Comments on Elizaphanian
of course, having a dialog with a person whose world view is not yours, will first depend on describing meanings to mutually used language, like god, atheist, tradition, idolatry, and epistemology. it may take a while to find common language, or agreed upon meanings, so both conversors would have to stay in the dialog for the long haul, and not ignore each other's requests for clarification of terms.
and if intelligent conversation, especially intelligent conversation with the hope of conversion, is the true desired outcome, describing an atheist's position, no matter how poorly thought out, as 'a juvenile clouding of the issues' is to raise roadblocks to mutual understanding.
peace--
scott
On the first point, the atheist's objection is the accusation of "mystification". So it needs to be buttressed by some understanding of why a believer takes mystery seriously, indeed, in why a believer might find that reason requires taking mystery seriously. At least that's how it worked in my case, when I realized that 'consciousness' is also a word that forever resists idolization (much as Pirsig discovered with 'value'). But see below.
On the second point, I would say there is some difficulty with the idea that fundamentalism is rare over time. I assume what you are getting at is that allegorical interpretations of Scripture have always been around. The problem is that before the Enlightenment, the literal interpretation was also the norm -- Augustine thought there were actual individuals named Adam and Eve, etc. So there needs to be some explanation of why they accepted that so readily but we don't. Barfield provides the explanation.
You will perhaps note that what I have said add up to criticisms of the believer's point of view. Too much of what I read by modern Christian thinkers looks to me to reflect a metaphysical view that amounts to "materialism plus God", and I think that without a much more radical change in metaphysics, the Christian argument is too readily dismissible.
you wouldn't be able to talk about 'truth' very easily, unless you agreed to qualifiers--theistic truth, and metaphysical truth, maybe. metaphysical truth is about evidence-based conclusions as to what is true (how things are, how things work, what really happened in history), and theological truth is based on other things.
you might get a taoist to agree with you on 'god-as-set-of-only-one-member' but you'd definitely have to define the characteristics of that one member--no atheist or taoist could agree that that member had the anthropomorphic characteristics that christians, have attributed to it, for example. sam, are you ready to think about your 'only god' without a personality? it's a basic tenent of your theological paradigm.
you might be able to talk about 'values,' but metaphysical truths don't have value per se. sun rise is sun rise, it has no intrinsic value. you might attribute value to it based on pleasure (i certainly do, as an god-agnostic). or you might attribute value to it based on survival/existence (without it, life on earth ends). besides pleasure and survival, what else defines value for you?
peace--
scott
Scott (g) - yes, 'juvenile' might have been intemperate. Apologies. I need to spend more time cultivating inner calm on the issue. As for your second comment I must disagree about the anthropomorphism, and also your characterisation of metaphysics/ metaphysical truth - in fact this is opening out into all sorts of directions. Much to pursue in later posts I think.
Scott (R) - as always, much sympathy with what you say. Agree with the first 2 points (the 2nd with a caveat or three) but in particular I like the characterisation of much contemporary Christianity as "materialism plus God" - and that that is inadequate.
Perhaps this blogger might be one you could talk to.
sam--
you said: 'i need to spend more time cultivating inner calm on this issue.' what is there about this issue that challenges your 'calm?' it's only philosophical discussion, after all. it's not really about praxis.
Hi Sam, Happy New Year n'all that.
I think you can do better than this ? There is a mutual respect through dialogue aspect naturally, but there is also a level of reasonableness in expectations.
The quote "the atheist hasn't even reached the 'theologically necessary levels of denial'" is setting a high bar of jargon / specialist knowledge. I find it hard to believe that that bar would be met by many theists (other than theologians) in our common Christian culture ?
Your suggestion that godliness is not a necessary condition for goodness might be a good starting point for the theist conditions for debate seems almost trivial ... but I guess you've laid down the challenge ... to come up with the atheist's equivalent - right ?
Ian
PS saw Charlie Wilson's War - loved it (Were you a West-Wing fan ?)
Scott/Sam, have you got a moment to say what explanation Barfield gives?
Davidov,
It's difficult to provide the explanation briefly, but I'll try. For the full explanation, and argumenatation, you'll want to read Barfield's Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.
Briefly, then, Barfield argues -- based on changes in language, art, and ideas -- that human consciousness has evolved in historical time, that the consciousness common in the pre-Axial Age (prior to c. 500 BCE) experienced nature differently from after, and that another major change happened c. 1500 CE). (Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness from the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind makes a similar argument about the earlier change, though Jaynes argues from a materialist perspective). Barfield calls the earlier stage "original participation" which he describes as perceiving "spirit" on "the other side" (from the observer) of the phenomena. Hence, the corresponding religion was shamanistic, or pagan, and it worked. For we moderns, on the other hand, this participation has become unconscious, which made the rise of Cartesian dualism, eventually descending into materialism, possible. The intervening period was one of gradually losing this sense of participation, but the metaphysics of the time remained "participatory", that is, it was a given that the phenomenal was a representation of the spiritual. Mystics are those who have glimpses of a further stage, "final participation", in which the spiritual aspect of nature is rediscovered, but now experienced as "within" us, rather than, as it was for original participation, "without". The key point is that, as consciousness changes, so does nature and our relationship with it. Though now we need two words, "breath" and "spirit", the Greeks just had one ("pneuma"), or we have two words "word" and "thing", biblical Hebrew had one ("daber"). It was not the case (as the modernist filter would have it), that those "primitive" Greeks used "pneuma" in a strictly metaphorical sense for "spirit", but that for the Greeks, they were perceived as the same, occurring both in nature (as breath) and inside us (as mentality). What must be understood, though, is that the flip side of this sundering is the rise of intellect, which requires a stronger distinction between "inside" and "outside", so that we can think about the phenomena, rather than, as in pre_Axial times, be thought by the phenomena.
