Atheism and the Wild Imagination
Yes, my new fellow blogging friend and critic, “Godless Poutine” of My Secret Atheist Blog, this is for you. You found this comment confusing, and lacking in cogency.
If reason is real, then it is as inconceivable that the Big Bang is the primordial beginning of the universe as it is inconceivable that a circle can be squared. That is — it is impossible.
You said you are still waiting for an argument. OK, fair enough, let me explain, borrowing the apologetics of the late Frank Sheed, the theologian with impeccable communication skills famous for engaging the public on the street corners of New York City.* There is an oft-missed distinction between what is conceivable and what is imaginable, and it has to do with the senses and the intellect. Mr. Sheed’s book Theology and Sanity has a brief section near the beginning about “How imagination can hinder intellect.” Here you go: Part I, Chapter 2, Section (i).
O Wild Imagination!
It is tough work for the intellect to function, he says, as it has to compete with the imagination. What are these two things? Well, the imagination is limited to the senses. We can only imagine what we might see, smell, taste, touch, or hear. We can make mental pictures of material things that we have sensed. We can imagine a chocolate cake. We can imagine a horse. We can imagine a hug. We can even imagine hugging a chocolate horse, whether we believe it is exists or not. It is, still, imaginable. Ergo, the atheist erroneous comparison that belief in God is akin to belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the imaginary god upon which the atheists heap their scorn and ridicule. Very sophisticated.
This picture-making power of the mind can take over the other powers of the mind and affect the will, like a tempted two-year old in a toy store full of shiny playthings. He may decide, as an act of will, that he wants to behave as Mommy tells him and not plunder the place, but then his imagination conjures up a picture of all the wonderful things to be done with the new toys, and the resolve to exercise restraint disappears. Similar conversations occur in the mind of the college boy walking into a bar full of beer and women wearing jeans-that-fit-just-so; a dieter catching a whiff of piping hot lasagna bubbling in the pan and begging to be sampled (or devoured); or a gambler filling his eyes with glittering slot machines and enticing blackjack tables surrounded by wealthy-looking opportunists. Imagine the possibilities!
To be sure, it takes work to discipline the imagination, but it must be done so the intellect can do its work. If it is our intent to set out on an abstract train of thought, we must learn to control the imagination lest it wreak havoc on the intellect. To decide what the intellect can accept and what it cannot, we need to be able to think beyond the material world, beyond what is sensed. Mathematicians did not discover integers and theorems because they gleefully gawked, sniffed, caressed, savored, or tapped a foot to them. Material things could have inspired the intellect, but for the intellect to conduct its mission, it had to move beyond the sensory, material world, and not be distracted by its apparitions. That these two words have become interchangeable today is an example of how the ability to think has decayed.
Imaginable vs. Conceivable
Modern dictionaries will likely show these words to be synonymous; however, the Latin roots are consistent with Mr. Sheed’s analysis. “Imagine” comes from imāgināre which means to form a mental image of, and “conceive” comes from concipĕre which means to take all together, as in synthesize.
As said, if something is imaginable, we can form a mental picture of it. Pictures are of the material world, so imagination is limited to that realm, and many atheists in fact claim that the material is all there is. But what about such concepts as justice and love? The mind cannot form a picture of those things because our senses cannot experience them; we cannot imagine them, we can only conceive of them. We can see a just man, we can hear a loving adoration (as adjectives) but we cannot see justice itself or love itself (the nouns). So do they not exist?
The point is, the reality of any abstract, spiritual statement must be examined by the intellect. If an abstract statement is rejected, it is rejected on the basis of a contradiction in terms. We do not ask, “Is it imaginable?” anymore than we should ask what color air is because air is beyond the sense of sight. We ask, “Is it conceivable?” Abstractions can only be conceived or synthesized in the mind; they are beyond all the senses.
To return to the opening line that confused Godless Poutine, that is why I said it is “inconceivable” that a four-sided circle can exist. To ask whether such a thing can exist is literally meaningless. It is also meaningless to ask whether reason, an abstraction, sprang from the unreasonable. It is a contradiction in terms to the instructed intellect. It is inconceivable. That is — it is impossible that reason evolved materially from the Big Bang.
This does present a problem for atheism. To say abstractions exist is to admit the intellect exists, and to admit the intellect exists, is dangerously close to admitting the soul exists. And to admit the soul exists…[Stop looking up in the sky, you won't find God there.] More on that later.
Atheism requires nothing more than a wild imagination. Thinking about God, as any other abstraction, requires more than that; it requires the imagination to be confronted, and sat dutifully in its proper place, appreciated for its limitations, so the intellect can do its own job. This is the path of mental maturity, or as Frank Sheed says — to sanity. Ahem.
—–
*You also seemed to take issue with my referencing the people I reference as some sort of “secret code that only smart Catholics seem to comprehend.” Actually, it is just a matter of propriety in avoiding plagiarism, standard protocol in a writer’s world. It’s a way of attributing to individuals the rightful products of their intellects, i.e. intellectual property.
