Tom Petty Says Religion = War

Expressing a view that is held by a lot of people, rock star Tom Petty explained that the title of one of the tunes on his new album (Hypnotic Eye) was about cover ups of child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. I think it's safe to say that no one supports child abuse and most people don't approve of covering it up - so Tom's tune seems pretty relevant.

Unfortunately, he then went on to make a sweeping generalization about religion as a whole by saying that "religion seems to me to be at the base of all wars."  Well, whereas it certainly has been at the base of some wars it's hard to see how any war fought by communist (and atheist) Russia or China could fall into that category.

So just how many wars, historically speaking, is religion the cause of?  Political science professor John Tures (writing in the Huffington Post) says not too many.  His research found that "religion was very infrequently a source of conflict" while issues like "regimes, riches and real estate" were major culprits.  Professor Tures also points out that many wars, like the Protestants vs the Catholics in North Ireland, weren't actually religiously based but were rather over political power and governmental representation.

So while Tom may be a great musician, he may need some more rehearsals before venturing out on the theological world stage.

Read it all here.


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Can Anything Be Proven?

I was taken to task recently for presenting what I have to say in too much of an authoritative tone.  It was suggested that I not attempt to offer my thoughts on various theological questions as "proofs" inasmuch as they may not be provable and that suggesting otherwise could compromise my credibility (assuming I have any to begin with) on these topics.  In hunting around for people who really do have the proper credentials to address this question I came across this video from another of my favorite theological philosophers William Lane Craig.  Here's what he had to say about the need/concept of proof:




I think his point is well taken.  There is no need to demonstrate an argument with mathematical precision for it to be valid and powerful.  In truth, the more you even push mathematical truths the more difficult it becomes to actually prove them.  From what I understand, though it seems pretty obvious, there isn't any actual proof for the premise that 1+1=2 inasmuch as it's based on axioms which are definitionally unprovable.  Pushing things even further, it's also not possible to prove that what we perceive with our brains is reliable and accurate - effectively calling into question (from an absolute proof perspective) all that we understand and believe - literally.

Therefore, inasmuch as we need to live and function in this world, we need to decide to be ok with our lack of proof.  When we cross the street, it's considered a reasonable precaution to look left, right and left again. No one attempts to produce a formal, mathematical demonstration before taking on the risks of the crossing. We also need not concern ourselves with wonder over whether or not the people who we believe to be our parents truly are or if the sun will rise tomorrow morning.  All that's needed is a coherent argument in its favor.

My general approach to God and Torah is the same - it's not a matter of scientific proof.  A better analogy would be that of a jury hearing the evidence from a civil trial.  No one in the jury was there.  They're doing their best, based on the cognitive skills they have and the evidence that's presented to reach the correct conclusion.  Post deliberation, a decision must be made.  I believe the the preponderance of evidence rests with the position of the classical theist - others do not.  Neither of us has (ultimate) proof but each of us must act based on the conclusions we draw and those actions have significant ramifications for us - both as individuals and societally.

"Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved.  And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true."

- Jonah Lehrer

Sartre, God and Morality

The ongoing conflict in Gaza has me (and many others) ruminating on the nature of good and evil - something that Jean-Paul Sartre had something to say about.  This is an essay by my favorite contemporary theological philosopher Edward Feser on the topic.  If you've never read him you should.  He has the rare gift of being able to articulate extremely advanced and difficult concepts in a fun and relateable style.  Here's what he says:

If God is dead, is everything permitted? Yes and no. There is a connection between the existence of God and the possibility of morality, but it is not as direct as many religious believers – and some atheists – think it is. Take Jean-Paul Sartre, about whom Bill Vallicella has been writing a series of interesting blog posts this week. Sartre was an atheist, and he held, famously, that in a Godless universe there can be no objective standards of moral value. Why did he think this? First of all, because standards of moral value presuppose, Sartre maintained (correctly, in my view), that there is such a thing as human nature. But in a Godless universe there can be no such thing as human nature. Why not? As Bill reconstructs Sartre’s argument:

The argument seems to be:

There is no God
Essences or natures are divine concepts
-----
There is no human nature.

