Wherein the Email debate rages on... at length.
Quotes are drawn from scripture, Nietzsche, and Simon gets to use the word 'hooey' again.
Sit down for ten minutes and read ahead if you'd like.
>> The instant I, or anyone else, starts to look outside one's self for guidance, I've already lost the way. Go within or you go without.
Simon, I do not think you fully realize just how radical such a position is, nor how such a stance would undermine society and destroy the very soul of every man alive if honestly held and consistently adhered to. Even those moral standards that we fully accept are nevertheless external to ourselves, even if we fail to realise it. Going within only works because we have already internalized the most temporally consequential of those laws without acknowledging it. Consistently held, your position would justify doing away with those very institutions that teach us those laws to begin with. And if that were accomplished, I think it foolish to doubt that a rapid collapse of civil society would follow. Indeed, the weakening of belief in external standards has already resulted, especially in western society, in a sharp rise in social dysfunction. Nearly every negative social indicator, be it murder rates, assaults, theft, vandalism, or anti-social behaviour skyrocketed in the decades following the middle of the last century. We may console ourselves with the knowledge that our society is "more open", "more tolerant", and "less hypocritical", though this only works for those of us who have the resources to distance ourselves from the underclass.
Several weeks ago my roommate got a call at one in the morning from a friend of his. We picked her up from the bus terminal and went for coffee. I sat next to her without saying a word as she talked to [my roommate] about what she'd been doing the last few months. She was drunk and went back and forth from tears to bitter laughter and back to tears again. When this girl looks inside of herself, all she sees is her 'need' for crack and alcohol. That outweighs everything else. When she runs out of money to feed her habit she finds men who'll sleep with her in exchange for money. She more fully embodies the philosophy of looking to oneself for guidance than anyone else I've met. When you live in the suburbs and have a good job and a house and friends, and your vices are perhaps annoying, but not ultimately self-destructive, looking inside of yourself is a matter of philosophical games. When you're stuck in in poverty and addiction it's a death sentence.
The belief that we can look to ourselves for guidance must presume that man is fundamentally good, if not on the surface, at least deep down. No writer has deconstructed more poignantly this idea than a British physician who writes under the name Theodore Dalrymple. (see for instance http://www.manhattan-institute.org/cfml/cj_author.cfm?author=47, this article in particular: http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_4_oh_to_be.html)
"Crime and Punishment" begins with a crime. A young student, Raskolnikov, convinces himself that murdering a miserly old woman with no friends and only a single sister left alive is fully justified, given that this woman makes money by loaning money to the desperately poor and miserable. He fully believes that having justified the crime to himself he will avoid the ensuing remorse that betrays so many other criminals. Yet he, of course, does not escape knowledge of guilt; to the contrary it destroys him and leaves him a broken man by the end of the novel. Now you may argue that ultimately proves that that the knowledge of good and evil is innate, that we can look inside ourselves and determine right form wrong. But this is to miss the entire point - it's not that we don't know right from wrong, it's that we easily distort and deny even that which we know, and that without external guidance we certainly won't choose the right. The furies of conscience may indeed extract their vengeance, but in full force only ex post facto, and even there will as often as not serve to drive a man deeper into a sense of having been wronged and thus further justified in the very behaviour that destroys himself and those around him.
Jails are full of men who have looked inside themselves for guidance, and found that they could justify to themselves what they did. And on a larger and more tragic scale the twentieth century itself bears witness to the catastrophe of man looking to himself for guidance. No century has seen more men slaughtered with the belief on the part of the perpetrators that what they were doing was eminently reasonable and just - even noble - be it for the purpose of creating the ideal classless society, or establishing the dominance of the pure race of ubermenchen. Of the nineteenth century philosophers, none understood more clearly than Nietzsche the implications of man looking to himself for guidance:
The Madman. Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lighted a lantern and ran to the market-place calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why? is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? - the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub.
The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? - for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife - who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event - and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!" Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise.