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Sites That Link to this Post
- Atheism and the Wild Imagination | cathlick.com | November 21, 2012
- Schooling an Atheist on Grammar : Accepting Abundance | November 28, 2012
- Eyna, Are You More Than A Body? : Accepting Abundance | December 18, 2012
Totally jealous of your “Creation of Adam” pic. AND your intellect. But mainly your pic.
There is an effective form of debating, where you accuse your opponent of your own faults.
The stories of the bible and saints are far more wild in imagination and speculation than one story about hydrogen and a bit of helium.
Atheists can also point to the big bang, and create predictive models. Something you cannot do with Angels or Demons.
The miracles of the saints are documented by those who observed them directly.
Catholics can also accept the Big Bang theory, a Catholic priest formulated it after all. There is no theological conflict with evolution either, unless someone argues that the soul evolved from material things. That is a contradiction in terms.
Angels and demons are not material. The paintings you see are artists using their imagination to produce something beautiful, but the beings themselves are not material at all, and the artists know that.
Out of curiosity, do you believe that Saints levitated? If I remember correctly, there were three requirements to Sainthood, in the middle ages, and levitation was one of them.
I think there is more in the world than just the documented material world; however, that “something” seems to be inconceivable. It becomes almost impossible to explain or prove that you’ve had an experience with God.
Unless you meet someone whose had a similar experience, you will be ignored.
Yes, I believe saints levitated. No, not all have though, it is not, and never was (to my knowledge) a requirement. I wrote about one saint, St. Gerard Majella, here: http://www.acceptingabundance.com/the-levitation-of-st-gerard-majella/.
God is not inconceivable. Understanding the arguments takes some work though, that isn’t to say someone is dumb if they cannot, just to say it’s not as easy as people who dismiss it often perceive.
Sheed also points out that he is dealing with the intellect, not the will to love God. From the next section:
Stacy,
I would agree with Sheed. The knowledge of God takes a while; but love for God and appreciation for His creation and all within, takes a lifetime.
Go Stacy, and happy Thanksgiving.
Woo Hoo! Happy Thanksgiving Howard.
This article pulled me out of lurking status to comment! I thought this was a very well thought out piece. Coming from a background of scientific training, the biggest jump in personal growth I made is to understand that science and the scientific method are incomplete by themselves. I eventually came to see that if I didn’t have a firm grounding in the ability to grasp philosophical principles, that following “science” by itself can lead to some very dark and undesired outcomes.
It is so important to develop the intellect in such as way as to understand how to deal with what we do know, what we can know, what we don’t know, and what we can’t know. This sort of understanding is very incomplete if the knowledge under discussion deals with material things and measurements alone. As you so well laid out in this post, there are many areas of vital importance to humans that deal with truths which lay outside the realm of the physical.
Although inseparable in many ways, your delineation of imagination and intellect is valuable. And while imagination and intellect are not a dichotomy, they are sufficiently distinct that it is valuable to understand they are not identical, and that those activities suited to developing one of them may not be suited to developing the other.
Finally, I think it is a common mistake for people to * believe* that reason must necessarily be incompatible with the spiritual or super-natural (in the true meaning of the term, not the colloquial). So – well done!
Harpy,
Out of lurking! Oh my!!!
I’m glad, thank you for the comment. I appreciate it, and follow you perfectly. I had a very similar experience with my understanding of science and philosophy. I never realized how we need that grounding, that origin and purpose for the science, so we understand why we wanted to know those things and what we are supposed to be doing with the knowledge.
This delineation of imagination and intellect helped me immensely, I was waiting for a good opportunity to share it as I’m careful to use the right word now (imagine, conceive). I hope to hear from you again.
Hi Stacy,
I’m at work so I cannot read this very closely right now, but I did glance over it.
I’d like to thank you for your well thought out and calm response to my criticisms, questions and – I’ll admit it – lampoons. You really handled it with class and grace and I’d like to commend you for it.
I’ll take the time to read your response.
Sincerely,
- GP
PS: Happy American Thanksgiving to you and yours.
Thanks GP! I enjoyed your pieces, lampoons are entertaining, not a problem at all. I welcome criticism and dialogue, I’ve learned a lot from other people and enjoy the back and forth. Have a good day at work! Thanks for the Thanksgiving wishes.
This whole thing seems to just be an excercise in semantics and wishful thinking. If one must stretch their intellect to such lengths to make something seem plausible, one probably needs a swing from good old Occum’s Razor.
TG,
All arguments are an exercise in semantics. Semantics is the study or analysis of the relationships between linguistic symbols and their meanings. Logic 101 demands that we define our terms, and use those definitions consistently to break down and build back up our arguments. That is how we avoid fallacy.
Besides, who says that working your intellect requires extraneous assumptions and wordiness? It’s more likely the other way around.
