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 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.
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."