http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/15/110815crat_atlarge_wood
The New Yorker has a review by James Wood of a new book, The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, edited by George Levine, who says that the book’s aim is to “explore the idea that secularism is a positive, not a negative, condition, not a denial of the world of spirit and of religion, but an affirmation of the world we’re living in now; that building our world on a foundation of the secular is essential to our contemporary well-being; and that such a world is capable of bringing us to the condition of ‘fullness’ that religion has always promised.”
Wood in the past has not shown himself very sympathetic toward religion, or even very knowledgeable about it, but in this review he is at times more generous toward it, and more skeptical that secularism really offers any more consolation. Here are his first two paragraphs:
I have a friend, an analytic philosopher and convinced atheist, who told me that she sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, anxiously turning over a series of ultimate questions: “How can it be that this world is the result of an accidental big bang? How could there be no design, no metaphysical purpose? Can it be that every life—beginning with my own, my husband’s, my child’s, and spreading outward—is cosmically irrelevant?” In the current intellectual climate, atheists are not supposed to have such thoughts. We are locked into our rival certainties—religiosity on one side, secularism on the other—and to confess to weakness on this order is like a registered Democrat wondering if she is really a Republican, or vice versa.
These are theological questions without theological answers, and, if the atheist is not supposed to entertain them, then, for slightly different reasons, neither is the religious believer. Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them; atheism assumes that they are not valid questions because it cannot answer them. But as one gets older, and parents and peers begin to die, and the obituaries in the newspaper are no longer missives from a faraway place but local letters, and one’s own projects seem ever more pointless and ephemeral, such moments of terror and incomprehension seem more frequent and more piercing, and, I find, as likely to arise in the middle of the day as the night.
The idea that “religion” (that great abstraction!) regards those large questions as not valid has certainly been refuted often enough in the various religious traditions, not least of all by many, if not most, Christians. That “atheism” (another abstraction) things the questions invalid because unanswerable is likely to be equally false.
At a later point Wood refers positively to the essay by Philip Kitcher:
To take a central example, many religionists assume that life without God would be life without meaning. Where secularists cherish autonomy and choice as qualities that make life meaningful, religionists often emphasize self-abnegation and submission to a higher power. This would appear to be a wide gulf. But Kitcher suggests that religionists and secularists actually agree about how to create meaning in a life. Many believers think of their submission to God not as compelled, he points out, but instead as “issuing from the choice of the person who submits.” Life develops meaning because someone identifies with God’s purpose. This identification must spring from an act of evaluation, a decision that there is value in serving a deity whose purpose is deemed good. Believers, then, make an autonomous choice “to abdicate autonomy in order to serve what the autonomous assessment has already recognized as good.” Both atheists and believers are involved in making independent evaluations of what constitutes life-meaning. They draw different conclusions about what that meaning is, but they go about finding it in similar ways.
I like this argument because it tries to overcome the idea that to believe in God or to submit to his will is the antithesis of personal autonomy. Since the Enlightenment this has become a very common idea, not least, unfortunately, among Christians: Feuerbach’s idea that to enrich God one must impoverish man, to enrich man impoverish God. Earlier it was not always so: St. Thomas, for example, said this: “This is the supreme degree of dignity in human beings, that they be led to the good by themselves and not by others.” He regularly invoked two axioms, one Aristotelian: “Liber est causa sui” [A free person is self-responsible], and one biblical: “Posuit eum in manu consilii sui” [“God left man in the hand of his own counsel” (Douai-Rheims), that is, “made him subject to his own free choice” NAB]. (Sir 15:14). So far was Aquinas from counterposing human autonomy and participation in the life of God that he even invoked the Aristotelian tag in order to explain what genuine Christian freedom is. Immediately after saying that every created will must be “regulated by the divine law,” he went on to comment on the Pauline text, “Where the Spirit is, there is freedom” and made use of the Aristotelian axiom as the hinge of his interpretation:
A person is free when he is causa sui, while a slave exists for the sake of a lord. Whoever acts on his own initiative (ex seipso), therefore, acts freely, while whoever acts because moved by another, does not act freely. A person, then, who avoids evil not because it is evil but because of the Lord’s commandment, is not free. But if a person avoids evil because it is evil, he is free. And this is what the Holy Spirit effects when he inwardly perfects the soul by means of a good habit so that out of love he avoids something as if the divine law had commanded it. And thus he is called free, not because he is not subject to the divine law, but because by the good habit he is inclined to do that which the divine law ordains.
For Aquinas, then, the Aristotelian tag meant that human beings, at the highest level of their dignity, are self-directed, act on their own initiative, for their own sake. The triumph of grace is not the denial of this human autonomy, but its transcendent realization. It is sad that this wise position of Aquinas is so poorly represented today among many theologians and ordinary Christians.
Wood ends his review with this paragraph:
Thirty years ago, Thomas Nagel wrote a shrewd essay entitled “The Absurd,” in which he argued that, just as we can “step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back also from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way.” Secularism can seem as meaningless as religion when such doubt strikes. Nagel went on to conclude, calmly, that we shouldn’t worry too much, because if, under the eye of eternity, nothing matters “then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.” This is impeccably logical, and impishly offers a kind of secular deconstruction of secularism, but it is fairly cold comfort in the middle of the night.
