Introduction to Theology of the Modern Era That Has Had Great Meaning for Me

We will now discuss theologians and theologies of the modern era that have had great significance to me.  This review will not necessarily be systematic.   Over the years, as various books came to my attention while perusing libraries, bookstores, and used book stores, I was introduced to new ideas.    I don’t claim that I discovered these books, ideas, or experiences by the leading of God, whatever that means.  Nor do I deny it.  I recognize that we tend to read and discuss those things that are consistent with the views we hold, whether inherited or developed with experience and learning, or a mixture of each (which is most likely true of each of us..  I  believe that, despite differences, those which have meaning to me are consistent in that they generally reject a dualism of spirit and matter, embracing instead the divine as revealed in the marvelous mystery and miracle of humankind and nature.  I would not claim a mere pantheism, but neither do I believe that the divine suspends the laws of nature to satisfy a whim or to grant a prayer.  Whatever one may say about “God,” God is much more.

Throughout this blog, I have attempted to give a fairly balanced view of theology in the various periods.  However, I am having difficulty in organizing theology in the modern era.  For example, Karl Barth is considered by many to be the greatest theologian since Augustine. His  voluminous Church Dogmatics is considered to be a monumental work examining the entire body of Christian dogma for logical coherence, and restating it in contemporary terms.  He  is considered by many to be the pastors’ greatest resource.

But, I have no interest in dogmatics.  The problem with a literal interpretation of the Bible is that it must begin with one of two premises: either that all of it is equally God-inspired, or that all of it came directly from the revelation of God through the hand of the original scribe.  With either assumption, the task of the Christian, then, is to put all of those parts together to reveal Truth, “rightly understood,” in the context of the whole.  As a result, many Christians attempt to put the four Gospels of the New Testament together into a meaningful whole, such as a picture puzzle.  If one examines those gospels carefully, each is distinctive in its own way, and at least parts of any one of them conflicts with at least parts of each other of them.

The difficulty is that many of the reports in the gospels of Jesus’ life are contradictory from one book to another, and sometimes inconsistent with been the book, itself.  Likewise, many concepts, such as” blood of the lamb,” may have been originally intended as metaphor, but when treated literally, as fact, those statements may lose both the author’s original intent, whatever that may have been, as well as any meaning for the reader today.  Moreover, many of the stories, such as Joshua’s successful petition that daylight of a single day be doubled so that the Israelites could slaughter “the enemy,” if taken literally,  would have had great consequences of scientific significance inconsistent with the story.

When growing up and as a young adult, when I expressed difficulty with some church doctrine that seemed inconsistent with my life experience, learning, logic, or intuition, I was often met with objections by a fundamentalist (usually one or more of my ten siblings) that  human understanding, logic, and reason are frail, but “the Word of God, as revealed in the Bible when rightly understood, is True and reliable, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.   I have been accused of building structures on the shifting sands of human understanding, when all we need to know is revealed in that Holy Book; I simply needed to believe.  Over the years, as I’ve reflected on those criticisms, I have come to understand that use of my human powers has never been to build structures of logic, but rather to remove obstacles presented by doctrine and imposed beliefs that have been declared to be “beyond man’s understanding.”  But, can I check my intellect and reason at the door of faith?  Can I ignore the inhumane consequences of that faith in action?  Some of the worst atrocities have been committed in the name of religion, perhaps never as egregious as that committed by Christians in the Crusades and in the Inquisition.  How does one choose , for example, between Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer, between neo-orthodoxy and the revelations of Biblical criticism, i.e., historical analysis, textual analysis,  reason, and, as Joseph Campbell would describe it, the power of myth?

What we need is not dogmatics, but to be motivated and to learn to bear good fruits, to love our neighbor, and to live in right relationship with our world – all aspects of it, both physical and spiritual, human, other animal and plant.  Therefore, I will return to a principle to which I have consistently (I hope) harkened throughout this blog: “By their fruits you will know them. ”  I certainly do not know whether Karl Barth bore good fruits or not; but I do know that Albert Schweitzer bore many good fruits: fruits of the spirit, fruits of intellect, fruits of artistic expression, and fruits of medical care to those in Africa who “bore the mark of pain.”  I know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer neither shrank from his duty to act in a difficult human situation, nor attempted to justify it by theological manipulation.  Rather, quoting Luther, as I understand it, he faced the duty to act in the real world, an act which did not fit theological precepts or standards: ” Sin and sin boldly, but love Christ more boldly still. ” I do not expect the latter theologians to agree in every respect, or even on very basic precepts; but I do know that while acting consistent with the principles that they held, they produced good fruits.

Faced with a choice to make as to which path to follow, I choose to follow the advice of Shakespeare’s Polonius to his son, Laertes in Hamlet:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!

My presentation of theology in the modern era will therefore  depart from academically and popularly recognized paths, and I will follow the theological bent of modern theologians who I know bore good fruits.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Religion, Science and the Attack of the Angry Atheists

In a recent post, I asserted that Christian fundamentalism and atheism are the opposite sides of the same coin. Each claims the truth, but ”truth” without humility is not only dogmatic, but, when joined with power, risks all of the evils of authoritarianism and despotism.

However, I do not see all claims of atheism to be dogmatic. For some, it is merely a response to a fundamentalist or exclusive claim on God.  For such claims of atheism, it may mean nothing more than, in effect, saying, ” I reject this notion of God that you are trying to ram down my throat.”  Then there is the fundamentalist atheist who rejects all notions of religion and truth and throws it in the face of others, especially those who dare to boldly declare their faith in some transcendent power or experience.  In my past series of posts entitled Cry, “Justice!” I approached notions of God from the perspective of meaning in life which transcends physical circumstances and limits.

To be fair, I should also acknowledge that there are Christians who take the Bible literally and yet do not push their fundamentalist Christian beliefs upon others, and many respect those of other faiths, even atheists.  They embrace those who bear good fruits, without regard to any label that may become attached to that person.

I have suggested to the reader the Huffington Post as an excellent resource on religion, science, and their interface.  I will repost here an excellent article from that site that articulately expresses a similar viewpoint: we share the view that not all atheists are” angry atheists,” and, I would say, that not all Christians are angry Christians.  It is the exclusive fundamentalism of each to which I object.  The Huffington article may be accessed at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/angry-atheists_b_2716134.html :

Religion, Science and the Attack of the Angry Atheists  

I’d been warned. A friend cautioned me that if we went ahead and posted our MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins, I’d get inundated with hate-mail from religious fundamentalists who believe our universe to be less than 10,000 years old. We posted it anyway, and the vitriolic responses poured in as predicted. But to my amazement, most of them didn’t come from religious people, but from angry atheists! I found this particularly remarkable since I’m not religious myself. I have three criticisms of these angry atheists:

1) They help religious fundamentalists:
A key point I wanted to make with our survey is that there are two interesting science-religion controversies: a) Between religion & atheism b) Between religious groups who do & don’t attack science

Some forces pushing for creationism in US schools try to conflate the two so that they can pretend to represent the majority, and taunting religious groups that don’t attack science can play into their hands. In contrast, I think that drawing attention to b) is the most effective way to weaken the anti-scientific fringe and improve the prospects for future generations.

Although 46% of Americans believe that humans were created less than 10,000 years ago according to a Gallup poll, our survey showed that merely 11% of Americans belong to a religion openly rejecting evolution or Big Bang cosmology, so the mainstream religions representing the majority can be a powerful ally against the anti-scientific fundamentalists.

2) They could use more modesty:
If I’ve learned anything as a physicist, it’s how little we know with certainty. In terms of the ultimate nature of reality, we scientists are ontologically ignorant. For example, many respected physicists believe in the so-called Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, according to which a fundamentally random process called “wavefunction collapse” occurs whenever you observe something. This interpretation has been criticized both for being anthropocentric (quantum godfather Niels Bohr famously argued that there’s no reality without observation) and for being vague (there’s no equation specifying when the purported collapse is supposed to happen, and there’s arguably no experimental evidence for it).

