The danger in the System

by

There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work,  you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning… For the man of action there is nothing but idealism. —G.K. Chesterton

The idealist is an optimistic realist: A realist because he sees things as they are (hence his discontent), an optimist because he sees them as they might be, as they should be. Without idealists there could be no progress and no reform, for progress must be toward something and reformation demands a form. But of course one cannot get from A to B by wishing, so every good idealist must also have a System.

The System is the route from here to there, from status quo to what ought to be. “If only we…” then the ideal might be realized. Communism, courtship, and classical education are all Systems. The System takes the ideal and grounds it, explains how you and I can push toward it. And therein lies the danger, because Systems are much easier to hold onto than are ideals.

To follow an ideal requires imagination and will, conjuring up what is not yet and may never be. Far easier to hold onto the System, the concrete plan with steps and routines that can be accomplished today. And so we gradually lose the ideal in the System, becoming like the Texan who was told he could reach the Black Hills if he headed north and now battles polar bears as he makes his dogged way to South Dakota. It is hard to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon; they soon slip downwards and take up the easier task of merely making sure we continue to put one foot in front of the other.

It is for this failing that God rebuked Israel in Amos 5, beginning with one of the most chilling passages in Scripture:

Alas, you who are longing for the day of the Lord,
For what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you?
It will be darkness and not light;
As when a man flees from a lion
And a bear meets him,
Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall
And a snake bites him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light,
Even gloom with no brightness in it?
“I hate, I reject your festivals,
Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.
Take away from Me the noise of your songs;
I will not even listen to the sound of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

The Jews had not abandoned the elaborate system of festivals and solemn assemblies, burnt offerings, grain offerings, and peace offerings of fatlings, songs and music, by which the Lord commanded them to worship and serve him, but somehow in all that pile of worshiping and serving they had lost the Lord. The problem, of course, lay not in the system itself (which was good and necessary), but in allowing it to become the ideal.

This easy transmutation of means into end-in-itself is not confined to religious matters. We see it on a national scale as America fights to spread democracy throughout the world, forgetting that democracy is merely one good way of protecting the inalienable rights of the individual, without which it offers nothing but another flavor of tyranny. In my own field, increasing numbers of homeschooling parents seem to assume that simply schooling at home is a sufficient condition for educational success, as if the type of building in which a child is seated when a textbook is dumped in front of him is somehow determinative of his comprehension.

Even the best system will start to warp and distort if it becomes the focus, like an engine trying to power itself. To take an example mentioned earlier, the courtship system is founded on excellent ideals: involve family and community in the relationship, maintain physical and emotional purity, and of course seek God first in everything. And yet, one can’t help noticing a certain unhealthy mania in the way some families handle it, as if the key to an exceptional marriage is checking all the boxes on the courtship chart. We’ve all heard stories of girls who got cold feet at the last minute when they suddenly realized their fiancé would be marrying them, not their father. They had checklisted their way through the System so thoroughly that they forgot where it was taking them.

Ideals matter. Systems matter too, because they are the means by which ideals are realized. And in general, we spend more time thinking about systems than ideals, simply because they are more complicated since they must consider not only what should be but what is, and how to move from the one to the other. It is easy to become overly attached to the product of so much thought, prayer, and effort, but it is important that we hold our systems lightly, always remembering why we have them in the first place; motivated not by allegiance to the system, but by love for what the system seeks.

Against the Ontological Argument (Updated 3/7/10)

by

“I began to ask myself whether there might be found a single argument which would require no other for its proof than itself alone; and alone would suffice to demonstrate that God truly exists.”

Anselm of Canterbury’s 11th Century quest for a self-contained, self-sufficient argument for the existence of God led ultimately to what today is called the Ontological Argument, one of the most hotly-debated arguments among the many which aspire to prove God’s existence. An elegantly simple argument, it grounds itself in the very being of God, as its name suggests.

The Ontological Argument begins with a definition. “God” is a term with a particular meaning, whether or not one happens to believe a God actually exists. As a concept, “God” means “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived,” as Anselm writes in Proslogium. Even the atheist understands the term “God” as referring to a being of maximal excellence, such that nothing greater could possibly exist.

And yet, the atheist contradicts himself unawares, argues Anselm. For a being which is actual is greater than an otherwise-identical being which does not exist. Thus, if God does not exist, then it is possible to conceive a being [an actual God] which is greater than that than which nothing greater can be conceived. This creates a contradiction, which is impossible; ergo, God exists.

Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

We could restate the argument, reworded for convenience’s sake, as follows:

1. “God” means “a being of maximal excellence.”

2. Existence of a being of maximal excellence is possible.

3. A being which actually exists is more excellent than a nonexistent being.

Kant famously challenged Anselm on this point, but if we are careful with our definitions this premise is actually true by definition. The argument becomes circular if we define “maximal excellence” in terms of what is best, because to declare something best one must possess a standard by which to judge. I can speak of the best car, or student, or man, because I have ideals of automotive, academic, and moral excellence, respectively. In the absence of a standard, comparison cannot yield judgment. The diligent student and the slacker are different, but without a standard (“Diligence is good”), saying one is better than the other is simply absurd. This is why a mixed-race society need not engender racism. So long as there is no idea of racial superiority (“Being white is better”), racial differences are no more significant than the color of one’s hair.

