Amen and Amen! And Jesus said, go make disciples of all faculties and fields of study, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

May your dream come true Peter. Theology at the core of our lives. In a sense it already is. Listen to any voice wanting to persuade us on some topic, including someone wanting to sell us food to Obama or Romney wanting our vote. Listen to hear an appeal to shared values or aspirations. Inside the shared values are values, the determination of which rests on some sommon confession of good and true and that to be desired. Shared values arise from an exercise that is theological in kind, be it theistic or atheistic. If this is so we start the restoration of theology by seeking the Lord to be at the core of our selves and implementing intelligent quality control measures in theological training.

Hear Hear Peter! The idea that someone can be a theologian and not be serious about culture is to be confused about the nature of both.

Yes, if one prays all the time, or desires to, one must theologize all the time.

I think this is what Hans Urs von Balthasar meant by a "kneeling theology". When kneeling we are open to receive what is revealed in every second of our lives from the Holy Spirit. A standing theology is always an imposition, a partnership with powers and principalities that would suffocate what God reveals to us in every second of our lives, a theology that is anti-theology.

A false premise implies any conclusion. Many of the premises assumed by theologians of times before we knew about where our species came from and how the cultures of early tribes developed and propagated creation myths all around the world, have subsequently been show not to be true. As these foundational assumptions crumble, the logical castles in the sky built upon them by tradition of argument fall with them. The biggest change that theology must face, in general, is simply facing the facts that have catapulted our understanding of ourselves, and how our our minds work, into the modern world.

I'd like to add that as much as I salute Peter's point here, I'm still not ready to give the Queen her old job description back. There is simply too much triumphalism in that. Herman Bavinck suggest a different kind of Queen when he states, “[Theology's] honor is not that she sits enthroned above them as Regina scientarium [Queen of the sciences] and waves her scepter over them but that she is permitted to serve them all with her gifts. Theology also can rule only by serving. She is strong when she is weak; she is greatest when she seeks to be least. She can be glorious when she seeks to know nothing save Christ and him crucified.”

One problem of professional theology is that its professors must somehow make a living.

The natural place to do so is in a university, but the contemporary university is not what it was (yeah, I know, that’s a comical understatement). There are few (no?) places where a theologian can start a career, practice his craft, explore a few dead ends, come back to the main line, deepen his knowledge sufficiently, and take the time required to add something significant to 2000+ years of theology as received. He will – as he should -- feel pressure to become a debunker, to “challenge received wisdom” with some radical heresy. This also happens to young philosophers.

So imagine telling your lovely wife, The One, “Honey, I am called to spend my time on a new project, the project God put me here to execute. If I complete it, in 5 years I will publish a groundbreaking book that will sell 50-75 copies at $25/copy.” She responds, “I was going to wait until dinnertime, but I want you to know I am 2 months pregnant with our second child.”

I have come to think that theology (like economics, but don’t start me on that) should be an avocation, not a profession. There really isn’t a career path in it. The world does not need you. There is a reason why the field has fallen on hard times.

"hustled italien down a dark hallway and locked it in the basement"...

The key question to ask here is why.
Could it be due to a book Burning too many ? An inquisition not fully appreciatéd.
An accidental holocaust of heretics?


Théology + culture = Theocracy

@Quine:

You are making an important point here, not because I agree that theologians of earlier times created "air castles" that must surely crumble in the light of modern science, but because, from an early age, I have struggled with the intellectual challenge of taking Biblical faith issues and reconciling them to the modern, scientific consciousness.

As a child, I was naturally drawn to science. It became my passion. With my telecope, microscope, treasured child's book of the lives of famous scientists (scientific hagiographies?), and my sense of absolute wonder at the starry night sky and the endless,voluptuous parade of creatures in the tropical waters around Cuba, I could imagine nothing so satisfying as a life devoted to scientific study.

With increasing maturity, though, I came to a spiritual crisis that began, I believe, one night at about the age of 16, when I was walking alone at night, and began to contemplate the fundamental mystery of existence itself. This path of thought led me to the realization that we all go around taking existence for granted. But what it there was no existence, no universe, no... It seemed at once that an infinite void opened underneath me. The psychological impact was incredible, and I slowly extricated myself from it, saying, "I'll never be the same...I'll never be the same..." I had just encountered a theological/philosophical reality that reduced human science to impotence.

And now I've started a story that might be worked into an interesting spiritual autobiography, but there is obviously no room for it in a forum like this! But suffice it to say that I was finally led, by the grace of God into the awareness of whole dimensions of reality beyond nature. When I hear scientists discussing
cosmology with the obvious implication that they are dealing with all that
is real--the phenomenal created universe of matter, energy, space, and
time--I have to keep reminding myself (despite my continuing fascination
with science) that they are dealing with a very limited version of reality.
Spriritual planes of existence, because they are innacessible to the senses
and our rat-maze logic processes, will always be simply unknown to science.
The science game does not concern them. Science objectifies, quantifies,
rationalizes, analyzes--it sets the observer apart from the observed. The
spiritual path ultimately leads to UNION--a state of being beyond the game.
What is unknownable to science may be open to a blind beggar sitting in an
alleyway in Marrakech. And, in fact, the blind beggar may very well be closer to Truth than the most erudite theologian!

But to relate this to Peter's concerns about theology and culture, and to Quine's concern about the devastating impact of scientific revelation on theological structures, I can say that I now have much less problem with the coexistence of my faith life and our modern scientific culture. It's basically a matter of not mixing apples and oranges. If anthropologists devise convincing theories about the biological ancestry of my body, I am quite aware that they are saying nothing at all about my spirit.

The assumption that theology has anything real to contribute to knowledge is questionable. It must be remembered that theology is, essentially, rumination on a presupposed ideal - the reality of its subject-matter. Until such times as supernatural beings are positively identified, described and validated as facts, then theology remains a bogus occupation.

But modernity, for all its discontents, also led to societal differentiation and differentiated responsibility (marking out separate spheres for the church and the state, for instance). A theological chemistry or physics or economics(as radical orthodox thinker Stephen Long imagines) -- anyone? No, not the Queen of the sciences, far from it, but a rightful place in the academy along with the other disciplines, all directed by faith . That at least, is how reformational thought imagines it.

Peter,

How would this be different from working out a Biblical worldview across the arts and sciences? Sounds like an update on Wolters' Creation Regained--scripture-informed scholarship, but without the "worldview" bit.

As someone who graduated from one such "Theology and..." program at a well-respected institution, I agree in every sense that "theology and..." can do much better. It is great to see theologians break disciplinary boundaries, and by all means it should be happening more and more. Theology needs to come out of the parent's basement and get some exercise.

The conversation this post opens is essential for this new/ancient theological method. Personally, I am not comfortable with the coronation answer. When it comes to culture, Queen theology has always wanted to be a chaste queen. If all sciences are somehow internal to theology, being the supreme category, it implies a reductive method that explains all other science by reducing them to theological terms. Theology rules by purifying less-than-theological discourse into itself. Can we ever understand culture by reducing it to theology? In my experience, what you get there is a theological view of culture that appears alien to those who produce the culture, strangling dialogue. Queen theology starts to sound like a divinely self-credentialed psychoanalyst telling artists what they "really" mean or what they are "really" doing. Flattering for a queen and her court, maybe, but it isn't thinking.

