A God you can cozy up to when you've had a rough day
Or at least, that's the first thing I wrote on the paper I was taking notes on tonight. There were a couple of guest speakers at Cornerstone this week. Both were philosophers, one who teaches at a secular university and one who teaches at a seminary. The entertaining part of the evening for me was that, despite not knowing a single thing about either one of them prior to walking into the room tonight (including their avocations), I was able to tell that speaker number one was a professor in some humanities discipline and that speaker number two had been to seminary. This was evident because speaker number one drew a diagram on the chalk board to illustrate his point that looked vaguely like what a four year old would do when scratching out part of a picture he had drawn and speaker number two took over thirty minutes to get through three lines of text. Seeing as how I spent the evening taking notes while listening to two philosophers talking, you'd better get comfortable because this is going to be a pretty long post. I would split it up into multiple posts, but then you would only read the last one - you lazy bum.
The origin of the topic for tonight's post was a quote by speaker number two, Doug. The reason I wrote it down had absolutely nothing to do with the reason why he said it. I actually forget what the context was. Anyway, the reason I wrote it down was because I had just been praying with a friend of mine who had had a rough day. So when Doug says, "... a God you can cozy up to when you've had a rough day" I immediately think about my friends response to her day. She wanted to draw near to God - cozy up if you will - and she wanted me to accompany her. To me that is a wonderful illustration of the two greatest commandments and also a fabulous way to spend time.
The most interesting portion of the evening's talks - at least to me - was a sort of heirarchy of order that speaker number one, Greg, introduced. It went a little something like this:
Another concept that Greg introduced was Quine's "web of belief." In describing how most people make decisions and order their beliefs, he pointed out that while we tend to follow a preponderance of evidence, we can always deny any amount of evidence merely by inventing alternate possible circumstances. In the web of belief, math and logic are at the center of the web, and empirical data is on the outside. Connections which are made between various things and beliefs which are formed about them are continuously revised based on new experience. New data coming in on one part of the web may cause us to rearrance another part in order to accomodate it, but we don't have to accept it - we may in fact have to rearrange the web to exclude it. My initial thought was that math and logic can also be thrown out of the web in order to make it consistent simply by going insane. Which is true for most definitions of insanity. But the interesting thought that I had shortly after that was an adaptation of Chesterton from Orthodoxy. He describes the madman as one who has nothing but logic, which fits the web of belief model nicely. You are just as loony if your entire world consists of one single idea fenced around with logic as if you completely toss logic altogether. "Yes! Wonderful!" you cry, "but what of it?" Well, nothing really, these are merely cases which stretch the application of the analogy, and don't really lead anywhere. I just appreciate a clever and robust analogy when I come across one. Actually, the point he was making with the web was that there can be many webs which fit the observable experiences and are internally coherent - so which one do we believe? Well, ideally we take the one which requires the least additional explanations to fit the observed data - Occham's Razor all over again I suppose.
The summation of the talk was that given these observable levels of order in the universe, and the conclusions that can be drawn from the existence of such order (i.e. God exists and is at least something like the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible), Christianity is the most probable explanation. No, the most plausible explanation; probability only refers to things that happen over and over - the universe only happens once.
Something that struck me while listening to these guys was that philosophy almost always has to do with things that are more basic than we are used to thinking about. People think of philosophers as people who sit around and ponder the greatest questions of life and solve the problems of government, sociology, and love. When actually, the people who think about those probelms are usually lawyers, historians, and poets. Meanwhile, there are two philosophers off in a corner who have just finished determining that the universe does exist and are preparing to contemplate whether it contains more than one thing - which you would think they would pick up on because they disagree on the answer. I was wondering why people dismiss those basic questions as irrelevant. I suppose it's because they can live their entire lives without asking or answering them and get by more or less OK. And also because they think they know the answers; the irrelevancy rationale kicks in about three seconds after they realize that they don't. But then, even the philosophers have major disagreements in these areas, so how important can it be to one's ultimate survival?