Returning to the question of “maximal excellence,” it seems we need a standard by which to declare existence a good (excellent) thing. As a Christian, I can meaningfully say that existence is good because God exists. (Just as love is good because God loves, and wisdom good because God is wise.) It is better to exist than not to exist because to exist is to be more like God, the standard from which existence draws its value.

However, within the context of the Ontological Argument existence cannot be declared excellent on those grounds, for doing so assumes the existence of God, which renders the argument circular. Yet, in the absence of God, what other standard can an atheistic universe offer? Why, in fact, is it better to exist than not to exist? This thing, A, exists; that thing, B, does not. Difference, yes. But is one better than the other? From what source could existence draw value in a reality that can only offer comparison without judgment?

Fortunately for the argument, this problem can be solved through a clarification of the meaning of “maximal excellence.” If we define maximal excellence ontologically, as the fullest possible possession of all positive attributes (i.e. maximal being), no judgment is necessary. “Best” requires judgment; “most,” mere comparison. If a being’s degree of excellence is simply its degree of being, then the proposition that maximal excellence includes existence becomes an analytic proposition that is true by definition, because its predicate (existence) is contained within its subject (maximal excellence).

4. If that being which is maximally excellent does not exist, then it would be possible for a being more excellent than that which is maximally excellent to exist. (If P, then Q)

5. Existence of a being more excellent than the maximally excellent being is contradictory and therefore impossible. (Not-Q)

6. Therefore, that being which is maximally excellent cannot not exist; i.e. God must exist. (Not-P)

I offered the succeeding elements of the argument so it could be observed it in its totality, but let us now return to (4). Putting aside the premise as a whole for the moment, consider the antecedent: “If that being which is maximally excellent does not exist…”

Now, if the analysis offered earlier is correct, a being which is maximally excellent, as defined in this argument, must exist. The proposition is either necessarily true or unprovable. But this means the antecedent “If that being which is maximally excellent does not exist…” is impossible. (Note that a return to Anselm’s precise wording, “If that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone,” does nothing to remove the impossibility.)

An impossible antecedent in a counterfactual conditional such as (4) renders the consequent vacuous; empty. Premise (5) cannot deny the consequent “then it would be possible for a being more excellent than that which is maximally excellent to exist” because there is nothing to deny. The law of noncontradiction is first of all a law of being; what cannot possibly be cannot be contradictory.

In the language of possible worlds, there is no possible world in which “that being which is maximally excellent does not exist,” and therefore no possible world in which “it would be possible for a being more excellent than that which is maximally excellent to exist.” There is therefore no possible world in which the contradiction proposed in (5), upon which the argument depends, might arise. And without the denial of (4)’s consequent in (5), the conclusion (6) is invalid.

The basic problem is that, if one assumes a maximally excellent being that does not exist, it is not a maximally excellent being, and therefore cannot generate the contradiction which Anslem is seeking. He attempts to avoid this dilemma by speaking of that than which nothing greater can be conceived existing “in the understanding alone,” as compared with existing in reality. However, what Anselm identifies “in the understanding” is not that than which nothing greater can be conceived, but the idea of that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

The idea of a thing, and the thing itself, are distinct and different. The fact that the idea of a maximally excellent being may (in fact must) exist only in the understanding does nothing to refute the fact that, by definition, a maximally excellent being that does not actually exist is not a maximally excellent being.

Once the confusion created by conflating an idea with its object is removed, as it is in (4), (5), and (6) above, Anselm’s version of the Ontological Argument fails because it cannot yield the contradiction upon which it depends.

The argument revised, but still flawed

This does not yet fully refute the Ontological Argument, though. We still have this necessary analytical truth: A being of maximal excellence must exist. Taken by itself, this proposition forms the basis for the Cartesian version of the Ontological Argument. In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes writes,

But, nevertheless, when I think of it more attentively, it appears that the existence can no more be separated from the essence of God, than the idea of a mountain from that of a valley, or the equality of its three angles to two right angles, from the essence of a rectilinear triangle; so that it is not less impossible to conceive a God, that is, a being supremely perfect, to whom existence is wanting, or who is devoid of a certain perfection, than to conceive a mountain without a valley.

Descartes observes further, “the mountain or valley, whether they do or do not exist, are inseparable from each other.” Likewise, “because I cannot conceive God unless as existing, it follows that existence is inseparable from him, and therefore that he really exists.”

In making a response it is important to start, as before, with careful definition. If by, “A being of maximal excellent must exist” we mean, “A being of maximal excellence actually does necessarily exist,” then we have our conclusion: God exists. For “God” is merely the name given the concept “a being of maximal excellence.”