Another good article, sort of behind on my blog reading. I glad you pointed out that when you use the words of another it is proper and correct to give credit where it is due. I’m wondering if this thought process could also be applied when a person is asked ‘when was the earth created/how old is it’ and the answer is ‘I don’t know, I’m not a scientist.’
anywho – hope you and yours have a blessed and safe Thanksgiving – you cooking the bird over the pit fire?
Happy Thanksgiving to you too Richard. Turkey in the gas oven, but bread in the wood burning oven, hopefully. Hope you have a happy day.
Wow!
I second the expressions of joy and admiration in the comments above. And I am very excited to see the emerging Latin scholar in you, Stacy.
St. Thomas could add a few words on the topic: Imagination and conceptualization come from two different varieties of souls. When I was young we were trained to identify different psychological verbs in Latin and to force ourselves to think straight about what part of the soul is being implied. This is still what I do when I read Aquinas. Stacy refers to imāgināre and concipĕre. The former is an act of the sensitive soul, while the latter is an act of the intellectual soul. I think part of the gap in communication between believers and non-believers is that non-believers don’t appreciate the radical difference between the sensitive and intellectual souls.
Thus, their habit is to see imāgināre as a lower grade intelligence when in fact it is not intelligence. The intellectual soul is what gives us dignity. It is part of what it means to be created in the image of God. An intellectual soul gives us distinct capacities that animals don’t have. And even though our intellectual soul is also a sensitive soul, the intellectual soul supervenes on the sensitive soul. There is one soul. But the power of imagination is said to be a sensitive power. It dies when the body dies. The intellectual soul is immortal. That’s how radically separate these activities are.
For scholastic philosophers (like me), The most dreadful aspect of the so-called enlightenment was its confusing these two acts. Philosophers like Hume stripped all distinctions between these various mental experiences (he didn’t even admit they were acts, they were more like elements floating on a little movie screen appearing to the mind’s eye… yuck!). The enlightenment view gave rise to the modern scientific world view which tends to conflate intelligence and imagination.
The intellect is so powerful that not even the angels (good or bad) can touch it. Angels can merely influence us by phantasm (imagination). It is only through the imagination that the angels can corrupt our thinking, such as the way that scientists were shackled by Euclid’s postulate that parallel lines do not intersect. By imagination this seems like it has to be true. But conceptually it need not be, as when you see a globe you notice that the longitude lines meet at the poles. Wait, what??? Yes, parallel lines intersect. Of course, angels can also enhance our intellect by use of images in the imagination. Images can give us hints toward important concepts (I’m told that the Dutch chemist Kekule imagined a snake biting its tail, which led him to conceptualize and discover the structure of the benzene molecule, but now I’m way over my head and I’m sure I got some aspect of that claim wrong, anyway that’s what I’ve heard).
Also, this distinction plagues us in conceptualizing human life. It is difficult for modern people to imagine a “clump of cells” as a human life because it doesn’t look like a person. Oh dear. It’s not what it looks like that makes it human, either before or after we’re born.
Sigh.
Lots of food for thought here, Professor Trasancos. I’m just thoroughly enjoying this. This is exceedingly well done.
Once, on LinkedIn, a question was posed concerning what was the greatest theory of all time. My response, based on the work of others, suggested the following. It fits very well with your excellent and enlightening essay. Put together, they answer the bottom line question for us moderns:
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
To explain the process of how we know entities outside of ourselves (persons, things, or other beings), Saint Thomas Aquinas has recourse neither to the transcendental ideas of Platonism, nor the innate ideas of Descartes in his modern philosophy, nor to illuminations of saints.
Aquinas effectively argues for a cognitive faculty in people that is naturally capable of acquiring knowledge of entities in proportion to that cognitive faculty.
Knowledge is obtained through two stages of operation, sensitive and intellective, that are intimately related to one another. The proper object of the sensitive faculty is the particular entity, i.e., the individual. The proper object of the intellect is the universal. But the intellect does not attain any universal unless the material for it is presented to it by the senses.
The two cognitive faculties, sense and intellect, are naturally capable of acquiring knowledge for subsequent understanding of their proper object, since both have such potential — the senses, toward the individual form; and the intellect, toward the form of the universal. Obtaining the universal presupposes that the sensible knowledge of the object which lies outside the knower comes through the impression of the form of the object upon the knower’s sensitive faculty. This is likened to the impression of the seal upon wax. The knower’s soul reacts according to its nature, that is, psychically, producing knowledge of that particular object whose form had been impressed upon the senses. Thus the faculty which was in potential is actuated in relation to that object, and knows and expresses within itself knowledge of that particular object.
But how is the passage made within the knower from sensitive cognition to that which is intellective?
To understand Thomas’ solution to the problem, it is necessary to recall the theory of Aristotle that Thomas works with: the individual form is universal in potential. It is the matter which makes the form individual. Hence if the form can be liberated from the individualizing matter, or dematerialized, it assumes the character of universality.
