Thoughts on July 4

 

Why Should We Listen to Evil People?

 

            The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics (2002) was my first philosophy book (other than my dissertation, which remains unpublished).  The book’s argument depends on three stipulative definitions.  First, I defined “politics” as the art and science of making group decisions.  Any decision affecting a group of people is a political decision.  “Politics” thus includes corporate politics, family politics, and church politics, as well as civic politics. 

Second, I defined “political opponent” (or “enemy”) as anyone who opposes a political actor’s proposed policy.  On this definition, when two members of the library committee argue for competing policies, they qualify as political opponents, for as long as their disagreement lasts.  Two Democrats or two Republicans qualify as political enemies when they support different versions of a bill one has introduced in the legislature.  It’s a very broad definition, with the result that we all have “political opponents.”  If the political group is the family, and Sarah and I suggest different restaurants for dinner, we qualify as political opponents.

Third, I defined “civility” as virtue consisting in an internal motivation or desire to treat one’s political opponents well.  Sarah and I love each other; when we become political opponents, we are highly motivated to treat each other well.  But other political opponents might be moved to civility by other emotions.  Feelings of friendship, respect, and empathy could motivate a person to treat her political opponents well.  Importantly, certain beliefs can also support civility; for example, if someone believes that his political opponent is a person of great worth, more important than the outcome of the political disagreement between them, this belief will move him to treat that person well.

Now, if politics is the art or science of making group decisions, it seems obvious that the proper goal, or telos, of politics is better decisions.  It seems equally obvious that civility promotes this goal.  In the book, I offer two simple arguments:

1.     My political opponent knows stuff I don’t know.

2.     Better information tends to produce better decisions.

3.     Practicing civility tends to elicit information from the opponent.

Therefore: civility tends to aid better decision making.

Further,

4.     Civility tends to maintain communication with the opponent.

5.     Political groups will make more decisions, not just the current one.

Therefore, civility tends to sustain the opponent’s contribution to good decisions.

 

            I think these are persuasive arguments.  In public talks, I have never found anyone who denies that politics should aim at better decisions.  Nevertheless, people often fail to practice civility or attempt to develop feelings or beliefs that support civility. Why is this?

            First, we need to recognize that civility is a costly virtue.  If you treat your political opponent well, your political opponent might win.  Your office rival may get the promotion.  Mrs. Brown’s preference for speckled brown carpeting in the sanctuary might be approved.  You might end up eating at McDonalds yet again.  The Democrats’ budget (or the Republican alternative) could become law.  Given the cost of civility, it is not surprising that some people act as if the goal of politics is winning rather than better decisions.

            Second, we may fall prey to the “logic of intolerance.”  In the book, I outline an argument scheme:

1.     The value we support is of extremely high value.  (The value might be the eternal souls of our children—or the right to control our own bodies—or something else.)

2.     We are aware of the lies of the other side.

3.     The lies of the opponents threaten the great value we support.

Therefore, we have a duty to silence the lies of the other side.

 

            Imagine a proposal at an abortion rights convention to invite a pro-life Catholic priest to give a talk on the sanctity of life.  Contrariwise, imagine a pro-life convention inviting a NARAL leader to discuss the economic impact of pregnancy for poor women.  “We already know what he/she will say.  We need to fight for what’s right.”  And the unquestioned belief is we already know what is right.

            In the book, I claimed that political civility in the United States in the modern period (roughly, up to 1950) was partly supported by modern philosophical doctrines.  Modern philosophers, including Descartes, Kant, Hobbes, and Jefferson, gave us a picture of human nature that said we are all rational beings.  Your political opponent might differ from you in many ways: economic class, religion, race, ethnic identity, and so forth; but underneath all these differences, you and your opponent share rationality.  You can respect your political opponent (even if he is a Catholic or a Protestant—remember the many religious wars of Europe) because of his basic humanity.  You can reason with your opponent (even if he is African or Native or White) because underneath it all, reason is universal.

            Modernity has given way to a post-modern world.  The modern support for civility has disappeared for many people today.  Today, many people believe that underneath it all, their political opponents are simply evil.  Practical reason is different for different groups; there is no reason to think that “they” will ever understand our situation and needs. 

The Virtue of Civility in the Practice of Politics came out twenty years ago.  I argued that incivility would probably get worse in our culture.  It saddens me to see that prediction come true.

We live in a postmodern age.  Christians should never have bought into modern philosophy.  Christians should practice civility for explicitly Christian reasons.  1. All people are created by God, and God loves them.  Therefore, we have good reason to respect our political opponents.  2. Jesus is our lawgiver.  He told us to love our neighbors.  3. Jesus is our example.  He prayed for his enemies, even as they killed him.  4. Jesus is the light of the world, and by his Spirit he can speak to anyone.  He is the light in the political opponent, so we may learn his will by listening to the opponent.

 

 

 

 

Commencement Speech, April 30

 

Three Myths and a Prayer

 

            Imagine Aleksander.  Family and close friends call him Sasha, so we will as well.

