I had a crisis in my life about 2 years ago. Doubt challenged my faith… again… and I retreated… again… into self-convincing recitations. “It is true, it is true, count it true, believe it’s true, it is true, it’s all true, believe, reckon, it is true, yes, yes, true, true.” Then I stopped. “Wait, do I want what is true, or do I want this? I want both. I want THIS to be TRUE. I don’t want what’s not true. So I just want what’s true.” Breakthrough. Oh, man, talk about weight off shoulders. Yes, not “this” (anything, fill in the blank), but true. Just true. Crazy true, familiar true, new true, old true, “wait, does believing that condemn me to hell?” true, “wait, does this mean I get to go to heaven?” true. And here’s the most important one. I mean, this is UNBELIEVABLY IMPORTANT. Here it is: “Life works out like this” true, and “life does not work out like this” true. True. Truth. Whatever it is. Fill in the blank: if ____________ is true, I want it. Here’s how that last one, the important one works in that sentence: if this belief that helps life work out is true, I want it; or, if this belief that ruins the rest of my life is true, I want it.
So, here was the resolution to my crisis: I want what is true, no matter what that means.
This conclusion relieved some pressure on me because I had decided to believe whatever was true, and no longer believe anything because I felt I should, or ought to believe, or became happy by believing , but because I believed the thing was true.
That conclusion worked very well, and set me off onto an adventure of sorts to find what was really true. I remember seeing the world through rational eyes – what I had come to consider “pure” eyes – looking out at this great big universe of data that invites us to come and take and roll its data down the labyrinths of our minds to see where the balls will fall. How exciting! What a thrilling and independent voyage! No gulping down like a lost seafarer the words of a wise man or a wise book, but tasting all, trying all, testing all, and concluding for oneself. And using words like “oneself.”
Failures of Rational Method
Well, that method, the cool, rational, analytical method has come up short. It has not delivered what I expected. I expected to come to very good conclusions by sifting all things through the most reasoned sieve I could find. By good here I mean at least two things: certain and happy. I have not come to good conclusions. I have just (over the past few months) gained a vantage on rational method that dismays my previous expectations. From my current vantage, I can see two portentous (can I say prophetic?) shortcomings in rational method. (BTW, "prophetic" would only apply to me, because this has all been very thoroughly explored by others. Just not me yet.)
Failure #1: Rational method does not bring certain answers to any of life’s greatest questions.
Rational method is tricky. It is a street magician; it fools you with false sense of simplicity. One ball, three cups? Surely I can play this game! Yes, you can. And lose money hand over fist because something else, something you could not expect, is operating. Here’s how rationality fools us: by providing some answers, it repeatedly implies (as often as we have success with it), that it can provide all answers. It cannot. Rationality can tell us that 2+2=4 with absolute certainty, but it cannot tell us with certainty why the laws of logic are in operation. It can tell us that every murderous government in history has been overthrown, but it cannot tell us that murder is wrong. It can explain gynecology, but it cannot tell us where all life comes from, nor what it actually is. It can tell us the shape and size of our planet, the others in our solar system, and even galaxy, but it cannot explain where matter came from. It can acutely calculate how much CO2 will exist in our atmosphere in the year 3000 if we keep going like we’re going, but it cannot tell us where all of life is going, or should be going.
What ends up happening is what’s happened to Richard Dawkins. In one debate with John Lennox, he says,
Now, science has not told us some things, like where matter and space came from in the first place, but it is making progress all the time, and may explain those things eventually. (paraphrase)Wrong answer Dawk-daddy. It can’t yet because it can’t. If he thinks that science (read scientists) can get a distant enough vantage to see the origin of matter by escaping not only space, but time (which are both necessary to explain the origin of matter), then he needs to read about delusions and the stupidity of irrational faith. But, the worst part about it is that he’s sincere. I think. I think he really thinks science can explain ultimate questions because it has explained so much under them. Non sequitur.
Count this as the rational method’s first failing: it cannot bring certain answers to any of life’s greatest questions.
Failure #2: Rational method does not bring necessarily happy answers to life’s greatest questions.