I wonder what would happen if we turned this around. We would have to give up "theology" as our primary term. What would a promiscuous theology look like? A theology that was not continent to dominate other terms, but to risk its own identity in a communication/copulation with every fellow science? What is learning? Is it conceptual reduction or maybe conceptual copulation? "Theology and... and... and... and..." = ? I think theology only stands to learn from another science to the degree to which it risks itself in the process, not by insisting on its divine right.

We can make theology queen again, sure, but it sounds more like Napoleon crowning himself emperor. We can say that God put theology on the throne, but her subjects won't buy it no matter how sweetly we beg. So what do we do? Throw some rebellious handmaids in the basement? Discipline them? We need a plan for how to maintain our Queen's rule over what is presently an unruly bunch. And won't this compromise our ability to think theology without borders?

Laurie,

You're making a category error. Like so many these days, you're elevating a method, the scientific method, to a metaphysics. The scientific method is limited to what can be empirically, experimentally verified, and that's as it should be. But you, and Quine as well, are assuming that what cannot, in principle, be empirically verified does not exist. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that metaphysics undermines science itself, since science rests on at least two empirically unverifiable premises: 1) There is a world that exists outside our sensory perception of it. Since empirical verification simply means verification by the senses, there is no way to empirically verify the validity of premise 1) without begging the question. 2) Causality, without which repeatable experimentation means nothing. David Hume showed over two and a half centuries ago that causality is not empirically verifiable. All we can ever verify with our senses is that one event follows another regularly; we can only assume causality. Given the success of science, however, it seems rational to accept those empirically unverifiable premises. If so, a fortiori, it is rational to accept at least some empirically unverifiable premises, and a premise (theism for example) cannot be summarily dismissed as irrational because it is not empirically verifiable.

Best advice to all theologians, and the rest of us as well: Be in the world, but not of it.

Beginning with Kant, the burning Enlightenment temptation and quest became clear to many Christian theologians, that they could be of the world, too, and still reside in Christ, and why God so easily disappears when they write. Theology can reign supreme only if God reigns supreme. Otherwise, regardless how it is disguised, it becomes a theology where man reigns supreme, revealed in how he always puts himself (ideas) before God (revelation).

nairb has chosen the correct bat, but grasped the wrong end on the way to the plate. The burnings, yes, the burnings. The tyrants of scientific materialism (still around today, though with less standing) did the hustling and locking away of "The Queen". The vague whiff of martyrdom through mockery was enough to quiet the theologians. The flaccid and wealthy culture of the academy (as usual) dampened the Fire of Faith and so the theologians quietly lived on to no one's notice. As one who grew up in the second half of the 20th Century, it is always amusing to hear my generation express horror at the religious wars of so long ago. We came to be as the irreligious wars were winding down - the wars that in 50 years dwarfed all previous ones combined. And yet the fear of Faith live on. This is the "world" the Gospel warned us about.

Fred,

You're making a meta-assumptional error; your assumption about my assumption is not correct. I don't assume that what can't be shown empirically does not exist. Throughout the history of science people have had ideas about what might be true or exist, but had to wait for experimentation to catch up for verification. I don't assume that what theologians presuppose is necessarily wrong, it just sits in the space of the unevidenced with Russell's Teapot.

Your observation from Hume is quite true, but then, causality is not a thing. It is a property we assign. Giving up our old metaphysical ideas about causality was one of the hardest things to do, but necessary, to move physics on to being able to model quantum mechanics. We have had to accept that uncaused events happen on a small enough scale, everywhere and everywhen.

Yes, I agree that you can't do anything if you are stuck in a solipsistic position without an outside world; I can't justify the assumption of the existence of the world, I live with it because it allows me to get access to thoughts and experiences beyond just myself. Those of us who do assume the existence of the world, are usually interested in finding out more about it, and about our place in it. Unfortunately there are an unbounded number of false ideas to sort out, and the Scientific Method, provides the best known way of working through those while avoiding the so very well known tendency to human self deception.

@Fred

The error you make is in claiming that an entity for which there is no evidence for the existence of, exists. Indeed, you would claim that precisely because there is no evidence, your belief in it is so much better. 'Faith' as virtue.

If there is no evidence for something, there are no good reasons to believe it exists, only bad ones.

That you admit the claims of theology cannot be empirically verified, merely underlines the plain fact that theology is made up nonsense, with literally no basis in fact.

Hi Rick,

I enjoyed your comment and expect I would also enjoy reading your "spiritual autobiography" and encourage you to write it. In doing so, you should ask yourself where your thoughts and feelings are coming from? You speak of not mixing the "apples and oranges" and that was the case back in the time of Aquinas when rudimentary Natural Philosophy had no clue that our minds were the action of our physical brains, or even what brains did at all. We are past that, now, having shown by physical experimentation that Cartesian Dualism is not true, and that our thoughts and feelings are physical states of matter and energy in our biological control systems, and that we have characteristics and limitations coming from a long history of the evolution of biological control systems through our ancestors.

We can now look at the mechanisms of our senses and our emotions. We can observe and test our powers of observation. In doing so, we learn how our own biological systems fool us about what is going on both in ourselves and in our internal picture of the outside world. Of course it is not possible to know all about one's conceptual blind spots and put in nullifying corrections, but we can use what we know about how people perceive and think to do a great deal of that on a group level (experiment replication and peer review).

Just please consider that your "spirit life" may exactly be your "mental life" and that it is not beyond your ability to find out more about, how that comes about.

That which cannot be verified may exist, but it is not likely to be taken seriously.

Rick,

I respect your respect for those who disagree with you, but in this case, I think it's misplaced. Quine does not raise an important point. He merely asserts a rather shallow and cliche scientism. Changing our interpretation of scripture to take into account knowledge of empirical reality goes back at least to Augustine (see "Of the Literal Interpretation of Genesis"). The Catholic Church has always believed truth is one. Theology deals with a reality that is beyond empirical reality but also, it cannot be overemphasized, compatible with it. The Bible is not and never has been a science textbook. The fact that we now know that Eden was not a real place in the sense that, say, New Orleans is a real place and that Adam and Eve were never real people in the sense that you and I are real people does not in the least abrogate the truths about human nature or man's relationship to God, nature, and his fellow man that the story still contains. It is the function of theology to reveal and defend those truths. That function is not and cannot be affected by any advances in knowledge of the empirical world.

Chuck,
Verified how? Empirically? Can you verify the presupposition in your statement?

>The vague whiff of martyrdom through mockery was enough to quiet the theologians.

There is nothing vague about that whiff and there is no martyrdom involved.

The christian deity by all appearances is just another deity. It has lost ground and along with it so have christian theologians), because it is a mythology that used to be taken for granted (for cultural and polital and goddy-gaps reasons) but which has not proven to be reliable when examined for moral or evidentiary contributions. Darn that evidence. It keeps rolling in.

Theology has lost ground because it is based on a premise that by all reasonable standards, cannot be granted.

