the 'faith vs reason' debate with the ferocity of a college sophomore fresh from reading 'The Fountainhead'. (And I'm not embarrassed to link to a 20 year old email, but I digress). The attractiveness of liberation theology to me in the early 90s, in the wake of some faith in US government hitting some brick walls around Iran-Contra time, made me recognize the value of religion as primitive and fundamental pedagogy. I was also digging Iron John at the time and investigating archetypes, oh yeah and Paolo Friere too.
So I have significant reasons to believe, in a Hobbsian sense of reason being a spy for desire, that religion makes sense. And I reject Hitchens' quite logical assertion that if religion can get you to consistently believe one fundamental lie (the existence of God) than it can justify anything. In fact religion as a discipline does not lead one to nihilism, the morality of religion is a restraint against nihilism. And so I am disheartened but what I perceive to be Dennett's objection to theology. Again, I'm not specific enough because I'll have to read this work over and over before it coheres in my head, but I sense him on the wrong side - that their reading of Pascal's Wager completely overlooks the ethical lesson of Job. There is a very fundamental strength I see in that faith in a perfect being has earthly rewards. Scientists would seem to be on the side of kings, rather than transcendent ethics.
I'll have more to say on this as time goes on.
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