{"id":5101,"date":"2015-01-16T21:21:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T02:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5101"},"modified":"2015-01-14T21:35:58","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T02:35:58","slug":"a-brutal-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5101","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy is Getting Brutal"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read an interesting article on the RealClearReligion web site entitled “The Decline of Philosophy<\/a>“. Hmmm, so someone else thinks that philosophy today ain’t what it used to be. I am presently listening to a CD course<\/a> from the Teaching Company on philosophical metaphysics, and I too have some reservations about what modern philosophy is concerning itself with. The course is taught by Dr. David K. Johnson<\/a>, a young philosophy professor at Kings College in Pennsylvania. Professor Johnson goes out of his way to make ontology relevant to the masses, and specializes in integrating pop cultural into his lectures, especially movies (he also repeatedly mentions his love for the sweet potato fries at Johnny Rocket’s). <\/p>\n

And yet, so much of Dr. Johnson’s discussion and argument just seem irrelevant to me (despite my penchant for “deeper meanings” to things). Johnson’s lectures mostly boil down to a word games and battles between philosophers as to how cleverly they can apply the rules of logic. I get the impression from Johnson that he and his fellow modern philosophers certainly are very clever, but they don’t convey much that gives a better understanding of our selves, our lives and the environment and universe around us. Johnson has a very excitable lecturing style, and his enthusiasm almost bubbles over whenever he leaves us in a tangle of contradictory propositions and unanswerable questions. Ummmm . . . whatever happened to the old Greek philosophical notion that philosophy is to help us understand deeper truths? If Johnson’s course is any indication, philosophers today seem to be saying “there is no truth”. <\/p>\n

The RCR article was written by a Catholic priest named Robert Barron (who is President of Mundelein Seminary near Chicago). Fr. Barron hasn’t taken notice of David Johnson, but he does open up his article by zeroing in on Dr. Daniel Dennett, who is one of the more outspoken proponents of “the new Atheism<\/a>“. Barron believes that Dennett promotes arrogance on the part of modern atheists by proposing that they call themselves “brights”. This was meant to highlight the fact that some of the most intelligent people in our society today, scientists and philosophers, are now predominantly atheist. Barron cites a recent article in Salon<\/a> indicating that 86% of philosophers and 93% of scientists don’t believe in God. <\/p>\n

Well, obviously, Fr. Barron doesn’t take that lying down; he says that scientists don’t really appreciate the metaphysical subtleties behind the classical notions of God, and thus focus inordinately on the lack of any evidence for the supernatural found in their labs and equations. As to philosophers, Fr. Barron concludes that modern philosophers aren’t so “bright” after all, and that many of their arguments against God don’t really hold water. So, the philosophers are ignoring God because their intellectual craft is in a state of decline. Barron sums it up this way:<\/p>\n

I despise the arrogance of Dennett and his atheist followers who would blithely wrap themselves in the mantle of “brightness;” but I also despise the use of statistics to prove any point about philosophical or religious matters. I would much prefer that we return to argument.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most interesting. Personally, I have noticed some things about the “New Atheists”. They take a strong stand against the harmful (largely Christian) forms of domestic religious intolerance, including attempts to block or distort scientific teachings regarding evolution, and denying access to live-saving medical research and interventions (e.g., stem cell therapies). And the atheists are right in this. But as to international religious fanaticism, including the rather virulent strain of violent Islamic militantism plaguing the world today . . . the academics seem a bit more muted, perhaps because of an imagined position of superior understanding and faux-sympathy for those who wallow in hatred and ignorance allegedly because of their historical exploitation by western civilization. Let’s face it, the front lines of defense against the most dangerous forms of religious activism today run through the offices of Charlie Hebdo and not thru the hallways of the Harvard philosophy department.<\/p>\n

And toward those of us who still find reasons in our lives to believe in the divine (or at least to maintain hope, as in my case) but who don’t endanger society because of it, the modern atheists sometimes express a self-reassuring tone of condescending tolerance. After pointing out the errors of our intellectual ways, they put on their psychoanalyst hats and decide that given our mental weaknesses, we God-fearers should be allowed our irrational fantasies and imaginary friends in Heaven, given that we need them to cope with a complex and challenging world (again, so long as we don’t make any trouble about it). As Fr. Barron says, by calling themselves brights, atheists “distinguish themselves rather clearly from the dim benighted masses who hold on to supernaturalist convictions”.<\/p>\n

