Category: Religion

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes ?

Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Feynd is slee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

No stait in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker,
Wavis this wardlis vanitie;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

(William Dunbar c. 1460 — c. 1520, from "Lament for the Makers.")

Here lie I by the chancel door;
They put me here because I was poor.
The further in, the more you pay,
But here lie I as snug as they.

(Devon tombstone.)

Here lies Piron, a complete nullibiety,
Not even a Fellow of a Learned Society.

Alexis Piron, 1689-1773, "My Epitaph"

Why hoard your maidenhead? There'll not be found
A lad to love you, girl, under the ground.
Love's joys are for the quick; but when we're dead
It's dust and ashes, girl, will go to bed.

(Asclepiades, fl. 290 B.C., tr. R. A. Furness)

The world, perhaps, does not see that those who rightly engage in
philosophy study only death and dying. And, if this be true, it
would surely be strange for a man all through his life to desire
only death, and then, when death comes to him, to be vexed at it,
when it has been his study and his desire for so long.

Plato, Phaedo, St. 64, tr. F. J. Church

An Example of a Religion Without Superstition

John Pepple has written an excellent post in which he sketches a religion free of superstitious elements, thereby showing that there is nothing in the nature of religion — assuming that religion has a nature — that requires that every religion be wholly or even in part superstitious.  Here is his sketch:

1. God exists.
2. Upon creating, God placed all sentient beings in heaven.
3. Some of us sinned and were sent to our universe for punishment.
4. There is no intervention by God in our universe, because that would interfere with the punishment.
5. After we die, we either regain heaven or are reincarnated.
6. We regain heaven not through worship of God but by good behavior, by treating other sentient beings right. In other words, we regain heaven by merit and not by grace.

As I suggested  in Religion and Superstition, the bare belief that there are supernatural beings is not superstitious.  Without essaying a logically impeccable definition of 'superstitious belief' (very difficult if not impossible), I would say that a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of a belief's being superstitious is that it entail one or more erroneous beliefs about the causal structure of nature.  I have seen Catholic baseball players  make the sign of the cross before stepping up to the plate.  That bit of (disgusting) behavior is evidence of a superstitious belief:  clearly the gesture in question has no tendency to raise the probability of connecting with the ball.  Or consider the plastic dashboard Jesus that I mentioned before.    The belief that the presence of this hunk of plastic will ward off automotive mishap is superstitious, and a person who occurrently or dispositionally has many beliefs like this is a superstitious person.

But what if the person believes, not that the piece of plastic will protect him, but that the purely spiritual person represented will protect him by intervening in nature?  That too is arguably superstitious, though not as egreuiously superstitious as the first belief.  One might argue like this:

a. The physical domain is causally closed.
b. The belief that Jesus will intervene in the workings of nature should one, say, have a blow-out is an erroneous belief about the physical domain.
Ergo
c. The belief in question is superstitious.

To make things hard for the religionist  suppose we just assume the causal closure of the physical domain:  every event in the physical universe that has a cause has a physical cause, and every effect of a physical cause is a physical event.  The idea is that no causal influence can enter or exit the physical domain.  That the physical domain is causally closed is neither obvious nor a principle of physics.  It is a philosophical thesis with all the rights, privileges, and debilities pertaining thereunto.

But even if causal closure is true, it doesn't rule out the existence of a wholly immaterial God who sustains the universe at every instant but never intervenes in its law-governed workings.  As far as Pepple and I can see there is nothing superstitious in the belief that such a God exists.  So there is nothing supersitious about Pepple's (1).

I read his (2) as the claim that God creates purely spiritual beings who exist in a purely spiritual domain.  Please note that sentience does not entail having physical sense organs.  For example literal visual seeing does not require the existence of physical eyes. In out-of-body experiences, subjects typically have visual experiences that are not routed through the standard-issue optical transducers in their heads.  And yet they literally (and arguably veridically) see physical things, e.g., the little bald spot on the top of a surgeon's head. 

Ad (3).  How do we get sent into this penal colony of a world?  We are born into it: the preexistent soul begins to inhabit an animal organism.  Soul in this sense is of course not an Aristotleian animating principle or a Thomistic anima forma corporis, but a Platonic soul.  But wouldn't the attaching of a pre-existent soul to an already living organism involve some violation of causal closure?  Not obviously.  But this is a deep question. (I now invoke the blogospheric privilege entailed by the 'Brevity is the soul of blog.')

Pepple's is a rather 'thin' religion but I think it illustrates nicely how religion and superstition can be decoupled.  For his is a belief system that counts as a religion but is clearly not superstitious.