For someone like Augustine, this sundering had started, but hadn't yet reached the absolute level that made the thinking of Descartes or Bacon possible. So, for Augustine, there was no intellectual difficulty in seeing the allegorical in the literal. Or to put it better, what we mean by "literal" was not what he would have meant by it. For a participatory metaphysics (which is pretty much all there was before nominalism arose in the 14th century), the phenomenal was a wrapping of the spiritual, where "the natural object is constituted between two intellects" (Aquinas). In other words, there wasn't a literal to which is added (by us) the allegorical or metaphorical, instead, the allegorical and metaphorical was the given (from "without") meaning of the literal.
It should be evident that materialist presuppositions make it pretty well impossible for one to take Barfield seriously, at least based on this precis of mine. Which is why one needs to read the book, in order to see how those presuppositions arose -- they are in fact the "Idolatry" of the book's subtitle.
Hi Scott R, I didn't recognise that summary of Saving the Appearances so I started a re-read last night - since Sam also recommende I look at his "idolatory" chapter. I recapped where I got stuck with Barfield before. Although I read and enjoyed the whole book, I could never get over his misunderstanding of the physics of sight and sound at the beginning - so whilst I'm happy to drop "materialist suppositions" and take Barfield seriously I found the point at which he distinguished between the sensing / experience and the representation / figuration made no sense to me.
As far as the direct physical sense components of an eye are concerned trees and rainbows are equally real - the real inorganic patterns of value (in the EM radiation) are sensed. Ditto the ear when hearing the song thrush ... the ear components respond to the real physical pressure variations which carry a real pattern of physical value that is directly physically related to the thrush that made it. Thrush is a name the mind attaches to the result, but the thrush sound pattern is real and physical.
There is no interpretation or illusion until the mental faculties are involved ... Since Barfield is not stupid I was left wondering what I'd missed, but his examples just undermined his arguments.
Hi Ian,
I'm not sure if you are misunderstanding Barfield, or I am misunderstanding you. Barfield would agree that the EM patterns of a rainbow are the same sort of thing as those of a tree. His point was that in both cases, something is going on in the nervous system to create the objects: rainbow and tree. "...since the 'particles' [of the tree] are no more like the the thing I call a tree than the raindrops are like the thing I call a rainbow, it follows, I think, that -- just as a rainbow is the outcome of the raindrops and my vision -- so, a tree is the outcome of the particles and my vision and my other sense-perceptions." [p. 16-17] So I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that he is stating that there is a difference physically (other than, obviously, the tree can be experienced with other senses as well).
I have a problem when you say "Thrush is a name the mind attaches to the result, but the thrush sound pattern is real and physical". I think you are saying something that Barfield would not, or at least would qualify. If by "physical" one means "leptons and quarks (etc.) and their interactions", then the sound pattern is not physical, since there is no sound unless there are senses (there is a pattern, but not a sound pattern), so at a minimum, sound is also biological. To then say that this does not move one out of the "physical" is to presuppose materialism, and a diehard reductionist materialist would say the same for "naming". I know you're not one, but where does one draw the line?
Hi Scott, I wrote about this before, blogged and posted on MD too ... with quotes of specific passages.
From memory - that specific P16/17 quote is more promising - he is accentuating the similarity there, but earlier he is making distinctions - the only thing wrong with that quote is to see the raindrops as rainbow particles analogous to the atoms of the tree. Vision-wise there is no difference between a tree and a rainbow - though clearly a tree is tangible to other senses - as I said I wasn't sure whether his inaccurate science actually had any bearing on his main thesis.
By sound I mean pressure patterns in a fluid ... they are physical - well about such fundamental particles - at the level of atoms and molecules. Eardrums "sense" that kind of sound - the interpretation and naming is all in the mind (or extended nervous / and other systems generally).
Sorry, I'm speaking subjectively from memory - if I have a serious argument I'll need to dig out the specifics .... your response suggests my concerns don't affect Barfield's main thesis on idolatory - which is why it came up ?
Ooops - "well about "? I meant "well above" - at higher levels of aggrgation (and emergence).
Personally I think that to really apreciate what Owen Barfield had to say you have to consider his life long assoiciation with Anthroposophy which provided him with both the existential experience and the philosophical tools and concepts with which to formulate his ideas and explanation.
He was in no way an advocate of the usual abstract and abstracting left-brained "reason" that informed CS Lewis and his now doting fans. Especially those on the "right" side of the culture wars divide, to whom any kind of acknowledgement of Anthroposophy would be unthinkable or quite beyond the pale. An example of the flight to "unreason" that afflicts proponents of "new-age" religions and thinking.
In my opinion Rudolf Steiner was a polymath genius whose genius is only now beginning to be understood. He was also just as much a christian as C S Lewis---only different and more genuinely esoteric in his understanding of everything.
> "A usual response at this stage is to say 'well you and the theologians might believe that, but most Christians (Muslims/Jews) don't!' Well, that may or may not be true, but it's a juvenile clouding of the issues. If we're going to have a serious debate then we need to engage with the best exemplars of the tradition, the ones with most influence."
I’ll link that to something Paul Tillich wrote about Einstein’s views: “… to deal with theology in the same fairness which is demanded from everyone who deals, for instance, with physics - namely to attack the most advanced and not obsolete forms of a discipline.”
In physics there’s global consensus about what forms are obsolete. Is there comparable consensus on the best exemplars within a tradition? (Does that consensus include ordinary believers?)
> "It would be like saying that science is evil because of Mengele's experiments."
No.
handful of theologians vs. large number of believers
handful of mengeles vs. large number of scientists
It's to privilege the majority rather than the minority - it would be like saying science isn't evil because most scientists are not Mengeles.
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