This is just what happens through the action of a special power of the intellect, i.e., the power by which the PHANTASM (sense image) is illuminated. The phantasm is made by our senses when we see, hear, touch, taste, smell. Indeed, it is the stuff of dreams and imagination. Under the influence of the phantasm, the form loses its materiality in the knower. It becomes an essence or intelligible species. Thomas calls this faculty the “agent intellect”. (For Thomas the agent intellect is not, as the Averroists erroneously held, a separate intellect which is common to all people. Rather, all people possess the agent intellect, but to varying potentials.)
The intelligible species is then received by the agent intellect, being passive since it receives its proper object, and become intelligible in act. When it does, the knower acquires the knowledge sought.
The form, both intelligible and individual, is not THAT WHICH the mind grasps or understands (this would reduce knowledge to mere phenomenalism), but the form is the means THROUGH WHICH the mind begins to know the object (individual form) so the knower can begin to understand conceptually the mysterious essence of the person, thing, or other entity outside of the knower’s own self.
The more the knower knows the entity, the more mysterious is the object. This is so because the knower realizes the object (person, thing, or other entity) is not created in such imagining or conceptualizing by the knower, but is only encountered by the knower on physical and metaphysical levels in this process.
If people adopt this starting point in any discussion of HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT, the results become common sensical and lead to less controversy. Your imagination/conceptualization distinction adds more clarity to this epistemological process and enables us all to pinpoint further causes of disagreement. Thanks.
Nice job John.
Ponder the sentence you wrote:
“The form, both intelligible and individual, is not THAT WHICH the mind grasps or understands (this would reduce knowledge to mere phenomenalism), but the form is the means THROUGH WHICH the mind begins to know the object (individual form) so the knower can begin to understand conceptually the mysterious essence of the person, thing, or other entity outside of the knower’s own self.”
What was destructive about the enlightenment was the bold assertion summed up ultimately by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: “the world is a world of facts, not things.”
The enlightenment said we can’t know anything, but we can make judgments about the meaning of the images in our mind’s eye.
This was a reversal of the scholastic (Thomistic) assertion, “the world is a world of things, not facts.” What we know is the thing itself.
The abandonment of common sense realism has been devastating for us.
“It is also meaningless to ask whether reason, an abstraction, sprang from the unreasonable. It is a contradiction in terms to the instructed intellect. It is inconceivable. That is — it is impossible that reason evolved materially from the Big Bang.”
I think this is the thing that we want you to demonstrate, rather than treat as self-evident. Give us the logic so that we too can become “instructed intellects”
rt,
Honestly, I don’t know how to make it clearer. I defined reason, taken from the Latin root, in the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (the highest, most comprehensive standard on the English language) as “the intellectual power, the capacity for rational thought.”
I hope, as strictly as +’s and -’s hold in mathematics, that “un” is understood as well.
The [intellectual power, the capacity for rational thought] cannot spring from un[intellectual power, the capacity for rational thought].
It is as demonstrated as 1+1=2, but no one is ever forced to see that equation and conclude that it is demonstrated. They could argue that 1 isn’t really 1 or + doesn’t really mean to add, or just popping an equal sign in there doesn’t really prove anything.
I suppose I might ask for a demonstration to the contrary now…
Some will never move past their doubt, discouragement, despair, or denial about God. Some of us may not be the ones to help them. And yet, your explanation is very helpful. In some senses, I wonder if the example of others is more important than the arguments of all of us. In this context, I whole-heartedly recommend Stephen Mansfield’s new book entitled “Lincoln’s Battle with God” [http://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Battle-God-Presidents-Struggle/dp/1595553096/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353616685&sr=8-1&keywords=lincoln%27s+battle+with+god]. In it the author persuasively chronicles the journey Lincoln made in his own understanding of God and our relationship to God. Lincoln was a realist, not satisfied with mere material explanations of the world he lived in, and given that world, certainly not in the purely idealistic ones either. The intellectual journey he lived through was wholly and painfully realistic in ways we can barely imagine. But that is your point as well I believe. Engaging in debates with philosophers of the modern approach rarely get anywhere because their starting points are deeply hidden, even from themselves. Lincoln rose to a position where he could no longer hide from the toughest questions. Mansfield’s take on this reveals a dimension of the man and his influence on our country not none other I have read. Happy Thanksgiving and keep up the good work with your blog.
John,
“But the intellect does not attain any universal unless the material for it is presented to it by the senses.”
I read and re-read your longer post, and really appreciate it. I think I remember reading about the difference in sense and intellect when reading St. Thomas’ part of the ST about the Blessed Trinity. Thanks for explaining it.
The last part about HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT, as well as Jeff’s point about a world of facts, reminds me of something I read from Fr. Stanley Jaki too. He described how for anyone to observe (sense) something and know it, they had to make a leap in the mind from what they observe in the material world to actually acknowledging it objectively. Something like that. His point was that even two people could look at a rock right in front of them and disagree that it was in fact there. Why? Because one person could refuse to *see* it and agree that it was *there*.
