Confessions of a former Environmentalist prt 2

Roughly How my Conversion Took Place

The doctor adjusted his spectacles in the dimly lit room and readied his pen with a click. He spoke with an air of professional psychological disinterestedness to the burlap-clad man with the bushy unkempt beard. "Tell me now, from your earliest memory -how did you come to love the trees?"


The slumping, skinny, tofu-fed man scratched an undeodorized armpit. "Man, my earliest memory? Dude, my memory is shot, man. But okay. As near as I can tell, it all began back in...lessee...it was like, two years before woodstock...yeah, ‘92! With "Fern Gully". I mean, I was just a normal boy, right. I’d put my papers and bottles in the big blue bins like every other kid, right? But after seeing that movie, it like...blew my mind!"

"Would you describe viewing that movie as a watershed experience?"

Sitting up, the silage-smelling man spoke urgently: "Watershed? Dude, it was like Christmas on speed! Trees had feelings, and we were blind, man! We couldn’t feel what we were doing to the planet! We would torture little animals, and were totally out of touch with nature’s harmonies."
"So you felt something new that you hadn’t before?"

"Well, it was more like injecting some feelings into what I was already doing. All of a sudden, it was really really really important to recycle. I remember going to school the next day and all I could think of was the importance of telling my friends to see this movie. And it wasn’t just ‘cuz it was a good movie, but because it was important."

There was an entranced look in the hippy’s eyes as he sought to make eye contact with the psychologist. "Impoooortant, man."

Calmly raising his hand, the bespactacled professional spoke reassuringly: "Please remain seated. Excuse me for a moment." The psychologist reached over to his desk and pulled out a box of cubans. He lit one up and resumed the analysis. "Tell me more about this feeling. Why was it so important?"

The puzzled hippy scratched his head. "I guess it was guilt. And fear. And anger. I mean, all of those come out, right? Fear was probably the biggest: seeing that big smog monster was scary man, especially ‘cuz we made him, and fed him! Feeding him was the guilt part, and the fear was fear that we would destroy the world."

"I see. And was that it, the whole environmentalist thing begins and ends with a movie you saw 2 decades ago?"

"No way man, like I said, that was just the beginning of like, seeing the environment as something impooortant. After that, it just became second-nature to like, recycle and stuff. Every bottle, every piece of paper was impoooooortant. But, I found that like, no matter how much I recycled, the man wasn’t going away!"

"The man?"

"Yeah, the man!" The hippy steeled his eyes and clenched his smoke-stained fingers into noodly fists. "The corporations!"

The psychologist paused to take a liberal puff of his cigar. "Would you say that ‘the corporations’ were the primary target of your frustrations?"

"Oh, totally! And not only that, I found that other people shared my frustrations, and that I wasn’t like, all alone! I found that like, I could totally get people goin’ just by the way I could say the word. Like, I figured out that you can spit three times when you say it: ChorPoraTIon! It’s fun man, you should try it."

*puff* "No thank you. Please continue."

"So now it was like, words man, I found there was a whole string of words and ideas that fit together: corporations, colonialism, industrialisation, consumerism, inequality, exploitation, it all made sense! And you could like, string this litany together and sound smart. I mean, I was hardly passing school, but suddenly people thought I knew stuff, and I think I thought I knew stuff too. And like, my conscience was on fire! Every time I stuck a piece of paper in those blue bins, it was like, I was changing the world!"

"So it felt good to recycle?"

"Good? Oh man, it was an addiction, but like, a good one. ‘Cuz it would confirm that I was right! I was standin’ up to the man, and he was goin’ down! Him and his exploitative, colonialist, economic empire of corporate greed!"

*puff puff*

"And then I had this job at this electronics store, a few years back right? And they didn’t have any blue bins! I was confused. After all we fought for, here was the man still makin’ a mess of things. I didn’t know what to do without those blue bins...those beautiful blue bins. It made me mad, man! Every day at closing I could fill up two garbage bags with cans and bottles that were just goin’ to the landfill. The landfill, man, do you want to live in a landfill? ‘Cuz if no one stops the man, that’s where we’ll be living soon!"

*puff puff* "It sounds like you have everything figured out. What brings you in here?"

A sober mood crept over the hippy’s shoulders. "Well...I’ve got my doubts now. I mean, when you’re just a little boy, watchin’ movies about fairies and trees, and you just wanna do the right thing and save the planet, you just trust what you hear, right?"

"As it ought to be."

"But then, I took this political philosophy course right? And there I had to read abit of that bushy bearded guy...what was his name? Minx? And that Smith guy, and some economics and zero sum games..."

"You had never read these before?"

"Are you kidding man? Economics? That was the man’s stuff! You couldn’t trust it! It was tainted with exploitative free trade propaganda that keeps quiet the 99%!"

*puff puff* "Hmmm...’trust’, interesting choice of words there." The psychologist got up from his chair and slowly paced the room, listening intently as his patient continued to speak.

"Oh man, trust, that’s just it, trust man. I mean, once I started seeing things from another person’s point of view, that maybe the man isn’t who I thought he was, that maybe there’s another man out there whose out there tellin’ people lies about the trees! So who do I trust? At first I was taught that I couldn’t trust the man, but then it turns out, it was another man who was tellin’ me not to trust the man, so now I don’t know who the real man is anymore, and I think the worst of the two might be the one who chained my conscience so tightly to those little blue bins..."

*PUFF* "Well, our time’s up for today. I think we’ve made some significant progress." With that, he opened the blinds in the dimly-lit office.

Confessions of a Former Environmentalist

After a long hiatus involving a move and a new job, I think I can finally squeak some spare time out to do some more blogging. I’ve been meaning to hack out some thoughts on environmentalism for awhile now, so here goes: my eco-confessions.
Hold it! I feel the need for a lengthy preface, so let me first chat about a more general topic first: worldview.

Worldview is something of an obsession of mine. I’m regularly distracted from my immediate surroundings by mental excursions into idea-land. Therein, I’m fascinated by ponderings about "How would I look at the world differently if I thought ___ idea was true?" In fact, these mental excursions are hazardous: many thanks to those who refuse to talk to me about these things while I’m driving, as I’ve had more than a few near misses on the road.



Ideas are consummingly important, and I think rightly so. Worldview is something we all have and need as human beings. Recently I finished reading a book on the natural history of human beings, and I found this one quote from the author (Ian Tattersall) extremely informative and enlightening:

"As far as we can tell from the archaeological record, the difference in cognitive capacity between Homo Sapiens and even its closest extinct relative is a huge one. And it is not just a difference of degree. It is a difference in kind. It is probably fair to say that even such evidently complex beings as chimpanzees do not in essence do much more than react fairly directly to stimuli that they receive from the outside world...Human beings, on the other hand, are symbolic creatures. Inside their heads they break down the outside world into a mass of mental symbols, then recombine those symbols to re-create that world. What they subsequently react to is often the mental construct, rather than the primary experiences themselves."