The New Yorker has a review by James Wood of a new book, The Joy of Secularism: 11 Essays for How We Live Now, edited by George Levine, who says that the book’s aim is to “explore the idea that secularism is a positive, not a negative, condition, not a denial of the world of spirit and of religion, but an affirmation of the world we’re living in now; that building our world on a foundation of the secular is essential to our contemporary well-being; and that such a world is capable of bringing us to the condition of ‘fullness’ that religion has always promised.”
Wood in the past has not shown himself very sympathetic toward religion, or even very knowledgeable about it, but in this review he is at times more generous toward it, and more skeptical that secularism really offers any more consolation. Here are his first two paragraphs:
I have a friend, an analytic philosopher and convinced atheist, who told me that she sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, anxiously turning over a series of ultimate questions: “How can it be that this world is the result of an accidental big bang? How could there be no design, no metaphysical purpose? Can it be that every life—beginning with my own, my husband’s, my child’s, and spreading outward—is cosmically irrelevant?” In the current intellectual climate, atheists are not supposed to have such thoughts. We are locked into our rival certainties—religiosity on one side, secularism on the other—and to confess to weakness on this order is like a registered Democrat wondering if she is really a Republican, or vice versa.
These are theological questions without theological answers, and, if the atheist is not supposed to entertain them, then, for slightly different reasons, neither is the religious believer. Religion assumes that they are not valid questions because it has already answered them; atheism assumes that they are not valid questions because it cannot answer them. But as one gets older, and parents and peers begin to die, and the obituaries in the newspaper are no longer missives from a faraway place but local letters, and one’s own projects seem ever more pointless and ephemeral, such moments of terror and incomprehension seem more frequent and more piercing, and, I find, as likely to arise in the middle of the day as the night.
The idea that “religion” (that great abstraction!) regards those large questions as not valid has certainly been refuted often enough in the various religious traditions, not least of all by many, if not most, Christians. That “atheism” (another abstraction) things the questions invalid because unanswerable is likely to be equally false.
At a later point Wood refers positively to the essay by Philip Kitcher:
To take a central example, many religionists assume that life without God would be life without meaning. Where secularists cherish autonomy and choice as qualities that make life meaningful, religionists often emphasize self-abnegation and submission to a higher power. This would appear to be a wide gulf. But Kitcher suggests that religionists and secularists actually agree about how to create meaning in a life. Many believers think of their submission to God not as compelled, he points out, but instead as “issuing from the choice of the person who submits.” Life develops meaning because someone identifies with God’s purpose. This identification must spring from an act of evaluation, a decision that there is value in serving a deity whose purpose is deemed good. Believers, then, make an autonomous choice “to abdicate autonomy in order to serve what the autonomous assessment has already recognized as good.” Both atheists and believers are involved in making independent evaluations of what constitutes life-meaning. They draw different conclusions about what that meaning is, but they go about finding it in similar ways.
I like this argument because it tries to overcome the idea that to believe in God or to submit to his will is the antithesis of personal autonomy. Since the Enlightenment this has become a very common idea, not least, unfortunately, among Christians: Feuerbach’s idea that to enrich God one must impoverish man, to enrich man impoverish God. Earlier it was not always so: St. Thomas, for example, said this: “This is the supreme degree of dignity in human beings, that they be led to the good by themselves and not by others.” He regularly invoked two axioms, one Aristotelian: “Liber est causa sui” [A free person is self-responsible], and one biblical: “Posuit eum in manu consilii sui” [“God left man in the hand of his own counsel” (Douai-Rheims), that is, “made him subject to his own free choice” (NAB)]. (Sir 15:14). So far was Aquinas from counterposing human autonomy and participation in the life of God that he even invoked the Aristotelian tag in order to explain what genuine Christian freedom is. Immediately after saying that every created will must be “regulated by the divine law,” he went on to comment on the Pauline text, “Where the Spirit is, there is freedom” and made use of the Aristotelian axiom as the hinge of his interpretation:
A person is free when he is causa sui, while a slave exists for the sake of a lord. Whoever acts on his own initiative [ex seipso], therefore, acts freely, while whoever acts because moved by another, does not act freely. A person, then, who avoids evil not because it is evil but because of the Lord’s commandment, is not free. But if a person avoids evil because it is evil, he is free. And this is what the Holy Spirit effects when he inwardly perfects the soul by means of a good habit so that out of love he avoids something as if the divine law had commanded it. And thus he is called free, not because he is not subject to the divine law, but because by the good habit he is inclined to do that which the divine law ordains.
For Aquinas, then, the Aristotelian tag meant that human beings, at the highest level of their dignity, are self-directed, act on their own initiative, for their own sake. The triumph of grace is not the denial of this human autonomy, but its transcendent realization. It is sad that this wise position of Aquinas is so poorly represented today among many theologians and ordinary Christians.
Wood ends his review with this paragraph:
Thirty years ago, Thomas Nagel wrote a shrewd essay entitled “The Absurd,” in which he argued that, just as we can “step back from the purposes of individual life and doubt their point, we can step back also from the progress of human history, or of science, or the success of a society, or the kingdom, power, and glory of God, and put all these things into question in the same way.” Secularism can seem as meaningless as religion when such doubt strikes. Nagel went on to conclude, calmly, that we shouldn’t worry too much, because if, under the eye of eternity, nothing matters “then that doesn’t matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.” This is impeccably logical, and impishly offers a kind of secular deconstruction of secularism, but it is fairly cold comfort in the middle of the night.