He was making a bigger point about science, and how even for the strictest physical science of measurement and quantity, such a leap in the mind, like you said from sense to intellect, has to be made.
Thanks for your comments, John. I’m sorry it took a while to respond over the Holiday weekend, but I’m really thankful that you took the time to leave that relevant comment.
The wife of an Episcopal priest once told me that in their experience it is best to always speak the truth to such people even when they are not ready because they may someday remember it, just like we all do when someone pierces our armor.
Having said that, I am encouraged that you are aware of the problem. I have had to step away from some long-standing correspondences with “philosophers” because I have discovered their commitment to pursuing the truth wherever it leads them is too dangerous for them and, as a result, can be like a painful betrayal when they lash out and I am caught with their whips.
Nevertheless, your “Atheism and Wild Imagination” post struck a resonant chord with me. I used to think the problems people had in dealing with God were epistemological. Their starting points were in doubt, a la Descartes. Oddly, it seems our education system would have us place our faith in doubt. And by that I do not mean to doubt our faith, but rather to believe in the efficacy of doubt as the starting point of examination.
Then, I slowly recognized that the problems were much deeper, a Machiavellian sense of discouragement. Self-deception and cowardice is rampant.
Investigating why opened the door further to let me see their deep despair, following the likes of Sartre.
And in the grip of such despair, there appeared to be the last refuge: denial, of the Nietzschean variety.
I won’t bore you with my further explorations, but when all is said and done, I came to a profound realization that the apparent culture wars are really spiritual warfare. Your reflections are some of the best I follow and recommend to others to remedy the imbalance I see elsewhere on the Internet.
Often a leap is really only a step. As my dad used to say, walking is simply falling one step at a time.
The epistemological problem is one even science cannot fully understand because the practitioners of science have hamstrung their enterprise by a demand for physically detectable evidence. For example, years ago now I was working as the in-house General Counsel for our then-Catholic hospital, an ICU nurse came to me saying that doctors wanted to pull the plug on a patient that she was taking care of. Since she was a hospital employee and didn’t think it was right, I stepped into the discussion. While in the end the doctors, not our nurse, did the deed, what I found of deep interest was the assertion of the chief medical doctor that the patient was in pain and unplugging the patient was the humane thing to do to relieve it. My question was simply: how could they tell the patient was in pain? They had no evidence.
Now we hear recently of two instances of people in coma where doctors are baffled. In one case [http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/vegetative-man-tells-doctors-m-not-pain-via-020801923.html] the patient reports no pain. In another [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1230092/Rom-Houben-Patient-trapped-23-year-coma-conscious-along.html] the patient was conscious throughout the 23 years though the doctors could not detect evidence of consciousness until he “woke.”
In effect, the very scientists who rely on knowledge to further their enterprise, in the end do not know what it means to know. Aquinas’ explanation does not delve into the physical aspects of the process, but simply notes what seems to happen. That’s why he says in effect that the form, both intelligible and individual, is not THAT WHICH the mind grasps or understands (this would reduce knowledge to mere phenomenalism), but the form is the means THROUGH WHICH the mind begins to know the object (individual form) so the knower can begin to understand conceptually the mysterious essence of the person, thing, or other entity outside of the knower’s own self.
Those who write understand that meaning is conveyed through words. When misunderstandings take place, language may be blamed (it’s semantics), but more likely it is the different contexts people bring to the table (see TED video re optical illusions [http://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see.html] ) and, even most likely, different starting points.
Which brings me to the end of this missive. Why do you think Aquinas started his SUMMA with this first question [http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1001.htm] : Article 1. Whether, besides philosophy, any further doctrine is required? I sense it had to do with accepting abundance. What kind of abundance? Truth [http://www.amazon.com/Truth-Aquinas-Routledge-Radical-Orthodoxy/dp/0415233348/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353775360&sr=8-1&keywords=truth+in+aquinas], I would say.
John,
“Some will never move past their doubt, discouragement, despair, or denial about God.”
Yes, when I first discovered social media four years ago I was so excited to be able to engage with so many people about important issues, but it took a few years for my skin to thicken so that I could log off and not be depressed.
I don’t know if you saw the two comments left on Thanksgiving that I unfortunately did not delete soon enough, but meeting that kind of person online is common. I don’t know whether anything anyone says will help them out of their anger. However, I’ve met just as many, if not more, thoughtful people who are searching too and for that I am thankful. Whether anything makes a difference in anyone’s life, we just won’t know, but since I stay home and this is my window to the world, if you will, I figure I’ll use it to do my best to speak the truth and then let the truth speak for itself beyond that.
It’s rare, but once in a while, John, once in a while someone will send me an email to say that they’ve had a change of heart, or even just to say thank you, and it makes it all worth it.