Another argument Sartre may have in mind is this:

Man has a nature only if man is a divine artifact
There is no God and hence no divine artifacts
-----
Man has no nature.
But as Bill goes on to point out, a problem with this argument is that it is not as clear as Sartre thinks it is that there being such a thing as human nature presupposes that essences are divine concepts or that we are divine artifacts. For example, Aristotle held that there is such a thing as human nature, but (despite his belief in an Unmoved Mover of the universe) did not think of us as divine artifacts.

What is going on here, I surmise, is that Sartre has uncritically bought into the modern notion that to attribute purposes to natural objects and processes is ipso facto to commit oneself to a divine designer a la William Paley. And as I have been pointing out in a series of posts on teleology, Paley, and related matters, that is an error, at least from an Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) point of view. For A-T, the natures and final causes of things are immanent to them. Natural objects are not like machines, the parts of which have no inherent ordering to the end they serve, so that the parts cannot even be made sense of as serving a common end apart from a “designer” who forces them into their machine-like configuration. Rather, that a heart (for example) is “directed toward” or “ordered to” the end of pumping blood is something true of it simply by virtue of its being a heart at all, and would remain true of it whatever its cause or even if (per impossibile) it had no cause. For A-T, the natures of things can be known, at least in principle, entirely apart from questions about their origins, and human nature would still be what it is whether or not we were created by God. Sartre would need an additional argument against views like Aristotle’s, then, before he could make the case that in a Godless universe there could be no such thing as human nature and thus no objective source of value.

Does that mean that there is no connection between theism and morality? By no means. For whatever Aristotle believed, Aquinas and his followers argue (e.g. in Aquinas’s Fifth Way) that the existence of final causes, and thus of things having the natures that natural objects do in fact have, must ultimately be traced to the divine intellect. It’s just that the inference is not as direct as Paley, Sartre, and other moderns think it is. As I have pointed out before (following an observation made by Christopher Martin) modern philosophers tend to think that it is easy to get from the existence of purposes in nature to the conclusion that God exists, but frightfully difficult to show that there really are any purposes in nature. Classical philosophers, by contrast, tend to think that it is obvious that there are purposes in nature, and that where the real philosophical work comes in is in showing that these purposes entail the existence of God. It can be done, but a middle stage is required between the premise “Final causes exist” and the conclusion “God exists.” (For an exposition of how this will go, see the section on the Fifth Way in The Last Superstition, and, especially, the longer exposition in the relevant section of Aquinas.)

So, one way in which morality does depend on the existence of God is that morality presupposes (as Sartre correctly recognizes) the existence of essences and final causes, and these in turn must ultimately be explained in terms of God (but only via arguments that are less obvious and direct than Sartre supposes). That is, it depends on God in the way everything depends on God. Is there any specialdependence of morality on God, though – some way that it depends on theism in the way other aspects of the natural world do not? Yes, in two respects: First, for moral imperatives to have the force of law in the strict sense (and not merely as the course of action wisdom recommends if we seek to fulfill our nature) ultimately requires that they be understood as having in some sense been issued by an authoritative lawgiver. Since the existence of God can (according to A-T) be proved by rational arguments, so too (for that very reason) can the existence of such a lawgiver. There is no appeal here to “blind faith,” and to bring God into the picture is perfectly consistent with the imperatives of natural law being natural (as opposed to resting on special divine revelation). Still, there is an irreducible theological component to morality when it is understood in itstotality, even if much of it can be known completely apart from God. (See the “Ethics” chapter of Aquinas for the complete story.)

Second, given that the existence of God can in fact be rationally established (as, again, A-T maintains), a complete system of morality is inevitably going to make reference to our distinctively religious obligations. Furthermore, there are requirements of the natural law that would, at least as a matter of psychological fact, be very difficult for us to live up to if we had no hope of a reward in the hereafter for injustices and hardships suffered here and now. Religion thus serves as a practically indispensible aid to morality. (Again, see Aquinas, and the section in TLS on natural law, for more.)

