A guest post by Peter Lupu with some comments in blue by Bill Vallicella.
[This essay is dedicated to the memory of Ann Freitag, my significant other, who passed away on April 17, 2010, 11:30am. She gave me two priceless gifts: Herself and a deep understanding that the love of life is not a mere gesture, but a way of loving every living being.]
The title of this essay expresses what it is like for me to experience an ever ascending spiral of theistic aspirations inhibited by atheist inclinations, and vice versa. My predicament is both intellectual as well as existential. It is a blending of the two that fuels a restless existence, one which propels me to journey on this ascending spiral of unfamiliar territory towards an unknown destination.
I. Why I am not an Atheist
Let me begin with atheism. Atheism is first and foremost a rejection of theism. However, the rejection of theism itself springs from several often misunderstood sources. A deep and personal disappointment with a particular religion frequently converts into a fervent rejection of theism and all that it means. A second source may begin with a genuine delight in the achievements of science which now and then, and quite unnoticeably, spills over into a materialistic metaphysics. The latter, in turn, bluntly opposes theism’s commitment to a transcendent reality. Thus, what starts as a delight in the potential of inquiry to unlock the mysteries of the physical universe migrates into an impatient and often mocking rejection of anything non-physical. Theism is a casualty of such a sentiment.
A third source of atheism springs from the optimistic promises of the 17th and 18th centuries with the Enlightenment and its humanistic values. Modern Enlightenment promised to liberate humanity from the shackles of unreflective traditions, dogmatic values, and unrelenting demands to submit to an external authority. It encouraged replacing traditions, dogmas, and submissiveness with a bright path to a world in which individuals are free to mutually cultivate their autonomy guided only by the light of reason.
Modern Enlightenment shares with its Greek counterpart confidence in the authority and potential of reason to guide humanity to the truth, to a more harmonious social existence, and to a more enlightened personal life. But in order for reason to be able to do so its authority must be recognized and accepted. Modern Enlightenment uncovered the missing link in Greek thought. This missing link can be stated in the form of the following question: What compels a being to recognize and accept the authority of reason? Greek thinking was not quite able to supply a satisfactory answer to this question. Modern Enlightenment did.
Modern Enlightenment goes beyond its Greek counterpart by pointing out that the recognition of authority must start at home with our individual autonomy. Autonomy essentially involves a nature that is self-governing. Self-governing in turn is a process of self-reflection that confers a law upon one’s thoughts and conduct. Acceptance of the law springs from the recognition that it was bestowed by one’s own autonomous nature. Hence, its compelling force. But accepting the compelling force of such a law, its authority over us, is accepting the compelling force of reason itself as it springs from one’s own autonomy. And since a law is universal by nature, accepting the universal character of reason is accepting the authority of a universal rationality.
This account of the authority of reason and its origins was then applied by some modern Enlightenment thinkers to the pursuit of truth, social harmony, and personal enlightenment. Sadly this bright world which modern Enlightenment promised has been gradually distorted to a mere shadow of itself. The distortion occurred due to a tragic misunderstanding by many thinkers of the fundamental message of the Enlightenment: i.e., the message that the recognition of any authority and the acceptance of its compelling force start at home with the contours of our individual autonomous nature.
The mistake depends on the following reasoning. The Enlightenment taught us that the concept of authority itself ultimately rests with the individual. Therefore, claims of authority make sense only if relativized to the beliefs, inclinations, customs, and preferences of this or that individual and this or that group. And this mistaken understanding of the fundamental message of modern Enlightenment gradually gave birth to the spread of conceptual-relativism, moral relativism, and self-centered egoism.
The mistake of the above reasoning already appears in the first sentence. The insight of modern Enlightenment was definitely not that the concept of authority rests on just any aspect of individuals. The insight is rather that the concept of authority makes sense only in the context of a self-governing autonomous agency. And this is a radically different proposition. The above distortion of the fundamental insight of modern Enlightenment and the ensuing movements that sprung from this distortion deserve the label ‘pseudo-enlightenment.’
[You seem to be assuming that when individuals exercise autonomous agency they will come to universally binding conclusions. But that is not what happens. When people set aside external authority and think for themselves they end up espousing a plethora of conflicting positions. Protestantism may serve as an example. Rejecting the central authority of Rome, which laid down the law on matters of doctrine and practice, Luther and others put the emphasis on the individual. The result was a proliferation of Protestant sects.
Your treatment here is very weak. You need to give good reasons for believing that the Enlightenment project does not bear within itself the seeds of the relativism and egoism you reject. It is easy to reject blind submission to authority, as we both do. But what justifies your faith that people will arrive at rational consensus once they throw off the fetters of external authority? People love to dress up their dogmatic pronouncements as the dictates of Reason, the Randians being a prime example of this.]
