Inventing the Universe: Why We Can't Stop Talking about Science, Faith and God by Alister E. McGrath
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Evangelical Solipsism

Why is it that folk who one day realise that rational thought isn’t all that rational and that talk about reality can be a false friend, can find an answer to their feelings of uncertainty in thought and language about God? Surely whatever their conceptions of the divine, these are the product of the same process of thought expressed in the same language that they started with. Yet they feel sufficiently confident in their conceptions to harass the rest of us about them.

McGrath is an intelligent man. I know this because I listened to him lecture on the history of theology over two terms at the University of Oxford. He began his adult life as a scientist, in fact as a somewhat scientistic scientist who considered knowledge obtained in any other way to be bogus. His discovery that science provided what he calls knowledge without meaning was a turning point in his life, a conversion. In the well-established tradition of Christianity, he found meaning in the words of the gospel.

But according to his own evangelical tradition, the meaning that McGrath finds in Christianity is not something to be arrived at through thought or effort. In fact the source of such meaning is beyond human capabilities entirely. The Word of God is not contained in the words of Man, not even in the words of sacred texts much less the words that apologists use to explain those texts. Without divine intervention in the psychic/spiritual constitution of a person, such meaning must remain elusive. And the presence of such intervention compels the recognition of that meaning.

So even for McGrath, meaning must remain a mystery. He doesn’t know how or why he has come to find meaning in Christianity, nor even what meaning might mean except that he finds Christianity comforting in some way. For McGrath, Christianity is a way to tie up the loose ends that are left, perhaps permanently, by practical science and other modes of thought like, say, poetry, philosophy, or pure mathematics. Religion, specifically the Christian religion, brings everything else together for him into a Big Picture. And he wants the rest of us to see that picture as well.

Thus the somewhat arrogant paradox of the evangelical mind, no matter how intelligent or well-read it is. This mind persistently, and in its own terms somewhat blasphemously, believes that it can supply meaning which is not just beneficial but also necessary for the rest of us to have. It fakes being the voice of the God it has become obsessed by (or captured by; the theological meaning is the same). It also dismisses the criterion of meaning found elsewhere, or simply not found at all, as inferior to its own. Unlike the rest of us, this mind claims to understand that reality which is beyond language. Its experience of that reality is greater than ours; and the meaning it has gained from that experience is deeper, more profound, and just all-round better than ours.

It strikes me, therefore, that intellectual memoirs like Inventing the Universe are a form of solipsism. The entire evangelical attitude is one that presumes its mode of thought gives it unique access to reality. It knows what science and religion really are and how they fit together; and it throws words like meaning, method, and faith around with abandon in order to demonstrate their own meaningfulness. Apparently such an attitude is immune to education and intelligence. Other folk just don’t have the ability to understand what they should. What is presented, in one form or another, are words pretending to be more than words. These words are annoying whether they originate in an evangelical like McGrath or a radical atheist like Richard Dawkins. What makes any of these enthusiasts think that they have anything meaningful to say at all?

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Elmer Gantry 
by 

Sinclair Lewis

 

BlackOxford's review 

Nov 23, 2020  ·  edit

it was amazing

bookshelves: american, church, sociology 

The Revival of the Revival

It has always impressed me that Donald Trump’s political rallies are little more than evangelical tent meetings. These gatherings are a uniquely American institution dating to before the Revolution. They seem to run in cycles of popularity of approximately fifty years from the middle of the 18th century. What Trump has accomplished quite apart from any political disruption is the latest revival of the Revival. Elmer Gantry is a how-to manual for this kind of work and has dated very little since it was written a century ago. And if Donald Trump has never read it (which is likely), he has certainly learned how to live it, and to exploit its presence in American cultural DNA.

The central core of a tent meeting is of course the preacher. What he preaches about is not nearly as important as how he does it. He is a showman. And his audience expects a good show. Those who participate in a revival do not do so in order to learn or to consider, much less to argue, but to believe in something, anything really, with others whom they perceive as tribal members.

America is a Christian nation in at least this one important respect: believing is belonging. Belonging has historically been of great value to a folk on the edge of civilisation, living among others - other refugees, native Americans, Black slaves - with nothing in common except their location, and with constant fear of betrayal or attack. Revivalism has always been inherently racist and super (that is to say anti) natural. Even at the beginning of the 19th century, it could attract as many as 20,000 people in what was the still largely wilderness of Kentucky.

