Thinking Christian Comments
Original URL: The Return of Christ Our Only Hope
I'm privileged here to have some readers who don't entirely agree, or even a little bit. I'm grateful that you're here, and that we can have dialogue here.You're welcome.
Thank you for hosting the discussion.
It's continually interesting and enjoyable--but it's not just a game, is it?Agreed.
We all think that ideas are important.
To me, philosophy is a search for consistency. I think we philosophers want to ensure that the left hand doesn't undo the work of the right. (When we actually get around to working, that is!)
I appreciate that, doctor(logic).
Whatever else we say about Russell (and I gather from Ray Monk's biography that he was a deeply flawed man) he was surely a great prose stylist.
A fine post, Tom. You show a bit of stylistic flair yourself!
No, it is not a game. But as I'm sure you'll agree, that does not mean that it cannot be approached with good humor and a relish for debate. I continue to post here because everyone is so very well-behaved and because there's often high-level debate.
Thanks, Tom!
And thank you, too, Franklin. And I agree we can feel free to enjoy the discussion!
Here's a hypothesis:
The determining consideration is not whether a philosophy or religion gives us hope or whether it makes us depressed, it's whether it's true or not. Everything else will fall into place after that. So we have to be careful that we don't get sucked into a belief system that is going to solve a problem given to us by a situation (at least a hypothetical one, if not a true one) that leaves us with emptiness.
But it's not even really emptiness if one is willing to fully embrace the body (in a way that Western culture rarely does) as opposed to the mind. The mind and intellect can tell us that we face emptiness, but the body will still insist that we live and procreate because evolution has instilled that primal force in us. Even if the universe is ultimately meaningless in an existential sense, we still have a drive to eat and even to love because it has been bred into us.
Hi, Paul.
Your first paragraph makes a great deal of sense. The second one seems rather bleak to me, though. It makes us creatures of mere drives, with no other meaning.
But it's not even really emptiness if one is willing to fully embrace the body (in a way that Western culture rarely does) as opposed to the mind.
I think I know what you're getting at here, but I think it's incomplete, if not completely wrong. Current Western culture venerates the mind (or the will), and denigrates the body. Because infants in the womb don't appear to have a mind or an independent will yet, they are deemed expendable. Terri Schiavo didn't appear to have a mind, so she was expendable. If you want to engage in all manner of degrading activities with your body, that's OK as long as that is what your autonomous will wants. Robert George and others have pointed this out - the modern man has a dualistic concept of man, where the body is a tool that can be used by the will in any way the will sees fit. We have lost the traditional concept of man as a unified whole of body, mind, and spirit. This concept is largely a Christian one, although I think the Greeks had similar ideas.
It makes us creatures of mere drives, with no other meaning.
But of course nobody, including Paul, actually lives this way. Everyone will come up with some reasons for what they do. They get angry when people violate moral rules. They try to convince people that their view of reality is the correct one. The "life is meaningless/evolution is the driving force of life" construct is just a convient tool to use in certain situations - it's not actually a sophisticated view of reality. It's a Potemkin village.
I'll try to add some more thoughts about this tonight.
Tom:
1. Why doesn't a drive have meaning, or, why do we need meaning other than that from drives?
2. What drives do we imagine we are limited to? Might we not have a drive to curiosity, love, etc.? One could hypothesize evolutionary benefits to such drives.
Mike, your post confuses me.
Current Western culture venerates the mind (or the will), and denigrates the body. Because infants in the womb don't appear to have a mind or an independent will yet, they are deemed expendable.I 'm specifically critiquing Tom's Christian-oriented blog post, as part of Western culture, here, so to bring in the de-humanization of fetuses goes contrary to my thrust.
My thrust (hypothesis) is that if we focus on (=accept) the body fully, which means that we interpret even culture and morality as being based in the body, through evolution, we can still account for a whole lot of human existence as well as see the bodily/evolutionary foundation for all or nearly all human behavior.
The problem I have is when the intellect and reason and raised to the level at which they *deny* our bodily and evolutionary origins. When you say that no one lives by their drives, you deny the existence of those drives. Surely we do live *partially* (I hope you agree here) by our drives: we work, partially, because we need have a drive to eat, and, within our culture, being able to work then implies a whole lot of behavior that is beyond a mere drive but is in service to that drive.
Perhaps I am viewing the glass as half-empty and you view it as half-full.
The comment on abortion aside (which was accurate as an illustration of a principle, even if a bit off the topic), Mike was right in saying that Christians have a unique position of honoring body, mind, and spirit. Christianity was born out of a Greek milieu where one or another of these was generally disregarded, i.e. by the Gnostics, the Epicureans, etc. The Christian view is that all was created by God: none of it is evil just by virtue of being matter, mind, or spirit, though much of it has been marred by sin.