As a direct consequence of this mistake several pseudo-enlightenment movements emerged. The light of reason has given way to a form of conceptual-relativism which detests anything universal and objective, including the universal force of reason, the very reason that made modern Enlightenment so attractive. This form of conceptual-relativism champions instead the supremacy of “my or our opinion”. The value and legitimacy of autonomy has been gradually replaced with a form of egoism or a self-centered attitude that celebrates the unchecked force of “my desires and interests” merely on the grounds that they are “mine”. And the promise to liberate humanity from all forms of illegitimate authority, including the authority of antiquated norms and customs, has been all too frequently reduced to a mere anything-goes moral relativism.
[Again, it is easy to reject relativism, but how do you know that this is not the necessary consequence of individuals relying on their own reason and autonomy after having thrown off external authority?]
I cannot condone any of these forms of pseudo-enlightenment despite their valiant efforts to justify their conclusions based upon the empirical study of cultures and their diverse customs, belief systems, and ways of life. The adherents of pseudo-enlightenment will undoubtedly defend their position by arguing that the empirical study of different cultures, and by extension different individual human lives, forces us to appreciate the rich diversity which human life may take. Reflection upon this diversity in turn engenders a healthy disposition to adopt as a general guiding principle a tolerant attitude toward the other. This defense alleges that a pseudo-enlightenment attitude encourages tolerance and, hence, it has some beneficial consequences.
A discriminating reader should at this point notice that the empirical facts of diversity on their own do not entail nor compel a tolerant attitude. A tolerant attitude can be derived only once a self-governing autonomous agent reflects upon these facts and acknowledges that since other autonomous agents have chosen to lead a different form of life, the authority of these autonomous choices confers a measure of legitimacy upon these forms of life. We respect and tolerate an alternative form of life only because and to the extent that we recognize in them the embodiment of autonomous, and hence authoritative, choices of self-governing agents other than ourselves. The delicate structure of the concept of tolerance tragically escapes the champions of pseudo-enlightenment.
Moreover, we ought to acknowledge that diversity is not valuable for its own sake and not every way of life is valuable merely because it is different from others. A form of life is valuable only insofar as it enables human beings to flourish and cultivate their autonomy and a different form of life is valuable only if it is a valuable form of life that displays a novel way in which humans undertake to flourish and cultivate their autonomy. Once we appreciate these thoughts, we can see that the linkage forged by various pseudo-enlightenment movements to the empirical study of diverse human lives is artificial. This linkage is contrived for the purpose of appropriating the prominence of an empirical field, a prominence which pseudo-enlightenment has no hope of earning on its own merit.
On the other hand, I do respect and sympathize with those who found atheism a welcome sanctuary from the deep and personal disappointment with the ignorance, corruption, intolerance, and lack of understanding habitually exhibited by some religious institutions. I share their discontent with these and other excesses of religious institutions which too often place their own survival above their spiritual mission. Nevertheless, I find these grounds insufficient to join in a wholesale rejection of the deeper significance of theism merely on the grounds that human institutions tend to corrupt its ultimate mission and meaning.
The above summarizes the considerations that prevent me from considering myself a full-fledged atheist. One might wonder at this point why I do not find theism a more fitting affiliation. I will now turn to this question.
II. Why I am not a Theist
Anyone who on occasion sincerely reflects upon their own inner being cannot help but encounter there his conscious self radiating with meaning, purpose, and normative force. And since reflection is an inescapable condition for us humans, we are all familiar to one degree or another with this experience. Yet some of us may wonder whether the meaning and normative force glowing so majestically within the confines of our conscious self may be nothing but a chimera akin to an optical illusion or whether it is firmly grounded in some general aspect of reality itself. Theism, as I see it, expresses our deepest aspirations for a transcendent order that guarantees the existence and integrity of morality, meaning, and our conscious self. In its most sincere and prescient form, theism expresses the human aspiration to explore and understand such a transcendent order.
[Magnificent!]
Traditional theism in its purest form is an attempt to understand this transcendent reality in terms of the existence of a deity and its place in our world. Yet despite the fact that I consider the task of exploring the nature of a transcendent reality of vital importance to the human condition, I cannot join traditional theism. My inability to be affiliated with traditional theism, however, has very little to do with doubts about whether a divine being of the sort posited by theism exists. I would have been unable to join traditional theism even if I would have whole-heartedly believed that a transcendent reality is constituted by a deity. For I find the traditional theistic conception of such a deity and humanity’s relationship to this deity to be based upon an entirely flawed foundation. And this flaw is so fundamental that it cannot be patched up in a piecemeal fashion. It must be eradicated at its very core, if theism should ever be able to serve its professed mission. The origins of this colossal mistake can be traced to the very beginning with the traditional interpretation of Genesis. I shall now explain what I mean. In order to facilitate a clear narrative I shall occasionally speak below in a theistic voice.
Despite significant differences between the three Abrahamic religions; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they all share two central theological doctrines: i.e., the Sin-Doctrine and the Submission-Doctrine. The Sin-Doctrine is that the concept of sin plays a deep, indispensable, and fundamental theological role in explaining the human condition and our relationship to God. This doctrine features three tenets: The Original Sin, The Fall, and the Inheritance of Sin by all the descendants of the original human sinners; namely, Adam and Eve. The Submission-Doctrine in turn maintains that the only remedy for sin is submission. I shall call these two doctrines jointly the ‘Sin and Submission Doctrines’.