However, this cannot be the true meaning of the proposition, “A being of maximal excellent must exist.” What is actually meant is, “If a being possesses maximal excellence, it must necessarily exist.” Which of course does nothing to prove God’s existence, though it does prove that an existent God would possess necessary rather than contingent being.

Maximal excellence is itself a predicate: we say that some substance or other possesses maximal excellence. The proposition, “A being of maximal excellence must exist” further predicates necessary existence of a being of maximal excellence. In other words, if a being possesses maximal excellence, then it will possess necessary being.

When Descartes says it is “impossible to conceive a God, that is, a being supremely perfect, to whom existence is wanting,” he is correctly observing that a being of maximal excellence would exist necessarily. However, the necessary existence is a condition of the maximal excellence, and cannot be predicated of the being itself unless maximal excellence can also be predicated. Descartes’ argument could be restated as follows:

1. If a being possesses maximal excellence, then it will necessarily exist.

2. God is a being possessing maximal excellence.

Again we must distinguish between idea and object. This premise cannot mean, “Our idea of God is that of a being possessing maximal excellence,” because that would in no way support the conclusion that follows.

3. Therefore, God necessarily exists.

If the conclusion (3) is to be true, both premises must be true. However, Descartes’ only evidence in support of (2) is his own conception of God. He has an idea of God as a being possessing maximal excellence; or, expressed differently, we call our idea of a being possessing maximal excellence “God.” The fact that Descartes (and I, and every man) has an idea of a being possessing maximal excellence does not itself prove the existence of that being, any more than the idea of a horse with a horn proves the existence of unicorns. Neither is it possible to offer (1) to prove (2), because (1) offers not one iota of evidence that some specific being – God – in fact possesses the maximal excellence which would entail necessary existence.

It is true that one might attempt to refine the argument by avoiding the specificity of “God”:

1. If a being possesses maximal excellence, then it will necessarily exist.

2. Existence of a being of maximal excellence is possible.

Unfortunately, this only yields the obvious and useless conclusion that existence of a necessarily existent being is possible. We already know God might exist, the question is whether he in fact does; and it seems the Ontological Argument cannot offer proof on that point.

There are many good reasons to believe in the existence of God. And the reasoning of the Ontological Argument does prove that once his existence as a maximally excellent being is assumed, we can be assured that he does exist necessarily. However, reasoning in the other direction, from maximal excellence to actual existence, appears to run into impassible difficulties, no matter which road we take.

[Note: This post is a significant revision of my original article, first published on March 3. My initial argument rested solely on the reasoning regarding judgment and comparison which I developed in my response to (3) of Anselm’s argument. Further reflection suggested that alone was a woefully inadequate counterargument, which precipitated the further thoughts outlined in this revised post. (3/7/10)]

Aspergers and learning The Rules

by

This week’s Weekend Interview in the Wall Street Journal features Temple Grandin, “easily the most famous autistic woman in the world.” It’s a fascinating read, particularly for anyone with an Aspergers child. Growing up in the 1950’s, doctors pushed to institutionalize Grandin as her autistic qualities became obvious. Instead, her mother hired a speech therapist and a nanny and forced her daughter to interact with adults and spend hours practicing basic social skills.

Today, Temple Grandin is a doctor of animal science at Colorado State University and the designer of more humane slaughterhouse systems that are used worldwide. She also writes and lectures internationally as a first-person expert on autism.

Her cadence is unusual, staccato-like, and her pale blue eyes sometimes drift off into the distance. But she seems a different person from the young woman in the film, for whom being hugged, let alone schmoozing at a cocktail party, seemed physically painful. What’s changed?

“The thing about being autistic is that you gradually get less and less autistic,” she says, “because you keep learning, you keep learning how to behave. It’s like being in a play; I’m always in a play.”

As I said, the whole article is well worth reading, but I was particularly struck by Grandin’s advice on how to help an Aspergers child learn to function more comfortably in the outside world. Doubtless influenced by her own mother, who “insisted that Temple practice proper etiquette, go to church, [and] interact with adults at parties,” Grandin says,

It’s about hard work. Young children need 20 or 30 hours a week of one-on-one time with a committed teacher or mentor. Money, Ms. Grandin says, should not be an obstacle. If you can’t afford a professional teacher, find volunteers through your church or synagogue, she says. Parents need to teach 1950s-style social rules “like please and thank you, basic table manners, how to shop.”

“1950s-style social rules.” Back then, The Rules were explained pretty clearly and explicitly, by parents, teachers, neighbors, or even random passerby when necessary. There was a basic, shared understanding of how one ought to behave, and an expectation that society had a responsibility to pass that understanding along to the next generation. “Do this. Don’t do that,” as the 1971 hit “Signs” rather unenthusiastically put it.