Splendid post. These are the big questions of the day and I agree their answers are already out there, waiting to be re-discovered and re-articulated to make sense in today’s world. I too would start with Aquinas for that job. That we don’t look to faith for “an affirmation of the world we’re living in now” and to bring us “to the condition of ‘fullness’ that religion has always promised” tells us just how busted it is and how much in need of reconstruction from the ground up.
It seems that intellectually the secular West is in a period of crisis. Not only is the Enlightenment dead, except in a few stragglers such as Dawkins, but even post-modernism, that paradigm of chaos, is also gasping its last. (See the end game of post=modernism as described in this Prospect article: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/07/postmodernism-is-dead-va-exhibition-age-of-authenticism/
Wood, it seems is back at square one, and he isn’t the only secularist I’ve read lately who is beginning to wonder about their own philosophical pre-suppositions. There are even secularists like Habermas and Paglia who are willing to admit publicly that religion can have positive value.
The Courts of the Gentiles are desperately needed, but, in my opinion, only if the believers will retain the Greek-medieval-Enlightenment respect for reason. I don’t see any of the secularists abandoning it. On the other hand, because they are so deeply disappointed in the results of reason-alone, some of them just might in desperation look for other kinds of bases for their comittment/belief/weltaunschauung/whatever.
Indeed, Thomas is needed, but unfortunately he is generally less appreciated in the Church these days than outside of it. See, for instance, his non-presence in the documents of Vat II. But I must admit that the English analytic Thomists (who are conservative Catholics for the most part) do retain the rationalist appreciation of reason. (If Thomas himself were alive today would he be an analytic Thomist?)
So what will be the issues in the Courts? Faith v. reason? Faith and reason? Feelings over reason? Shall we just gnore the whole faith v. reason brouhaha and just rely blindly on theological intuition/mystical knowledge? Which way(s) will the dialogues go?
Even more important at the moment is this question: what would entice un-believers like Wood into dialogue with believers? What are the preconditions of conversation for such people?
Ann (8/17 1:27 pm):
Ann, intellectuals live in a permanent state of crisis. It’s in the nature of the beasts :o)
Ann: I don’t know why you think Aquinas is “less appreciated in the Church these days than outside of it.” The last fifteen or twenty years have seen a quite remarkable revival of interest in Thomas among Catholic philosophers and theologians. Fergus Kerr’s book, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism reviews some of these developments, which range far more widely than the analytical tradition. There is, in particular, a quite robust debate going on about the relative importance for Thomas of Aristotle and of Neo-Platonism. There was a symposium a few years back on Aquinas the Augustinian. There’s a lot going on!
if the hallmarks of the Catholic intellectual tradition are the importance of the tradition itself (and hence appreciation of Aquinas etc.), the belief in the essential goodness of God’s creation (aka what we now call the secular world), and a belief in the coherence of faith and reason (i.e., truth cannot contradict truth), it seems all the piece parts are there. We just need to put them together in words a modern person can understand. (In that department, “the court of the gentiles” may not be the most effective name for the job it purports to undertake.)
JAK –
Yes, the English analytic Thomists, whom I mentioned, are an exception, especially because of their lively interest in virtue ethics. Glad to hear that Thomas is being appreciated in other Catholic places again. I’d watch that Augustan strain, though :-) Let’s hope the enthusiasm gets to the Vatican in some form besides Thomas’ Augustinian mode. The Vatican is lopsidedly Augustinian already.
At least since the mid-19th century when the religious enthusiasm movement and later Romanticism took hold, Americans have usually been suspicious of reason, and, I’d say, just as often they became contemptuous of it. (Note how logic was dropped as a required subject in American colleges. That was not the case for our Founders’ schools.) Sure, Americans grant that reason is useful in science, but that’s about it for most Americans including an awful lot of Catholics. “Egg-head” has turned into “geek”.
That’s why I’m so curious about what the Courts of the Gentiles are going to talk about. What will it be — art? Poetry? History? What psychiatry can tell us about man and God? (Neat trick if that were possible — see Lacan). Ah, well, there’s always the Holy Spirit to nudge us in the right direction.
David S. –
Since by your own admission you find thinking useless, and you seem to avoid doing so whenever possible, you are hardly in a position to judge what the intellectuals are and are not up to.
Ann:
Wood is already in dialogue with believers. I once had a conversation with him about what used to be called the Four Last Things, and he showed more interest in what heaven might be than many believers I’ve spoken with. I have also heard him defend religious thinkers before an audience of people who assumed that faith was usually a sign of stupidity. He found it hard to believe that anyone thought Leszek Kolakoski, Terry Eagleton, and Marilynne Robinson were stupid.
Matthew –
That is indeed good news :-)
From your conversation with him and your other knowledge of contemporary seculars, which religious topics would you say they are interested in the most? Or what is it that you think they might need most?
Yes, generalizations are usually risky, but . . .
If somebody assembles the Court of the Gentiles in this country Wood should be invited. I read his New Yorker essay and found it balanced given his starting point.