The cosmic importance of the Original Sin tenet within this theological picture cannot be overstated. It is the story that objectifies the existence of sin and evil in the world and places full responsibility for introducing them into God’s world upon the shoulders of the first humans. It also explains how sin and evil are possible within a world that was originally created by God as entirely good. Only a being that has evil at his core can corrupt a world that is wholly good. Here we have in a nutshell the duality of good and evil. God represents that which is wholly good; humanity embodies evil.
[This needs qualification. It is not as if God is the good principle and humanity the evil principle. Humans are capable of both good and evil, and according to the traditional account there was no necessity that man sin. Moreover, rebellion against God antedates the creation of the material world. Satan, who tempts Eve in the garden of Eden in the form of a serpent, is a fallen angel.]
The Doctrine of the Fall draws the inevitable consequences from a horrendous deed of cosmic proportions; namely, the corruption of creation. The unavoidable consequence is the Fall of Man which narrates the inevitable gulf that was created between the first humans and God due to the original sin. And finally the Inheritance Doctrine completes the picture by advocating the thesis that the intrinsically sinful nature of the first humans is inherited by all their subsequent descendants. And, therefore, so is the gulf between each human being individually and God.
Is it possible to bridge the cosmic gulf between God and Man? Is it possible to bridge the ultimate gap between Good and Evil? It is at this juncture that the Submission-Doctrine enters the theological scene. In order to bridge the gulf between God and Man (good and evil) an extraordinary effort of cosmic proportions is required. This effort involves two extraordinary components: human will to submit and divine will to forgive.
[OK, except for your false equation of man and evil.]
The Abrahamic religions can be ordered according to three ascending degrees of submission. Judaism requires human willingness to submit to God’s Laws as set forth by the covenant at Mount Sinai. Submitting to God’s Laws is both necessary and sufficient in order to fulfill humanity’s contribution to bridging the gulf between Man and God. The rest is up to the will of God. In all other respects human beings are free to choose their own path in life.
Christianity demands from human beings an act that shows their willingness to submit to Jesus, the personification of God’s own Son, as their savior. Regardless of whatever else one does or thinks, as long as one is willing to genuinely and without limit submit to Jesus as one’s savior, one completes one’s contribution to the effort to bridge the gulf between God and Man.
[Jesus is not the personification of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, for the simple reason that the Son of God is already a person. Jesus is better described as the unique human Incarnation of God the Son. Christianity demands that human beings accept Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. But it is not true that such acceptance suffices for salvation, unless one is a Lutheran (sola fide). Works are also required. Your formulation has a Protestant bias.]
Islam goes even further and requires an all-inclusive and unconditional submission of our very humanity to God. The required submissiveness is all-inclusive in the sense that it must be practiced in every facet of one’s private as well as social life. And it is unconditional in the sense that any doubt, reservation, or questioning is forbidden. One must submit to God in body and soul, deed and thought.
Excellent. And now I will quote from an earlier post of mine that references Prothero's God is Not One:
For Islam, the problem is neither sin nor suffering but self-sufficiency,"the hubris of acting as if you can get along without God, who alone is self-sufficient." (32) The solution or goal is "a soul at peace" (Koran 89: 27) in submission to Allah. The technique that takes the believer from self-sufficiency to Paradise is to 'perform the religion." (42: 13) Orthopraxy counts for more than orthodoxy. The profession of faith is relatively simple, to the effect that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God. That is the First Pillar of Islam. The other four concern practice: prayer (salat), charity (zakat), fasting (sawm), and pilgrimage (hajj).
The Sin and Submission pair of doctrines appeals to a basic yet primal human sentiment. One who harmed another must stand with a measure of humility proportional to the wrongdoing when facing the injured party. Since humanity committed a cosmic sin against God, the only acceptable remedy is submission. Thus, when one hears sin, submission comes to mind as the only possible remedy.
Yet despite their primal appeal, the Sin and Submission Doctrines rest on a fundamental mistake. The origin of the mistake springs from the thought that the story of Adam and Eve narrates the emergence of sin in the world. While God created Adam and Eve in innocence; i.e., in the absence of sin, it is their disobedience that introduced sin in the world. And, as noted above, the mention of sin invokes the expectation of submission as the only means to eradicate the gulf created by sin. It is not surprising, therefore, that once the original sin conception governs our understanding of creation, we expect the rest of the biblical narrative to delineate the terms of our submission as the only appropriate remedy.
But the story of Adam and Eve cannot narrate the emergence of sin into the world. While we may grant that Adam and Eve disobeyed God, this act of disobedience cannot be conceived as a sinful act, if the latter means a moral wrongdoing. For a moral wrongdoing can be committed only by a being who understands the concept of right and wrong and possesses the resources required to distinguish between them. And by the terms of the story itself, prior to their act of disobedience, Adam and Eve lacked the moral concepts required to recognize that disobeying God is morally wrong. And since we must assume that God was aware of all of these circumstances, God could not have viewed Adam and Eve’s disobedience as a sin, original or otherwise.