That mass of symbols is one’s worldview. A worldview is something we as humans can’t not have, it’s how our brains function, we need one in order to interact meaningfully with the world around us. I wanted to draw attention to this, because it greatly helps me understand why changing one’s opinion about something is such a frustrating and painful process. It also explains why it’s so difficult to convince another person to change their mind. It’s actually a really tall order to ask someone to change their worldview, because, depending what you’re arguing for, you’re expecting another person to re-arrange their head full of symbols that they’re using to live by.

Moreover, the act of changing one’s symbolic system in any major way is an excruciatingly painful and confusing experience. As I experience it, my mental world is a self-consciously Christian one: these concepts are crucial in my day-to-day working world, because the world as I know it is governed by God, and every decision and thought is accountable to the Lord Jesus Christ. There are things going on around me that I can’t see, for God created both a physical realm, and a spiritual one. I interact with both those worlds, and make decisions based on the assumption that these symbols are accurate. If you were to take my symbols away, I actually could not interact with the world in a way that was meaningful to me. I am used to seeing the world through a certain lens, and if that were taken away, I really couldn’t do anything. If I were to be persuaded that a major part of my worldview was false, I would be very confused about what I ought to do, what my moral obligations are, for these all depend on the world around me being ordered and coherent. If you change one concept that is obviously inconsistent with other symbols, I could be seriously thrown into confusion.

Another example I like to use to describe this re-symbolizing of the world that we humans practice is by comparing our mental worlds to a living room full of furniture. We are like a person who owns a room, and acquires furniture and appliances that enable him to live comfortably in that room. Changing your basic beliefs is like re-arranging your room. We move around our mental furniture. Now most of the time, we’re always in the process of re-arranging things. I think most ideas come to us like handy appliances: when we come across an idea that helps us understand things, it’s like we just acquired a new blender, and happily add this new appliance (knowledge) to our mental living space.

Now, sometimes new ideas are imposed upon us. We thought we were all comfy, but suddenly someone comes in and kicks over the centerpiece of your room, or smashes a table or a major appliance like your fridge. This causes great discomfort and anxiety: the room that you were used to is no longer liveable or comfortable, and it takes a lot of work to re-arrange your room in the light of the loss of your refrigerator.

Now I write all this as a preface to a bunch of posts about the environment because the experience of "converting" away from environmentalism was very much like being violently thrown out of a favorite lazyboy chair. Not only was my room disrupted, but I could not simply set my living room upright and resume sitting in it: the chair was trashed and no good; I couldn’t sit in it even if I wanted to, but the rubble still cluttered my mental living space. I suddenly had no place to sit, and the room was almost too messy to move around in. The busted chair didn’t just disappear, it left a mess.

The importance of this worldview preface is actually to apologize. I’ve had a few years to fix up my room, and now that it’s a little cleaner, I can see in retrospect what I was going through at the time. When you can’t sit down, you get tired, frustrated, and grumpy. Changing my long-held views on the environment was positively exasperating, and I wish I had dealt with the process better than getting angry. My sincere apologies to those who had the unpleasant experience of talking (or writing) to me about the topic of the environment while I was in the business of cleaning up my headspace due to the unexpected destruction of the environmentalist chair I had sat in since childhood.

Hair Metal and the Lord

For awhile now, I have tried to put my finger on something that has been nagging at me: what is it that makes Christian music sound so different? That is, when I surf through the radio, there’s a certain something that identifies Christian music as such. Even my 3-year old notices it: while surfing, whenever I hit the Christian station, regardless if any words are being sung, my little munchkin will pipe up; “That song’s about Jesus!”

Today it occurred to me that Christian music (at least the pop Christian music played on the radio) makes a gratuitous use of reverb, echo, and delay effects that you don’t see quite as much in any other genre. There are some bands that use a lot of electronic effects; U2 is well known for the Edge’s trademarked delay sounds. But it doesn’t seem to matter which Christian band it is, they all amp up the delay. Likewise, the drums aren’t your snappy jazz kits, the Christian drum kit sounds big and powerful. Christian vocalists also seem to have more reverb and vocal effects added to their sound, and the bass frequently has a powerful boom to it, rather than the sharp pop-bass you find in a lot of contemporary rock.

There is one other genre that regularly makes use of such tones, and that is 80's hair metal. What’s with that? What’s the connection between 80's metal and Christian rock?

I think the combination of boom tone bass, echoed big drums, guitars with delay, echo and reverb maxed out and a concert-hall echo on the vocalist gives Christian music an “epic” tone. It’s a fitting style of music for the content Christians sing about: the larger-than-life God, the transcendent, the macro themes that make the finite world seem so small. In light of God, the world is just one big, empty canyon that His voice fills up with ease. Can you properly communicate the majesty and grandeur of God with a banjo? Wouldn’t the tone do a disservice to the theme?

You see a similar tone in a lot of Enya’s music, where the tones and instrumentation she uses has that “Spiritually transcendent” feel to it where the echoes and the reverb and delays take the listener to the past, and the earlier notes and words continue to echo in the background as the continues. Like Christian music, the tone fits the themes of the words.

The big joke of course, is 80's hair metal. If the above rationale about musical sound and content has a grain of truth to it, what on earth led rock stars to connect such tones to their lyrical content? Consider Def Leppard, a good example of the quintessential “epic” tone of 80's metal. Rather than using epic tones to fittingly describe epic themes, they use epic tones to describe their epic sex lives, their epic romantic flings, and their own epic rock.

While I generally find fault with the proverb “the medium is the message”, I have to concede there is a grain of truth there. If art is just the mirror of the soul, 80's hair metal might rightly be described as the purest expression of Freudian humanist philosophy: sex as that great transcendent beginning and end of all things.

Philosophically, Freud is depressing. Musically, I think he's hilarious.

Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 5 of 5

My last post was largely concerned with defining and defending the sovereignty of God in the midst of evil. God is directing, working with, and using the earthquake as a means towards a good end that only He fully knows and understands. How does this answer the problem of evil? I have offered no complex argument, it is basically: “God is sovereign.” Why do I think this is a good answer? For starters, it places God where he belongs: not as the conclusion of a philosophical curiosity, but as the One who makes inquiry possible, and provides the events that cause us to seek Him:

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28)

Secondly, it challenges the questioner’s question, which I think is crucial. Just as all answers come from a certain worldview and motives, so all questions come from a certain worldview and motives. It gives the questioner the response God gave to Job:

“Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?
Let him who accuses God answer him!”
“Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

“Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself?
Do you have an arm like God’s,
and can your voice thunder like his?
Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,
and clothe yourself in honor and majesty.”