Today, instead, American society depends much more upon a sort of peer-to-peer absorption approach to social norms. With the traditional venues for social instruction (family, community, church) fading in their authority and significance, most youth learn basic social norms through entertainment or from their peers, through observation and adaptation. Gallons of ink have been spilled chronicling the underwhelming results of this approach, and my point here is not to add thereto. Instead, I’m interested particularly in how this approach affects those with autistic tendencies.

Reading the interview with Temple Grandin, it seems that our lack of explicit social instruction must be doing a tremendous and particular disservice to Aspergers children. Gradin isn’t the first I’ve heard liken living with Aspergers to being in a play. You learn how you are supposed to behave, and you fill that “role”; it’s actually a considerable relief, avoiding the frustration and confusion of continually violating norms you didn’t know existed.

The instruction must be explicit though. By definition, a child with autistic tendencies isn’t going to pick up on the cues that his peers use to learn social norms. He needs to actually be taught what other children might be able to unconsciously pick up. And yet, more than ever before, our society tends to avoid offering the clear, specific guidance that such a child needs.

I’m not suggesting that a greater social willingness to articulate and teach the rules of social behavior would be some magic bullet to make life easy for those with Aspergers. However, I do wonder how much it would help, not so much in broad strokes but with those brief little interactions that could help create the explicit, clear roadmap that is so important to individuals with Aspergers.

And… I feel like I should conclude with some insightful commentary, but I’m really just throwing this out here as food for thought. I was struck by it while reading the article, and hoped some of my readers would find it similarly interesting.

Hidden fathers and the need for competent maleness

by

Throughout the ancient hunter societies… and throughout the hunter-gatherer societies that followed them, and the subsequent agricultural and craft societies, fathers and sons worked and lived together. As late as 1900 in the United States about ninety percent of fathers were engaged in agriculture. In all these societies the son characteristically saw his father working at all times of the day and all seasons of the year.

When the son no longer sees that, what happens? After thirty years of working with young German men, as fatherless in their industrial society as young American men today, Alexander Mitscherlich… developed a metaphor: a hole appears in the son’s psyche…

We know of rare cases in which the father takes sons or daughters into his factory, judge’s chambers, used-car lot, or insurance building, and those efforts at teaching do reap some of the rewards of teaching in craft cultures. But in most families today, the sons and daughters receive, when the father returns home at six, only his disposition, or his temperament, which is usually irritable and remote… Fathers in earlier times could often break through their own humanly inadequate temperaments by teaching rope-making, fishing, posthole digging, grain cutting, drumming, harness making, animal care, even singing and storytelling. That teaching sweetened the effect of the temperament…

[T]he father as a living force in the home disappeared when those forces demanding industry sent him on various railroads out of his various villages… When a father now sits down at the table, he seems weak and insignificant and we all sense that fathers no longer fill as large a space in the room as nineteenth-century fathers did.

Robert Bly argues in Iron John that the diminishment of the father’s role in family life is destructive to both daughters and sons, but particularly to the son. With his principal image of manliness reduced to a half-stranger whose regular appearances every evening do little to impact the real life of the family, the son is left with terrible deficiency: “How does he imagine his own life as a man?”

Bly suggests this absence leads to two different types of men. The first “fall into a fearful hopelessness, having fully accepted the generic, diminished idea of father. ‘I am the son of defective male material, and I’ll probably be the same as he is.'” The second type become what Bly calls “ascenders,” striving with a hint of mania to redeem a maleness they do not really know. “The ascensionist son is flying away from the father, not towards him. The son, by ascending into the light, rising higher on the corporate ladder and achieving enlightenment, to some extent redeems the father’s name… Society without the father produces these birdlike men, so intense, so charming, so open to addiction, so sincere, as those great bays of the Hellespont produced the cranes Homer noticed that flew in millions toward the sun.”

What can be done to try to cure this father-deficiency? Well, first we must understand the problem, which goes well beyond mere lack of time spent with the father. After all, throughout history fathers have been busy, off hunting, or farming, or in the shop. So while the quantity of time spent with the father is certainly important, more important are the qualities of the father which are on display during that time.

In the modern family, the competencies of the father are almost entirely centered in a workplace that remains utterly opaque to his children. His experiences, his skills, his struggles, failures, and victories, and the respect of his associates are all hidden from his family.

A few weeks ago, while spending the night at my father’s house I could not help overhearing him leading a conference call in the next room. As I half-listened to him confidently directing colleagues on the other side of the globe, I was struck by the fact that my father is, in fact, quite good at what he does. It’s not that I hadn’t known that before, but the intensity with which I realized it while actually listening to him conduct business – something I’d never done before – was actually quite startling.

Instead of observing their father’s competencies, children are usually treated to a view of him at his most limited, treading more-or-less awkwardly in a realm in which the mother is the expert. (Generalizing to the family structure which remains most common in America, of course.) She knows where things are, what must be done, and how to do it, and, through no fault of her own, quite outshines the father in her command of most domestic situations. The man who might be capable of programming supercomputers, commanding battalions of soldiers, or performing lifesaving operations is reduced to hollering, “Honey, do I need to cover this dish when I put it in the microwave?”

