All posts by j'bug

I teach philosophy and build web pages.

the atheist and the creationist…

…make the same kind of mistake.

It’s an easy one, but it disturbs me. The mistake is constituted by shutting one eye or the other. Anybody familiar with using a microscope understands this. This may be passé for the moderns, but in the 1960s if you wished to record what you saw through the lens of the microscope, you would have to look into the microscope with one eye and record the observation with the other one. There’s a trick to it that takes some practice. The same kind of skill is required if you wish to fly an Apache helicopter. What is required is that with one eye, the pilot sees the real world, while with the other, they see what is presented to them through an eyepiece that shows the world differently.

It usually takes anywhere between 9 to 12 months for a young pilot to become “safe” enough not to kill himself accidentally during night flights (until then, young pilots fly with instructor pilot or a senior and experienced pilot who can take controls in case of disorientation).1

Though flying a microscope does not risk the life of the pilot, it requires concentration and can be mastered in a few hours or days.

The problem for the atheist and the creationist is that they have closed one eye while they observe their data. The atheist, by presupposition, cannot see the hand of God in the universe, or the Bible that tells about it. The creationist cannot see the real world, or the data that it presents. For both, the world is skewed, by presupposition, to avoid the possibility that data from the other sphere may inform their observation. As a consequence, though the richness of their chosen myopia enthralls them, they are unable to see the world in its living splendor. This is regrettable and sad, but it can be fixed.

A further observation prevents data of the other sort leaking into their chosen world, that is, their opponent presents them with all the arguments against looking into that other world. They see their opponent’s error and rightly reject it as myopic. Their own lack of imagination prevents them from seeing that they make the same mistake. When Jesus pointed out that one’s judgment about the splinter in the other’s eye prevented them from seeing the plank in their own he was encouraging them to do a little self examination. Critique your own failure to see from the other’s point of view.

The golden rule shouts against the splinter judgment. Walk in the other person’s shoes for a mile; see from their perspective; understand their point of view. Both views alone are incomplete and problematic. Both require different skills.

Here’s my suggestion, primarily for the creationist since they do believe that people can change: Try to understand why it is important to include scientific data in your evaluation of the world. Try to understand why the scientist thinks that natural laws, in place from the beginning of time, do not change with every whim of God and lack of foresight. He created the world and called it good. So study the world, and add the lens of empiricism and logic to the tools of biblical interpretation. Try seeing the Book of God called Nature as compelling data for inclusion in your worldview. Open the other eye to the world itself and see the wonders of God unfold in a new fashion, not as the utilitarian groundwork of God’s exaltation of people, but as a living artifact of God’s desire, passion, and grace.

1https://www.quora.com/Do-Apache-helicopter-pilots-eyeballs-move-independently

favorite quotes on facebook

I am disappointed that the only MySpace like thing on Facebook was downsized, that is, “My Favorite Quotes.” It is still there, inside the profile, but not prominent. So I put My favorite Quotes right here.

Season 3, Babylon 5, episode 6, Lanier says: “The darkness carried in the heart cannot be cured by moving the body from one place to another.”

Inscription on a bell at the school Clifford Stoll went to:
All truth is one
In this light here may science and religion endeavor for the steady evolution of mankind
from darkness into light, from narrowness to broadmindedness, from prejudice to tolerance,
It is the voice of life which calls us to come and learn.

I am not proceeding by linear deduction, but rather by concentric circles. Foucault, “Archaeology of Knowledge”

Effective history leaves nothing around the self, deprives the self of the reassuring stability of life and nature, and will not permit itself to be transported by a voiceless obstinacy toward a millennial ending. It will uproot its traditional foundations and relentlessly disrupt its pretended continuity. This is because knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting. Michel Foucault (AME, p. 380)

When you turn your car on, does it return the favor? Cadillac commercial. I’ve got an S2000, and when I turn it on, it returns the favor.

“The best thing you’ve got going for you is your willingness to humiliate yourself.” Simon to Melvin in “As Good As It Gets”

It’s only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reason can be found. John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind” (the movie)

Half of being successful is just showing up.

People cease to be foreigners when we recognize emotional structure in them.

