[asa] Santayana on Accommodationalism

Everyone here knows how opposed I am to the prevailing opinion on this
board, that of accommodationalism. I came back for another series of
drive-by postings. I just read a remarkable essay by George Santayana,
"Lucretius". This essay is basically his comments upon De Rerum Natura. I
will start with Lucretius who clearly wrote a RELIGIOUS doccument. Lucretius
appeals to Venus to help him write his work and thus, he seems to think he
is acting with the concert of the Gods:

"MOTHER of the Aeneadae, darling of men and gods, increase-giving Venus, who
beneath the gliding signs of heaven fillest with thy presence the
ship-carrying sea, the corn-bearing lands, since through thee every kind of
living things is conceived, rises up and beholds the light of the sun.
Before thee, goddess, flee the winds, the clouds of heaven; before thee and
thy advent; for thee earth manifold in works puts forth sweet-smelling
flowers; for thee the levels of he sea do laugh and heaven propitiated
shines with outspread light... Since thou then art sole mistress of he
nature of things and without thee nothing rises up into the divine borders
of light, nothing grows to be glad or lovely, fain would I have thee for a
helpmate in writing the verses which I essay to pen on the nature of things
for our own son of the Memmii, whom thou, goddess, hast willed to have no
peer, rich as he ever is in every grace." Lucretius On the Nature of Things,
tranls. By H. A. J. Munro, in The Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 12,
Robert M. Hutchins, ed., (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 1

But, this religious poem (and it is poem) tells us a profound truth about
the word, showing exactly what I have been saying over the years, that
poetry is not exclusive of natural truth, so the claim that because Genesis
is a poem it is thereby absolved of telling us observational truth.
Lucretius tells us about atoms:

"Wherefore once and again I say winds are unseen bodies, since in their
works and ways they are found to rival great rivers which are of a visible
body. Then again we perceive the different smells of things, yet never see
them coming to our nostrils; nor do we behold heats nor can we observe cold
with the eyes nor are we used to see voices. Yet all these things must
consist of a bodily nature, since they are able to move the senses; for
nothing but body can touch and be touched. Again clothes hung up on a shore
which waves break upon become moist, and then get dry if spread out in the
sun. Yet it has not been seen in what way the moisture of water has sunk
into them nor again in what way this has been dispelled by heat. The
moisture therefore is dispersed into small particles which the eyes are
quite unable to see. Again after the revolution of many of the sun's years a
ring on the finger is thinned on the underside by wearing, the dripping from
the eaves hollows a stone, the bent ploughshare of iron imperceptibly
decreases in the fields, and we behold the stone-paved streets worn down by
the feet of the multitude; the brass statues too at the gates show their
right hands to be wasted by the touch of the numerous passers by who greet
them. These things then we see are lessened, since they have been thus worn
down; but what bodies depart at any given time the nature of vision has
jealously shut out our seeing." Lucretius On the Nature of Things, tranls.
By H. A. J. Munro, in The Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 12, Robert
M. Hutchins, ed., (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), p. 4-5

Let it be noted that Lucretius had zero direct evidence for atoms, all was
indirect. Much of the rest of the world didn't accept atomism for another
1800 years.

So, what we have is a religious poem which tells us truth about nature, and
this is what I have been saying is a requirement for detecting truth in the
religion. Now, we come to Santayana's comments. He seems to agree that
Lucretius is not a mythological poem.

"Mythology, **that to a childish mind is the only possible poetry**, sounds
like bad rhetoric in comparison. The naturalistic poet abandons fairy land,
because he has discovered nature, history, the actual passions of man. His
imagination has reached maturity; its pleasure is to dominate, not to play."
George Santayana, "Lucretius," in Robert M. Hutchins, and Mortimer J.
Adler, Gateway to the Great Books, Vol. 10, (Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Inc., 1963), p. 373

I emphasized the phrase that seems relevant to those who seem to think that
if it is a poem, it must be mythology and then apply that belief to Genesis.
Mythology is not the only kind of poetry.

Yet, lacking truth, here is what Santayana says about the RELEVANCE of the
poem to our lives (my emphasis).

"Suppose, however-and it is a tenable supposition-that Lucretius is quite
wrong in his science, and that there is no space, no substance, and no
nature. **His poem would then lose its pertinence to our lives and personal
convictions**; it would not lose its imaginative grandeur. We could still
conceive a world composed as he describes. Fancy what emotions those who
lived in such a world would have felt on the day when a Democritus or a
Lucretius revealed to them their actual situation. How great the blindness
or the madness dissipated, and how wonderful the vision gained! How clear
the future, how intelligible the past, how marvelous the swarming atoms, in
their unintentional, perpetual fertility! What the sky is to our eyes on a
starry night, that every nook and cranny of nature would resemble, with here
and there the tentative smile of life playing about those constellations.
Surely that universe, for those who lived in it, would have had its poetry.
It would have been the poetry of naturalism. Lucretius, thinking he lived in
such a world, heard the music of it, and wrote it down." George Santayana,
"Lucretius," in Robert M. Hutchins, and Mortimer J. Adler, Gateway to the
Great Books, Vol. 10, (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1963), p.
374

Now, if someone like Santayana can easily see that a poem lacking natural
truth causes said poem to 'lose its pertinence to our lives and personal
convictions', why on earth are christians unable to see this?

I will not reply today because I will use up most of my posts in the 3
threads I intend to start.

glenn
They're Here: The Pathway Papers
Foundation, Fall, and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology

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Received on Sun Mar 11 10:59:06 2007