#atheism and theism

Matt Casper is an atheist. He is also a father, husband, musician, author and marketer. Matt’s atheism is a firm conviction that there is no god or supernatural external to himself and the physical world around him. He seems not to have become an atheist upon a lengthy philosophical exercise in epistemology, or upon a hard study of science; it was something that just occurred. He says, “I have no idea how long I have been an atheist. I also have no idea how long I will continue to be an atheist. The reason I say the former is that there was not some “eureka!” moment, no day I celebrate or honor… it was simply gradual, as is all real and lasting change.” [i] Yet his atheism had roots. Matt was raised within the Christian church and attended a Catholic college; it was in these institutions that he says his atheism took root. There came a time when religion didn’t make any sense, and in his mind was more negative than positive. “I just couldn't believe it anymore. It started by seeing the hypocrisy (racist Catholic schoolmates, money-grubbing televangelists, war-mongering Jesus followers) and went from there.”[ii]  Perhaps the rationale for Matt Casper’s adoption of atheism is the means that most people become atheists – it is prompted by a response and reaction to a religion that appears, at best, to be irrelevant and even abstract, and at worst, destructive and abusive.

The idea that people adopt atheism as a response to a lack or negative within religion is evidenced with Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English at Emory University. As a seventeen year old looking at a bush he concluded that there was nothing there, “It's just a bush, roots and leaves and branches, nothing more. It has nothing behind it or above it or inside it. It doesn't mean anything.” From then everything changed for him; “The bush was different and the universe was different. God was gone, utterly, and so was all spirit and meaning and moral value. If anybody bad passed at that moment and casually remarked upon the morning with the slightest hint that it had a moral or metaphysical meaning, I would have answered, "That's a lie." No philosophical analysis, no scientific investigation, only a moment in time when for Bauerlein there arose within him the conscious belief that nothing existed outside the phenomenon he was experiencing.  He would describe the ground for his atheism as a non experience, “he didn’t sense God”, “God was a token abstraction.” Only later in life would he support his atheism with philosophy that he curtly describes as ‘contemptuous nihilism.’[iii] Interestingly, in middle age when he had jettisoned his atheism and became a Christian Bauerlein would say this of his adoption of atheism as a teenager, "Atheism happened to me not because it is the truth but because of who I was and what was happening to me back then." I don't think that all beliefs are socially or historically constructed, but in this case I know that my epiphany at seventeen was not an insight into the nature of things. It was a psychological adjustment to a mentally ill, domineering father and an erratic, promiscuous mother.”[iv]  

For Casper and Bauerlein, and perhaps for many others, atheism was grounded in their experience, both personal and with religion, a reaction more than a well thought out search for truth. This is an experience that is becoming increasingly more common.  Why might this be? In secular western culture such a move towards atheism reflects what Charles Taylor says is a ‘disenchanted world’, a world in which god and the supernatural is no longer necessary for people to understand their world, nor indeed for them to flourish as individuals. Taylor suggests that in the past western culture encouraged faith in god, whereas the opposite is true today.[v] Atheism thus becomes a very plausible option in such a world, indeed it may be the default option for many.[vi]  Within a ‘disenchanted world’ individuals such as Casper and Bauerlein live as ‘buffered selves’, a term Taylor uses to describe persons who are “not open and porous and vulnerable to a world of spirits and powers...[who have] confidence in [their] own powers of  moral ordering.”[vii] It follows that such ‘buffered’ persons viewing themselves as autonomous and standing alone from others and the world, in the face of religion that appears to them to be irrelevant, abstract, even destructive would drop religion for atheism and an ‘exclusive humanism.’[viii] And the culture would actively encourage them to do this. One doesn’t need religion or belief in any god to be happy, to be good, and to contribute positively to the well-being of one’s family, community and world. It’s not that god is dead as much as god is irrelevant.

If a ‘disenchanted world’ is the cultural soil in which religion, and in particular Christianity, finds itself grounded, one option amongst many and not even the one many people believe is central or primary, it follows that if religion and Christianity are viewed as being irrelevant, abstract, and destructive many people will respond to such religion by their leaving and for increasing numbers a movement into atheism.

 How might religion, and in particular Christianity, confront this socio-logic? Bauerlein came to faith through the love and intellectually robust witness of family and friends whom he respected, and a realisation that humility of perception was necessary.[ix] These suggest the essentiality of Christians taking seriously Jesus’ teaching to love God and to love others, including our enemies.