Let’s compare the ontological views of Niels Bohr to those of a moderate and tolerant religious person. At least one of them is incorrect, since Bohr was an atheist. Perhaps neither is correct. But who’s to say that the former is clearly superior to the latter, which should be ridiculed and taunted? Personally, I’d bet good money against the Copenhagen Interpretation, but it would be absurd if I couldn’t be friends with those believing its ontology and unite with them in the quest to make our planet a better place.

3) They should practice what they preach:
Most atheists advocate for replacing fundamentalism, superstition and intolerance by careful and thoughtful scientific discourse. Yet after we posted our survey report, ad hominem attacks abounded, and most of the caustic comments I got (including one from a fellow physics professor) revealed that their authors hadn’t even bothered reading the report they were criticizing.

Just as it would be unfair to blame all religious people for what some fundamentalists do, I’m obviously not implying that all anti-religious people are mean-spirited or intolerant. However, I can’t help being struck by how some people on both the religious and anti-religious extremes of the spectrum share disturbing similarities in debating style.

All my ideas may be wrong, including those I’ve expressed here, and I don’t mind if you criticize me. All I ask is that, before you do, you please read carefully what I’ve written, make an honest attempt to understand my point of view, and articulate your criticism carefully and thoughtfully. Otherwise you may be undermining your own ideals.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Religious Leaders on Science

The reader who has followed this blog from the beginning will recognize that I embrace religion and science.  Humankind cannot live without some sort of faith; each one of us needs both anchors and adventure, we need both activity and repose.  I reject, however, dualism of spirit and matter.  As to Christian faith, indeed, any religious faith, I have consistently quoted Jesus: “By their fruits you will know them.”  I note with appreciation that recently our new pope, Francis, has embraced even those who claim atheism, not in the theological sense of “going to heaven, ” or “being saved,” but with the theological notion of redemption.  I particularly like that notion of redemption because,  not only can it be used in the biblical sense as a necessary condition for “being saved,” or “going to heaven,” but it also can have concrete relational significance.

In our transition from science and philosophy to faith and theology, I have quoted extensively others who have examined the great scientists of our era concerning religion, God, and spirituality.  I find the same to be true concerning religious leaders’ views of  science and of the relationship between science and religion.  We will later examine in greater depth modern theology; but, as a bridge from science to religion, I will repost a significant part of the article by David H.  Bailey posted at http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/theology/religions.php :

David H. Bailey
31 Mar 2013 (c) 2013

Just as the public broadly perceives scientists as completely opposed to religion, many also believe that major religious leaders and movements are utterly opposed to science in general and to evolution in particular. Indeed, many believe that major religions are pitched in battle with the world of science. There is some truth to this assertion. Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis, the evangelical organization that operates the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio), declared, “[M]illions of years of evolution not only contradicts the clear teaching of Genesis and the rest of Scripture but also impugns the character of God.” [Ham2009]. In a similar vein, John G. West of the Discovery Institute, the organization behind the intelligent design movement, declared that Darwinian evolution fundamentally cannot be reconciled with Judeo-Christian theism [West2007].

However, numerous other theologians, religious officials and religious organizations have stated that they see no fundamental conflict with science in general, or with evolution and the creation scriptures in particular. Here are some statements from several large religious organizations (listed in alphabetical order):

1. Catholic Church [Pope1996] (Pope John Paul II): “In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we do not lose sight of certain fixed points. … Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact, it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies — which was neither planned nor sought — constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”

2. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“LDS” or “Mormon”) [Evenson1992]: “The scriptures tell why man was created, but they do not tell how, though the Lord has promised that he will tell that when he comes again (D&C 101:32-33). In 1931, when there was intense discussion on the issue of organic evolution, the First Presidency of the Church, then consisting of Presidents Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, and Charles W. Nibley, addressed all of the General Authorities of the Church on the matter, and concluded, ‘Upon the fundamental doctrines of the Church we are all agreed. Our mission is to bear the message of the restored gospel to the world. Leave geology, biology, archaeology, and anthropology, no one of which has to do with the salvation of the souls of mankind, to scientific research, while we magnify our calling in the realm of the Church.'”

3. Episcopal Church [Episcopal2009]: “Episcopalians believe that the Bible “contains all things necessary to salvation” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 868): it is the inspired and authoritative source of truth about God, Christ, and the Christian life. But physicist and priest John Polkinghorne, following sixteenth-century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker, reminds us Anglicans and Episcopalians that the Bible does not contain all necessary truths about everything else. The Bible, including Genesis, is not a divinely dictated scientific textbook. We discover scientific knowledge about God’s universe in nature not Scripture.”

4. Presbyterian Church in the USA [Presbyterian1969]: “We conclude that the true relation between the evolutionary theory and the Bible is that of non-contradiction. … We re-affirm our belief in the uniqueness of man as a creature whom God has made in His own image.”

5. Rabbinical Council of America [Rabbinical2005]: “[The Rabbinical Council of America] notes that significant Jewish authorities have maintained that evolutionary theory, properly understood, is not incompatible with belief in a Divine Creator, nor with the first 2 chapters of Genesis.”

6. United Methodist Church [Methodist2004]: “Science and theology are complementary rather than mutually incompatible. We therefore encourage dialogue between the scientific and theological communities and seek the kind of participation that will enable humanity to sustain life on earth and, by God’s grace, increase the quality of our common lives together.”

See the above site for a more comprehensive review of major Christian denominations , its clergy, its people, and leaders of other religions.  The site has other precious resources concerning religion as well as its relationship with science.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Famous Scientists in Our Modern Era on Spirituality

Surveys of the religious views of great scientists in our modern era tend to reflect the bias of the person inquiring.  As a former lawyer, I am aware that the form of the question often times suggests or determines the answer given.

It reminds me of a story concerning travelers to a city, at the gates of which they meet an old man, a resident of that city.  One traveler approaches the old man and asks him what kind of city it is.  Was it friendly and welcoming of others, or was it defensive and suspicious of others?  The old man asks, “What kind of place are you coming from?  The traveler answers, “Defensive and suspicious.” The old man responds, “You will find that kind of people here.” Another traveler approaches the same city and asks of the old man, “What kind of city is this?”  The old man asks the traveler what kind of place is he coming from.  The traveler responds, “Friendly and welcoming.”  The old man answers, “You will find that kind of people here.

The most balanced approach I have seen concerning science and religion is that of the Huffingtonpost website, Religion and Science, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/religion-science .  It clearly states its intentions and purposes:

About Religion and Science

Religion and Science features blog posts and news reports that address the ongoing conversation and tension between religion and science. The page has a pro-science and pro-faith point of view and highlights smart, sophisticated perspectives from all religious traditions on how to best improve relationships between these two fields of inquiry.

That site has a wonderful slide show of famous scientists in our modern era with a quote from each concerning spirituality, religion, theism or atheism.  The following quotes are taken from their website, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/03/science-and-religion-quotes-scientists-god_n_1182521.html?utm_hp_ref=religion-science#slide=589894 .  It seems to me to be representative of the scientific community in our modern era.  As I read in these quotes, it seems to me that the vast majority of great scientists see religion and spiritual matters naturally occurring within the physical universe but beyond name or description.  I see these views as consistent with Eric Fromm’s view of Moses and of the burning bush, as expressed in his book, You Shall Be As Gods:  I am being, itself;  I was, I am, and am yet becoming; I am the nameless God.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for 
the existence of God.

Clarification: The full quote, from one of Darwin’s letters, carries a different sentiment.   A young admirer asked Darwin about his religious views (the original inquiry is lost), and the great naturalist answered: “It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length. But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958-    ) –American astrophysicist and science commentator

So you’re made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?

Stephen Hawking (1942-2013) –English physicist and cosmologist

What I have done is to show that it is possible for the way the universe began to be determined by the laws of science. In that case, it would not be necessary to appeal to God to decide how the universe began. This doesn’t prove that there is no God, only that God is not necessary.