(Job 40:2-10)

Letting God be God

This answer preserves the Godness of God. Rather than suggesting we know the why, what, how, and when of God’s own inner counsel, we freely say that God’s ways are inscrutable, and this is what we ought to expect: if our answers did away with all mysteries of the Divine, we would essentially have proven secular humanism, not Christianity. If God could be explained, He would not be Higher than us, he would be merely “man writ large”.

There is a bad need to correct many contemporary well-meaning apologists who trot out a diminished deity as a response to the problem of evil. One way or another, their response amounts to this: “What’s that Mr. Skeptic? The idea of God being Sovereign offends your human autonomy? No problem, I have just the product for your skeptical woes in my apologist’s handbag! Introducing: Christianity! Now with 25% less Deity!”

The problem of evil and suffering brings us face to face with what we are commanded to surrender: our own personal claim to Lordship. God directs all events, and He is under no obligation to anyone to justify His actions or to explain what He is doing, or how He does it, or where evil came from. He is the Holy One, the Almighty, and we are His subjects under His judgment, not the other way around. To insist that God submit to our queries reverses the order of Creator-creature, as if God was bound to justify himself to His subjects.

The Evil Practice of Justifying Evil

This answer doesn’t pretend to justify or explain away the weight we feel in the face of evil and suffering. It seems to me that if you come up with an answer that justifies the existence of evil, you have failed to understand evil. Look closely at the suffering of the Japanese, and can you, O Philosopher, come up with any possible answer that makes this right, just, or fair? If you can, you have just justified evil. You have established that evil can be right and warrantable.

Any attempt to say that “Evil happens because of ___” is really saying that evil can be tamed by reason, and that its presence in the world may be rationally justified. This does great dishonor to victims of suffering, for it in turn demands that we argue that “the ends justify the means”. As if there is any end which could justify the existence of suffering. The answer I have given, which is basically the bible’s answer, is to refuse to justify evil. The demands of the rationalist cannot be met without a gross misperception about how evil evil really is.

By contrast, the bible never pursues this route, recognizing that evil is unjustifiable: that is what makes it evil. It cannot fit into rational categories. By its very nature, evil is defined in terms of what it isn’t, but it’s impossible to conceive of what evil is. Goodness is law, order and logic. Evil is lawlessness, disorder, unreasonable. So I think that beyond God’s own inscrutable purposes, it seems that evil itself is inscrutable as a subject. To try to bring the weapon of reason to bear against evil is like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight thinking you have the upper hand. It is hopeless to try and answer evil. What is by nature irrational cannot respond to rationality.

Conclusion

Evil and suffering is altogether an inscrutable menace. It is obviously in some sense a product of freedom, but it’s clear as day that freedom does not justify the existence of evil. (See part 2 in this series of posts) God knows why He allows it, and He merely asks that we trust He will do away with it on a set day that He has appointed. He defeated it on the cross, and will bring that initial victory over death and evil to a final conclusion. Ironically, though we have no idea how, Japan’s suffering will in some way serve the good purposes of God in bringing about the destruction of evil. For now, we must be content to let God be God, and leave the foe of death, destruction, suffering, and all other evils in the hands of the only one with the power to bring it to an end. In the meantime, we are commanded to let our faith work itself out in love, compassion, hope and patience.

Lastly, we must never lose sight of Jesus Christ, the Conquering One crowned with Sovereignty. As a foreshadowing of the fullness of God’s promise, evil has been utterly defeated and humiliated at the cross. Ultimately, Jesus himself is the response to evil, for in Him, suffering has been overcome, and death has been defeated.

Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 4 of 5

This series has been quite awhile in between posts, so let me just summarize what I’ve said thus far.

First off, I have discussed atheism’s self-imposed joke of criticising Christianity for “the problem of evil” meanwhile openly asserting good and evil are not objective categories.

From there I addressed 3 Christian answers that aren’t very good: the “It’s just natural law!” plea, the “free will justifies evil” response, and the hypocritical “they’re sinners!” response. I hope to wrap this up in two more posts by sketching out what I think is a better answer intellectually and practically.

Of course, by “better”, there’s probably more hubris in that phrase than I’d like to convey: I’m very much indebted to a number of other authors on this topic, and I have by no means finished studying it. I’m sure many, if not most people, will find my answer to the problem of evil to be a terrible one. The answer I give will also raise more questions for my reader than I will probably address here, and so comments and criticisms are most welcome as always.

The Sovereignty of God

When answering the problem of evil, I find the temptation to obfuscate God’s power and glory is great. Whether coming from a strict intellectual question, or a hurting person, the ominous presence of God seems to be what causes the problem of evil to be so sharp, and so many answers relieve this problem by avoiding or minimizing the sovereignty of God. By contrast, I think we must assert that God is fully sovereign and fully knows and intentionally purposes all events that occur. Deliberately drawing attention to the fullness of God’s power and glory I think is the first step that makes the difference between a good and bad answer to this difficulty.

Some Christians, (notably those in the Arminian tradition) openly disavow or silently avoid the traditional doctrine of God’s sovereignty. (Kenneth Grider’s systematic theology is a good example of Arminian silence on this.) The deep problem involved in denying the full sovereignty of God is this: if God is not in control of every unfortunate/evil event, then we introduce a large amount of meaninglessness into the universe. This is because God’s sovereignty is an either/or position. Either God is involved, or he isn’t. He is either hands-on and thoughts-on, or neither of these. There can be no “middle position” on this, because it’s a yes or no question. If our answer is “no”, we are basically saying that evil serves no purpose in God's mind. If God has no thoughts or actions towards evil events, who do we think we are to propose an answer?

Further, This also demolishes any pastoral concerns of comfort, for God himself is distant and uninvolved. To deny that God directs all things pushes a person to assert that God created a world in which meaningless and purposeless events occur regularly and often. If that is the general nature of the world God has created, there can be no basis to assert that God is ever involved in any particular occurrence of suffering. In turn, this has implications for the nearness and knowledge of God, and results in a deity that is either ignorant, or distant, or both.

Despite these problems, many Christians still reject the full sovereignty of God, claiming that rejection of God’s sovereignty avoids making God responsible for evil. Better to have a non-sovereign God they say, than a God who causes evil.

