Faith and Reason

This post is a synopsis of some of the ideas presented by Rodney Stark, professor of Sociology at Baylor University, in an article run in the National Post on Friday, January 27, 2006. An expanded version of the article first appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education and is based on a book by Stark: "The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success", Random House, publisher.

The article interested me in light of claims by a few prominent scientists, notably Richard Dawkins, that faith and reason in general, and faith and science in particular, are in conflict.

Here is my synopsis of some of the relevant points:

1. Christianity alone, amongst the world religions, "embraced reason and logic as the primary guides to religious truth," as opposed to a general emphasis on mystery and intuition.

2. The Church Father's taught that "reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase understanding of Scripture and revelation."

3. This led to the creation, by the Church, of the medieval university which stimulated "the pursuit of science and the evolution of democratic theory."

4. "The success of the West, including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians."

5. Max Weber, 20th Century German sociologist, concluded that "only Protestantism provided a moral vision that led people to restrain their material consumption while vigorously seeking wealth."

6. Belgian scholar Henri Pirenne demonstrated that all of the essential features of capitalism are to be found from the 12th Century on.

7. Only where reason and freedom arose together was significant progress made. "Before any medieval European state actually attempted to rule by an elected council, Christian theologians had long been theorizing about the nature of equality and individual rights."

8. "From the earliest days, the major theologians taught that faith in reason was intrinsic to faith in God." (Tertullian, a second Century theologian, for example)

9. It was during the "so-called" Dark Ages "that European technology and science overtook and surpassed the rest of the world...by the 10th Century Europe already was far ahead" with respect to farming, water and wind power, and military advances.

10. "...by the seventh Century, Christianity had become the only major world religion to formulate specific theological opposition to slavery, and by no later than the 11th Century, the Church had expelled the dreadful institution from Europe."

"The common denominator in all these great historical developments was the Christian commitment to reason. That was why the West won."

"Evidentialism, Reformed Epistemology and the Holy Spirit"

Some reflections on the above titled paper by John M. DePoe, Western Michigan University:

A non-philosopher tries to make sense of a philosophical discussion:

1. DePoe notes that Evidentialism is criticized "for allegedly eliminating the possibility for justified belief in God among the unlettered faithful" who fail to acquire sufficient rational reasons for belief (P1):

By this understanding of justified belief no mathematician would have a justified belief in the theorems of mathematics who had not reproven all of those theorems for himself. This would leave most of us with no more than a handful, at best, of justified beliefs about anything. Is this definition of justified belief worth anything to anyone? In our normal daily living what we are usually working with are not "justified" beliefs but "justifiable" beliefs. This discussion about justification seems to take too personal a view of belief. What if we look at justified beliefs as community property rather than the property of an individual. Does the community have a justified belief, x, which is supported by the collective thinking of the community? If so, why can the theoretical fourteen year old in question not be seen to share a "justified" belief with his community? Justified beliefs are not necessarily true but the youth can have sound reasons for standing with the community. The question for Evidentialism is not whether some individual has acquired sufficient reasons for a justified belief but whether empirical evidence is at all capable of justifying belief in God.

2. DePoe finds two key epistemic roles for the Holy Spirit from his review of Scripture: "providing testimony to the truth of Christianity and conferring confidence to believers."

DePoe presents these roles as a way forward in strengthening the Evidentialist's case by using it to shore up the evidence and to act as evidence themselves. I agree that the Holy Spirit acts to reinforce the impact of the evidence but not that this action of the Holy Spirit is itself evidence. How would it be possible to assess or count as evidence the fact that I feel convinced or I feel certain about my beliefs?

"No matter what a believer’s educational background and philosophical expertise are, all believers’ evidential support for belief in God will include at least one piece of evidence—the testimony of the Holy Spirit." (P6)

How can this testimony be counted or evaluated as evidence? Is it the fact that a person believes without evidence, or believes with weak evidence, or believes in the face of evidence to the contrary? It would seem that it would be only under such conditions that this "testimony" would show itself. In which case it would raise the question of either a slide into irrationality or into fideism, both of which DePoe is concerned to avoid.