This second shortcoming of the rational method has just come to me (as a shortcoming) in the last day or two. Now, when I consciously adopted a rational method, I realized that it may bring me unhappy answers (see first paragraph), but I didn’t think I cared. I wanted to know what was true, even if it made me very, very, very unhappy. And at this moment, I still do. However, I recently observed this: unhappy answers to life’s greatest questions cannot survive.
I note three components essential to human existence that any philosophical or scientific answer deprecates to its own demise: relationship, usefulness, and progress. If any answer, regardless of how certain it is, makes relationship, usefulness, or progress impossible to humanity, humanity retches it up like rancid meat. Humans need, absolutely require those three things to live. Without one of those things, life is hardly possible; without all of those things, suicide is hardly impossible.
Humanity expresses these three things in five main ways: marriage/family (relationship), work (usefulness), imagination (progress), government (all three), and religion (all three). Look at the world and tell me if this is not true: where marriage/family are absent, work and/or imagination take its place; where work and imagination are absent, marriage/family and/or imagination take its place; where imagination is impossible, marriage/family and/or work take its place; where religion is impossible, government takes its place; where government is impossible, religion takes its place. “Lacking” can be substituted for “Impossible.”
Count this as the rational method’s second failing: it cannot bring necessarily happy answers to any of life’s greatest questions.
Rational Method vs. Relationship, Usefulness, and Progress
Right now you may be saying, “But, how do relationship, usefulness, and progress at all apply to rational method?” In this way: they don't. That’s the breakthrough for me on this point. Humanity orbits these themes, yet they are independent of rational method. Said another way: these themes will endure though all rationality stands apart from them, or even against them. Our lives function on these themes instead of rational themes as poetry operates on common experience instead of meter. Meter adds something, but it adds to the communicative effect of poetry, and shared experience is the communicative effect of poetry – the “point” of poetry. Another analogy: our lives are about rationality like they are about physical exercise; without any, we cannot function, yet it is about our lives and not the other way around.
We need helpful historical data right here, and I’m finding a dearth in my brain. Call Dr. Bennett, and have him insert a great paragraph of historical data that supports my points:
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________.
And so we see from history that everything I said is unavoidably apparent, and worthy of all agreement.
Loosely compelling generalities
Until I requisition some data from him, though I hate to do it, here are some loosely compelling generalities:
(I want these to support the basic idea that humanity, by and large, regards the categories relationship, usefulness, and progress as far more important than rational method).
- Persons who devote their lives to rational method (academians, modern philosophers) often end up isolated and confused. (may I here say again how much I hate generalizing?)
- Persons who devote their lives to rational method, yet are not willing to end up isolated and confused often find recourse in other things to have relationship, usefulness, and progress. (generalizing sucks!)
- Almost all scientists, philosophers, and otherwise rationally motivated persons get married and have children, even though it distracts from their work. (generalizing should be taken to the woodshed and have its butt beat)
- Common sense says that “meaning” in life is found moreso in relationship, usefulness, and progress than in rationally-defined pursuits. (all generalizations should be sterilized so they can't have little generalizations)
- Most famous persons contributed to relationship, usefulness, and progress more than to rationally-defined pursuits; the same is true of most historically and globally venerated persons. (generalizations are more pointless than a gnat's toot in a hurricane)(ripped from today's Dilbert)
- We are happiest when we spend ourselves on relationship, usefulness, and progress, not when we spend ourselves on rationally-defined pursuits. (are these distracting from my generalizations?)
- Most parents hope their children spend themselves on relationship, usefulness, and progress than on rationally-defined pursuits. (ok, that's enough)
- Rationally-defined pursuits seem to speak their conclusions into mainstream society, which operates on relationship, usefulness, and progress rather than BEING the main stream of main stream society.
- A preacher who speaks only to the rational needs of his/her congregants fails, as does a university professor, though to a lesser degree.
- High school students ask, “why do I need to learn this?” instead of, “why do I need to date someone?” or, “why do I need friends?”
- University students ask, “why do I need to learn this?” less often than do high school students, not mainly because they have fallen in love with rationality, but because they have learned how rationality contributes to relationship, usefulness, and progress.