In reply, it must be asserted that God’s sovereignty is ultimately a mystery. We don’t know how He works, and so we cannot reasonably bring the accusation of malice to God just because God says he is Sovereignly directing all things for a purpose. God’s methods are inscrutable: “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8) Nevertheless, some things can be said about God’s sovereignty to rule out a deterministic take on God. I can’t put it better than it was put by Thomas Oden, so I’ll just cite how he put it:

“Classical Christian exegetes have thought of providence in three inter-related dimensions:
-The unceasing activity of the Creator by which in overflowing bounty and good will (Ps. 143:9; Matt 5:45ff.) God upholds creatures in time and space in an ordered existence. (Acts 17:28; Col 1:17; Heb 1:3)
-God cooperates with natural and secondary causes to employ fit means to good ends through orderly and intelligible processes of natural causes; (Prov 8:29-31; Westminster Conf. V.2 CC, p. 200); and
-God guides and governs all events and circumstances, even free, self-determining agents, overruling the regrettable consequences of freedom and directing everything toward its appropriate end for the glory of God. (Eph 1:9-12)” (Syst. Theo. Vol I, 270-71)

Upholding, guiding, cooperating are primary concepts to understanding God’s Sovereignty. But above all, in the midst of that we assert God’s goodness and love, without which all the upholding, guiding and cooperating would mean nothing.

There is meaning and purpose in suffering. God is constantly near and in control, and no amount of evil ever diminishes that. In fact, the assumption of God’s sovereignty is necessary to give a meaningful answer, because it is a necessary assumption behind the love of God. God is near, He is in control, and He cares. If He is not in control, it is impossible to assert that God cares, or that a disaster like Japan’s earthquake has any meaning or purpose in God’s free and sovereign will.

That Inevitable Evil: Superficial Politics

Allright, let’s face it, elections are that aggravating time of year where we all look down our noses at each other’s grossly incorrect opinions and lament the shallowness of the sloganeering and vacuous mud-slinging that goes on between our country’s elite. Is this what the best and brightest do? Elections time to me always has a fog of hopelessness in the air: strategic voting, angry arguments, pushy politico-evangelists, shallow mail-outs and demonizations of “the other guy”.

I’ve never liked the idea of not voting, especially the so-called conscientious objector who fancies himself too profound of a thinker to get involved in this barbaric box-ticking and shouting matches. Not that I’m without empathy: it is shallow, it is depressing.

However, it has to be. There are two sides to political opinions: the present and the future. The future is what we hope for, the country we’d like to see, the personal values we vote from believing they would make the world a better place to live in. However, we can’t stop the machine of government until that happens. We are here now, and we must govern now. So until the ideal comes, part of working for an ideal will involve a realistic assessment of the present, and working with the tools of the present.

I would like to assume that the people behind the shouting and shallow mail-outs and commercials are deeper than the mail-outs make them look. As with almost everything, political mail-outs is an industry: there are people who specialize in slogan-writing and pejorative mail-outs and commercials. It’s a business, these political businesses run on certain principles.

Very little of a campaign is directed towards rational arguing, and politicians know this. A few quotes from workers in the field taken from the book “Culture Wars” by JD Hunter: “The purpose of the (political) letter is ‘not to convince the reader of anything [but to] motivate the person to send some money.” And “The rule of thumb in the industry is to keep writing to about the sixth- to eigth grade level.” “Direct mail is a medium of passion, and the more extreme the appeal, the more successful the mail campaign will probably be. One mailing consultant simply put it: ‘You’ve got to have a devil. If you don’t have a devil, you’re in trouble.’” Another remarked: “Find...a nasty enemy. Tell people they’re threatened in some way...it’s a cheap trick, but it’s the simplest.” Another Gem from Hunter’s book; “Political scientist Larry Sabato reports that direct mailers apply the ‘magic word test’ to their letters. ‘You add up the number of words under five letters in your copy, and if you’re anywhere under 65 to 70 percent, you have problems.’” In a nutshell, politics are institutionalized superficiality, and those are the tools politicians must work with, or forfeit the chance at power.

The same laws of superficiality apply to Parliament: all that “debate” is largely for the camera. Most of the real task of governing is done behind the scenes as they make deals and manoeuvres and compromises to get what they want and hopefully keep the job of governing under way.

For similar reasons, local MP’s are largely parrots for the party line: this is why every party has a member designated as “the whip”; responsible for in-party discipline. In other words, making sure all the soldiers are following orders and towing the line. As I understand it, Canadian politics aren’t so much about personality as they are about party, and local MP’s have to get used to being a cog in the party’s machine.

In a nutshell, there’s much to complain about the system itself. That’s no secret. But complaints about the structure is no reason not to vote, because the structure of Canadian government isn’t strictly the result of shallow minds and poor design. I don’t know everything that put it together, but one of the main reasons for the current state of affairs is the development of information technology. Televised parliament, mass-mail-outs, and newspapers. Information technology has popularized the process of governing to a whole new level. Polarized politics and articles are nothing new, but the extent of the superficiality is. Politics are superficial because the primary mediums of communication in our society, Television and Newspapers aren’t capable of carrying deep argument and detailed information. Only books, essays, lengthy conversations, lectures, and well-moderated debates can do that.

I would love to see a Canada that has a better educated electorate. (Then maybe the NDP would go away.) That requires work though, and before we complain about the process of elections, we ought to take stock of how informed our own political views are. If you had to publicly defend them, would your opinions survive any informed scrutiny? I know many of mine wouldn’t.

Conclusion: Read. Read your history, your economics, your political philosophy, and know where you stand with ethics on the various issues. Form your opinions on good arguments and evidence (and learn how to evaluate good arguments and interpret evidence!) before an election comes along. Know where the parties stand philosophically and practically. Even if “being a dutiful informed citizen” doesn’t turn your crank, do it because it helps make sense of the mud-slinging, and makes election time a little more bearable for the soul.

Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 3 of 5

There’s one last “Christian answer” that I almost forgot. I had hoped this answer had been sufficiently buried into the dustbin of stupidity, but I was told this answer was roughly given in a local church a week or so ago. That is; “They suffer because they’re sinners!”

Ugh. This barely deserves the dignity of a response, but because it’s so common, it seems one of those things that needs a constant reminder.

In one sense, this response is true: of course they suffer because they’re sinners, but the problem here is this whole “they”. I think it was it was well put by one Evangelical author who said “The problem with the Christian right is they think sin is everywhere but in them.” This answer’s main problem is both intellectual and moral: it reveals one’s hypocritical thinking patterns.

Perhaps this response would be better if it was rephrased to this; “Oh Lord, why weren’t we struck with an earthquake?”

Again, the book of Job deals with this answer ad nauseum, and Jesus needed to rebuke this opinion in his own circle of disciples; “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No I tell you; but unless you repent, you will likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will likewise perish.” (Lk 13:2-5)

Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 2

This post is a continuation of my last one. This part discusses Christian responses to Japan's earthquake that I think we as Christians shouldn't give.