3. I find the following statement theologically disconcerting:

"At first blush, it seems that taking this second work of the Holy Spirit seriously
commits one to fideism. If the Holy Spirit’s testimony is construed in such a way that it
always swamps the opposing evidence for belief in God, the rest of the evidence seems
irrelevant. Moreover, assigning an indefinitely large evidential value to the testimony of
the Holy Spirit would make Christians “undefeatable”—a position non-believers find
frustrating (at best) or intellectually dishonest (at worst). Finally, this evidence may seem
unfair since it is “private.” Unbelievers will hardly be impressed by alleged evidence to
which they have no access." (P6)

DePoe does not want to find himself in a position where the Holy Spirit's testimony can "swamp the opposing evidence" or "make Christians 'undefeatable'" or "frustrate non-believers" or appear "intellectually dishonest" etc. I don't know how this position is avoidable for the Christian. The Christian position on divine testimony cannot be that "the heavens declare the possibility of the glory of God and the firmament might, under some readings, show his handiwork" (Psalm 19). There can be no way around saying to the non-believer that "what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them" (Romans 1:19 - see Paul's whole discussion in this chapter). I don't think we have any choice but to root belief in Revelation. The task of the apologist is to show that the position this puts us in is reasonable and makes sense on the empirical evidence that we have. In turn we attempt to show that their own position, based on their own premises, is not justifiable.

With respect to the charge that we are appealing to "private" evidence my response is that the Scriptures declare this to be public evidence to the whole earth. I can be confident that this message has been sent to everyone, even to those who deny receiving it. We cannot ignore the fact that the Bible deals with unbelief as a moral problem rather than as an intellectual one.

James Agee, Novelist

"All that each person is, and experiences, and shall ever experience, in body and mind, all these things are differing expressions of himself and of one root, and are identical: and not one of these things nor one of these persons is ever quite to be duplicated, nor replaced, nor has it ever quite had prededent: but each is a new and incommunicably tender life, wounded in every breath and almost as hardly killed as easily wounded: sustaining, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe."
(Quoted by Philip Yancey in "Soul Survivor")

Pause to reflect upon yourself, and upon the person next to you in the universe; Pause to reflect upon the victims of poverty, abuse, neglect, prejudice; Pause to reflect upon the sick, the dying, the mentally ill, the suicide. Pick any one individual out of this mass. Pick yourself or some stranger to you and see this person as one who is "never quite to be duplicated, nor replaced." Pick even your enemy or the enemy of your friend and see him or her in these terms. Can we treat with more care, respect, and awe the one who is "wounded in every breath?" Can we wonder at the fact that we are "as hardly killed as easily wounded?" Can we marvel at how the starving, impoverished, abandoned child, of some African nation can "sustain, for a while, without defense, the enormous assaults of the universe?" Biology is the least of our concerns in trying to explain the wonder and origin of the human spirit.

Religion the root of all evil

Oxford Professor, Richard Dawkins, has produced a two-part television program in which he attempts to demonstrate that religion is the root of all evil. This is an old argument and I haven't seen the series but just a few observations on the basic argument itself:

1. The use of the term "evil" in a naturalistic, Darwinian, argument seems out of place. If a dragonfly kills and eats a mosquito is the dragonfly evil? If a weasel kills a whole hen house full of chickens and leaves them to die in their own blood is the weasel evil? If a lion kills and eats a man is the lion evil? If a man kills another man is the man evil? At what point in the food chain does killing become evil? What place do moral judgments have in a purely naturalistic world? Is the evolutionary process of struggle and survival a moral process? Does Dawkins reserve the moral argument for homo sapiens alone? What dramatic change has taken place in the history of evolution that suddenly the whole story has taken on deeply moral tones? Is it possible that even the evolutionists cannot live with the logic of a purely naturalistic world? If humans are simply fancy containers for genes, as Dawkins believes, then how can any moral judgments be made against anyone?