Now if there is a sense in which morality does ultimately rest on the existence of God, does that not entail that my criticism of Sartre is mere quibbling? It does not, for this reason. If the A-T view of morality is correct, then even if morality ultimately depends on God, we could nevertheless discover a great deal about our moral obligations even if we did not know that God exists. Compare: We can discover a great deal about the way the natural world works via empirical scientific research, without making any direct reference to God and His purposes. To know about the periodic table of elements, for example, does not require that we first prove God’s existence, even if God’s existence is the ultimate explanation of the periodic table (because it is the ultimate explanation of everything). Similarly, we can to a large extent understand human nature even if we bracket off the question of God’s existence. And for that reason, we can know a great deal about what fulfills our nature – and thus about the content of our moral obligations – even if we do not think of that nature as given to us by God.

Hence when Sartre finally met his Maker and was asked to account for (say) his notorious sexual immorality, or his support for communism, we can be confident that said Maker would not have been impressed had Sartre replied: “But Lord, I honestly did not know that You existed!” We can imagine God responding: “Even if I were to grant you that dubious proposition, how is it relevant? You didn’t need Mearound to tell you that promiscuity and mass murder are evil. Your knowledge of human nature was enough to tell you that.” And were Sartre to reply: “But I honestly didn’t believe in human nature either!” perhaps God might say: “Oh, please. Next you’ll tell Me that you weren’t certain that the empirical world was anything other than a dream!” For it takes an enormous amount of self-deception to get oneself to doubt that there is such a thing as human nature, just as it would take an enormous amount of self-deception to get oneself seriously to believe that one’s entire life is only a dream. In particular, and in both cases, it takes the sort of self-deception only intellectuals are capable of – the sort embodied in bizarre revisionist systems of metaphysics of the kind rife in modern philosophy.

Be all that as it may, the point is that the A-T view of things does not, as the careless reader might have supposed, make things easier for the secularist, morally speaking. On the contrary, it makes things much harder on him. For, contra the implications of a Paley-style view of God’s relationship to the world, ignorance of the Author of nature does not excuse ignorance of the nature of things, and thus it does not excuse ignorance of the demands of the natural law. You can know that things have natures and final causes – and thus you can know what morality requires of you at least in general terms – whether or not you know that there is a God. And that is one reason why it is a more than academic matter to point out where Sartre goes wrong in his claims about the relationship between theism and morality.

Bonus observation: As Bill notes, Sartre took the bizarre view that to believe in an objective source of morality somehow entails looking for an “excuse” to avoid taking “responsibility” for one’s actions. Bill notes some of what is wrong with such a view. But why would Sartre think it at all plausible in the first place? Here, I speculate, we see the malign influence on modern moral theorizing of Kant – in particular, of all the Kantian stuff about heteronomy versus autonomy, and about how our moral dignity requires that we be conceived of as “self-legislators” and “ends in ourselves.” On this view, unless the demands of morality can be interpreted as in some sense self-imposed – as something we bind ourselves to, by virtue of being rational agents – then morality could only be a restriction on our freedom and dignity. In particular, human dignity requires (on this view) that morality not be seen as imposed on us from outside – by nature, say, or God. If you believe such blasphemous liberal modernist tosh, then perhaps Sartre’s characterization of the idea of an objective moral standard as an “excuse” to avoid taking “responsibility” for one’s freedom might seem halfway plausible. If not, then you might consider Sartre’s view as (possibly) yet one more decadent riff on this poisonous Kantian theme.

Here endeth the rant about Kant. But more later.

Israel in Gaza: No Less Than the Battle Between Good and Evil

For many Jews and their supporters around the world, it is highly disturbing to see and hear so many clear demonstrations of near total moral befuddlement.  I'm not sure how a conflict could be any more clear - one side loves life and desires to preserve it (on both sides!) and the other openly admits that it "loves death" and is happy to bring it to both sides as well.  Despite that, millions of people around the world rally to the side of this cult of death. How can this be?

