For me just to leave a ‘like’ is just not sufficient. It is so refreshing to read this very interesting and captivating exchange of views, when so much content elsewhere is little more than argument in the worst sense of the word.
1/2 I tried to be brief, but the length is too great for the system. So I will put it in two parts.
Mr Kerstein,
I made a few introductory comments earlier today, but should have delayed that and put them here.
Much more could have been said, but I cut out quite a bit to make it less than 2,000 words, which did improve it I think. So I hope you will overlook it if this is too long. I have tried to confine myself to the main points.
About Darwin, I am glad to set that aside. I do believe however that the question of human origins is essential to this topic, and has a lot to do with problems of knowing and spiritual reality. I encourage you at some point to look at some material on the other side – for example, Stephen C. Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.
Without going into the details of Darwinism, surely it must be self-evident that the nature of rationality and intelligence is intimately connected to the question of human origins. If we as human beings came about by accident as the result of a random process, and the workings of our brains are merely questions of chemistry and biology, true and pure rationality is one thing.
If on the other hand if we were created by an external source of infinite power and resource, and reason and feel and behave as we do because of invisible spiritual qualities which are not material and cannot be seen nor weighed or biologically explained, then true and pure rationality must be something entirely different.
In my view, the second explanation conforms more closely to the human personality as we know and experience it daily, and hence is more rational, and logical. So it is all a question of presuppositions, and the first and most fundamental question on which all else depends is, “Does God exist or not?”
When it comes to the narrower question of rationality, I did think you were limiting rational thought to observation and theory, so I welcome your clarification. I can’t agree however that secular scientific observation and experiment is rationalism in its purest form, as you maintain, for the simple reason that it cannot extend to many significant aspects of human life. If, for example, I want answers to any ethical question, science is inadequate. If the purest form of reason really is so inadequate, then its purity is of limited value. And what if rationality in its purest form is confined more narrowly to mathematics and abstract logic? Then it has even less to do with our daily lives.
Should I get revenge on someone who as hurt me or should I forgive him? Should I steal from a very rich man who would not be hurt by the loss? Scientific knowledge does not deal with the heart, mind and soul, but there are other modes of knowing that do. You concede the validity of some (not all) philosophical insight, and I add the validity of some (not all) religious insight by revelation.
You agree that there is a different sort of understanding such as that given to Plato. He understood that the soul lives after death, and that there is higher eternal reality above and beyond this temporary physical world. To my mind this is a higher understanding than that of modern secular rationalism.
You accept the obvious fact that rationalism can lead to erroneous conclusions. That qualification is an important one. True, the ancient philosophers did have some very contemporary insights, and the achievements of ancient philosophy are impressive. My personal belief is that God gave it to them to achieve the maximum development of mind without revelation, and many religious people have been challenged by them, but (for someone who believes) their achievement still falls very far short of the revelation of God through Moses and the prophets, and through Christ.
This leads us to the subject of faith. You said in your discussion with someone else on my thread that you might be able to believe if you had some kind of a mystic experience, similar to that which Ezekiel said when the heavens were opened and he saw visions of God.
Many Christians today are opposed to that sort of thing, and there have been mystical claims that discredit the idea of a genuine mystical experience. There was a Christian writer from India for example who claimed in his books to have been to heaven a number of times and had conversations with David and Moses, along with other things which did not seem at all credible. However I believe it is possible to have a direct experience of the divine, which may come in various ways and degrees, and that is essential to real faith, which must be more than an intellectual proposition in order to be alive.
I did get the impression you were speaking of a leap of faith as a conscious choice. But you explain in your clarification that faith is more complex than that, and involves inner conviction or simple belief apart from rationality. I maintain, and the Bible teaches, that there must be some divine intervention, some call, some opening of the heart. You can think of some examples from your own life, and so can I with regard to mine. I wrote about this in a Substack article of July 10, “Why I believe there is a God.”