This ‘love ethic’ is echoed by Matt Casper. In response to the sad reality of many American churches being racially segregated Casper writes, “tell me why I should join a movement that preaches love and equality and one body but for two thousand years has itself essentially resisted the very change it preaches about? It makes a good case for being an atheist if the very people who claim to be serving God and obeying him aren’t what they say he’s telling them to do. What kind of religion is that?[x]  For Casper it seems that a racially segregated church is a symptom of a larger problem – congregations and Christians turned in upon themselves and not practising ‘otherliness’.[xi] To practise ‘otherliness’ is to show care and compassion, to practically make a difference in another person’s life, if not the world.

There are many individual Christians and congregations practising ‘otherliness’ in their daily lives, and Casper would acknowledge this, but for many people within America the perception of Christianity and Christians is quite the opposite; that is assuming that they notice it at all.  No doubt this is an over simplification of the place of Christianity, and religion more generally, within western culture, and much can be said in defense of Christianity and religion, yet Casper is adamant that Christians are to do what Jesus taught and did. When they do they just might get an atheist’s attention to reconsider the God who is active in this world.

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Atheism and belief in god.     #dminlgp   #atheism and theism

“Atheism is a misunderstood term. Atheism just states that there's not enough evidence to believe in Zeus, or Thor, or Christ, or what have you.” – Peter Boghassian[1]

One might be mistaken yet it seems that atheism is a growing trend within western culture. In an on-line article, ‘The Rise of Atheism in America,’ the author states that ‘the number of disbelievers is growing...’ yet qualifies this statement by saying that answering how many atheists there are [in America] depends on how one defines atheism. Hard core atheists, those who believe that ‘no higher power exists’ may number between 1.5 to 4.0 per cent of the population, whilst another 19 per cent of the population spurns organised religion in favour of non defined skepticism about faith in some sort of deity or higher power. Apparently this latter group’s numbers, commonly referred to as the ‘Nones’ is growing faster than any other religious grouping.[2] In other western nations the number of people who self identify as atheists, agnostics or non faith affiliates are typically greater than in the United States: perhaps 20-40 percent in many European countries including the United Kingdom.[3] If the numbers are unclear regarding those aligning themselves with atheism and agnosticism, the reasons why it seems more people are leaving god for atheism and agnosticism is murkier still. The article, ‘The Rise of Atheism in America,’ cites several possible reasons: negative reaction to the American religious right and to the sex scandals within the Roman Catholic Church; an increasingly secular society and non conservative social values; a collapse of institutional religion.  Undoubtedly these factors have contributed to the rise of atheism within the United States, yet how important are they in other countries? As well, are there other factors, for example consumerism and individualism, functioning separately or more likely synergistically with the factors mentioned in the First Week article contribute to the adoption of atheism?

Regardless the numbers and the reasons surrounding atheism it seems that atheism, at least the possibility of it, is no longer the domain of philosophers and intellectuals. It is in the living rooms and classrooms and coffee bars with ordinary people talking about it, and thinking about it, if not exactly adopting its precepts. This occurrence is in part due to the highly visible, heavily marketed, and at times loudly vocal, presence of the proponents of ‘new atheism’. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett , and Victor Stenger are only the most visible of a growing number espousing a form of atheism that is known for its anti-theism, and often anti-religion.[4]

 ‘New atheism’ is different from the ‘old atheism’.[5] The latter is a form of skepticism, a way of thinking that questions whether there is enough evidence to support the reasonableness of a god’s existence. Bertrand Russell[6] espoused such a view as does Peter Boghassian of Portland State University.  For Boghassian theism constitutes a faith claim, a claim that states a belief without the reasonable expectation that it can be substantiated with evidence.  For Boghassian atheism “just states that there's not enough evidence to believe in Zeus, or Thor, or Christ, or what have you.” Interestingly Boghassian, true to his skepticism, would be open to change his views regarding theism if there was sufficient evidence to support the reasonableness of such a claim.[7]