Bottom line time: a rationally-defined life is uncertain and meaningless. Rationality is a train that goes to a lot of places – most very interesting, all helpful in some way, some absolutely indispensable. But it does not go to two places: certainty and happiness.
Have you noticed something? We don’t seem to be very energized about or hopeful talking about our recent epistemology discussion. We aren’t posting things and exploring and growing in joy. I’m putting forward weak assertions, you guys are giving shaky comments, and we all feel to be descending into a, as Prof. Lehner said, “infinite regression.” May I ask regression from what? From certainty and happiness. From relationship, usefulness, and progress. That’s what’s moving underneath all of this like an undertow. We’re paddling rationally, but we are being pulled by far more essential desires in a far more human direction.
Here is my charge to you: count rationality’s discordance with certainty and happiness as its failure, and not certainty and happiness’s discordance with rationality as their failure.
Here are a few atypically (word dedicated to WTD) concrete examples of what I’m calling for:
- We should love love and rejoice in friendship, marriage, baby-making, and parenting. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for these things, it has done us a disservice. (relationship)
- We should set ourselves faithfully to any task that falls to us. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for wage-earning or volunteer labor, it has done us a disservice. (usefulness)
- We should do good in genuine hope of improving society around us. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (progress)
- We should believe in an after-life. Unless man has life after life, what we have now is merely death before death. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (progress)
- We should seek to make a life for ourselves at some work, and therewith be content. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (usefulness)
- We should seek out people in our churches and ask personal questions. If our philosophy has given us a distaste for this, it has done us a disservice. (relationship)
David
1 John 1.4
17 comments:
'Is' and 'Ought'--I hate how these stand opposed like two horn-locked mountain goats, both making demands but neither willing to give ground. The 'is' of the epistemological endeavor has always been functionality--and we define 'functionality' as, like you said, that which promotes relationship and progress and usefulness. They are the musts, the sine quibus non, the pillars of 'living the good life', that which must be preserved at all cost. You said: ‘Our lives function on [relationship, usefulness, and progress] instead of rational themes.’ But, 'ought' this to be the case? Why are these foundational? To push the issue deeper, you correlated ‘certainty’ with ‘happiness’. The 'is': "Certainty is the necessary prerequisite of happiness."
So, I guess in this I'm asking ultimately, 'Should a system's utility be as much of a consideration as you seem to suggest?'
"Happiness" is an ambigious term. Do you mean it in the sense of satisfied or...? I think it would help me if you clarified.
Wes,
Yes, I know - "is" and "ought." Description and prescription. Here's the easiest situation: is = ought. This "is" how I "ought" to live.
"Should a system's utility be as much of a consideration as you seem to suggest?"
That was my initial problem with a lot of defense I was hearing around Christianity. I would hear people defend a tenet - like the Trinity - and I would think, "Now, are you really convinced by what you're giving me, or are you convinced because the Trinity is part of your tradition, and you can't stand to think about leaving your tradition?"
I brashly flung the "allegiance to tradition" thing out the window in favor of rational method. But that was when I thought rational method was going to bring me certain answers. When it has not, I see that by flinging tradition, I lose happiness, and I don't gain certainty.
So, in a tradition, at least we have happiness. In none, we have neither happiness nor certainty.
No pretending: talking like this is disturbing to me because it's flagrantly pragmatic. (And right here maybe we need to discuss whether we really are living in and relying on a tradition or not. I think we are, but we should talk about it.)
So, I just said all that to try to make you see what's at stake here, and to make you value it. To answer your question directly: a system must be preserved at any cost when that system's utility is human life.
Here's a lesser example. There's this society dedicated to saving Blue Footed Boobies. They love Blue Footed Boobies. They have meetings and plan and have fundraisers for years and years. Then, the last Boobie dies. That rational fact - there are no more Boobies - is the demise of the society. That society should accept the fact (as long as it is certain beyond doubt) and dissolve. (Probably such a society would stick around for a few years and slowly morph into a Blue Footed Boobie memorial society, but whatever.)