Another random thought that I had during the sort of Q and A afterwards was about the line, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." Someone asked what that meant. Or rather, they asked what constituted the Kingdom of God. Given that we spent a year of Bible study examining that question, my response would have been simple: "The Kingdom of God is at Hand" was Jesus's way of saying "Now Things can begin to be Set Right." Most people think of the Kingdom of God as Heaven and vice versa (that is they think of Heaven as the Kingdom of God, not that the Kingdom of God thinks of people as Heaven, though it might, for all I know). I think this is true, but I also think that the popular conception of Heaven is too limited. Heaven is not bounded by death on one side and Armageddon on the other. Heaven reaches down into our world in the form of every Christian since the Incarnation and every righteous act those people perform. And it is our responsibility as Christians to expand that Kingdom as much as possible, thus accruing the maximum amount of glory for our King. The entire earth used to be His kingdom, but it was given over to evil after the fall, and now it's our job to take it back. We won't finish the job, but that's no reason to slack off.
The last interesting thought of the evening really had very little to do with anything that was said at Cornerstone. I was really thinking about it on the drive home while trying to remember another thought that I had lost because I didn't have a pen when I thought it. Anyway, the replacement thought was about understanding the meanings of things. I've always said that my only skill is in understanding things people are trying to explain. I also think that the main reason one should go to college is so you can know what the underlying assumptions are of any book, movie, or statement. I only realized tonight that these are more or less the same thing. Being able to determine someone's view of the world based on something they say or write is sort of like understanding something someone is teaching only they're talking about a different subject at the time. It's sort of like learning someone's political views by talking to them about sports - a nice trick once you get the hang of it. As I was driving home I was trying to figure out how I could make a career out of interpreting what people are really saying. I know there are plenty of people out there who'll pay top dollar to have someone talk a lot without ever saying what they really mean, but I'm not sure if there's anybody who's willing to pay to have someone else see through all that bullshit. Aside from having to wade hip-deep in nearly meaningless verbiage all day it could be an interesting job. Whether it could be lucrative remains to be seen.
The origin of the topic for tonight's post was a quote by speaker number two, Doug. The reason I wrote it down had absolutely nothing to do with the reason why he said it. I actually forget what the context was. Anyway, the reason I wrote it down was because I had just been praying with a friend of mine who had had a rough day. So when Doug says, "... a God you can cozy up to when you've had a rough day" I immediately think about my friends response to her day. She wanted to draw near to God - cozy up if you will - and she wanted me to accompany her. To me that is a wonderful illustration of the two greatest commandments and also a fabulous way to spend time.
The most interesting portion of the evening's talks - at least to me - was a sort of heirarchy of order that speaker number one, Greg, introduced. It went a little something like this:
- Existence - The fact of existence necessitates a finite series of preceding causal states. i.e. the universe had to have a beginning in order to exist. Therefore, something other than the universe had to predate the universe in order to cause it to begin. e.g. Aristotle's Prime Mover.
- Order - Physically, the universe is an orderly place. There are laws and patterns that can be observed and used to predict future actions of the universe. Thus, whatever caused the universe had to also have an underlying orderliness.
- Mental Order - Conciousness. The fact that matter can be alive is kind of peculiar. Actually, it's stunningly bizarre. There is, and can be, no Materialist explanation for conciousness.
- Epistemological Order - Thought. Differentiated from conciousness in that thought is about something. By thinking about things, our minds can have a relationship with them that is in no way physical - proven by the fact that we can thing about things that do not exist.
- Moral Order - Self-explanatory.
- Volitional Order - Free will excludes Determinism. If your thoughts and beliefs are only the results of physical process and environmental factors, then there is no reason to think that your thoughts and beliefs are true.
- Psychological Order - There is a right relation of human beings to their surroundings and to their lives. Your state of mind affects your behavior. This may seem obvious, but there is no reason why your mood or emotions should affect your responses to your environment, and yet they do.
- Historical Order - I didn't follow this one as closely, but I think basically he was saying that events that happen in the universe reflect patterns not actually found within the universe itself.