What we need to make this really clear are definitions of 'religion' and 'superstition' ('pseudo-religion').  But definitions in this area are very difficult to come by.  And it may be that religion and superstition are both family-resemblance concepts that are insusceptible of rigorous definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions of application.

On the Mormon Concept of God

I should thank (or perhaps blame) Spencer Case for sidetracking me into the thickets of Mormon metaphysics.  But I have no cause to complain seeing as how my motto is "Study everything, join  nothing."  Earlier I made a preliminary response to some of Spencer's concerns about the "facelessness" of the full Anselmian conception of deity.  Here I am not concerned to defend that conception in all its aspects.  Indeed, I will concede arguendo all of the following for the space of this post:  divine simplicity is incoherent; divine simplicity is inconsistent with the doctrine of the Trinity; the latter doctrine is incoherent; and so is the doctrine of the Incarnation. I make these concessions to focus the issue and to make clear that my interest as a philosopher is neither apologetic nor polemical.  I want to put Blake Ostler and other Mormons at ease: I am not here interested in attacking their faith or defending the sort of God conception found in Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas.  Philosophy is first and foremost inquiry; its purpose is not to attack or defend any worldview.  It does not exist to shore up or legitimate antecedently accepted worldviews or ideologies. (So it is not ancilla theologiae, not the handmaiden of theology or of natural science or of anything else.)  Religions are worldviews; philosophy as inquiry is no more a worldview than is mathematics or physics.  It is also important to note that if the Augustine-Anselm-Aquinas conception is incoherent it doesn't follow that the Mormon conception is coherent: they could both be incoherent.

The issue I will discuss is precisely whether the following assertion by A. A. Howsepian is true:  ". . . nothing countenanced by Mormon metaphysicians could possibly count as God." ("Are Mormons Theists?" Religious Studies, vol. 32, no. 3, Sept. 1996, p. 367)  Since I am not familiar with the particulars of Mormon doctrine, I will simply assume that they are what Blake T. Ostler says they are in his response to Howsepian in  "Worshipworthiness and the Mormon Concept of God," Religious Studies, vol. 33, no. 3 (Sept. 1997), pp. 315-326.  So what I will be doing is examining Ostler's view of the the Mormon conception of God with an eye to deciding whether it is an adequate God conception.

1. The Anselmian Criterion  of Deity

Obviously, not just anything could count as God.  So we need a criterion of deity.  According to the Anselmian criterion, which both Howsepian and Ostler accept, at least in the main, it is a matter of broadly logical necessity that nothing could count as God that is not the greatest conceivable being (GCB).   The Anselmian provenience of this notion is clear: God is "that than which no greater can be conceived."  The greatness of the GCB consists in its unsurpassibility in respect of all perfections or great-making properties.  The GCB possesses all great-making properties and the highest degree of those that admit of degrees.  Among these properties are the traditional omni-attributes, e.g. omniscience.  Only the GCB is an adequate object of worship.

Let's note that if a being is unsurpassable by any being distinct from itself it does not follow that it is unsurpassable, period.  For it might be "self-surpassable in some respects." (Ostler 315) Obviously, a being that was unsurpassable by any other but self-surpassable could not be actus purus inasmuch as it would have to  harbor unrealized potentialities.  We ought therefore to distinguish an unmodified and a modified GCB criterion:

Unmodified:  If a being counts as God, then that being is unsurpassable in point of perfection by any being, including itself.

Modified:  If a being counts as God, then that being  is unsurpassable in point of perfection by any being distinct from itself.

2.  Does the Mormon God Satisfy the Modified Anselmian Criterion?

It is obvious that the Mormon God cannot satisfy the unmodified  criterion since that criterion leads to the ontologically simple God in whom there is no composition of any kind, whether of form and matter, act and potency, essence and existence, supposit and attributes.  Since Mormons can reasonably reject ontological simplicity, they needn't be fazed by the unmodified criterion.  Ostler maintains, however, that the Mormon concept of God can satisfy the modified criterion.  It may have a chance of doing so if 'God' is construed as 'Godhead.'  (319).  This Godhead, Ostler tells us, is the one supreme being. (319)  If henotheism is the view that there is at least one God, then the Mormon view as Ostler presents it is henotheistic.  If monotheism is the view that there is exactly one God, then the Mormon view is not monotheistic.  Ostler tells us that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three distinct Gods. (319) So there are at least three distinct Gods in the Mormon pantheon, which prevents the view from being strictly monotheistic.  They are nonetheless one Godhead in that the three "divine personages" are united "in love and unity." (320)

Each of the divine persons is "corporeal" and "located in a particular space-time." (320)  The Godhead, however, is not corporeal, at least if Godhead is the same as Godhood.  Ostler employs both of these terms without explaining whether or how they differ.  (320) My impression is that he is using them interchangeably.  If that is right, then Godhead/Godhood is not corporeal.  This is because ". . . Godhood refers to the immutable set of properties necessary to be divine. There is only one Godhood or divine essence in this sense." (320-321, emphasis in original)  Presumably, an immutable set of properties is not corporeal.  The same goes for a set of immutable properties, and a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are immutable properties.