2. The phrase "religion is the root of all evil" can be defended using the same methodology that Dawkins uses by substituting for the word "religion" any ideology, culture, or subculture that you wish to insert, including science. It would not be difficult to insert "atheism" in the place of religion and come up with a compelling argument in support of the case. The most "successful" application of Marxist ideology has been communism. With its intention to eliminate all forms of religion and to eliminate all of its ideological opponents this form of atheism has been responsible for the deaths of between 85 and 100 million people worldwide. What Dawkins fails to see is that it is people (theologically speaking, sin) that are the root of all evil, if it is possible to believe in evil at all in a naturalistic universe. Evil people will use any tool to promote their evil including religion, science, marxism, etc.

3. I can take the phrase "religion is the root of all evil" and test its veracity in terms of my own life. I can certainly say that I have committed evils in my live, and continue to do so. As a Christian I have been continually confronted by my own evil through my reading of the Bible. The Sermon on the Mount alone provides a powerful counterforce against the inclinations of the human heart. In my own case religion has acted as a restraint on evil and has presented a challenge to me to live in love, mercy, and forgiveness, even towards those that I might be inclined to view as my enemies. Have I ever used my religion as an excuse to do evil? Yes. But this does not make religion the root of my evil. It only shows how the human heart is inclined to take even the good and use it for evil. Although religion might present me with yet another tool with which to do harm it is also the most powerful tool I have for confronting and overcoming the evil that is in me. Beyond that it is a wellspring of grace and mercy and forgiveness that gives me the freedom to pursue the life of the gospel.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Martin Luther King, Jr, From The Call of Service, (Quoted by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor, P. 106-107):

“A big danger for us is the temptation to follow the people we are opposing. They call us names, so we call them names…but I remind you that in many people, in many people called segregationists, there are other things going on in their lives: this person or that person, standing here or there may also be other things – kind to neighbors and family, helpful and good-spirited at work.

You all know, I think, what I’m trying to say – that we must try not to end up with stereotypes of those we oppose, even as they slip all of us into their stereotypes. And who are we? Let us not do to ourselves as others (as our opponents) do to us: try to put ourselves into one all-inclusive category – the virtuous ones as against the evil ones, or the well-educated as against the ignorant. You can see that I can go on and on – and there is the danger: the “us” or “them” mentality takes hold, and we do, actually, begin to run the risk of joining ranks with the very people we are opposing. I worry about this a lot these days.”

On the one hand this is a hugely generous attitude on the part of someone who has been physically and verbally attacked to the degree that Luther and many of his followers were. On the other hand Luther understands that the very real danger exists of becoming the enemy we hate.

Even in more ordinary circumstances there is a huge application of this principle to the people we interact with all day long. Take note of how many times throughout the day you see people but don't really see them because you trivialize them by categorizing them. These people become invisible to us because we know them by only one fact - how they relate to us in a given context. They are "that kind of customer," or "this kind of driver." They are "a religious person," "an atheist," a "conservative," "a liberal," and so on. We know nothing of these people (and they know nothing of us). In reality they are not anything like our charicature of them. Each one has his own story. A person is religious for a lot of reasons, or an atheist for a lot of reasons, or a conservative, or a liberal, or a criminal, or an addict, for a lot of reasons. As soon as we fit them with a label we dehumanize them, we rob them of their story, of the history of their relationships, their successes and failures, their endearing qualities and their secrets. They become invisible and can be eliminated. They can be demeaned, ignored, even beaten, alienated, and discarded. Follow any of the debates going on in the blogs or various internet venues and see if this is not happening unceasingly among intelligent, educated people today. The most frequent argument used in any debate is the ad hominem argument. Martin Luther King, Jr., still has a lot to teach us today.