Your point, and a very interesting one it is, is that before Adam and Even ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were without any understanding of good and evil, so that their act of disobedience was not a moral wrongdoing, and therefore not a sin. But consider that God according to Genesis creates man in his own image and likeness. This of course is a spiritual image and likeness. So we ought to infer that God creates man from the outset as possessing free will and an appreciation of moral distinctions. So even before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve were moral beings. In light of this, the traditional theist can perhaps interpret the bit about the tree in a way that is consistent with the original parents being aware of moral distinctions before eating its fruit.
You may also be wrongly assuming that the traditional theist is committed to fundamentalism. I myself deny that there were original human parents, a serpent, a garden, a tree, etc. while still believing in Original Sin as a sort of fundamental structural flaw in human nature that cannot be overcome by human effort alone whether individual or collective. There is no need to take the Genesis story literally. The atheist Schopenhauer also believed in Original Sin appropriately interpreted.
Now, if I am right and Adam and Eve could not have committed a sin by disobeying God, then the Sin and Submission Doctrines have no basis. First goes the original-sin component of these doctrines. Since Adam and Eve could not have committed a sin, there is no original sin. Second, if there is no original sin, then there is no Fall. Moreover, if there is no original sin and there is no Fall, then the descendents of Adam and Eve; namely all of us, could not have inherited a sinful nature and the conditions of the Fall. And, of course, if the Sin Doctrine collapses, then so does the Submission Doctrine: if there is no sin, submission is not required.
Again, you seem to be assuming that a Bible-based approach to religion must be some sort of fundamentalism/literalism Why? What justifies your thinking of original sin as original in a temporal sense, as referring to a first event in 'moral time' if you will? That's not obvious. And then you think of the Fall in the same way, as an event after the original sin. Why? And why opt for the crass inheritance conception of the transmission of original sin, as if it is passed on in human seed? You appear to be writing in ignorance of the theology of Original Sin, theology which is not derivable from Bible stories alone.
Perhaps submission is not required; but is it possible? I maintain that submission to God or any of his surrogates such as God’s Law or his Son is not possible. Submission is not possible as it is conceived by traditional theism. Let me explain.
The traditional theistic picture is correct about one important thing. The story of Adam and Eve does narrate the appearance of a rupture between God and Man. However, unlike the traditional theistic conception which explains the rupture in terms of sin, I maintain that the rupture was caused by the emergence of Adam and Eve as autonomous agents. Moreover, given the usual assumptions about God, the emergence of Adam and Eve as autonomous agents was orchestrated by God himself who created the circumstances that enabled this to happen.
I will not take the time to justify this last claim. Let us suppose that I am right and the story of Adam and Eve is about the emergence of autonomous agency intended by God. Let us further suppose that God conferred upon this newly emergent autonomous being a dominion over the material world, in the sense that it may employ it for its own survival.
According to the present account, we now have two autonomous beings: God and Man. And as I have articulated in section I, autonomy is required in order to recognize authority. However, unlike Man’s autonomy, God’s autonomy is absolute. Therefore, unlike Man’s authority, God’s authority is also absolute. And absolute authority cannot be reconciled with any measure of autonomy possessed by another being. If this is right, then one cannot willingly submit to an absolute authority without thereby utterly voiding one’s own autonomy. But it is impossible under any circumstances to autonomously will to completely eradicate one’s own autonomy. Therefore, no autonomous agent can possibly submit to God’s absolute authority without thereby annihilating its own autonomy. But doing so autonomously is not possible. Hence, only in death can one possibly submit to God’s absolute authority.
[Suppose I do what God commands, not because he commands it, but because I see by my own lights that it is obligatory. Would there then not be a coincidence between God's absolute moral authority and man's moral autonomy? Of course you are assuming that human beings as a matter of fact are autonomous. But is this true? Or is human autonomy an ideal largely unrealized?]
If the above reasoning is correct, then God is fully aware of its conclusion. And so it is inconceivable that God should be interested in the emergence of an autonomous agent only to demand from it to do that which would destroy its autonomy. The only solution that is available to God is to exit the scene and thus allow the newly created agent to flourish by cultivating the gift of autonomy within a world which God provided. God’s unavoidable departure from the world over which now Man has dominion created the rupture between God and Man, a rupture of such a scale that nothing but death can possibly bridge.
[God withdraws so that man can develop and exercise his autonomy. What appears to be God's abandonment and forsaking of man is necessary for man to develop himself fully.]
I cannot submit to God’s absolute authority without completely giving up my own as Islam requires. But perhaps I can submit to the authority of one of God’s surrogates. Perhaps it is not impossible that I should submit to the authority of God’s Law as required by Judaism or to the authority of God’s Son, personified by Jesus, as required by Christianity. Unfortunately submission to the authority of these surrogates, as such submission must be understood, is not a viable option.