At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," he then said. "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling - it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star - and yet they have done it themselves!" It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned his Requiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?"
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On the question of sexual morality and ethics I will say only two things. First, that the church has the same right to teach adherence to the seventh commandment as it does to the other nine. The pope hardly "stands in the way" of anyone's sexual gratification, any more than it stands in the way of anyone taking the Lord's name in vain, though it teaches that both are grave sins in the sight of God. Secondly, the church's view of man is that he was created in the image of 'God', that is, having a spiritual nature in addition to the physical, and that the two are intimately intertwined. Furthermore the sexual relationship (in humans) involves not just mechanical contact between two autonomous beings, but the spiritual union of two people. This is what's implied by the words of the Christian wedding ceremony that the "two shall be one flesh." The teachings of the church are intended to protect that which it considers sacred from being treated as something common and thus emptied of it's power and significance and reduced to mere emotion and physical sensation. They are not merely the arbitrary imposition of rules and regulations with the intent of depriving people of pleasure. This is why the church cannot meaningfully alter it's position on sexual morality without either contradicting or first destroying it's teachings on the nature of man.
As for the theology of the Matrix, my beliefs do not in any way require anyone else to believe what I do, but I do believe in an external, knowable (although imperfectly), reality that is entirely noncontingent on what either of us - or anyone else for that matter - believes. However, to the extant that either or our beliefs conflict with that reality, they are mistaken. You have however hit upon the crux of the epistemological dilemma of post-modernity. Since it can be shown that that we cannot know everything perfectly, it is possible to deduce, without logical contraction, that nothing can be known with any certainty at all. So having abandoned Truth, all we are left with is Power - which - given the fallen nature of man as agued above - is a terrifying proposition. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of mankind is less internally consistent than he would like to believe.
>> And you know, our positions on soteriology are probably not all that different.
On the contrary Simon, our positions on soteriology are nearly opposite.
Your second assertion either makes the first superfluous, or else contradicts it, depending on how much weight you place on the definite article in front of Way and Life (you left out Truth). Immediately following "I and the way, the truth, and the life" Christ states "No one comes to the father except by me." (John 14:6), so to then propose universal salvation is to flatly contradict him, in which case you make him out to be a liar, but then the idea that he had it more together than you do sort of falls apart. And to declare the 'only begotten son' thing biblical hooey, and on that basis suggest some commonality in out position is outright untenable. My position, and that of all orthodox Christianity, is that, though created by God, I, on account of the rebellion of Adam, am naturally in a position of enmity towards God. Only on the basis that God allows for the vicarious atonement for sin in the person of Christ - God who became man - do I believe that I am considered a son of God - an 'adopted' son as it were, not 'begotten'. In short, my position is that your position (especially the capitalization of the word 'Son' in reference to yourself), is blasphemous.
I'm afraid Simon, in reading my own writing, that I come across as too much of a logician and that I seem to reduce my faith to little more that a set of cold, albeit logically consistent (he says, patting himself on the back), propositions. So I think it appropriate that I point out that in an ultimate sense, my faith is not a matter of syllogisms and corollaries, but a relationship with God. Nevertheless, this does not entitle me to believe whatever I like about God, anymore than I could have a relationship with anyone where everything I believed them was an expression of my own preferences and felt needs. And, like all Christians, I believe that the truth about God has been revealed in the pages of scripture and in the person of Christ himself.
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Smith's Falls is about forty minute's drive from here. I would welcome enthusiastically the opportunity to get together and enjoy a pint. In the words of John Calvin, no theological slouch himself: "Nature would certainly be satisfied with water to drink; and therefore the addition of wine is owing to God’s superabundant liberality... It is permissible to use wine not only for necessity, but also to make us merry." (Commentary on the Psalms, Ps. 104:15)
AEKDB,
Jared
Jared,
We're going to have to agree to disagree pretty soon here. I can only wax loquacious so long and then have to get back to raking the lawn!