And yet . . . I’ve seen plenty of believers take very disrespectful and closed-minded approaches towards atheists too. The atheists certainly have many stories of Christians acting in a rather un-Christian way towards them. And as the Salon author points out, the social and institutional culture that has accumulated around religious belief just doesn’t work for a lot of people in modern society (to be honest, it doesn’t work for me either — that’s why I hang out with a Zen sangha). But as to the intellectual sustainability of a belief in the existence of an ultimately benevolent God, or at least a hope in the possibility thereof . . . I myself feel that the philosopher’s concept of the ontological “brute fact<\/a>” provides grounds on which such a hope may reasonably and rationally rest. <\/p>\n

I myself have not spent years studying the fine points of philosophy, modern or ancient. But Dr. Johnson’s course has made me aware of the existence of the “brute fact” concept (and of the discomfort and disdain of many philosophers towards this notion, probably including Johnson himself). In an oversimplified nutshell, a “brute fact” is what you turn to when you can’t explain something any further. Perhaps ancient humans saw “earth, wind and fire” as the ultimate brute facts. Then along came the earliest Greek philosophers such as Democritus, who proposed the “atom” as the ultimate brute fact. The atom was to be the tiniest thing, of which everything else was made up. You couldn’t divide this kind of atom up any further (obviously, what we now know of as atoms turned out to be composites of various internal particles and energy states). What the atom was made of inside was forever locked in the realm of mystery. You had the atom and its characteristics, and no further explanations would be possible. That’s the “brute” of the brute fact at work.<\/p>\n

Actually, there would be other brute facts in the reality that Democritus envisioned — such as the empty space in which these atoms existed. And what about time . . . but actually, time is ultimately a mental construct . . . so perhaps the mental backdrop to time and space and all the corporeal stuff made of atoms was another brute fact. (Thus taking us back to the classic problem of consciousness). And then what about energy and light, the stuff that tripped up Newtonian physics several millennium later? <\/p>\n

Well, perhaps these could somehow be related to the primal atom, as some special configurations or arrangements of it that make the aggregate different from water or earth or air. But of course, the concepts of Democritus and the ancient Greeks ultimately gave way to Newton; and Newton’s world of physical and mathematical brute fact concepts gave way to Einstein’s relativity laws and also Bohr’s world of weird quantum physics. And these may yet yield to a higher “brute law” consisting of superstrings or loop quantum structures. <\/p>\n

On the cosmological end, the earth-centered universe of the Greeks and Christian fathers thankfully yielded to a more vast world of stars and galaxies, with our own solar system occupying just a tiny and temporary niche within it. And even that picture of the universe matured from an infinite steady-state realm into an expanding big-bang space-time-energy bubble with no real center. Then came further refinement into an eternal cosmic inflation setting where the universe that we know reflects just another random roll of the dice on an infinite casino table (ah yes, the inflaton field as the cosmological equivalent of Los Vegas; so the ultimate nature of reality turns out to be poker chips, 24\/7 buffets, legal hookers, and Tony Orlando and Dawn). <\/p>\n

One could say that both scientists and philosophers are the sworn enemies of the brute fact. They try to keep on digging deeper, though their experiments, both thought experiment and physical experiment. Over the history of humankind, they have pushed the “brute fact” back quite far. But still . . . ultimately there comes a point where we have to say “we don’t know why it is that way, that’s just the way it is”. <\/p>\n

But what if . . . what if there is an infinite chain of causes on deeper and deeper levels, and humankind will keep on digging deeper and deeper into the scientific and logical mystery of it all without hitting bedrock. If that is the case, then humans will still never know it all; we are finite creatures in a finite realm, and our species is not going to last forever. And even if we did — at all points in “forever”, there is still an infinite future to go. So, even if there is an infinite regression of causes behind reality and we had an infinity to work on them, all we could ultimately say is . . . just that. I.e., there is an infinite regression of causes, and we know a limited sub-set of them, with an infinite set that remains unknown (and this situation will never change). That sounds like a brute fact to me. If we don’t have an infinity of human time to work on this — same problem, perhaps even more brutal.<\/p>\n

It would seem to me that no one can escape the “brute fact” behind it all. I will give scientists a pass on this, however. They are pledged to the empirical. They have the right to say “we only work on what can be know, we don’t focus on that lies beyond what we can know”. (Although that is not completely true either . . . scientists are always trying to take the next step into what lies just beyond their current body of knowledge.)<\/p>\n