The proponents of ‘new atheism’ are not merely skeptics; they are believers, believing that there is no god or anything beyond the natural world.  They posit that because “scientific theories are true, religious beliefs are false.”[8] In this they can be as fundamentalist as any ardent religious believer.  Perhaps rather simplistically, but what is being believed is a form of naturalism.  Alvin Plantinga, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, thinks of naturalism as a type of worldview, “a sort of total way of looking at ourselves and our world.”[9] Naturalism is not a religion, though it attempts to answer similar questions to religion – is there a god?; how should we live?; what is our place in the universe? It does so by ascertaining that there is nothing beyond the natural order. In other words there is no god or anything remotely divine or supernatural. Such a view purports to be rational and evidence based, similar to skeptics such as Peter Boghassian. Yet whereas Boghassian doesn’t, or at least he doesn’t seem to make a priori assumptions whether any type of god is present in the universe, he is willing to accede the reasonableness of such a proposition with sufficient evidence, atheists assuming a naturalist perspective rule god out of any possibility of existence “declaring that there is deep and irreconcilable conflict between theistic religion...and science.”[10] It seems that one has to choose: science or religion.

The proposition that science and religion is incompatible or more specifically that science has shown that god does not exist, to paraphrase the title of a book written by physicist Victor Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis – How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist,[11] is disputed.[12]  David Berlinski, a mathematician and secular concerning any religious belief, writing in The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, believe that much of the reasoning of scientific support against religion is incoherent. “If science stands opposed to religion,” he writes, “it is not because of anything contained in either the premises or the conclusions of the great scientific theories.  They do not mention a word about God. They do not treat of any faith beyond the one that they themselves demand.”  A little later he posits that science believes that there is ‘something answerable to the name of science” and that science believes it offers “a coherence vision of the universe.”  He emphatically writes that the second claim is false if the first claim is false, and the first is most assuringly false: nothing is answerable to science. Science describes and attempts to explain something about humanity and the physical universe. For Berlinski “no scientific theory touches on the mysteries that the religious tradition addresses.”[13] It appears that science is in need of humility.

Where does the problem lie if not between the basic tenets of science and theism and religion? Plantinga claims that the conflict is not between science and religion, but between science and naturalism, and by extension between naturalism and theism.  With Berlinski and McGrath Plantinga sees no inherent conflict [and epistemological defeaters][14] between the major thesis of theism and science, even forwarding three further suggestions: that there might be ‘mild support for theism’ in contemporary quantum mechanics theory[15]; that design discourses put forward by Michael Behe and others, though they don’t provide support for theism, they don’t provide strong defeaters either[16]; and that human cognitive abilities, given through the contingency of theistic creation, have enabled and provided for the empirical basis of contemporary science.[17] It is the latter that Plantinga sees a strong concord between science and theism, that there is “a match between our cognitive or intellectual faculties and reality, thought of as including whatever exists, a match that enables us to know something, indeed a great deal, about the world – and also about ourselves and God.”[18] No conflict but concord; as 20^th century physicist C.F. von Weizacker once wrote, “In this sense, I call modern science a legacy of Christianity.”[19]

Naturalism posits that there is nothing beyond the natural order; the universe including humanity is the way it is through natural processes. There is no god, no supernatural, nor any need for such fanciful ideas to explain the world. As such this is a metaphysical claim and is a presupposition that conflicts with science.[20] For example, Plantinga suggests that in regards to evolutionary theory, the thought that god has some play in it is as reasonable as if god didn’t; the science doesn’t affirm one position over the other. Whereas naturalism would a priori discount any theistic action in evolution as not only highly improbable, but just not occurring. He goes further to argue that a naturalistic explanation for evolution is incoherent with a scientific explanation for evolution, that one cannot believe both. His argument centres upon whether naturalistic evolution would enable the development of cognitive abilities that are reliable regarding the truthfulness of knowledge, memory and experience;[21] the same cognitive abilities that enable us to do science.

In short Plantinga would say no,[22] and he would also say that a non-naturalistic understanding of evolution that might allow theistic action could account for reliable cognitive abilities. Further, he would say to believe that one’s cognitive abilities are reliable, and possibly the product of theistic action, is a rational belief, a basic belief that doesn’t require evidence to support it, other than the awareness that they exist and can be studied, say by psychology or philosophy.[23] Holding the belief that god created the world and gave humanity its cognitive abilities would be a basic belief, and not only it is rational, it also one that is reasonable to hold in light of a science that at worst, is evidentially neutral towards theistic belief, and at best, mildly supports theism.

