Month: July 2012

Pessimistic Thoughts on this Fourth of July

Is there anything to celebrate this  Fourth of July?  Not much. Maybe there will be cause for celebration in November.  But I'm not sanguine about that either.  Our founding documents have become merely ornamental.  They  are interpreted to mean whatever those in power want them to mean.

The Commerce Clause is to be found in Section 8, Article I, of the U. S. Constitution.  It reads," The Congress shall have Power to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

Congress, then, has the constitutionally-based power to regulate interstate commerce.  But it seems to this concerned citizen — who is no constitutional scholar — that one cannot regulate what does not exist.  If there is some interstate commerce taking place between, say, California and Arizona, then congress by the above clause has the power to regulate it.  But if no commerce is taking place, then there is nothing to regulate.  Now if I choose not to purchase health insurance, then my not buying it is surely not a bit of commerce.  So there is nothing to regulate, and my non-buying does not fall under the Commerce Clause even if, by some argumentative stretch, the buying of health insurance involves interstate commerce. 

Or do you think something can be regulated into existence?  Can my buying of health insurance be regulated into existence?  The very notion is incoherent.

Ah, but "The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes . . . ." (Section 8) and so all we have to do is call the Obamacare individual mandate a tax, and we get what we want.  After all, the PoMo Prez and his enablers  can use words to mean whatever they want depending on what promotes their agenda.

The underlying principle here is the lack of any principle limiting governmental expansion.  The essence of the totalitarian Left — and of course the Left is totalitarian by its very nature — is the lack of any limiting principle.  And so, if the individual mandate cannot be rammed through via specious reasoning from the Commerce Clause, then some other justification must be found, however specious and mendacious it may be.  Instead of evaluating for constitutionality a law that is presented for evaluation, one can simply rewrite the law, changing the mandate to a tax.

It is interesting to speculate as to what caused Chief Justice Roberts to cave to the Left.  My man Prager adduces the power of liberal intimidation.

Dennis Prager on High Self Esteem

I like Dennis Prager, but he is sometimes sloppy in his use of language.  He will often say that high self esteem is not a value, or words to that effect. It sounds as if he is against people having high self esteem.  But what he really wants to oppose, or rather what he ought to oppose, is not self esteem or high self esteem, but the silly notion of many liberals that high self esteem is  a value, a good thing, regardless of whether or not it is grounded in any actual accomplishment.

Suppose my high self-esteem, in general, or in some particular respect, is justified by actual achievement.  Then I am entitled to my high self esteem, and my  having it is a good.  When a person of high achievement suffers from low self esteem we consider that an unfortunate state of affairs. 

Another example of Prager's sloppiness is his use of 'Ponzi scheme.'  He said one day on his show that the welfare state is a Ponzi scheme.  I know what he means, and what he means to say is true, but he ought to say what he means.  What he means is that the welfare state is economically unsustainable in the long run like a Ponzi scheme.  But if X is like Y, it doesn't follow that X is Y. 

Ponzi schemes are set up by people with fraudulent intent.  But neither the architects of the modern welfare state nor the architects of the Social Security system in particular had fraudulent intent.  Nor do current supporters of the welfare state or SS have fraudulent intent.  They really think that these schemes are good and workable.

Why is this important?  Well, because one ought not demonize one's opponents, or, less drastically,  impute to them unsavory motives, unless one has very good evidence of the unsavoriness of their motives.  I am not saying that one ought never impute evil motives to one's opponents, but that one ought to be very careful about doing so.

Language matters.

Another Hiker Lost in the Superstitions

Do as I say, not as I do.  Stay out of the rattlesnake infested inferno known as the Superstition Wilderness in summer!