            Sasha is a faithful Christian and has been his whole life.  He’s almost as old as me, so he has lived through enormous changes in Russia.  Did I say that Sasha—Aleksander—is Russian?  Yes.  Imagine him living in a moderate sized town a few hundred miles from Moscow.  Sasha grew up under the Soviet regime, when the schools explicitly taught atheism, but the influence of his family was strong and he has always been a believer.  Sasha thanks God that Vladimir Putin supports and has close ties with the Russian Orthodox Church.

            Imagine further that when Sasha worships tomorrow, he will pray along with others for the success of the special military operation in Ukraine.  Actually, what he prays will be, “Your kingdom come, your will be done” (in Russian, of course).  In Sasha’s mind, it is absolutely clear that victory for Russia’s army will extend the kingdom of God.

            Why does he think this way?  There’s a story, a history, behind his thought.  The Christian Church is two thousand years old.  Roughly a thousand years ago, the western part of the Church split away because they wanted to change the Nicene creed.  That’s right.  The Latin speaking Church added words to the creed.  But the eastern part of the Church—the right teaching part, the “orthodox” part—stood strong for the truth.  Among the leaders of the Orthodox Church, the Russian patriarch (the Russian archbishop) is the most important.  You can gauge how faithful the other patriarchs are by noting how close they stick to the Russian Orthodox Church.  In Sasha’s opinion it should surprise nobody that five hundred years after the split, the western church divided further when the “protestants” came into being.  Sasha wonders whether protestants should be considered Christians at all.

            Don’t imagine that Sasha keeps these ideas explicitly in his mind.  In fact, Sasha probably couldn’t “tell the story” of Russian orthodoxy as I have recounted it.  Sasha never learned the details of the 11^th century split between east and west.  He just trusts the Russian Orthodox Church.  For Sasha, this whole story is background.  It’s mostly assumed and unconscious.

            In academic language, we say that Sasha believes a “myth.”  A myth is a grand story that provides background and context for beliefs and behaviors of many sorts.  A myth may be literally true or partly true or completely fantastic.  The myth of Daedalus, who flew to close to the sun.  The myth of Galileo versus the church.  The myth of the secular founding fathers of America.  Students at university are aware of myths.  Our myths shape the way we think, often without our awareness.

            We may give a name to the myth Sasha believes: “Russian Orthodoxy.”  The myth of Russian orthodoxy says the Church of Russia, guided by the Russian Patriarch, has preserved Christian doctrine in its true form.  Please note!  Even under 70 years of explicit state atheism, the Russian Orthodox Church maintained its testimony.  And now, having triumphed over atheism, Orthodox Christianity can make use of Russia’s military strength to recapture the ancient heartland of the Russian Church.  Remember, before Moscow, the Patriarch’s seat was in Kiev.

            Now, we have only imagined Aleksander.  But I assure you that today there are Russian Christians who think along the lines I have attributed to Sasha.  They believe the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a just war, a “special operation” blessed by God.  They believe this not only because Putin’s dictatorship controls the media, giving them a skewed account of what is happening in Ukraine, but also because they believe the myth of Russian orthodoxy.

            I confess that I think the myth of Russian orthodoxy, in addition to being a myth in the academic sense, is also false.  What would you expect from a Quaker?  Quakers think the Spirit of Christ can speak to us directly.  We don’t repeat the creed—with or without those extra 11^th century words.  In fairness, it would be better to say that I think the myth of Russian orthodoxy is only partly true.

            I expect many of you agree with me.  That is, like me, you think the myth of Russian orthodoxy is not entirely true.  Christian truth has not been preserved best in the teaching of the Russian patriarch.

            Notice: our disbelief in the myth makes a difference.  When we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done,” we do not imagine the triumph of Russian arms in Ukraine.  In short, we think the myth of Russian orthodoxy has distorted Sasha’s prayers.  Think about that.

            Now I want to name two other myths that can distort our prayers.

            The first is the “Myth of Inevitable Secularization.”  Again, this myth builds on a story; in particular, the history of Christianity in Europe in the modern period.  Christianity used to dominate European culture and politics.  There was a time, five hundred years ago, when it would have been mostly true to say Christianity was a European religion.  But in the last three centuries European countries became largely secular.  What happened?  Sociologists and historians give various explanations, but the biggest factors, according to the myth of inevitable secularization, were scientific progress, economic prosperity, and mass education.  Science undermines religious belief, prosperity takes away the need for divine help, and widespread public education spreads science and opportunity to the masses.  According to the myth of inevitable secularization, all this is  natural.  In the end, the myth says, Europe’s story will be replicated everywhere.  Modernization, in the form of science, prosperity and education, will eliminate religion, including Christianity.

