From: Glenn Morton (glennmorton@entouch.net)
Date: Fri Jul 11 2003 - 20:42:04 EDT
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Howard J. Van Till [mailto:hvantill@chartermi.net]
>Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:27 AM
>Good morning, Glenn. Thanks for another thoughtful contribution.
>
>From: "Glenn Morton" <glennmorton@entouch.net>
>
>> I agree that we can't worship the Bible, and that that is as bad
>as being
>> an idolator or like the Israelites who believed that the Ark of the
>> Covenant would save them from the Philistines. However, without some
>> limitations one can run the gamut from atheism, to deism to
>pantheism and
>> any other flavor one wants.
>
>Correct. Limiting the source material considered to be religiously
>authoritative can lead to corresponding limitations in the
>spectrum of religious worldviews derived from it. Narrowing the
>scope of a "religious data base" can lead to greater certainty in
>the theology (religious theory) derived from it. If certainty is
>the goal, then limiting the sources to be consulted sounds like a
>good strategy.
There certainly is htis tendency with the YECs, whose leaders and members specifically limit their input material to those things which support their view or those things for which they think they have an explanation. Ask them something that they for which they have no 'answer' they clam up.
Even companies try to have 'vision' statements with which to unite the troops behind a common view of the world. Maybe we humans need this for our groups. Primates use grooming to ensure group behavior is correct. But as the neocortex gets larger, the group size follows. With mankind, it would be impossible for us to engage in group grooming to maintain the size of group our neocortex predicts because we would spend 45% of our time grooming to maintain relationships for groups of the average human size--150 individuals. Language allows secondary 'grooming' by keeping up with others not present and that helps maintain the relationship.
"Although we do not yet fully understand how grooming works
to bond social groups, one likely mechanism is that it enables
animals to spend time in close proximity, thus facilitating the
development of a sense of mutual trust (and reliability as
allies). If this is so, then one way of increasing the size of
groups may be to increase the number of individuals with whom one
engages in these kinds of social interactions. Language allows
living humans to do just that because, unlike grooming, we can
converse with several people at the same time. To get from the
mean group size for chimpanzees (55) to that for modern humans
(150), any such bonding mechanism would have to be about three
times (150/55) more efficient than grooming; given that grooming
is a one-on-one activity, language ought to be a one-on-three
activity. As it turns out, the maximum size of natural human
conversation groups (one speaker plus three listeners) is exactly
the size required." Robin I. M. Dunbar, "Brains on Two Legs: Group
Size and the Evolution of Intelligence," in Frans B. M. de Waal,
editor, Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us About
Human Social Evolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001), p.190
But groups which don't have a common belief system, don't cohere. And that may be why we humans require common beliefs to have consistent communion with our fellow creatures. So, while you may find it limiting, or illogical, when viewed from an evolutionary perspective it isn't.
>
>But look what happens if we were to follow the same strategy in
>science. Selecting one set of data and discarding other available
>data sets might lead to a scientific theory that seems very highly
>supported -- one in which we might have (whether warranted or not)
>a high degree of certainty, but what is the price of that sense of
>certainty? As a scientist, you know the answer. Certainty has been
>purchased at the cost of accuracy or truth, or at least an
>opportunity to get closer to the truth. As scientists, we value
>truth above certainty.
I have mentioned that I did grad work in philosophy but got disgusted with it and left (also had a baby and realised that philosophy offered a mighty poor living). David Siemans will most assuredly disagree with my characterization here. The reason I got disgusted was that there was no truth in philosophy. One guy would swallow a set of assumptions, build an incredibly self-consistent system of thought. Then the next guy would come along, do the same with a different set of assumptions. In some sense they were all speaking different systems/languages. There was no experimentum crucis to separate the wheat from the chaff. And then there was Wittgenstein, who believed that language didn't mean very much but was just a self-consistent game played by people and that translations from the game of English to the Game of German were illogical (but he never seemed to turn down his royalty checks on the translations of his work!) I digress here.
My point is: Why do you think theology is different? Why would these various systems be more consistent than what I felt like I saw in philosophy.
I apologize right now to all philosophers who, no doubt, will pick apart my critique, logic and facts, whether or not they publish their retort anywhere including on this list.
My worry is that lacking an experimentum crucis, we can't tell what 'divine' books were inspired by God and which are the products of the David Koreshes of this world. Which makes me think your enterprize will fail.
And it isn't because there might not be truth in one of them but that there can't be ultimate metaphysical truth (as to the nature of God) in all of them. (read that carefully because of the subtle nuance.)
>
>It has long been my suspicion that the principal reason that
>religious communities designate some particular text as the
>authoritative canon is to achieve (at a cost) a sense of certainty
>that functions to stabilize the community. It's a very pragmatic
>function; and to the extent that community stability is good, the
>designation of a canon accomplishes something of practical value.
Grooming.
>
>Glenn, we're on the same page here. We make choices, either
>consciously or unconsciously. My own inclination is to make this
>choice as consciously as possible and without fear that God (the
>Sacred) will send me to eternal punishment if my best human
>judgment happens to err in some of those choices.