1. The big lie still works: The most generous explanation is that these people have been duped. Decades of relentless lying have born abundant fruit for the Jihadi side as they have successfully managed to invert the perception of good and bad.  They freely tell enormous lies such as PA President's recent assertion that Israel was committing "genocide" in Gaza. Genocide is generally defined as killing a large number of people for ethnic reasons.  I very much doubt that the 400 people killed (most of whom Israel wished not to kill but who were in the wrong place at the wrong time) on their side would fall under the category of genocide but if it did then the 1137 Israelis killed by Palestinians in the Second Intifada was three times the "genocide" - and done on purpose.  Somehow I doubt that this crowd was overly concerned with that particular "genocide." So given the power of the big lie and how readily it's lapped up by various media outlets it's not hard to see how someone could walk away utterly misinformed.
2. Morality itself has collapsed: Dennis Prager wrote an important piece a while back called "A Response to Richard Dawkins" in which he demonstrates that in the absence of a belief in God, morality shrivels up and dies on the vine leaving us with nothing more than subjective preferences in place of a true moral code.  Could it be that large swaths of humanity simply lacks the template by which to successfully adjudicate between right and wrong?  Judging by the endless stream of unhinged tweets, governmental condemnations and violent street protests it would seem so.  If someone is incapable of distinguishing between accidental deaths and those committed with intent then that person has no moral compass.  The tallies that are so often bandied about are irrelevant and even if the number of accidental deaths were extremely high and the number of purposeful deaths very low it would not vindicate the purposeful killers.  They can't even be compared.  It's evil apples vs non-evil oranges.
3. The supporters are evil too: Israel, in all likelihood, is in the process of fighting the most morally conducted campaign in the history of warfare.  No army drops thousands of leaflets, or places cell phone calls or does "roof-knocking" to warn civilians before they attack.  No army continues to provide water, supplies and electricity to the enemy while they are in the process of attacking them. Few armies place their own soldiers at grave risk by going door to door in search of weapons caches, terror tunnels and rocket launchers when they could just carpet bomb, shut off the electricity and water or both and be done with it.  Conflicts like this one bring to a head who people really are and what they stand for.  Sides must be chosen.  One has to suspect that a good many people out there have chosen to align themselves with the forces of darkness and death.  Even if they are generally perceived as "religious" practitioners, in truth they are nihilists - people who have wholesale given up on life and who gleefully desire to take out as many as they can with them.  Their lives are without meaning and as such they have no use for them.  Anyone drawn after such people and who offer them succor or support in any fashion are of the same ilk and should be regarded as the amoral beings that they truly are. 

"If antisemitism is a form of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics.  In my view as a historian it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in quite a different category.  I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive."

Paul Johnson 

Can You "Experience" God?

Monotheists have never pretended that they know (or will ever know) what exactly God is.  As Genesis 1:1 informs us, He "created the heavens and the earth."  As understood in classical Judaism - through the lens on Kaballah - this means that God created both the spiritual as well as the physical.  This would obviously imply that inasmuch as He created them, that God is neither something physical nor something spiritual and there is no way for finite, physical beings such as ourselves to wrap our heads around such a being - one Who creates, but is not bound by space, time, matter or even spirit.  As the 18th Century Kabbalist Moshe Chaim Luzzatto wrote in The Way of God, "God's true nature is beyond comprehension.  No inference can be drawn to the Creator from what we see among created things.  The nature and essence of the two are not the same at all, and it is therefore impossible to draw any parallel between them."

Rabbi Luzzatto and others would argue that there are nonetheless cogent methods of adducing the necessity of His reality through logic and through the Sinaitic revelation.  What though should we make of people who claim to have had an actual experience of the Divine?  There are a lot of them - are they all false?  What types of thoughts, feelings and experiences should be counted as "reality?"  Are there any?

There are thousands of people who have claimed to have had a near-death experience - one in which they become convinced of a parallel world in which non-physical beings (souls, angels, etc) reside.  Dr. Jeffrey Long has painstakingly cataloged these experiences and their remarkably consistent features in a fascinating work called "Evidence of the Afterlife."  Materialists (those who believe that there is no other reality aside from the physical) generally ascribe these experiences as a projection of the dying brain - a fantasy created by neurons firing wildly before they flame out.  This certainly could be the case but it wouldn't help to explain multiple, documented features of the near-death experience such as the ability to perceive what was taking place at a distance from the hospital room well after brain function ceased entirely.