How are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost related?  They are related in a "relationship of divine love" which is "contingent and not necessary." (321) It is contingent because "Love is a voluntary attitude freely chosen." (321)  "The divine persons can kenotically empty themselves of the divine glory by separating themselves from the divine unity of the Godhead." (321)  Despite this ability of the persons to separate themselves from the unity of the Godhead,

. . . there always has been and always will be a God in the sense of divine persons united as one. The divine persons obviously can so plan that there will always be at least two joined as one to govern the universe. (321)

The individual divine persons are subject to "eternal progression," progression in knowledge, power and dominion.  (321) Does it follow that "Godhead as a whole" or "God-as-divine-persons-in-relationship" is subject to eternal progression?  No it doesn't, says Ostler, and to think otherwise would be to commit the fallacy of composition.  This is the fallacy with which Ostler taxes Howsepian. 

3. Preliminary Evaluation

My question is precisely this: Does the Mormon conception of God/Godhead, as explained by Ostler, satisfy the modifed Anselmian criterion?  The modified criterion requires that a candidate for GCB status  be necessarily unsurpassable by another, but allows the candidate to be self-surpassable in some respects.  Ostler tells us that

. . .there cannot be a greater being than God qua the divine persons united as one Godhead in Mormon thought.  God is necessarily unsurpassable by any other being. (323)

Here is one difficulty I am having.  Ostler claims that the divine persons are contingently related to each other.  It follows that the Godhead as the unity of the persons contingently exists. Please note that if x always existed and always will exist,it doesn't follow that x necessarily exists.  (If x exists at all times in the actual world, it does not follow that x exists in every possible world.)  If the divine persons "c an so plan that there will always be at least two joined as one" (321, emphasis added), it doesn't follow that they must so plan.  Now if the Godhead contingently exists, then there can be a greater being than "God qua the divine persons united as one Godhead," namely, a being having the same properties bu existing necessarily.

I conclude that the Mormon conception as explained by Ostler cannot satisfy the modified Anselmian criterion.  For whether God/Godhead is or is not self-surpassable, he must be a necessary being.  But he can't be a necessary being if the divine persons are merely contingently related. If they are contingently related, then they are possibly such as to be unrelated.  But if they are possibly such as to be unrelated, then their unity is possibly nonexistent, i.e. not necessary.  So it looks as if Howsepian is right in his claim that ". . . nothing countenanced by Mormon metaphysicians could possibly count as God."

Does Ostler have an escape via his talk of Godhood as opposed to Godhead?  (320-321) Godhood or "the divine essence" is "the immutable set of properties necessary to be divine."  This set counts as a necessary being unlike Godhead which we have seen is a contingent being.  But although metaphysically necessary, Godhood cannot be the one God who is "the governing power of the enture universe."  For no such abstract object as a set can play that role.  But, to be charitable, I won't hold Ostler to his talk of a 'set.'  Let us take him to mean a conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are the divine attributes.  It too is a necessary being, but it too is causally impotent and cannot be the governing power of the entire universe. 

In sum, Godhead is powerful but contingent while Godhood is necessary but powerless.  To satisfy the modified Anselmian criterion, Ostler needs a being that is both necessary and powerful. 

Obama’s Assault on Religious Liberty

Quotable:

Here is what is particularly worrisome: the state seems no longer satisfied with a slow but steady evolution toward secularity; it is aggressively forcing Catholic hospitals off the stage, for it is creating for them an impossible situation. If they cave in and provide insurance for these verboten procedures, they have effectively de-Catholicized themselves; and if they refuse to provide such insurance, they will be met with fines of millions of dollars, which they cannot possibly pay.

In either case, they are forced out of business as Catholic. And this seems, sadly, to be precisely what the Obama administration wants.

At the University of Notre Dame, on the occasion of his receiving (controversially enough) an honorary degree of laws, President Obama publicly and vociferously pledged that he would provide for a "conscience clause" for those who wanted, for religious reasons, to opt out of a policy they find objectionable. But with this recent mandate, he has utterly gone back on his word.