12 Books That Changed The World         #dminlgp  #Bragg

Richard Stengle, Managing Editor of Time magazine wrote, “Ideas change the world. The power of a new idea is the engine that transforms the way we live and think. (Our country was founded on one.) It was almost 50 years ago that the philosopher Thomas Kuhn coined the term paradigm shift--the moment when our worldview fundamentally changes because of a new idea, as when people understood that the sun does not revolve around the earth or that climate change is altering the way we would all have to live.’[1]

Melvyn Bragg would echo Stengle.  In his book, 12 Books That Changed The World,[2] Bragg selected 12 books, and in several cases documents, that provoked new ways of thinking, proposed new ways of thinking; he writes, ‘What I wanted these books to have in common was that they changed the world to that in which we now live.” [3] Bragg does not say that his work is definitive, more of a sampling, particularly as these books have British origins, thus the absence of the definite article ‘The’ prior to ’12 Books’. Yet there is no denying that these books have produced, or at least majorly contributed to paradigm shifts that have changed the way we live and think, as a culture and as individuals.  This is the case in regards to leisure and sport, literature and language, science and technology, politics and constitution, human rights, social issues, and religion. [3]

·         The Football Association Book of Rules gave us the ‘beautiful game’ a world-dominating sport;

·         Isaac Newton and his Principia Mathematica gave us an understanding of gravity and motion essential to go to the moon, not to mention a better golf-ball;

·         Married Love by Marie Stopes opened our culture towards women having control and enjoyment over their sexuality and family lives, while Mary Wollstonecraft and her book A Vindication of the Rights of Women started the struggle for women suffrage and equality of the sexes;

·         Wilbur Wilberforce broke down the door protecting the slave trade and moved us towards race equality and civil rights with his speech On the Abolition of the Slave Trade to the British House of Commons;

·         Michael Faraday, Experimental Researches on Electricity, gave us electricity while his contemporary Charles Darwin with On the Origin of Species, launched a revolution in natural science and with the idea of evolution and natural selection irrevocably shook our conception of human’s origins;

·         Adam Smith opened up our economic markets and the possibility of globalisation with An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations;

·         Richard Arkwright’s Patent Specifications for Arkwright’s Spinning Machine organised our work and enabled mass production of manufactured goods;

·         William Shakespeare’s plays published in The First Folio profoundly changed the English language as well exercised our imaginations whilst the King James Bible did something similar regarding God and faith;

·         and then there is the Magna Carta a 13^th century legal document between the monarchy, the aristocrats and the church that formed the foundation for modern democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, an organising paradigm that created the environment in which the authors of the other eleven books were able to dream, think, experiment, live, and propagate their ideas and consequentially change the world.

There were and will be other great ideas that have and will change the world,[3] ideas that will create ‘a conceptual chain reaction, sometimes of awesome proportions’ [4], producing profound paradigm shifts in the way in which our culture and ourselves think, experience, and live life. There may be books and other media recently produced or soon to be produced that will change the world.

Bragg and others like him enable us to know something of the people and ideas of the past that have shaped our present; they remind us that our ideas are often built upon the ‘shoulders of giants’ and not so ‘giant’ men and women who have dared to dream, think, create, innovate and risk.  As we grasp the past and the ideas that find their context in that past, as well our present, we may also glimpse the possibilities of the future. To change the world is not a unitary act; it requires the work of many people, from the past, present and future.  Yet we are also reminded that to change the world often begins with one solitary figure that has a dream and was willing to take up pen and write it down or as the case may be a group of men sitting in a pub.  This takes courage, conviction, and perhaps a bit of genius, but above all it requires an imagination that sees a changed world.

‘And as imagination bodes forth / The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen / Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing / A local habitation and a name.’  Theseus – A Midsummer Night’s Dream [4]

Life is difficult Scott Peck once wrote, and Jesus told his disciples ‘in this life you will have many troubles.’ It is consequential of life’s difficulties and troubles that we experience internal isolation and wilderness.[i]  The question is not ‘will we experience isolation’, but ‘how will we respond and navigate our lives in the midst of isolation and wilderness?’  Is there any hope?

Dr. Shelley Trebesch, in her book Isolation: A place of Transformation in the life of a Leader,[ii] broaches these questions by looking at Christian leaders who experience internal isolation. For Trebesch isolation is involuntary [30-31] or voluntary [32-34], and it is an experience “in which God uses the situation to deepen the leader’s life.” As such it can be transformative. [49] As the leader moves through isolation the consequential change can help the leader to reflectively understand what has and is occurring within the leader so that the leader may prepare through isolation for the future. The ideal effect would be one in which the leader’s self identity and framing for her ministry becomes more reflective of and rooted in God’s character and work, and in who God has created them to be [50-51], not in what she does, how well she performs, or what she accomplishes.