            Unsurprisingly, many sociologists of religion believe the myth of inevitable secularization.  They have been predicting the decline of Christianity in North America for a century.  It happened in Europe, so it will happen in North America.  The myth is a background belief in much graduate education, from literature to psychology and political science.  But you don’t have to go to graduate school to believe this myth, because the ideas percolate in our culture.  Many people, including many Christians, believe the myth of inevitable secularization.  Remember, myths often serve as unconscious background to our conscious beliefs.  Sometimes Christian parents worry when they send their high school graduates off to college—even when they send them to George Fox—that their child will somehow lose her faith at university.  The parents may not explicitly and consciously believe that education destroys faith, but they have absorbed the myth as a background assumption.

            Now, the myth of inevitable secularization is indeed a myth in the academic sense.  It is a widely held, though often unstated, belief.  But like the myth of Russian orthodoxy, the myth of inevitable secularization is at best only partly true.  The history of modern Europe is evidence for the myth.  But the United States, richer than Europe and just as well educated, is much less secularized.  Believers in the myth of inevitable secularization have been waiting 100 years for the U.S. to catch up to Europe.  Polling by the Barna group over the last couple decades suggests that maybe secularization is happening in the U.S.  Maybe.  Remember, lots of people, including lots of Christians, believe in the myth of inevitable secularization.  Such people expect religious faith to fade away under the pressure of education.  We should be wary of confirmation bias.

            So: Europe? Check.  The U.S.? Maybe another check.  What about South Korea?

            In 1953 South Korea was a mostly peasant country that had suffered three years of war.  Its people were poor, rural, and largely uneducated.  Religiously they were mostly Buddhist or Shinto.  Since then, the country has become highly industrialized, urbanized, and educated.  They have a thriving export economy, which has raised their comparative wealth markedly.  And Christianity has grown from a miniscule minority to about a third of the population.  Of the approximately two million Koreans who live in the U.S., more than 60% are Christians.

            Korean Christianity is important because it directly contradicts the myth of inevitable secularization.  In the seven decades since the war, South Korea became more religious, not less; significantly more Christian, not less.  The myth of inevitable secularization is not entirely true.

            As a philosopher I should also say, as an aside, that the myth of inevitable secularization is bad philosophy.  It’s a version of historicism, which Karl Popper effectively criticized back in 1945, in The Open Society and Its Enemies.  Never fear!  I’m not going to give you a lecture on historicism at this time.  Read Popper for yourself.

            The second myth I must mention is more specific to Christians.  To invent a name for it, I will call it the “myth of the VERY soon Parousia.”  Parousia is a Greek word that means “presence” or “coming.”  The New Testament uses this word to speak of the return of Jesus at the last day.  Paul wrote about the parousia of our Lord Jesus, and in the Revelation Jesus told John “I am coming soon.”  From the first century on, Christians have believed in the return of Jesus, and that he would return soon.  That is not exactly what I mean when I speak of the myth of the VERY soon Parousia.

            Occasionally Christians have gone beyond the teaching of the New Testament.  They have said that Jesus is coming VERY soon.  Christians expected the return of Christ in 1000.  They predicted the return of Christ in 1666.  Those are attractive numbers.  Some of you as old as me may remember the popular pamphlet, “88 Reasons Christ Will Return in 1988.”

            The purveyors of the myth of the VERY soon Parousia don’t often go that far.  Without explicitly saying it, they imply that Jesus will return VERY soon—in this generation.  They preach about the “signs” of the end times and say there is no longer any prophecy that must be fulfilled.  Jesus could return any day.

            Now I believe that Jesus could return any day.  We are living in the end times.  But get this: Christians have been living in the end times for two thousand years.  The resurrection of Jesus initiated the end times; his return will bring an end to the end times.

            The myth of the VERY soon Parousia causes trouble because the purveyors of the myth often also include other predictions.  For instance: just before the Parousia, there will be a falling away from the faith.  Wars and injustices will get worse.  Christians will be persecuted everywhere.

            I suspect that many of you are familiar with such preaching.  The myth of the VERY soon return of Christ is popular in some of our churches.  I became familiar with it in high school when I read Hal Lindsey’s best seller, The Late Great Planet Earth, but the ideas go back to the writings of J.N. Darby in the 1800s.  Never fear!  I am not going to lecture on Darbyism at this time.

            Interestingly, for some Christians, the myth of inevitable secularization links up with the myth of the VERY soon Parousia.  They believe that the future of Christianity is bleak.  The forces of modernism will increase secularism.  Disasters are coming.  But that doesn’t matter, because prophecy says the world will end VERY soon.

            My point is this.  The myth of inevitable secularization combines with the myth of the VERY soon Parousia to lead us to expect certain things.  And those expectations can distort our prayers.

            We pray for God’s will to be done, but do we pray for peace with freedom for Ukraine?  We pray for God’s kingdom to come, but do we pray for the Holy Spirit to change the minds of political leaders?  We look forward to a new heaven and a renewed earth.  Until that day comes, we are stewards of this earth; we ought to pray God’s blessing on worldwide cooperation to defeat climate change.  We ought to pray for these things, and we ought to believe that God can do them.

            The myth of inevitable secularization says that science overthrows faith.  Well, that is just bad philosophy.  When we pray we should believe that truth can overcome error.