"doctrines seen as facts"

I'm continuing to explore the reasons why, in certain debates, people holding different positions cannot give up the view that their opponent can only be dishonest, ignorant, or irrational. Certainly there are dishonest, ignorant, and irrational people out there but there is something more to this dynamic than this assessment suggests. Here are some ideas I came across in reading Anthony Thiselton's Two Horizons. Thiselton is discussing some ideas by G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein (On Certainty):

"Cultural presuppositions, Hulme declares, become so much a part of the mind of the people of the given culture 'and lie so far back, that they are never really conscious of them. They do not see them, but other things through them.' They constitute 'doctrines seen as facts.' In due course we shall compare the idea of cultural presuppositions with some of Wittgenstein's observations in his last writing On Certainty, on what G.E. Moore had regarded as certainties of 'common sense.' They are certainties, Wittgenstein argues, in the sense that they are like hinges on which all our every day presuppositions turn. They perform a logical role not unlike that of the theological assertion 'it is written.' Such a proposition, Wittgenstein explains, 'gives our way of looking at things...their form...'" (P.74)

"They articulate 'the scaffolding of our thoughts'." (P 392)

"Within certain communities they have become virtually unquestioned or even unquestionable axioms; they function 'as a foundation for research and action,' but are often simply 'isolated from doubt, though not according to any explicit rule.' Wittgenstein seems to suggest that in any culture, including our own, 'all enquiry...is set so as to exempt certain propositions from doubt...They lie apart from the route travelled by enquiry.' In due course, an axiom may become 'fossilized.' It is removed from the traffic. It is so to speak shunted onto an unused siding.' But it does not thereby lose its significance; rather, its significance has changed into that of a grammatical proposition. 'Now it gives our way of looking at things, and our researches, their form. Perhaps it was once disputed. But perhaps, for unthinkable ages, it has belonged to the scaffolding of our thoughts.'" (P392-393)

"Thus, as in the case of ordinary grammatical statements, if someone challenges an unshakable 'hinge' proposition from within the community or culture in question. 'I would not know what such a person would still allow to be counted as evidence and what not.' 'What counts as a test?' The decisive point is that 'our talk gets its meaning from the rest of our proceedings.'" (P. 393)

"Wittgenstein remarks that one thinks one is looking at the nature of something, but 'one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.' It is in this context, and in this sense, that he observes, 'The problems are solved not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.'" (P. 404)

"The picture and the grammar which it suggests 'commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter.' It is only by breaking the spell of a misleading picture that Wittgenstein can 'show the fly the way out of the bottle.'" (P. 404)

"More recently, special attention has been given to the far-reaching role of paradigms in the sciences, especially by Thomas S. Kuhn. Kuhn argues, for example, that the men who called Copernicus mad because he claimed that the earth moved were not 'just wrong.' The point was that 'part of what they mean by 'earth' was fixed position.' If 'earth' was a pardigm-case of fixity, Copernicus seemed to be making a self-contradictory claim. Only by changing their way of looking at things, and substituting a new paradigm, could the way be opened for an acceptance of his claims." (P. 405)

Our opponent can seem to be making a simple grammatical error, a basic blunder of logic, because our picture of reality and our language used to describe it already settles the case. I cannot even understand someone who disagrees with such a basic conception of the facts. He must be a simpleton!

Philosophy can help us become more adept at "breaking the spell" of these underlying conceptual structures, or at the very least can help us to bring them into the light.

Reclaiming Creation

Read this journal article today:

Hanby, Michael, Reclaiming Creation, Theology Today 62(2006): 476-83.

Michael Hanby is Assistant Professor of Theology at Baylor University.