Carl Sagan (1934-1996) –American astrophysicist

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual…The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

Francis Collins (1950-) –American physician-geneticist and director of the National Human Genome Research Institute

“Science is…a powerful way, indeed – to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective…in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other.”

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) –American biochemist and science fiction writer

“Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time”

Albert Einstein (1879-1955) –German physicist, created theory of general relativity

While the New York Times noted that “Einstein consistently characterized the idea of a personal God who answers prayers as naïve, and life after death as wishful thinking,” he also “described himself as an ‘agnostic’ and ‘not an atheist.'” One ambiguous quote, from Einstein’s response to a letter from a sixth-grade student named Phyllis Wright, reads “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe – a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naïve.”

Max Planck (1858-1947) –German physicist, noted for work on quantum theory

It was not by accident that the greatest thinkers of all ages were deeply religious souls.

Erwin Schroedinger (1887-1961) –Austrian physicist, awarded Nobel prize in 1933

I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experiences in a magnificently consistent order, but is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, god and eternity.

Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) –British biophysicist renowned for her work on X-ray diffraction.

In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining…I maintain that faith in this world is perfectly possible without faith in another world.

William H. Bragg (1862-1942) –British physicist, chemist, and mathematician. Awarded Nobel Prize in 1915

From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.

Richard Feynman (1918-1988) –American physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in 1965

God was invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand.

Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977) –German-American rocket scientist

I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.

Richard Dawkins (1941-) –British evolutionary biologist

The more you understand the significance of evolution, the more you are pushed away from the agnostic position and towards atheism. Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

Nevill Mott (1905-1996) –English physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in 1977

Science can have a purifying effect on religion, freeing it from beliefs of a pre-scientific age and helping us to a truer conception of God. At the same time, I am far from believing that science will ever give us the answers to all our questions.

Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) –English mathematician and astronomer

A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) –British science fiction author and inventor

Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or Thor – but they have few followers now.

Walter Kohn (1923-) –American theoretical physicist, awarded Nobel Prize in 1998

I am very much a scientist, and so I naturally have thought about religion also through the eyes of a scientist. When I do that, I see religion not denominationally, but in a more, let us say, deistic sense. I have been influence in my thinking by the writing of Einstein who has made remarks to the effect that when he contemplated the world he sensed an underlying Force much greater than any human force. I feel very much the same. There is a sense of awe, a sense of reverence, and a sense of great mystery.

Sam Harris (1967-) –American neuroscientist

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious.

Victor J. Stenger (1935-) –American physicist

With pantheism…the deity is associated with the order of nature or the universe itself…when modern scientists such as Einstein and Stephen Hawking mention ‘God’ in their writing, this is what they seem to mean: that God is Nature.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Einstein on God and Dice

Whereas Darwin has been popularly misconceived as being atheistic, Albert Einstein has been misconceived as being deistic.  Three factors contribute to the latter view.  First, unlike Galileo, the theories of relativity did not challenge popular or Christian assumptions about the physical world.  Second, the concepts of relativity and its consequences were little understood by nonscientists.  Third, Einstein is popularly associated with the statement : “God does not play dice with the universe.”  The religious and scientific communities of his time associated other statements by him as affirming their own theistic beliefs.  See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein as the source of these:

Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.

meaning,

Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.

Remark made during Einstein’s first visit to Princeton University. (April 1921)] as quoted in Einstein (1973) by R.W. Clark, Ch. 14.

God is slick, but he ain’t mean.

is a 1946 variant of that statement.

Later, upon further reflection, he reconsidered,

I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.

Einstein in America (1985) by Jamie Sayen in which he suggests that the statement indicated that God leads people to believe they understand things that they are actually far from understanding,  See, also, The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), ed. Fred R. Shapiro.

He has been quoted to make a number of statements associated with his Jewish inheritance, but ambiguous regarding his own religious beliefs, orientation, or practice:

Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

In a letter to Josh Winteler (1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter (1993), p. 79. Einstein admits to being annoyed that Paul Drude, editor of Annalen der Physik, had dismissed out of hand some of his criticisms of Drude’s electron theory of metals.

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But there is no doubt in my mind that the lion belongs with it even if he cannot reveal himself to the eye all at once because of his huge dimension.

Letter to H. Zangger (10 March 1914), quoted in The Curious History of Relativity by Jean Eisenstaedt (2006), p. 126.

Variant:

Nature shows us only the tail of the lion. But I do not doubt that the lion belongs to it even though he cannot at once reveal himself because of his enormous size.

As quoted by Abraham Pais in Subtle is the Lord: The Science and Life of Albert Einstein (1982), p. 235.

As President Eisenhower warned the nation in his farewell speech of the danger to American ideals posed by the industrial – military complex, so Einstein warned of advances in science and technology without the temper of human values:

Our entire much-praised technological progress, and civilization generally, could be compared to an axe in the hand of a pathological criminal.

Letter to H. Zangger (1917), quoted in A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit by Alan Lightman (2005), p. 110, and in Albert Einstein: A Biography by Albrecht Fölsing (1997), p. 399.  The statement is sometimes paraphrased as

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.

He acknowledged his Jewish heritage without being limited by it:

I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.

Letter to Alfred Kneser (7 June 1918); Doc. 560 in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein Vol. 8

He paid poetic tribute to Spinoza, acknowledging a pantheistic kinship with the philosopher:

How much do I love that noble man
More than I could tell with words
I fear though he’ll remain alone
With a holy halo of his own.

See http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein, with the following attribution: Poem by Einstein on Spinoza (1920), as quoted in Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer, Princeton UP 1999, p. 43; Original German manuscript “Zu Spinozas Ethik” Einstein Archives 31-18.00.

When specifically asked concerning his religious ideals, he was unambiguous on several occasions:

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm

See, also, some excellent discussions concerning his spirituality and religious convictions:

Albert Einstein: God vs Science at http://yes-23.com/other/albert-einstein-god-vs-science/

Albert Einstein’s Faith: Was the Great Physicist Spiritual? at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/krista-tippett/albert-einsteins-faith-wa_b_651592.html

Speaking of Faith: Einstein and the Mind of God (Part II: Einstein’s Ethics) http://hotstartsearch.com/searchy/?keyword=speaking+of+faith+einstein

Religious views of Albert Einstein at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Albert_Einstein

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Charles Darwin on Faith and Chance

In a prior post, I mentioned Darwin as a marker in our modern era of life in process, consistent with the notion of our Living God, Nameless God, our God that is, with the world, becoming.  As Copernicus and Galileo challenged the Church’s assumption that the earth, the locus of humankind’s domain, was the center of the universe, so Darwin challenged the notion that humankind was specially created to have dominion over the earth and life upon it.  Early in the 20^th century the latter conflict was formalized in the Scopes Monkey Trial.  Thereafter, Christian fundamentalists have dismissed the dialog concerning the actual science of the phenomenon of evolution by framing it as a conflict between science and religion, in which case biblically literal religious faith trumps pretentious scientific knowledge.  To the other extreme, atheists also pose the issue as a conflict between religion and science, in which objective science trumps subjective religious faith.

As I see it, Christian fundamentalists and radical atheists merely represent two sides of the same coin: each would strip physical life of mystery and sacred value, but for different reasons.  Darwin is neither a threat to Christian faith, nor the friend of atheism.

A young admirer asked Darwin about his religious views (the original inquiry is lost), and the great naturalist answered:

It is impossible to answer your question briefly; and I am not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at some length.  But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real value, I have never been able to decide.