Ann: Fear not! Thomism is alive and well in my university in tones ranging from the Analytic to that still wistful for Neothomism. I recently say in a brilliant defense of a young woman who defended her thesis on deification in Thomas.In addition: Virtue Ethics thrives in various forms.
Ann (8/17 3:18 pm):
By their fruits you shall know them.
I think occasionally, Ann, but I don’t take my thinking seriously. It’s just words. Almost by definition, intellectuals take themselves very seriously.
If a hallmark of Americans is a profound skepticism about rational thought in areas other than the hard sciences, I think that’s admirable. As I understand it, that’s one of the things that separate the French Enlightenment from the English Enlightenment. We went English, and the intellectual world stayed with the French. To each his, her, its, and their own.
So which is safer, richer and more at peace now — London or Paris?
Lawrence C. –
Yes, the analysts and virtue ethicists are strong. And I have to admit there there are still neoThomists (I mean the sort at Ave Maria) but I try to forget that fact. They do a lot more harm than good. Are any of them first-rate?
What we don’t have are first-rate Catholic philosophers who are willing to mix it up with non-Catholic philosopher in the difficult and controversial metaphysical and epistemological issues of the day. Even MacIntyre has avoided the most controversial metaphysical/ epistemological issues (though he just might not be interested?), and so far as I know neither has Taylor (who is inclined to anthropological and social issues), while John Finnis’ big work on natural law ignores the issue of abortion entirely. Yes, there are some minor folks like Robert George who try to engage in that issue, but I just don’t find him all that competent.
I did my thesis on Maritain and grew to dislike the man, but I’ll give it to him — he never avoided a controversy and was willing to meet his opponents on their own ground. Not your typical neo-Thomist at all, at all.
Might I ask if the young woman’s thesis was influenced by the Orthodox mystical theologians? They too seem to be coming back. (Also an unfortunate trend. Sigh.)
Ann,
To answer your question, these are some of the topics that, in my experience, have made for the best conversations between believers and non-believers:
1. Is belief compatible with doubt or skepticism? James Wood became an atheist in his adolescence; he stopped believing when he started thinking rigorously for himself. And his experience with many believers has been that they fail to apply enough intellectual pressure to their beliefs. It is not for nothing that many atheists call themselves Free Thinkers; they put a premium on following an argument wherever it leads, and they think of themselves as being opposed to comfortable illusions. For them, the greatest courage is the courage of being able to live without illusions; they cherish lucidity above all. So the question is whether lucidity as they understand it, the critical faculty uninhibited, is compatible with theology. Show them that it is, and they will give you a hearing. But it is not easy to show them that it is.
2. Can the desire for justice — for ourselves and our descendents, but also for our ancestors, for anyone who has ever lived — be satisfied without something like the Last Judgment? In Spe salvi, Benedict answers No; and this, he thinks, is the greatest argument for belief. That encyclical more than any other I’ve read speaks to atheists and agnostics where they are. You could build your whole Court of the Gentiles around it.
Ann: With regard to Aquinas at Vatican II, I published an article a decade or so ago on the topic, which you can find in typescript at http://jakomonchak.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/thomism-at-vatican-ii.pdf
” Free Thinkers; they put a premium on following an argument wherever it leads, and they think of themselves as being opposed to comfortable illusions. For them, the greatest courage is the courage of being able to live without illusions; they cherish lucidity above all.”
Matthew –
Thanks.
I too seem to be a natural born Free Thinker — if we are obliged to recognize what is true, we have to critically examine our own beliefs and follow the challenges where they lead. But I must say I”m surprised at the requirement for lucidity that your free-thinking friends requrie. Unlike them I don’t require lucidity or certainty. I know –! — that even my own objections to my beliefs are themselves ultimately uncertain too.
Why do your friends think that it’s so important? Is it the feeling of uncertainty they can’t tolerate or is there some theoretical problem with *all* uncertain or unclear beliefs? Too much Descartes? While he valued clarity and certainty, he would admit his own limitations and settle for less. Hmm.
Yes, there’s a lot in Spe salvi of interest. But I think Benedict’s argument about justice requiring a last judgment would ground belief in an afterlife only IF we knew there would be justice. But belief that there will be justice is still only belief. As I read him, he’s proposing a sort of pragmatic justification for hope/belief — it works, so it must be true. Hmmm.
JAK –
Thanks very much for the article. Sad that some “Thomists” were Thomas’ worst enemies.
Having read the propositions Chenu was forced to approve, I now have an even lower opinion of the Vatican than I did this morning. Sigh.
I keep thinking how big a problem in the secularism/religion relationship fundamentalism is.
Just this week several articles appear:-majolr evengelical discussion on whether Adam and Eve were real people and what to do abou tevolution.Coverage of the building of the Ark for a Kentucky theme park to show the Biblical story (myth) is true.
The horrific coberage pf the young adopted girl beaten to death to folow the “spare the rod theology” (thank you CNN for covering this in depth -it’s long been a cultural issue in domestic violence circles).
Today we even have that great Christian consevative, TRick Pery, poopooing global warming as human caused.
I think the Church has enough problems dealing with seculatism and keping up with (Ann’s word)complexity which seems to increase , but there are even still strings of biblical fundamentalism in our Church.
