declarative versus interrogatory versus …
Sorta apropos … mostly funny. (via del.icio.us)
Was reading the introduction to an edition of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics while sitting outside a café. (It’s for a class; not for pleasure, though I appreciate being told to read it.)
At the table next to me two fellows were talking and it quickly became obvious that they were evangelical Christians. They were discussing their faith and reading passages from the Bible, trading anecdotes of flaws in the fossil record, and generally musing on the virtues of Jesus and God.
I rubbernecked shamelessly. Not watching them, but I couldn’t stop myself from eavesdropping. I wondered why I treated their conversation like a car wreck, and realized that my reaction would be pretty offensive. Images of Bill Oreilly and America’s purported War on Christianity and so on … yup, er, I guess that’s me?
What I came up with in response was that it was the cult-like quality of their beliefs. It’s not that they ground their worldview in any particular set of beliefs, but that they ground it exclusively in a set of beliefs. To the absolute exclusion of everything else. At one point I overheard something to like “Buddhism, Hinduism, Daoism … I mean, I’m sure they can be helpful to people. But I feel better knowing that I’m worshipping the one who is really responsible for all of this.”
Not so compelling as a rational justification for Christianity, but of course emotional validations don’t need to be logical. Granted, of course, his was a magnificently tolerant position compared to what’s possible when religion and herdism join forces.
Anyway, it was sort of funny, sitting between the two parallel but very different lines of inquiry: what is moral? what is just? what is the highest good? asks Aristotle. “Worshipping God and Jesus in fellowship,” answers the guys at the next table. The main difference between Aristotle and evangelical Christianity seems to be that Aristotle and non-religious lines of inquiry in general ask questions. Religion, in the extreme, gives answers.
As I’ve said here before, I think truth and certainty are sort of like space and time, or alternatively, like silly putty: squash one direction and it expands to compensate in some other direction. There’s some fundamental constant that is preserved. The closer you get to certainty, the further you are perforce from truth in some sense. And vice versa.
As I was listening to these gentlemen, I started to understand the seduction of their certainty. “They were so confident and happy …” I overheard one of them say about, I think, members of a particular church. Well, that does sound nice, doesn’t it? I wondered what it would be like to be so absolutely certain of something. It would be so easy, I felt, to accept the answers given by God to men, the strength of knowing beyond doubt that you are in the right, that there is a comprehensible order to the world and that you understand it and have taken your place in it.
A woman leaving the café sneezed loudly, twice. Embarrassed, she smiled at an old man who sits motionless outside in the sun everyday for hours, eyes closed, brow wrinkled. I’d never seen him smile. His wrinkled leather face broke into a grin for the woman and it was sort of beautiful. Thought dropped away and I wondered if maybe neither truth nor certainty matter, that both the seduction of security and the nobility of questioning are illusions, because—perhaps, as the contemplative traditions say—nothing exists but the moment anyway. Thought dropped away and it seemed like both Aristotle and these folks’ version of Christianity are flailing attempts to placate the mind and the emotions, both bound to be fruitless because the mind and emotions are fleeting and impermanent when compared to the moment, which is always present.
Hmm. Anyway. Whatever …
April 7th, 2007 at 10:34 pm
The difference being that one is a closed system and the other is open. I’ll take the open one, thanyouverymuch.
I would feel much better if scientists would stop saying that Darwinism is unequivocal fact and start saying that this is a very strong theory that holds up under rigorous testing and academic research. Scientific dogma is just as bad as blind faith. This way we could take back the ideological weapon being used by Creationists that scientists are not open-minded. We all need to learn to embrace process and stop searching for finality.
There’s also a difference between “Christians” and “Evangelical Christians.” I respect the former for finding a moral anchor and form of inspiration that works for them and their family. The latter I find utterly distasteful, destructive, ignorant, and, frankly, weak.
I was thinking about this whole issue when I saw a recent panel discussion on global warming. My thought was that, particularly in the environment I’m living in now, I’m realizing that at the level of “culture” there is no right and wrong. There are systems that function based on agreed mores. I could *believe* that western logic is better than eastern relativism. But I can’t claim that objectively. Coming back to the subject… Religion is another form of culture. I can’t say it’s wrong because I’m not inside it. I really, really wish I could, but I can’t.
But with global warming, I think the planet is going to have to start embracing a bit more reason into their worldviews, regardless of perspective. Because GM goes beyond culture and becomes a problem that we’ll all have to see with the same sets of eyes, maybe we can start to integrate more scientific thinking in how we interact across cultures. I think this may be the first time in history we’ve had to do this. Maybe this will help bring a form of collective work ethic that has to do with being human rather than being a member of a particular tribe or belief.
Sorry, kinda strayed from your topic there.
April 15th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Faith is faith, whether in God or in scientific observation. It is, I think, part of the human condition that perceptions are ordered on the basis of some conditioned matrix of experience, no more examinable than the interior of a black hole. If one breaks through into the realm of awareness that is detached from faith, so is one detached from all of the concerns that faith addresses, and action in the world is not a concern in that state of mind (or being). It takes faith to hunt and gather, to farm, to procreate, and to use the Internet. So I am agreeing with the notion that you chooses your faith and you takes your chances. Man does not live by faith alone; he must have beer–and science, tradition, culture and religion all teach us to make beer.
April 20th, 2007 at 4:09 am
I agree to a point. I guess it depends on the definition of faith. It’s what I meant by open versus closed. Yes, scientists have faith in their method, but I think there’s an institution of scrutiny there whose purpose is to tweak the instruments of observation to make things more open to criticism, not to mention peer review, publishing, etc.
I have plenty of faith in beer. It rarely lets me down.