A part of the solution to this deficiency can be found in introducing children to their father’s work, taking them, in Bly’s words, “into his factory, judge’s chambers, used-car lot, or insurance building.” The difficulty, of course, is that many jobs just don’t lend themselves to observation, particularly by children with limited attention spans. Today, I could appreciate my father’s teleconference, but try to sit me down to listen to a lengthy meeting or analyze a spreadsheet back when I was ten, and I probably would have called Social Services. With the exception of a fortunate few, the average worker today faces a similar dilemma. What child would be excited to learn about C++ functions or the intricacies of actuarial calculation?

That being said, the typical office worker should not assume his children would not benefit from some exposure to his work. Seeing where Daddy works and observing the respect of coworkers is not insignificant for a young boy or girl. However, today’s worker usually needs to do more than simply exposing his children to his working environment. This is one of the reasons why I believe it is so valuable for men to cultivate handyman or outdoor skills.

The man who can change his car’s oil, fix a leaky faucet, put up a shed, skin a deer, or gentle a horse has a precious opportunity to display the competence and confidence that his children, and particularly his sons, have such a deep need to experience. There are other venues for displaying ability, of course: through the arts, or community leadership, or technological prowess for example. However, few things can beat simple manual skill to interest and impress children of all ages. (I still chuckle at the memory of two small children standing wide-eyed and on tip-toes next to the bathtub in a friend’s house while I simply changed a showerhead.) Anyone who has observed a little boy trailing along after his father, plastic tools in hand and ready to “help,” knows that herein lies a powerful avenue to a child’s psyche.

Whatever avenue one chooses – and it should be unique to each man and his interests, family, and work – the structure of the modern world means that today’s “hidden” fathers must put extra thought and extra effort into allowing their children to experience a maleness they can respect, appreciate, and, in the case of sons, emulate.

Passion, moderation, and virtue

by

Rereading G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy recently, I was struck by the essential distinction he draws between the balanced, moderate Aristotelian idea of virtue and that of Christianity. Discussing “the paradoxes of Christianity,” Chesterton writes,

Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle. There was really an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy which had justified the secularists in their superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders and meek saints might balance each other; still, the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were very meek, meek beyond all decency…

All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium; that one may be mad and eat too much, or mad and eat too little… But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept. That was the problem with Paganism tried to solve; that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way…

Paganism declared that virtue was in balance; Christianity declared it was in conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously.

The tempered, moderate virtue of the Greeks ends up respectable but lifeless.  Seeking, for example, the virtuous balance between pride and abasement, the Greek “would merely say that he was content with himself, but not insolently self-satisfied, that there were many better and many worse, that his deserts were limited, but he would see that he got them. In short, he would walk with his head in the air; but not necessarily with his nose in the air.” “This is a manly and rational position,” Chesterton agrees, but, “Being a mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two things; neither is present in its full strength or contributes its full color.”

This proper pride does not lift the heart like the tongue of trumpets; you cannot go clad in crimson and gold for this. On the other hand, this mild rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul with fire and make it clear like crystal; it does not (like a strict and searching humility) make a man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of the grass… Thus it loses both the poetry of being proud and the poetry of being humble.

In contrast, Christianity manages to save both. “In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners… Christianity thus held a thought of the dignity of man that could only be expressed in crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the gray ashes of St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard.”

Chesterton argues that this paradoxical wedding of extremes goes to the heart of Christianity; a religion which promises, after all, that “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it,” and founded upon the Christ, who “was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God.”

In fact, this principle characterizes Christian ethics. Take, for example, man’s relationship with the natural world. On the one hand, a wondering joy, alternately exuberant and hushed, at the beauty of creation; on the other, a gritty hatred for the evil and wrong intermingled with the good. Or Augustine’s Just War theory, which holds that violence can be right and good… so long as it is motivated by love of our neighbor.

And what of romantic love? Commenting on Christ’s command to “hate” one’s own wife (Luke 14:26), C.S. Lewis writes in The Four Loves, “He says something that cracks like a whip about trampling them all under foot the moment they hold us back from following Him… To hate is to reject, to set one’s face against, to make no concession to, the Beloved when the Beloved utters, however sweetly and however pitiably, the suggestions of the Devil.” And yet, this submission to a higher love in no way diminishes the love that Scripture anticipates between man and wife. After all, they are told to love one another “as Christ loved the church;” an overwhelming idea even when considered only in light of his sacrifice on her behalf, which is itself a mere expression of the inexplicable delight which led prophets from Isaiah to John of Patmos to speak of Christ “rejoicing” in his bride. And of course, the vast majority of scriptural discussion of marriage takes the form, not of commands or propositions, but of a book of love poetry considered so inflammatory by colonial Americans that their youth were not allowed to read it until they reached adulthood!