Consider first the option of submitting to the authority of God’s Laws. As explained in the first section, I cannot even recognize an authority, let alone submit to it, without first seeing that authority as emanating from some autonomous agency. Since Laws by their very nature are not themselves agents, but only the products of an autonomous agent, their authority must be derived from a source that is itself an autonomous agent. God cannot be the source of the authority of these Laws, because then submitting to the Laws would be tantamount to submitting to God’s authority, which I have argued is not possible. Therefore, I cannot submit to the authority of God’s Laws unless I conceive of their authority as derivable from my own autonomous agency. And the only way that I can see their authority as derivable from my own autonomous agency is if they are the product of the exercise of my autonomy. Therefore, the requirement to submit to God’s Laws cannot mean anything other than the obligation to employ my autonomy in order to discover the moral law. Only subsequent to such inquiry can I recognize the authority of such laws and submit to them. And that I can do.
Consider next submitting to the authority of Jesus as required by Christianity. I cannot submit to the authority of Jesus unless I recognize Jesus as an autonomous agent. If Jesus is a person like the rest of us, then I can submit to his authority only within certain limits. But Christianity requires an unlimited submission. And that I cannot give to any human person. On the other hand, if Jesus is a personification of God’s Son, then his authority is absolute, since God’s Son is equal to God and, therefore, has the same absolute authority. And that as I have argued is impossible for me to do.
But perhaps there is another way of viewing the Jesus’ story. Consider again the question of submitting to the authority of God’s Laws. As I have argued above, I can submit to the authority of God’s Laws only if I view this authority as derivable from my own autonomy. That is, if they are the product of my own autonomous will. But what guarantee do I have that my autonomous will is a reliable guide to the right moral laws; i.e., to God’s Laws? The only guarantee that is possible here is to assume that my will is essentially; i.e., at least in principle even if not invariably, good. But how do I know that my will is essentially good? I suggest thinking of the person of Jesus as providing such a guarantee. Jesus can be seen as personifying a divine guarantee that human will is essentially good. It is not a guarantee that it is always good, for then it is not an autonomous will. Rather it is a guarantee that our efforts to cultivate our autonomy will result in a will that can be a reliable guide to inquire and discover the right moral laws.
III. Conclusion.
On the one hand, I cannot be an atheist because I cannot accept materialism and pseudo-enlightenment. I cannot accept the former because, like theists, I believe there is a transcendent reality. And I cannot accept pseudo-enlightenment because it is a corruption of the nature and importance of autonomy, the central message of modern Enlightenment.
On the other hand, I cannot be a theist because the heart and soul of all the traditional monotheistic religions are the twin doctrines of Sin and Submission. However, I cannot accept the Sin Doctrine because in my opinion it rests upon a fundamental flaw in the understanding of the creation story of Adam and Eve. And I cannot accept the Submission Doctrine because I do not think that it is possible for me to autonomously submit to God’s absolute authority without thereby eradicating the very autonomy that tells me to so submit. Since submission is impossible, the Submission Doctrine must also be false.
Thus, the only option that is left for me is to be a quasi-something: an atheist or theist, it does not really matter. For the ‘quasi’ prefix simply expresses the recognition of my autonomous and self-governing agency. For if I was a theist, then I would have to see my autonomy as God’s will, a will that resulted in the inevitable rupture between myself as an autonomous agent and God. And if I was a full-fledged atheist, then I would have to see my autonomy as part of my nature, the only thing that can guide me to discover the nature of morality and thus the transcendent reality. And so it does not really matter whether I am an atheist or a theist as long as I recognize that above all else I am an autonomous moral agent.
I suspect that others experience from time to time some of the thoughts I have expressed in this essay. I hope that the things I have said here will help others to clarify these shared experiences.
[I agree with the critique of Submission. Islam, as a religion of submission to the will of Allah, conceived of as absolute willfullness unconstrained by reason, is an abomination. But Christianity in its non-Protestant forms may have resources that elude your critique. In Eastern Orthodoxy the goal of life in Christ is the deification (theosis) of man. Your reading of Christianity is too Protestant and perhaps even Calvinist.]
(*) Kant’s influence upon my thoughts on the centrality of autonomy should be obvious. Perhaps less obvious is the influence of Kristine Korsgaard’s Book “The Sources of Normativity” which I have read recently. I also must acknowledge the contributions of several friends who influenced throughout the years my thinking on this subject. Among them are Bill Vallicella, Mike Valle, Steven Nemes, and David Bassine. Bill Vallicella and I have spent countless hours discussing these and other issues. I cannot understate the impact these talks had on me and my thinking about the subject. I wish once again to highlight the deep influence upon my life and attitude towards it that Annie, my significant other, made.
Bill,
I shall respond in a series of posts, bunched more or less according to topic. I count 11 comments in blue, other than the one word comment. Imagine them numbered from top to bottom. Comments that belong together will be bunched together.
Post (A),
Blue-Comments 1 and 2: You are making here three critical comments:
(I) Enlightenment may contain within itself the seeds of relativism and egoism, both of which I reject.