[B]ut most of all the attempt, ever more determined, to fix a price for every offense, and thus to dissociate, up to a certain point, the offender from his offense—these are the traits which characterize with increasing clarity the development of penal law. Whenever a community gains in power and pride, its penal code becomes more lenient, while the moment it is weakened or endangered the harsher methods of the past are revived. (205)” Nietzsche, Geneaolgy of Morals, ch 2 section X. On these grounds America has become increasingly weak over the past 30 years.

“The only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.” Alien in the movie Contact

I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I’ve seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. Holiness is in right action and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves. And goodness—what God desires—is here [in your head] and here [in your heart]. By what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man. Or not. –Priest in movie “Kingdom of Heaven” speaking to Balian.

Lee Smolin “We have had enough of the weight of violence, and its justification in terms of any and all systems by which people can be made to believe in their special access to absolute knowledge.”

Without empathy there can be no community.

i knew this, but here it is again

Today, I received an email from the Reasons to Believe ministry. Hugh Ross, Fazale “Fuz” Rana, Jeff Zweerink, and Kenneth Samples lead American Christians to trust both the Scriptures and the voice of science, historically the two books of God, the Bible and Nature. So, I decided to quote the Equipping Message from Hugh for 10/6/2015 because this issue is at the heart of many disputes highlighted in a mean-spirited way by the new atheists, but with generosity and wisdom by Hugh and Fuz. Here it is (some emphasis, and all apostrophes are mine.)

This month, Hugh and Fuz are speaking at the National Conference on Christian Apologetics (NCCA). The theme for this year’s conference is Ideas Have Consequences, and we saw the truth of that in a letter Hugh received recently. A pastor named Paul had started believing that God’s Word and the book of nature couldn’t be reconciled, and the consequences spread throughout his life. He wrote:

“I never questioned whether God was real but lost hope that my love of science could merit as anything other than entertainment. I assumed true answers could not be known until heaven. As a result, my faith and life suffered severely. I quit the church as a pastor and stopped dreaming.

“Then I read your book Why the Universe Is the Way It Is and instantly my imagination started coming to life again. I was surprised when I recognized that my faith had grown exponentially as a result. I look forward to sharing that book with my 22-month-old son as he grows, since he already loves space so much.

“Dr. Ross, this is the answer to reaching the lost in society today. I literally thank God for you and your team daily. I’m more excited about my faith than I ever have been. You’re leading us through the greatest possible uncertainty when the entire world is changing and secular views grow louder in hatred for faith each week. We need your work. Please never give up.”

The new hope Paul found is a direct result of the prayers and gifts of RTB ministry partners like you. We’re not giving up, and we know you aren’t either. Thank you for your commitment to fighting the false ideas that can destroy faith!

The Reasons to Believe website is found at http://reasons.org. I don’t copy this message to encourage you to give money to this ministry, but if you do give, it certainly will help.

the pensmore conference

September 24th and 25th College of the Ozarks hosted a conference with contemporary Christian luminaries in the sciences. John Lennox, Stephen Meyer, Robert Spitzer, Michael Tenneson, Mark Rapinchuk, Kyle Rapinchuk, and Erin Hayes examined and exposed some of the trenchant issues on the interface between science and faith.

I went to the conference with my friend Steve Krstulovich, a recently retired engineer at Fermilab in Chicago. Unfortunately, he and I napped for some of the sessions, and where we went to different sessions, we recorded them for each other.

I only have the ones I recorded, since I haven’t received any from him yet, but here they are:

Stephen Meyer: Signature in the Cell (partial)

Download 100 MB


Stephen Meyer: Darwin’s Doubt and the Cambrian Explosion

Download 130 MB


Robert Spitzer: Creation and Evolution in My Classroom

Download 108 MB


Robert Spitzer: Evidence for the Supernatural from Human Consciousness

Download 130 MB

Enjoy!

