Cobb

Faith vs Reason: Will Atheists Eat a Christian Meal?

 

Q: Despite being a sinner, could a Christian still be honest and objective enough to examine the moral attitudes of atheist progressives and leftists, and form conclusions accordingly?

A: It’s almost impossible.

Look up my questions to atheists. You’ll find that I get opprobrium because ‘small a’ atheists tend to suggest that there is nothing more to their atheism than a denial of God and that for someone who practices faith essentially has insufficient moral standing to investigate their morality. This implies, basically, the Hitchens argument which is as follows. The presumption that the faithful can be forgiven their sins (by a non-existent entity) undermines every moral system the faithful can have. Because assertion of a falsehood as true implies anything is true. So anything clerics dream up as ‘the will of God’ can be justified regardless of its inherent good or evil.

The Hitchens argument is reasonable and absolutely nails hypocrites. But it doesn’t address the moral or psychological origins of the disciplines of faith. There are a lot of other implications here as well that it’s difficult to get atheists to discuss, but we can in the comments.

Progressives and Leftists. Well let’s start with Leftists.

‘The Left’ is essentially the Marxists or the Frankfort School devotees. I think they are overly materialist and tend to be authoritarian. Even ‘authoritarian’ in the way that German intellectuals can be, which is in that way of mastering a technical scrum and expecting that the less capable will fall in line. There is a certain lack of libertarian sentiment in that line of thinking as I see it. That is the difference between a Leftist and a ‘classic liberal’. So I tend to think of such people as incompatible with religious freedom in that they are not likely to accept more than one moral master, nor would they borrow or share. Again, this is a kind of totalizing sentiment.

Of course Enlightenment liberalism (and natural philosophy) are under a broadside attack from the Progressives. I see them as unilaterally shallow and completely dismissive of any idea that true freedom has ever existed prior to the years of their births. This would be ok if they had a decent track record of institutional reform. But I perceive that Progressives are more likely to be ahistorical in their attacks against Christianity and more than a little susceptible to anti-Semitic tropes.

What I would like to discuss with atheists is the usefulness of art which is wholly created out of someone’s mind as a symbol of moral teaching. Consider the moral universe of Star Trek. Can any science fiction be morally instructive even if it asserts the falsehood of faster than light travel? Can any fiction be morally instructive if its characters never existed in actual history? Doesn’t that make authors of fiction atheist prophets? I think some atheists fail to distinguish between facts and truth in that the search for truth doesn’t begin and end with findings of fact. To do so is to be shallow, moreover it is an admission to the trust of human instinct in all decisions that are unproveable. What is that other than faith? I try to draw the equivalence between cosmology and/or the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence and the search for God. I set these equivalent. The will of God = the laws of nature = the inherent structure of the universe.

Given that equivalence there is no core principle of the existence or non-existence of ‘god’ that is relevant. What is relevant is the ethical and moral discipline of the schools and adherents. And I think a careful study of history will show the syncretism between Christian ethics and natural philosophy in the development of the West. To me, a proper vision into this shows no conflict between faith and reason. Just as there are fallacies of logic, there are heresies of faith. The existence of these don’t negate the ability of these systems to reveal truth.

I am interested in evolutionary psychology. I’m getting a clearer picture of what we don’t know about the ways in which we think. And I am convinced that a refreshing study of the history of philosophy and the history of religion can clear things up as we advance our understanding of what thinking actually is, what believing actually is, what conviction actually is. This being the core idea in pressing back the unknown, I tend to be dismissive of Progressives and Leftists who seem to have no positive use for any history before the 20th century or respect for the development of the humanism they claim.

I have been instructed in many forms of Christianity and I respect the historical idea of Christendom as well as the aims of Catholicism which means ‘universalism’ as well as the general idea of monotheism over polytheism. I am particularly fond of the fact that the Catholic church is not fundamentally evangelical, and the same holds true for Judaism. I am a student of the Tao, and I have essentially made peace with the universally understood mystery “Thou art that.” My contention is simple. Moral truth is like an excellent complex meal. It takes much skill to prepare it and generosity to serve it, but everyone will enjoy it and be nourished by it. We have all evolved in the same way, if we are not defective, it’s impossible for us not to.

I say it's almost impossible. What I really ask is will atheists eat a Christian meal?

The Axis of Magic

There is something which unites magic and applied science [=technology] while separating both from the “wisdom” of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men; the solution is a technique. --C. S. Lewis

This week I happened on a conversation by @swardley, one of my favorite tweeters. He was describing magic in the realm of corporate desire. The thread is here: 

X : Culture eats strategy for breakfast
Me : Magic eats culture for lunch
X : What?
Me : I asked 20 tech executives - “Do you think your workplace is magical compared to others” and 40% said yes. Magic is real.
X : This is bullshit
Me : You started it with culture.

— Simon Wardley #EEA (@swardley) August 27, 2019

And the idea of magic occurs to me in two contexts. The first is the series Magic 2.0 by Scott Meyer. My review of the first book is here.

What a fun book, and what an exceptionally diabolical villain. Scott Meyer's protag is an ordinary bumbling, self-deprecated cornball of a 'Greatest American Hero'. All good intentions and smarmy sentimentality of a Millenial Charlie Brown, Martin Banks can't figure out a purpose for his life and becomes a marvelous fish out of water in the series. And having read the audiobook, one of the greatest voice actors in the business does a pitch perfect mentor in Phillip, the wise and conscientious mentor to Martin the Magnificent. But the true genius of this book is found in the character of Jimmy, social engineer par excellence. I cannot think of a villain who exemplifies so much of what is wrong in this world than this ruthless manipulator. He is the kind of glib evil that permeates so much of American society that recognizing the lengths he goes to is a revelation. 