Why does all of this matter? Two reasons. First, there is the obvious fact that a better understanding of our God and our faith is always valuable. Secondly, a renewed attention to that element within Christianity “of emphasis and even frenzy… the collision of passions” which Chesterton notes might serve as a corrective to the tendency within comfortable American Christianity to be exceptional largely for our dullness. This is not to suggest an artificial fanning of passion, but rather a simple recognition that, contra the intuitive, classical view, virtue is not necessarily found in moderation, in a Goldilocksian “not too hot and not too cold;” that the faith which Dorothy Sayers called “the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man” has not lost the spirit of the Creator who decided to stage a play, and spun a universe from nothing to serve as the set.

It’s never just self-defense

by

I recently had an interesting conversation with my mother in which she commented that she would intervene to defend someone else who was in danger, but wouldn’t feel comfortable using violence to defend herself. She knows I disagree (the exchange was prompted by a weapon on my Christmas wish list…), and with her usual graciousness she agreed that self-defense is morally justifiable. She said she simply felt uncomfortable with it as a personal matter, because the idea of harming another human being solely for your own benefit bothered her.

It is a reasonable argument, but the problem with such a position is that it assumes an act of self-defense only impacts the attacker and the victim, when in reality, like any social interchange, its effects ripple out far beyond those immediately affected.

With the exception of the extremely rare, truly psychotic individual, every criminal makes a cost-benefits analysis before acting, asking himself if the risks of the proposed action outweigh whatever gain he anticipates. It may be nothing more than a subconscious observation that the victim is smaller or alone, but every criminal wonders, “Is this worth the risk?”

The benefit from any one individual’s self-defense accrues to every member of society when it slightly decreases the likelihood that a future attacker answers the question, “Is it worth it?” in the affirmative.

One of the benefits of judicial punishments such as imprisonment or capital punishment is deterrence: the fact that anyone considering a similar crime is given an additional reason to decide it isn’t worth the risk. Deterrence works. It’s why murder rates went up when capital punishment was shelved in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, then declined as the death penalty was again employed. However, the criminal justice system isn’t the first line of deterrence.

Any time an intended victim fights back, they act as a deterrent to future crime. When John Stossel interviewed imprisoned criminals several years ago, they told him their greatest fear was running afoul of armed victims. Study after study has shown that criminals prey on the weak. They don’t want a fight; they want a quick and painless victory. That’s why many would-be attackers flee at the first sign of resistance, or don’t attack at all if the intended target appears alert and prepared. The more doubt a predator feels about the ease of victory, the more likely he is to decide it’s just not worth it.

The homeowner who kills an armed robber, the jogger who stabs a rapist, or the tourist who attacks a mugger have one thing in common: Each one is making it a little less likely that some future innocent will suffer a similar attack, because they’ve just altered the criminal’s cost-benefit analysis in favor of the victim. The individual who chooses to fight back defends not only himself, but also the shadowy ranks of future victims who now look just a bit more menacing to would-be attackers, and are therefore just a bit less likely to be victims afterall.

Unthinking

by

Apparently, a lot of people think the world is going to end in 2012. The ancient Mayan calendar ends in 2012, you see; also, a hidden planet named Nibiru is about to crash into the earth, destroying all life.

The apocalyptic warnings are being spread online through email and pseudo-scientific websites. A NASA scientist tells the LA Times that two different teenagers have told him they are considering suicide to avoid facing the end of the earth. “‘I’m getting more and more questions from people who are upset and scared,’ he said. Some people say their children are refusing to eat.”

Because earth is about to be whacked by stealth-planet Nibiru.

The seeming ease with which significant numbers of Americans fall for conspiracy theories like the 2012 scare, despite clear evidence to the contrary, is a disturbing phenomenon, particularly in a democratic nation. The thought that large numbers of American voters are actually convinced that the government orchestrated 9/11, to pick one example, makes one slightly queasy. It’s true that popular delusions are hardly a new phenomenon, but surely in today’s age of widely available information such large numbers should not fall for claims so easily refuted?

The problem is that Americans are no longer taught how to think critically, how to evaluate an idea on its merits or lack thereof. Today’s education is almost entirely centered around accumulating information, rather than evaluating truth claims. (After all, it is intolerant to point out that someone else’s truth, isn’t.) Even at the university level, the educator’s job is to present students with a set of facts, and their job is to assimilate and remember those facts.

Having become accustomed to uncritically accepting the statements of authoritative figures, is it any wonder such habits persist beyond school? Politics becomes a battle of slogans, because we rarely think to look deeper and ask, “Why?” Internet rumors and conspiracy theories are given credence, because we have not been taught how to evaluate claims before accepting them.

Like any other skill, critical thinking must be taught and practiced before it can be used effectively to distinguish between the plausible and the implausible. In a world buzzing with an unprecedented supply of facts and information, claims and counterclaims, it is small wonder that unpracticed judgments are often less than reliable.