You mention the inadequacy of revelation. Just as appealing to rationality does not mean all of one’s conclusions are right, so appealing to faith and revelations also does not mean one’s conclusions are right. You point to the Gnostics who had an erroneous understanding of revelation. You are correct, I would say their revelation was false – how is an outside observer such as yourself to know?
2/2 From this, you argue that rationality is more secure. It is more secure, but on a limited plane. There are no scientific disagreements on the speed of light, or the size of the earth, or the many other scientific principles which are amply confirmed. However, this is a weak and inadequate sort of certainty that falls far short of the great questions. Is there a God? What happens after death? What is right and wrong, good and evil? On all of those and many other important questions the scientific certainty you speak of is useless and irrelevant. We need some higher knowledge of a different nature.
About your thought experiment, I understood you wanted to show how irrational Christianity might seem to people with no prior belief or knowledge. And, I concede that point. The basic truths of biblical Judaism and of Biblical Christianity are nonsense, impossible and absurd to the merely natural mind. Paul talks about this in I Corinthians.
Christians also recognize this problem and thus (with some unfortunate exceptions) try to present their message in suitable ways, but, you are right, basic religious truths are spiritual, and do not have power as rational arguments. Yet people can rationally think about them and discuss them. But revealed religious truths have a different sort of power, and it is not irrational but supra-rational. That is, they exceed rationality but do not contradict rationality.
It is written in the Bible somewhere, that “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” All of the physical things of earth will pass away, but the eternal things will be revealed though we cannot see them now.
This is so thoroughly consistent with Platonic thought that many have argued Christianity was influenced by Platonism and by Neo Platonism – but I believe that the Greeks at their best were allowed to glimpse some truths that were revealed much more completely by revelation.
It says in Genesis, in what I believe are truthful and historically accurate narratives, that God spoke to Abraham. This was more than a sense of the numinous, it was direct communication from the spiritual realm, which could be remembered, and thought and acted upon. It came from a source that was beyond reason but accessible to reason, once reason has been opened to it.
This is the “direct experience of the reality of God that is more real than any earthly knowledge,” to which you responded that this “is not an invalid means of understanding existence, but I don’t think it’s rational and perhaps it shouldn’t be.”
You are right, it is not rational according to the ordinary secular standard, but the problem is with the superficiality and inadequacy of merely human rationality, and not with the existence of God.
If the world and the people in it and the universe came about by blind chance and random accident, then belief in God is irrational. But if God exists, to believe in him is rational.
I understand your distinction between the alleged irrationality of “The heavens show the glory of God” and “I know God exists because of what he has done for me” on the one hand, and the alleged rationality of “How do you know God does not exist,” or “Have you ever really studied it” on the other – but statements are not necessarily irrational or false merely because people reject them, or do not understand them. The truth of any statement is not confirmed by acceptance or denied by rejection, but exists independently of whether it is accepted or not.
What if the heavens do really show the glory of God? And what if someone’s life really has been changed by divine influence and assistance? Those things may be true even if they do not seem so. And what if human reason is unable to judge accurately and makes a wrong decision? What if human reason is corrupt and blind to higher truths beyond the physical world?
Your conclusion gets to the heart of the matter. You say “Perhaps our disagreement is ultimately over the definition of words, as I think my understanding of ‘rational’ may differ from yours, for various reasons. It may be only in that you believe that knowledge of God is possible, while I believe the existence of God and, if he does exist, God himself are unknowable.”
It is a question of words, but not of words only, because there is a great deal of truth behind some words. So the real question is that abiding truth, one way or the other, of which words are merely human expressions.
I believe that knowledge of God is possible, because he reveals himself to us and speaks to us if we have ears to hear. After all, God created us with powers of reason and communication and he did not do all of this for no purpose. And this is the highest purpose of reason, to contemplate God and the things of God as he has revealed them. This cannot be proven by logic and reason, but it cannot be disproven by logic and reason either. And the problem there is not with any inherent rationality in the subject. The problem rather is with the inadequacy of fallen and limited human reason.