Free Will

Another influential response Christians have often given is the free-will argument. This argument has a certain dignity in the Christian tradition because of its long history, going back to the church fathers. Many people find this argument persuasive, and even philosophers who aren’t Christians, like Dr. Jitendra Mohanty (an atheist hindu philosopher) admits it’s a good answer to the problem.

Though this argument has a long history and many find it appealing, it also has a long line of Christian critics throughout history, starting with no less an authority than Augustine of Hippo. The Reformers, especially Martin Luther (an Augustinian monk) and John Calvin, were especially vitriolic against this argument. In a way, the Christian tradition is divided along Augustinian and non-Augustianian lines so there isn’t a true consensus on the issue. At the moment, the free will argument is enjoying considerable popularity. Nevertheless, I think it has some serious problems, and in my mind stands as an inadequate answer to the problem of evil and suffering.

The free will argument has several nuances, but if I were to apply it to the Japanese earthquake, it would go something like this:

Stating the Free Will Argument

In order to prevent the earthquake catastrophe God would have to either a) change the laws of plate techtonics so that they never occur wherever humans are, or b) Prevent humans from setting up shop on fault lines. Option a) would make geological science relative to the presence of humans, and would effectively undermine viewing the natural world as governed by predictable physical laws. In other words, for God to sustain a universe with no suffering, he would have to kiss science goodbye, resulting in a world without knowledge or predictability. Option b), preventing humans from setting up shop on fault lines, near volcanoes, etc, would involve God treating human beings as children and would effectively violate our freedom to act with meaningful choices. Since God has given us free will, he allows us to do what we want with it, including populate fault lines and do other foolish things and nasty stuff to one another.

The free will argument is also often buttressed with free will being necessary for virtue. God has given us the choice of doing good or evil: if he took away the freedom to choose act in evil ways or risky ways, that would rob the good choices we make of dignity. Virtue would be an automatic impulse, and we would be robots: without the choice to do wrong, the choice to do right loses its meaning. Love that is forced love is not truly love.

It’s kind of a thoughtful argument, isn’t it? Anyone who wants to object to the existence of evil, whether willful evil or natural evil like earthquake disasters, has answer the question: “What’s your alternative?” This inevitably leads us to conclude that for God to make an evil-free world, he would have to ditch this whole free will thing and natural law thing in some way, which we humans rather cherish. So take your pick: the present world with freedom, meaning, knowledge, and choice, or a coercive, neutral, irrational, compulsory world. Which would you pick? Anyways, the free will argument looks something like the above, although bear in mind the topic has been given much more ink and depth than how I have briefly put it.

Six Objections to the Free Will Argument

The first problem I see with the free will argument is that it argues that God in some way needs evil in order to have goodness in His world. I find this to be a pretty big challenge to the Christian concept of God, for God as creator of all things is independent of His creation. He is and has always been and always will be perfectly good and loving, and no creation of His can change that. But if the free will argument is valid, then God is not independent: He needs evil to exist, for without it, He could not create goodness.

Also, the bible says that God cannot do evil. (James 1:13) If evil is necessary for goodness, then how is God good? Does he need the devil in order for Him to be good? The free will argument argues that virtue and love are not genuine unless there is a genuine choice to the contrary. Consider what this implies for a God who is so good, choosing evil is not possible for Him. I find this argument leads to the conclusion that human love has more virtue than God’s, because unlike Him, we have the ability to choose evil.

Another objection to note is that this argument doesn’t show up in the bible anywhere. That itself doesn’t mean it’s wrong -lots of good and valid arguments about many things aren’t included in scripture. However, the bible does address this question, and it gives a consistent answer every time -never the free will argument.

I used to accept the free will argument, but it was always frustrating reading the book of Job which exhaustively discusses the problem of evil for 42 chapters, and never hints at anything remotely close to the free will argument. You can’t imagine the frustration involved in reading a holy book addressing this question all the time thinking my own answer to this question was better than God’s.

Job argues at one point; “The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He (God) covers the faces of its judges, if it is not He, (who gives the earth over to evil) then who is it?” (Job 9:24) Why didn’t Job’s friends here tell Job that God has too much respect for free will to prevent evil? Here Job says God is the cause of evil, -if it isn’t God, who is? The notion that God is not causing Job’s suffering does not even register as an option in the book of Job. Unlike many contemporary apologists, the biblical authors insisted that God must be involved in suffering every step of the way, and no human choice is ever done without the supervision of the divine hand. “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the Lord directs his steps.” (Prov 16:9)

There is also the charge of inconsistency in Christians who use the free will argument. Two of the most popular devotional verses in the bible are Matt 6:26 and Romans 8:28 .“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” and “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Christians regularly find comfort in these verses whenever they go through trials and sufferings. We affirm that God knows what’s going on even if we don’t, and nothing is happening by chance, but for a purpose. Essentially, it is a reminder that everything that goes on is in God’s mind and hand. This theme is repeated in almost every book of the bible. Yet if we then reply to the suffering of Japan with “it’s just natural laws and free will, don’t blame the Lawmaker for this.” What are we doing? We are drawing attention to natural laws, we’re looking at effects and causes and drawing attention away from the willful, intelligent presence of God. We are making two mistakes: a) we are contradicting our own practice of what we tell ourselves when we suffer and b) Denying that God was aware of and involved in the earthquake in the present tense. Was He too busy counting sparrows to notice the Nuclear reactor meltdown?

Lastly, to argue that God values free will so highly that he will not intervene to stop it, no matter what is being chosen, seems to be a pretty bad ethical misjudgment. Just like the eco-terrorists who value animals above humans, so the free will argument makes a glaring mistake in placing free will at the pinnacle of a value scale. For the free will argument to work, free will has to be elevated to such a high value that what is chosen becomes subservient to the act of choice itself.

Consider applying this to the Darfur genocides: God values the free will of the Sudanese government and the Jenjaweed so much that He doesn’t see fit to intervene to prevent them from dismembering men, women and children with machetes because that would violate free will. “Nope” says God, “Free will is too valuable, I cannot prevent this genocide. Choice itself is too precious.”

The struggle to understand evil is based on this moral truth we all intuitively know: evil choices aren’t worth a rat’s ass! The very worthlessness of evil actions is what goads us into asking how such worthless, wasteful, wicked events could possibly be permitted in the first place. The existence of suffering violates our sense of a proper priority of what is good and valuable.

It is the Christian’s most Spiritual prayer to say; “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” Not our will be done, but God’s. Our own will, so ignorant and prone to make stupid, impulsive and selfish choices is exactly what we pray to have God curb, transform, and remove. We don’t want sinful choices because they are rock-bottom on the value scale.