I often hike alone in the Killer Mountains in the summer.  But I observe the following precautions:  I hydrate throughly before leaving the house and carry at least a gallon of water and enough gear and food to get me through the night if that should prove necessary; I carry a whistle and bright bandannas to attach to my hiking staff for signaling; and I stick to the itinerary that I leave with my wife, e.g., Black Mesa Loop, 9. 1 miles, out of First Water Trailhead, counterclockwise direction.  And of course I stay on the trail.  Don't go looking for the Lost Dutchman's gold.  There ain't no gold in them thar hills, but you could easily fall down a mine shaft.  Naturally you must start such a  hike at first light and be done with that ankle-busting 9 mile loop by about 10:00 AM.  Only a jackass with a death wish hikes in the middle of the day in these mountains in summer.

Here is a tale of three Utah fools who died two summers ago near Yellow Peak near the Black Mesa trail.  Here is Tom Kollenborn's account of when and where and by whom the bodies were recovered.

At the moment, one Kenny Clark of Gilbert, AZ has been missing since Sunday out of that same First Water T-head.  May the Lord have mercy on him.

Here are my Five Ways of roasting your ass to a crisp in the Sonoran desert in summer.

Up for a hike?

Addendum (7/6):  Mr. Clark was found dead this morning, Friday, around 2 AM in Garden Valley about a mile and a half from the First Water trailhead where his car was parked.   Well, at least he died with his boots on.  He was found off trail.  That was one mistake.  Stay on the trail! The other was not leaving an itinerary with his wife.  According to a radio report, this is the second time the poor woman has had a husband die on her while hiking.

 

Protestants, Catholics, Purgatory, Inerrancy and Related Topics

My last post drew a number of e-mail responses.  Here is one, by Joshua Orsak.  Subheadings added.  The ComBox is open in case Professor Anderson, or anyone, cares to respond.
 
Purgatory
 
First I'd like to make a quick note on purgatory. Purgatory is found in the Apocrypha, the 10 or so books of the Bible found in the Septuagint, the Hellenized Jews' Scriptures and not in the Hebrew Scriptures. You find it in Tobit 12:9, 2 Maccabees 12:43-45 and Ecclesiasticus 3:30. Protestants don't accept these scriptures as divinely inspired, but the Catholic faiths (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglo-Catholic, etc) do. I don't want to expound TOO much on arguments for including the Apocrypha, but I want to say this. The Jews did not canonize their scriptures until around 90 AD. They did this, in part, because the Septuagint, in particular the books we call the Apocrypha, were being used against them by the Christians in debates over Jesus' place as messiah. Ironically, Protestants later excluded the books because they are not included in the Jewish' canon. Anderson's point about purgatory is confused. The issue is not whether purgatory is found in the Bible but which scriptures should be included in the Bible at all.
 
BV:  Perhaps the point could be put like this:  The question whether purgatory is to be found in the Bible is not a well-defined question, and is therefore unanswerable, until we decide which books are canonical. "You tell me which books make up the Bible, and I will tell whether there is Biblical support for a doctrine of purgatory." 
 
Inerrancy
 
As to whether the Bible supports plenary inerrancy, in my opinion it does not do this consistently. The Bible is a collection of books that take a variety of positions on various theological issues. They are more like conversations around the Revelation of God to the Israelite people (and later the church) than the Revelation itself. The Bible is not the Revelation, but the record of The Revelation. Just to give an example, Jeremiah 28:7-9 modifies the conditions by which we test whether a prophet is genuine from an earlier set of conditions laid down in Deuteronomy 18:21-22. In the latter case we are told that a prophet is only a true prophet if his prophecy comes true. Jeremiah says that this is true only in the case of a prophet that prophecies peace. If a prophet gives you an oracle that you like, that is in line with what you want to hear, then his prophecy must come true or he was a false prophet. But Jeremiah insists that any prophet that challenges you or gives you a word of judgment, i.e., tells you what you do not want to hear, is a true prophet regardless of whether his prophecy comes true.
 