Bob N. ==
The worst bit of Catholic fundamentalism is the rigid interpretation of “Increase and multiply” without any qualifications, except for the recommendation of the natural family planning method which often doesn’t work, even when used properly. JP II was irrational on the subject of what he saw as a necessity for couples to be “generous” in having more than two children . The problem is not simply a matter of the effect of the contraception “dogma” on individual couples and families. The wider problem is the Earth’s over-population. This fundamentalist interpretation has prompted the Vatican to defy the laws of arithmetic == there is simply no way that couples can continue to more than replace themselves without wrecking the Earth. Its natural resources are limited, and so must the population be.
It surprises me that even the liberals on this blog do not seem a bit concerned with this already devastating problem. I mean, just look at Africa today, and the theologians of both the RCC and Islam bear some responsibility for the starvation and deaths.
Why is this topic never discussed here?
By the way, I’m quite convinced that another huge consequence of the Church’s ignoring of this problem is that many young people leave the Church because of it. They look at the contemporary result of the teaching (e.g., Somalia, Texas) and decide that the Church is morally too blind for them. They cannot in conscience teach their own kids that this teaching of the Church is rational.
Thanks for the thoughtful article. The reference to Aquinas reminds me of how my wife approaches things.
She is originally from Latin American and likes the Neocatecumenado way of looking at things. She reminds me to “Do want you want”, but also that the best way is to want to do things the way the church says.
In other words – as best I can determine – Neocatecumenados would say something like; attend mass of course, but do not attend mass because it is your obligation; attend because it is what you want to do, because you love attending mass. This approach or outlook relies on aligning one’s wants and preferences with what the Church says to do.
Some other examples:
Help the poor not because it is your so-called “Christian duty”, but rather, help them because you love God and want to help them.
Take communion if that is what you want, not just because everyone else in the pew is going.
For me then, the notion seems two-fold; do not do things automatically (avoid a herd and/or robotic mentality), and try to be submissive by trying to bring my wishes into line with, make them conform with God’s plan.
While I understand where they are coming from, and intellectually agree with them, for me this Neocatecumenado approach or outlook is a very tall order. I tend to do things automatically or because they are obligatory. I also tend to like ritual and routine; I find them comfortable.
Ann, as for your concern about a population explosion, that old cant, one the coincidentally Al Gore recently tried to revive, has never been less valid. Also, NFP in fact is both a moral and reasonable way to plan for children.
Many folks who might agree with you, along with the likes of Al Gore, always think that the people are the problem, when the truth is that the people are the solution, or at least they hold, or can find the solution to the many problems we face.
Certainly people are starving in Sudan; that tragedy has been obvious for awhile. However that does not mean Americans should limit the size of their families via artificial birth control. It means rather, that we Americans should try to help relieve the immediate suffering and longer term, try to help the Africans provide for their own families.
Moreover Ann; the sort of thinking that you outline – that we just do not have enough food and water on this earth for the great unwashed masses to keep reproducing without someone controlling it – as a practical matter inevitably forces onto society decisions like:
- Whom shall we allow to have children?
- How many children per family shall we allow?
- Whom shall we designate to make such decisions?
From Eugenics, Sanger, Mussolini to Pol Pot, right down to the on-going outrage of Red China (pun intended) today, the end result of that line of thought and action is always – always – a man-made, morbid tragic nightmare.
So much for thoughtful famil yplannin gand encouraging it.
Of course. there’s no world population question or global warming question -al lthat counts is defendin g one;s ideology and fixed religious ideas.
Stay blind, Ken, and your great-grandchildren won’t have water to drink.
Bob N. –
What gets me is that so many people manage to ignore the fact that the Earth is not an infinitely large sphere. For God’s sake, all you have to do is *look at* a picture of Earth and you’ll know that the number of people the Earth can support is a finite number.
I just don’t understand how people can be so blind.
There is global climate change Bob. The question is not whether the climate is changing. Some think climate change is man-made, while others think it is part of the natural cycle of things.
Now those who claim global warming (climate change is more accurate; the polar bears are not drowning and never were) is man-made, tend to say things like; “We ‘believe in’ global warming”, “Give us your money to save the planet”, and the one I like best; “We do not have time to explain; this is too important”. Oh and I almost forgot; “It is for the children”.
On the other side are those who, since they consider recent climate changes to be part of nature’s cycle, think we do not have to do anything. In fact we will need to help folks in parts of the world where heretofore the climate had “always” been mild enough for them to live in shacks or lightly-built homes with no heat or air conditioning, to renovate or re-build their homes and their national infrastructure.
If climate continues changing, we will need to allow for migration. We will also need to help a country where (for example) since it was previously never cold enough to justify central heating and natural gas piped into homes, they instead relied upon bottled gas and space heating; that will need to change.
But it is difficult to discuss the matter with some who subscribe to anthropomorphic global climate change; they tend to over-emote, to glorify the Noble Savage, and are all too ready to dive into a big pout about how bad and evil Western Civilization is now and has always been.
These folks can hardly stand themselves or their own civilization, and that makes it tough to discuss things. Add to this the plain old socialists and communist hacks, silly utopians, and greedy business types who are tickled silly at the thought of playing the cap-and-trade global carbon credit market (system), and the matter quickly becomes quite involved.
