Loitering

Monday, 11-15-2021

 

In 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court, acting as censor morum, declared that America is a Christian people.  Sixty years later it modified the claim, calling us a religious people, whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.  The difference between the two statements is profound, for almost anything can count as religious.  Proof, were it needed, came in 1968, when Justice Douglas, speaking for the Court, asserted a right to use pornography because of the importance of “man’s spiritual nature.”

Where are we now?  Some have gone so far as to characterize contemporary American pop spirituality by the motto ABC:  “Anything But Christianity.”  There is some truth to the portrayal.  Large numbers of us are willing to try Zen, yoga, channeling, séances, astrology, past-life regressions, transcendental meditation, the reading of omens, the chanting of mantras, the casting of spells, the use of charms, the induction of abnormal mental states by drugs, the cultivation of out-of-body experiences, the ritual offering of milk and honey to Sophia or of aborted babies to Artemis -- anything but faith in the one whom Christians call the resurrected Lord.

Because of the strangeness of these practices and associated beliefs, the ABC segment of our folk religion receives a great deal of attention.  I suggest, however, that the attention given this segment is far out of proportion to its numbers.

For the greatest part of American pop spirituality seems to be formed by the confluence of two streams, neither of which can be characterized as simply ABC:  A stream of people fleeing Christian orthodoxy, who have paused, for some reason, on the way out, and a stream of people attracted to Christian orthodoxy, who have paused, for some reason, on the way in.  If these two groups have much in common and are attracted to many of the same authors, it is because they are loitering at the same gate, comparing and exchanging their articles of luggage.  They dabble with the beliefs and practices listed above, but they dabble with orthodox beliefs and practices as well.

Because the representatives of these two streams never offer theological reasons for lingering, one cannot help but wonder just what arrests their respective movements.  One writer I encountered, a best-selling minister who loitered on the way out the exit, seemed to have a sheer sentimental attachment to congregational fellowship.  Another, a best-selling psychologist who loitered on the way in, seemed burdened by the awful weight of sudden and unexpected guruhood.  Having passed in both directions through the portal myself, I am interested by such things.  But because they are not such things as can be learned from books, let us consider the things that can.

Particularly interesting is the selectivity of such writers' borrowings from orthodoxy.  The second of the two fellows I mentioned borrowed a belief in the existence of various created spirits -- some of them angels, others deceivers.  But he had no use for scriptural guidelines for telling them apart, much less for the scriptural prohibition of sorcery; thus he practiced unsupervised exorcisms of the ones he considered bad and “channeled” the ones he considers good.  This is a good deal more than chilling.

The other was also selective, though in a sillier way.  For instance the idea of Holy Communion attracted him, but heaven forbid that it should be undertaken with bread and wine, for the elements Jesus instructed his followers to use might suggest, he said, a “theological interpretation.”  One fine Sunday, therefore, the good reverend sprang tangerines on his congregation, reasoning that the problem of dealing with pits and peels and so forth would encourage cooperation.  Another week he tried animal crackers.  Over time he also experimented with Gummi Bears, jelly beans, M&Ms, and Pop Rocks.  Unfortunately the animal crackers provoked a free-for-all among the children, the M&Ms melted in the hands, and the Pop Rocks produced a lavender froth around the lips.  His conclusion?  “Reformation is never simple, never easy, never quick.”

So it is that people of two such different streams, some of them refugees from something like orthodoxy, the others just arrived from regions adjacent to Zen, converge at the gate and pause.  Contemporary American pop spirituality is a theology of lingering, of loitering, of hesitation, a religion of the vestibule.  It wants connectedness without commitment, reconciliation without repentance, and sacredness without sanctity.  It wants to sing the songs of Zion in the temples of Ishtar and Brahman – or vice versa.  God help us to know what we want and to want what we ought.  God make haste to help us; God make speed to save us.

 

If Man Is the Image of God

Wednesday, 11-10-2021

 

The logic of the matter is that since contingent effects require causes, and contingent causes require causes, there must be a first cause that is not contingent but rather has to exist.

This being the case, if we ask “What if there were no God?” we are trying to draw conclusions from an impossible premise, which is a recipe for nonsensical conclusions.

But of course people do ask the question.  It is not a logical but a psychological enterprise.

Very well, let us consider the psychology.  The sequence of ideas tends to work out something like this.

If God is dead, everything is permitted.

We’re heard that one.

But if Man is the image of God, Man is dead too.

And then everything is even more permitted.