Selfish consumption and the recession

by

I visited a new church today and thought the pastor’s message was worth a comment. He suggested that “the Fed, the politicians, and the bankers” were not ultimately responsible for the recession, the true cause of which was our own selfish race to acquire ever more material comforts and pleasures. I found myself strongly agreeing with his comments on the insufficiency of anything less than God to bring true happiness, while disagreeing equally strongly with his argument that selfish consumption was the primary cause of our current economic woes.

Certainly, selfishness was a contributing factor, but blaming it for the recession is like blaming gravity for plane crashes. Gravity is always a factor, and it can cause a crash, but only when something goes wrong in the plane itself. Similarly, human selfishness helped create our current mess, but only because government distortions of the free market created perverse incentives that eventually built up too much pressure for the economy to bear. Bad economic policies caused the recession; human self-interest contributed only insofar as it has contributed to every economic phenomenon, whether good or bad.

Why does this matter? After all, any message opposing selfish consumption and trust in worldly values should be encouraged, should it not? Well… no. Not if the heart of the message is false. God is never honored, nor his kingdom advanced, by falsehood – even well-meaning or unknowing falsehood. In this particular cause, blaming the recession on human greed poses a number of dangers. To begin with, ignoring the real causes of the recession increases the likelihood that it will deepen or recur.

As Christians, we ought to love our neighbor, which means seeking his best. I only state the obvious in observing that losing one’s job, seeing one’s life’s savings evaporate, or losing one’s house due to an unsustainable mortgage is hardly best. If we are commanded to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, surely we ought to do our best to prevent their becoming hungry and naked in the first place! The Christian duty of loving our neighbor translates into a responsibility to seek the economic policies which are most conducive to social wellbeing. When we ignore the true causes of economic failures, we neglect this responsibility and set the stage for further suffering.

Some might argue, though, that the recession offers long-term benefits which outweigh its costs. By undermining our financial wellbeing, it creates a de facto curb on greed and envy; an ironic twist in which our society’s selfish consumption undermines itself. By taking away the material flimflam on which we have glutted, the recession forces us to value what truly matters.

Or not. Does selfishness come from the outside? If we could only wipe away big screen TV’s, luxury cars, overpriced McMansions, and all the other vestiges of conspicuous consumption, would selfishness trail away with them? Of course not. Take your generic selfish modern man, strip him of everything he owns, drop him in a primitive hunter-gatherer society, and he’ll soon be envious because the bone through Gorgog’s nose is fancier than his. Selfishness, greed, and envy exist independent of their objects; they are entirely subjective. So long as I am I, I can be selfish. What I am envious of is more or less immaterial. (After all, it isn’t as if greed is ever satisfied, even by the most outrageous consumption. The richest billionaire is no closer than the poorest subsistence farmer to filling the black hole of selfishness.)

What was needed before the recession, what is needed now, during the recession, and what will be needed after the recession, is a change of heart. Consumption is merely a symptom. Even if guilt or necessity leads a Christian to cut back his consumption, nothing is gained unless the selfish and disordered affections that lead to conspicuous consumption are eradicated.

Selfish consumption didn’t cause the recession, and the recession won’t cure selfishness. Pretending otherwise merely increases the likelihood that neither problem will be properly understood or effectively combated.

From Worldview class: The definition of truth

by

This Friday’s Christian Worldview class featured a lengthy tangent over the definition of “truth,” which ended in a promise to pursue the matter further on this blog. After I had presented the classic correspondence theory of truth, a student objected that this definition “left God out of truth,” and proposed an alternative definition. Hopefully, my response here will help clarify an issue that I didn’t have time to fully address in class, and which I feel I didn’t really do justice to, as my brain was still not firing on all cylinders after a bad cold the day before. (My apologies to students who may have been confused by my attempts at explanation!)

The discussion began when I defined truth as “correspondence to reality.” An objection was made on the grounds noted above, and a counter-definition offered: “Truth is revealed by God through his word and his creation.” In this post, I will begin by explaining the correspondence theory of truth, consider the objections that were offered to it, then analyze the proposed counter-definition.

To begin with, it is important to clarify the point of the inquiry: What does the word “truth” mean? When I say a proposition is true, what am I actually saying about that proposition?

Quite simply, and intuitively, the correspondence theory of truth says that a statement is true if it corresponds to (accurately represents) reality. If I say, “God exists,” and God does in fact exist, then the statement is true. If I say, “I am typing on the computer right now,” and that is in fact what I am doing, then the statement is true. On the other hand, if I say, “George Bush is president of the United States,” then that is false, because in reality George Bush is not president. The statement does not correspond to reality.

It is impossible to think of an example of a true statement which does not correspond to reality, or a false statement that does, which is why the correspondence theory of truth has been accepted for millennia by thinkers both Christian and pagan. When I say, “This is true,” I mean, “This corresponds to reality.”

BUT THIS DEFINITION LEAVES GOD OUT

Yes, it does. But the definitions of “existence,” “intelligence,” “frog,” and most other concepts do too. There is no reason to shoehorn God into the definition of truth when I’m clearly not saying anything about God if I say, “It is true that I had pepperoni pizza tonight.” If I had pepperoni pizza tonight, then the statement is true, even if I am a pagan with no conception of God.