I appreciate the thought you’ve given to what I wrote, which again is very flattering. I will also attempt to keep this at a reasonable length, so please forgive me if I concentrate only on those points that I think are most important.
First, I think we are never going to agree on Darwin. I do feel compelled to say, however, that as far as I’m aware, Darwin never claimed that evolution and natural selection are random or accidental. They both result in the adaptation of the organism to its environment in order to ensure its survival and pass on its genes. If they fail in this, the organism dies. As a result, these processes naturally tend toward the goal of a well-adapted creature. This is not a process driven by blind chance.
If I can be a bit forward, you said in your original essay that Darwin may have reached his conclusions because of his desire to escape God. I wonder if, similarly, you are uncomfortable with his conclusions because they hold that evolution--and thus, in a sense, history--has no moral quality.
This may not be amenable to the Christian worldview, which--correct me if I’m wrong--sees history as the unfolding of a redemptive process. Obviously, evolution is completely alien to this idea, so I imagine that it’s not a very pleasant thing for a believer in any of the Abrahamic religions to accept. It means that at some point--like 99% of the species that have ever existed--we may well simply vanish into the mists of time for no reason at all. This means in turn that human destiny may be ultimately tragic and I think that the philosopher John Gray was right when he said that Christianity does not accept tragedy.
I do think you’ve hit on something, though, when you say, “If on the other hand, we were created by an external source of infinite power and resource, and reason and feel and behave as we do because of invisible spiritual qualities which are not material and cannot be seen nor weighed or biologically explained, then true and pure rationality must be something entirely different.”
This is an important point, I think, because you believe “invisible spiritual qualities” exist and can be known. I do not know if they exist and, if they do exist, I do not believe they can be known. I don’t say that as a materialist. I think Plato is right that there are non-material things like justice, the good, etc. and we can understand them through reason to some extent. I do not know if justice and the good are “spiritual” in the sense that you use the word, however. That is, I do not believe they are possessed of or created and bestowed by any providential will. Like evolution, they may simply be.
Our differing perceptions of the human personality also seem important in this regard. I often have no idea why most people think or behave the way they do, or why I think or behave the way I do for that matter. This indicates to me that either the world is driven by an underlying chaos beneath all things or there is a great deal about ourselves and others that will and must remain unknown and probably unknowable. I don’t think this means we should simply throw up our hands and stop trying to know anything. We should seek to know what we can know, and we usually don’t know what that is until we know it. Nonetheless, we should be modest as to the possibilities.
This, I think, may be the key to our disagreement. It seems to me that your view of secular rationalism is that, today, this rationalism is immodest. It claims to know things it cannot know. Thus, we must rely on other sources of knowledge such as revelation.
I confess that on this, the gap is probably unbridgeable. I do not see the claims of Christianity (or any other revealed religion) as more modest than the claims of secular rationalism. In fact, they seem far less modest to me. Such religions--or at least their orthodox doctrines--make titanic claims to knowledge. They assert that they know everything or at least a great deal more than any other system of thought; not only about the physical world, but also about the metaphysical world. To my mind, secular rationalism properly utilized--that is, with appropriate modesty--is a far more compelling means of understanding the world. This modesty, perhaps, is the rational as I understand it.
On that point, I think, we will simply have to agree to disagree. My thanks again for a very edifying discussion.
I am not sure how far we are supposed to go with this. Yet, I would like to respond to your response – not that I have to have the last word, which I will gladly yield that to you if you like.
When it comes to Darwin (since you didn’t want to get into details), I contented myself with the obvious assertion that the question of human origins – from God or from a natural process – must have something to do with the meaning of rationality. But, you did mention Darwin in your response so I feel allowed to comment briefly on those remarks.
True, Darwin did not say specifically that evolution and natural selection were random or accidental. However, unless you want to assert theistically guided evolution, which I doubt, the mutations that are necessary before natural selection can begin to work are random.
About Darwin possibly having been influenced by a deeper motive, it is reasonable for you to wonder if I also might be similarly influenced by some sort of personal motive. That is a secondary argument (or maybe not even an argument at all, since someone can be influenced by personal motives and still come to a right decision).