Chuck says:

>That which cannot be verified may exist, but it is not likely to be taken seriously.

He's right. And it SHOULD not be taken seriously. There's too much that needs to be taken seriously.

The frustrating thing about humans is that they take so many things seriously that cannot be verified, and so many that have been thorougly falsified (Adam and Eve, the tower of Babyl, a global flood, a mass exodus of Jewish slaves fromEgypt, for starters) and fail to take mountains of evidence seriously (evidence which demonstrates that the universe we recognize is ancient, that it obeys physics, that physics are very predictable but has some murky bits, that we are a blink in the eye of a story about humans which is the blink in an eye about the story about life on this planet, which is an eye-blink in the story of planets which orbit stars, which are generally born in galaxies, which emerged out of the earliest physics we can measure and past which, we can either say, "I don't know." which is what our most honest minds do, and "Let's try to find out.", which is what our best, most honestly trained, often very talented minds do and do very well...

OR we can claim to know the ultimate answers because our questions are not even wrong.

Our best questions are too important to play theological games.


As Quine quoted: A flawed premise can lead to any conclusion. I


Our moral and intellectual arguments need to address the facts about who we are and where we are. We live on a tiny planet that supports life, in a universe where life as we know it is rarely supported. ON this planet, many apparently sentient life forms pre-date and surround us (by very large numbers).

It is unlikely that we we will survive if we don't acknowledge that. It is also likely that we are committing some terrible moral errors if we think it's all about us on a planet that's old as this one is and on which, life established itself long, long before we existed,, and on which so many forms of life that aren't us, seem to show sentience, to exist, live, hope, struggle and die, just as we do.

Theology is not about morality. It's not about evidence. It's about an unevidenced belief in Yahwheh, (who will morph into a Platonic ideal, when convenient, and back into Yahweh to win the point) and all the crazy, unevidenced and yes, immoral claims that emerge from that belief.

Not only is theology not "Queen" of the sciences, it has no understanding of what science is, it makes no effort to comply with the "What if I'm wrong?" standard that science reqires one to adhere to in order to buy a ticket into the discussion.

Theologians are not martyrs. They are artifacts.

They are just another example (and we have so many) of the fact that being able to manipulate your fellow primate most often wins over any legitimate standards of "truth".

There is nothing that stands out as special about christianity except for its pleading.

The reason they were ushered into the basement in the first place was an act of kindness on the part of society towards an endearing but stubbornly blinkered section of our community. The terminally and wilfully restricted. It’s a strain on us all to have to refrain from pointing out the constant and repetitive cognitive and logical mistakes theologians make by assuming their conclusion in their premises, much safer for them to play with each other in a comfortably appointed and secluded room.

Much safer for them and more humane all round than having to watch their feeble and doomed attempts to warp and bend the fabric of existence around them into a fantastical cope of many colours rather than engage with the increasingly high resolution appreciation of the physical universe with which scientific progress is furnishing us. It’s heartbreaking to gently steer them towards the chasm between their own false ground and that of observable reality only for them to hang, Road Runner-like, in mid-air before plummeting inexorably to the ground far below (with the engaging circular puff of dust to mark their landing) and declare themselves unconvinced that the chasm exists.

Or that everyone else does not understand that the chasm is a metaphor and only they have the key to understanding the universe around them despite only taking their intellectual sustenance from one food type. A thorough understanding of evolution has demonstrated to us the dangers of such restrictive diet in the shape of pandas. And in truth the analogy of pandas to theologians is apt; beloved by most of the population of the planet, we wish them well but remain sad that they are only a viable species under specific conditions, which we’re happy to provide, while they remain blissfully unaware of the real conditions of their own existence.

Fred, I don't support "Scientism" which also relies on an unsupportable presupposition.

"The frustrating thing about humans is that they take so many things seriously that cannot be verified..."

For example, the proposition that all men [humans] are created equal, a ridiculous Christian notion that grows out of the ridiculous proposition that every man and woman is a child of God with equal dignity. We're slowly getting rid of this ridiculous, improvable assertion, first by killing babies in the womb and euthanizing the elderly and incapacitated, folks who definitely are not equal to us Aryans or us__________________. Yep, one step at a time in deconstructing those silly Christian propositions that cannot be proven by science, in fact, what science clearly demonstrates is false.

Gil says:
"the proposition that all men [humans] are created equal, a ridiculous Christian notion that grows out of the ridiculous proposition that every man and woman is a child of God with equal dignity."

I realize this was sarcasm, but this fails. It is NOT a Christian notion that the 'proposition that every man and woman is a child of God with equal dignity'. Christianity grew out of Judaism, but did not reject it, hence Paul's notions of what women could and couldn't do in the service of the church. Women were not thought of as 'equals' in any real sense by the early Christian church. It was through the enlightenment that these notions had any germ of an idea.

Fred,

I understand your point, and you put it very lucidly. Yes, I agree that eternal spiritual truths can never be affected by scientific discoveries. But I still think it is critically important to deal with the chasm between the mentality of modern, scientifically oriented people, and theological concepts which were born in a pre-scientific age and which are typically expressed in forms springing from a pre-scientific mental universe.

Quine,

Of course, neurological research is one of the most revolutionary, rapidly developing, and sexy fields in science these days. There was even recently a research project to discover what areas of the brain were activated by people falling in love! And it is common to hear comments to the effect that what was once considered to be the "soul" is no more than complex patterns of electro-chemical neurological activity, with things such as "love" or "loyalty" or "faith" possibly being explainable as illusions caused by the transient firing of neurons in the amygdala or the basal ganglia. A BBC drama I saw recently had an MI-9 agent visiting a brain researcher who confidently told him that every aspect of human personality was explainable by the firing of neurons. "When the brain dies, nothing is left. There is no soul."

This is a huge and fascinating topic, and of course there isn't space here to do it justice. But here are a couple of points. If neo-Darwinism is a complete explanation of all that we are as humans, then every aspect of our nature must be explainable because it gave some biological survival advantage to our ancestor organisms. (I am not, by the way, a critic of evolution as an explanation of our animal natures. I have a good friend who teaches microbiology at the University of Chicago. He has no doubts about the validity of evolutionary theory but is also a devout Christian who prays fluently in tongues.) As I described in my first comment, however, I was always given to philosophical speculation, including even contemplating the non-existence of existence. How, may I ask, did an animal evolve according to Darwinian principles, with such an intellectual ability? What conceivable survival value is there in the ability to contemplate non-existence? There simply HAS to be more at work here!

Now let me relate an amazing experience I had some years ago. I had just returned from my Peace Corps service in West Africa, and I was invited by an old friend to have dinner with her family in San Diego. She was always a robust and dynamic character with an "in-your-face" personality. She was carrying on with her parents in her inimitable style, while I sat on a bar stool marveling at the performance. I thought, entirely within my mind, "You haven't changed." She instantly swiveled around to face me and fired back, "No...not one little bit!!!" I almost fell off the stool. I had said nothing, and she hadn't even been looking at me. It was one of the most amazing examples of word-for-word mind reading that I've ever known. So, how can the private firing of neurons and subtle chemical reactions inside anyone's skull account for the transmission from one brain to another of a word-for-word message with no natural means of communication linking them? My answer is a metaphysical "mind" within which we all "live, and move, and have our being." What do you think?