Another concept that Greg introduced was Quine's "web of belief." In describing how most people make decisions and order their beliefs, he pointed out that while we tend to follow a preponderance of evidence, we can always deny any amount of evidence merely by inventing alternate possible circumstances. In the web of belief, math and logic are at the center of the web, and empirical data is on the outside. Connections which are made between various things and beliefs which are formed about them are continuously revised based on new experience. New data coming in on one part of the web may cause us to rearrance another part in order to accomodate it, but we don't have to accept it - we may in fact have to rearrange the web to exclude it. My initial thought was that math and logic can also be thrown out of the web in order to make it consistent simply by going insane. Which is true for most definitions of insanity. But the interesting thought that I had shortly after that was an adaptation of Chesterton from Orthodoxy. He describes the madman as one who has nothing but logic, which fits the web of belief model nicely. You are just as loony if your entire world consists of one single idea fenced around with logic as if you completely toss logic altogether. "Yes! Wonderful!" you cry, "but what of it?" Well, nothing really, these are merely cases which stretch the application of the analogy, and don't really lead anywhere. I just appreciate a clever and robust analogy when I come across one. Actually, the point he was making with the web was that there can be many webs which fit the observable experiences and are internally coherent - so which one do we believe? Well, ideally we take the one which requires the least additional explanations to fit the observed data - Occham's Razor all over again I suppose.
The summation of the talk was that given these observable levels of order in the universe, and the conclusions that can be drawn from the existence of such order (i.e. God exists and is at least something like the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible), Christianity is the most probable explanation. No, the most plausible explanation; probability only refers to things that happen over and over - the universe only happens once.
Something that struck me while listening to these guys was that philosophy almost always has to do with things that are more basic than we are used to thinking about. People think of philosophers as people who sit around and ponder the greatest questions of life and solve the problems of government, sociology, and love. When actually, the people who think about those probelms are usually lawyers, historians, and poets. Meanwhile, there are two philosophers off in a corner who have just finished determining that the universe does exist and are preparing to contemplate whether it contains more than one thing - which you would think they would pick up on because they disagree on the answer. I was wondering why people dismiss those basic questions as irrelevant. I suppose it's because they can live their entire lives without asking or answering them and get by more or less OK. And also because they think they know the answers; the irrelevancy rationale kicks in about three seconds after they realize that they don't. But then, even the philosophers have major disagreements in these areas, so how important can it be to one's ultimate survival?
Another random thought that I had during the sort of Q and A afterwards was about the line, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." Someone asked what that meant. Or rather, they asked what constituted the Kingdom of God. Given that we spent a year of Bible study examining that question, my response would have been simple: "The Kingdom of God is at Hand" was Jesus's way of saying "Now Things can begin to be Set Right." Most people think of the Kingdom of God as Heaven and vice versa (that is they think of Heaven as the Kingdom of God, not that the Kingdom of God thinks of people as Heaven, though it might, for all I know). I think this is true, but I also think that the popular conception of Heaven is too limited. Heaven is not bounded by death on one side and Armageddon on the other. Heaven reaches down into our world in the form of every Christian since the Incarnation and every righteous act those people perform. And it is our responsibility as Christians to expand that Kingdom as much as possible, thus accruing the maximum amount of glory for our King. The entire earth used to be His kingdom, but it was given over to evil after the fall, and now it's our job to take it back. We won't finish the job, but that's no reason to slack off.
The last interesting thought of the evening really had very little to do with anything that was said at Cornerstone. I was really thinking about it on the drive home while trying to remember another thought that I had lost because I didn't have a pen when I thought it. Anyway, the replacement thought was about understanding the meanings of things. I've always said that my only skill is in understanding things people are trying to explain. I also think that the main reason one should go to college is so you can know what the underlying assumptions are of any book, movie, or statement. I only realized tonight that these are more or less the same thing. Being able to determine someone's view of the world based on something they say or write is sort of like understanding something someone is teaching only they're talking about a different subject at the time. It's sort of like learning someone's political views by talking to them about sports - a nice trick once you get the hang of it. As I was driving home I was trying to figure out how I could make a career out of interpreting what people are really saying. I know there are plenty of people out there who'll pay top dollar to have someone talk a lot without ever saying what they really mean, but I'm not sure if there's anybody who's willing to pay to have someone else see through all that bullshit. Aside from having to wade hip-deep in nearly meaningless verbiage all day it could be an interesting job. Whether it could be lucrative remains to be seen.