            The myth of inevitable secularization says that prosperity removes the need for God.  That’s just not true.  Our material culture is fabulously prosperous, and that has only left people hungry for meaning.  When we pray we should believe that when people understand Jesus’ way, they will want it.

            The myth of the VERY soon Parousia implies that the world is going to the dogs and there’s nothing to be done about it.  That’s not true either.  When we pray we should believe God will do good things in and through us.  In some cases, God will do great things.  God will do good, even great, things through you, the graduates of 2022.

            Final word.  Beware of myths that distort your prayers.  When you pray for God’s kingdom to come, believe it can happen.

School of Theology Chapel, April 7

 

On “the Way”

 

            Several times in Acts, Luke (traditionally identified as the author of Luke/Acts) describes the new Christian movement as “the way.”  For example, in Acts 9:2, Saul “went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.”  And Acts 19:9 refers to certain synagogue leaders in Ephesus, “But some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way.  So Paul left them.  He took the disciple with him and had discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus.”

            Obviously, there were other names for the Christian movement, from the earliest times.  In the verse just quoted Luke speaks of “disciples.”  In Acts 11:25-26, Luke explains that the disciples were first called “Christians” in Antioch, presumably because the church there consisted mostly of Gentiles.  And—of course—many parts of the New Testament refer to the “Church” and to Christians as “saints.”  Paul says the Church is “the body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians and other places.  We have no shortage of New Testament labels/names for Christians and the Christian movement.

            Taking cues from NT usage, Christian churches today use a variety of names: the Friends Church (or Society of Friends—both names refer a saying of Jesus), the Church of God, Disciples of Christ, the Christian Church, the Believers Church, Orthodox Church (“orthodox” means “right teaching,” so there are multiple Orthodox churches), Church of God in Christ, and so on and on.  Unsurprisingly, there are churches that identify as “the Way”: the Way Church, the Way Christian Fellowship, Followers of the Way Church, and probably lots of others.

            I think this is all quite natural.  It’s right and proper for Christian groups today to use NT labels as names; doing so, we acknowledge that our movement is 2000 years old and that our beliefs rest on the doctrines of the first Christians.  “The Way” has the advantage of being one of the very earliest names for the movement.  (Notice “the Christian movement” is not a NT phrase.)

            In addition to drawing on first century Christian vocabulary, “the Way” confers another advantage.  It reminds us that Christians are called to pursue something they haven’t yet attained.  Paul admitted in Philippians 3:12 that he had not yet been made perfect.  For the apostle, and for all of us, following Christ means we are “on the way.”  We describe the Christian life with metaphors of change: we are learning, we are maturing, we are growing, and so forth.

            Living “on the way” is a dynamic thing, which makes for difficulties.  Sometimes we are tempted to cheap grace.  In cheap grace we presume on God’s favor and we neglect hard tasks of discipleship.  Other times we go to the opposite extreme.  Knowing that God calls us to a holy life, we might assert that we have achieved holiness.  Or we can make a list of righteous and unrighteous behaviors with which we judge ourselves and others; in other words, we become legalists.

            The difficulties are real.  Life “on the way” is dynamic.  We need to be wary and we need to ask the Spirit to guide us away from laxity on one side and legalism on the other.  We must simultaneously rejoice in God’s overwhelming grace and yield to Christ as he takes us deeper into the life of the Spirit.  And the dynamism of “the way” applies to fellow believers as well as to me.  It is difficult indeed to preach costly discipleship and grace to other Christians.  But we must try.

            That brings me to a third meaning of “the way.”  Here I want to speak of “getting in the way.”  Caveat: I am no longer interpreting the New Testament, so do not take what I say as gospel.  When I speak of “getting in the way,” I am talking about the Christian minister when he or she stands to teach or preach.  As I say, I am speaking from experience, not from scriptural authority.

            Based on my experience, I urge Christian ministers—and this includes undergraduate students engaged in ministries of many sorts, from counseling at summer camps to teaching Bible studies to preaching to congregations—to put yourself “in the way.”  When you are “in the way” you stand between God on one side and human beings on the other, human beings whom God loves more than we can imagine.  God wants to channel the grace and truth of Jesus through you to this congregation, this study group, this cabin of campers.

            The whole notion is scary because we don’t want to foul it up.  Nevertheless, I urge you to put yourself “in the way.”

            Since the time of Paul, God has used the “foolishness of preaching” to draw people to himself.  Comforting thought, that.  Of course, you should prepare for your teaching and preaching assignment diligently.  Preparing for public ministry is work, and you need to do the work.  But you should never believe that success depends on you.  It is God’s grace and the interior work of the Spirit that brings faith and hope and love into human lives.

            Based on my experience, you will find great satisfaction—to use an Aristotelian word, you will find eudaimonia—when you put yourself “in the way.”  So: get in the way.  Position yourself between God who wants to bless and the people he wants to bless.  It may be scary, but it will be full of wonder.

A Lesson in Novel Writing

 

How Does Grace Happen?