You had me until you got to love and justice. I almost thought you were going to make an interesting point but instead you merely dressed up an old ridiculous argument to make it seem like it was new and intellectual. Love is an emotion we feel… with out senses. We measure it with our senses and we evaluate it in like of actions. It is a product of brain chemistry. That’s material, not some inconceivable “feeling” in a vacuum. Justice is even more material than that. It comes from our material feelings of empathy and compassion.
-Staks
Staks,
It seems like you are agreeing with the explanation in the article then. Love is abstract, something beyond our senses.
We can imagine things we can sense, material things, but we can only conceive of things not available to the senses.
But then you say that justice is material. You are confusing, as did Godless Poutine, adjectives and nouns. You can see a just act, but you cannot see justice itself. It is an abstraction.
No, love nor Justice are abstractions from the material world. They are based in our very material brain. It’s all neuroscience.
So what does justice look, smell, taste, sound, or feel like? What space does it occupy? What material is it made of?
Got the chemical formula?
Again, those who deny the existence of the mind in favor of the brain cannot reach concepts at all. They can sense something they call justice or love but they are simply nominalistic in doing so. They reduce us to material and cannot explain themselves when pressed. Moreover, justice and love are words through which those who mind them express them as more than emotional feelings, though emotions are clearly results of understanding them in person. For example, those men who lived through the actual building of the bridge over the river Kwai, as presented on a History Channel documentary, found justice even in the worst of situations by being friends to each other.
Thank you John.
“They reduce us to material and cannot explain themselves when pressed.”
Perhaps this is what Cardinal Ratzinger meant.
From this post, the end (http://www.acceptingabundance.com/explaining-reason-atheism-or-christianity/)
The philosophical question of antiquity “What is it?” is replaced with the question “What does it do?” and the ever-popular modern over-reliance on science as the source of all truth becomes atheist dogma — anything that needs explaining beyond that is left to personal or popular expedience.
First off, you are making a rather obvious category error. Second, Justice looks like actions based in fairness brought about through empathy and compassion.
You argument amounts to saying that running doesn’t exist because you can’t taste it. Running, like justice describes an action… the action of being just.
There are entire bookshelves at your local library and bookstore about ethics and justice, many of which are introductory. You should read one!
Dangerous, I am curious, how would you describe me when I am being just?
Dangerous,
You are soooo getting a lesson in grammar tomorrow. Until then…cheers and thanks for the discussion.
Howard,
Just curious. Sentence diagramming, was it an essential part of your education? It was for me. I don’t hear much about it any more though. I think I want to make sure my kids learn it because it seems to be the way to clarity with language.
Remember the diagram of the Pledge of Allegiance?
Stacy, if it was we are talking about well over 3 score ago.
Learning for me was absorbing the point, making the lesson mine. Remembering the details was secondary. I often felt that if I concentrated on facts I would be too busy to understand the meaning. That got in the way of memorizing sometimes. To me creativity was more important than learning facts.
I understood that language was a natural way to understand the world. When we articulate and reason honestly we direct and redirect our understanding towards truth. We know we are on the right path because somehow things make sense and do not contradict. Ignoring contradictions is a sign of sloppy thinking.
Staks,
As promised, if you are still around. Hopefully you are.
http://www.acceptingabundance.com/schooling-an-atheist-on-grammar/
Diagramming sentences found at http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001PGXLHC
John, I bought a copy of that book and posted it to Facebook! One of my writer young adult friends said she got it as a gift a few years ago from her parents. http://www.facebook.com/strasancos/posts/4525104857831
Thanks! I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.
True justice appears at the same time true love does: in deep friendship. This first struck me when I saw the History Channel video entitled “The True Story of the Bridge on the River Kwai (History Channel) (2005)”[http://www.amazon.com/Story-Bridge-River-History-Channel/dp/B000AABL12]. The deep love these prisoners had for one another created a new justice that no one could take away from them, least of all their captors. From my perspective, Christ was among them.
You claim that human reason, which you defined as the capacity for rational thought, could not possibly have emerged in a natural way such as through evolution.*
You claim this without any reference to the enormous body of knowledge on neuroscience. Neuroscience studies the nervous systems in organisms from the most primitive consisting of only a few specialized cells to the human brain and their development throughout the life of the organism. This body of knowledge has grown through study by millions of people around the world for hundreds of years based on hundreds of millions of observations and experiments and writing about them and sharing them, and developing and testing hypotheses and theories, and continuously revising and enriching the field.
You seem to claim that even if the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution might generally be true, human reason could not have occurred in that way. In fact, you claim it is as inconceivable for human reason to have emerged where it once did not exist as it is inconceivable for a circle to be squared.** That is, “literally meaningless” and “a contradiction in terms.”.