I am not uncomfortable with Darwin’s conclusions, I simply believe them to be false.
You are right, Darwin is not amenable to a Christian world view, and is in fact completely alien to it. The fact of the human race vanishing into the mists of time does not concern me, however, because I have a deep conviction that that will never happen, that we all of us have immortal souls and eternal destinies. God created the human race and will end our earthly destiny in his way and in his time.
As to human destiny being tragic, Christianity does teach that large numbers of people going to a place of eternal punishment. I am not sure how to define tragedy in this context, but it is certainly not cheerful or optimistic, especially since Christ said that the way to eternal life is narrow and few find it, while the way that leads to eternal destruction is wide and many go in by it.
As to the existence of invisible spiritual qualities, I am not sure if mere concepts like Plato’s “justice” or “the good” apply. I think “quality” was a poor word choice on my part. Maybe I should have said “spiritual realities” which is more open-ended. But I believe such qualities as "justice" and “the good” and many others were created by God, and (as far as we poor mortals are concerned) have real meaning only relative to him.
Once again, so much depends on whether God exists or not. And divine or natural creation must affect our “differing perceptions of the human personality.” I believe rationality on its deepest level must be defined relative to God.
I thought your comments about the underlying chaos, and things about ourselves that remain unknown and are probably unknowable, were very good, perhaps even profound. And I agree we should not throw up our hands, but rather do what we can while being modest about possibilities – except for one thing. That is divine revelation. In said revelation, we have access to truths and mysteries about God and creation and ourselves that would otherwise forever be unknowable. Not that this leaves no room for mystery. Much remains unknown due to our finite capacity. But, nevertheless, we can know much more is generally assumed by those who know of nothing more than human reason unaided.
I agree that the key to our disagreement is differing concepts of the range or the reach of knowledge, that I see secular rationalism as immodest – but not only immodest. I see it as sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but at times even blind and foolish, and corrupted by human weakness, ignorance and sin. Thus, human reason may not merely miss the truth, it may be adverse to truth and even seek to stamp it out.
As you say, orthodox religions “make titanic claims to knowledge.” The nature of God; the reality of the afterlife; the origins of the cosmos; rules for living; real and personal communication with the personal God behind the universe; divine love, and healing, and forgiveness. I believe that the orthodox claims of the Christian religion as contained in the Old and New Testaments are true. Yet, as fallible humans we often fail to live up to these truths, or to correctly understand their applications in the vagaries of daily life. So even with revelation there is plenty of room for humility and acknowledgement of error.
And, the modesty of rationality as you describe it can quickly morph into extreme forms of irrationality, when man becomes his own master, subject to no higher power and no higher rules. This is clearly manifest in 20th century history where the massive cultural turning away from God and revealed religion has resulted in multiple catastrophes, many of them committed by people who thought they were being rational but accepted no higher rule to which they had to be subordinate.
I have read your response - as I anticipated, it has a lot of substance, these are not simple questions. Later today or tomorrow at the latest I will have some kind of response that will cover the main points, and moreover be short enough to fit in the comments - though once or twice in dealing with difficult topics elsewhere I had too many characters and had to divide my comment into two separate sections.
Your willingness to accept the validity of Plato's thought simplifies things greatly, but also opens more possibilities and avenues of conversation. But I will try to be concise.
The ancient Greeks had a saying "Less is more" (It goes back to Chilon of Sparta, not Mies van der Rohe) so maybe the constraints of the comment format will improve my writing. At least this time I can respond to your points directly instead of first having to clarify my purpose at length as I did last time.
Allow me to echo Guy Hemming's comment. I am glad to have a chance to look into these topics, although at some point we will have to confess our ignorance (I have been reading Xenophon's description of Socrates recently), though we will have to draw the boundaries of ignorance in different places. As Paul said, "If any man thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know."