Although Henri Bergson has not been the focus of bad press, as has Darwin, yet he recognized that evolution by mere chance is not a necessary conclusion of Darwin’s theory of evolution.  Rather, the procession of life from a simpler form to a more complex and advanced form is possible only through a coordination of many changes, none of which, without the other, bears any advantage over the earlier life form.  Henri Bergson gave that coordinating principle a non-descriptive and non-limiting name: vital elan, or “vital principle.”  Such a notion of biological encoding had long been recognized in the function of genetics.  The fact that such coordination was necessary for biological advantage invites an exploration of the mechanics of that function.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2009/02/20/myth-5-darwin-thought-evolutio/ addresses What Darwin Said About God:

No figure in modern history has received as much religiously based criticism as Charles Darwin.  He is seen as worse than an atheist; his work has been attacked as a threat to the belief that the universe and mankind are God’s creations.

Charles Darwin was not the first person to write about evolution.  In his book Origin of Species he gives credit to 24 naturalists who discussed the idea before he did.  Since Darwin did the most work to research and promulgate the topic, the concept of evolution has been identified with him.

Many who are angrily anti-Darwin have not read the Origin or examined Darwin’s personal life.  At Cambridge University he studied to be a minister.  However, he felt that science should be objective in nature, and was careful to keep any reference to God or a creator out of his work, particularly in his two major works On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.  For example, he states in the Origin, “They [creationists] believe that many structures have been created for the sake of beauty, to delight man or the Creator (but this latter point is beyond the scope of scientific discussion)”

Toward the end of his life Darwin’s reluctance to discuss God diminished.  It is in the sixth edition of the Origin where this shift is most noticeable.  The sixth edition was the last edition edited by Darwin.  It was released in 1872 — some thirteen years after the first edition was published.  The word “evolution” appears for the first time in the last edition.

Darwin used the word “Creator” nine times, and the word “God” twice in the sixth edition. Of greater importance is what he said about life and the Creator’s role in it.  Darwin never said that evolution was Godless or directionless.  In fact, a reading of the sixth edition of Origin proves that both of these assertions are factually incorrect.  The second page of the Origin prominently displays this quote:

To conclude, therefore, let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficience in both.  – Bacon: “Advancement of Learning.”

Darwin addressed several objections to evolution in the sixth edition of his Origen of Species.  (He added a Chapter Seven titled “Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection.”)  One of best-known criticisms of natural selection was that nothing as complicated as an eye could have evolved purely by chance.  Darwin’s response was that we can observe many examples of the evolution of light-sensitive cells in nature.  The most intriguing thought Darwin had on this subject was that just because we don’t understand how something can evolve does not mean that the Creator wasn’t behind it.  His exact words in the sixth edition of Origin were “Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?”  Using the telescope as an example of a man-made optical instrument, he added: “May we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to man?”

For a more detailed discussion, see Myth 5: Darwin thought evolution relied on accidents and chance at http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2009/02/20/myth-5-darwin-thought-evolutio/.

 See, also, Why Do We Care About Human Evolution Today?  at https://www.bigquestionsonline.com/content/why-do-we-care-about-human-evolution-today.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

“Extrasensory” and Out-of-Body Experiences

In the last post, I mentioned human experiences of the physical world which are not limited to the five physical senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.  Before proceeding with a discussion of science and religion, we will examine some documented extrasensory experiences.   I will begin with my Mother’s account of her own near-death experience.

Sabbath morning I did begin having occasional cramps and pain so Edgar did not go to church.  I pretty much rested and walked or read through the day.  By late afternoon, pains were regular and much harder so Mom called the doctor and he said to come into the hospital, which we did.  Mom went with us and I was so very glad, for they would not let Edgar, or anyone, come into the Labor Room after they took me in there.  At least Mom was with him, I thought.  He never did well not knowing what was going on when I was not well or when our babies arrived.  Maybe because of this experience.

There were other women in the Labor Room.  The nurse who did my prep and examined me said I would probably deliver within an hour.  The doctor would come when they called and told him that I was ready, she said.  The Doctor ordered “something” put in the IV they had going in my arm.  Before the nurse went off duty she had me pushing down with each contraction “to help the baby along,” she said.  Women came and went and I was still there.  The night passed and I slept some between pains.  Pains were not regular as they had been.  A nurse observed me bearing down on a pain and scolded me saying that was harmful and not helpful for sure.  I stopped gladly for I was very sore from trying to bear down on contractions anyway.  The morning passed and on into mid-afternoon nothing had changed.  I was really thankful Mom was with Edgar to be sure he was eating meals.  I had had nothing to eat all day, of course.

Mom watched for the nurse to leave and she sneaked into my room and said, “Xenia Lee, you have to bear down on each pain as if you were having a difficult bowel movement.”  I said, “I cannot do that,” and she quickly and softly said, “I do not care what they tell you, you do as I say and you will have this baby,” and she was gone.  By now the nurse was not paying any attention to me anyway.  I did as Mom said and soon the nurse observed me and became very excited saying, “I see the head.  Get her into the delivery room quick.”  “You go call the doctor,” she said to another nurse.  Soon I was on the table with my legs strapped together against the table and being rolled to the Delivery Room.  Once in there I was put on the delivery table and again my legs were together on the sheet and strapped down awaiting the doctor.  A nurse popped her head in the door saying that the doctor’s line is busy and she could not get him.  Someone snapped, “Call the operator and tell her this is an emergency and have her break in to the doctor.”

My pains were almost continual now and severe.  I said, “Unstrap me and I am not afraid to have this baby with your help”.  More compassionate now, the nurse said, “I am really sorry but there is a rule here that no baby can be born without a doctor present.”  So we waited an eternity longer.  I had read articles, “war stories,” about women during the Second World War being mistreated by the “Powers that be” by strapping their legs together during labor letting the mother and baby die.  Then into my mind I thought of friends of ours in college who were expecting a baby in January and the wife and mother died during delivery.  The baby lived.  The husband could not find out from anyone what caused her death.  I wondered!

I remember seeing the doctor finally enter the Delivery Room.  Suddenly I had an ether mask placed on my nose with orders to breath in it and it would ease the pain.  I was aware of my legs being unstrapped and the next thing I remember was someone saying, “She is dead.”  I vividly remember hovering above the table seeing people around the delivery table with heads looking down.  I knew we had had a baby girl and she had died.  I had to find Edgar so he was not alone finding out what had happened.  I remember traveling through the hospital to a room with a water fountain.  It was beautiful!  I kept saying “Edgar, I have to go back and find Edgar.  He needs to be told and I need to tell him.  Please let me go back”.  A gentle but authoritative voice said, “She wants to go back.  Let her go back.”

I awakened in my room calling for Edgar but he was not there.  Mom was there reassuring me all was well, but I only wanted Edgar, so she went to look for him.  Soon he came into the room and I told him we had a baby girl but she is dead.  He assured me she is alive and he has just seen her.  “She is perfect and beautiful,” he said.  I was very confused because I clearly heard them say, “She is dead.”  I even had Mom see if I remembered correctly about being in that beautiful water fountain area.  I explained carefully where it was and what I had seen on the way.  Mom said it was the ether playing tricks on me, but to appease me she went to “look” for the water fountain anyway.  She came back excited telling me it was exactly as I described it and she found it right where I told her to go look.  Then she said it was in a part of the hospital she had never been in.  If our baby is okay then who – were they talking about? Me?  I had a strong feeling that if we had another baby I would not live to deliver it.  This haunted me for we did want a large family, if we had our “wants.”

In my daily Bible readings, I came to 1 Timothy 2:15 in which God spoke clearly to my heart and I held tight to that verse.  “But women shall be preserved (saved) through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self restraint.”  God is good and faithful in keeping His word.  I bear testimony to that.

Edgar came daily to the hospital to see me and brought Bob in with him at least once.  That day the nurse brought the wrong “W…” baby to the window and Edgar insisted that was not his baby girl.  Sure enough it was another “W..” girl.  Edgar was so very proud of Annita and said the other baby was ugly and he knew it was not our baby girl.  Bob got a laugh out of that.

