Off the deep end IV
October 11, 2005
Reality: what is it?
I have come to believe that I have to deal with two realities and live in two worlds. A preacher from my past kept hammering this idea home, and I think he may have had it right. There’s the physical world that I can see and feel and taste and hear, but there also is a spiritual world of memories, hunches, coincidences, relationships, dreams, a parallel reality that cannot be explained away as just my imagination.
Before “the enlightenment” (seventeenth century), the unseen world was very real to most people, and it was only when people tried to do philosophy and even life by the scientific method that the idea of reality that is based only on the evidence of the senses took hold. I’m not quite ready to accept the modern explanation that we are further developed than they were. If pressed, I think I could cite some pretty intelligent and perceptive men and women throughout recorded history who would cast doubt on the modern premise.
Blaise Pascal didn’t jump on that bandwagon; he talked in terms of three levels of reality: body, mind, and heart, going his contemporary Descartes one better by expanding the latter’s body-mind dichotomy an extra level. Pascal thought of a reality in three dimensions, but since I am very dimension-challenged, I prefer to think of a simpler dual reality, one of which I know through my senses and the other that I know by supernatural means (Pascal’s “heart.”)
The supernatural, you say? Yes, I think we “moderns” have been much too quick to believe those who say the supernatural doesn’t exist. Until and unless the day comes when science can answer unequivocally all of our questions, we need to leave room for the supernatural.
Dave, growing too soon old and too late smart.
Galatians 4:1-7
October 9, 2005
4:1 Now I mean that the heir, as long as he is a minor, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. 4:2 But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. 4:3 So also we, when we were minors, were enslaved under the basic forces of the world. 4:4 But when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 4:5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we may be adopted as sons with full rights. 4:6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, who calls “Abba! Father!” 4:7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if you are a son, then you are also an heir through God.
Paul explains what it means to be “heirs to the promise” by considering the relationship of father to son. The latter is under guardians and managers until his father says that he has earned the right to adulthood and an inheritance. In a sense he moves from being a slave to being a son.
Likewise, God, at the right time, “sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts,” and we became as adopted sons “with full rights.” Chew on that statement for a while. Redemption as adopted sons came first to the Jew, “those who were under the law,” then to the Gentile. May this truth impact every corner of our lives! -sdg-
Life is a cup of tea
October 8, 2005
The Economist weighs in again on the intelligent design controversy with an interesting analogy to illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding.”
The plaintiffs have carefully called expert witnesses who believe not only in the separation of church and state but also in God. Mr Miller is a practising Roman Catholic. So is John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that life is like a cup of tea.
To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding”, Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one’s spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is “because I want a cup of tea.” None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.
It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the “I want tea” explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory—which he called “appalling theology”—in science classes.
For some reason, the “I want tea” explanation doesn’t seem to hit the mark for me. I don’t know why. The answer to “why does water boil?” obviously depends on the context of the question. What would be the equivalent question for the case of intelligent design vs. evolution? Think about it.
The bottom line seems to be that it’s not so much levels of understanding as it is one’s view of ultimate origin. Either all that exists was created ex nihilo by a Creator, or it’s the result of some random process that had a beginning, somewhere, sometime. Whichever view is most persuasive to you, dear reader, boils down to an article of faith.
Dave, no monkey, he.
Google and Copyrights
October 7, 2005
Google’s Mission Statement says “Don’t be Evil,” whatever that may mean to them. In a previous article, Robin Hood Google, I mentioned the brewing brouhaha between Google and the Author’s Guild. Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal on the subject. It raises some interesting questions about the ethics of Google’s data harvesting operation.
Google may be “different,” but neither the advent of the Internet nor of the digital age has changed anything fundamental about the U.S. copyright laws, as the Supreme Court resoundingly affirmed in its unanimous decision against online file-sharing services in MGM Studios v. Grokster last June. Intellectual property was important enough to the Founding Fathers for them to mention it explicitly in the Constitution. We assume that when Google says “Don’t Be Evil” this includes “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”
Far be it from me to speculate about whether Google is Evil, or judge whether they are robbing authors of their intellectual property. I’m guessing, though, that the Google guys and gals mostly just want to get rich by creating value in their business, which is nothing more than what every entrepreneur wants.