The revival creates community by giving people something to believe in and other folk who are ready to believe. Historically revivalists have believed in rather outrageous things, from the imminence of the Second Coming to the peculiar holiness of the American Republic, to the superiority of Northern European culture. The questionable character of such beliefs in other than producing feelings of spiritual camaraderie is irrelevant to the participants. Their desire to believe in order to belong is overwhelming. It is not accidental that the most notorious cults, secular as well as religious, are the product of this aspect of American culture. The historical matrix of these intensely believing, intensely belonging groups is the revival.

It is remarkable how the grifting personality of Lewis’s protagonist captures the social essence of Trump: 

“Elmer was never really liked. He was supposed to be the most popular man in college; every one believed that every one else adored him; and none of them wanted to be with him. They were all a bit afraid, a bit uncomfortable, and more than a bit resentful... Elmer assumed that he was the center of the universe and that the rest of the system was valuable only as it afforded him help and pleasure.” 

Elmer’s electoral as well as clerical shenanigans are Trumpian in their shameless determination to dominate. But also in their obvious plea for acceptance. He needs his audience desperately as he plays on their need for belonging:

“The greatest urge was his memory of holding his audience, playing on them. To move people--Golly! He wanted to be addressing somebody on something right now, and being applauded!” 

Elmer, like Trump, is a creation of his audience: “He had but little to do with what he said. The willing was not his but the mob's; the phrases were not his but those of the emotional preachers and hysterical worshipers whom he had heard since babyhood.” The lack of originality is crucial. What he says must be familiar, resonating not with thought or reason but with forgotten emotion. It is his sense of inarticulate feelings that is the source of his power.

Little does his audience know however that they will become more and more like him, and that what that means is literally diabolical because: “He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.” Elmer and Trump use religious language not because they believe it but because it is the opening to any amount of counter-factual nonsense: “Why is that it's only in religion that the things you got to believe are agin all experience?” This is not a query but a principle of method. Faith is impervious to experience. This is what Elmer and Trump know. Essentially anyone who believes in the Virgin Birth, Predestination, and the absolute necessity of full immersion baptism will believe anything!*

Elmer Gantry is not a period piece; it is an insight into the perennial American culture, a culture of inherent alienation. National (and nationalistic) mythology has never been sufficient to overcome the pervasive alienation among a country of immigrants. The line from George Whitfield in Savannah (and his advocacy for the reintroduction of slavery in Georgia) to Barton Stone at Cane Ridge (a sort of Te Deum for the defeat of the native Americans in the Northwest Indian Wars) to the involvement of white evangelicalism in the Jim Crow legislation after the American Civil War, to the gentile racism of Billy Graham and other 20th century fundamentalists leads directly to Trump. Elmer Gantry is not about a temporary and transient aberration in American culture but about its very constitution.

* It might appear that I am overstating the case. I am not. Tertullian, a Christian apologist of the late 2nd century explained the intellectual attitude of the new religion quite well in his dictum Credo quia absurdum-“I believe because it is absurd.” It is clear that this is the explanation for so much of modern life, particularly life with the internet. The more absurd the statements of Trump or QAnon or Tucker Carlson, the more they are taken as the way the world is. In short, The Christian idea of faith is central to American culture and generates its affection for salaciousness. It also goes a long way in explaining much of American advertising.

 

How to Read and Why 
by 

Harold Bloom

 

Learning to Listen by Reading

Listening and reading are generally considered independent activities. The only way to spot imposture is to listen attentively to lots of people. And the only way to spot fakery in print is to read lots of books critically. But it strikes me that Bloom is making an implicit case for considering listening and reading as functionally equivalent. Everything he has to say about reading applies with even greater urgency and relevance to listening. 

One need only substitute the word ‘conversation’ for ‘literature’ to see the relevance of Bloom’s insights to human communication in general. For Bloom, “literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness.”Clearly there is no difference here from conversation. According to Bloom, the best critics are those who“make what is implicit in a book finely explicit.” Isn’t this the same outcome as with good conversation? And doesn’t it make sense that what we are really doing in any serious conversation is exactly the same as what we do when we read, namely “prepar[ing] ourselves for change,” in order to “strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests?”

And it seems to me that Bloom’s principles of productive reading are also important in creating productive conversation. The first principle, “clearing one’s mind of cant,” that is, recognising pious platitudes and their source in one’s tribal history is as relevant to listening as it is to reading. Most conversations are formulaic and have no real content other than establishing peaceful social relationships. But even significant communication is dominated by cliché and inarticulate usage. And when we are challenged to provide a description of our emotional state, we are likely to drop into an abyss of the most awful and trite vocabulary. Cant is our typical way of life.