BUT GOD CREATED TRUTH

No he didn’t. Truth is not a created thing, for the simple reason that it isn’t a thing at all. It doesn’t exist in itself. It is a quality which may be predicated of certain propositions, much like “heavy” or “long” are qualities which may be predicated of certain bodies. God didn’t create “heavy.” You can’t find a heavy. It isn’t a thing; it’s merely a quality possessed by one thing (a rock, perhaps) as perceived by another thing (some intelligent being). If there were no bodies, there could be no “heavy.”

Similarly, “truth” is a quality possessed by a proposition, if the proposition accurately represents reality. If I say, “I have brown eyes,” and I do have brown eyes, then we say my statement is true. “Truth” is merely a way to say that the proposition accurately portrays reality; it is not itself a thing. If there were no propositions, there would be no truth.

BUT THIS DEFINITION OF TRUTH IS SUBJECTIVE

This was the most substantive critique offered, but it is based on a misunderstanding of the definition of truth, reading “correspondence to reality” as “correspondence to my perception of reality.” (The latter being, interestingly, more-or-less the definition of truth offered by the coherence theory of truth, which is the basis for relativism.) However, the whole point of the correspondence theory of truth is to emphasize that truth can only be truth if it corresponds to reality itself. It is anything but subjective, for it depends entirely on the objective: What is the thing itself? If every man in the world believes the earth is flat, and it is fact round, then they are all collectively wrong, for their perceptions do not correspond to reality.

Now, the separate issue can be raised, “How do we know what reality is?” Well, that can be difficult! Men are often wrong, and often about very important matters. That fact notwithstanding, to blame the definition of truth for our failure to always reach it is rather like blaming a target for our poor marksmanship… And merely selecting a new target is unlikely to improve our aim! (And in some cases, the “new target” will actually make things worse, which leads me to the alternative definition mentioned at the start of this post, since I am not merely arguing that the correspondence theory of truth is correct, but also that the counter-definition which was offered is not an acceptable standard of truth.)

“TRUTH IS REVEALED BY GOD THROUGH HIS WORD AND HIS CREATION”

My student’s primary objection to the correspondence theory of truth was that it did not directly involve God. In response, he offered the following definition: “Truth is revealed by God through his word and his creation.” There are several problems with this definition. (Note that these are problems with the fundamental ideas being expressed, not merely nitpicking objections to the specific wording.)

The first and primary problem is that this definition of “truth” simply doesn’t fit the word itself. While one cannot come up with a proposition that is true which does not correspond with reality, there are plenty of propositions that are true without being revealed in either Scripture or creation: “I like football.” “Barack Obama is president of the United States.” “Roses are red.”

When I say, “It is true that I had pepperoni pizza tonight,” I mean, “In reality, I had pepperoni pizza tonight.” Not, “God revealed through his word and his creation that I had pepperoni pizza tonight.” When I talk about something being “true,” I am depending on the correspondence theory of truth.

Furthermore – and this is the second major problem – what do I mean when I claim that some historical account in Scripture is true? Surely I mean something more than a mere tautological assertion that it is, in fact, in Scripture? If I say, “The scriptural account of Christ’s resurrection is true,” I mean that Christ did in fact die and rise again. Yet, if my definition of truth is “that which is revealed by God through his word and creation,” then when I say, “The scriptural account of Christ’s resurrection is true,” I am really only saying, “The scriptural account of Christ’s resurrection is scriptural (i.e. revealed by God through his word).” Such a circular affirmation certainly seems to go against the spirit of Paul’s testimony of Christ’s resurrection in I Corinthians 15, when he appeals to the reports of eyewitnesses (those who could say what actually happened – in reality).

IN SUMMARY

Ironically, the statement “Truth is revealed by God through his word and his creation” is actually true. God does reveal truth through his word and his creation. However, not all truth is revealed in this way, and setting up “God’s word and creation” as the definition of truth doesn’t work for the reasons discussed above.

I’ve had to summarize some points to avoid making this post ridiculously long, but hopefully this is enough to give a coherent framework to my argument. If you are a Worldview student who’s here to see my followup to the class discussion, I’d enjoy hearing from you (either in agreement or disagreement) in the comments. Please don’t hesitate to disagree, or simply ask for clarification.

“Because I must, I can”

by

Kant wrote, “Because I must, I can” in defense of the existence of human free will, but I like the line’s application in a different context: as a concise summary of the Christian attitude towards challenge and adversity. Whether it’s David facing Goliath or Daniel before the lions’ den, or a modern-day Christian confronted with a seemingly insurmountable temptation or obstacle, the correct response is a smile, squared shoulders, and “Because I must, I can.”

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

QUICK LINKS

Classes

Speaking

Contact

Donate

SITE CONTENT

Blog

Podcast

Videos

Books

SOCIAL

Facebook

Twitter

Google+