Now extrapolate that to make the society all mankind, the cause human life (which I condensed into relationship, usefulness, and progress), and the rational fact a philosophy (or even a powerful enough singlular fact, though one almost definitely could not exist) that destroys the cause of human life. If we break up the society, where do we go? There is no recourse.
DJ,
When I posted last night, I saw a paragraph that was missing: one that very deliberately tied together the ideas of "happiness" and of "life working out." It was late so I didn't write it.
In the first paragraph I mentioned
"life working out" but then I used "happiness" throughout the rest. Read the "Failure #2" section again. All that is what I mean by happy answers. An answer is happy if it affirms us in our relationships and/or usefulness and/or progress. An answer is very happy if it affirms us in all three. Less so in one, and more less so in two.
You're right, happiness is ambiguous because it means different things to different persons. But, I think those categories hold true. A suicide bomber loves the answer that killing himself to kill infidels because it is a happy one for him - he gets a better relationship with God, he is useful to God's cause, and he goes on to a better life. His answer is a sad one to a Spanish Catholic who gets killed, not first because he doesn't believe it is true, but because it stops his earthly relationships (though at his funeral the relationship category would be used to make the situation a happy one, because death brought him to God), and ruins his usefulness and progress.
Ok, and stop here and use the situation I just described. When I wrote that, I just objected, "Well, does it? If he believes in sovereignty, his death was useful to God in some way, and if he believes in an after life, it also brought progress." But, see how this objection still exonerates the three categories according to his theology? Saying, "All is lost! My relationships, usefulness, and progress are all ruined by this Sharia-enslaved lunatic!" is not an option.
It seems unhappy answers are just no option for humanity! What I'm working on now is, why, and how do I assimilate this?
Just a thought: this is common sense religion. Go talk to Joe Person. He'll probably say, "Believe what you want, as long as you're happy." That's what Missy (a Mormon girl I talked with in Utah) said to me at the end of our conversation.
Something stinks here. This sounds like I'm hinting in a direction I do not want to be hinting towards. And that is that of universalism, liberal religion at large, postmodernism, and humanism.
Because we can't talk about something without anticipating an conclusion (btw, is that a good definition of "presupposition"?), I need to set a good anticipatory conclusion. I brought this up, so where am I going with this?
Well, I'm exploring so I don't know what the destination is yet, but here is at least one thing this topic can achieve: I think we have uncovered the biggest "ulterior motive" in rational dialogue. That motive is this: arriving at answers that are happy for one's relationships, usefulness, and progress.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/ogc/species_SKU.cfm?cqs=CTBB
I don't think a system should be summarily abdicated because it threatens happiness (I mean this in response to your statement that 'Unhappy answers are just no option for humanity'). For example (and this is not hypothetical), I'm strongly Calvinistic. I believe that genuine repentance is impossible for the creature. So, I can pray and weep and curse my flesh--but at the end of the day it counts for nothing unless God acts of his own accord on my behalf. Thus, as it stands now, I have NO guarantee or promise of a bettered relationship, increased usefulness, or progress. Is my system consequently invalidated? No. I can ignore the facts (the Textual evidences) but not escape them. I can forsake the facts but will be held accountable ultimately for my treatment of them. Facts are incorrigible--they aren't the problem. Maybe our conception or definition of happiness is?
Wes,
Yes, definitely, we should not drop or manipulate facts because they don't make us happy. Here's the help I'm getting from thinking along my theory: the fact that relationship, usefulness, and progress are absolute requirements for humanity, I'm expecting the facts of life to support those things. So, right now I'm using those categories as prophecies to direct me toward what's true. When I am despairing of relationships because they seem pointless, and I don't have faith to believe what the Bible says about them, I've found some help in realizing that they are necessary for human life; therefore, I, as a human, must embrace them.
Here's a specific response to what you said: A system should [not] be summarily abdicated because it threatens happiness (I mean this in response to your statement that 'Unhappy answers are just no option for humanity').
Then you use the example of you accepting/rejecting the difficulties of Calvinism.