I was in the hospital seven days and still not up walking about.  I went home in an ambulance.  Fortunately we had Health Insurance that covered all the medical and hospital bills.  I had good care at home and Annita Marie did, also.  We thrived with Mom and Mae’s loving, faithful care and were soon able to be outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

I believe my mother had the experiences she described.  It was not an experience through the usual five senses.  Her “view” of a place in the hospital where she had never been physically, nor viewed physically, was confirmed by her mother.

I have stated previously, and maintain, that spirit is bound up with matter, not entirely distinct from it, and that science and religion do not inherently conflict.  Some have claimed that the “out-of-body experiences” or “near-death experiences” prove that there is a spiritual world apart from the physical.  For example, Kevin Williams claims to have done some research concerning such events.  He introduces that research and what he considers to be its implications with the following:

Imagine that you are a patient in a hospital and surgery is being performed on you. You are sound asleep. You were sound asleep long before they wheeled into the operating room. But while you are asleep something very strange happens. During the operation, you are suddenly awakened to find yourself floating near the ceiling! Down below are the doctors working on your body (as in the cartoon on the left). You see a strange sign hanging from the ceiling which says “You are dead.” You watch as the doctor puts the electric paddles on your chest. You have a wonderful peaceful feeling which you have never had before. The doctors give your body a shock and you are back in your body sound asleep again. Hours later, you awaken and tell the doctor about your out-of-body experience and the “You are dead” sign. The doctor smiles and tells you, “Your heart stopped during surgery and we had to revive you. You are part of a near-death study and you had a near-death experience. You are the first patient who has ever read that sign. That sign can only be read by someone reading it from the vantage point of the ceiling. And because you were able to read this sign and tell us about it, you have proven scientifically that the mind can function outside of the body. A great scientific discovery has just occurred. Congratulations. This is probably how researchers are going to prove scientifically that our consciousness can transcend our bodies.

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/research11.html

That article  refers to such experiences as a “consciousness expansion.” I believe that is consistent with the position that I have taken.  However, he takes that experience in which the subject “sees” a specific sign, “You Are Dead” to confirm his further conclusion that it is evidence that the spirit survives the physical body after death.

Again, I do not see the “the hand of God” as violating or suspending the laws of nature.  I merely suggest that the laws of nature are likely greater than those which science and common experience have heretofore recognized.

In the following posts, we will explore various scientists’ recognition of spiritual aspects of physical being, and religious leader’s recognition the physical aspects of spiritual being.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Baruch Spinoza: If Triangles and Circles Could Speak

It may seem odd to the reader that after I have posted the conclusion of philosophy in our modern era with existentialism, and as we turn our attention to science and religion, I begin this new section with the 17^th century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, whom we have not before mentioned.   That was not by design, but by another happy coincidence, or some might say, by God’s leading.  I’m not sure that there is a real distinction to be made between the two.

As I have at least inferred in the past, I do not see “miracles” as contrary to the laws of nature or suspension of those laws;  rather, I see miracles as defined by Dr. Nida: where the eye of faith sees the hand of God at work.  One prepares for such an experience by cultivating an attitude of thankfulness.  Such an attitude is not possible for a person who believes that he or she is responsible for, earned, or deserves, all the good and necessary things that he or she has.

I recognize that human perception of, and interaction with, the physical world is not limited to the recognized five senses.  Just as migratory birds find the same locations of their nests season in and season out, year after year; or a dog or a cat happens to be transported to a distant, strange place and yet finds its way back to its owner and home; or horses and other animals become jittery upon what turns out to be the approach of a storm; human beings have senses far beyond those which we verbally acknowledge or cognitively recognize.  Nor can such perceptions and their interpretations be processed entirely by logic.  Oftentimes logic impedes that sensitivity; it is often expressed in terms of intuition or the creative impulse.  Some philosophers, such as Bergson, recognized that some truths are accessed, not by logic but by intuition.  Are there other ways of perception; other natural senses?

I began this series of posts concerning theology in the modern era with a discussion of civil disobedience, which perceives truth to transcend written laws and popularly held beliefs, and acts in conformity with that perception of truth while accepting the consequences.  We examined notions of Natural Law, of unity of spirit and matter, and of justice in the context of right relationships.  We then examined faith in action through the memories of my mother and father.  From there, we have discussed scientific developments in our modern era, and itheir influence upon philosophical developments in the concreteness of modern life.

We will now address issues of science and religion during our modern era.  I will begin with Baruch Spinoza who is recognized as the first modern philosopher to reject the dualistic view body and soul.   He also viewed God, not as a personal God, interfering in human affairs, whether by punishment, whimsy, human petition or prayer.  Rather, his theological view is perhaps best described as pantheistic.   When Einstein was pressed concerning his religious views and experience, he owned agnosticism, not atheism;  he rejected any God expressed in anthropomorphic terms, citing Spinoza.

Therefore, it seems appropriate to introduce the subject of science and religion with Spinoza.  Although I have forgotten the origin of many of my ideas, I do acknowledge great debt to him.  Rather than attempt to summarize him in a few words, less well chosen, I will set out here a number of quotations of his work which are posted on the web site, http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza:

Quotations:

• When you say that if I deny, that the operations of seeing, hearing, attending, wishing, &c., can be ascribed to God, or that they exist in Him in any eminent fashion, you do not know what sort of God mine is; I suspect that you believe there is no greater perfection than such as can be explained by the aforesaid attributes. I am not astonished; for I believe that, if a triangle could speak, it would say, in like manner, that God is eminently triangular, while a circle would say that the divine nature is eminently circular. Thus each would ascribe to God its own attributes, would assume itself to be like God, and look on everything else as ill-shaped.
• The briefness of a letter and want of time do not allow me to enter into my opinion on the divine nature, or the questions you have propounded. Besides, suggesting difficulties is not the same as producing reasons. That we do many things in the world from conjecture is true, but that our redactions are based on conjecture is false. In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth. A man would perish of hunger and thirst, if he refused to eat or drink, till he had obtained positive proof that food and drink would be good for him. But in philosophic reflection this is not so. On the contrary, we must take care not to admit as true anything, which is only probable. For when one falsity has been let in, infinite others follow.
• Again, we cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

Letter  56 (60), to Hugo Boxel (1674)

• My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted. The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous.
•  As regards miracles, I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.

Letter  21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg , November (1675)

• I make this chief distinction between religion and superstition, that the latter is founded on ignorance, the former on knowledge; this, I take it, is the reason why Christians are distinguished from the rest of the world, not by faith, nor by charity, nor by the other fruits of the Holy Spirit, but solely by their opinions, inasmuch as they defend their cause, like everyone else, by miracles, that is by ignorance, which is the source of all malice; thus they turn a faith, which may be true, into superstition.

Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg ,  November (1675)

• I do not think it necessary for salvation to know Christ according to the flesh: but with regard to the Eternal Son of God, that is the Eternal Wisdom of God, which has manifested itself in all things and especially in the human mind, and above all in Christ Jesus, the case is far otherwise. For without this no one can come to a state of blessedness, inasmuch as it alone teaches, what is true or false, good or evil. And, inasmuch as this wisdom was made especially manifest through Jesus Christ, as I have said, His disciples preached it, in so far as it was revealed to them through Him, and thus showed that they could rejoice in that spirit of Christ more than the rest of mankind. The doctrines added by certain churches, such as that God took upon Himself human nature, I have expressly said that I do not understand; in fact, to speak the truth, they seem to me no less absurd than would a statement, that a circle had taken upon itself the nature of a square. This I think will      be sufficient explanation of my opinions concerning the three points mentioned. Whether it will be satisfactory to Christians you will know better than I.

Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg ,  November (1675)

Variant translation: The eternal  wisdom of God … has shown itself forth in all things, but chiefly in  the mind of man, and most of all in Jesus Christ.