Then you redefine “reason.” Earlier, you said reason is the “capacity for rational thought,” which is a relatively generally-accepted definition, and you agreed that humans possess reason, which is also generally accepted. Now you seem to define “intellect” as the capacity to “conceive of and work with abstractions” and “reason” is now one of those “abstractions,” which you say is something that can only be conceived or synthesized in the mind. Or maybe “reason” is both an “abstraction” and the “capacity for rational thought,” but the “intellect” is required to “conceive” of the “abstraction” of “reason” before “reason” can actually be used to perform “rational thought.”
Then you concede that you are using obsolete definitions for “intellect” and “imagination” as perhaps the early Roman Catholic church used them and as a street preacher named Frank Sheed used them rather than as they are commonly understood today.
Let’s step back for a moment. First, let us look at what biological sciences tell us about representational and abstract thinking.
Many single-celled organisms in water can detect molecules that indicate a source of nutrition with a higher density in one direction and can, in response, move in that direction. It can similarly move away from a threat source. This behavioral capacity is called chemotaxis. The significance of the molecules expelled by the food source could be considered a representation of the actual food item the organism can eat. This single-celled organism, without any nervous system at all, detects its environment and responds to it. Representation is a step in the pathway to abstract thought, and it starts in simple life forms.
There are even more simple organisms with similar capabilities but these are more difficult to explain simply. As animals increase in complexity and include a nervous system (which is in large part specialized for detection, evaluation, and response), they have increasingly complex and intricate capabilities.
At some point far before humans, some of these evaluations can clearly be considered to be ‘abstract.’ A dog (and even simpler creatures) can be trained to salivate (initiate digestive processes) at the sound of a bell or be afraid (initiate defensive processes) of a flashing light even though the bell is not naturally representative of food nor light of danger. Can we call this “abstract thinking”?
Words and symbols are clearly abstractions, and all the great apes, many mammals, and even some birds have the ability to understand words as well as symbols. Alex the grey parrot could be requested orally to count and consistently reply orally with the correct number of yellow fabric keys on a platform with many items with several materials, shapes and colors. Koko the gorilla became sad when her trainer told her, using human speech, that her cat had been hit by a car. Chimpanzees naturally understand fairness, as shown by always getting upset if a neighboring chimpanzee is given a better reward for performing the same task. A lone lion will not attack a herd of jackals even though it doesn’t know how to count (in one sense) because it clearly knows how to count (in another sense). Dolphins recognize they are looking at themselves in mirrors. I could go on at length because the scientific literature is full of such examples.
If you disagree that multi-level categorization, colors, friendship, news-of-distant-death, counting, fairness, and self are abstractions, then perhaps you need to go into some more detail in your explanation of what you mean by “abstraction” and how this means that only humans have abstract thought.
You state “The mind cannot form a picture of [things such as justice and love] because our senses cannot experience them.” Your statement is mostly false. Humans have long painted pictures and carved sculptures and performed dances and played music and told stories in order to communicate, share, and understand the many abstractions that we naturally have in our minds.
The mind cannot form a matter-based picture of justice because justice is not composed of fermions, which is one type of reality we call matter. But the human mind and many animal minds clearly form representations of justice.
If a primate is seen to steal something from another, that primate (and often its friends) are quite likely to mete out justice in the form of violence against the thief. This is predictable and repeatable and thus can be scientifically proven. These primates can be proven to have the concept of justice, and thus justice can be said to be scientifically real in certain animals in addition to humans.
And justice is also real in a physical sense that when humans are connected to certain devices detecting brain activity and they hear a story or see a movie regarding justice or injustice (justice being a concept combining the concepts of a proper behavior, a violation of that proper behavior, and a consequence for that violation for the violator and/or a recompense for that violation for the violated), their brains react in certain ways. That is, there is more brain reaction while watching behaviors involving justice or injustice than while watching non-controversial behaviors. These devices may not be able (yet) to identify the particular concept the brain is reacting to. However, if observing justice causes, predictably and repeatably, a physically, detectable reaction in the brain, the abstraction of justice can be considered biochemically and electrochemically real.
Further, brain research has shown us that the mind actually doesn’t use different processes nor different parts to think about “abstract” and “material” things, so your ancient division is as outdated as your ancient definitions of “imagination” and “intellect.”
Your main logical fallacies are the argument from ignorance, the ‘God of the Gaps’ argument and begging the question.
You state that natural development of reason, using your second definition of it as an abstraction and thus not in some physical sense, real, is inconceivable to you. This is an argument from ignorance. Perhaps after you have devoted some time to studying modern neuroscience and psychology rather than relying on mental gymnastics from more than hundreds or thousands of years ago, then your ability to conceive of the emergence of the functioning of the nervous system in both simpler and more complex organisms will increase sufficiently for you to make a more reasoned (if you will pardon the expression) observation regarding whether the human capacity for rational or abstract thought could have occurred within the evolutionary process.
You claim that because you cannot imagine how one specific thing, reason, could exist without divine intervention, then God must have done it. This is a “God of the Gaps” argument. This kind of God is a shrinking God as human knowledge develops.