 

            A literature professor at GFU, Guadeloupe Garcia-McCall, recently published her fifth novel.  We had a free moment before a faculty senate meeting, and I congratulated her for the publication—and I said she would have to give me advice about writing, since I want to work on fiction after I retire from full-time teaching.  Without hesitation, Guadeloupe pulled a book from her bag: Save the Cat! Writes a Novel, by Jessica Brody.  So far, I’ve read almost half of “the last book on novel writing you’ll ever need” (the blurb on the book cover).  I’m learning!  And I’m grateful to Guadeloupe.

            Brody says a good novel must have more than “fun and games,” the adventures or plot elements that usually appear on the back cover: “a recent college graduate takes a job with a twenty-first century ‘witch’ and combats international sex trafficking,” or “alien technology snatches a monastery novice to a distant planet—and the middle of a war.”  We often categorize stories in these ways: mysteries, adventures, coming of age stories, horror stories, love stories, and so on.  When a would-be reader first picks up a book, it’s the “fun and games” that probably induces her to open to page one.  But most readers won’t keep reading, Brody says, unless there is something deeper.

            Readers need to care about the story’s hero.  Brody claims we want protagonists who need to grow or change.  If the hero enters and exits the story without learning anything or losing something or overcoming great challenges or something—if the hero is exactly the same before and after the fun and games, we lose interest.  The action elements of the story may draw us to the book, but it’s the people, especially the protagonist, that matter.

            As I say, I’m grateful for the book.  I need to look more critically at the characters in my stories.  I’ve devoted most of my story writing to “fun and games”—the politics, trade, and magic in The Heart of the Sea or alien technology and the sci-fi setting of Castles.  Brody is forcing me to look more carefully at my characters.  I want readers to root for my heroes; not in the sense that things turn out well for them (not all stories need a happy ending), but in the sense that the hero encounters and overcomes an existential or spiritual problem.  This is a weakness, I think, in Buying the Bangkok Girl.  Eleanor Urquhart is “little Miss Perfect,” as Ron Mock complained about her; she’s smart, pretty, athletic and always in charge.  The story needs more of a sense of danger.  Not danger from bad guys; Bangkok Girl has plenty of that.  But there needs to some kind of incompleteness in a hero so she can grow, even if the growth is only in a deeper understanding of herself or her relationships.

            I want to write good stories, in a double sense.  I want readers to enjoy the stories, maybe even be thrilled; but I also want my stories to display the good.  Morality is everywhere in our world, because human beings are moral creatures.  We are also often stupid and evil.  A “good” story ought to display real moral conflict.  A good story should invite and provoke the reader to root for good over evil.

            Though not a Christian, Iris Murdoch often referred to Christian theological ideas.  She said that “grace” can come into a person’s life in strange disguises.  Most often, she wrote, the enemy in the moral life is the “fat, relentless ego.”  It’s not that people are deliberately wicked or cruel.  They just see the world as revolving around themselves.  As I’ve often said in class lectures, human beings often see other people as furniture in our lives.  But other people are not furniture.  As long as we see them that way, we see them falsely.  The great thing, and almost impossibly hard thing, to accomplish in the moral life is to see other people accurately, fairly.  This is where Murdoch brings in the notion of grace.  Something happens to break a character out of egocentricity.  It may be success or promotion, but often it is death, disease or disaster.  The change forces its way into a person’s life, and if the character responds to the change rightly, it helps her to see her neighbor and herself a bit more truthfully.  It’s as if God sends the disease or disaster in order to help the hero see.  Murdoch didn’t believe in God, but she did believe in grace, the unexpected nudges that may (or may not) move the character toward the good.

            Brody helps to make all this more explicit in my thinking.  After I retire, I want to write more fiction.  I hope to incorporate Brody’s lessons about the internal plot into my work.  I’ve written “fun and games.”  It’s not easy, but I can do it.  Going forward, I need to build the inward side of my characters.  I want to show some grace.

           

Agnostics and Atheists

 

The Agnostic’s Hope

 

            Suppose you are a religious agnostic.  You find yourself thinking it is possible that karma is real whether or not this or that branch of Hinduism describes it correctly, it is possible that there is a personal God such as preached in Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, it is possible that there exists a “moral arc” to the universe such that the universe tends toward justice, and it is possible that all these versions of transcendence are false.  The last option is what philosophers call “naturalism,” the doctrine that the natural world described by science is the whole world.  As an agnostic, you think that all these possibilities are possibly true, though you might also think some one of them much more likely than the others.  Your belief that some religious doctrine might be true distinguishes you from the atheist, who says we can know that such doctrines are false.

            What might you, as a religious agnostic, hope for?

            Traditionally, philosophers have said that hope combines desire and belief, in the following way.  First, we hope for things we want or think will be good for us.  Since Socrates, philosophers have said that people pursue the good, or at least what they think is good.  The various religions offer a variety of object-states (to borrow a technical term from Andrew Brei) that people might hope for.  In Hinduism, one might hope for reincarnation at a higher level of being.  A Muslim might hope for resurrection to a blissful garden of delights.  A Christian might hope for the Kingdom of God to come.  All of these are images of a future people might desire.