So in a nutshell, the following criticisms are raised by the Augustinian/Calvinist side of the Christian tradition:

1. The free will argument demands that God needs evil, making God dependent on His creation.
2. The free will argument makes (chosen) human virtue greater than God’s (eternal) virtue.
3. This argument is nowhere advanced by God, his prophets, or apostles.
4. Is inconsistent with Christian devotional practice.
5. It denies sufferers the comfort of God’s presence, and avoids talking about what we do believe: that God is sovereignly directing all events.
6. The Free Will argument elevates choice itself to be the greatest good.

For the above reasons, I found I had to abandon the use of the free will argument.

Some Theological Reflections on Japan’s Earthquake part 1

In the midst of Japan’s national catastrophe, I find myself pulled in two directions: to speak, or not to speak. On the one hand, Jesus taught us that the proper response to suffering is to "mourn with those who mourn”. Suffering demands the response of compassion. In the midst of that, speaking alone can do more harm than good. Stories abound of suffering people who have been brought theories as a remedy to their pain, rather than comfort. Therefore, I’m inclined to keep practical and quiet.

Yet, suffering does raise the question of theory, especially in regards to God: where is He in the midst of suffering? There is also a large crowd of atheists in the blogosphere who have been very quick to point out that this earthquake is a very strong argument against the existence of God. This is a theoretical question, and needs a theoretical response. In way, we can say that we are theoretical creatures: when suffering happens, we plug those events into our network of understanding of how the world works. We need theory to make sense of our lives, and so we theorize rather intuitively. It's part of being human.

As one final excuse to write about this when I kinda feel rude doing so, I would like to confess that though bringing a big plate of theology to the disaster scene offends some, it also comforts some. In fact, in my own darkest hours of suffering (when I almost lost my wife several years ago) I found theology one of the greatest comforts available. God was the solid rock in my own personal tsunami. He is real, and what we think about Him does have a significant bearing on how we react to our suffering.

Addressing the Atheist

I have no particular atheist in mind here, but “atheists in general” have been quick to jump on this quake as a salient demonstration of the non-existence of God. Atheists as people have every right to raise this excellent objection. However, they do not have the right to raise it as atheists anymore than a man has a right to raise the question; “How may I relieve my menstrual cramps?” Atheism simply lacks the proper equipment to make sense of the question. Unfortunately, they have raised the question of evil so often that it is no longer apparent just how ridiculous atheism looks doing so.

For a Christian, human beings are made in the image of God, and the suffering of God’s image-bearers is a palpably bad thing. However, humans only have this value placed on them because of their relationship to God. If you remove God from the picture, humans lose their value. It is no understatement to say that no philosophy or worldview in the world gives human beings the honor and dignity that the bible does, and this high view of humanity is what generates the problem of human suffering. This worldview provides ample equipment to legitimately criticize any mistreatment of humans, and provides the framework necessary to ask questions about the justness of their suffering. The question of suffering is thus an explicitly Christian (or Jewish) question, for it is a question that is raised by our view of the world.

By contrast, atheism has no such resources. A bunch of hairless hominids decided to build a country near a major geological fault line -end of story. Suffering cannot be related to the dignity of humans, for theoretically, they have none. Suffering is the activity of nerves that send unpleasant signals to our brains when tissue is damaged, or social relations are terminated by death and disaster.

Other than the new atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens who resolutely avoid this question, this is plainly acknowledged by more responsible atheists themselves: Kai Nielsen and Jonathan Shook are good examples of intellectually honest atheists who have freely confessed their lack of ability to explain the existence or nature of what we call “good and evil”. Notice it’s not just the inability to explain its existence, they don’t even know what it is! This is why atheism looks ridiculous asking this question; if you have no idea what the subject under discussion is, how do you figure you have anything coherent to say about it?

Let me be careful to note that I am addressing atheism as theory: as theory, the question is incoherent coming from within atheism. However, the question is valid for atheists as people, for they are made in the image of God. Though their worldview doesn’t equip them to make any rational sense of the dignity of humans, they nevertheless know it, for God has put that knowledge in us all. This simply needs to be pointed out to them, because most atheists have a high regard for evidence.

Here it can be said that the strength of a theory depends on its ability to account for a wide array of evidence: in science, the more a theory can regularly account for the data, the better the theory is. This criteria can likewise be applied to philosophy, and here atheism is the philosophical equivalent of flat-earth science. It is unable to account for a massive array of data. The entire field of ethics is, en masse, unexplained. People and society cannot function without ethics: we need ethics in the workplace, in politics, in our hearts. Atheism thus remains ignorant about matters that pertain to almost every area of life. How much less then, does it have anything to say about suffering caused by earthquakes.

Addressing the Christians

Christians I’m afraid, haven’t always done the best job of addressing this question either, but at least we can claim that is it our question, and we have a right to ask and answer it: we are consistent in doing so. Let’s look at some of those answers, because some of the answers often given could use some internal criticism.

The "Natural Law" Answer

One answer I heard a few nights ago on the radio came from the influential Christian apologists and former US politician, Chuck Colson. Basically, he gave a Christianized version of the atheist answer: “Rational image-bearers of God built a country on a faultline, and God has commanded us to take account of the order of creation and act accordingly: in this case, we took a calculated risk. Now that choice has resulted in catastrophe, and our ethical response is compassion.” (My rough paraphrase) Colson is right as far as pointing out that the Christian worldview provides the rational grounding for the existence of earthquakes, but this seems to me to be avoiding the question of why a good God permits such suffering.

Basically, the answer to suffering is this: “The earthquake was caused by natural laws that God designed.” Sure. But we’re not questioning physical laws, the question is: “God being all-powerful, why would he deliberately create a universe with suffering?” or “Why doesn’t he intervene to prevent those laws from causing suffering?” Colson’s answer points to the mechanism of suffering, but fails to even address the nature or purpose of suffering. It is a non-answer, being roughly the same answer a thoughtful atheist gives: "natural laws caused this, let's get on with practical matters." The only difference is that for the Christian, God made those laws, whereas for the atheist, the laws just exist.

I have more to say about Christian answers to the problem of evil but due to length, I will save it for the next post.

Mom and Pop, Canadian Wine, and Free Trade

I came across an interesting factoid the other day, and decided it was worth writing down.