Response:
1) The two principal claims that I associate with the Enlightenment and which I wish to focus on presently are as follows:
(E1) All claims of authority concerning items in a Normative Field (i.e., a domain with respect to which it makes sense to apply evaluative categories) are legitimate only if they are subjected to the scrutiny of reflective-universal-principles and for as long as they pass such scrutiny.
(E2) The autonomy of agents encapsulates reflective-universal-principles of reason such that when discovered through the exercise of self-reflective reason and joined together comprise at a given time the reflective-methodology that scrutinizes the legitimacy of all claims of authority.
2) I now turn to some clarification of terminology: The term ‘evaluative-categories’ simply means the familiar normative terms we use when we evaluate anything. Examples: true/false, good/bad, justified/unjustified, legitimate/illegitimate, right/wrong, just/unjust, proper/improper, correct/incorrect, beautiful/ugly, rational/irrational, valid/invalid, etc. The term ‘normative-field’ refers to any domain of items that we normally evaluate in some way. Examples: claims, beliefs, desires, principles, arguments, persons, actions, character traits, dispositions, practices, traditions, societies, religions, institutions, situations, performances, art-pieces, etc.
3) Two related points worth noting. First, since reflective-universal-principles belong to a normative-field (i.e., principles), they are themselves subject to scrutiny. Some may withstand such scrutiny, others may not. Likewise, the reflective-methodology (i.e., the collection of universal-principles at a given time) used to scrutinize claims of authority is subject to continuous improvement and amendment.
Second, implementing the above two principles may result in discovering new Normative Fields and discarding others that were previously thought to be a Normative Field. The former may happen due to the discovery of new reflective-principles and the later due to the discovery of certain facts.
4) An example of a reflective-universal-principle is Kant’s Categorical Imperative or his Means-Ends principle.
5) It should be immediately obvious that relativism, which is in the business of denying that there are any general truths, principles, methods, and so forth (and does so by itself asserting at least one), contradicts both principles (E1) and (E2). Relativism contradicts (E1) and (E2) because they both appeal to certain universal principles, methods, etc. Thus, the Enlightenment which incorporates (E1) and (E2) and any genuine extension of it is incompatible with relativism.
6) Egoism I take it maintains that right conduct for a given agent is what is in the best interest of that agent, regardless of how such conduct impacts others. I think so defined egoism will conflict with certain specifically moral reflective-principles such as Kant’s Categorical Imperative. It might falter even at an earlier stage because I do not believe that a thoroughly egoistic theory is compatible with autonomous agency. However, this later claim I need to prove.
(II). There is no reason to suppose that when people rely upon their own autonomy they will arrive at universally binding conclusions and achieve a rational consensus on central issues.
Response:
I believe human beings can arrive at universally binding conclusions and achieve a significant measure of rational consensus and moreover on some very important issues they already did so. However, it must be conceded that arriving at universally binding conclusions on which a rational consensus can be achieved is laborious, time consuming, demands enormous sacrifice (sometimes quite needless), and requires the presence of a certain social, political, intellectual, economic, environments in which some measure of rational discourse and exchange is possible.
Sometime the most difficult obstacle to such progress is to see that a certain Field is a Normative Field and hence subject to reflective scrutiny. A case in point is the authority to govern and the proper principles for social organization. For long periods of time the authority to rule that was based upon force or inheritance was not challenged (Athens is an exception). The reason, I believe, for the fact that such practices were not challenged was that it did not occur to anyone that governance is a Normative Field and, hence, subject to reflective scrutiny. It took the 17th Century social contract theorists to show that governance is a Normative Field subject to reflective scrutiny and came up with the social contract theory. The result is liberal democracy.
Humanity, however, achieved some measure of success in various areas: e.g., the abolition of human sacrifice and slavery, liberal democracy, science, recognition of the inherent value of human life and liberty, etc. I believe that we can do better and will. Of course, this optimistic outlook is not guaranteed and a healthy measure of skepticism is required in light of events such as WWII, the Holocaust, Genocide, etc., which take us back into moral chaos every so often. I suggest that even such events, as horrendous as they undoubtedly are, provide an opportunity for humanity to reflect and attempt to identify principles which could prevent repeating them in the future.
(III). “When people set aside external authority and think for themselves they end up espousing a plethora of conflicting positions.”
Example: Rejecting the authority of Rome that resulted in a proliferation of Protestant sects.
Response:
1) I partly agree with your claim and the example. However, let us examine why this happens. An abrupt removal of external authority that reigned for a long period means that on the whole people were not used to think for themselves autonomously, at least not regarding the subjects about which the external authority had control. Therefore, when the external authority is removed, people seek another external authority or else they fall into chaos. I think this is what happened in your example of Rome and the Protestant Revolution; the French Revolution, and other cases. While humans have the seed of autonomy and the capability to exercise it, doing so requires favorable conditions and doing so well comes with considerable practice and effort. The task is to gradually provide the requisite conditions including suitable education and an appropriate intellectual atmosphere (which sadly is currently lacking).