Dave, cheering the Google gang on.
Off the deep end III
October 6, 2005
My mind, such that it is
I’ve thought a lot about this. (Ouch!) I think I agree with the Catholic dogma that says that my soul (which I equate with my mind) pre-existed my body. At birth, my soul hopped aboard for the ride through life, and it will detach again at my death.
How can I know that? Well, I can’t, in any absolute way, but I also can’t avoid the question if I am to think much about my thinker. Look at it this way; I believe that some of my thoughts had their beginnings long before I had a body. I am not the first person to marvel at the obvious order of the heavens, nor did I invent curiosity about things we call scientific: physics, biology, astronomy, etc. If I am not the first being to think these thoughts, there must be some link between my mind and life before I stumbled upon it.
And if this makes sense, it is equally plausible that my mind (soul) may continue its existence beyond this life. The function of my mind is to give me my sense of reality and link my being with the world around me and with the past, with things spiritual as well as things material.
Reality? What is that?
Dave, still thinking about it.
The Scofflaw Swimmer
October 5, 2005
Peggy Noonan says some things that sorely need to be said in these days of Big Government. You’ll want to read it. It’s about what Katrina taught us about responsibility and authority.
No one took responsibility, but there was plenty of authority. People in authority sent the lost to the Superdome and the Convention Center. People in authority blocked the bridges out of town. People in authority tried to confiscate guns after the looting was over.
And they did things like this: The day before hurricane Rita hit Texas, last Friday, I saw on TV something that disturbed me. It was not the usual scene of crashing waves and hardy reporters being blown sideways by wind gusts. It was a fat Texas guy swimming in the waves off Galveston. He’d apparently decided the high surf was a good thing to jump into, so he went for a prehurricane swim. Two cops saw him, waded into the surf and arrested him. When I saw it the guy was standing there in orange trunks being astonished as the cops put handcuffs on him and hauled him away.
I thought: Oh no, this is isn’t good. This is authority, not responsibility.
Ms. Noonan thinks she is seeing a change in the relationship between the individual and those who would govern him. She may be on to something. She says that in an emergency, we hunger for someone to take responsibility. Not authority, but a sense of “I’ll lead you out of this.” On 9/11 the firemen took responsibility. So did the mayor.
Contrast the response by Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum, the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina.
Case closed.
We are losing the balance between the rights of the individual and the needs and demands of the state. Again, this is not new. It’s a long slide that’s been going on for a long time. But Katrina and Rita seemed to make the slide deeper.
It is hard for governments to be responsible, and take responsibility. It takes real talent, and guts. But authority? That’s easier. Pass the law and get the cuffs.
If we are truly seeing a change of the relationship between government and the individual, I doubt if we can expect a change for the better any time soon. I also wonder what kind of a world our children and grandchildren will face.
Dave, musing.
Metaphysics of Baseball
October 5, 2005
Now here’s a guy I can relate to. With the playoffs and the World Series, the season changes and we go from summer to bummer. Then, nothing of import will happen until spring training arrives and a new summer begins.
It’s now crunch time for the eight teams in the playoffs after 162 games that don’t count, a time to take delight in every pitch, every hit, every out.
Kruse Kronicle: Metaphysics of Baseball
What metaphysical lessons are we to learn from this season? For instance, the regular season is over and we in Missouri find we are home to the worst team in baseball (Kansas City Royals with 106 losses) and the best team in baseball (St. Louis Cardinals with 100 wins.) The Royals’ primary color is blue and the Cardinals’ color is red. Hmmm…is this an omen about future political outcomes? (i.e., blue states vs. red states?)