For now though; watch your wallet.
“If climate continues changing, we will need to allow for migration. ”
Ken –
You assume that moving from a country with a lot of people to one with fewer people will solve the resource problem. It won’t. True, we are all dependent on our own little local economic systems, but our micro=economic systems (which provide the means of life like food, energy, clothing, etc.) are dependent on each other.
So if a Somalian moves to Britain, he will not have reduced his dependency on the oil of Saudi Arabia, etc. The world is now a global village, and, Earth being finite, there are no other villages to move to when this village’s resources (Earth’s) are depleting and finally totally depleted.
To return to the original theme of the post…Woods (as usual) provides us with much to consider. The acknowledgement that inconclusiveness and uncertainty is the condition of believers and non-believers alike is a welcome proposition. The issue is not that some have certitude about the ultimate while others do not; the issue is, given the inscrutability of the ultimate, how does one live and think and act in the face of that unknowingness? Within what communities and traditions does one orient oneself (and this of course is something that we do not have complete control over…it depends to a large extent on the circumstances of one’s birth).
Joe’s reference to Aquinas is instructive. Thomas contrasts the free person and the slave. Paradoxically, though, for the Christian, Christ’s redemptive activity is effected precisely by his (freely) becoming a slave (Phil 2). What does this mean? Whatever it means, this becomes the path of the Christian disciple as well…though in another paradoxical turn, Jesus proclaims as well to his disciples that “I no longer call you servants (slaves) but friends” (John 15:15). Christ affirms the fullness of our human dignity and freedom (to be causa sui in Aristotelian terms), but the crown of that freedom is not to be unmoved by another, but rather to be moved by persuasion and love, rather than by coercion and fear. So the disciple “does exist for the sake of a lord”…the Lord who is the Christ.
“ Ken, You assume that moving from a country with a lot of people to one with fewer people will solve the resource problem. It won’t. True, we are all dependent on our own little local economic systems, but our micro=economic systems (which provide the means of life like food, energy, clothing, etc.) are dependent on each other.
So if a Somalian moves to Britain, he will not have reduced his dependency on the oil of Saudi Arabia, etc. The world is now a global village, and, Earth being finite, there are no other villages to move to when this village’s resources (Earth’s) are depleting and finally totally depleted.”
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If a Somalian moves away from Somalia, he is readily absorbed into his (or her) new local economy. In the case of large numbers of folks from Somalia moving, their country does not produce much for export and so their movement would not affect the world economy. I know it sounds harsh but frankly, since Somalians produce little if anything of value for the world economy, the world would not notice that few remained in Somalia. In the case of poor, ignorant basket-case nations Somalia, if due to climate change it is best to relocate, the key would be to take care to split them up among far-flung nations, so that no one nations would receive a large number of the immigrants. That way they would be forced to abandon their old ignorant ways and be assimilated into their host culture.
If on the other hand, Argentina’s climate became colder & hotter to the point where they need to install central heating and air conditioning, the case could be made that the international community should help fund the building of the required infrastructure and equipment. If the Argentines moved north (or wherever) the world would notice the absence of Argentine beef. Likewise with other area that produce enough for export.
And so while in some cases, migration would help mitigate climate change, in other cases where the locals produce products the world wants or needs to buy, investment in infrastructure and technology will be the answer.
Solutions to challenges presented by on-going climate change will vary, but the ends do not justify the means, and we need to remember at all times the dignity of Man.
It seems to me that the big issue for the agnostic heirs of the Enlightenment is: is it rational to believe what has not been or cannot be proven? NOt very long ago their answer was a guick No, their assumption being that rationality demands proof. But times have changed rather fast for them.
First, the 20th century, the century of scientific progress par exellence, ended up the bloodiest era in history. The waning of the estalbished churches with their superstitions and the triumph of eason lead to Hell, not a material Heaven.
Second, basic science became stymied around the middle of the 20th century as Einstein’s great system was found to be incnsistent with the great sub-atomic system of quantum theory. The March of Science no longer seemed inevitable. There hasn’t been too much basic theory to brag about since them.
Third, philosophy of science did progress in the sense that it showed that the a physics that could explain everything in the material world and which could predict the future was just wishful thinking. The epistemic problems of physics lead only to more or less probable and always revisaable physical theories.
I would add that there is pair of philosophical events that has shaken up the agnostic/atheist intellectuals who have been doing the most basic thinking of the 20th century — two consummate geniuses, namely Gottlob Frege and Wittgenstein who were philosophers of math, logic, and language. Their standards of proof were absolute, and no one could accuse either of being soft-headed, intellectual wimps. Unfortunately for the militant seculars (who are always materialists), Frege was, of all things, a Platonist who admitted that there are certain non-material realities which persist in time and are the basis of all logical thinking. And Wittgenstein admitted (gasp!) the reality of a mystical dimension Between them, the materialism of the Enllightenment folks has been badly, badly shaken, and since Frege and Wittgenstein non-religious philosophers have become more open to considering at least the possibility of at least some sort of reality(ies) that transcend the material world.
So now the Enllightenment agnostics are left with their own intrinsic uncertainties, and some are starting to see that their position is philosophically similar to the position of would-be believers of religious claims: neither religion *nor* science can be proven with the sort of certainty that the Enlightenment demanded.