Posted by: Account Deleted | Sunday, May 01, 2011 at 05:42 PM
Mr Lupu,
You write as if the only options were either Atheism or Abrahamic religions. To me, the first fork is whether the reality is mind-like or is purely materialistic (i.e. algorithmic). The second option leads to Atheism. But the first option could also lead to Monism of Hindu variety i.e Advaita.
Also, Theism is not restricted to Abrahamic religions. The Vaishnavas of India (of whom the ISCKON are a representative) also believe in kind of Theism with Incarnation, theologically quite similar to the Christian Incarnation. In fact, I strongly suspect a genetic relation between Vaishnava philosophy and Christian, though this is an unexplored territory.
What would you say to the argument that the Godel's Theory indicates that even Mathematics is not reducible to algorithm and thus reality has an irreducible mind-like aspect. This argument was made by Fr Stanley Jaki but the physicists of 60's and 70's proved resistant to this and Godel's theorem was not much known to physicists then.
It is very curious that Douglas Hofstadter treats Godel's Theorem in an effort to built an algorithmic picture of mind.
Posted by: Gian | Sunday, May 01, 2011 at 10:58 PM
It is curious that you write so much on God's relation with humanity but never introduce the Christian concept that God loves man. Perhaps love can reconcile the problems with authority and submission and autonomy.
The commandments at Sinai were given only to Jews and were not intended for the wider humanity. I think even now, the Jewish authorities regard only the Noahide laws as obligatory to all mankind. So the Jewish case is not analogous to Christian and Muslim.
Posted by: Gian | Sunday, May 01, 2011 at 11:23 PM
Gian,
Regarding your first comment that there may be alternatives to atheism and theism my response is: Perhaps there are! Whether those you cite fit the mode I am interested in is not easy for me to determine, since I am not familiar with the options you cite.
Regarding your point about Godel: the inference you make from the Godel result that mathematical truth is not reducible to formal proof (within a given formal system) to the mind dependence of mathematics is not clear to me. Godel's incompleteness results are compatible with an abstract mathematical reality which is not mind dependent.
Third comment: God's love, whatever exactly that means, cannot solve the problem of the gulf between God's authority and my autonomy. In fact, God's love could be an additional reason for God to retreat as I have argued.
The point can be made by an analogy. Sometimes precisely because you love your child you must let go and allow them to find their own way in life. Clinging to a child prevents them from cultivating their autonomy and, thus, hindering the very point purpose of life.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Tuesday, May 03, 2011 at 07:52 PM
Mr Lupu,
I guess Hindu philosophy has lost its former attraction to the Western philosophers since its 19th C heyday.
The soul-making picture of the world suggests that we humans are in an infancy stage. CS Lewis even compared it to a womb-like stage.
The religious people actually worry that God has or may retreat from them.
Divine love may be analogized as painstaking as artist's love for his creation, as despotic as man's love for his dog, as provident and venerable as father's love for his child and as jealous and exacting as man's love for a woman.
Lovers submit to each other all the time and delight in it.
Your attitude seems to have a whiff of Ivan Karamazov: God exists but I dont accept his world. His block was suffering of children. If the word Sin is troublesome, then you can just drop this word. Anyway, in Greek it is something like "falling short" or miss as an arrow, I believe. Adam and Eve were guilty of disobedience, that you would accept and nothing more is required.
Posted by: Gian | Wednesday, May 04, 2011 at 12:14 AM
Gian,
"Your attitude seems to have a whiff of Ivan Karamazov: God exists but I dont accept his world."
On the contrary. It seems you misunderstood my post. The view I expressed in the post requires that we accept the world and cultivate our autonomy; we could not do so w/o the world.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Wednesday, May 04, 2011 at 03:45 AM
"God’s unavoidable departure from the world over which now Man has dominion created the rupture between God and Man, a rupture of such a scale that nothing but death can possibly bridge."
I haven't the time for a complete critique, but the above quote seems to me to be the only semi-lucid thought in the entire screed, only because it is contra the remainder of it. The quoted statement points to the necessity of Jesus Christ participating in the human life and dying (God sacrificing his autonomy) so that we might learn to sacrifice our autonomy and thereby participate in the divine life.
Complete autonomy is not an attribute of the God of classical theism or the Triune Christian God, nor is it an attribute of the original state of creation. Whether or not you're talking about the God of classical theism or the Triune Christian God specifically, God exists as a relationship and exists as creator. Thus, as corroborated in Genesis, Divine and human co-participation is the original created state. The link between creator and creation is inexorable. Sin just is the misplaced elevation or promotion of autonomy of the individual at the expense of cooperation with God--it just is, by definition, the creation of a gap that only sacrificing autonomy for the sake of cooperation can bridge. And it's a two-way street. Because God sacrifices, we sacrifice. Because God becomes like us, we become like God. As mentioned earlier, God just is the act of sacrifice of autonomy by virtue of the fact that he exists as three persons. If it were not so, the concept of him sacrificing autonomy by becoming incarnate would be unintelligible in reference to the God of classical theism. The doctrine of the Trinity leads me to conclude that if God was not the act of sacrificing autonomy, if he were not Triune, then he would be the one creating the gap between himself and his creation, and thus sinning. That is, if it were even possible to create something, and thus sacrifice autonomy, without yourself being the pure act of sacrificing autonomy-that is existing as relationship -- being relationship. Your apparent lack of knowledge about the relationship between the persons of the Holy Trinity and of the concept of deification completely ignores Catholic and Orthodox teaching, which comprises the majority of Christian theology throughout the world. Your rejection of theism amounts to no more than a rejection of fundamentalist thought (if you can call it that), or some sort of Calvinist head-burying.