The secularist state recognizes that its principle [sic! read 'principal'] enemy is the Church Catholic. Accordingly, it wants Catholicism off the public stage and relegated to a private realm where it cannot interfere with secularism's totalitarian agenda. I realize that in using that particular term, I'm dropping a rhetorical bomb, but I am not doing so casually.

It's not a rhetorical bomb but the plain truth.  The Left is totalitarian by its very nature, a nature  manifested every day.  The author ought to ask himself whether it makes sense to be so polite and civil toward an administration that is not only the enemy of what he represents, but also mendacious in its hiding of that fact.

John Hick

John Hick has negotiated that mysterious transition that awaits us all.  Here is one take on his passing.  I saw him in action only once.  I recall him questioning whether Jesus ever claimed to be God.  An ill-mannered colleague of mine attacked him for that, churlishly.  Hick retained his equaninimity, projecting a superiority that was yet without a trace of superciliousness.  That impressed me and furnished me with yet another insight into the hierarchy of the spirit and the inequality of human beings. 

Hick's An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent is required reading for philosophers of religion.  I have two posts on Hick.

John Hick on Religious and Naturalistic Definitions of Religion

No Provision in Islam for Mosque-State Separation

Religion and Superstition

Julian Baggini asks: Can a religion survive being stripped of its superstitions?

Baggini does not tell us explicitly what he understands by  'superstition,' but the context suggests that he takes the term to apply to any and all supernatural elements in a religion, whether these be beliefs, practices, or posits such as God and the soul.  The supernatural, in turn, is anything beyond or 'outside of' the system of space-time-matter, or anything that makes reference to such things.   God conceived of as a bodiless person, as in mainstream Western monotheism,  would then count as a supernatural being.  Accordingly, belief that such a person exists would count as a superstitious belief, and prayer in all its forms (petitionary, intercessory, contemplative, etc.) would count as a superstitious practice.

Supposing (counterfactually) that this is true, one might be tempted to make the journey to the East in quest of a religion free of superstition.  One of Baggini's points is that Buddhism as actually practiced by millions is rife with it, as witness motorized prayer wheels, etc.  Baggini's main thesis is that a religion stripped of supernatural elements ceases to be a religion.  A Buddhism naturalized, a Buddhism disembarrassed of all such elements, is no longer a religion but something acceptable to secularists and atheists, "a set of beliefs and practices to cultivate detachment from the impermanent material world and teach virtues such as compassion and mindfulness." 

Baggini's claim is that what is specifically religious about a religion are its superstitious beliefs, practices, and posits.  To put it another way, every religion is essentially superstitious.  But of course 'superstitious' is an adjective of disapprobation: a superstitious belief is  a false or groundless belief; a supersitious practice is one that is ineffectual; a superstitious posit is one that does not exist.  So in claiming that religion is essential superstitious, Baggini is claiming that it is essentially false, ineffectual, and devoid of reference to reality.

Of course, I disagree.  For one thing, I reject what Baggini assumes: naturalism.  But I also disagree because he rides roughshod over a fairly elementary distinction.

There is religion and there is pseudo-religion.  Superstition is pseudo-religion.  That adherents of religions are often superstitious in their beliefs and practices is undeniable.  But to the extent that they are superstitious they are pseudo-religious.

Let's consider an example. A believer places a plastic Jesus icon on the dashboard of her car. It seems clear than anyone who believes that a piece of plastic has the power to ward off automotive danger is superstitious. A hunk of mere matter cannot have such magical properties. Superstition in this first sense seems to involve a failure to understand the causal structure of the world or the laws of probability. A flight attendant who attributes her years of flying without mishap to her wearing of a rabbit's foot or St. Christopher's medal is clearly superstitious in this first sense. Such objects have no causal bearing on an airplane's safety.  It is magical thinking to attribute to bits of plastic and metal the powers the superstitious attribute to them.

But no sophisticated believer attributes powers to the icon itself, or to a relic, or to any material thing qua material thing. The sophisticated believer distinguishes between the icon and the spiritual reality or person it represents.  

Well, what about the belief that the person represented will ward off danger and protect the believer from physical mishap? That belief too is arguably, though not obviously, superstitious in a second and less crass sense. Why should the Second Person of the Trinity care about one's automotive adventures? Does one really expect, let alone deserve, divine intervention for the sake of one's petty concerns? How can religion, which is about metanoia — change of mind/heart — be justifiably hitched to the cart of the mundane ego?