 

It’s MY Purpose. Hands off.

Monday, 11-08-2021

 

Query:

In an explanation of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law, you say that the purpose of the common good “belongs” to the whole people.  Could you tell me how a purpose "belongs" to someone?  Any light you can shed on this would be very much appreciated.

 

Reply:

I don’t mean anything terribly abstruse.  A purpose belongs to me if it’s my purpose, belongs to you if it’s your purpose, and belongs to the community if it’s the community’s purpose.  Terms like “my” can be puzzling because they are used in different senses.  For example, if I speak of “my” car, I mean that I own it, but if I speak of “my” wife, I mean that I am the person who is related to her as husband to wife.

How then is a purpose mine?  It’s mine when I am interiorly ordered or directed to it.  Ordered or directed to it how?  Well, it may be my subjective intention (for example, I may want to get some ice cream), it may be my inbuilt or natural purpose (for example, even if I want to die, I am naturally directed to life and flourishing), or it may be both (I am naturally directed to life and flourishing, but I subjectively aim at a flourishing life too).

We’re also speaking in both senses when we say that the purpose of the common good “belongs” to the political community.  Certainly the community cannot be said to flourish unless it really is enjoying the common good; as Aristotle says in Politics, Book 1, the city “comes into existence for mere life -- but exists for the sake of living well.”   So the purpose of the common good is natural to it.  But unless the common good is the city’s subjective intention too, it is hardly proper to call the city a “community.”  The very phrase calls attention to what it cherishes and pursues in common.  I hope I’ve cleared up the puzzle!

 

Universal Higher Education -- Just a Thought

Thursday, 11-04-2021

 

Sending everyone to college hasn't given everyone a college education.  That can't be done.  It's given everyone what used to be a high school education.  A very, very expensive high school education.

 

The Genetic Basis for Sacrifice

Monday, 11-01-2021

 

If evolution is driven by the survival of the individual, then it’s pretty hard to explain why anyone would sacrifice for anyone else, since any impulse to do so should have been bred out of us long ago.  Theorists of “kin selection” propose a solution to the puzzle.  Does it work?

According to this theory, the unit of natural selection isn’t the individual, but the gene.  My close relatives share a lot of my genes, so in some cases the survival of the genes we share – in this case, the very genes for sacrificing for relatives -- is better promoted by my sacrificing for them than by my clinging to life at their expense.

Such explanations do have value.  Kin selection explains some animal behaviors quite well.  In the case of the social insects, it has been a spectacular success.  But if kin selection is all there is to it, then why would I ever sacrifice for neighbors who aren’t close relatives, persons with whom the value of my coefficient of genetic relatedness is very small?

Evolutionary psychologists have an answer to this one too.  I am able to sacrifice for non-relatives by viewing them as though they were my relatives.  After all, don’t we say that all men are brothers?  And don’t we call that saintly woman Mother Teresa?

Hold on a moment:  The explanation doesn’t work.  If the kin selection hypothesis is true, then although sacrifice for close kin is adaptive, sacrifice for unrelated people whom we merely think of as though they were close kin is maladaptive.  On balance, it makes the survival of my genes less likely, not more.  So by this hypothesis, even though we should be strongly motivated to sacrifice for real kin, we should be strongly averse to sacrificing for merely figurative ones.

We may concede that the impulse to sacrifice for non-kin is rather weak and unreliable.  But it exists.  Moreover, we applaud it and believe that we ought to cultivate it.  On the kin selection hypothesis, not only should the impulse to sacrifice for non-kin not exist – not only should we have the opposite impulse – but we shouldn’t even think we ought to cultivate such a motive, for the inclination to think so would be maladaptive too.  We should have evolved to think that we shouldn’t view all men as brothers.

So there are two possibilities.

1.  Natural selection is the whole story, but we don’t yet have all of the pieces.

2.  Natural selection isn’t the whole story.

The materialist will back hypothesis 1.  He will do so on grounds of faith – and yes, it is a faith – that material nature is all there is, so that even if we don’t see how it could be, one day we will.  I find a faith that is open to the possibility of additional, non-materialistic explanations much more persuasive and interesting.  Follow the evidence where it leads.

Related:

What Conscience Isn’t

So-Called Evolutionary Ethics

 

Why the Nazi Analogy is Overused

Thursday, 10-28-2021

 

Why is the Nazi analogy so overused that it loses its force?