For me just to leave a ‘like’ is just not sufficient. It is so refreshing to read this very interesting and captivating exchange of views, when so much content elsewhere is little more than argument in the worst sense of the word.
1/2 I tried to be brief, but the length is too great for the system. So I will put it in two parts.
Mr Kerstein,
I made a few introductory comments earlier today, but should have delayed that and put them here.
Much more could have been said, but I cut out quite a bit to make it less than 2,000 words, which did improve it I think. So I hope you will overlook it if this is too long. I have tried to confine myself to the main points.
About Darwin, I am glad to set that aside. I do believe however that the question of human origins is essential to this topic, and has a lot to do with problems of knowing and spiritual reality. I encourage you at some point to look at some material on the other side – for example, Stephen C. Meyer’s book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.
Without going into the details of Darwinism, surely it must be self-evident that the nature of rationality and intelligence is intimately connected to the question of human origins. If we as human beings came about by accident as the result of a random process, and the workings of our brains are merely questions of chemistry and biology, true and pure rationality is one thing.
If on the other hand if we were created by an external source of infinite power and resource, and reason and feel and behave as we do because of invisible spiritual qualities which are not material and cannot be seen nor weighed or biologically explained, then true and pure rationality must be something entirely different.
In my view, the second explanation conforms more closely to the human personality as we know and experience it daily, and hence is more rational, and logical. So it is all a question of presuppositions, and the first and most fundamental question on which all else depends is, “Does God exist or not?”
When it comes to the narrower question of rationality, I did think you were limiting rational thought to observation and theory, so I welcome your clarification. I can’t agree however that secular scientific observation and experiment is rationalism in its purest form, as you maintain, for the simple reason that it cannot extend to many significant aspects of human life. If, for example, I want answers to any ethical question, science is inadequate. If the purest form of reason really is so inadequate, then its purity is of limited value. And what if rationality in its purest form is confined more narrowly to mathematics and abstract logic? Then it has even less to do with our daily lives.
Should I get revenge on someone who as hurt me or should I forgive him? Should I steal from a very rich man who would not be hurt by the loss? Scientific knowledge does not deal with the heart, mind and soul, but there are other modes of knowing that do. You concede the validity of some (not all) philosophical insight, and I add the validity of some (not all) religious insight by revelation.
You agree that there is a different sort of understanding such as that given to Plato. He understood that the soul lives after death, and that there is higher eternal reality above and beyond this temporary physical world. To my mind this is a higher understanding than that of modern secular rationalism.
You accept the obvious fact that rationalism can lead to erroneous conclusions. That qualification is an important one. True, the ancient philosophers did have some very contemporary insights, and the achievements of ancient philosophy are impressive. My personal belief is that God gave it to them to achieve the maximum development of mind without revelation, and many religious people have been challenged by them, but (for someone who believes) their achievement still falls very far short of the revelation of God through Moses and the prophets, and through Christ.
This leads us to the subject of faith. You said in your discussion with someone else on my thread that you might be able to believe if you had some kind of a mystic experience, similar to that which Ezekiel said when the heavens were opened and he saw visions of God.
Many Christians today are opposed to that sort of thing, and there have been mystical claims that discredit the idea of a genuine mystical experience. There was a Christian writer from India for example who claimed in his books to have been to heaven a number of times and had conversations with David and Moses, along with other things which did not seem at all credible. However I believe it is possible to have a direct experience of the divine, which may come in various ways and degrees, and that is essential to real faith, which must be more than an intellectual proposition in order to be alive.
I did get the impression you were speaking of a leap of faith as a conscious choice. But you explain in your clarification that faith is more complex than that, and involves inner conviction or simple belief apart from rationality. I maintain, and the Bible teaches, that there must be some divine intervention, some call, some opening of the heart. You can think of some examples from your own life, and so can I with regard to mine. I wrote about this in a Substack article of July 10, “Why I believe there is a God.”