I don't think it can be denied that much petitionary and intercessory prayer is superstitious.   Someone who prays to win the lottery is superstitious  as is a person who, upon winning, exclaims, 'There is a God after all.'   The nauseating egotism of such a remark is antithetical to genuine religion.  But suppose I pray for a friend who has contracted a deadly disease.  I pray, not for some divine intervention into the course of nature, but that he be granted the courage to endure his treatments, and should they fail, the courage to accept his death with hope and trust and without rancour or bitterness.  It is not obvious that such an intercessory prayer (or a similar petitionary prayer should I be the sick man) is superstitious despite its invocation of a transcendent power to grant courage and equanimity.  'May the Lord grant you peace' is a prayer for a spiritual benefit.  Unless one assumes naturalism — which would be question-begging–  there is nothing obviously superstitious or pseudo-religious about that.  An even better example would be, 'Let me see my faults as clearly as I see the faults of others.'  Such a prayer is a prayer for the weakening of the ego and to that extent not motivated by any crude materialism.

The sophisticated non-superstitious believer is not trying to achieve by magical means what can only be achieved by material means; he is aiming to achieve by spiritual means what cannot be achieved by material means but only by spiritual means. Perhaps we can characterize superstition as pseudo-spiritual  materialism.

Getting back to the icon on the dashboard:  what if the icon serves to remind the believer of her faith commitment rather than to propitiate or influence a godlike person for egoistic ends? Here we approach a form of religious belief that is not superstitious. The believer is not attributing magical powers to a hunk of plastic or a piece of metal. Nor is she invoking a spiritual reality in an attempt to satisfy petty material needs. Her belief transcends the sphere of egoic concerns.

To sum up.  Assuming that religion necessarily involves supernatural elements, religion and naturalism are incompatible.  So if naturalism is true, then religion is buncombe, a tissue of superstitions.  But there are powerful reasons for rejecting naturalism.  In any case, that all of religion is bunk is rather hard to swallow given its prevalence and usefulness.  (Here one can mount a pragmatic argument premised on the consensus gentium.)  It is a good bet that there is something true and right about a cultural and a symbolic  form that has won the adherence of so many distinguished people over all the earth in all the ages.  But if we are to make sense of religion as a cultural form that has a core of rightness to it, then we need the distinction between religion and pseudo-religion (superstition) — the very distinction that Bagini clumisly rides roughshod over.  (Can one ride in a clumsy fashion?)

Companion post: Grades of Prayer

 

Is Religion for the Weak?

We haven't heard much from Jesse Ventura recently, leastways not on the topic of religion, but I recall him some years ago saying in effect, 'Religion is for the weak!' at which provocation various religionists jumped up and retorted, 'No it's not!' Such knee-jerk opposition avails nothing. Ventura is in fact right. What Ventura doesn't appreciate, however, is that we are all weak. The correct response to Jesse 'The Body' Ventura is not one of diametrical  opposition but one of ju-jitsu-like concession.

We are all weak relative to a standard of true strength. We are weak  in body, in mind, in will. We vacillate in our affections. A body that   can lose its strength in a split-second due to a brain aneurysm, say, is only relatively, contingently, and temporarily strong. Such strength is nothing to crow about. Or is Ventura's strength so awesome that it is proof against every contingency? Can he maintain it indefinitely? Is he causa sui? If not, then why is he so proud of his prowess?

The great religions teach the simple truth about our weak and indigent condition. (Whether these religions provide a genuine solution to it is another question.) The proper counter to Ventura is to point out to him that the sense in which he thinks that religious people are weak is not the sense in which they know that we are all weak. Religion is  not a projection of the merely contingent weakness of some of us, but a sober recognition of the necessary weakness of all of us. Religion doesn't exist to make good the deficiencies that we can and must make  good by our own efforts, but to ameliorate the deep-going deficiencies  that none of us can ameliorate individually or collectively by our own efforts.

Cottingham, Wittgenstein, and the Religious Impulse

John Cottingham, On the Meaning of Life (Routledge 2003), p. 52:

     . . . the whole of the religious impulse arises from the profound
     sense we have of a gap between how we are and how we would wish to
     be . . . .

This is not quite right, as it seems to me, even if '"would wish to be" is read as "ought to be."   The sense of the gap  between 'is' and 'ought' is undoubtedly part of the religious impulse,  but there is more to it than this. It must be accompanied by the sense that the gaping chasm between the miserable wretches we are and what  we know we ought to be cannot be bridged by human effort, whether  individual or collective, but requires help from beyond the human-all-too-human.   Otherwise, the religious sensibility would  collapse into the ethical sensibility. There is more to religion than ethics. The irreligious can be aware of the discrepancy between what  we are and what we should be. The religious are convinced of the need for moral improvement together with a realization of their impotence in bringing it about by their own efforts.