The most exciting thing about this conference was the careful philosophical evaluation of materialistic naturalism. With one voice the presenters offered evidenced, nuanced, and valid criticism of the Neo-Darwinian supposition that life and consciousness appeared under the auspices of natural law operating on material reality. That turns out to be insufficient based on the sudden appearance of information in the universe. There was not enough time and material cause and effect is not sufficient to allow the evolutionary leap to complex life forms and then consciousness.

synchronizers

I just got back last week from a 2400 mile trip to Virginia Beach. It was a lovely trip, lovely weather for the most part, and no accidents. I have spotted a bit of bad behavior among drivers that adds to the frustration of driving. This behavior is added on to another behavior that is frustrating as well.

The first behavior that irritates me is driving the freeway without cruise control. Here is how it plays out. The car’s speed is controlled by the driver’s foot. That foot is under stress as long as the cruise control is off. When the car goes uphill, the car naturally slows, unless the driver is attentive. This isn’t true for big trucks. They just don’t have the power to keep on speed. So the inattentive driver slows down going uphill, maybe below the speed limit, maybe not. People following have to be attentive to the changes in the road but also changes in the driver’s attention, speed, lane changing, etc. Some of that is of course necessary, but the speed can be removed from the equation by using cruise control. The following driver can set their own cruise control to mimic the driver in front, keep a safe distance, and one less variable in the risk assessment is taken out of consideration. Drivers who do not use cruise control increase the stress of other drivers on the road.

I understand. Really! Some cars don’t come with cruise control. But I think it should be a necessary addition to all cars, and the car itself should recommend its use. It saves gas, and reduces stress and road weariness, especially on long trips.

The subject of this post has to do with people who do not use cruise but also have a terrible habit. I call these people synchronizers. That is, when they start to pass a slower vehicle, they slow down to the other vehicle’s speed and just stay parallel to them for a while. It’s even worse when they are passing a truck or something and the truck is going variable speeds. The synchronizer, slows down and speeds up to match the truck. Even though they wished to pass the vehicle at first, and were going at a speed that would have done it quite happily, they then block those other vehicles behind them who also wished to pass. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not ready to fly off the handle in road rage, but they aggravate me. Any aggravation on the road causes stress. Some aggravation is part of the territory, like following trucks, but some, like synchronizing can be eliminated.

I’m not saying that we do not all make mistakes. We do, and sometimes more often than would promote general safety and wellbeing. We are all subject to making bad judgments for a variety of reasons. I’m not necessarily a better driver than you.

OK synchronizers, get your act together and become better highway citizens. Don’t snub your nose at me. I am not a snob. I just want you to voluntarily stop being an irritant. Oh, you didn’t know it was aggravating? Now you know. Don’t care about me? That’s OK too. Think about staying home next time. You are one of the causes of road rage, and the increase of blood pressure in the general population. Want world peace? Me too. Do your part.

This can be fixed. Give these people self-driving cars. Take the incompetent out from behind the wheel.

response to an opinion

Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

Times Opinionator by Justin McBrayer

This is a video of his explanation of the problem presented at Evangel University.

My response to the written piece in the NYT Opinionator

I have always maintained that the equation between truth and proof is fallacious. We’ve moved on past the simplicity of a logical proof to statistical correlations between facts, truths, and opinions. The nice thing about that is that irrespective of whether you are judging opinion or the real world, a statistical correlation gives corroboration and even warrant to the best of our moral intuitions, even as it does to our measurements of the material properties of the universe.

In this way we have learned to judge the negative value of divorce, except in the case of spousal violence. And divorce is a great example because any blanket proscription against divorce because it is “morally wrong” fails to rescue women (or men) from abusive relationships that may, and too often, result in death. Statistical correlation does give warrant for divorce. It is the moral solution in the case of abuse. It is not an opinion. (Or, if it is an opinion, it is also more than that.)

Yes, this judgment relies on the belief that all people are created equal and deserve equal judgment under the law. But even that belief has statistical warrant. It is a negative warrant, but one that has proved to be true over the many centuries when different values have been held. Other grounds for social values all end by breaking social bonds and result in logical, legal, and moral contradictions, subjecting one group to the will of another, and performing unjust actions upon them. This is not strictly a biblical value either, except by derivation. There was no proscription against slavery in the Bible, something that southern landowners knew very well.

Yes the very concept of justice relies on a belief that equity and fairness must be preserved, and that there must be redress for wrongs done, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

To think that values are simply opinions that can be dismissed because they are opinions is the shallow end of the gene pool, both intellectual and biological. They choose this path because it is deterministically simple, and no more complex thought is required, and whether they would be able to perform that complex thought is in question.