From the concluding paragraphs of the article:

"The first function of the Christian doctrine of creation, then, is simply to protect the infinite qualitative difference between God and all that is not God, something that both Darwinian and creationist "explanations" fail to do. Creation thus understood is not an alternative theory or explanation of the world of the sort Darwinians or other scientists demand, but rather a denial in principle that any such "theory of everything" is finally possible, and a suspicion that any such comprehensive theory will necessarily exercise a reductive tyranny over the things it purports to "explain." To precisely this extent, the Christian doctrine of creation is more "agnostic," less ideological, and thus - dare we say? - more scientific than Darwinism. The Christian doctrine of creation refuses to posit a causal mechanism for the being of the world, but only a misunderstanding of the word "God" could register this refusal as a failure. For God is no "sky hook," a straw man of Darwinism's own invention that liken's God's creative act to a piece of stage-machinery that "intervenes" from "beyond," like Aphrodite restoring Paris to his bedchamber. Rather, God is that simple, immutable act of being and love so transcendently other to creation as to be at once external and internal to it, mysteriously indwelling it while calling it into the novelty of existence in the mystery of divine love." (P. 482)

Hanby encourages a fresh approach to the debate between faith and science with respect to the question of origins. Natural selection in particular, and science in general, at best, can only be an explanation of "what is." It can never comment on how things came to because there can be no naturalistic explanation of how something arises out of nothing. There are limits to "explanation," whether naturalistic or theological. There are things that neither science nor theology can deliver. The Christian doctrine of creation serves to highlight the incredible distinction between God and the "novelty of existence." We are here, not because God needs us to be. We are here because of God's unexplainable act of love in creation. For this reason Hanby thinks that Darwinism, creationism, and Intelligent Design, are missing the point when it comes to origins.

Dreams of a better world

Reading with transforming effects

From Anthony Thiselton: "New Horizons in Hermeutics"

"Texts, first, we argue, open new horizons for readers. Because of their capacity to bring about change, texts and especially biblical texts engage with readers in ways which can productively transform horizons, attitudes, criteria of relevance, or even communities and inter-personal situations. In this sense we may speak of transforming biblical reading. The very process of reading may lead to a re-ranking of expectations, assumptions, and goals which readers initially bring to texts.

Gadamer points out, however, that such a process does not occur inevitably or automatically. Only if we respect the distinctiveness of the horizons of the text as against the distinctiveness of our 0wn reader-horizon can a creative and productive interaction of horizons occur. The distance between the reader and the text performs a positive hermeneutical function. Premature assimilation into the perspectives projected by the horizons of readers leaves the reader trapped within his or her own prior horizons. Worse, in such a case the reader may stand under the illusion that the texts have fully addressed him or her. Still more significanctly, interaction between the two horizons of text and readers will, if premature assimilation has taken place, appear uneventful, bland, routine, and entirely unremarkable.

Within the Christian community the reading of biblical texts often takes this uneventful and bland form. For the nature of the reading-process is governed by the horizons of expectation already pre-formed by the community of readers or by the individual. Preachers often draw from texts what they had already decided to say; congregations sometimes look to biblical readings only to affirm the community-identity and life-style which they already enjoy. The biblical writings, in such a situation become assimilated into the function of creeds: they become primarily institutional mechanisms to ensure continuity of corporate belief and identity.

This is not to deny that prior understanding of biblical texts can become corporately embodied in the tradition which shapes our horizons....Nevertheless interpretations of texts and of earlier traditions can also become institutionalized and fossilized into forms which defeat the original vision which they emerged to serve. Traditions can absorb error, and be overtaken by new understandings and contexts." (Taken from the Introduction P.8-9)

I love this insight into how reading the Bible can simply be a bland reaffirmation of everything we believe before we start to read or a creative confrontation with our own pre-understanding. I am fascinated by the very real danger of our seducing the text of the Bible into speaking our own truth back to us. Perhaps one of the most important signals that this is what is happening is when our reading becomes "uneventful, bland, routine, and entirely unremarkable." What a delicate balancing act it is to listen with benefit to the voice of the living God.