In the New Testament, the writers often quote passages out of context, and take them to mean something different than the original writers thought they meant. They take prophecies about the return from Babylon to Israel under Persian rule and talk about them as if they are messianic. This is not lying, from the writers' perspective. At the time the New Testament was written, it was believed that the truths behind scripture were hidden even to the original writers, and one needed the Spirit to guide one to dig into the hidden meaning behind the text. It is the Holy Spirit, and not scripture, that is primary in the New Testament, and it is guidance by the Spirit (rather than, say, the Pope) that gives credence to one's understanding of scripture. Jesus does this all the time in Matthew. He quotes scripture "you have heard it said" and then replaces or modifies it "but I say unto you…". Jesus has the authority to 'bind and loose' the law (to bind the law is to make it more strict, to loose it is to make it less strict, this was the pharisees' understanding of what a teacher was supposed to do). This authority derives from the Spirit. Just to give one example, think about Matthew 9:1-12. Jesus says that the allowance of divorce, found in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 did not derive from God but from Moses, clearly implying that not all of scripture comes from God alone. Jesus then goes to a rather ambiguous passage from Genesis to clarify what our attitude towards divorce should be.
 
The Danger of Bibliolatry
 
This is just the beginning of a sketch of a Biblical argument, but I'd say you are on firm BIBLICAL ground when you reject plenary inerrancy. There are certain passages that do seem to support that doctrine, but there are many, many more passages that indicate a vastly different way of approaching scripture. God should be the center of our theology, not a book. Experience and reason have to play a role. The Bible is not a constitution that restricts our limits our relationship with the Divine, it is rather a long and storied history of one people's (or two peoples') relationship with God and how God revealed Himself to them over an extended period of time. It includes their reflections on that revelation. It has a lot to say to us, and gives form and function to our own experience. Without it, we'd be starting pretty much from scratch. I love the Bible and it plays a central role in my relationship with God. But if it becomes the end-all be-all it becomes idolatrous in its own right. Bibliolatry is a subtle but I think very dangerous form of that terrible sin.
 
I find myself in broad agreement with Pastor Orsak.  Here is the slant on scripture I took in Four Slants on Scripture:
 
C. Scripture is a product of divine-human interaction. It exists contingently and does convey divine revelation. But it is not inerrant. It contains errors and defects that reflect the fact that it is a product of
divine-human interaction. God may be an impeccable transmitter, but we are surely not impeccable receivers.  There will be plenty of human 'noise' mixed in with the divine 'signal.'  God is not the author of the Bible, various human beings are the authors, but some of these at some times are writing under inspiration and thus are drawing truths from a transcendent source. Although the Book contains divine revelation, it is not the Last Word. Nor is it impossible that divine revelation is to be found in such writings as the Bhagavad-Gita and the Dhammapada, not to mention 'inspired' philosophers such as Plato and Plotinus.

The Bible as the Christian Faith’s ‘Constitution’

James N. Anderson has a thought-provoking post entitled Ecclesial Activism.  A key idea is that the Bible is to the Christian  faith as the U. S. constitution is to the U. S. government.  And just as judicial activism is a Bad Thing, so is ecclesial activism.  The Roman Catholic Church comes in for a drubbing as the main engine of ecclesial activism:

If the Bible didn’t say something something that the bishops wanted it to say, or thought it should say, they could claim to “discover” new doctrines in the Bible — purgatory, indulgences, apostolic succession, papal infallibility, etc. — and no one would have power to overrule them.

Adapting the candid statement of Chief Justice Hughes, today’s Roman Catholic might well put it thus: “We are under the Bible, but the Bible is what the Pope says it is.” In fact, that’s exactly how things stand in practice. Functionally the Pope has become the highest governing authority in his church: higher even than the Bible. The church has been derailed by “ecclesial activism”.

I find it rather ironic then that in recent years a number of politically conservative evangelicals (J. Budziszewski, Francis Beckwith, and Jay Richards are three prominent examples) have swum the Tiber. Presumably they take a dim view of judicial activism. Shouldn’t they be equally averse to ecclesial activism?

When it comes to ecclesiology, Protestants are the true conservatives and the true constitutionalists.

Not being a theologian, I hesitate to comment on Anderson's post.  But I'll make a couple of maverick comments.  First, if a doctrine of purgatory cannot be found in the Bible, then I would consider that to be a lacuna in the Bible. The doctrine strikes me as not only extremely reasonable but also necessary:  at death, almost none of us will be ready for the divine presence, and yet some us will not deserve hell.  Therefore . . . . 