You mention the inadequacy of revelation. Just as appealing to rationality does not mean all of one’s conclusions are right, so appealing to faith and revelations also does not mean one’s conclusions are right. You point to the Gnostics who had an erroneous understanding of revelation. You are correct, I would say their revelation was false – how is an outside observer such as yourself to know?
2/2 From this, you argue that rationality is more secure. It is more secure, but on a limited plane. There are no scientific disagreements on the speed of light, or the size of the earth, or the many other scientific principles which are amply confirmed. However, this is a weak and inadequate sort of certainty that falls far short of the great questions. Is there a God? What happens after death? What is right and wrong, good and evil? On all of those and many other important questions the scientific certainty you speak of is useless and irrelevant. We need some higher knowledge of a different nature.
About your thought experiment, I understood you wanted to show how irrational Christianity might seem to people with no prior belief or knowledge. And, I concede that point. The basic truths of biblical Judaism and of Biblical Christianity are nonsense, impossible and absurd to the merely natural mind. Paul talks about this in I Corinthians.
Christians also recognize this problem and thus (with some unfortunate exceptions) try to present their message in suitable ways, but, you are right, basic religious truths are spiritual, and do not have power as rational arguments. Yet people can rationally think about them and discuss them. But revealed religious truths have a different sort of power, and it is not irrational but supra-rational. That is, they exceed rationality but do not contradict rationality.
It is written in the Bible somewhere, that “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.” All of the physical things of earth will pass away, but the eternal things will be revealed though we cannot see them now.
This is so thoroughly consistent with Platonic thought that many have argued Christianity was influenced by Platonism and by Neo Platonism – but I believe that the Greeks at their best were allowed to glimpse some truths that were revealed much more completely by revelation.
It says in Genesis, in what I believe are truthful and historically accurate narratives, that God spoke to Abraham. This was more than a sense of the numinous, it was direct communication from the spiritual realm, which could be remembered, and thought and acted upon. It came from a source that was beyond reason but accessible to reason, once reason has been opened to it.
This is the “direct experience of the reality of God that is more real than any earthly knowledge,” to which you responded that this “is not an invalid means of understanding existence, but I don’t think it’s rational and perhaps it shouldn’t be.”
You are right, it is not rational according to the ordinary secular standard, but the problem is with the superficiality and inadequacy of merely human rationality, and not with the existence of God.
If the world and the people in it and the universe came about by blind chance and random accident, then belief in God is irrational. But if God exists, to believe in him is rational.
I understand your distinction between the alleged irrationality of “The heavens show the glory of God” and “I know God exists because of what he has done for me” on the one hand, and the alleged rationality of “How do you know God does not exist,” or “Have you ever really studied it” on the other – but statements are not necessarily irrational or false merely because people reject them, or do not understand them. The truth of any statement is not confirmed by acceptance or denied by rejection, but exists independently of whether it is accepted or not.
What if the heavens do really show the glory of God? And what if someone’s life really has been changed by divine influence and assistance? Those things may be true even if they do not seem so. And what if human reason is unable to judge accurately and makes a wrong decision? What if human reason is corrupt and blind to higher truths beyond the physical world?
Your conclusion gets to the heart of the matter. You say “Perhaps our disagreement is ultimately over the definition of words, as I think my understanding of ‘rational’ may differ from yours, for various reasons. It may be only in that you believe that knowledge of God is possible, while I believe the existence of God and, if he does exist, God himself are unknowable.”
It is a question of words, but not of words only, because there is a great deal of truth behind some words. So the real question is that abiding truth, one way or the other, of which words are merely human expressions.
I believe that knowledge of God is possible, because he reveals himself to us and speaks to us if we have ears to hear. After all, God created us with powers of reason and communication and he did not do all of this for no purpose. And this is the highest purpose of reason, to contemplate God and the things of God as he has revealed them. This cannot be proven by logic and reason, but it cannot be disproven by logic and reason either. And the problem there is not with any inherent rationality in the subject. The problem rather is with the inadequacy of fallen and limited human reason.