First, I fully realise what a totally radical position my assertion about 'going within' is. It was a completely ideological statement. We probably have at least another couple of millennia to go before self-governance becomes even somewhat plausible, let alone the norm. And until that time is reached, barring the self-extermination of our species, which is currently a frightening possibility, our reliance upon leadership and guidance from both a spiritual/religious and socio-political standpoint are vital. The ignorant masses are still too ignorant to be left to their own devices. (It sounds like I'm excluding myself from that, but I'm not.)
And I will join you in the congratulatory back patting for maintaining a logically consistent set of propositions. Much more so than are mine. And there, I think, is where we differ so greatly. That is one of the great services that religion provides. It is very consistent; and that is comforting. It is much more black and white; right and wrong; do and don't. It provides guidance to those who seek it and answers to those who crave them. That is where it fails for me. Hardly an issue exists where an argument cannot be made for the other side. I include on that list: abortion, murder, divorce and sexual gratification without intending spiritual unity. For me, I need more than just a consistent set of guidelines and dogma to steer me on the path to the Father and eternal salvation.
I disagree with the literal interpretation of "no one comes to the Father except by me." That reads like my way or the highway, pilgrims! Literally, that also bars all non-Christians, which falls again under my category of hooey. I prefer to read that to mean that living an enlightened life, like that of Christ's, will allow one to see the Heaven on Earth without having to wait for the doorway of death to open. Again, I see that as unavoidable salvation. Hitler went to Heaven and all that. There is no hell other than the one we create for ourselves here on Earth, if that is our choice, conscious or otherwise.
And on the topic of the bible, seeing as you were quoting a wee bit from scripture, I have to take issue with a book, even the Good Book, that has undergone numerous revisions since its compilation. I would not choose to adhere to guidelines set forth in a religious text that has 'King James Version' emblazoned on the spine. I would be wary of a book that has been modified, however marginally, to fit with certain aspects of a political regime. Religion and politics have no place interfering with each other, though I am well aware that the two are inextricably intertwined. I do think the bible is a wonderful repository of life lessons that can be learned, so long as one keeps a salt lick handy. Interpretation is the key.
There is really so much more I would like to touch on, but cannot dedicate the time. I am at work right now on a Saturday and had best get a few things done so I can return to my family. I'll be sure to send you my cell number so we can hopefully get together briefly in Smiths Falls next month.
Hope to see you soon,
Simon
An interesting concept of hell: I read a discussion on a message board in which the writer put forth that heaven and hell are not two separate places. His point was that there is only one afterlife, which is being "in the presence of God," and everyone goes there. However, for those who have led an evil life, being in the presence of God is unbearable, and so becomes that person's personal hell.
At least I think that's what he was saying. It's all just fairy tales as far as I'm concerned.
Posted by: Paul | Friday, 06 May 2005 at 06:41 PM
Fairy tales?
So what, you just discorporate at the end of all things and completely cease to be? Don't you have a sense that there is something more and greater than thou and that you are somehow inexplicably a part of it?
Posted by: Simon | Friday, 06 May 2005 at 08:54 PM
I like the interpretation Paul gave of heaven/hell. I have never felt the need to justify my lack of belief. It just is; furthermore, I could never countenance the idea that the whole God/Satan thing is basically a tired cliche from the movie Trading Places. The two evil brothers make a wager that they can take a loser from the streets and turn him into a productive member of society. They wager a dollar on this bet, and at the conclusion, both unknowing parties to this wager will be cast off. Sure Satan, you can TRY to run the show, but I bet ya a buck you lose... then again, I am more comfortable with the idea that my scew-ups are mine alone. My accomplishments are mine. For me, it is a logical way to go through life....Penny
Posted by: Penny | Monday, 09 May 2005 at 06:24 PM
I agree that pretty much the WHOLE God/Satan thing is man's contrivance. Anyone who takes religion, any religion, strictly at face value ought to have their own smacked. Perhaps the sting would wake them a bit. Mind you, taking it at face value, they might just turn the other cheek.
Posted by: Simon | Tuesday, 10 May 2005 at 06:57 AM