On the topic of indulgences and papal infallibility, I too find these doctrines untenable if not absurd, but not so much because they cannot be found in the Bible — assuming that is true — but for philosophical reasons.  The idea that there is an economy of salvation that can be quantified and regulated  and administered is the rankest superstition.

So you see my  bias:  I don't understand sola scriptura and I reserve the right to think for myself.  Question:  Is the sola scriptura principle itself scripturally based?  I apologize if that, to the cognoscenti, is a cheap-shot question.

It is worth noting in passing that it was his inability to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility that was the main cause of Franz Brentano's leaving of the Catholic priesthood, and later, the church. See here.

Is Death an Evil or Not?

I go back and forth on this question.  I should be ashamed of myself.  Forty years a philosopher and no fixed view on such a fundamental question?  What am I (not) being paid to do?  To gain some clarity, I will sketch some possible views.  I will also sketch the  view to which  I incline (despite my vacillation).

But first I define 'mortalist.'  A mortalist is someone who holds that we human beings are mortal, i.e., subject to the natural necessity of dying, both in body and in mind.  Accordingly, all human beings will eventually die, and when they do they will utterly cease to exist as individuals, even if they persist for a while after death as corpses or as smoke and ashes.  (By the way, I consider transhumanist dreams of immortality here below to be the worst sort of self-deluding, ultra-hubristic sci-fi nonsense.  Pox and anathema be upon this house of cards.)  For the mortalist, then, as I define the term, there is no natural immortality, as in Platonism, nor any supernatural immortality via divine agency as in Christianity. 

A. Views According to which Death is not an Evil

1. The first view, that of the pessimistic mortalist, we can label 'Silenian.'  On this view, death is not an evil because it removes us from a condition which on balance is not good, a condition which on balance is worse than nonexistence.  This is the wisdom, if wisdom it is,  of Silenus, reported by Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus, ll. 1244 ff.) and quoted by Nietzsche in The Birth ofTragedy, section
3:

There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him.  When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man.  Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words:  "O wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing.  But the second best for you is — to die soon."

Better never to have been born, but here we are.  So second best is to die as soon as possible.  Death is not an evil, but a good, since it releases us from an evil condition, that of being alive.

2. The second view is that of Epicurus. On the Epicurean view, death is not an evil for the one who dies because when death is, one is not, and when one is, death is not.  My being dead is not an evil state of affairs for me (though it may be for others) because there is no such state of affairs (STOA) as my being dead. There is no such STOA because when I am dead there is no bearer of the property of being dead.  And there being no such STOA entails that it it cannot be an evil STOA, or a good one for that matter.

I must point out that some find this reasoning sophistical.  Well, if it is, is is not obviously sophistical.  Some of the complexities of the reasoning are explored in a number of posts collected in the Death and Immortality and Epicureanism categories.  I can't go into this now since this post is mainly just taxonomic.

The Epicurean line is consistent with life affirmation. The Epicurean is not saying that being dead is good and being alive evil; he is saying that being dead is not evil.  It is not evil because it is axiologically neutral.  The Epicurean is therefore also committed to saying that being dead is not a good.

The Silenian pessimist renders a negative value verdict on life as a whole:  it's no good; better never to have been born, with  second best being to die young.  By contrast, the Epicurean's point is that the ontology of the situation makes it impossible for death to be an evil for the one who has died. 

3.  Platonism.  For the Silenian, death  is not evil because it releases one from life, which is evil.  For the Epicurean death is not  evil because the decedent is nonexistent, hence removed from all goods and evils.  One cannot experience loss, or suffer in any way, if one does not exist.  On the Platonic view death is also not an evil but for a different reason: death is release of the naturally immortal soul (the person in his essence) from embodiment.  From a sub-standard 'cave-like' existence, the soul is freed to enjoy a true existence.  On Platonism, the true self continues to exist post mortem in better conditions. 