Gil:

>For example, the proposition that all men (humans) are created equal.

To begin with, sliding "humans" in next to "men" in brackets is dishonesty. A review of "the" ten commandments might clarify things for you.

Secondly, the idea that we create societies that extend equal rights to all involved doesn't appear to emerge from biblical thinking.

Most importantly, you ignored the "falsifiable" part of my statement.

Claims about Adam and Eve are falsifiable, and they have been falsified.

Claims about the tower of Babyl are falsifiable, and they haven been falsified.

Likewise, a mass exodus of Israelites from Egypt and a global flood.

If you'd like to address ethical issues, by all means do so. If any of us want to do that, we had better refer to all of the evidence we have at our disposal.

But if you think you can point backwards to some little bits of partly-developed ethical ideas and claim that they are unique or that they emerged in a fully-formed, inscrutable capsule that should be swallowed whole despite those ideas being basede on premises that are falsified, then we are back to theology.

Theology is akin to alchemy. The idea that it should reclaim its rightful position as "queen" is absurd.

It lost its position because its premises are unsound.

It has no place in science or in philosophy.

Thanks for allowing my first comment; much appreciated and certainly not a privilege to be taken for granted on such a heavily moderated forum. Thanks again.

It may seem a little presumptuous but I'd like to ask Gil for a point of clarification, please. With regard to your point here;

Gil; 'the proposition that all men [humans] are created equal, a ridiculous Christian notion'

Are you saying that the proposition of human egalitarianism was first expressed in Christian teachings? Thanks for any clarification you can offer.

I like Thomas Sowell's criticism of "intellectuals" -- meaning people whose end product is an idea and who do not subject themselves to objective tests or verification of their ideas in the real world.

Mr. Leithart, how would you incorporate Sowell's criticism into your scheme? Are you willing for theological ideas to be tested empirically?

Hi Rick, thanks for your reply.

You are correct in that it is too wide a topic for this thread, and I don't what to derail this discussion of theology (although the subject of trying to find meaning in the phrase "disembodied mind" is in scope). There have been other threads at FT that were closer to the discussion of dualism, so we could take it to one of those, or to a blog elsewhere.

-Q

Susan, you write, “To begin with, sliding ‘humans’ in next to ‘men’ in brackets is dishonesty.” I don’t see that, for Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, as well as many men and women writers from that time, had no intention of excluding women from the Christian viewpoint when using the word “men” to refer to all humans, although lots of discrimination concerning women, as there is today, was prevalent back then, and that discriminatory impulse was and remains in some degree caught up in the language we use, what we remain at work in trying to amend.

Then there is Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” For many Jewish theologians as well as Christian theologians down through the centuries the word “Adam” signifies humanity, men and women included. The complexity of human development in the sciences trying to catch up with revelation can’t be made easier by throwing out all the complexity involved in men and women trying to come to terms with God’s revelations through reason. One thing is certain: although reason has its own realm separate from revelation, it is a radically limited realm, where revelation certainly is not when it comes to signifying the depths of this profound mystery that defies our “scientific” observations in nature and politics, revealing spiritual facts of human dignity, and why reason is ultimately dependent on theological insights to discern the depths of human dignity. And when reason discovers those depths in revelation (for example, that all humans are created equal) reason is able to deepen its understanding of the theological insight logically that it otherwise could have never grasped to begin with. In other words, true reason, as Socrates so thoroughly understood, is not opposed to faith, but is enhanced by it. Let me give one more example:

Peter Singer: an admired secular scientist and ethicist, and a great hero to many secularists adamant in shunning theology from all academic and public discourse, who is adamant himself in disposing of theology when addressing the complex issues that arise out of the notion of human dignity. Here’s Wikipedia’s summing up of his career and present status: Peter Albert David Singer AC (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher. He is currently the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne. He specializes in applied ethics and approaches ethical issues from a secular, preference utilitarian perspective. He is known in particular for his book, Animal Liberation (1975), a canonical text in animal rights/liberation theory.”

Mr. Singer, using scientific logic, concludes that we should allow infanticide up to the first three months after a child’s birth for the simple reason that there is no essential difference between a late-term fetus and a new-born infant. That scientific logic, in my view, is irrefutable once you accept the dominant scientific view of our culture of death (that I believe is false from my theological reasoning that does not negate good science) that the fetus is not a human person.

The examples are endless. But one need only consult the man of the 20th century who devoted his entire life to scientific reasoning separate from theological insights, Joseph Stalin, whom the leading existentialist philosopher of the 20th century who also dismissed theological insights on human dignity, Jean Paul Sartre, a radical secular humanist himself, totally supported Stalin’s agenda, even while aware that Stalin was committing mass genocide through scientifically planned starvation. You see, from a scientific perspective, Sartre was convinced that Stalin was the only man in history who had a scientifically verifiable plan that could lift human beings out of every form of oppression, and that it was simply ethically incumbent upon us to accept the temporary devastation to bring about the utopia Stalin and Sartre envisioned, and precisely why Sartre cut off his friendship with Albert Camus who insisted we not support Stalin, and it’s interesting that Camus, an atheist himself, in stretching his imagination concerning our inability to exit the dilemma of man’s inhumanity towards man, ended up seriously considering becoming Christian, the only realm he saw that was confronting the radical depths and mystery of evil.

If we persist in ostracizing the important meditations offered by theology in our public and academic discourse, there is no question that soon we will be killing infants up to three months old and beyond. We should backtrack here to what Lincoln reminded us of via Christian revelation, that all humans are created equal, and start anew in our reasoning.

AllanW,

In response to your question, "Are you saying that the proposition of human egalitarianism was first expressed in Christian teachings?" Judaic/Christian, yes, totally fulfilled in Christ.

In the ancient Hebrew world, great thinkers from nations surrounding Jewish culture were always stunned and amazed by Jewish Law and the commentaries on it (for example, in an age where slavery was universally accepted as a legitimate economic principle, only the Jews were able to find dignity in slaves that turned into practice, and why Paul, totally Jewish in his approach to his conversion, was the person who begins the universal dismantling of slavery, Philemon 1:12-16). If you want an in-depth understanding how only Judaic/Christian revelation can open the door to the boundless mystery of the dignity of the human person and the equality of men and women, please read John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" where it is clarified as much as the mystery of equality can be clarified in all of history. In fact, one cannot possibly understand equality as a universal principle in depth until one understands the equality of man and woman revealed in the nuptial mystery. Check it out and you will be glad you did. Christian revelation is best grasped in our serious attempt to grasp the nuptial mystery.

severalspeciesof,

The Enlightenment gets carved in stone by Immanuel Kant (and no secularist or atheist has escaped him), a pious Christian who sought to confine the Christian revelation to Reason and Ethics so that everyone in the world, including atheists, could embrace the Christian revelation. A noble effort, but what it created instead are enlightenment philosophers and scientists who believe we can stop the horrors of the world absent revelation, and the evidence, I submit, is in that that is one big mistaken notion.

severalspeciesof,

You write, "Women were not thought of as 'equals' in any real sense by the early Christian church."