I had an undergraduate professor whose symbol for religion was:

 Rx_symbol

I like that because it conveys that religion is for the sick.  And sick we are.  An awareness of our root sickness is an element in the religious sensibility.  Dubious as Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion is, he is absolutely on target in the following observation:

People are religious to the extent that they believe themselves to be not so much imperfect (unvollkommen), as ill (krank).  Any man who is half-way decent will think himself extremely imperfect, but a religious man thinks himself wretched (elend). (Culture and Value, U. of Chicago Press, 1980, tr. Winch, p. 45e, emphasis in original)

Dennett, Anthropomorphism, and the ‘Deformation’ of the God Concept

One of the striking features of Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Viking 2006) is that Dennett seems bent on having a straw man to attack. This is illustrated by his talk of the "deformation" of the concept of God: "I can think of no other concept that has undergone so dramatic a deformation." (206) He speaks of "the migration of the concept of God in the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) away from concrete anthropomorphism to ever more abstract and depersonalized concepts." (205)

Why speak of deformation rather than of reformation, transformation, or refinement? Dennett's view is that the "original monotheists" thought of God as a being one could literally listen to, and literally sit beside. (206) If so, the "original monotheists" thought of God as a physical being: "The Old Testament Jehovah, or Yahweh, was quite definitely a super-man (a He, not a She) who could take sides in battles, and be both jealous and wrathful." (206, emphasis in original). The suggestion here is that monotheism in its original form, prior to deformation, posited a Big Guy in the Sky, a human being Writ Large, something most definitely made in the image of man, and to that extent an anthropomorphic projection.

What Dennett is implying is that the original monotheistic conception of God had a definite content, but that this conception was deformed and rendered abstract to the point of being emptied of all content. Dennett is of course assuming that the only way the concept of God could have content is for it to have a materialistic, anthropomorphic content. Thus it is not possible on Dennett's scheme to interpret the anthropomorphic language of the Old Testament in a figurative way as pointing to a purely spiritual reality which, as purely spiritual, is neither physical nor human. Dennett thereby simply begs the question against every sophisticated version of theism.

Dennett seems in effect to be confronting the theist with a dilemma. Either your God is nothing but an anthropomorphic projection or it is is so devoid of recognizable attributes as to be meaningless. Either way, your God does not exist. Surely there is no Big Guy in the Sky, and if your God is just some Higher Power, some unknowable X, about which nothing can be said, then what exactly are you affirming when you affirm that this X exists? Theism is either the crude positing of something as unbelievable as Santa Claus or Wonder Woman, or else it says nothing at all.

Either crude anthropomorphism or utter vacuity.  Compare the extremes of the spectrum of positions I set forth in Anthropomorphism in Religion.

Dennett's Dilemma — to give it a name — is quite reasonable if you grant him his underlying naturalistic and scientistic (not scientific) assumptions, namely, that there is exactly one world, the physical world, and that (future if not contemporary) natural science provides the only knowledge of it. On these assumptions, there simply is nothing that is not physical in nature. Therefore, if God exists, then God is physical in nature. But since no enlightened person can believe that a physical God exists, the only option a sophisticated theist can have is to so sophisticate and refine his conception of God as to drain it of all meaning. And thus, to fill out Dennett's line of thought in my own way, one ends up with pablum  such as Tillich's talk of God as one "ultimate concern." If God is identified as the object of one's ultimate concern, then of course God, strictly speaking, does not exist. Dennett and I will surely agree on this point.

But why should we accept naturalism and scientism? It is unfortunately necessary to repeat that naturalism and scientism are not scientific but philosophical doctrines with all the rights, privileges, and liabilities pertaining thereunto. Among these liabilities, of course, is a lack of empirical verifiability. Naturalism and scientism cannot be supported scientifically. For example, we know vastly more than Descartes (1596-1650) did about the brain, but we are no closer than he was to a solution of the mind-body problem. Neuroscience will undoubtedly teach us more and more about the brain, but it takes a breathtaking lack of philosophical sophistication — or else ideologically induced blindness — to think that knowing more and more about the physical properties of a lump of matter will teach us anything about consciousness, the unity of consciousness, self-conciousness, intentionality, and the rest.