4. Illusionism.  Whether or not actually held by anyone, there is the possible view according to which  dying and being dead are illusions.  If so, then how can they be evil?  The enlightened sage sees through the veil of maya and recognizes his true identity as the deathless Atman (=Brahman).  We don't exist as separate individuals and we don't die as separate individuals. I am the eternal Atman, and as such deathless. Moksha, enlightenment, liberation,  is to realize  my identity with the eternal Atman thereby seeing through the illusion of separateness.  For some puzzles relating to moksha, see here.

5. The view to which I incline.  Although the process of dying for most of us won't be easy, physically or mentally, the evil of dying is outweighed by the good of being dead, the good of being released from a predicament which is plainly unsatisfactory, whether or not we survive our bodily deaths as individuals.   One aspect of the unsatisfactoriness of our present predicament — and it is indeed a predicament — is our deep ignorance, an ignorance that in some takes the form of delusion.  (We are de-luded, played for fools, by a world which obtrudes itself upon us as the ne plus ultra of reality when calm reflection shows that it can be no such thing.) 

If you deny that this life is plainly unsatisfactory, and can in the end offer us nothing that truly satisfies, then you live on a different planet and I can't help you except to refer you to Buddha, and the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, and Plato, and Augustine, and Thomas a Kempis, and Schopenhauer, and a thousand other philosophers and sages East and West.

Mine is not the position of the pessimistic mortalist, the Silenian, because I am neither an out-and-out pessimist nor a mortalist.  Life is not thoroughly bad, but a mixture of good and bad, a chiaroscuro of axiological light and shade if you will.  It's not all night and fog; there is daybreak and sunshine and thus intimations of Elsewhere.  And if this life is a vale of soul-making, as I am inclined to think, then it is instrumentally good.

Mine is not the Epicurean position because I am not a mortalist.

Mine  is not the Platonic position because I do not dogmatically affirm the immortality of the soul.  (By 'Platonic' I do not mean the actual views of Plato, whatever they were, but something much broader and caricature-like.)  I maintain merely that belief in it is rationally acceptable.  The rationality of the belief supports the hope that we may come to learn in death what we cannot learn in life.  On this view death is not an evil but an adventure into Shakespeare's "undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns." (Hamlet's soliloquy.)  Death is an adventure, and one to be embraced and prepared for, given that one has perceived that this world has nothing much to offer us.

The poet and drunkard Dylan Thomas had it exactly wrong when he advised not going gently into that good night but raging, raging against the dying of the light.  I liked his famous lines (which I did not just now quote but paraphrase) when I was an adolescent, but I have put aside childish things.

Peter Lupu once asked me why, if I believe that being dead is good insofar as it is a release from this unsatisfactory predicament, I take such good care of myself.  My answer follows from what I have said.  This vale of tears is also a vale of soul-making.  So I need to 'do my time.'  (Here, in nuce, is an argument against suicide.)  I need more time here below to earn merit and make up for earlier transgressions.  I need more time to complete my philosophical projects and prepare for death.  No reasonable person embarks upon a long journey to a foreign land, there to take up permanent residence, without adequate preparations.  How foolish, then, not to prepare for the journey to Shakespeare's "undisovered country"?  You say there is no such "undiscovered country"?  Well, then you need to inquire into the grounds of your belief.  Or do you hold beliefs about matters of the utmost importance thoughtlessly?

B. Views According to Which Death is an Evil

6.  Optimistic Mortalism.  Death is an evil because life is unqualifiedly good and death deprives us of it.  Does this need refutation?

7.  Christian Mortalism.  Death is an evil because we were intended to live in an embodied state forever in paradise with God.  But now we are under sentence of death due to Adam's sin.  Death was not intended by God but is a punishment for Adam's sin.  Death, though an evil, is yet a portal to eternal life for those who accept Jesus as savior.  So Chrisitan mortalism is not mortalism full-strength as I defined it at the outset, but a mitigated mortalism which pins its hopes on supernatural divine agency and the resurrection of the body.