There's a lot more to be said on that someday, because our culture typically falls off the fence one way or the other, denying body (New Age religion) or rationality (post-modernism), or saying that the material is all there is (scientism). That's over-simplified, and I don't know if Mike will want to run further with it.
Anyway, Paul, you might want to be aware of this when you equate accepting the body fully with the materialist evolutionary viewpoint. Christians accept the body fully in most senses of the term, as well as accepting mind, soul, and spirit. For example, the doctrine of resurrection says the eternal state of believers will be in physical bodies, not disembodied souls. Worship is a bodily act (Romans 12:1 says to offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God) as well as a spiritual one.
Back to your questions before that.
Why doesn't a drive have meaning, or, why do we need meaning other than that from drives?
I'm glad you asked this both ways, because I wouldn't suggest that no drive has meaning. I would say that if meaning is presumed to come entirely from drives, that is insufficient. It fails to differentiate us from animals, for one thing.
That's if we understand "drives" in the typical Freudian sense. Your second question hints at a more fundamental issue: what do we mean by this word "drive"? If we define it broadly enough to include a "drive" toward eternity, toward ultimate answers, toward a relationship with God, then I might not have as much of a quibble with it, although that would be a non-standard use of the term.
Paul,
The problem I have is when the intellect and reason and raised to the level at which they *deny* our bodily and evolutionary origins. When you say that no one lives by their drives, you deny the existence of those drives. Surely we do live *partially* (I hope you agree here) by our drives: we work, partially, because we need have a drive to eat, and, within our culture, being able to work then implies a whole lot of behavior that is beyond a mere drive but is in service to that drive.
I do agree that we live partially by our drives. I just took your paragraph,
But it's not even really emptiness if one is willing to fully embrace the body (in a way that Western culture rarely does) as opposed to the mind. The mind and intellect can tell us that we face emptiness, but the body will still insist that we live and procreate because evolution has instilled that primal force in us. Even if the universe is ultimately meaningless in an existential sense, we still have a drive to eat and even to love because it has been bred into us.
to be saying that we live only by our drives. Or, perhaps, that we should give the drives primacy over the intellect. I think it should be the other way around. We should recognize that we have strong drives that are part of being human, but that we need to control and direct those drives in appropriate ways. e.g. marriage vs. unfettered sex; enjoying good food vs. gluttony; having a strong work ethic vs. being a workaholic; etc.
Tom,
I'm glad you asked this both ways, because I wouldn't suggest that no drive has meaning. I would say that if meaning is presumed to come entirely from drives, that is insufficient. It fails to differentiate us from animals, for one thing.I have three comments on this.
First, we are differentiated us from other species because other species lack the spectrum of drives that we have.
Second, if we are just a different type of robot from a mouse, that doesn't automatically lead to the conclusion that we should value the lives of mice as highly as we value the lives of men. Materialism says nothing about what one "ought" to do.
Third, I understand that this issue of differentiation from animals is an emotional trigger ("if we can eat animals, then we can eat people, too" etc), but it has no bearing on the study of whether materialism provides explanations of life. Our subjective distaste for the conclusion is not an argument against the conclusion itself.
Hold the phone! I think you just said, "Materialism says nothing about what one 'ought' to do."
Before I run too far with this, I'll give you a chance to confirm what you may be saying here. You see, one thing several of us theists have been saying is that under materialism, there are effectively no "oughts," no sound basis for ethics. It sounds like you might agree.
We exchanged a comment once before about this "subjective distaste" thing. I agree that it is not a test of truth. (By the way, did any atheist feel a shudder of distaste when you read the word "sin" in my earlier post? The same principle applies there.)
Anyway, I would respond to your point here with a question: do you think there is any significant ontological difference between humans and animals? If not, why should we treat humans any differently than animals? And if so, on what basis does this difference exist? I think there is difficulty answering these from a materialist perspective, and living consistently with the answers one gives. (I consider the existential effect of a belief to be part of the relevant evidence concerning its truth. If you can't live it, it might just be wrong.)
Tom, I'm not too tied to the body issue I raised, and can accept your idea that Christianity unites mind, body and spirit for the time being.
I would say that if meaning is presumed to come entirely from drives, that is insufficient. It fails to differentiate us from animals, for one thing.Your problem being. . . .? : )
Seriously, I don't have a problem with that. We *are* animals, I believe. Distinctive ones, true, but nothing more.
You're right to start to dissect what we (I) mean by the word "drive." I meant it as behavior "driven" by materialism and the body. Cats are curious, and unless we believe they have souls, then we can be curious as well without requiring the soul. This is a partial answer to Mike's last post, too.
do you think there is any significant ontological difference between humans and animals? If not, why should we treat humans any differently than animals? And if so, on what basis does this difference exist?No significant ontological difference.