Depends upon whether or not Pascal's wager is correct. :-)
>
>> For the atheist, he places most weight on what he
>> can observe, or in science or whatever. Often it is faith that
>God wouldn't
>> cause the pain seen in the world. For the other religious positions,
>> weight is placed upon the explanatory power that which is unseen
>offers for
>> explaining that which is seen. Or it might be faith that there
>will be a
>> final justice. But in each of those positions, any of which we
>could take,
>> there are limitations placed upon the view, all of which are
>artificial.
>
>OK, but I would use a word like "chosen" or "selected" in place of
>"artificial."
At the end of the day they are artificial (if I may presume to disagree with you --which never stopped me before). They are selected, but they are artificial in that we don't know empirically what the real limitations are. They are man-made, shall we say, rather than 'natural.'
>But the answer to the question, "Why is there a God rather than no
>God?" is just as elusive as the answer to the question you just
>posed. Ultimately, we are all staring in the face of deep Mystery.
>To pretend to comprehend that Mystery is human hubris, whether
>expressed by Christian, Buddhist or atheist.
The most fundamental question is what I asked, "why is there something rather than nothing?" God is something. :-) But I agree that we are all starring in the fact of a deep mystery--one I have no hope of solving. But it does remind me of an idea I read about a couple of years ago. It was "In the beginning was the bit!" This is a serious idea offered by Anton Zeilinger. He says that the bit is the ultimate reality. While Zeilinger didn't say this, it does seem that the most elemental bit of information is "Does something exist?" Yes/No. That is the ultimate quantization. But Zeilinger's idea is interesting. It is that the elementary atom of the universe is the bit--the yes/no, ying/yang,1/0.... Here is a tidbit from the article I read:
"It sounds innocuous. But the consequences of Zeilinger's principle promise to be breathtaking. In the first place, it contains the fact that the world is quantised--the very starting point of quantum mechanics. [29]Because we can only interrogate nature the way a lawyer interrogates a witness, by means of simple yes-or-no questions, we should not be surprised that the answers come in discrete chunks. Because there is a finest grain to information there has to be a finest grain to our experience of nature. This is why electrons are restricted to fixed energy levels in atoms, why light comes in pieces we call photons, and perhaps, ultimately, why the Universe seems to be made out of discrete particles. To the question, "Why does the world appear to be quantised?" Zeilinger replies, "Because information about the world is quantised."
"Less obviously, Zeilinger's principle leads to the intrinsic randomness found in the quantum world. Consider the spin of an electron. Say it is measured along a vertical axis (call it the z axis) and found to be pointing up. Because one bit of information has been used to make that statement, no more information can be carried by the electron's spin. Consequently, no information is available to predict the amounts of spin in the two horizontal directions (x and y axes), so they are of necessity entirely random. If you then measure the spin in one of these directions, there is an equal chance of its pointing right or left, forward or back. This fundamental randomness is what we call Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
"In order to progress beyond a single elementary system, Zeilinger's principle has to be generalised. He proposes simply that two elementary systems carry exactly two bits of information, and N systems carry N bits. This gives us a natural explanation for one of the most fundamental and puzzling features of quantum mechanics--entanglement.
When, say, two electrons are entangled, it is impossible even in principle to describe one without the other. They have no independent existence. This seems bizarre until you use Zeilinger's principle. Concentrating on their spins, a two-electron system contains two bits. For example, they might be "The spins in the z direction are parallel," and "The spins in the x direction are antiparallel". The two bits are thereby used up, and the state is completely described--yet no statement is made about the direction of spin of one electron or the other. The entire description consists of relative statements, or correlations. This means that as soon as one spin is measured along a certain direction, the other one is fixed, even if it happens to be far away. "
http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22781
accessed 3-17-01
Hans Christian von Baeyer, “In the Beginning was the Bit,” In the New Scientist, Feb. 17, 2001, p.26-30
That does say something about the ultmate question--why is there something rather than nothing.
>
>Your "adrift" metaphor brings us back to my earlier remarks about
>achieving certainty at the expense of having a chance at getting
>closer to truth. Glenn, you contrast the certainty that a canon
>provides to the predicament of having "nothing" or "no basis upon
>which to judge the value of the 'portrait.' " I heartily disagree
>with your suggestion that "no basis" is the only other option. The
>choice is not that black & white. Even without a designated canon
>to limit and stabilize our theology, we still have all of our
>cognitive and rational faculties at our disposal, to use in the
>same way that we use them to evaluate empirical data without
>appealing to the authority of Aristotle's scientific texts. It may
>be "messy" in the sense of less certain, but, as in empirical
>science, I think we are more likely to learn something valuable
>about Reality.
One could, very appropriately at this point, ask Pilot's question: What is truth?
Simply and less profoundly, I would say that there is simply too much noise in the theologico-metaphysical system to attempt to detect the real signal from all the contradictory and mutually exclusive religions in the world.
>> OK, so why Scripture? Isn't this inconsistent with the man-made cannon
>> idea? I am just trying to explore your views. and why not
>Islamic or Hindu
>> traditions? Leaving them out is a limitation isn't it?
>
>You're right. There's no reason to exclude them, other than the
>limitations of time to become familiar with them all.
Then you are limited in your intended course by your very humanness--an inability to know everything. Sorry to say, but I still think your path is one that leads to failure, but then, having been occasionally close to where you are, maybe all paths lead to failure.
I gotta go find a dollar to place a bet with my friend Pascal.
Glenn
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