"Back in 1988, as the United States and Canada were in the final stages of negotiating their bilateral free trade agreement (the predecessor of the current NAFTA), Canada's wine industry was adamantly opposed. Canadian winegrowers argued that the wine they grew in their country's cold climate could never compete with wine from warm and sunny California. But Prime minister Brian Mulroney (1984-93) went ahead and concluded the agreement. The winegrowers responded to this outcome by sending repeated study groups to France, and eventually came up with strains of grapes that were capable of producing high-quality wine while being hardy enough to withstand the Canadian cold. These are now used to make Icewine, a dessert wine that has established a certain presence for itself internationally. This is a good example of FTA-induced structural reform." (from "Japan Echo", 10, October 2009)

Since a good chunk of my readers are wine enthusiasts, I thought this tidbit of info was worth sharing, and brings home a political point I have been an advocate of for awhile that should strike near and dear to the hearts of wine-lovers.

I would like to look at this information in the light of the plea I have heard that takes numerous forms, but looks something like this: "Those big multi-nationals are closing down the local mom and pop stores!" or "Buy local!"

I dislike this line of thinking because it is missing out alot of very important information. Taking the above info from the Japan Echo magazine, there are characters and their relationships to one another that weave a story together:

The Government
Canadian wineries
Canadian wine consumers
US Wineries

If we only look at the Canadian wineries and portray them as hard-working local mom-and-pop good guys and portray the government and the giant California wine industry as some ruthless money-grubbing machine, you end up with a way of thinking that looks something like the NDP party. (that's bad btw)

Why exclude the plea of Canadian consumers? Until NAFTA came along, Canadian law demanded that Canadians put up with mediocre wine. Why are mom-and-pop winegrowers portrayed as the good guys here? To side strictly with mom and pop is to side against consumers, and to deprive the Canadian dinner table the opportunity of having a greater selection of wines with which to pair their bacon and maple syrup.

Or consider the case of US wineries: here California wineries have one of the best products in the world. They have something that people are willing to pay for. Why should the wineries be denied the opportunity of providing their quality goods only to their local region? If they can produce it, and people are willing to pay for it, how is it fair to deny everyone above the 45th parallel line the opportunity to drink their wine?

Essentially the predecessor to NAFTA told mom and pop to suck it up and get in the ring -quit subjecting Canadians to mediocre wine.

Did mom and pop end up KO'd on the mat? This story doesn't give the details, but I'm sure some of the wineries tanked. Is this sad? I think if one's compassion makes you cry for failed businesses we need to re-think how much our hearts are dominating clear thinking -is it right to weep over the loss of a winery that couldn't produce a wine good enough to keep them in business? Some mom and pop wineries manned up and faced the challenge and improved the Canadian wine scene for all. This is laudable: should we not applaud hard work and ingenuity? On the flip side, is it good to create an economic environment where these kinds of efforts are stifled through an enforced absence of serious competition?

I think the "protect mom and pop!" mentality is the result of bad information presented in a moral-high-ground package. There's something morally edifying about thinking you're "standing up for the little guy!" in your political opinions. It even seems like the good Christian thing to do, "defend the cause of the orphan and widow" and all that. However, I think this point of view basically views the player "government" in this drama something like an "economic mommy". Rather, Governments are to the economy what refs are to a boxing match: they set the rules and makes sure there's no foul play -but the fact is, it's a fight we're watching, not an episode of "leave it to Beaver". In a way, good economics has some parallels with good parenting: If mommy is confident that she's raised junior well, she won't be afraid of letting him compete with the big boys. Real confidence comes through real accomplishment. The Canadian wine industry now has real confidence because it actually accomplished something.

Fighting and competition is part of life in all aspects, from love, to war, to the job market, to economics, to spirituality. In the bible, competition is often presented as impetus for spiritual growth: "Outdo one another in showing honor" (Rom 12:10) The Corinthian churches were also exhorted to out-give the Macedonian churches as a matter of regional competitive generosity. (2 Cor 8) I simply mention this to demonstrate that competition isn't always bad: it's also a tool for good.

So kick back and enjoy a nice glass of wine to celebrate the sweet nectar of economic diversity, and don't feel bad that some businesses lose out. Business is a gamble, a chance at good income and a chance at financial loss. That's the way it ought to be.

Religion and Science Revisited

Well, it’s time for some fresh musings on this age-old issue. In fact, it’s more of a moldly issue but bear with me because some of this is new to me, and so it still captivates my interest like a freshly opened package of extra old premium cheddar.

I was introduced to the following proverb the other day: “The object you are inquiring about will tell something about how it is known.” In other words, if you are wanting to know how the bacterial flagellum of a protozoa works, don’t go looking in a math textbook or the bible. If you want to know what Brie Cheese tastes like, don’t ask your fingers. If you want to know the meaning of life, don’t expect a microscope to give you a zen moment.

Science is only equipped to answer certain kinds of questions, and it can only give us a certain kind of knowledge. Moreover, this kind of knowledge has certain qualities and attributes that are unique, and scientific knowledge also lacks other kinds of qualities. A simple example is taste: science can never tell us what something tastes like, or smells like. That’s a different kind of knowledge to which science cannot speak much on.

One of the qualities of scientific knowledge that has befuddled me for awhile is the nature of scientific certainty. When I read web pages of dogmatic evolutionists touting the radical certainty with which we know the theory of evolution to be true, I expect to find evidence that supports that.

I look at “evidence” through the lens of a theologian or philosopher. Though this is nothing new, it has dawned on me to what extent philosophic evidence has certain qualities that are never going to be found in scientific knowledge. Philosophy and science have different descriptions of “certainty”, and it seems to me that I have been looking for a philosophic-type of certainty as I evaluate the evidence of scientific arguments. I find myself an evolutionary skeptic -having looked at a lot of evidence but yet being unconvinced. In the scientific literature I have read, I have come across frustrated scientists who accuse those who do not accept their evidence as having no other argument other than “personal incredulity”. In other words, I am being dishonest with the evidence and remaining an evolutionary skeptic is not a fault of the evidence, but my own stubborness. I take such accusations seriously, as I have my own slough of “you’re not being honest with clear evidence” with other issues and people. For me not to take such claims of “personal incredulity” would by hypocritical on my part.

The primary difference of quality between scientific and philosophical certainty is that the kind of certainty I am used to is an absolute certainty. To prove something philosophically, I regard as absolutely certain propositions which are impossible to deny. The most obvious one is the law of non-contradiction: It is impossible for A and not-A to be true. A car cannot be both red and not-red.

Further truths I think fit under this umbrella of absolutely certain absolutes because they are impossible to deny. I would also put the existence of a sovereign God under this umbrella. The bible argues for many things, but it never once attempts to prove the existence of God. Why? I think part of the reason is because a sovereign God is a necessary presupposition for the process of asking metaphysical questions. That is, the very process of inquiry assumes a sovereign God, and even must assume a sovereign God.