Trebesch outlines a process of transformation, four stages[iii] that a leader experiencing isolation will go through: a stripping of identity founded in the externals of ministry [35-38]; a wrestling with God in which the leader’s identity comes into conflict with how God defines her identity [38-40]; an increased intimacy with God [40-42]; and release towards the future in which the leader is led out of isolation and God by His Spirit “gently gives persons permission to begin looking outward again for a return to ministry and to begin exiting the isolation period.” [42-43] Trebesch includes a chapter that suggest six factors may intensify the isolation experience: being honest with self; remembering the values and experiences on past ministry; remaining in hope; having a mentor; listening for God’s voice; and embracing the isolation [55-67]. 

In 2003 after eleven years of pastoring a congregation I found myself terminated from this position. This precipitated a period of nearly five years in which I experienced an ‘isolation experience’, a period of questioning of self and God and a time of chaos and pain in which I evaluated my call to serve God. It was also a time I decided to do other things other than congregational ministry; much like Peter who after Jesus’ death went back fishing [John 21]. I moved through the various stages of transformation though my experience was not linear or smooth. There was stripping of pride and seeking security in ministry.  I wrestled with God and self over ‘do I belong within my denominational family?’, ‘Do I have what it takes to be a pastor?’, and ‘Do I want to be a pastor? I asked whether God still liked me [love was a bit rich at the time] and more pertinently ‘Did I like God?’ I persevered in a stubborn trust of God, but it was a trust that defied circumstances and rationality. After five years of struggle, working through hurt and anger, waiting upon others and at times God, doggedly rethinking and retooling, and working with my father-in-law building fences, as a barista at Starbucks, earning another bachelors degree and qualifications to teach high school science, teaching and tutoring high school, preaching on Sundays and at a Filipino Presbyterian Church, numerous applications to churches, turning down one call to serve a church in eastern Canada, God graciously released me from the isolation into a new ministry.

Retrospectively two things stand out.  Whilst serving the congregation I didn’t appreciate the extent that I had used ministry as a platform for securing my sense of identity and call.  The second thing I realised towards the end of my isolation experience was the call God had given me to serve him as a pastor and within my denomination was not revoked. The call which I responded to more than thirty years ago yet was unsure of [wouldn’t I’ve been a better surgeon?] was reaffirmed when God opened the door for me to serve in the congregation I presently serve.

Reflecting upon my isolation experience I would have benefited from an awareness of Trebesch’s guidance in the chapter entitled, ‘Psalm 42-Six Things To Heighten Development in Isolation’ [55-66]. In particular I would have benefited from ‘remembering’ [58-60] – reflection and articulation of the values, attitudes, skills, and experience from my previous ministry as they interacted with my sense of call to ministry and leadership. My inattention to this ‘remembering’ caused me to continue in a state of confusion regarding future congregational ministry.  As well, I would have benefited from having a mentor who would have enabled me to process the ‘isolation experience’ more fully, aiding me to minimise my self-pity, my self-judgement [and of others], and to establish future goals.  Ironically working with a mentor would have placed me into a situation of having to be less self-sufficient, another character trait that God was stripping me of during this isolation experience.

The Social Animal:  Heart Over Mind

David Brooks in The Social Animal writes as though he is onto something new:  that human beings are more emotional than rational, more relational than thinking, more about character than responders to material incentives.  Using the story of two successful, yet fictional people, Brooks in The Social Animal develops and illustrates how neurological research aids in this understanding of who we are deep inside, and how this shapes our behaviour.  He posits that how we [at least contemporary western society] define what it is to be human, and how to describe human nature, has moved beyond a commonly held bias that articulated "a view of human nature based on the notion that we're divided selves, that reason is separated from the emotions, and that society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions." [TED lecture March 2011] Symptomatic of this divided self, says Brooks, is politicians' approach to policy-making. Despite their ‘incredible social skills,’ these public figures become "completely dehumanized when they think about policy." [TED lecture]; they ignore their social and emotional intuitions and approach policy ‘mechanistically’ focusing upon ‘those factors that could be rigorously quantified and toted up in an appropriations bill.’  [316] In doing this they value the engineering of material resources to solve a problem, and perhaps as an unintended consequence they undervalue people, their relationships and what contributes to human flourishing.