To understand the reason, consider first that almost all of the overuse is on the Left.  Opposing critical race theory is like Naziism.  Believing that there are two sexes is like Naziism.  Disapproving riots is like Naziism.  Supporting anyone who isn’t Woke is like Naziism.  Practicing faith in God is like Naziism.

The fact that the analogy loses its force by being used for so many things that are not in the least like Naziism doesn’t matter to the Left.  For in the long run, the analogy cannot be allowed to retain force.

For if it were used only for things that really were like Naziism, then it would certainly be used most of all for our own equivalent of the Nazi genocide, the genocide of babies, the Left’s most sacred cause.

In the meantime, using the analogy for everything but what is really like Naziism is a pretty good distraction.

 

Shaving with Ockham’s Razor

Monday, 10-25-2021

 

 

Ockham’s Razor is the rule that we shouldn’t assume more kinds of things than we need to.  Roughly, if a simpler explanation can do the job, then simpler is better.  It’s a pretty good rule of thumb if it is used correctly, but it usually isn’t.

I came across the following bad example in a review of a book written to celebrate the Razor:

If a friend tells you “I’ve seen a UFO!” what would you think?  It might have been an alien spacecraft -- or perhaps the friend was mistaken.  The first possibility requires numerous unproven assumptions about extraterrestrial life; the second is consistent with what we know about human fallibility.  The 14th-century Franciscan friar William of Ockham was never troubled by flying saucers, but he did see the importance of eliminating unnecessary assumptions -- the principle known as Occam’s Razor.

Now it’s true that a friend who says he saw a UFO – which means an unidentified flying object, mind you – may think that what he saw was an alien spacecraft, and yes, that would assume the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.  But which hypothesis assumes less – the one that assumes that there might be extraterrestrial intelligence and that this experience counts as evidence, or the one that assumes that there couldn’t be extraterrestrial intelligence so that nothing at all could count as evidence?

Assuming a negative isn’t the same as not assuming.  And it isn’t assuming less to assume a universal negative.  Besides, the idea isn't to posit the fewest suppositions, but the fewest suppositions to account for the facts; a simpler hypothesis is better only if it explains just as much or more.

Before speculating about a friend’s sighting, I would want to know exactly how what he thought he saw looked, why he thought it odd, whether anyone else saw it, whether there is any corroborating evidence, whether he is truthful, whether his observations are generally reliable, the state of his sobriety when he made the sighting, and a lot of other things – including what other hypotheses might be offered to explain it.  Note well, the reviewer has no other hypothesis.  He only assumes, Well, it couldn’t be that.

Turning from UFOs to metaphysics, the reviewer thinks Ockham’s Razor proves that things don’t have essences.  For it is much simpler not to assume essences than to assume them; the only reason we call cats “cats” is that we have placed them in the set of things we do call cats.  We don’t need to assume some mysterious thing called cat nature, or catness.  But wait a moment.  Why do we place certain things in the set of cats, and not place others there?  We don’t call them cats because we have placed them in the set; we place them in the set because they are cats.  They all do have catness.  Dogs don’t.

Pushing essences out the door turns out to be harder than it looks.  In fact, it’s something like pushing – well, cats.

Leaving the book reviewer to his devices, let’s consider another common abuse of Ockham’s Razor.  A certain attempt to refute one of the current arguments for the existence of God runs something like this:

a.  On a certain hypothesis – call it fine-tuning -- the physical constants of the universe have the precise values they would need to have to permit the existence of life like us, so there must be a First Cause to give them those values.  Call it a Creator.

b.  On another hypothesis – call it the multiverse -- the appearance of fine-tuning is an illusion, because there is actually an infinite number of universes, each one with different physical constants.  We just happen to be in one in which the values of the constants permit us to exist.  Lucky us.

c.  But the multiverse hypothesis is simpler, because it doesn’t need to assume a Creator.

d.  Therefore, we should prefer the multiverse hypothesis.

The problem with this reasoning is that the multiverse hypothesis is not simpler than the hypothesis that the universe was created.  In fact, it is both more complex, and explains less.  For in the first place, it assumes an infinity of universes which are all, in principle, unobservable, just to avoid assuming a single Creator.

And in the second place, it doesn’t avoid the Creator after all, for it still doesn’t answer the question, “Why is there something and not rather nothing?”  It merely replaces the question of why (instead of nothing) there is one universe, ordered in a particular way, with the question of why (instead of nothing) there is an infinite array of universes, each ordered to all the others in a particular way.

All other things being equal, simpler explanations are better.  But be careful about what you call simpler and what you call equal.
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