The only disappointing thing about relying on statistical correlations is that they must be worked out through arduous research. Logic is much simpler. But can we require certainty? There are plenty of examples where incomplete reasoning, false certainties, or open-ended absolutes are the cause of much abuse and damage to God’s children and the earth he has placed them on. Under which justification can a king claim divine right, the absolute rule over a subject’s life without appeal?

in response to a remark

A friend of mine said something yesterday that piqued my interest. I paraphrase: “Students in my Modern/Postmodern class will need to pray for help because the writers of the essays in our text do not give any hope of resolving a crisis of faith.” This paraphrase also contains some of what I understood him to mean, I apologize for my failure to grasp the exact thought.

He is correct when he worries for the Christian students in his class. Postmodernism does not try to sew up the cracks in our perception of reality. The reality his students have, and the reality they have constructed is largely deficient in the critical faculties necessary for the raw critique found in postmoderns, post structuralists, and literary critics like Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Fish, Gadamer, or even Nietzsche. That is because they have little training in classical philosophy, or the philosophes of the Age of Reason. Most of these believers have been brought up in the certainties of early twentieth-century conservative theologies.

There is nothing in particular wrong with these certainties, except when they face the much longer and more difficult philosophical conversation of the critical schools. The critical schools have little to do with conservative Christianity, and their remarks are aimed at a much broader set of issues in society. Conservative Christianity is the child of a narrow branch of conservatives, perhaps the Scottish plain language school of theology where the sentence in question just means what it says: a form of literalism. Literalism is fine for a small community that doesn’t interact with the wider world. It is too fragile for contact with uninterpreted reality, say, the truths of experience that are only found outside the covenant community. It is part of a closed system that not unlike natural systems, suffer continuing entropy for lack of a persistent source of energy.

Alongside these certainties is the vigor of youth, that turns their certainty into a weapon for defense of their knowledge citadel. This is all, at times, that their elders expect. What their elders do not expect, because they have no acquaintance, is that the knowledge they have imparted, is at best naïve, and subject to the critiques made famous in the postmoderns. In fact, the sidelong attack of the postmoderns on the knowledge of the modern era (from the Enlightenment) is particularly apt at stressing the unexamined presuppositions of the conservative Christian. This is why my friend’s request for prayer is appropriate.

Part of what has always been the character of the conservatives version of education is indoctrination. That is, flatly, “you should confess what I have told you to believe.” This works perfectly well for doctrinaire scientism as it does for conservative Christianity. Their models of knowledge are similar. Happily the attack of the postmoderns work as well on both crowds. The problem the Christian faces is the failure of their worldview, while the adept at scientism finds a new indoctrination that they naïvely see as truth in the same way as the predecessor scientism. Both reactions are incorrect.

Before we get started, let me suggest as an aside, that the initial mistake many Christians make with postmodernism is that they take it as a replacement for what they call knowledge. This is a failure to recognize the difference between theory and critique, between knowledge and skepticism. When the postmoderns speak they do so not as an authority, but as pointing out flaws in their subject’s perception of knowledge. They are not building an alternative worldview, but suggesting that the current worldview is a cobbled together piece of excrement. Some, like Foucault do this early in their careers, but after tearing down get around to building something later on. Others, like Derrida, never construct anything. They are always and forever deconstructing the precious objects. That is perhaps a bit unfair, but I have found few instances of construction in his writings. His puzzling rhetoric annoys, teases, and rejects the foundationalist certainties of an early twentieth-century worldview.

Problems in the Church with postmodernism (I am most familiar with these) range from outright rejection to reassertion of the fundamentals as a response to the critique. But the range of reactions rises from a lack of acquaintance with the material the postmoderns are critiquing in the first place. Some rail against the postmoderns, not realizing that postmodernism is unhappy with all foundationalist pretensions, not just those evidenced by conservative Christianity. But the Christians I know who reject postmodernism out of hand, don’t realize that they themselves have foundationalist pretensions. They want to say that the Bible is a reliable foundation for Christianity. OK, let them say that. They are wrong. Jesus said himself “You search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but they are the ones that testify of me.” Christ, and the revelation of Christ is the foundation of the Church and Christianity, not the Bible, (or Peter for that matter,) which by the way, the early believers only had a part of what we call the Old Testament in the Hebrew TENAK and the Greek Septuagint. So Jesus couldn’t have been speaking of the New Testament at all.