Brooks understands this bias having evolved and developed from an application of French philosophical thinking, Descartes, Rousseau, Voltaire, Condorcet and others [233-234], that valued rationality, universal principles and a materialist orientation towards culture. This produced a view of human nature and flourishing in which “[W]e are good at talking about material incentives, but bad about talking about emotions and intuitions. We are good at teaching technical skills, but when it comes to the most important things, like character, we have almost nothing to say.” [xii]  Further, this view of human nature under values the shaping and influence that non-rational aspects of human nature has upon human behaviour – the unconscious system, its affections and aversions that in turn are shaped by interactions with the environment including people.  Contra to an understanding that the conscious mind shapes and directs human nature, that humans are “primarily the products of our conscious thinking”, Brooks says the core of recent research into understanding the building blocks of human nature supports the perspective that human nature is “primarily the products of thinking that happens below the level of awareness.” [viii]  As such, in perceiving and processing the world around us – relating to the environment, and other people in what Brooks calls interpenetration - the unconscious, not the conscious mind does most of the work, and in turn the unconscious shapes and influences the conscious, for example telling us what to value and informing how we act.  

Brooks doesn’t deny the place or the importance that rationality and thinking has for human beings, he says that both the conscious/rational and the unconscious/emotional are necessary for people to thrive and flourish [380],  but he maintains that our sense that our brains and rational processes is responsible for who we are and what we do is misleading.  “We are not who we think we are” he writes and that there are hidden forces, unconscious processes, that are involved in how we perceive, process, and act in the world around us. [377]  James K. Smith in summarising Brooks’ thesis in the The Social Animal says, “we are creatures of habit and we absorb fundamental, orienting habits through embodied but unconscious routines and rituals.” [quote cited by Jason Clark] Such is the foundation for how we relate to a stranger on the street, engage in the economic market, or exercise religion and faith.

Brooks’ thesis is not new. Aristotle spoke that all human beings seek what is good and that which contributes to flourishing and this good is centred in virtue that is experienced in and through four dimensions – intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and spiritual; dimensions of human experience that involves yet transcends the rational. The ancient Hebrews and after them the early Christian also viewed human nature as more than the conscious mind. They spoke of ‘heart’ – not a physical organ but the totality of what makes a person human.  The heart includes the emotional, volitional, intellectual, spiritual, and rational aspects of a person governing all aspects of a person.  The ‘heart’s’ work is present, for example, in one’s love for God; one is to love God with all of one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength [Mark 12.30-31].  Interestingly Mark 12.30-31 might also be translated ‘love God with all one’s heart – that is with one’s soul, one’s mind, and one’s strength’; the latter attributes finding their origin in the heart. And even the 18^th century French philosophers who valued the rational mind over affections, and their English and Scottish counterparts who valued the affections over reason would have much in common with Brooks’ thesis; the difference perhaps more of emphasis and importance of the conscious and unconscious dimensions.

It seems that David Brooks hasn’t discovered something new about human nature, but has engaged in restoring [and effectively communicating] a deeper view of human nature that was known and valued within theology and philosophy. To be sure this deeper view of who we are is grounded and supported through research and science, and this research enables us to explore the shaping the unconscious has upon human nature and how it might control and direct behaviour.  This perhaps distinguishes his thesis from earlier philosophers and theologians, yet it probably is a stretch of historical reality to say as Brooks does that this new deeper understanding of human nature is not based in theology or philosophy [TED lecture], and that this empirical insight into human nature creates a ‘new enchantment.’  Yet Brooks reminds us to connect our behaviour with not so much what we think, but with what we love and desire; as Augustine [5^th century] suggested we become what we have passion for – be it money, doing good, love, or God. In this the research that Brooks cites supports something Jesus of Nazareth said a long time ago, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” [Matthew 6.21]

References

1.  Brooks, David. The Social Animal. New York: Random House, 2012. 

2.  Brooks, David. ‘The Social Animal: How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life.’ The New Yorker, January 17, 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/17/110117fa_fact_brook  [accessed 12 February 2012]

Brooks, David. ‘The Social Animal.’ TED Talk, March 2011.  http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/david_brooks_the_social_animal.   [accessed 12 February 2012].