• You seem to wish to employ reason, and ask me, “How I know that my philosophy is the best among all that have ever been taught in the world, or are being taught, or ever will be taught?” a question which I might with much greater right ask you; for I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy. If you ask in what way I know it, I answer: In the same way as you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: that this is sufficient, will be denied by no one whose brain is sound, and who does not go dreaming of evil spirits inspiring us with false ideas like the true. For the truth is the index of itself and of what is false.
• But you, who presume that you have at last found the best religion, or rather the best men, on whom you have pinned your credulity, you, “who know that they are the best among all who have taught, do now teach, or shall in future teach other religions. Have you examined all religions, ancient as well as modern, taught here and in India and everywhere throughout the world? And, if you have duly examined them, how do you know that you have chosen the best” since you can give no reason for the faith that is in you? But you will say, that you acquiesce in the inward testimony of the Spirit of God, while the rest of mankind are ensnared and deceived by the prince of evil spirits. But all those outside the pale of the Romish Church can with equal right proclaim of their own creed what you proclaim of yours.
•  As to what you add of the common consent of myriads of men and the uninterrupted ecclesiastical succession, this is the very catch-word of the Pharisees.  They with no less confidence than the devotees of Rome bring forward their myriad witnesses, who as pertinaciously as the Roman witnesses repeat what they have heard, as though it were their personal experience. Further, they carry back their line to Adam. They boast with equal arrogance, that their Church has continued to this day unmoved and unimpaired in spite of the hatred of Christians and heathen. They more than any other sect are supported by antiquity. They exclaim with one voice, that they have received their traditions from God Himself, and that they alone preserve the Word of God both written and unwritten. That all heresies have issued from them, and that they have remained constant through thousands of years under no constraint of temporal dominion, but by the sole efficacy of their superstition, no one can deny. The miracles they tell of would tire a thousand tongues. But their chief boast is, that they count a far greater number of martyrs than any other nation, a number which is daily increased by those who suffer with singular constancy for the faith they profess; nor is their boasting false. I myself knew among others of a certain Judah called the faithful, who in the midst of the flames, when he was already thought to be dead, lifted his voice to sing the hymn beginning, “To Thee, O God, I offer up my soul,” and so singing perished.

Letter  74 (76) to Albert Burgh (1675)

• Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

As quoted in The Story of  Philosophy (1933) by Will  Durant, p. 176

See, also, http://www.scaruffi.com/phi/spinoza.html for an excellent summation of the key points of Spinoza’s philosophy.

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Existentialism

The last philosophy of the modern era that we will discuss is existentialism.  Philosophy, particularly in the 20th century explored such questions as, is it practical?  What difference does it make?  Is life an accumulation of instances or pictures? Does it flow?  How does the present relate to the past or the future to the present?  What is the nature of thought?  If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?  If a straight line is the shortest distance between points A and B, and if there are an infinite number of points in the line, mustn’t there be an infinite number of halfway points between each of the infinite points so that one can never get from point A to point B?

Existentialism addresses the meaning of existence and its quality both in its individual and social aspects.  Modern existentialism swept Western culture following the Second World War.  Its most notable recent proponents are John Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.  But existentialistic considerations have, as with the afore-mentioned, found expression throughout history.

The American Unitarian minister and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, was one of America’s first and best known philosophers and a well known poet.  His philosophy was poetic.  That is, as I consider it, appropriate in that any philosophy of life ought to live; prose describes, but poetry sings.  As Bergson recognized, when one examines any form of life, it is perceived through the filters of the sense and logic, which tends to freeze what is observed in an “instant,” which is necessary for examination, but it wringing the life there from.   I have previously alluded to a  literature of “ecstasy,” which has nothing to do with altered mental states and everything to do with transcendent experience.  One does not access that experience through mere description and logic.  It is accessed through poetry, allegory and metaphor.  In short, it is conscious “is if” thinking.

Wittgenstein understood that: language has much greater function than describing objects and experiences.  He analogizes  words to “tools in a toolbox.”  Some tools are appropriate for description, definition and analysis; other tools are appropriate for experience.  Language is the stuff of thought.  He describes it, “bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” That, from my perspective, means that we can never directly experience an event in the environment about us; it is only through our brain processing of sensory input that our environment can be perceived.

On April 4, 2013, National Public Radio had an excellent program which focused on delay between our sensory input and mental response, whether in cognitive recognition or reflex.  Their point: whatever perception we have of that event is, by the time that it is processed in our brains and then relayed for appropriate response, already in the past.  The practical consequences of this phenomenon was demonstrated by the producers of the program in computer communication between the stock exchange computer and that of a buyer or seller.  Ultimately, differing lengths of cable connections between the exchange and the user could make a difference in whom the exchange computer recognized as a buyer or seller.  From the human experiential standpoint, there was no difference in the transaction times among the various users, but the computers could distinguish which was first.  The infinitesimal differences in time could make millions, even billions of dollars difference.  On that level, in that arena, difference between input and output had immense, concrete circumstances.

Since we cannot avoid the use of language, how can language be used to access experiences which are beyond mere words?  If one uses the words of description, they must treat the experience as an object, using powers of logic which tend to be static, rather than those of insight or inference to access and process stored experiences in the light of the new verbal input.

Jesus understood the power of a metaphor.  He did not teach philosophy or theology, but he taught in parables which conveyed a truth beyond the mere facts expressed which people from many different backgrounds and social status could understand, and which could make a difference in their life, whatever their circumstances..

The Methodist minister, Rev. David Lux, served in two different churches of which I was a member.  He had a way of speaking that, as my wife, Dawn, describes it, was as though he were speaking “directly to me.”  The “stuff” of his Sermons were often based upon a movie, a book, or some other aesthetic experience which he then might connect to both a Biblical passage and some current, real life experience.  Not only did he feed me well of spiritually, but he was a great help to me and my family emotionally, intellectually, and financially in a time of severe distress.

In preparing this post, I came across a site with Emerson’s poetry concerning the worship experience and its affect on the way that we live and experience life.  It seems appropriate that it is in the form of poetry:

VI: WORSHIP
This is he, who, felled by foes,
Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows:
He to captivity was sold,
But him no prison-bars would hold:
Though they sealed him in a rock,
Mountain chains he can unlock: but
Thrown to lions for their meat,
The crouching lion kissed his feet:
Bound to the stake, no flames appalled,
But arched o’er him an honoring vault.
This is he men miscall Fate,
Threading dark ways, arriving late,
But ever coming in time to crown
The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down.
He is the oldest, and best known,
More near than aught thou call’st thy own,
Yet, greeted in another’s eyes,
Disconcerts with glad surprise.
This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers,
Floods with blessings unawares.
Draw, if thou canst, the mystic line,
Severing rightly his from thine,
Which is human, which divine.

http://www.rwe.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=172&Itemid=208

Following the Second World War, philosophers, theologians and writers began to address the role of technology in our lives: to what degree does technology help us to live authentically; and what to what degree does it control our lives and reduce us to objects or automatons.  As Samuel Enoch Stumpf describes it at page 454,

Everywhere men were losing their peculiarly human qualities.  They were being converted from “persons” into “pronouns,” from “subjects” into “objects,” from an “I” into an “it.”

. . .

Whether they were theists or atheists, the existentialists all agreed that traditional philosophy was too academic and remote from life to have any adequate meaning for them.

In John Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, he rejects any notion of dualism of spirit and matter.  To be is to be responsible for one’s own destiny.  He distinguishes good faith from bad faith.  Bad faith of an individual sees one’s self in terms of his or her social or occupational position or function.  One cannot blame others, but must take responsibility for his or her future.  Humankind is “condemned” by finitude and responsibility to make a decision and to take the consequences, whether that is realized in guilt and despair, or fulfillment in the human condition.  Each of us has a mixture of good faith and bad faith.  To live authentically is too accept our human condition and to take responsibility for “the wolf that one chooses to feed.”