The second principle flows from the first in light of our universal tendency to confuse words with reality:“Do not attempt to improve your neighbor or your neighborhood by what or how you read.” Because we instinctively feel that the language we use is an concrete as the things we experience, we believe that the language used by others is just as concrete as our own. Words therefore become things to argue and fight about, sometimes even to die for. At best we become idealists trying to get the rest of the world to conform with our ideas of what is good for it; at worst we become monsters who use those words to beat it into submission. Strengthening the self has nothing to do with changing the world.

Bloom’s third principle is taken from Ralph Waldo Emerson and echoes the advice of many others: “A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.” It seems to me that scholarly conversation has little to do with erudite academics but with an appreciation of one’s interlocutor. The realisation that language is as much a veil as a bridge between two people suggests that one must listen not for the words but for the intention and interests which are unspoken. Listening for what is agreeable is one way to discover purpose. The logic of purpose is often hidden below layers of irrelevant language, a sort of anti-poetry which hides what is trying to be expressed. This is Bloom’s “making explicit that which is implicit,” and establishes the same relationship between speaker and listener as between writer and reader, namely a collaboration that produces a new experience.

The fourth principle is an Emersonian variant of the third: “One must be an inventor to read well. ‘Creative reading’ in Emerson's sense I once named as ‘misreading,’ a word that persuaded opponents that I suffered from a voluntary dyslexia.” This goes beyond refusing to accept language at face value. The principle demands conscious interpretation of what one reads or hears. Interpretation is in any case inevitable even in the most casual of conversations. So Bloom’s idea is simply to ‘fess up to the process, not only to oneself but to one’s partner in communication as the foundation for clarification and expansion. Another way to state the principle is that if nothing new arises from a conversation, it wasn’t worth having. I think Bloom is correct about all our communication when he says that we are, “frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.” If we are not so disposed, perhaps we ought to be.

Finally, Bloom’s final and most important suggestion is “that the recovery of the ironic might be our fifth principle for the restoration of reading. Think of the endless irony of Hamlet, who when he says one thing almost invariably means another, frequently indeed rhe opposite of what he says.” This fifth principle is a summary and recapitulation of all the rest. Language, it says, is beautiful but it is not to be trusted because it is beautiful. Remember that this is from a man who has devoted his entire life to language and its beauty! It is because of this devotion that we can trust him when he says that “Irony demands a certain attention span, and the ability to sustain antithetical ideas, even when they collide with one another.” 

To extend these principles to all of communication is, to me, an obvious and productive necessity. Bloom’s one-sentence dictum captures his programme concisely: “Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.” I think I’ll try it out this evening over dinner with my wife.

Postscript, on the same day: In the way of these things, the attached article showed up from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/op...

 

The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and Nietzsche 
by 

Sean Burke

 

BlackOxford's review 

Nov 14, 2020  ·  edit

it was ok

bookshelves: aesthetics, criticism, epistemology-language 

Who Is To Blame?

Nice try. But aside from some trivial conclusions about the sins of intentional lying and bad grammar, there’s not much to say about the ethics of writing. We begin and end any critique of writing with the impenetrable mystery of language itself, the vagaries of which are not under anyone’s control. 

Famously and somewhat paradoxically, Plato wanted literary figures banned from his ideal state. Not only were they disruptive to established order, their writings also would have incalculable effects in future generations, thus encouraging permanent social and political instability. 

Plato was, of course, justified in his concern if not in his suggestion: language is the source of all human power; and those who have power are always threatened by their lack of control over language. So as writers write they undermine society, its institutions, its mores, and its peace. Anyone longing for a quiet life has to sympathise with the great philosopher.

Whether the effects of a writing are beneficial or destructive is something that society at large has to deal with, not the writer. He or she will have been quickly obscured by interpretations and commentaries which are impossible to correct. Indeed the writer may be dead so that neither blame nor praise has any import whatsoever except to cause more interpretations and therefore more complex instabilities.

So does it make sense to associate Nietzsche with the Holocaust, Marx with the Gulag, religious fundamentalism with St. Paul, or the American Republican Party with Ayn Rand? Or for that matter the destruction of traditional moral values with Jane Austen, Harriet Beecher Stowe, D. H. Lawrence, and James Baldwin? 

All writing, it seems, is subject to what Hegel called the risk of reason, that is, the chance that an idea will run amok, endangering the social matrix that is its source. But even Hegel could not conceive of the lethal dangers of writing on the internet in which the risk of reason has risen to crisis levels. Lying, deception, and the passing on of questionable information has become routinely acceptable for political and religious reasons, or even just for fun. Perhaps Charles Babbage, Tom Watson, and Alan Turing ought to be brought to book for what they have helped to create.