We are all left with the question: when is it rational to believe without proof? This leads to other very difficult questions, such as: are there different sorts of evidence and if so what are they?
In my opinion, an epistemology of theological truth is desperately needed. It should be concerned with these questions: what can we know about God and Revelation? and how can we know it? Until there are good answers to those questions it will be difficult to talk with the agnostics whose faith in science has been shaken. They are very, very sharp people, and they are not going to take a lot of vagueness and inconsistency from us. The Courts of the Gentiles will not be simple, one-side-talking, catechism lessons.
‘It seems to me that the big issue for the agnostic heirs of the Enlightenment is: is it rational to beIn the case of large numbers of folks from Somalia moving, their country does not produce much for export and so their movement would not affect the world economy.’
Ken –
In Somalia right now the needs of the people cannot be met because they do not have the natural resources to meet them. If they all moved to Britain that would indeed affect the British economy — because they would make major demands demands on the available resources. In the process of meeting their demands more of Britain’s and the rest of the world’s natural resources would be required to meet their needs, so the world economy *would* be affected. It would mean somewhat less for all the rest of the world’s people. (Why do you think that Somalia’s neighbors are not anxious to take them in?)
You can’t get out of this truth, Ken: when more people use more resources (regardless of where the resources come from), the amount of resource are reduced. The world has just so much in the way of certain natural resources. Some are renewable, but many essentials (e.g., oil at this point) are not. If you don’t believe that, just look at what you paid for gas the last time you filled your tank.
“In the process of meeting their demands more of Britain’s and the rest of the world’s natural resources would be required to meet their needs, so the world economy *would* be affected. It would mean somewhat less for all the rest of the world’s people. (Why do you think that Somalia’s neighbors are not anxious to take them in?)
You can’t get out of this truth, Ken: when more people use more resources (regardless of where the resources come from), the amount of resource are reduced. The world has just so much in the way of certain natural resources.”
While Somalia’s neighbors are too poor to be of much material help, Britain, the US, and other advanced nations can take-in folks like Somalians without much straining their own systems. On Somalia in particular, given the internal strife of that country, if one was going to organize any mass relocation, it would be best disperse that population as widely as possible.
Regarding the use of resources and your dire view, if not sharing the resources among nations, what solution do you propose? On what do you pin your hope?
Ken,
Please tell us more about this “anthropomorphic” climate change. It sounds very interesting. Does this mean we will be naming thunderstorms and droughts and not just hurricanes?
OOPS —
‘It seems to me that the big issue for the agnostic heirs of the Enlightenment is: is it rational to beIn the case of large numbers of folks from Somalia moving, their country does not produce much for export and so their movement would not affect the world economy.’
SHOULD JUST BE; In the case of large numbers of folks from Somalia moving, their country does not produce much for export and so their movement would not affect the world economy.’
Ken –
Yes, people sometimes move to where resources are available — but when they do, they reduce the amount available for the rest of the people in their new land.
Yes, short of moving to get needed resources, peoples trade resources. But that makes no difference to the amount of an available resource because if the buyer uses it instead of the seller, then the resource has still been depleted the exact same amount.
Well, we know that the faster the number of people grows, the faster the resources are diminished. If such increases in population continue, it is inevitable that all of the resources will be used up.
So what is the solution? The ONLY solution is a stable population, with people recycling materials where necessary. The question then becomes: how to stabilize a population? So far the means seem to be contraception v. NFP v. abstinence and all the moral and psychological problems attendant on them.
Questions about atheists and atheism, Christian culture and gospel are most pertinent and can really be helpful. Whatever my reservations about John Paul II I appreciated his opposing the war in Iraq. But he should have pressed his intervention more sharply and focused in on the horrors of war. Really noteworthy was how John Paul’s most fervent boosters opposed him on the war. And got away with it. It emphasized to me two serious weakness of John Paul. He was not willing to go out on a limb on the war and he was intimidated by American conservative Catholic leaders.
This hurts religion when it appears the leadership is more political than moral. It is an historic problem which has not been resolved. And certainly skirted in these last two threads.
Ann: Here’s a link to an essay I wrote in criticism of Tracey Rowland’s proposal of a “postmodern Augustinian Thomist.” http://jakomonchak.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/jak-on-rowland.pdf
Ann (8/18 12:47 pm):
I think that objection’s dying, Ann. Forecasts are for the world’s population to level off at about 9 billion in about 2050, then start down:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
A more practical problem might be the cost of putting ten kids through college.
“Joseph Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971) xiii: “In many ways, those turbulent years [the 1260's and 1270's], with the abrupt entrance of Arabian science into the firmly built structure of traditional theology, are similar to the post-Conciliar mood which we are experiencing at the present time [1969].””
JAK –
What interesting quotations from Ratzinger!
I really don’t see any great similarity between the two periods mentioned above except that there was a great deal of opposition to the intellectual status quo at both times, which Ratinger seems to find very threatening.
His notion that Aquinas was “closed in on himself” because of the logical clarity of his thought is a very weird one to me. If anyone was not closed in intellectually it was Aquinas who took wisdom from wherever he could find it. Ratzinger might talk favorably about openness as an intellectual virtue, but these remarks about Thomas show at least mixed feeling about it. It seems to me his criticsm of Gaudium et Spes, shows another instance of his characteristic clinging to the status quo.