So, if Christ is the foundation for the Church, then there is no need to defend the logic of the Bible. (That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know what it says, or understand history, context, organization, and theology.) These critics of postmodernism rightly believe that postmodernism is an attack on Christianity when Christianity has become an adherent to the text instead of an adherent to Christ. Or these believers think that they are defending Christ when they are defending a culturally inept interpretation of God’s intention, mistaking their theology for reality, they have missed Christ altogether and placed a terrible burden on reality to prove their theology. The postmoderns are correct to critique that miscegenation.

The proper view of the postmodern critique is to treat it as a skeptical instrument to call into question foundationalist assertions, that is, assertions of knowledge that rely on the annunciation and exact correspondence of our knowledge with absolutes. Any study of science or theology will reveal how terribly wrong humans have gotten it at times. The critique of the postmodern is just another instance of calling us to account for some of those errors.

What does the believer have to fear from postmodernism? Well, in my estimation, nothing. All that’s required is the kind of reading and research that is required for any other dense and often inscrutable set of texts: a healthy ego, a wry sense of humor, some fair historical awareness of the subjects of their critique, and an acquaintance with the larger conversation. If somebody mentions a writer, say Foucault mentioning Nietzsche, it would be worth your while to discover what Nietzsche was doing that Foucault critiques. If a writer mentions an essay or a book, as Foucault does when he mentions Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals in “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” you will notice that he also mentions Dr. Paul Rée who is one subject Nietzsche critiques in his book. Rée is known as the subject of Nietzsche’s critique by any who have read the Genealogy, and so wouldn’t necessarily require a citation by Foucault. But for the uninformed reading Foucault’s essay, Rée is a piece of the puzzle unknowable outside of Foucault’s reference to his ideas. But this scholarly concern of mine is meant only to hint at the many ramifications possible in tracing out the meaning of any reference. Any casual dismissal of Foucault because he “attacks” conservative Christianity, has no idea what Foucault has said and so does a disservice to the hearers, in fact performs the office of lying and misleading.

I haven’t told you what Paul Rée actually said, or what Foucault or Nietzsche said. But a student who wishes to be counted, should be able to enter that conversation fairly as an observer, and later, a participant. A reader worth their salt will be able to evaluate what they say without spitting or cursing. Comprehending any writing is partly a skill that requires being able to ground the conversation in some space, taking one side or another (one of many possible sides). The tendency to see any conversation as black and white is one of the unfortunate characteristics of foundationalism. Every statement is judged to be right or wrong, fitting or perverse. One must be willing to try to see an alternative worldview. You should even try swapping out your worldview for somebody else’s. That takes strength of character, so you may have to work out for a while in simpler tasks before trying it.

Does the postmodern critique give us relativism? No, it doesn’t. Remember that postmodernism is not giving us anything but a critique of failed beliefs, systems, and ideas. You might conclude that relativism is an appropriate response to their critique, but it would be your choosing that, instead of their critique resulting in that. According to Hughes LeBlanc, probabilistic logics function as well as binary ones. And Joe Margolis suggests that a robust relativism does not preclude truth. Thinking in black and white terms is probably wrong. Just because Jesus speaks the truth does not preclude Kongzi or Plato from also speaking the truth. Just because Aristotle is wrong about one thing (actually more than that) doesn’t mean he was wrong about all the things he said. Just because you have made mistakes in the past doesn’t mean you always make mistakes, etc.

Cheer up! The postmodern conversation is a fruitful one, when you can flex like a palm tree in the wind. The practice of shoring up your defenses against a possible attack can give you insight into your form of life, and help you to be transformed and not destroyed by this contact.

a journey with ryan bell

A Year Without God by Ryan Bell

My Response:

As a critical realist, I understand the purifications you have gone through, and the difficulties of this transition. I faced the prospect of the same sort of transition early in my life of faith, say, 15 years after my conversion to Christianity. I realized as a philosopher, that the route I was taking would lead me inevitably to the project you have found yourself in. But I also realized with the passage of time, what having grown up in a scientific household made me recognize, that is, the perfect blindness of that path as well.