This was illustrated to me very powerfully once when I heard Ravi Zacharias (one of my favorite apologists) answering questions from a roomful of university students. One student boldly stood up and insisted that life had no meaning. Ravi replied; “you don’t believe that.” The student insisted he did. Ravi insisted he didn’t. The student repeated that he did. Ravi once again denied it. This was all quite comical to watch, but Ravi was right, on this principle: a person who stands up and asserts the meaninglessness of life is asserting by his actions that he finds his statements meaningful. In fact, he finds them so meaningful he’s willing to publicly proclaim them and commend such a belief in the meaninglessness of life to his fellow human-beings. This is ridiculous -if a person truly, sincerely believed in the meaninglessness of life, why would he venture into the meaningless discussion about meaning?

To state that all of life is meaningless undermines the very inquiry into what life means. I think we can reason soundly that if we are going to ask such questions, we are automatically assuming that life is meaningful: that is why we ask! Take the meaningfulness of life out which we already intuitively know, and you undermine all metaphysical inquiry.

Meaningfulness requires a sovereign Deity, for the search for meaning is a search for an objective meaning, and God is the only objective candidate for a universal source of meaning. That is, we search for a meaning beyond the taste of good cheese. Not just meaning for me, but true, objective meaning we can see, feel, discuss, and reason about. Just as our tongues search for savory or sweet food to satisfy ourselves with, so our souls search for objective truth outside of ourselves. By definition, objective meaning doesn’t come from within. However, the hunger for meaning does come from within. The thing is, you can’t be hungry for something you already have. A hungry person is in need for something external: so it is with the soul.

Most of us believe there is a reason why things are the way they are. Things just don't appear and disappear, we must and do presuppose that the universe is a rational and ordered place. This is why we ask and inquire, and is so fundamental to us as human beings that we named ourselves after this quality: homo sapiens sapiens; "wise wise man". This belief in the rationality of the world extents to more than just physical nature. Emotions and morals are rational as well. (with the exception of evil of course, but that's a topic for a different post.) If meaning is there, it didn't just appear: it's there because someone put it there. Again, a sovereign creator-deity is the only real candidate as far as I can tell. The unfortunately popular naturalist alternative, that the universe popped into being for no reason at all rubs contrary to the belief in a rationally ordered universe. Nothingness, disorder, and meaninglessness gives birth to something, order, and meaning? Someone's living by faith here, and I don't think it's me for once. :)

Coming back to the topic of science; science does not attempt to go about forming its knowledge the philosophical way. It does not analyse presuppositions, it looks for patterns of behaviour that fit with a theory. As such, scientific knowledge never has the kind of certainty that philosophical and religious presuppositions do. Since this is what certainty usually means to me, (as these are the kinds of questions I usually study and think about), I find the piling up of scientific evidence to be exciting, but rarely satisfying. I don’t understand the pompous touting of certainty by scientists about the theory of evolution, because science never arrives at absolutes. Upon reflection, I realize it never can.

On the note of peacemaking between science and religion, I see this as a point of clarity. Religious believers may indeed be scientifically ignorant, but I don’t think the accusation of “personal incredulity” is entirely fair. I think believers come to the table of science looking for the kind of knowledge they are used to -religious knowledge, which has certain qualities of certainty, certain methods of acquiring knowledge that science cannot provide. In fact, it’s not supposed to, because it’s a different kind of knowledge.

How do scientists come up with scientific certainty? I must be honest that I am coming at this question as a theoretical thinker rather than one from personal experience as a scientist, so I trust what I am about to say is taken with a grain of salt -I’m not taking myself to be speaking any ground-shattering truth here.

A scientific theory like evolution can never arrive at absolute certainty. You can pile up all the evidence you like, you can never say the theory has been “proven” in a sense that will satisfy a philosophical criteria of certainty. This is because of a law of reason: finite creatures cannot arrive at general conclusions from particular inquiries. Unless one is omniscient, no amount of brown deer will ever infallibly prove the proposition “all deer are brown”. Certainty mounts as more brown deer are found and no exceptions are found, but it seems to me that it can never arrive at an absolute certainty, because that is just impossible to know.

Visiting again the problem of “personal incredulity”, scientific theories do increase in certainty but never cross the threshold: they are always open to modification and further evidence. To deny this would be to turn science into religion. (Which I think some scientists do at times) Religious beliefs don’t have that quality: once a presupposition is reached through clear reason, it sits there unmoveable. They’re not something we can prove: they are the beliefs that make the process of inquiry and proof possible, and so sit with a greater quality of certainty than any science can ever arrive at. It’s not because believers are cocky evidence-ignorers. It’s that our focus of knowledge, knowledge of God, has different qualities to it than scientific knowledge does, and we are used to thinking in such categories of knowledge. In other words, science expects us to think in a different way than we are used to thinking, and this expectation is often not clearly laid out. At least, this idea seems to make sense of a lot of the “religion vs science” mud-slinging that goes on: people think in different ways without understanding or respecting the other’s criteria for “evidence.”

A further question is raised, and here I think I do plead guilty to a form of “personal incredulity” as regards the theory of evolution. I am skeptic, but not without good reason, and that reason is as follows. I look at the history of science, and I see the impact Newton’s physics had on Christianity. While Newton reigned, a curious heresy followed the church at every step: Deism. Deism is the belief that God started the world and just let it run, but he is not personally involved anymore.

Nowadays, Deism is rare. One may wonder what circumstances would give rise to someone considering becoming a Deist. It simply isn’t on most people’s radar. Prior to Einstein’s revolution though, the world was seen as a closed, rigid law-driven system. Evidence was piling up and piling up to buttress Newton’s physics. The more laws we discovered, the less room there appeared to be for God to maneuver His unseen providence, other than as the Great Cosmic Instigator.

Newton’s physics, and the reaction of Deism from the quarters of philosophy, challenged the church for centuries until science itself overturned Newton’s physics. In retrospect, my “personal incredulity” is an informed gun-shyness. I look back at the many people who had their faith dashed on Newton’s principles. What kind of people were they? Some were quite intelligent, and doubtless felt obligated to affirm the latest scientific findings. It turns out their faith was shipwrecked on bad science. So how do we know what good science is that we might not follow in the folly of the Deists? The only way to know personally is by a lot of scientific study. But who has time for this? I don’t think such study is a waste of time by any means -the more scientifically educated people out there, the better the world would be. It does remain true though that many scientific theories are theories “under construction”, and evolution is one of those which has been modified numerous times in the past century. Is evidence in support of it mounting? I’m still in the process of verifying that, so I’ll refrain from touting my ignorance here. It does seem to remain true though that if an object of knowledge is “under construction” it is only by a stretch of reasoning that it is obligatory for us to live in unfinished buildings.