I appreciate the thought you’ve given to what I wrote, which again is very flattering. I will also attempt to keep this at a reasonable length, so please forgive me if I concentrate only on those points that I think are most important.
First, I think we are never going to agree on Darwin. I do feel compelled to say, however, that as far as I’m aware, Darwin never claimed that evolution and natural selection are random or accidental. They both result in the adaptation of the organism to its environment in order to ensure its survival and pass on its genes. If they fail in this, the organism dies. As a result, these processes naturally tend toward the goal of a well-adapted creature. This is not a process driven by blind chance.
If I can be a bit forward, you said in your original essay that Darwin may have reached his conclusions because of his desire to escape God. I wonder if, similarly, you are uncomfortable with his conclusions because they hold that evolution--and thus, in a sense, history--has no moral quality.
This may not be amenable to the Christian worldview, which--correct me if I’m wrong--sees history as the unfolding of a redemptive process. Obviously, evolution is completely alien to this idea, so I imagine that it’s not a very pleasant thing for a believer in any of the Abrahamic religions to accept. It means that at some point--like 99% of the species that have ever existed--we may well simply vanish into the mists of time for no reason at all. This means in turn that human destiny may be ultimately tragic and I think that the philosopher John Gray was right when he said that Christianity does not accept tragedy.
I do think you’ve hit on something, though, when you say, “If on the other hand, we were created by an external source of infinite power and resource, and reason and feel and behave as we do because of invisible spiritual qualities which are not material and cannot be seen nor weighed or biologically explained, then true and pure rationality must be something entirely different.”
This is an important point, I think, because you believe “invisible spiritual qualities” exist and can be known. I do not know if they exist and, if they do exist, I do not believe they can be known. I don’t say that as a materialist. I think Plato is right that there are non-material things like justice, the good, etc. and we can understand them through reason to some extent. I do not know if justice and the good are “spiritual” in the sense that you use the word, however. That is, I do not believe they are possessed of or created and bestowed by any providential will. Like evolution, they may simply be.
Our differing perceptions of the human personality also seem important in this regard. I often have no idea why most people think or behave the way they do, or why I think or behave the way I do for that matter. This indicates to me that either the world is driven by an underlying chaos beneath all things or there is a great deal about ourselves and others that will and must remain unknown and probably unknowable. I don’t think this means we should simply throw up our hands and stop trying to know anything. We should seek to know what we can know, and we usually don’t know what that is until we know it. Nonetheless, we should be modest as to the possibilities.
This, I think, may be the key to our disagreement. It seems to me that your view of secular rationalism is that, today, this rationalism is immodest. It claims to know things it cannot know. Thus, we must rely on other sources of knowledge such as revelation.
I confess that on this, the gap is probably unbridgeable. I do not see the claims of Christianity (or any other revealed religion) as more modest than the claims of secular rationalism. In fact, they seem far less modest to me. Such religions--or at least their orthodox doctrines--make titanic claims to knowledge. They assert that they know everything or at least a great deal more than any other system of thought; not only about the physical world, but also about the metaphysical world. To my mind, secular rationalism properly utilized--that is, with appropriate modesty--is a far more compelling means of understanding the world. This modesty, perhaps, is the rational as I understand it.
On that point, I think, we will simply have to agree to disagree. My thanks again for a very edifying discussion.
I am not sure how far we are supposed to go with this. Yet, I would like to respond to your response – not that I have to have the last word, which I will gladly yield that to you if you like.
When it comes to Darwin (since you didn’t want to get into details), I contented myself with the obvious assertion that the question of human origins – from God or from a natural process – must have something to do with the meaning of rationality. But, you did mention Darwin in your response so I feel allowed to comment briefly on those remarks.
True, Darwin did not say specifically that evolution and natural selection were random or accidental. However, unless you want to assert theistically guided evolution, which I doubt, the mutations that are necessary before natural selection can begin to work are random.
About Darwin possibly having been influenced by a deeper motive, it is reasonable for you to wonder if I also might be similarly influenced by some sort of personal motive. That is a secondary argument (or maybe not even an argument at all, since someone can be influenced by personal motives and still come to a right decision).