Further, I suspect that his rejection of the possibility of “reason pure and simple” is what makes him reject Thomas’ appreciation of reason. His notion that because Thomss accepted inductive knowledge (“positivism”) that he couldn’t also possess wisdom (“ontological truth”) is just ludicrous.
Why does Ratzinger think he has to choose between reason and heart? Augustine didn’t, did he? From what you quote here, Ratzinger might better be categorized as a Lutheran than as an Augustinian, though I know that Luther was also very Augustinian. I just don’t remember Augustine rejecting reason to the extent that Ratzinger seems to do.
You sure make mince-meat of Rowland :-)
David S. –
The problem of putting 10 kids through college is a personal one. The problem of finding no food on the grocery shelves to buy is a world-wide economic one having to do with scarce resources, like not having enough petroleum to turn into fertilizer to grow the food.
Yes, Ann, but my point was that Malthus was wrong. The earth can carry nine billion people.
David –
The question I raised was whether or not (contrary to JP II’s encouragement) the Earth can support an unlimited number of people. We can argue about what the limit might be at any different point in time. But if you consider the fundamentals, you’ll see that ultimately there must be limits on human reproduction. And the Vatican still doesn’t seem to recognize that fact.
Ann, nine billion is the forecasted peak:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
No matter what the Vatican says, people will stop having huge families. That’s happening now and it will continue.
You could say, I suppose, that the Vatican is being irresponsible, but that’s not counting with the subtle logic of God :O)
Ann: What did you mean above when you spoke of “JP II’s encouragement”?
M.-D. Chenu, in the 1930′s, compared the situation at the University of Paris in mid-13th century, to the crisis engendered in the 20th century. The former crisis was precipitated by the introduction of the whole corpus of Aristotle’s works which seemed to present a whole worldview that challenged the traditional mode of conceiving and representing the Christian view. A left wing (the Averroists) group up that frightened the right wing (the neo-Augustinians) into resort to authority. The middle, on Chenu’s view, was occupied by Sts. Albert and Thomas. The 20th-century crisis was precipitated by the rise of historical consciousness and by the turn to the subject in philosophy. A left wing was represented by the Modernists, a right wing by the resort to authority (“Pascendi” and “Lamentabili”). Chenu wanted a middle position to do for the two great challenges what Aquinas had done for Aristotle–that is, think one’s way through the crisis.
Ratzinger is correct, of course, in saying that there is no such thing as “pure reason.” There are only people who are more or less intelligent, rational, and responsible. But I hardly think that Aquinas was unaware of that. Perhaps some modern “neo-Thomists” were, however, who thought that the proofs for the existence of God and for the claims of Christianity were so objectively true that only bad faith or outright sin could explain that some people were not convinced by them. Lonergan used to speak ironically of people who think that truth is so objective that it doesn’t need to reside in anyone’s mind. Thomas didn’t think that. He said that there are eternal truths only if there is an eternal mind.
“Ann: What did you mean above when you spoke of “JP II’s encouragement”?”
JAK –
I meant that JP II, in encouraging couples to have lots of children, was helping to accelerate the over-population of the Earth.
About “truth” and “pure reason”, there are some semantic problems involved there. Still, I think Thomas is right that truth in the most basic sense is a relationship of a thought to a thing, so that if there is no thinking there is no truth. But given that as so, there are instances of pure reason — perfect exercise of reason. In other words, there are times when we are indeed reasoning correctly and we can be confident of our thinking processes. Unfortunately, those instances are for most of us only very simple processes. Complexity is the enemy of human reason. That’s why we avoid it so, I think.
I have never heard that Pope John Paul II encouraged couples to have lots of children. Do you have a source?
If by a “perfect exercise of reason” you mean simply that at times we reason correctly, I would agree. But “right reason” has often been taken to mean “what I reason to be the case,” with everyone else wrong…. But, then, of course, one can’t consistently say: “This is what I think, unreasonably.” That we are reasoning correctly is the implication of every judgement.
JAK –
HEre’a a quote JP II at his general audience of Aug. 1, 1984:
” Taking for granted the above-mentioned interpersonal aspects and adding to them the “economic and social conditions,” those are considered “to exercise responsible parenthood who prudently and generously decide to have a large family, or who, for serious reasons and with due respect to the moral law, choose to have no more children for the time being or even for an indeterminate period” (HV 10).”
http://www.theologicalclowning.org/117.html
In other words, when circumstances permit it is good to have a large family.
This strikes me as something less than encouragement of large families. Not having a large family and having one, it seems to me, are regarded as equally valid moral options, depending on circumstances. And given the traditional position, what was more significant was that the second option was considered, first by Paul VI and then by John Paul II, as as valid and permissible as the former, the large family. The quote, of course, is from Paul VI.
It seems to me that the preferred choice is to be “generous”. The alternative is justified only when there is serious reason choose a smaller family.
Yes, the quote it Paul VI, but it is JP II quoting and approving the quote.
The main point of both popes is that people ought to be open to life, and should be willing to accept the gifts and grace of God, to at least try to say “yes” to His will.