4.   Clarke, Jason. 20 February 2012. Facebook comment.

Charles Taylor in A Secular Age[i] seeks to continue a project he began with an earlier book Sources of Self [22] to examine the competing moral sources within modern western culture through the telling of the story of their roots within medieval Latin Christendom [1500] and their transformation to the present [2007].  An important core of Taylor’s project is how to understand the rise of secularity within Western culture, a process “which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith...is one human possibility among others.”[ii] [3] In other words, the ‘conditions of belief’, the context “in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place” [3], changes and secularity is a context that favours unbelief, though the possibility for belief still exists with most people shunting uneasily between the two.[iii] [14]  It is these ‘conditions of belief’ that shapes one’s ‘lived experience’, the manner in which people live and understand their lives, and whether their reference is God, or something within nature or themselves, in other words “what it’s like to live as a believer or an unbeliever.” [4-5]  Taylor uses ‘fullness’ to describe something of the ‘lived experience’, of living life more fully or at least seeking to do so; ‘what makes life really worth living?’ [16] As such ‘fullness’ may be inhabited by people open to the transcendent or only to the immanent[iv] and those who reside in the middle.

A complete review and summary is beyond the scope and space of this posting[v], yet one idea that arises from the above and flows as a sub-current under Taylor’s main argument is: within western society belief in God is no longer axiomatic, and adherence to the Christian church even less so.  Taylor speaking about conditions of belief present within western society and the secularity that presents many viable alternates to belief in God writes that in many milieux it will be hard to sustain faith, and harder for people to discover faith.[3] Taylor isn’t speaking explicitly about Christian faith, though it is implicit in his project, and in Europe, Canada and parts of the United States this conclusion is evident.[vi]  Seeking and the experiencing of some sort of fullness in response to transcendent reality will be very plausible[vii], as will the seeking and experiencing fullness in some sort of immanent reality [768-770], it just may not be Christian or involve the Christian church.

Where do we go from here? If the ‘conditions of belief’ makes it hard to discover and to sustain Christian faith and participation within the church how might this affect the church’s ecclesiology? Taylor is suggestive as he refers to the place of communion and agape. Agape “is a higher good than, beyond human flourishing” and in the Christian context it is founded in the love God has for us, a love that we can participate with, a love that has within it “the possibility of transformation...”. [20]  Agape has the potential to move beyond any good and mutual benefit that occurs within human society, in part because it draws us beyond ourselves, to the transcendent, to God, to others, and also because of its nature: it is sacrificial and unconditional asking for nothing in return.  It is centred in pity and compassion illustrated by the parable of the Good Samaritan. [701, 741-742]

Communion is causally related to agape as agape involves relationship: God to God in the form of the Trinity; God to people in Christ; people to God; people to people.  Communion assumes what Taylor refers to as a ‘porous self’, the openness to God and the possibility of transformation “to the raising of human life to the divine (theo-sis)." [737] For Christians communion has the ontic goal of becoming more Christ like; the telos of this being resurrection and redemption. For Taylor communion is illustrated and experienced through incarnation or embedding; God incarnating his agape in Christ, Christ embedding God’s agape into the church with the corollary that God and the church incarnates and embeds agape in their relationships within the world. Communion that incarnates agape finds its centre and expression outside itself, in this it is transcendent, and is able to locate human flourishing outside society while affirming what is good and contributes to human flourishing in the modern moral order. In other words ‘agapic communion’ is able to experience fullness, “porous persons communing with God and each other” in a “mutual giving and receiving”. [Long, 106]

What might this look like in the church?  It leads to a different ‘itinerary’, a different approach in which communion and agape, the incarnation and embedding of Christ, becomes the way Christians see and live out their ‘lived experience’ of being in Christ.[viii] This is contra to the ‘itinerary’ that is present in much of the western church that reflects the itinerary and social imaginaries within the modern moral order. Instead of asking and living out the answer to ‘what does it mean to be Christian?’ the church asks and seeks to live out the answer to ‘what is the church to do?’ Alan Roxburgh says that most of the missional conversations, at least in North America, is centred upon the production of programmes, formulas, and models that attempt to manage, organise, control and predict what the church will be.  In other words the ‘lived experiences’ of many churches and Christians is situated, not in relationships, but in tasks and actions, a form of nominalism that values success, individuals and meeting needs.[ix] The latter may be necessary, yet they ought to derive from agape practised in communion, and not as practises that can function without agape.   