This is not the place to repeat the many arguments against naturalism.  Suffice it to say that a very strong case can be brought against it, a case that renders its rejection reasonable. (See J. P. Moreland's The Recalcitrant Imago Dei for one case against it.) Dennett's reliance on naturalism is thus dogmatic and uncompelling. Indeed, when he pins his hopes on future science and confesses his faith that there is nothing real apart from the system of space-time-matter, he makes moves analogous to the moves the theist makes who goes beyond what he can claim to know to affirm the existence of a spiritual reality within himself and beyond himself.

Dennett needs to give up the question-begging and the straw-man argumentation. His talk of the "deformation" of the God concept shows that he is unwilling to allow what he would surely allow with other subject-matters, namely, the elaboration of a more adequate concept of the subject-matter in question. Instead, he thinks that theists must be stuck with the crudest conceptions imaginable. Thinking this, he merely projects his own crude materialism into them.

Genuine religion is ongoing, open-ended and (potentially) self-correcting.  It is more quest  than conclusions.  We don't hold it against science that its practioners contradict each other over time and at times. That is because we understand that science is an ongoing project, open-ended and self-correcting.  That is the way we should treat religion as well.  If you protest that there are huge differences between religion and science and that the latter has been highly successful in securing consensus while the former has not, I will simply agree with you and chalk that up to the great difference in their respective subject-matters.

It is no surprise that natural science secures consensus: it has available to it the touchstone of sense experience.  We all have sense organs, while the same cannot be said of moral and spiritual 'organs.'

The Sudduth Surge Continues

Before I posted Michael Sudduth's open letter on Saturday, site traffic for the month was averaging between 1600-1900 page views per day;  yesterday, however, saw a surge — the Sudduth surge to give it a name — up to 2880, and now, at high noon Tuesday, I'm at 2200.  Meanwhile, the industrious Mr. Lull (cybernaut extraordinaire, etc. etc.) has supplied me with two further links on the topic.

Daniel Silliman, The Experience of Conversion as Always-Already Having Been.  From the title alone I know that Mr. Silliman has come under the influence of Heidegger:  'always already'  is a Heideggerism familiar to students of Sein und Zeit as immer schon.

And scroll down here for a review of Michael Sudduth, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology.

UPDATE (5 PM):  traffic for the day came to 2965 page views.  I thank you for your patronage.

Belief Change

The indefatigable Dave Lull, argonaut nonpareil of cyberspace, friend and facilitator of many a blogger, pointed me this morning to Triablogue where there is some commentary here and here of a mainly churlish sort on the recent conversion of Michael Sudduth.  Comments like those encountered there reinforce me in my view that comboxes are often better kept closed, except that our old friend Tony Flood did surface there and made a decent comment.  (I wouldn't be surprised if it was the industrious Lull who hipped Flood to the Triablogue posts.)

In any case, reading Flood's comment put me in mind of his main site and I wondered what was happening over there.  Well, it looks like old Tony himself has made a doxastic shift too, one  back to his origins:

I have returned to the Christian orthodoxy from which (this may come as a surprise to some of you) my thinking strayed. Those fields did not yield what they seemed to promise. The harvest of my intellectual discontent is still on display here, but henceforth new content will reflect my new-old interests.

My current priority is situate myself mentally within Christian orthodoxy, a matter that I do not think has been settled for me. I believe myself to be a member in good standing of the Roman Catholic communion within the Catholic Church, from whose fold I do not exclude Eastern Orthodox and Reformed Christians.

The distinguished members of Tony's Gallery of Heroes are now under quarantine.

Inasmuch as mature religion is more quest than conclusions, a truth  lost on the New Atheists and their cyberpunk auxiliary legions, belief change is to be expected and is often  a sign of a vital and sincere seeking for a truth which is hard for us in our present predicament to discern.  So my hat is off to Mike and Tony as the one swims the Ganges while the other refreshes himself in the Tiber.

Addendum 1/23:   Logging on this morning, I found three messages from Dave Lull and one from Tony Flood.  Lull apprises me of a second comment by Flood at Triablogue, a comment even better than the first, one that I have just now read, and mostly agree with.

Michael Sudduth Converts to Vaishnava Vedanta!

The New Year has brought me quite a lot of surprising e-mail, but the following missive wins the surprise prize.  (Since Dr. Sudduth has sent his open letter to numerous correspondents, and has posted it on his Facebook page, I feel entitled to post it here in its entirety without his explicit permission.)  Comments later, perhaps.  A fascinating document. 

Continue reading “Michael Sudduth Converts to Vaishnava Vedanta!”