But as to philosophers . . . no mercy for them, it’s their job to speculate on the ultimate. So, for philosophers and anyone concerned with thinking like a philosopher, the ultimate brute fact problem remains. And it seems to me, from that perspective, that God is NOT such an unreasonable notion after all. At minimum, you are stuck with some sort of infinite regression of physical laws, causes and fundamental substances (more fundamental than on the previous level, anyway — fundamental is a relative term here). <\/p>\n

To avoid the infinity of causes problem, perhaps you could bring back something akin to Democratus’ atom. But then you have to answer this question: when were they caused? If they are truly undividable and fundamental bits of reality, then they were NEVER caused, as that would require something more fundamental than them to precede them. So, they must have existed . . . guess how long? Right, FOREVER. Eternity. You can’t seem to get away from needing some sort of ETERNITY.<\/p>\n

This eternity might be dumb and insentient, just a whole lot of limitless time and some invincible bits of things that swirl and interact to create reality. To turn this into God, you would need something akin to personality and sentience . . . something akin to . . . yes, akin to consciousness. So maybe it comes down to this . . . if human consciousness is ultimately just a side-effect of one particular level of physical laws and substances, with many layers (possibly an infinite number) of causes and explanations beneath it, then God does not exist. (No wonder then that Dr. Dennett argues so vigorously that human consciousness is entirely a physical phenomenon.) But if human consciousness does not ultimately break down into the physical (despite its being intermediated and manifested by it), if consciousness is ontologically fundamental . . . then it also exists in eternity. And an eternal consciousness sounds a lot like God to me.<\/p>\n

To be honest, however . . . I don’t know which of these options is more likely. This is where I go TILT. But at least it leaves me in a state where the notion of God seems at least possible, if not proven. And so long as God is possible, then I personally choose to hold out hope.<\/p>\n

As to God potentially being ultimately evil . . . I believe that evil ultimately tries to nullify everything else, and an infinity of nullification would make everything go away. Puff! But everything has NOT gone away. So I don’t think that a God, if God does exist, would be evil. If God exists, God would be about existence, in a universe of ultimate existence. That to me sounds pretty good.<\/p>\n

So where does this leave me, Fr. Barron, Dr. Dennett, Professor Johnson and the brights and not-so-brights? Well, it seems to me that we all need a dose of humility . . . me too, mea culpa. There’s too much hubris on both sides of the fence (and the tone in Fr. Barron’s article isn’t any more helpful than Dennett’s “bright” suggestion). A lot of atheists are very smart (and I admire and respect that), but that doesn’t prove that they are completely right. Nor do their occasional condescending attitudes prove them wrong either. As to whether philosophy is in decline . . . well, I still have a few more lectures to go with Professor Johnson, so I should hold back my own conclusions, despite my misgivings about what I’ve heard from him thus far.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, Kings College, Professor Johnson’s employer, is a Catholic school. But that doesn’t make Johnson an easy sell on God and a dualistic view of human consciousness. From what I’ve heard thus far in his lectures, he in fact seems to be quite fond of Dennett’s point of view (two recent articles by Johnson include “Why Religious Experience Can\u2019t Justify Religious Belief” and “The Argument from Reason: C.S. Lewis\u2019s Fundamental Mistakes”). A neo-atheist teaching philosophy in a Catholic college? Not impossible . . . Father Barron says “take a good look at the philosophy department at many of the leading Catholic universities: what were, in the 1950’s overwhelmingly theistic professoriats are today largely atheist.” And I think that’s actually a good thing. A Catholic institution where a differing point of view lives . . . that’s rather refreshing, in my opinion. Let the discussion continue. <\/p>\n

Still, I hope that Professor Johnson leaves us with something more at the end of his course than a bunch of movie references, sweet potato fry hypotheticals, and a knot of word-game puzzles that all lead to dead-ends. I don’t expect him to make his listeners want to drop on their knees in prayer, but . . . hey, Prof, couldn’t you at least try to make us feel a bit better about our lives as thinking, reasoning human beings? Ain’t it all brute enough in life without some fancy-talking nihilism? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read an interesting article on the RealClearReligion web site entitled “The Decline of Philosophy“. Hmmm, so someone else thinks that philosophy today ain’t what it used to be. I am presently listening to a CD course from the Teaching Company on philosophical metaphysics, and I too have some reservations about what modern philosophy is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5101"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5117,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5101\/revisions\/5117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}