This is true. the Revelation that is Christ, fully available from the beginning but for any number of reasons resisted, still unfolds for Christians. But if you look to the life of Christ you see that women indeed obviously became equal, although to perceive it accurately in Christ, one must look through the lens of the nuptial mystery that is also fully revealed to the extent possible before the Parousia only in Christ.

Dan:

>Verified how? Empirically? Can you verify the presupposition in your statement?

Can you verify the presupposition in any statement?

Are all statements equally valid?

What standards can we agree on about truth claims?

Gil, you are most kind to reply and so fulsomely! And it is most definitive which makes for an absence of ambiguity. Congratulations on that aspect of your post to me.

Unfortunately I can’t be so kind to its content, I’m sorry to say. You know of course that the notion of egalitarianism contains not just the idea that there is equality between the sexes (as you quite rightly mention in your reply) but is fully described by being a concept of equality between differing races, creeds and castes of the human species. In short, we are all born equal members of the species whatever the individual characteristics of our race, sex, creed or status might be.

It is certain that on the last long, difficult branching path our species travelled upon from ape to human over hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors were under no illusion about how each individual member of our species entered the world. Indeed their forebears may well have been aware of the ubiquity of our individual birth conditions over millions of years, as members of ape families, at least that’s what our current research into ape behaviour shows quite well.

Their certain knowledge of being members of the same species could only have been reinforced by encounters with Neanderthals never mind familiarity with their and our close cousins in the ape family. How could it have been otherwise? We retain this innate understanding to this day and as newborns have no trouble in discerning the differences between family pets and human family members from the time of first being aware of our environment.

That we all enter this world in exactly the same fashion is an unassailable fact inherited from our deep genetic past, only very recently tinkered with. This fact of our shared heritage is the basis for our innate understanding of egalitarianism and our membership of the human species. So I have to ask, were you quite serious when you stated that the first time this concept saw the light of day was in the Judaic/Christian teachings? Because if so I’m sorry to have to let you know that significant elements of the fields of evolved human psychology and anthropology lie outside your current reach.

I quite understand that you may be excited by doctrinal insights into the nuptial mystery but fear you have over-claimed on this particular point and look forward to your recognition of the position in reality that humans have understood what equality means, what the qualifications are for being a member of the species, for a far longer time than you indicate. I seek to take nothing away from kind post and will merrily talk about the rest of your most interesting points but I do insist, as gently as possible, on acceptance of this first and self evident point; the gold medal for first expressing our definition of species membership, our equality as human individuals, cannot be given to Judaic/Christian teachings. That understanding was first expressed and understood deep in the mists of our evolutionary past.

AllanW,

I will try to respond to each of your concerns:

1) “You know of course that the notion of egalitarianism contains not just the idea that there is equality between the sexes (as you quite rightly mention in your reply) but is fully described by being a concept of equality between differing races, creeds and castes of the human species.”

What I’m postulating is that one must begin with understanding the equality of man and woman (as described in detail by John Paul II in “Theology of the Body”) to have any chance at understanding a universal egalitarianism. And the converse is not true. This is why I insist to all Christians that they must make a serious effort at grasping as best they can the nuptial mystery of the Church.

2) “It is certain that on the last long, difficult branching path our species travelled upon from ape to human over hundreds of thousands of years…”

There is no scientific evidence that we evolved from apes, although there is plenty of evidence that we humans as creatures evolved along an almost identical track biochemically as apes. In the final analysis, the relatively “minor” difference between humans and apes is astounding in scientific fact and its endless implications. I suspect that as we humans evolved from the primordial slime, at some point, in our “apeness”, God endowed us with what we call human consciousness, a mysterious occurrence represented by the story that He breathed into us. As Lea Sestieri writes in “The Torah”, "The term ‘Spirit’ translates the Hebrew word ruah, which, in its primary sense, means breath, air, wind. Jesus indeed uses the sensory image of the wind to suggest to Nicodemus the transcendent newness of him who is personally God's breath, the divine Spirit." Again, a case where the dignity of the human person resides in his/her being created in the image and likeness of God, and this is what radically distinguishes us humans from the apes and all other creatures. And I just can’t see how we can arrive at the true and depth-oriented dignity of the human person separate from this revelation. In fact, Peter Singer’s book that attempts to equate other animals’ dignity with that of the human person is proof of this. He does make a compelling case after he excludes theology from his discernment process.

3) “That we all enter this world in exactly the same fashion is an unassailable fact inherited from our deep genetic past, only very recently tinkered with. This fact of our shared heritage is the basis for our innate understanding of egalitarianism and our membership of the human species.”

Unfortunately the Enlightenment’s claim that Reason is the ultimate human faculty, what you suggest here, inevitably births its own deconstruction with the reasonable observation (by Schopenhauer and then Nietzsche) that the will, not reason, is the highest human faculty, and that reason simply assists us in discovering that, which of course is no small thing (we could not discover the dynamics of the will without reason), but if the 20th century has proved one thing incontrovertibly, it is that Nietzsche was right: the will is a higher faculty than reason. But is that really a new idea? No. We can go back to the 13th century where we have the genius German mystic Meister Eckhart claiming the same thing. His argument was that there are two dominant forces in the life of human persons, the human will and God’s will. Eckhart argued that all of human history can be discerned by three stories: the story of doing our own will, God’s will, or straddling the barbed wire fence between the two; and of course all three stories overlap in being told through our actions that are willed. In fact, one of the charges brought against Eckhart when he was tried before the Inquisition (run by Franciscans who disliked the Dominicans, which Eckhart was) was that he claimed “understanding” is more important than love, contradicting the revelation that God is Love and therefore love being the highest virtue, even moreso than faith. But Eckhart wasn’t dismantling love as the highest virtue, nor was he dismantling the revelation that we are most Christ-like when we love. He was making the case that only through reason (understanding) can we arrive at grasping what agape is. He witnessed too many Christians, especially monks, who claimed to live in love but were the farthest removed from it because they didn’t understand what it is. In Dostoevsky’s first great novel, “Notes from Underground”, his pathetic protagonist explains this in detail when he points out that when secularists enumerate the “reasons” we can arrive at a utopian culture, they always leave out an irresistible, particular reason that too often throughout human history moves humans to act, doing whatever the hell they want when they want and not caring if they or anyone else benefits from it. He was making the same point as Eckhart made. Tyrannies have always and always will defy reason because the will is what affirms existence, and why Jesus insisted he never did his will, but the will of his Father who sent him. And once we lost sight of this revelation in Christ, that agape can exist only in doing God’s will, not ours, we lose the path that leads to the Kingdom of God on earth.

4) “I do insist, as gently as possible, on acceptance of this first and self evident point; the gold medal for first expressing our definition of species membership, our equality as human individuals, cannot be given to Judaic/Christian teachings. That understanding was first expressed and understood deep in the mists of our evolutionary past.”

I agree that we can acknowledge species membership with reason, but expressing and developing a definition of species membership absent Judaic/Christian revelation will always include the inevitability of unresolvable cyclical violence, most especially scapegoating. Just check out the works of Rene Girard on this. Or check out these words from Hitler: “I know as well as all those clever intellectuals that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race, but I need a concept to serve me politically, and the concept of race serves me well.”