A good friend of mine, Stephen Scott, has found Deepak Chapra’s book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, quite helpful in expressing in nontechnical language similar notions:

The first spiritual law of success is the law of pure potentiality.  This law is based on the fact that we are, in our essential state, pure consciousness.  Purer consciousness is pure potentiality; it is the field of all possibilities and infinite creativity.  Pure consciousness is our spiritual essence.  Being infinite and unbounded, it is also pure joy.  Other attributes of consciousness are pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity, and bliss.  This is our essential nature.  Our essential nature is one of pure potentiality.

p. 9

The field of pure potentiality is your own self.  And the more you experience your true nature, the closer you are to the field of pure potentiality.

p. 10

Your true self, which is your spirit, your soul . . .

p. 11

. . .  One way to access the field is through the daily practice of silence, meditation, and non-judgment.  Spending time in nature will also give you access to the qualities inherent in the field: infinite creativity, freedom, and bliss.

p. 13

As you gain more and more access to your true nature, you will also spontaneously receive creative thoughts, because the field of pure potentiality is also the field of infinite creativity and pure knowledge.

p. 20

Stillness alone is the potentiality for creativity; movement alone is creativity restricted to a certain aspect of its expression.  But the combination of movement and stillness enables you to unleash your creativity in all directions – wherever the power of your attention takes you.

p. 21

The Cherokee Indians had two similar existentialistic stories of the battle of good and evil within each of us and our responsibility for our choices.   Two forms of the story are told at http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html:

Two Wolves

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

The Wolves Within

An old grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, “Let me tell you a story.

I, too, at times have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.

But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.

But the other Wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger, for his anger will change nothing.

Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit.

The boy looked intently into his grandfather’s eyes and asked, “Which one wins, grandfather?”

The grandfather smiled and quietly said, “The one I feed.”

The source of the above stories treats them as Cherokee legend.  Joseph Campbell, a scholar who collected such stories of indigenous peoples and stories of religions from around the world and interpreted them, called them “myth.” In the PBS television series, The Power of Myth, composed of conversations between Joseph Campbell and with Bill Moyers, Campbell states that myth, rather than mere heroic legend, are metaphorical statements of what goes on within each of us.  They give instruction in how to live: do you choose to live by feeding the wolf of anger, arrogance, inferiority or its companion, superiority; or will you choose to feed the Wolf of joy, love, humility and compassion?

In these myths anger is acknowledged to be part of human nature. That is consistent with modern mental health science. It is there.  Will I let it have control, or will it do what emotion is intended to do: to do something.  We have a choice: which wolf do we want to feed?

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

William James’ Pragmatism

Pragmatism is one of the great American  contributions to philosophy.  William James is its best-known advocate.  To understand it, one must distinguish between pragmatism and practicality.  It has nothing to do with convenience, and everything to do with, “what difference will it make if such a proposition were followed as true.”  It has little to do with content.  In James’words, “pragmatism is a method only.” It begins with the assertion that human life has a purpose.

In Stumpf”s words at page 408,

If, for example, there is a dispute over whether God exists, pragmatism has no preconceived creed to offers; but it does ask whether it makes a difference to believe in God’s existence.

In pragmatism, truth is not the status of an idea, but, “truth happens to an idea.” Past ideas are not a measure of truth, but rather, a truth happens to ideas because they are successful in making a difference in life.   In that sense, there’s some commonality between him and Whitehead: each relates to possibilities.  Therefore, if we ask what difference it makes whether or not God exists, the answer is to be found by examining the qualitative difference in living were such a proposition to be true.  In my writing, Cry, “Justice!” previously posted, I asked the same question in the sense that nihilism suggests no purpose in life, whereas, the assumption that God exists assumes possibilities and authentic living. I thought that I had come to that conclusion as influenced by Hans Kung’s, Does God Exist?  I did not then realize the debt that I owed to William James in coming to that conclusion.

In my writing, I also ask whether we see ourselves as automatons or as having free will; James refers to  “judgment of regret.” As Stumpf writes at page 411of that notion,

But how can one “regret” what could not have been otherwise?  The determinist must define the world as a place where what “ought to be” is impossible.

Again, I make the distinction between “ought” and “what is possible?” James simply asks,, “What is possible?” I make a connection between purpose in life and belief in some power that is greater than are we.  James makes a connection between belief and action.  Rather than belief, I refer to faith; however, I make a distinction between blind faith and faith that is not proven, and yet is not in inconsistent with the known or observed facts.  I refer to a a person’s choice to believe or not to believe; James refers to a similar notion as ” the will to believe.” Stumpfs at page 413, represents that choice as follows:

The will to belief, then, is relevant and can operate only when we are confronted with an option that (1) is forced upon us, in that it is impossible not to choose one way or the other, (2) is a living option because both hypotheses make a genuine appeal, and (3) is a momentous option because the opportunity to choose might not present itself again.  And, moreover, belief is relevant only, for reason alone cannot settle the matter.

To take my friend, Bill Ericson’s metaphor and perhaps and to twist it to apply to this situation, I apparently have gotten wet, without realizing that I was swimming nor that I was wet.  It would not be fair to apply my conclusion to William James, but I certainly believe that with respect to myself, applying  process philosophy and process theology notions, I know that whatever I do, whether for good or for bad, will have a future life or influence upon my lif and that about me.  I hope to have some positive impact, but is not for me to own or demand credit for it.

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/

Bertrand Russell Quotes

Bertrand Russell, who collaborated with Whitehead in the writing of Mathematica Principia, pursued a quite different philosophical line from Whitehead.  Whereas Whitehead paid attention to the detail, he also sought the larger picture, the process, Bertrand Russell, on the other hand maintained his mathematical attention to detail to contribute to a form of Analytic Philosophy called Logical Atomism.  Although his philosophical notions have their place, I have less interest in the intense details of his philosophy than I have in his statements concerning the challenges of his day.  Despite his claim of atheism, he believed in the power of Civil Disobedience and was jailed for a time because of his principles, which Gandhi would have attributed to the power Satyagraha, or Truth.  As I perceive it, it is not so important to me that he claimed atheism.  I’ve discovered in my lifetime that many atheists see a wonderful mystery in life, not magic, but a profound reverence; and yet they claim atheism simply because they disagree with the commonly accepted notion of God.  From my perspective, Matthew got it right in quoting Jesus: “By their fruits you will know them.”  Bertrand Russell bore good fruits.

Here are some quotes of Bertrand Russell which I have found interesting and thought provoking:

What I wish to maintain is that all faiths do harm. We may define ‘faith’ as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. When there is evidence, no one speaks of ‘faith’. We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

For four and a half months in 1918 I was in prison for pacifist propaganda; but, by the intervention of Arthur Balfour, I was placed in the first division, so that while in prison I was able to read and write as much as I liked, provided I did no pacifist propaganda. I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. . . . I was rather interested in my fellow prisoners, who seemed to me in no way morally interior to the rest of the population, though they were on the whole slightly below the usual level of intelligence, as was shown by their having been caught.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, notes that his original philosophical interest was two‑fold: 1) could philosophy provide a defense for religious belief, however vague; and 2) desire to believe that something could be known, in pure mathematics if nothing else. In regard to religion, he came first to disbelieve free will, then immortality, and finally God.

As regards the foundations of mathematics, I got nowhere.” It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty. . . . It is a practice of theologians to laugh at science because it changes. . . . Men who speak in this way have not grasped the great idea of successive approximations.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. . . . Fear is the basis of the whole thing ‑ fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. . . . Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look round for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the Churches in all these centuries have made it.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

For my part, I should regard an unchanging system of philosophical doctrines as proof of intellectual stagnation.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E.

With me it is purely a practical question of whether to do it or not, a method of propaganda. I have no right to complain about being punished for breaking the law. I complain only if I am permitted to break it.

Best of Playboy Interviews

What the world needs is not dogma, but an attitude of scientific inquiry, combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

I have found . . . that by analyzing physics and perception the problem of the relation of mind and matter can be completely solved. It is true that nobody has accepted what seems to be the solution, but I believe and hope that this is only because my theory has not been understood.

Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, notes that his original philosophical interest was two‑fold: 1) could philosophy provide a defense for religious belief, however vague; and 2) desire to believe that something could be known, in pure mathematics if nothing else. In regard to religion, he came first to disbelieve free will, then immortality, and finally God.

As regards the foundations of mathematics, I got nowhere.” It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty. . . . It is a practice of theologians to laugh at science because it changes. . . . Men who speak in this way have not grasped the great idea of successive approximations.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

For my part, I should regard an unchanging system of philosophical doctrines as proof of intellectual stagnation.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E.

Bertrand Russell: With me it is purely a practical question of whether to do it or not, a method of propaganda. I have no right to complain about being punished for breaking the law. I complain only if I am permitted to break it.

Best of Playboy Interviews

What the world needs is not dogma, but an attitude of scientific inquiry, combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

I have found . . . that by analyzing physics and perception the problem of the relation of mind and matter can be completely solved. It is true that nobody has accepted what seems to be the solution, but I believe and hope that this is only because my theory has not been understood.

Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner. [Note and compare, however, Fromm’s definition of religion and his conclusion that healthy religion is necessary to mental health.]

The business of a philosopher is to understand the world and if people solve their social problems Religion will die out.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

If you consider the Politbureau or the American technocrats you will see that there are those who escape atheism by impiously imagining themselves on the throne of the Almighty.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Bertrand Russell has demonstrated that induction by simple enumeration, if conducted without regard to common sense, leads very much more often to error than to truth. And such dependence on common sense is not satisfactory to a logician. “Introduction” to Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development.

Bertrand Russell was asked about his old age and what he had not achieved:

Since boyhood, my life has been devoted to two different objectives which for a long time remained separate . . . One has been to discover whether anything could actually be known; this was a matter of philosophical inquiry. The other has been to do whatever I could to help create a happier world. . . . It is easier to have an immense effect if you dogmatically preach a precise gospel such as communism. But I do not believe that mankind needs anything dogmatic. I think it essential to teach a certain hesitancy about dogma. Whatever you believe, you must have reservations. You must envisage the possibility that you may be wrong. I have lived in pursuit of a vision, both personal and social, noble, beautiful, . . . gentle, . . . insight, . . . imagination, . . . attainable society in which hate and greed and envy would die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I still believe. So you can see that the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.

Best of Playboy Interviews.

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that these opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, addresses perception:

It results from the synthesis of physics, physiology, psychology and mathematical logic. Traditional approach of philosophers has been from how we know to what we know.

He believes this to be mistaken because how we know is but a compartment of what we know. Moreover, the traditional approach gives mind a supremacy over the non‑mental universe it does not deserve. He believes one must look first to theoretical physics for an understanding of the major processes in the history of the universe. . . .

The next step is an approximation to perception. . . . He analogizes to the photographic image of stars, different ones of some portion of sky yielding similar results. Or similar results from recordation of several movie cameras of the same play. There appears to be a connection between the event and its recordation, which processes belong purely to physics.

. . . It begins with “events”, a fundamental notion involving a finite amount of space‑time and is overlapping with numerous other events occupying partially, but not wholly, the same region of space‑time. These events are not uncommected.

For purely physical reasons, [the event is transmitted to the brain.] . . . It is perceived in the brain, which perception bears little resemblance to the physiological processes that excite the brain’s reaction.

The above world is entirely an inferred world. But the entire world is not wholly a matter of inference. Some things we know without asking the opinion of a scientist, e.g. whether you are hot or cold, recognition of a face. Data are those matters of which we are aware without inference. They include our sensations. Common sense sees reason to attribute many of our sensations to causes outside our own bodies. Where it goes wrong is in supposing that inanimate objects resemble, in their intrinsic qualities, the perceptions which they cause.

His theory is that there is space in the world of perceptions and there is space in physics. . . . He believes that space‑order in the physical world is bound up with causation, and this, in turn, with the irreversibility of physical processes, unlike classical physics where everything was reversible. E.G. radioactive atoms disintegrate and do not put themselves back together again.

His point to which other philosophers react in shock, is that people’s thoughts are in their heads. . . . The brain consists of thoughts. People say “Nonsense, when I look at a brain through a microscope I see not thoughts, but matter.” We can witness or observe what goes on in our heads, and we cannot witness or observe anything else.

” It is not the function of philosophy ‑ so they maintain – to teach something that uneducated people do not know; on the contrary, its function is to teach superior persons that they are not as superior as they thought they were, and those who are REALLY superior can show their skill by making sense of common sense. Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Love and knowledge and delight in beauty are not negations; they are enough to fill the lives of the great men that have ever lived.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Philosophy is in the field of speculation where one goes out to look for oneself what the world is, and what it is about. It asks the following questions:]

1. . . . [W]hat is the meaning of life, if indeed it have any at all. Has the world a purpose, does the unfolding of history lead somewhere, or are these senseless questions?

2. There there are problems such as whether nature really is ruled by laws, or whether we merely think this is so because we we like to see things in some order. Again, there is the general query whether the world is divided into two disparate parts, mind and matter, and, if so, how they hang together.

3. And what are we to say of man? Is he a speck of dust crawling helplessly on a small and unimportant planet, as the astronomers see it? Or is he, as the chemist might hold, a heap of chemicals put together in some cunning way? Or finally, is a man what he appears to Hamlet, noble in reason, infinite in faculty? Is man, perhaps, all of these at once?

4. Along with this are the ethical questions about good and evil. Is there a way of life that is good, and another that is bad, or is it indifferent how we live?

The more prudes restrict the permissible degree of sexual appeal, the less is required to make such an appeal effective. Nine‑tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cosy homelike comfort of a fenced‑in dogmatic creed? . . . It is not the happiness of the individual convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind. If you genuinely desire the happiness of mankind, certain forms of ignoble personal happiness are not open to you. If your child is ill, and you are a conscientious parent, you accept medical diagnosis, however doubtful and discouraging; if you accept the cheerful opinion of a quack and your child consequently dies, you are not excused by the pleasantness of belief in the quack while it lasted.  I am constantly asked: What can you, with your cold rationalism, offer to the seeker after salvation that is comparable to the cosy homelike comfort of a fenced‑in dogmatic creed? . . . It is not the happiness of the individual convert that concerns me; it is the happiness of mankind. If you genuinely desire the happiness of mankind, certain forms of ignoble personal happiness are not open to you. If your child is ill, and you are a conscientious parent, you accept medical diagnosis, however doubtful and discouraging; if you accept the cheerful opinion of a quack and your child consequently dies, you are not excused by the pleasantness of belief in the quack while it lasted.

Bertrand Russell’s Best, edited by Robert E. Egner

Perhaps the following better represents Russell in the context of the day and his contemporaries is the in the book, Best of Playboy Interviews:

Schweitzer was asked what he had yet to do. He responded that he had to continue building his hospital.

Apart from that, there is the bomb. I want, before I die, to see all atomic weapons banned, no matter who makes them or what special name they give them. This is the only possible hope for mankind if we are to avoid self‑destruction. Already I have fought against this insanity for several years with my friend Bertrand Russell and others. . . . It is not just a hope: we must achieve it. Do you want mankind to be obliterated?

Bertrand Russell responded:

I still feel that the human race may well be extinct before the end of the present century. [He gave 3:1 odds against survival] . . . For every day we continue to live, remain able to act, we must be profoundly grateful. . . . If mankind is to survive at all, intelligent people must learn to think and act in a less provocative manner than in former times. . . . If nuclear bases are intolerable in Cuba, then they are intolerable anywhere in the world.

Best of Playboy Interviews, March 1963

 

Links to my site:

Introduction https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/introduction/

Graphic Arts https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/i-graphic-arts/

Architecture https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/ii-church-architecture-and-its-incorporation-of-art/

Music https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iii-music/

Theology https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/2013/07/14/iv-theology/

Home Page https://bibleartists.wordpress.com/