Oxford University has a research center that catalogs numinous (metaphysical) experiences.  Founded in 1969 by Sir Alister Hardy, it has recorded some 6000 accounts of people who affirmatively responded to the question "have you ever had a spiritual or religious experience or felt a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your every day life?"  Even if we assume that 90% of these people were victims of wishful thinking, confusion or neuronal hallucinations, would we be prepared to say that 600 people had an authentic transcendental experience?  Notably, those same materialists who would be wont to dismiss these claims as 100% false tend not to concede that their own experiences - including their belief in materialism - are subject to the same rejections.

If we assume that the human experience of reality can be accurate or at least partially accurate, then despite our inability to define what the Creator is, it would seem that we do have several methods available to us to appreciate, understand and experience Him nonetheless.

The Smackdown of Pop Atheism Rolls On

Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Dennett et al made a big noise and undoubtedly affected a lot of people with their brash, combative and "in your face" style writing and speaking.  They garnered a lot of attention. Unfortunately for them they also attracted the attention of some people who had a lot more training and experience with philosophy and theology (what they attempted to engage in in the first place) and who proceeded to unmask their ignorance on the topic.  My favorites are David Berlinski, Edward Feser and Moshe Averick who are all linked on the home page.

Today I came across something from Slate's Book review entitled "Know Nothing: the True History of Atheism" by Michael Robbins.  In reviewing a new book by Nick Spencer called "Atheists: the Origin of the Species" he makes several good points.  The first is that Pop Atheism generally busies itself attacking straw men - defeating arguments and concepts they invented themselves and that the other side isn't putting forward.  For instance, someone like Richard Dawkins believes that there is no way to evidence something's existence without reference to a material characteristic - we need to be able to measure it, test it, hypothesize about it, etc - and if this cannot be done then the thing does not exist.  Ironically, Dawkins's supposition is itself immaterial (impossible to measure, etc) and this subject to the same non-existence he claims for metaphysics. As Robbins comments on this point "Richard Dawkins claims that religion is a 'scientific' theory, 'a competing explanation for facts about the universe and life.'  This is - if you'll forgive my theological jargon - Bulls***."

Another popular straw man is God Himself.  Outside of being wantonly offensive to millions of people, descriptions of the Deity of classical monotheism like Dawkins's are simply not describing the one that is easily found (if you've bothered to read a bit) in classical theology.  So as he generously offered "The God of the Old Testament is a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, insecticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."  Uh huh.  One wonders about his relationship with his father.  In any event this is all simply absurd, inaccurate and illogical.  Robbins again - "if your idea of God is not one that most theistic traditions would recognize, you're not talking about God...but even more damning is that  such atheists appear ignorant of atheism as well."

"Atheists used to take the idea of God Seriously.  That's why they mattered."


 

Freud Liked (Some) Faith

It's well-known that Sigmund Freud was an atheist and believed that religiosity was a "neurosis" (though he held that this wasn't a pejorative word per se). Despite this, Freud believed that there were a number of tangible benefits that could be gained through engagement with theological thinking.  Lacy Cooke of Faithstreet outlines some of these benefits in a piece called "How Sigmund Freud Got Religion."

Freud was impressed by Judaism's insistence that there be no visual representation of the Divine and felt that this practice helped devotees with abstract reasoning - so much so that he believed that "Jewish thought laid the foundation for intellectual progress in the western world."  He also felt (despite his own lack of it) that a belief in a Creator helped improve the mind and that the "Jewish People were able to develop introspection through their faith in God."

It's unfortunate that so many contemporary atheists are unable to perceive and appreciate these benefits.  At very least, it would allow them to conduct themselves in a respectful manner towards people of faith and thus contribute to the general societal harmony.  In truth, there's a growing "second wave" of atheists who do just that.  Publications to date include: "An Awareness of What's Missing" by Jurgen Haberman, The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville and Alain de Botton's "Religion For Atheists."

What these atheists have come to realize is that they've thrown the baby out with the bath water and there is quite a lot that we all want and need as human beings - deep and fundamental things like meaning, ritual and community - to be found in theology.  I'm all in favor of a reformation within the cynical and acrimonious incarnation of the "new" atheism and see this explicit recognition as a good first step.  I'm hopeful that with further research and introspection that some of these folks (as many have done before them) will come to appreciate that not only was the baby worth saving but that the bath water was pretty important as well.