The reasons why we should are based on the reasons that we do. That is, we say we "should" for those things that we can't imagine (metaphorically) doing otherwise because of the way we *are.* I wouldn't eat a person (excepting situations like starving, the Donner party, etc.) because it's just not who I am, and who I am is a result of evolution and the society in which I was raised. You could not more get me to think eating a person was OK as you could get a plant that grew with a bent stalk, trying to reach the sunlight, to have a straight stalk, and for the same reasons: that is, that's how I grew up and and can only change that with great difficulty (more easily than a plant, for sure, but still . . .).
Before I run too far with this, I'll give you a chance to confirm what you may be saying here. You see, one thing several of us theists have been saying is that under materialism, there are effectively no "oughts," no sound basis for ethics. It sounds like you might agree.Materialism has no objective "oughts". At best it can explain why we hold that we ought to do something. However, this does not imply that there aren't subjective oughts (things we feel we ought to do), nor does it preclude reaching broad social consensus on what people ought to do.
This is just a minor terminological issue... I would not say that materialism has no sound basis for ethics because I think ethics is broadly like economics, i.e., a game theoretic study of different moralities and their consequences. Materialistic ethics is fine, but it cannot determine morality for you for the same reason that economics cannot objectively determine whether you should adopt communism or free markets. Economics can only tell you what the economic (and possibly the social) consequences of each policy will be. Economics cannot tell you whether you like those consequences.
do you think there is any significant ontological difference between humans and animals? If not, why should we treat humans any differently than animals? And if so, on what basis does this difference exist? I think there is difficulty answering these from a materialist perspective, and living consistently with the answers one gives.Will you trade me your Babe Ruth baseball card for my Orlando Hernández baseball card? They're both baseball cards. Why not value them all the same?
Rarity and social convention are just two of many reasons why we treat different ontologically similar things in different ways.
I consider the existential effect of a belief to be part of the relevant evidence concerning its truth. If you can't live it, it might just be wrong.I dare say that everyone is motivated by their subjective taste for the conclusion of a philosophical argument, but doesn't the search for truth require that we at least aspire to leave our tastes at the door?
Suppose Andy provides Bob with an argument for a claim. To what extent is Bob's distaste for the perceived consequences of Andy's claim a refutation of Andy's argument? I would have thought that Bob's distaste for the perceived consequences of Andy's claim would be motivation for refuting the argument, but not an actual refutation.
I consider the existential effect of a belief to be part of the relevant evidence concerning its truth. If you can't live it, it might just be wrong.Wow, how did I miss that one? I can't disagree more.
Now, strictly speaking, the last sentence quoted above is meaningless because it applies everywhere: sure, anything might be wrong, right, whatever. But, I take Tom's intent was more like "If you can't live it, it has a greater chance of being wrong," and I can't disagree more. Whether you can live with something has *nothing* to do with whether it is factual, actual, correct, real, etc. Those qualities are only dependent on correspondance with reality, as best as we can check.
By adopting that principle, Tom, you call into question anything you claim to be true, including the biggie. I'm glad this brings us back to the first paragraph of my 03.27.06 - 9:05 pm post, because I thought its implications were largely ignored. Belief in religion is in danger of being driven by how well its existential benefits fulfill us.
I dare say that everyone is motivated by their subjective taste for the conclusion of a philosophical argument, but doesn't the search for truth require that we at least aspire to leave our tastes at the door?
This is silly. In a previous thread, you specifically said that truth was subjective and relative, and simply a label defined by the individual, and here you are talking about it as something objective for us to find again. Honestly, can you put together two paragraphs that are logically consistent with each other?
Tom, I gotta say, along with Mike S now, you're a real trooper for hanging in there. You're dealing with people that have, at best, seen the incoherence of their own position multiple times but stuck with it anyway, and at worst, have repudiated logic altogether and retreated into extreme post-modernist absurdity when necessary to maintain their beliefs. Trying to argue reason with someone who's willing to simply kick reason to the curb when it becomes inconvenient for them is pointless, imo. There's absolutely no way to appeal to such a person on the basis of logic.
Deuce,
If you can't be bothered to read and comprehend my comments, then perhaps you should take your ad hominems elsewhere. You're not engaging in philosophical debate if you make no effort to understand what other people are saying. What you are engaged in is political debate.
Even subjective truth consists of facts asserted whether or not they comport with subjective taste.
Even subjective truth consists of facts asserted whether or not they comport with subjective taste.
I'll grant that maybe you find that to be subjectively true relative to you
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