The problem is that the problem isn’t mendacity, or bad intentions, or misinterpretation. The problem is language. Our use of language may be the consequence of various evolutionary, neurological, and sociological events. But these events have created what is a unique way of being, what some German philosopher might call Being-in-Language. 

Being-in-Language is a metaphysical state in which we all share. This shared state has allowed our species to become the dominant life-form on the planet. But our success comes at a considerable price. Being-in-Language means that we are effectively trapped in a bubble from which we are continuously trying to escape. We are plagued by issues of truth and authenticity and the connection between language and what is not language. 

We attempt to cope with the uncertainties created by our metaphysical condition through religion and philosophy and various other intellectual strategies, like, for example,... well, ethics, sometimes even the ethics of writing. But writing about the ethics of writing plunges into the depths of self-referential paradox without hope of surfacing. Being-in-Language means that any analysis of our condition begins in whatever premises we choose and ends in the implications of those premises.

There is no ultimate authority about what constitutes better or worse premises. If, like Plato, one prefers social stability, writing must be severely suppressed. Or if one is concerned about the global rumour mill of the internet, Donald Trump’s tweets should be curated. On the other hand, if one’s priority is innovation and discovery, the useful (perhaps not the truthful) will triumph. Freedom of expression may be messy but the wheat can’t be separated from the chaff before expressions are expressed. Reason doesn’t get us to either Plato or Nietzsche. Our self-interests might. But even those will be be clouded by intellectual gossip and plain ignorance.

So the ethics of writing makes about as much sense as the ethics of language. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ as the computer programming cliché goes. Sean Burke acknowledges this obliquely when he writes,“Do not all interpretations belong to God?’, it is asked, rhetorically, in Genesis (40: 8).” Indeed, language transcends us all. Like the Christian God, language is within us, among us, and most definitely beyond us. Perhaps that is the real motivator for religion: we desperately want someone to blame for our metaphysical condition, our Being-in-Language.

Postscript: I can’t resist appending James Taylor’s take on the issue of linguistic responsibility:

Let It All Fall Down
By James Taylor

Sing a song for 
The wrong and the wicked 
And the strong and the sick, 
As thick as thieves.
For the faceless fear 
That was never so near, 
Too clear to misbelieve.
Well the sea is jumping salty 
And the porpoise has the blues,
My recollection's faulty 
And I cannot find my shoes.
And my wiring is misfiring 
Due to cigarettes and booze,
I'm behind in my dues, 
I just now got the news.
He seems to tell us lies 
And still we will believe him,
Then together he will lead us 
Into darkness, my friends.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
The man says stand to one side, son, 
We got to keep this big ball rolling.
It's just a question of controlling 
For whom the bell is tolling.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
There'll be suffering and starvation 
In the streets, young man.
Just where have you been, old man? 
Just look out of your window, man.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
Well, it ain't nobody's fault 
But our own, 
Still, at least we might could 
Show the good sense
To know when we've been wrong, 
And it's already taken too long.
So we bring it to a stop 
Then we take it from the top,
We let it settle on down softly 
Like your gently falling snow
Or let it tumble down and topple 
Like the temple long ago.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.
Let it fall down, let it fall down, let it all fall down.

 

How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter 
by 

Sherwin B. Nuland

 

The Ultimate Indignity

Either our end will be painful but mercifully quick; or it will be gradual and exceptionally uncomfortable. Medical science makes the latter increasingly likely. Quite apart from the pain involved, the process of dying is always acutely humiliating. I trust Nuland when he says,“I have not often seen much dignity in the process by which we die.”

Perhaps this is why warrior cultures promote the idea of courageous violent death. Such an idea fetishises death which is otherwise an insignificant natural event. Perhaps this fantasy of a courageous end, even among non-combatants, is meant to take the edge off what Thomas Hobbes pointed out, “... that continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 

Nuland wants to deflate the myth of death as a confrontation that should be engaged in with courage, fortitude, and spiritual energy. For him, “Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost.” One might even say that death is a kind of victory over the attempts of medical science, pharmaceutical companies, and self-concerned families to avoid it. The release from pain, distress, and worry is in this light our ultimate blessing.

The core of Nuland’s book is the detailed description of the mechanisms by which most of us will die - heart disease, cancer, and infections of infinite variety. In addition to preparing the reader for more productive conversations with his or her end-of-life consultant physician, the text is mesmerising in its upbeat account of lethal bodily processes. I find his casual insistence about the inevitability of such processes to be oddly comforting. In dying, the abnormal is normal. Knowing that one is more likely to be better off cooperating with nature sounds to me like pretty good advice.