The book is an excellent meditation on ethics and power, wrapped up in fantasy and fun, a brilliant and entertaining combination. Trekkies will immediately recognize the centrality of the Prime Directive in this work. 

But Lewis' is deeper. I remembered what he said about the expertise of technologists. He said that they cannot explain what it is they do, because they're all wrapped up in technique and their specialization has a necessary measure of opacity and obfuscation. I think I'm feeling this right now in my profession, and mustn't we all eventually? I mean if we really become proficient, we learn the underside of our business. Lewis said however, any child can understand magic. If you want to explain why all rockets don't explode on the launch pad, someone who understands all of the 735 components of the the rocket assembly couldn't explain it in a year. But if you say "it's magic", everybody gets it.

There's another tangent to this which is the explanation of the infinitely contingent nature of human decision making. Jordan Peterson made a remarkable impression on me in describing how humans handle tools. A car, for example, is just a tool to get you from point A to point B. It's only when the damned thing breaks that you bother to look under the hood. You will spend as little effort in using this tool as possible so you can accomplish your goals. When the tool begins to fail you, it becomes a problem and so you get into its innards, yet only up to a point. You then decide that all of its complexities are a waste of your time & money and you discard the entire thing. It is no longer relevant to your purposes. You find an alternative tool.  In that respect, it doesn't matter if your car runs on electricity, squirrel farts or vampire blood. It's technology you're never going to learn unless that is your purpose.

Philosopher Peter Kreeft writes in clarification of Lewis:

Science and religion both aim at conforming the mind to objective truth, objective reality (science conforms our mind to the nature of the universe, and religion conforms our mind to the mind of God and our will to the will of God).

Magic and technology, on the other hand, try to conform objective reality to the human will. That is why they both arose at the same time—not the Middle Ages but the Renaissance, not the Age of God but the Age of Man. Both are Faustian, Promethean. The difference is, of course, that technology works while magic doesn’t (usually). But their end, their goal, the purpose behind them, the human values and desires and state of soul that set them in motion, are the same.

What I need to think about is - oh never mind I just figured it out. Wow!

The abuse of religion always is involved in the establishment of the illusion of supernatural magic. The charlatan seeks the authority granted by inverting the idea of approaching God, the sacred divine by objectifying God as the ultimate authority to which the charlatan naturally appeals. The abuse of science always is involved in the established of the illusion of supernatural technology. The charlatan seeks the authority granted by inverting the idea of practicing the scientific method by objectifying Science as the ultimate authority to which the charlatan naturally appeals. 

The Error of Coming To Jesus

What if it were the end of the world, or merely the end of your world? Where would you go? 

In Portsmouth, NH there is a church in the middle of town. No matter what you believe or don't believe about God, that church has been standing there over 400 years. What do you know that's 400 years old? Surely not Google. 

For a couple years now, I have been thinking about how democracy fails and how representative government fails, rather in the same way that I had previously been thinking how racial reasoning fails. Like many people at the turn of the century, I have been wondering why the future has arrived full of surprising successes and unexpected failures, and so I have come to give my attention to (among others) The Long Now, Nouriel Roubini, Nassim N. Taleb, David P. Goldman, Richard Fernandez and several others acting under pseudonyms. I don't expect everything to fail, and I don't expect to live in a world of zombies, but I am preparing my mind to work under those conditions. It's like gaming Fallout 3. Hopefully, I'm a quick study.

Without going into the details of which institutions I think will fail and what behaviors will emerge in various levels of educated and monied people, I am thinking of the act of desparate flailing when the floor collapses under you and you wake up some time later with the taste of blood in your mouth. You get up, stumble around for a moment, find out where you are and then vow never to walk that same stupid way again. Then of course you go look for an explanation and a hiding place. 

The church is a hiding place and so you might come to Jesus, testifying loudly and showing off your knocked out bloody teeth. And a priest will be smiling to himself and rubbing his hands together. You have traded one lost comfort for a newly found one which you hope to be eternal. And so you are a fool, the exact dimensions of which are known to the priest. His explanation will be hard to accept but sufficient for your desparation. Alas, you must commit coin. And you might find or at least be suspicious that it was that very priest who weakend the floor you fell through in the first place. 

Until you make that suspicion, and as you commit your coin, you have come to Jesus. You make the confession you expect the priest will accept (he will eventually give you the proper words) and you begin with a fresh start. But have you made an error?

As a Stoic, I say that you have unless you are significantly cynical (or stoical) and realize that you are merely building yourself another shelter from the dangers of the world - a shelter that itself will fail in the perfect storm. You must realize the strength of the bricks of the church building itself without regard to the confessions and promises held therein.

--

My newest insight is that 'the people' are a force of nature. Like storms and wild beasts, they are not to be trifled with, but they can always be outwitted. Your only hope is that you don't have to outwit them spontaneously without prior preparation or they will mow you down, oblivious to your credentials. 

As I keep arguing with atheists (ok with the atheists inside my head), the point is not whether or not God exists in any verifyable and objective way, but what is verifyable and objective about the people who believe in God. For one thing, they are trying to be moral. For another, they build churches. And these churches end up lasting for centuries as generations of human beings fall through their respective floors. Not saying that the floors of all churches are bedrock, but 400 years is 400 years. That is a force of nature a wise man would not try to spontaneously outwit. 

The error is not in coming to Jesus, in this ironic regard, one cannot come too soon. The error is coming without preparation. No irony there at all.