Here's the breakdown: the word "humanity." Unhappy answers are just no option for humanity, but they are options for individual persons. Here's what I mean: you, as an individual person may believe in Calvinism and bear up under its puritanical weight, but if you do, you will either 1) find your happiness in it (by being sure that God has given you repentance or has elected you), or 2) join the small minority of persons throughout history who have believed something that riddled their life with despair.
Without doubt, some individuals have lived in despair because of what they believed. Although I don't know him well, Cowper seems to have been one. Count with him some of the church ascetics. Count also Nietzsche. Count a lot of other philosophers. And this is what I ask, "can such a life system ever hope, though it can be strongly supported, to become the philosophy of mankind?" I'm answering, no, because even if such a philosophy did come to global acceptance, it would drive humanity into bleak existence, then extinction.
I'm viewing what I'm saying as a form of pragmatism, but it is on such a massive scale that I think it is justified. What I'm saying regards world-view level questions. Ok, that's important. Calvinism is close, because it is a system through which to view very much of the Christian worldview. But it's not quite there. It can only operate on top of the Christian worldview (even though non-Christian determinism exists)(but that's not Calvinism)(anyway... moving on).
I actually think what I'm saying is approaching presuppositional apologetics, as much as I'm wary of that. I don't like what I'm saying for (almost) the same reason as presuppositional apologetics. I haven't liked presuppositional apologetics because it says, "You need to believe this even though you can't prove it because it is the most basically true thing in the universe" and what I'm hearing myself say is, "You need to believe that relationship, usefulness, and progress are right even though you can't rationally prove they are right because they are the most essential things to human life because they most basically define human happiness."
So, in what a presuppositional approach says and in what I am saying, we're both appealing for acceptance in the face of uncertainty on an appeal to the "quintessence" of our propositions.
I don't know how what I'm saying applies to questions like "is Calvinism true?" Probably in the same way a presuppositional apologetic applies to questions like, "is Calvinism true?"
I always have always hated when children ask 'why?' Not genuine inquisition (of course), but the simple, stubborn, I-don't-care-what-you-say 'why?' (particularly when it comes as the only objection to a logical, detailed explanation). So, forgive me if I sound like the child.
Facts (to state it again) are incorrigible. What we make of the facts, then, becomes the all-important endeavor. So, if facts ask us to redefine relationship, usefulness, and progress, then why should we not grant them that? It's the Hegelian Dialectic. THESIS: human beings cannot operate without relationship, progress, and usefulness (I should add: 'as currently defined'); ANTITHESIS: facts lead us to different conclusions on relationship, progress, and usefulness than what has been historically accepted/endorsed. SYNTHESIS: to be discovered?
David, if we grant your supposition, how does Truth not become shackled by the chains of tradition and condition? (If that sounds strangely reminiscent and thus like plagiarism, it sort of is; you actually taught me that one). The presuppositionalist at least has an universal G/god on his side. All we are left with (in your argument) is individual observation. Consequently (as you wrote earlier), the inevitable end must be relativism.
Wes, no apology needed. Thanks for pushing back on this one - something is at stake and I'm very glad to see you unwilling to lose it. If we're trying to get happy and not true, we may as well pack up shop.
You're right. We must protect truth as the pure aim of our rationality, and bend to the best interpretation of facts we can get. I think I've gotten a little carried away on this one in this way: disenchanted with rational method, I found solace in those categories, and so swung a little wildly to that side.
If we substitute happiness for truth as our aim in our evaluative method, we almost guarantee ourselves failure (unless by chance the thing that made us most happy was also the truth).
But here's the spin: I believe the thing that makes us most happy IS also the truth (Christian hedonism reference here). So, while we bend painfully to facts like our dependence on God in Calvinism, we find our happiness growing, NOT because Calvinism is true, but because its truth gives us true relationship with God, and true usefulness and progress.
I think I need to put a lot more work into this, because I really think there's something here. I'm prone to get all giddy with visions of total explanatory power of a vein of thought, and start cramming all kinds of things into an idea. Help keep me from that.