Gil says:
AllanW,

I will try to respond to each of your concerns:

1) “You know of course that the notion of egalitarianism contains not just the idea that there is equality between the sexes (as you quite rightly mention in your reply) but is fully described by being a concept of equality between differing races, creeds and castes of the human species.”

What I’m postulating is that one must begin with understanding the equality of man and woman (as described in detail by John Paul II in “Theology of the Body”) to have any chance at understanding a universal egalitarianism. And the converse is not true. This is why I insist to all Christians that they must make a serious effort at grasping as best they can the nuptial mystery of the Church.

2) “It is certain that on the last long, difficult branching path our species travelled upon from ape to human over hundreds of thousands of years…”

There is no scientific evidence that we evolved from apes, although there is plenty of evidence that we humans as creatures evolved along an almost identical track biochemically as apes. In the final analysis, the relatively “minor” difference between humans and apes is astounding in scientific fact and its endless implications.

Humans are apes. Our ancestors branched off from chimps and others about 6 million years ago. The smoking gun is in the DNA analysis of our chromosome #2 which is a fusion of two other chromosomes from the other apes.


... I suspect that as we humans evolved from the primordial slime, at some point, in our “apeness”, God endowed us with what we call human consciousness, a mysterious occurrence represented by the story that He breathed into us. As Lea Sestieri writes in “The Torah”, "The term ‘Spirit’ translates the Hebrew word ruah, which, in its primary sense, means breath, air, wind. Jesus indeed uses the sensory image of the wind to suggest to Nicodemus the transcendent newness of him who is personally God's breath, the divine Spirit."

Not at all likely. The likely explanation is that as you go back in our ancestry the quality of their consciousness becomes less and less complex. Think of it something like as you get progressively more drunk your ability to do things like advanced mathematics shuts down, but you still have a sense of yourself, at least for a while. As demonstrated by the Sorites Paradox, we have no way of setting a generation of our ancestors who had "consciousness" while the previous did not.

... Again, a case where the dignity of the human person resides in his/her being created in the image and likeness of God, and this is what radically distinguishes us humans from the apes and all other creatures. And I just can’t see how we can arrive at the true and depth-oriented dignity of the human person separate from this revelation.

Can you present any evidence to the contrary?

... In fact, Peter Singer’s book that attempts to equate other animals’ dignity with that of the human person is proof of this. He does make a compelling case after he excludes theology from his discernment process.

If he is using evidence, then he can make a compelling case, up to some point in our evolutionary history. Why would theology, which is devoid of evidence, enter into it?

3) “That we all enter this world in exactly the same fashion is an unassailable fact inherited from our deep genetic past, only very recently tinkered with. This fact of our shared heritage is the basis for our innate understanding of egalitarianism and our membership of the human species.”

Unfortunately the Enlightenment’s claim that Reason is the ultimate human faculty, what you suggest here, inevitably births its own deconstruction with the reasonable observation (by Schopenhauer and then Nietzsche) that the will, not reason, is the highest human faculty, and that reason simply assists us in discovering that, which of course is no small thing (we could not discover the dynamics of the will without reason), but if the 20th century has proved one thing incontrovertibly, it is that Nietzsche was right: the will is a higher faculty than reason.

What does "higher" mean in this context? Does it mean that "will" is more likely to get you out of bed in the morning? If so, then granted. But if it means "leading to truth," then not so much.

... But is that really a new idea? No. We can go back to the 13th century where we have the genius German mystic Meister Eckhart claiming the same thing. His argument was that there are two dominant forces in the life of human persons, the human will and God’s will. Eckhart argued that all of human history can be discerned by three stories: the story of doing our own will, God’s will, or straddling the barbed wire fence between the two; and of course all three stories overlap in being told through our actions that are willed. In fact, one of the charges brought against Eckhart when he was tried before the Inquisition (run by Franciscans who disliked the Dominicans, which Eckhart was) was that he claimed “understanding” is more important than love, contradicting the revelation that God is Love and therefore love being the highest virtue, even moreso than faith.

And, what would Meister and Eckhart have said if they had known what we know today from Darwin and the neuroscience research about where our thoughts and feelings come from?

But Eckhart wasn’t dismantling love as the highest virtue, nor was he dismantling the revelation that we are most Christ-like when we love. He was making the case that only through reason (understanding) can we arrive at grasping what agape is. He witnessed too many Christians, especially monks, who claimed to live in love but were the farthest removed from it because they didn’t understand what it is. In Dostoevsky’s first great novel, “Notes from Underground”, his pathetic protagonist explains this in detail when he points out that when secularists enumerate the “reasons” we can arrive at a utopian culture, they always leave out an irresistible, particular reason that too often throughout human history moves humans to act, doing whatever the hell they want when they want and not caring if they or anyone else benefits from it.

What did Dostoevsky say of the "better" against the "utopian"? Does the lack of a proof that we can make things perfect stop us from using our reason to make things better?

... He was making the same point as Eckhart made. Tyrannies have always and always will defy reason because the will is what affirms existence, and why Jesus insisted he never did his will, but the will of his Father who sent him. And once we lost sight of this revelation in Christ, that agape can exist only in doing God’s will, not ours, we lose the path that leads to the Kingdom of God on earth.

Got evidence?

4) “I do insist, as gently as possible, on acceptance of this first and self evident point; the gold medal for first expressing our definition of species membership, our equality as human individuals, cannot be given to Judaic/Christian teachings. That understanding was first expressed and understood deep in the mists of our evolutionary past.”

I agree that we can acknowledge species membership with reason, but expressing and developing a definition of species membership absent Judaic/Christian revelation will always include the inevitability of unresolvable cyclical violence, most especially scapegoating. Just check out the works of Rene Girard on this. Or check out these words from Hitler: “I know as well as all those clever intellectuals that in the scientific sense there is no such thing as race, but I need a concept to serve me politically, and the concept of race serves me well.”

And the concept of using evidence and reason to make a better world can serve us even better.

>What I’m postulating is that one must begin with understanding the equality of man and woman (as described in detail by John Paul II in “Theology of the Body”) to have any chance at understanding a universal egalitarianism. And the converse is not true.

Can you give me some examples?

>This is why I insist to all Christians that they must make a serious effort at grasping as best they can the nuptial mystery of the Church.

What IS the nuptial mystery of the Church?

Gil wrote:

You write, "Women were not thought of as 'equals' in any real sense by the early Christian church."

This is true. the Revelation that is Christ, fully available from the beginning but for any number of reasons resisted, still unfolds for Christians. But if you look to the life of Christ you see that women indeed obviously became equal, although to perceive it accurately in Christ, one must look through the lens of the nuptial mystery that is also fully revealed to the extent possible before the Parousia only in Christ.

Thanks for your reply Gil.