            Second, hope requires a belief that the desired good is possible.  The probability of the desired object-state must be greater than zero and less than one.  If some desired outcome is certain, we don’t hope for it, because it’s already here.  If the desired outcome is impossible, we might wish for it, but we can’t be said to hope for it.

            It seems to follow that the religious agnostic may hope for any of the object-states proferred by the various religions he thinks might be true.  He does not need to believe the religious doctrines are likely to be true, only that they might be true.  In the extreme case, the religious agnostic might think philosophical naturalism has a 90% probability of being true—and still hope for a good reincarnation, a garden of delights, or the kingdom of God.

            Now, some philosophers—Friedrich Nietzsche or Simon Critchley—may advise us that such hopes are dangerous, especially if we let low probability hopes influence important decisions.  If President Obama based policy decisions on “audacious hope” (Obama’s campaign slogan in 2008), he invited disaster.  So wrote Critchley.  These philosophers advice is, “Don’t get your hopes up.”  If some desired object-state has a low probability, don’t let that desired outcome affect your decisions.

            Adrienne Martin argues that sometimes it makes perfect sense to “hope against hope.”  I may judge that my desired object-state is unlikely—e.g. the cancer drug offered by the doctors may have a one-in-ten thousand chance of curing me—and still I may decide, based on the importance of that desired object-state to “license” myself to hope for it.

            I have written extensively about the debate between the cautious view advocated by Critchley and the more expansive position taken by Martin.  My book, Understanding Hope, will come out this year.  For now, though, I will set aside that question.

            My point now is this: the agnostic may hope for religiously inspired object-states.  Whether or not she should is a matter of practical reason.  The person who cannot hope for such good things is the atheist.

            To be consistent, the atheist must shun any hope proffered by a religious system he knows to be false.  As a naturalist, he knows (or believes based on overwhelming evidence), in the words of Carl Sagan, “The cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” 

Sometimes it is hard to pin down philosophical naturalists as to what that means.  Is it possible that alien species have invented resuscitation machines to bring dead people back to life?  Some naturalists might say yes, since advanced alien technology is possible; but with the same breath they would deny that God might resurrect people.  I leave it to the naturalist to specify what it is she thinks does not exist.  But once she does, she should not hope for object-states based on definite unrealities.

Thus, I think, there is an important difference between the hopes of the religious agnostic and the atheist.

Revisiting Dualisms

 

What’s Wrong with Therapeutic Dualism?

 

            In the “Dualisms” essay I posted a few months ago, I introduced the label “Therapeutic Dualism” in an attempt to describe what I think is a widespread, though inchoate, doctrine.  I compared this contemporary dualism with Platonic and Cartesian versions of dualism.  The basic ideas, I wrote, are two.  First, a person’s true self is to be identified with her heart and not her body; second, recognizing and affirming this true self will improve her life.  Both elements of therapeutic dualism can be found in academic writing of many sorts, but more importantly they permeate our popular culture.  For example, consider the Disney film for children, The Little Mermaid, in which Ariel improves her life by ceasing to be a mermaid.  In a thousand different ways therapeutic dualism teaches us to “follow your heart.”  You can become anything you wish, if you truly believe.

            The chief problem with therapeutic dualism is that it’s false.  You cannot become anything you wish.  Young boys cannot become major league pitchers merely by believing in their dream, even if their belief causes them to practice for years.  The fact is that years of hard work will only make a major league pitcher if it is combined with a body with certain hard-to-quantify natural qualities.  (For example, the boy’s body must be able to endure thousands of practice pitches without career-ending injury.)

            But the problems with therapeutic dualism multiply when we consider three strands of thinking that have contributed to it.  My earlier essay identified these strands as Marxist, Freudian, and Nietzschean.  Individually and together, these strands describe the human “heart.”  They rebel against Descartes, who taught that the essential person, the true self, was the conscious rational mind. 

Marx taught that social relationships controlled the mind, and social relationships reduced to economic relations in the end.  Contemporary therapeutic dualists may not hew to Marx’s materialism, but they accept the importance of social relations.  We see this in intersectionality, the idea that a person can only be understood through social relations.

Freud taught that innate drives controlled the mind.  All societies teach individuals to repress their innate drives, because social peace requires control, but such repression often leads to psychological problems.  Again, contemporary therapeutic dualists don’t have to buy all of Freud’s theories (e.g. that we have an innate drive toward death), but very often they do affirm the idea that a person’s true self is found in his unchosen desires.  We see this in sexual orientation, the idea that proper sexual behavior is determined by one’s innate sexual desires.

            Nietzsche taught that will to power controlled the mind.  Most people deny this fact, having been thoroughly deceived by the cultural taboos of weak people.  Ironically, Nietzsche thought, the weaklings of the world had emasculated strong men through collaborative will to power.  Against the false rules of the weak, Nietzsche counseled individuals to assert themselves.  We see this in non-binarism, the idea that sexual orientation need not be controlled by sexual desires; when it comes to sexual identity, you can literally be anything you choose.