What good is philosophy?  #dminlgp   #philosophy and culture

Philosophy is the love [philos] of wisdom [sophos] and it is one of the foundations for western thinking creating the framing that has produced our contemporary culture for politics, economics, law, education, science and religion. Yet philosophy is often thought as something that is not very practical and useful. Carlos Fraenkel, who teaches philosophy at McGill University in Montreal, was told by a Brazilian high school student, “learning how to read and write and basic mathematics is useful, but why should I care about Plato’s concept of the soul?”  In reply Fraenkel conceded “that learning philosophy for the sake of erudition may not be the best use of their time.”  Yet he went on to say to the student, “But if you want to build a just and democratic society, isn’t it useful to get as clear as possible on what you mean by justice and democracy and to examine if you have good reasons to pursue these?” I asked. “And aren’t your intuitions about knowledge, goodness and beauty worth investigating?”[1]

            In other words philosophy and its study can have very practical uses in the world that we live in. William Raeper and Linda Edwards in their A Brief Guide to Ideas: Turning Points in Religion and Philosophy[2] would concur.  Their book is a guide to the questions that have been asked by people concerning truth, knowledge, existence and life. It is introductory and limited to western philosophy and religion, starting from Thales, a pre-socratic Greek philosopher from the seventh century BCE, to contemporary post-modernism thinking.  For an even briefer [and amusing] summary see ‘A Brief Guide to Donuts’ by friend and colleague Anderson Campbell [http://www.thecrookedmouth.com/a-brief-guide-to-donuts]. 

Reading Raeper and Edwards it becomes clear that philosophy has had profound and practical effect upon western culture and Christianity.  This perspective is grounded in a very simple concept that how we live is consequential to how we think.  Raeper and Edwards write, “what we think is true affects our view of ourselves and how we treat other people and the world.” [11] This was Fraenkel’s point to the students he was speaking to.  Since 2008 philosophy has been a compulsory subject in Brazil’s high school curriculum; for two hours a week over the course of three years nine million Brazilian high school students study Plato, Descartes, Marx and others.  The official reason for this curriculum choice is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.”  In this regard Fraenkel comments that it “represents an experiment in democracy.”  Among teachers there is a hope that teaching philosophy to students will improve civil society and increase participation in civic affairs. It is not difficult to understand this desire.  Voting is obligatory in Brazil, yet there is a deeply seated political cynicism.[3]  In 2010, the largest number of votes for any member of congress went to Tiririca, a popular TV clown, who ran on the slogan, “I don’t know what a congressman does, but vote me in and I’ll tell you.” [4]

Can philosophy help us become better citizens? Can it help us to know ourselves, and our society better?  Can it help us to question, to challenge, and to suggest an alternate vision for the society we live in? Raeper and Edwards in their 2600 year overview of the interaction of philosophy with western culture and Christianity would suggest this as does Fraenkel.  Fraenkel quotes Almira Ribeiro, who teaches philosophy in a high school in Itapuã on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. Itapuã is a poor, violent neighbourhood and is an unlikely place for the teaching of philosophy. Ribeiro believes that getting out of the cave – a reference to Plato’s parable – is important to see how things are, yet she adds “But seeing things as they really are isn’t enough,”.  Fraenkel sums up Riberiro’s perspective, “As in Plato’s parable in The Republic, the students must go back to the cave and apply what they’ve learned. Their lives give them rich opportunities for such application. The contrast between the new luxury hotels along the beach and Itapuã’s overcrowded streets gives rise to questions about equality and justice. Children kicking around a can introduce a discussion about democracy: football is one of the few truly democratic practices here; success depends on merit, not class privilege. Moving between philosophy and practice, the students can revise their views in light of what Plato, Hobbes, or Locke had to say about equality, justice, and democracy and discuss their own roles as political agents.”[5]  Fraenkel believes that by giving students “the basic semantic and logical tools they need to clarify their intuitions and to analyze arguments for and against their views, philosophy could help to extend and refine the debate that naturally arises in a pluralistic society from conflicting interests, values, and worldviews. And it could also help citizens make wise use of the power they have in a democracy....”[6]

Is this overstating philosophy’s benefits, and power? Plato would say yes, unless of course philosophers were running the government. But what would occur if for example, the Christian church seriously taught the followers of Jesus how to think, write, and discuss critically, an application of Augustine’s belief that reason seeks to understand what faith believes?[7]  What if the ordinary Christian believer were given the semantic and logic tools to be able to engage and think about not just the Scriptures, but also the world in which they live, a world that often presents conflicting beliefs, values and worldviews? Would Christians be better citizens of heaven as well as better able to help the society they inhabit to flourish? It may be that the Reformation’s vision of the priesthood of all believers remains unfulfilled, mere shadows flickering on a cave’s wall, because believers have been kept in the dark concerning how to think.