I'll counter this with the fact that it was difficult for the early church to parse this out because one has to cherry-pick with a lens anything that resembles or possibly points to the idea of equality in the sense we have today. One is on far firmer theological grounds regarding the bible (both Old and New Testaments) to support slavery, women as second class citizens, etc. [See: Leviticus 25:44-46, Exodus 21:7-11, Ephesians 6:5, 1 Timothy 6:1-4, 1 Timothy 2:12.] If you object and think that the abolitionists and others used the bible to promote equality, yes they did but without regard to 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" Notice the word "All". Even Jesus says, "For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." One has to get past that to get to equality.

Gil; Thanks once again for your response; this really is a most rewarding conversation. At the risk of dampening your obvious enthusiasm for taking the discussion in a host of different directions, something I’m loathe to do as it’s obvious you have an excess of energy and erudition on tap, I must return to the original point at issue between us in an attempt to reach some agreed starting position from which we can both enjoy our further endeavours.

You agree with me that the specific issue of species membership is settled in the biological details of procreation. Thank you for that agreement. I note that you have an enormously interesting position staked-out on the subsequent implications of being a member of the human species absent Judaic/Christian revelation which I’m eager to explore in more detail just as soon as we finish this first point but let’s just put a bookmark in that one so we can return to it later. You didn’t however concur with the inextricably linked fact that a detailed understanding of our evolved biology reveals, which is that we are evolved animals.

I’m sorry to see you take this distinctly different position, different not only to established doctrine but also to the vast majority of educated people on this planet. You must have powerful, compelling evidence to support this dissent. And I say that because it must be powerful and compelling enough to answer and overturn the tidal wave of evidence that has built the current consensus. A consensus not just in terms of reason but also quite particularly in theologically accepted doctrinal terms as well, as you are well aware.

I’m not asking you to accept anything here in any wider terms than the narrowly specific one of human evolutionary origins, we can as I say get onto all the other interesting points you raise once this foundational stone is laid in place, but I am asking you to appreciate how thin your last comment of ‘I suspect’ appears in contrast to the body of knowledge we humans have built that leads to the inexorable conclusion that we perch on one branch of the vast tree of evolved life on this planet. We are not separate from it.

I look forward to your simple expression of agreement to that one point or alternatively your explosive and compelling destruction of this central dogma. Mendel and every Pope since has been convinced of this point so you are taking on a monumental task, my friend, please be sure you wish to go down this route.

Quine, Susan and severalspeciesof:

Because I can only access the internet at the library (limited time) I will first sum up my main thought and add a few observations:

Tyrannies have always and always will defy reason because the will is what affirms existence, and to will AGAINST REASON is the absolute expression and affirmation of the will, and why Jesus insisted he never did his will, but the will of his Father who sent him. And once through Enlightenment principles we lost sight of this revelation in Christ that agape (the ground of true equality as children of God) can exist only in doing God’s will, not ours, we lost not only the sure (guaranteed) path that leads to true equality, but to the Kingdom of God on earth. There is absolutely no evidence that "the concept of using evidence and reason to make a better world" will in fact make a better world, but there is plenty of evidence that employing faith with reason can, and has, for it is the Judaic/Christian led reason that has dismantled the tyrannies of the will to power repeatedly throughout the last 2000 years of history and has consistently promoted a gestalt ethic of the good, which must entail protecting innocent human life.

Quine, you are certainly adamant that "Humans are apes". Would you like to read some theories at odds with yours? Go here:

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-c018.html

Of course all of life begins in the primordial slime, and as the site listed points out, we humans in an evolutionary sense share in common our origin with yeast as one example. So we could state, "Humans are yeast." And all of it was generated by God.

"The likely explanation [of humans' unique consciousness] is that as you go back in our ancestry the quality of their consciousness becomes less and less complex."

Watch Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams".

"What did Dostoevsky say of the 'better' against the 'utopian'? Does the lack of a proof that we can make things perfect stop us from using our reason to make things better?"

No, it is incumbent upon us to always strive to make things better, but what Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky prophesied was that the 20th century would be an age of resentment that can in no way alter the Dionysian chaos it will champion because the will to power will always in the end topple our reasonableness unless we center in agape, the Love that is God, and I'm saying that Eckhart saw this before all three of them, and the 20th century certainly proved all of them correct: our capacity to reason cannot overcome our will to power, and why we must turn to what God wills. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857) that slavery was constitutional, and that high court has yet to overturn itself (Congress overturned it, but it would be a remarkable gesture for the Court to acknowledge its high reasoning didn't amount to much in its decision, just as its decision, presently still in effect, that to slaughter the innocent today is perfectly fine doesn't amount to anything other than mass slaughter; but then again, there are "reasons" that we slaughter human beings in their mothers' wombs).

Susan, I will list two sites that attempt an explanation of the nuptial mystery, but, as I wrote earlier, John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" is comprehensive.

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2827

http://communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/scola30-2.pdf

I would simply add that we will never gain a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of equality until we understand the equality of man and woman in their differences. Man as man can inspire woman, and woman as woman can inspire man: both the male in woman and female in man can be awakened in a nuptial relationship that leads to a gestalt in each.

It is my view that we today need more female leadership in international politics, for the female principle involves compassion, networking, a being-open-to, a receiving of others, and that leadership could be models for us men in accessing the female principle in ourselves. The male principle, the singularly focused, the locked-down determination in looking forward to success in a singularly focused agenda will bring about annihilation. What amused me to no end in the last Democratic primaries is that Hillary Clinton operated more out of a male principle, and Obama out of a female principle. But Obama's faults and failings aside, the female principle must outweigh the male principle as we move into the future. And the greatest model of a man operating out of a female principle is certainly Jesus Christ. The best manager I have ever known was a woman who maximized her skills as a woman, caring for all of us, helping each person maximize his/her potential, even those that the male leadership wanted fired (they became the best in what she trained them to do).

My time is up at the library. I have to go! Thanks folks for this lively discussion. And peace be with you all!

Hi Gil,

I looked at the link you gave, and it is not about the specific DNA evidence I mentioned. You can see more about that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-WAHpC0Ah0

Yes, I have watched Werner Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" which is terrific. However the time steps going back I had in mind were in step sizes of hundreds of thousands of years, not tens of thousands of years. Remember, physically modern humans have been around for about 200 thousand years. I have written about visualizing the change from our common ancestor with chimps (about 6 million years ago) here: http://quinesqueue.blogspot.com/2010/01/visualizing-evolutional-change.html

I will leave it at that, because this thread has run away from the original theology theme enough without my making it worse.

Best wishes,

-Q

I'm disappointed in you, Gil. I thought you were a man of stronger character than just one who, as someone once said, 'is more transmit than receive'. You have all the time in the world to respond, to develop your position so as to enable your undoubted legion of readers to appreciate your erudition and sophisticated points, but at the first sign of difficulty you disappear. It saddens me and I'm sure it does not paint the kind of picture for anyone reading these exchanges that you would wish. Please consider getting back to me and continuing our fruitful discussion.

AllanW,

"You didn’t however concur with the inextricably linked fact that a detailed understanding of our evolved biology reveals, which is that we are evolved animals."