Posted by: Mark Duch | Thursday, May 05, 2011 at 11:33 AM
On Thursday, May 5, 2011, at 11:33Am, a Mark Duch posted a comment on a guest post of mine titled “Why I am a Quasi-Atheist?”. After quoting one sentence from that essay, he says:
“I haven't the time for a complete critique, but the above quote seems to me to be the only semi-lucid thought in the entire screed,”
First, I take it to be a desirable standard of civility among disputants even in the blogosphere that if you do not have time to critically examine a post, then you refrain from calling it by disparaging names (e.g., “screed”; “semi-lucid”). This elementary lesson has been lost on the above commentator.
Second, the commentator post is a comment only by courtesy. It strikes me more like a sermon, preaching a set of dogmas without any effort to critically examine them or even show how they are related to specific things I have said. Notice that he comments on my post only in his first sentence and refers to me in the last two. In between, we get a stream of pronouncements without even a slight effort to critically examine their significance, coherence, or relevance to the topics discussed in my piece.
Nevertheless, I will attempt to respond to a few themes that I discern in this commentator's sermon.
1) “Complete autonomy is not an attribute of the God of classical theism or the Triune Christian God,…”
This pronouncement is quite astonishing. I presume we agree that if God exists, then God is perfect with respect to every characteristic he features. Now, surely if anything is autonomous, then God is. And if God is autonomous, then God must be perfectly autonomous: i.e., completely (I use the word ‘absolute’ here) autonomous. Hence, correspondingly, God’s authority is also absolute.
2) “Whether or not you're talking about the God of classical theism or the Triune Christian God specifically, God exists as a relationship and exists as creator.”
What does the phrase “God exists as a relationship” mean? First, if this phrase means that God’s existence depends upon a relationship with something else, then God’s existence is conditional on that relationship. But God’s existence cannot be conditional on anything. That is a fundamental tenet of any classical theism. On the other hand, if God’s existence itself consists of a relationship between several elements within God, say the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity, then the doctrine of God’s simplicity must be given up.
3) The Trinity: The Trinity carries a heavy burden in the above sermon: e.g.,
“The doctrine of the Trinity leads me to conclude that if God was not the act of sacrificing autonomy, if he were not Triune, then he would be the one creating the gap between himself and his creation, and thus sinning.”
The Trinity has been the subject of several posts by Bill on this site (See the “Trinity” entry in the Categories section of this site). The problem in a nutshell is this: the Trinity, monotheism, a natural assumption about identity, together with the relevant orthodox doctrines logically entails a contradiction. No adequate solution that removes the contradiction and does not violate the Trinitarian dogmas has been found (Bill soundly refuted several proposals he examined including two of my own).
Apparently the author of the above sermon is unaware of this problem or else he thinks that the problem is not sufficiently threatening to his overall views. In either case the threat of inconsistency is very serious. Since an inconsistent set of propositions entails every proposition, including the ones the author of the sermon preaches as well as their negations, relying upon the doctrine of the Trinity under such circumstances is precarious indeed. Perhaps, it is for this reason that parts of the above quoted passage and the one I quote next seem to be so obscure:
“That is, if it were even possible to create something, and thus sacrifice autonomy, without yourself being the pure act of sacrificing autonomy-that is existing as relationship -- being relationship.”
Does anyone understands what the above quoted passage means and explain it? Immediately following the above incomprehensible passage I am being accused of ignorance:
“Your apparent lack of knowledge about the relationship between the persons of the Holy Trinity and of the concept of deification completely ignores Catholic and Orthodox teaching, which comprises the majority of Christian theology throughout the world.”
4)“Sin just is the misplaced elevation or promotion of autonomy of the individual at the expense of cooperation with God--it just is, by definition, the creation of a gap that only sacrificing autonomy for the sake of cooperation can bridge.”
Whose Sin? The sermon does not elaborate. I suppose the Sin in question is just the doctrine of the “Original Sin”. But in my essay I have argued against the doctrine of the Original Sin. However, the present sermon does not even bother to address the argument I have given against this doctrine. It is at this point that I began to realize what is going on here.
The author of the above comment had no intention to engage with me in a rational discourse on the issues I have raised in my essay. His purpose was to use the opportunity to comment on my essay as a means to preach his favorite sermon. I do not appreciate being used only as means and so my response ends right here.
Posted by: Account Deleted | Friday, May 06, 2011 at 05:10 PM