You are also begging the question, wherein the conclusion of the argument is assumed in one of the premises. You claim abstract thinking is something that by definition could not have occurred naturally, and then you conclude that, since abstract thinking exists, this is proof that abstract thinking didn’t occur naturally.
Abstract thinking is real. As noted above, the existence of abstract thinking does not present any problem at all for scientists, who can clearly see that this capacity evolved.
The existence of abstract thinking also does not present a problem for atheists. Atheists may or may not believe in the scientific process or evolution, but rather they are defined only by not holding a belief in God. Atheism is only a belief in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby, per Penn Jillette. Even if you could prove that abstract thinking did not emerge as a product of evolution or even could disprove the theories of evolution and the Big Bang, this does not mean that the only alternative is that a god did it or that your God did it. Some natural process other than evolution could have done it, or some other supernatural process or entity other than God could have done it.
God may in fact exist. And I agree with you that people certainly could lead better lives by developing their minds and exercising discipline of all kinds, and the world would probably be a better place as a result. But simplistic claims based on word games, logical fallacies and ignorance are poor efforts at providing evidence of God’s existence or of God’s creation or intervention in the universe.
But you certainly aren’t making any progress at all toward setting the stage for contending that all education and research and all government should be subservient to the church. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your contention that the evolution of some human faculty is by definition inconceivable to the “instructed intellect” and that an intellect developed according to your church’s teachings should “move beyond” and “not be distracted by” the material world is clearly a call to close the mind so that the church’s teachings can be comfy and safe from reality, and this only supports the wisdom of keeping the church far from education and government.
* Clarification: The Big Bang is a cosmological theory regarding the origin of the universe. Abiogenesis is the origin of life from chemistry and there is no generally accepted scientific theory regarding abiogenesis, although the RNA hypothesis is a strong contender for at least part of it. Evolution by means of natural selection is biological theory regarding the development of different species from a common ancestor. Therefore, something cannot correctly be said to have evolved from the Big Bang.
** “Squaring a circle” doesn’t mean what you think it means. The term actually refers to the scientific field of mathematics, wherein it has been proven to be impossible, using only straightedge and compass, to “square a circle” defined as the attempt to construct a square with an area equal to the area of a given circle. Separately, there are many thought experiments by which it is possible to square a circle.
*** I am reminded of a scene from the Princess Bride:
Vizzini: He didn’t fall? Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Whoa, this comment is very long. Maybe a new post. There are some leaps in logic here, and some basic questions need to be answered first.
Thanks for the thought and effort in the comment though, Eyna. I’m glad you took the time. Awesome!!!
“Atheists may or may not believe in the scientific process or evolution, but rather they are defined only by not holding a belief in God. Atheism is only a belief in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby, per Penn Jillette.”
Eyna Neimus,
While Stacy is thankin on this very long thang, there is one part that just gets me twiching.
“….are defined only by not holding a belief in God.”
I have heard this here before and have wondered why any atheist would want to hide other aspects of their position from other people if they are confident in that position. We have a collection of definitions in dictionaries and the in one I use says, “One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods”. I won’t argue with the addition of “denies the existence”. The interesting thing is when we look up the definition of automobile we get. “A self-propelled passenger vehicle that usually has four wheels and an internal-combustion engine, used for land transport. Also called motorcar”
Now, when we actually see, drive, and touch a car we get a much more detailed understanding of it. When atheists actually speak about the existence of God they reveal MUCH MORE than a simple definition can describe. They also exhibit a unity of thought that is defining.
The usual accompaniment to non-belief is an insistence that we only are allowed to bring into the conversation empirical evidence. That is not in the simple definition. Is the answer I am looking for that you are really a devoted Penn Jillette fan, and are trying to use distraction by insisting “I am only” to slip this RULE through? There is also very often an angry attitude towards the idea that God could possibly exist. For example the infamous Richard Dawkins telling people to make fun of those who believe in God as I learned from a father whose son told him that is what he read he should do. This is more than not believing, it is a physically restrained but deliberate effort to attack those who disagree. A sort of “popular thought terrorist” disguised as a teacher.
Not doing something is not a hobby or an activity, being an atheist is a position and talking with others about God is an activity.
Eyna, made a new post for you. Hope to hear from you.
“While Stacy is thankin on this very long thang, there is one part that just gets me twiching.”
Snort!
Hi Stacy,
I was going to respond to this but I decided to read chapter 2 of the Sheed book you pointed me to. Of course, I can’t read chapter 2 unless I read chapter 1 first. Well then I just went ahead and bought the book!
I’m writing about my reactions to the book in the blog. I will respond to this when I have read chapter 2 a second time and mulled it over.
http://www.mysecretatheistblog.com/2012/12/theology-and-sanity-chapter-1-world.html
- Godless Poutine
What a great idea! It’s good to hear from you, GP.