I do concur that we are evolved animals, radically distinct from all other forms of life regardless what degree we share in common with those forms of life biochemically, which should, in my view, be obvious. In other words, we, for example, are not apes, but human beings. But then, we have arrived at a point in human history, relatively recently, where many highly educated folk (the majority it seems, including doctors who should certainly know better) believe through their reasoning faculty that it is scientifically obvious that a man/man and a woman/woman sexual union and influence on children is equal to that of a man/woman. What is obvious obviously will not remain obvious to many in their purported use of their faculty of reason, and this can be linked, in my view, to man’s insistence on pursuing knowledge with his reason radically independent of and hostility towards religious faith from any source, which always leads to the violent gutter of what is certainly not an evolving social dynamic (Hitler/Stalin as one example), as evidenced recently in the slaughter of the innocent unparalleled in magnitude to any other slaughter of innocent human life in all of human history.

I am certain I have no legion of readers, and I am uneducated (quit school in the 3rd grade but obsessed on picking up information to defy how educated professionals kept distorting and continue to distort who I am as a person, including an attempt to define me as an ape), of mid-range average intelligence (obviously not as evolved as many who disagree with me) and incapable of having published anything of interest at any of the many media outlets I have submitted to over a 45 year history, including our local newspapers (why I am grateful for blog sites). Plus, I have a maximum of 1 1/2 hours at the library to respond to you and others, which limits my responses.

In any case, I am finished here, for we have all reached a point where we will just loop around in our fixed disagreements.

God bless, and peace be with you.

Gil says:

"Tyrannies have always and always will defy reason because the will is what affirms existence, and to will AGAINST REASON is the absolute expression and affirmation of the will..."

Am I reading this right? That if one follows one's own affirmation of the will, one is doing so to be against reason? It was through reason that brought me to atheism. It was when I was being against reason that I stayed a christian. So if tyrannies defy reason, and so does christian thought, what gives?

Gil, in responding you have rescued yourself from a slight conundrum. Congratulations to you; never let it be said you lack honor. I’m equally happy with the substance you sent back because it contained another point of agreement between us and a notable one at that, thanks again. We are indeed descended from apes and different from them now, you couldn’t be more right. I’m content to leave this particular discussion on that additional point of agreement to the one we made before about species membership as you seem to wish. I think that’s more than enough common ground to be going on with.

I’ll just add a personal point if I may; while you may feel that attendance at school past a certain point to be the marker of an educated person I hold no such point of view. You exhibit all the hallmarks of someone who is in a continual process of improving themselves, self-directed learning I think the catchphrase is nowadays, and I salute you for those efforts because they are certainly producing some results.

Now while I don’t agree that this discussion has reached a point of stagnation and endlessly repeated loops I’ll let you go with a last ‘Thank you’ for your contributions and a grateful nod to the moderators for allowing our discussion to take place on their little patch of turf on the internet.

Who knows, we may cross paths again sometime.

severalspeciesof,

You ask me, “…if one follows one's own affirmation of the will, one is doing so to be against reason?”

Not necessarily. One’s will can be in conformity with reason, and what is reasonable can be very attractive to the will. One can actually sit and discern through reasoning that a particular goal is not only good, but what one desires. And at that point the will takes action, and a good end is achieved. But one can also discern with one’s reasoning that it would not be good to shoot up some heroin, but one still desires the effect of the drug. What is one to do? Well, one can discern with the reasoning faculty that the effects of fulfilling this desire will result in the absence of pain and an experience of euphoria, and this reasoning centered in this desire overcomes one’s reasoning that if one continues to pursue the gratification of this desire it will continue in undermining one’s spiritual growth and cause pain and suffering for one’s family. What is the person to do? Whatever one decides, the will takes over to accomplish the end of what one has decided, and so it is that the faculty of the will (the power to convert thoughts into action) is the dominant faculty, and one could, theoretically, WILL JUST TO WILL, independent of any discerned outcome, good or bad, and what I consider the sin against the Holy Spirit, for in this situation one has absolutely opposed God’s will with one’s own, no doubt the satisfaction Satan experienced, what he desired above all that God offered to him.

Now the point I am trying to make is that one can with reason know with certainty that to pursue fulfilling one’s desire for the effects of heroin injections will result in the destruction of one’s life and cause untold misery for one’s loved ones and still will to do it. And my further point is that there is an oftentimes secrete, depth-oriented justification for willing against a greater good, the secret satisfaction of doing whatever the hell I want when I want regardless what good or absent of good it has for myself or anyone else. This is what Dostoevsky points out in his first great novel “Notes from Underground”. He and I are referencing what Eckhart had said 800 years ago, that in every given second there is only three dynamics at play, three stories: we are either doing God’s will, our will, or we are straddling the barbed wire fence between the two. I am arguing that in every decision made affirmed by the will in action in any given second we are always either doing God’s will or our own will, and that the only way to predict a good with finality is to do God’s will, and why doing our own will always involves a decision that belongs to the realm of chaos, in its mystical sense what Heidegger called Nothingness, a total unpredictability of its eventual outcome in its rippling effect (Heidegger insisted it must end in violence), conscious or unconscious, and why I accept that one must pray all the time, i.e., listen to what God’s wills for us in every second and follow through by willing what he wills, which is theologizing all the time, and why theology is the Queen of all knowledge systems—not King, but Queen, because it involves the Marian, feminine, principle of listening, receiving, and bearing the truth of things in one’s heart, and in discernment always saying Yes to God’s will, not our own, which would be masculine, an attempt to expropriate the throne of God the Father.

Reason doesn’t bring anyone to atheism or theism. Desire does. The question is always what does one desire.

So for example, if one desires freedom, one can use reason to discern that the freedom to kill indiscriminately is certainly a libertine freedom that would be hard to match. But if one discerned more deeply, not rejecting what faith has to offer in that discernment in using one’s reason, one would discover that that freedom to kill indiscriminately is a limited, perhaps non-existent, freedom, that real freedom is the freedom that God is and wants to share with us, for, after all, we are made in his image and likeness, and only the freedom that he knows would truly be the freedom that suits who we are in his image and likeness, our true identity. This revelation that we (man and woman) are made in God’s image and likeness tells a lot of what we need to know, what is required in reasoning if we are to eventually make a true decision in freedom. This revelation also tells us that we human beings are not apes, regardless what we share in common bio-chemically, in whatever degree, for apes are not created in God’s image and likeness . To perceive ourselves as apes would be to deny our divine natures, and who wants to go down that road? How many Hitlers and Stalins would that guarantee for the future?

Don’t you see that to be opposed to reason would be anti-Christian? For God, in making us humans in his image and likeness gifted us with reason as central to being that image and likeness. And it is through reason that we come to know reason’s limitations, but that it still remains a great and holy gift from God, and a powerful faculty for the greater good.

Tyranny defies reason, for if one employed reason to discern the greater good, one would never tyrannize. Tyrants always defy reason (and why it is imperative in Orwell’s “1984” that Winston accepts unfailingly that 2 + 2= 5), and I further argue that they sometimes do this for the Satanic pleasure of simply defying God. That realm of willfully defying God, the realm of sinning against the Holy spirit, must be fathomed in our understanding by utilizing our reasoning in faith, for only in faith will we get as far as we are able the big picture of Evil, and only in this discernment via reason in faith will we be able to decide finally for God’s will in everything, the only way to arrive at good absolute.