            I readily admit there is something right in each of these doctrines.  Social relations do affect the way we think, unchosen sexual desires are strong (in most people), and the drive to bend the world to our will is present beneath our conscious rationalizations.  But therapeutic dualism absolutizes these factors to produce contradictions and error.

            For instance, we are told that it is impossible for Joe—white, male, cis-gendered, heterosexual, privileged, Christian, and old—to really understand a person who is brown or gay or poor or young.  This is the extreme form of intersectionality.  A person just is the combination of social forces that created him.  But if that is true, it would be impossible for persons from different groups to understand each other.  Why should we bother to listen to each other if our thinking is determined by social relations?

            (This problem traces back to an incoherency in Marxism.  According to dialectical materialism all social forces, including religion and philosophy, are determined by the economic base.  If that is true, Marxism itself, because it is a philosophy, is determined by economic forces.  But Marx and other Marxist philosophers were not proletarians.  How could they possibly read history right?)

            There is much clinical evidence that same-sex attraction is unchosen in some people.  So we have all become accustomed to thinking in terms of sexual orientation.  Our unchosen desires determine who we are as sexual beings.  At least, that’s the standard line.  Children are taught to look inward, into their “heart,” to discover what they really are.  It’s not just sexual behavior, but gender itself, that is divorced from the body.  But what if some person does not want to be controlled by her heart?  What if she investigates her heart and sees many different, competing desires?  What if she decides—what if she wills—something else?  Here the Nietzschean aspect of therapeutic dualism comes into conflict with the Freudian aspect.

            Another problem emerges when we inquire into moral limits on Freudian drives.  The standard move is simple utilitarianism: we may rightly indulge our sexual drives however we like, so long as we don’t hurt others.  Now, consider a thirteen-year-old boy—at just the right age, when his beard is starting to come in, according to the experienced lovers in Plato’s Symposium.  He has examined his heart, and he want to enter a sexual relationship with an older man.  But no!  According to our utilitarian bent, such a relationship would be unequal and bring harm to the boy.  Amid all the many variations of the sexual revolution, this relationship—so highly praised by Plato’s speakers—is still regarded as immoral and illegal.  But the same thirteen-year-old boy, if he reports that he has discovered that he is transgender, may demand sex reassignment surgery.  At least, that’s the conclusion some have reached.  It’s especially important that he not be held back by the backward thinking of his parents.  In this conflict, the Nietzschean bent wars against both utilitarianism and the Freudian bent.

            I think therapeutic dualism is a real power in our contemporary culture.  But it is unstable, self-contradictory, and—most importantly—false.  A person’s “heart” cannot be cloven off from his body.  We need a new Aristotelian view, in which the soul is the form of the body.

 

Fermi Speculations

 Where is Everybody?

            I did a little reading on a NASA website.  And then I read a bit more on Wikipedia.  Beware!  Even a little reading, when done by a philosopher, can produce hours of speculation.

            A few facts, before the speculation.  First, the Milky Way galaxy, our cosmological home, has about 300 billion stars.  The galaxy is shaped like a disk, bulging at the middle and tapering at the edges, with stars strung out on four spiral arms.  The starry, visible portion of the galaxy is about 120,000 light years across, but scientists think dark matter extends the size of the Milky Way much further.  There are satellite galaxies in our “near neighborhood” that cluster around the Milky Way.  Our own star, the sun, is located about 27,000 light years from the center of the galaxy, out on one of the spiral arms.  We’re not way out on the edge, but we’re definitely not in the middle.

            So far, astronomers have found several thousand planets orbiting other stars in the galaxy.  These discoveries have all occurred in the last three decades.  Astronomers have long theorized that many stars will have multiple planets, just as our sun does, so the total number of planets in the galaxy could be 500 billion or even more.  Astronomers will be announcing discovery of new planets for many decades to come.

            There is a Fermi problem associated with that number (500 billion planets), the most famous of all the Fermi problems.

            Background: a “Fermi problem” seeks to estimate some unknown quantity about which you have no direct information.  For example, how many piano tuners are there in Chicago?  You don’t need to consult the phone book or interview piano owners to make a reasonable estimate.  First, you guess how many people live in Chicago; 5 million, let’s say.  Then you guess how many family units that would be; nowadays, the typical household has three or four persons, so Chicago has somewhere between 1 and 2 million.  Then you guess which percentage of families would own pianos.  Let’s guess one in ten, so that gives us 100,000 to 200,000 pianos in Chicago.  How often do people have their pianos tuned?  Let’s say once every two years; that means 50,000-100,000 need to be tuned every year.  If a piano tuner tunes a piano in 2 hours and works 40 hours a week, that’s 20 pianos a week.  If the tuner works 50 weeks a year, he tunes 1000 pianos.  So there would be 50-100 piano tuners in Chicago.