Go down these thoughts and try to beat me to what I'm trying to say:
- The aim of rationality is finding what's true, but the aim of our lives is glorifying God by enjoying Him forever. Therefore, rationality is a tool we use to achieve a higher aim, and is not the higher aim.
- The Bible clearly emphasizes relationship (with God and man), usefulness (to God and man), and progress (with God and man) more than it does rationality. It definitely informs the meaningfulness of these things rationally, but rationality seems to be assumed throughout as a means and not an end.
- Now these three remain: faith (usefulness), hope (progress), and love (relationship). But the greatest of these is love.
Ha! I used a Bible verse so that proves it!
- Rationality is not the goal of our lives like transportation is not the goal of roller coasters; it is a necessary means to something greater.
Just to let you know I haven't gone off the deep end here, consider this: I've presented this whole thing rationally with the hope of adjusting how we think of rationality in relationship to the purpose of life. So, even in this presentation I've wanted certain incorrigible facts to shape what we think is true. Is this all a good illustration of the spiral shape of method? Rationality here has seemed to turn the brush back on itself and painted over what was there, changing the image but not completely obscuring what was there already.
Time for bed; let's talk about repentance later.
I asked God for attention for you tonight, specifically about Sunday.
This might help.
Tell me two things:
1. Do you agree with my two failures of rational method? I mean, do you think rational method brings certain and happy answers to life's greatest questions? (don't miss "to life's greatest questions")
2. If you agree, what is your recourse in the face of those difficulties?
I agree fully with #1 and mostly with #2.
With regard to #1.
'Certainty' is, I think, a faith claim. I mean, we cannot be absolutely certain of anything purely on the basis of our rational faculties for two obvious reasons: 1) because we cannot observe all of the data, and 2) even if we were able, we couldn't necessarily trust our conclusions because they are brimming with bias (hey! that's great assonance right there).
That the rational method cannot produce certainty seems to be particularly true when we address 'life's greatest questions'. 'Who am I?', at it's core, is a question regarding not physical composition (which can be described in detail by anatomists) but the nature of the soul. 'Where did I come from?'--a sperm? an egg? Well, yes, but no. We could go on ('Why am I here?','Where am I going', etc.).
I'm not suggestion that observable evidences are unimportant; they are irreplaceable--they point which diving board to jump off of; but evidences (alone) will not or are not capable of motoring us to surety--they are merely indicators.
With regard to #2
I would say 'Some rationalistic conclusions do not bring happy answers to life's greatest questions'. If we can agree that our 'certainties' are faith-wrought and not grounded merely on evidences, then we are able to address the logical consistencies of each interpretive system. In admitting this, we are heeding John Lennox's advice to admit presuppositions at the outset. Richard Dawkins is unquestionably 'convinced' of the reality of his system; I am 'convinced' that Jesus is Truth or Reality Ultimate. Now that we have granted that our conclusions hang as much on faith as they do on evidence, we can engage begin to analyze one another's methodology. Yes, we've both 'jumped off of the diving board'...but why did we choose 'this' or 'that' board? If he is right, I must be willing to adjust; if he is wrong, he must be willing to give ground.
Hope...I mean 'progress'...this makes sense.
DJ, I want to know what you think.
I'm reading through this now. Focus is a faculty a rarely possess anymore.
David: Now I know why I'm in disagreement with you. Here's an excerpt from C.S. Lewis' essay called 'Man or Rabbit?':
“Can’t you lead a good life without believing in Christianity?” This is the question on which I have been asked to write, and straight away, before I begin trying to answer it, I have a comment to make. The question sounds as if it were asked by a person who said to himself, “I don’t care whether Christianity is in fact true or not. I’m not interested in finding out whether the real universe is more what like the Christians say than what the Materialists say. All I’m interested in is leading a good life. I’m going to choose beliefs not because I think them true but because I find them helpful.” Now frankly, I find it hard to sympathise with this state of mind. One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe any of you have really lost that desire. More probably, foolish preachers, by always telling you how much Christianity will help you and how good it is for society, have actually led you to forget that Christianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of facts—to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.'
Call me Peter.
Do you agree?
Post a Comment