Thinking that people can’t change, that we are predictable, that we are the subject of deterministic forces we can’t extricate ourselves from is as good a picture as the Calvinist gives us, and is from the same source — an overconfidence in our own logical apprehension of reality.

Gödel’s and Heisenberg’s thinking should have disabused us of notions like that, but in general it is comforting for people to imagine there is a destiny and we are responsible for it only in some peripheral sense. However, the humanist has to realize as the Christian must that our freedom (a surd in any sense) allows us to construct a reality that only partially resembles the reality we are given. And that construction is often at odds with reality though it may be internally consistent. The non- or anti-scientific theist and the non- or anti-religious atheist are not consistent with reality, though their consistent logics tell them they are.

Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction is a tool for the logic of sentences, not a test of reality. Reality is full of (for the moment) unresolved paradoxes, but the mistake many of us make is to ignore the paradox, leave it unexplored. But in those paradoxes lie, like a region of Mandelbrot’s fractal, unexplored depths of knowledge. Some paradoxes can be dissolved, and some can’t. That is a tale for time to tell. But some hold the riches of knowledge we hunger for. The paradoxes of quantum reality were like that. Now we’ve explored some of those regions, but our exploration is not finished. The paradox of reality still calls for resolution. As many like John Donne, the Catholic thinker suggested, we are on a journey.

Don’t let the determinists of the agnostic sort capture you as the determinists in the church did for a time. They may provide some material comfort, but fail to fill the promise of lasting knowledge. Allow this journey to be unrestricted on top as it is on the bottom. Don’t be content to settle for less than the truth, even if that truth disallows the resolution of your dilemma. The libraries are littered with minds that can’t conceive anything greater than their own conception. Let your exploration be freed from the constraints of your own logics, though minding the consistency with reality.

Cheers for the new year!

spirituality

Our use of language, words, and communication is a very spiritual affair. After all there is little material component to reality. As the physicists are noted for pointing out there really is no stuff at the bottom except fields, forces, and information. Material is so 19th century.

Michel Foucault tried to get us to consider that the practices that are most important for us, including the conversations and letters we share with each other are spiritual practices even as our poetry and prayer is. We have gotten rationality down pat in our computers. But consciousness and self consciousness, not yet. That doesn’t mean we won’t, but we don’t understand it well enough yet to program it. It may be in trying to program it that we begin to understand it better. Morality of whatever kind is for us a very spiritual exercise because its practice is the admission that there is meaning beyond the redness of tooth and claw.

How can poetry not be a spiritual affair. The modern materialists have done so much to make the precious banal. In an effort to keep God out, they have reduced themselves to plankton, all the while acting as if like gods they could banish their spiritual natures with a wave of their hand. (I don’t say “spiritual natures” like there’s a God-sized hole in us that can be filled only by following this or that rubric.) Our spiritual nature is consciousness and self consciousness, a mystery of magnificent scope.

I know Christianity and all the major religions have some take on the afterlife. But I side with Plato who says we shouldn’t be scared of it since we can know nothing about it. Even though in the mouth of Socrates he elaborated a marvelous tale of the afterlife, reincarnation, et al in the Phaedo he denied anything like knowledge about it.

Kant thought that without God, freedom, and immortality, morality couldn’t exist. I don’t know that, but as mysteries they are magnificent in scope. There is no easy answer to them, or categories we can put them in. The modern materialist would banish such language, but it persists, even if there is no resolution to debates about it. Looking for proofs for or against Kant’s foundational principles is a problem that can only be solved by taking a transcendental position (too high for mere humans.) That system in which freedom can be proven is larger than the system we live in. We can assert it. We can’t prove it. We also can’t prove that it doesn’t exist. It remains conditional in a philosophic sense, suspended without resolution, even though we act as though it does exist and hold each other accountable as if it exists.

I let the materialists have their say. It comforts them to eradicate the opposition. Hot air really.