            Notice that a Fermi problem does not expect a close answer, only a plausible one.  The number of piano tuners in Chicago could be 10 times as many as our guess (500-1000 tuners) and still be useful.  We can be confident there are more than 20 piano tuners in Chicago, but less than 5000.

            Now, the most famous Fermi problem, also called the “Fermi Paradox,” traces back to Enrico Fermi himself.  In 1950, while working with Edward Teller and other scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Fermi asked: “Where is everybody?”  (At least, that’s one version of the story.  It was reconstructed later from memories, after Fermi died in 1954.  Every version of the tale gives Fermi credit for the question.)

            Fermi and his friends had been discussing UFO stories, which were in the news at the time.  (Of course, UFO sightings have not ceased, but they were new then.)  None of the men believed in UFOs, but Fermi’s question pointed to a problem.  Given reasonable guesses about relevant questions, Fermi said we should have received visits from alien beings.  How many alien visits should Earth have received?

            First, assume that the percentage of planets that can support life is fairly small, say 5% of all planets.

            Second, assume that the percentage of planets that could support life and actually do support life is small, say 10% of the first group.  So only 0.5% of planets would be habited.

            Third, assume that the percentage of habited planets that develop intelligent, possible space-faring life (comparable to humanity in 1950) is very small, say 1%.  So only 0.005% of planets would be habited by possibly space-faring life.

            Fourth, assume that faster than light travel is impossible, so that space-faring populations can only travel space at rocket ship speeds (circa 1950), so travel across the galaxy would take as much as 5 million years.

            Now 0.005% of 500,000,000,000 (500 billion) planets means there would be 25,000,000 space-faring civilizations in the galaxy.  In cosmological terms, 5 million years is a very short time; in geological terms it’s still short.  The Earth should have been visited many, many times by alien species.  Yet we see no evidence on Earth of their visits.  Where is everybody?

            Obviously, the estimates could be too high.  Let’s say we overestimated the likelihood of habitable planets, the percentage of actually inhabited planets, and inhabited planets with space-faring life by a factor of 100 in each case.  That would reduce the likelihood of alien space-farers by a factor of 1 million.  We still end up with 25 space-faring civilizations in our galaxy.  The 5 million year estimate for spreading across the galaxy wouldn’t change.  Where is everybody?

            Maybe the aliens visited Earth a long time ago, found it boring, and left.  But we see no evidence of their visits.

            Actually, the Fermi paradox is worse than that, because of radio.  Fermi asked his question in terms of alien visits to Earth.  But alien species don’t need to visit Earth and leave evidence; all they need to do is use radio (which humans began using in Fermi’s lifetime).  Radio transmissions move at the speed of light.  A radio program from the most distant part of our galaxy would reach Earth in less than 100,000 years.  (Our own radio and television broadcasts have been spreading the news of intelligent life on Earth for more than 100 years.  Alien species within 100 light years of Earth could access our radio signature.). In cosmological time, 100,000 years is almost nothing.  If there have been space-faring civilizations in our galaxy any time before the last few thousand years, our radio telescopes should be able to hear them. 

The Fermi paradox, particularly in its radio signature form, is well-known among astronomers and cosmologists.  That’s why SETI, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, has been going strong for 50 years.  We have been using radio telescopes, deep-space probes, and space station telescopes to look for indications of intelligent life in our galaxy.  But scientists have not reported any such evidence.  Where is everybody?

            50 years of searching is not very long.  It’s possible that we’ll find evidence of intelligent ETs next year.  But every year that passes without finding any positive evidence—especially since we are continually refining and strengthening our search—increases the power of the paradox.  Perhaps we need to re-examine our estimates.

            Maybe life, particularly intelligent life, is much rarer than we thought.  After all, despite the confident assertions of philosophical naturalists, we do not know how life first formed on Earth.  Too often, the Chris Hitchenses and Richard Dawkinses of the world simply assert that life had to begin in a certain way, because they are committed a priori to naturalism. 

            (By the way, it’s fun to make plurals of names that end in s, like Hitchens and Dawkins.)

            One depressing suggestion needs to be mentioned.  In the twentieth century humanity discovered thermonuclear weapons only four decades after building radios—in cosmological terms, almost simultaneously.  Maybe that has been true of ET civilizations too.  Maybe all of them discovered weapons of extinction.  And maybe they all used them to destroy themselves.  That’s a lot of speculation, but it could explain the lack of radio evidence of ETs, because the radio signature of such a civilization would be a band of radio waves only 50 or 100 light years across.  If our SETI researchers weren’t looking in the few years those radio signals pass the earth, we would never notice them.

            More and more, the possibility begins to dawn on us.  Maybe we really are alone in the universe.

            Or . . . maybe there is intelligent life in the universe, but it looks very different from us.  Perhaps there are intelligent beings who don’t use radio to communicate and whose natural movement is so swift they wouldn’t bother to build spaceships.  Maybe they wouldn’t even have physical bodies.  How would we know?

            But SETI researchers are not looking for angels.