John Haldane on Christopher Hitchens

The piece ends as follows (emphasis added):

Hitchens is a case worth studying. He is more interesting than Dawkins because evidently more psychologically complex and humanly engaging. If we Catholics are right about God and humanity, why was he so wrong? Or, put another way, what can we learn from his attitude about how to understand our own religious claims and about how our lives reflect them? Hitchens pointed to the record of evil associated with Christianity and with Catholicism in particular. It is glib to reply that humanism has its own tale of terrors, and problematic if we also claim that religious adherence brings transforming grace. If I were to take up Hitchens’s campaign against religion it would be to ask again and again: “Where is your grace and your holiness?”

This challenge has particular force against those who downplay human sinfulness and the extent of depravity. Not until we have taken seriously the idea that the effects of sin and ongoing sinfulness corrupt the soul will we be in a position to fashion an effective counter to the charges Hitchens brought against Catholicism and Christianity more generally. It will not be to say that we are better than he claimed. Rather, we need to explain effectively our failings and those of all humanity in terms of a shared supernatural identity. To which we might add, adapting a saying of Wilde’s, whose style of wit Hitchens sometimes echoed: “We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking to heaven in hope of salvation.”

Two comments. 

First, I don't find it at all glib to point out the horrors of atheistic humanism which in the 20th century alone are greater than those inflicted over 20 centuries of Christianity.  The purpose of pointing that out  is to underscore the fact that it is not religion as religion that is the source of the horrors, but dogmatic adherence to a worldview, whether religious or anti-religious,  that permits the suppression and murder of opponents.  Bigotry and hate have their source in the human heart, not in religion or in humanism.  Certain forms of religion and humanism may give carte blanche to the exercise of murderous impulsees, but the animating cesspool and prime mover ansd applier of doctrines is and remains the human heart.  It is a fundamental mistake of leftists to seek the source of evil in something external such as religion or capitalism when its source is in a mind made dark by a foul human heart.

But I wholly agree with Haldane that religious people need to explain why their beliefs and practices are so ineffective in transforming their character.  We all know people whose fervent religiosity has made scarcely  a dent in their fundamental nastiness.  Why does religion contribute so little to the amelioration of people?  Twenty centuries of Christianity and even more centuries of Buddhism and we are still tearing each other apart, body and soul.  As for glib remarks, Chesterton's takes the cake: "Christianity hasn't failed; it's never been tried." (Or something like that; I quote from memory.  If you have the exact quotation in its context with references, e-mail me.)  If it hasn't been tried by now, it will never be tried.

Of course, one can argue that the religious would have been worse without religion and I don't doubt that that is true.  And not only are the religious better than they would have been without it, the irreligious are also better than they would have been without it.  For religion supplies the morality that civilizes and humanizes, a morality that permeates the social atmosphere and affects even those who reject the metaphysical underpinnings.  Unfortunately, Western civilization now appears to be running on empty, on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian-Athenian  tradition, and one fears what happens when they too evaporate.  A good question for the New Atheists:  once your suppression of religion is complete, what will you put in its place?  How will you inculcate morality, and what morality will you inculcate?

Although Haldane does not mention the Fall by name, he alludes to it.  The explanation for religious inefficacy anent moral transformation has to involve the notion that man is a fallen being.  Although the religious are not much better than the irreligious, they at least appreciate their fallen condition.  They at least know they are in the gutter, and knowing this, are inclined to do something about it.

Addendum:  My thanks to several readers who have quickly responded with the correct G. K. Chesterton quotation. It is at the end of the following paragraph:

Of course, I mean that Catholicism was not tried; plenty of Catholics were tried, and found guilty. My point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen. But at the same time hostile elements had certainly begun to end it long before it could have done its work. In the nature of things it needed a common scheme of life and thought in Europe. Yet the mediaeval system began to be broken to pieces intellectually, long before it showed the slightest hint of falling to pieces morally. The huge early heresies, like the Albigenses, had not the faintest excuse in moral superiority. And it is actually true that the Reformation began to tear Europe apart before the Catholic Church had had time to pull it together. The Prussians, for instance, were not converted to Christianity at all until quite close to the Reformation. The poor creatures hardly had time to become Catholics before they were told to become Protestants. This explains a great deal of their subsequent conduct. But I have only taken this as the first and most evident case of the general truth: that the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. Mankind has not passed through the Middle Ages. Rather mankind has retreated from the Middle Ages in reaction and rout. The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.

It is from What 's Wrong with the World, Part I, Chapter 5.  I am now inclined to say, having seen the context, that my calling the quotation glib  was itself somewhat glib.