Anyway, playoffs begin tomorrow. Who knows what metaphysical realities may be revealed to us by the boys of October. I just hope that whatever the scenario is, it includes a World Series championship for my beloved Red Birds. Go Cardinals!
Metaphysics aside, enjoying the playoffs is to witness life writ large, a time to ignore the passing scene and lose ourselves in The Game until the last out of the summer of 2005.
Dave, waxing a bit too much perhaps.
Off the deep end II
October 4, 2005
The knee-bone connected to the thigh-bone…
I’ll try to avoid falling into the pit of neo-Platonism and not paint bodies black and souls white. Since God called both good, who am I to argue?
Bodies and souls. I think I’ve got one of each, but how are they related? A complete lack of evidence of any kind doesn’t stop me from believing that the connecting link is my mind, my CPU, so to speak. I become aware of a creaking physique. I think, “my back aches.” If my mind didn’t tell me so, I wouldn’t know it, now would I?
But what about the soul, the existence of which I am assuming? I suspect that it is the “real” me, the awareness of myself and my relationship to my environment and to a greater, “true” reality that transcends this world. As spacey as this may sound, absent the existence of something greater than myself, I am reduced to a biological brain, which is connected to a physical body and sends feedback from my environment to close the neuron servo loop. But I am a person, not a machine, a circuit.
So I assert that my environment is connected to my body, my body is connected to my mind, and my mind is connected to “me.” This infantile concept of personhood at least jibes with most philosophical views of man and especially the Christian view. I claim no originality of thought. Better men than I have already been down this path.
Dave, in over his head and paddling hard.
Happiness, revisited
October 4, 2005
Just what we need, a happiness industry. Since arguably the worst way to find happiness is to analyze and pursue it, one wonders if it’s worth wasting words. But I’ll waste a few, anyway.
So what do you have to do to find happiness? - Sunday Times - Times Online
These are the conclusions of a burgeoning happiness industry that has published 3,000 papers, set up a Journal of Happiness Studies and created a World Database of Happiness in the last few years.
Pardon me if I don’t start reading those 3,000 papers. I strongly suspect that they mostly are exercises in futility. Nevertheless, the article makes entertaining, if not edifying, reading.
One thing makes a striking difference. When two American psychologists studied hundreds of students and focused on the top 10% “very happy” people, they found they spent the least time alone and the most time socialising. Psychologists know that increasing the number of social contacts a miserable person has is the best way of cheering them up. When Jean-Paul Sartre wrote “hell is other people”, the arch-pessimist of existentialist angst was wrong.
This’ll probably get me booted out of the Christians Union, but I have a lot of sympathy with Sartre’s view. I’m reminded of a gag ashtray that dear Aunt Lois gave me on a Christmas many years ago. It had a picture of a little man cowering in a small booth. The caption: People are no damn good. Perverted humor, perhaps, but I still get a chuckle out of it.
Dave, grump.
Off the deep end
October 3, 2005
Bodies, minds, and souls
This is not a subject for the faint of heart, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about it. When I was young, I was convinced that I was immortal, or at least I lived that way. Why think about the end of life when it seemed so far away?
For most of us men, thoughts of mortality start popping to the surface of our minds sometime in our fourth or fifth decades. The realization starts to sink in that life is finite, that we probably won’t be able to do all that we would like to do, and that some day in the not too distant future we will certainly die. Dead. Gone. Kaput.
Aging baseball pitcher Satchel Paige dealt with it this way: “Don’t look back,” he said, “something might be gaining on you!” So we try not to look back, pretending that our physical end is not racing to meet us.
But let’s think about it anyway. Let’s posit that (1) in the nature of things our bodies atrophy and return to dust, (2) we have something we’ll call a soul that contains the essence of our personhood, and (3) while we live, our mind links body and soul. Descartes put it this way: cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I exist.
You may not agree with one or more of these assumptions, but never mind; we have to start somewhere. Next, we’ll do some more thinking about the body-mind-soul interface.
Dave, rushing in where angels fear to tread.