I am not uncomfortable with Darwin’s conclusions, I simply believe them to be false.
You are right, Darwin is not amenable to a Christian world view, and is in fact completely alien to it. The fact of the human race vanishing into the mists of time does not concern me, however, because I have a deep conviction that that will never happen, that we all of us have immortal souls and eternal destinies. God created the human race and will end our earthly destiny in his way and in his time.
As to human destiny being tragic, Christianity does teach that large numbers of people going to a place of eternal punishment. I am not sure how to define tragedy in this context, but it is certainly not cheerful or optimistic, especially since Christ said that the way to eternal life is narrow and few find it, while the way that leads to eternal destruction is wide and many go in by it.
As to the existence of invisible spiritual qualities, I am not sure if mere concepts like Plato’s “justice” or “the good” apply. I think “quality” was a poor word choice on my part. Maybe I should have said “spiritual realities” which is more open-ended. But I believe such qualities as "justice" and “the good” and many others were created by God, and (as far as we poor mortals are concerned) have real meaning only relative to him.
Once again, so much depends on whether God exists or not. And divine or natural creation must affect our “differing perceptions of the human personality.” I believe rationality on its deepest level must be defined relative to God.
I thought your comments about the underlying chaos, and things about ourselves that remain unknown and are probably unknowable, were very good, perhaps even profound. And I agree we should not throw up our hands, but rather do what we can while being modest about possibilities – except for one thing. That is divine revelation. In said revelation, we have access to truths and mysteries about God and creation and ourselves that would otherwise forever be unknowable. Not that this leaves no room for mystery. Much remains unknown due to our finite capacity. But, nevertheless, we can know much more is generally assumed by those who know of nothing more than human reason unaided.
I agree that the key to our disagreement is differing concepts of the range or the reach of knowledge, that I see secular rationalism as immodest – but not only immodest. I see it as sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but at times even blind and foolish, and corrupted by human weakness, ignorance and sin. Thus, human reason may not merely miss the truth, it may be adverse to truth and even seek to stamp it out.
As you say, orthodox religions “make titanic claims to knowledge.” The nature of God; the reality of the afterlife; the origins of the cosmos; rules for living; real and personal communication with the personal God behind the universe; divine love, and healing, and forgiveness. I believe that the orthodox claims of the Christian religion as contained in the Old and New Testaments are true. Yet, as fallible humans we often fail to live up to these truths, or to correctly understand their applications in the vagaries of daily life. So even with revelation there is plenty of room for humility and acknowledgement of error.
And, the modesty of rationality as you describe it can quickly morph into extreme forms of irrationality, when man becomes his own master, subject to no higher power and no higher rules. This is clearly manifest in 20th century history where the massive cultural turning away from God and revealed religion has resulted in multiple catastrophes, many of them committed by people who thought they were being rational but accepted no higher rule to which they had to be subordinate.
If you are, I'm content to bring things to a close. Thank you very much again for a fascinating discussion.
Hello BK,
I have read your response - as I anticipated, it has a lot of substance, these are not simple questions. Later today or tomorrow at the latest I will have some kind of response that will cover the main points, and moreover be short enough to fit in the comments - though once or twice in dealing with difficult topics elsewhere I had too many characters and had to divide my comment into two separate sections.
Your willingness to accept the validity of Plato's thought simplifies things greatly, but also opens more possibilities and avenues of conversation. But I will try to be concise.
The ancient Greeks had a saying "Less is more" (It goes back to Chilon of Sparta, not Mies van der Rohe) so maybe the constraints of the comment format will improve my writing. At least this time I can respond to your points directly instead of first having to clarify my purpose at length as I did last time.
Allow me to echo Guy Hemming's comment. I am glad to have a chance to look into these topics, although at some point we will have to confess our ignorance (I have been reading Xenophon's description of Socrates recently), though we will have to draw the boundaries of ignorance in different places. As Paul said, "If any man thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know."