Defusing God’s Warriors: The Nature of Truth
Does anyone watch CNN any more? Some days it looks like they got young Anderson Cooper running the show. Hosting interminable stretches of it, anyhow. Might possibly work out fine. Such a great head of air. And American audiences might relate. Not intimately like they relate to Homer Simpson -– nobody redeems American ignorance like huggable, indestructible Homer. But, provided sufficient boyish charm and childish innocence -– maybe like with Bart.
And how about that “God’s Warriors” miniseries? Wasn’t that worth watching? Wasn’t it hilarious?
Toronto Sun’s Michael Coren watched it. Didn’t much like it, though. Didn’t like it so much -– he got fuming incendiary at CNN.
Comparing Christiane Amanpour’s CNN miniseries to a suicide attempt, Coren wrote that,
So why get upset at Christiane Amanpour? She’s just doing her job. Accidental tour-guiding us to fundamentalist footage. And look -– see? There’s some Christian fundamentalism here. Alright –- keep very still. There! That was Islamic fundamentalism. And if we all just look behind this rock -– quietly! There! Yes! Jewish fundamentalism.
Of course Christiane neglected telling how the time to worry about Christian fundamentalism was hundreds years back. When Christian soldiers really got crusading the heathens. Or how the time to worry about Jewish fundamentalism was thousands years back. When their tribes spilled from the dessert and got genociding anything that moved if it worshipped false idols. Whereas the time to worry about Islamic fundamentalism is now more than ever. Particularly when in potential conjunction with weapons of mass destruction -– as reported repeatedly.
Right? We don’t lose much sleep over Christian or Jewish fundamentalism any more. We did for a while. Kept waking in the wee hours. Wondering if the militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist terrorists were coming to make pastries of our blood. But when militant fundamentalist terrorists did arrive, when we woke to explosive pounding, there weren’t any Christian or Jewish fundamentalists to be found. None. Nowhere. Oh, we looked. We searched. After the dust settled, we searched high, searched low, searched sideways. Behind stones. Behind trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds.
“Hey there, stone,“ we’d ask, “are there militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalists hiding behind you?”
And the stones –- trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds –- invariably replied, “Nah. Haven’t seen any those lately. Not the past hundreds years. Thousands, even.”
Not one militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist to be found when terrorist dust settled. What we found, invariably, was militant Islamic fundamentalists. Islamists. Invariably. Got real used to finding those whenever dust settled. We’re getting so familiar how they tick -– pretty often now we find them even before they blow up.
Sure there’s Christian and Jewish fundamentalists. Absolutely. Might be there’s a couple Jehovah’s Witnesses in the flowerbed this very instant. But Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Those are not the variety found when terrorist dust settles. And in event of singular exception, when Christian or Jewish fundamentalists do grow sufficiently militant to assassinate or spontaneously blow up –- we don’t run the streets celebrating. We don’t celebrate, admire or venerate anyone remaining in Christian or Jewish fundamentalist ignorance. We manage tolerating their ignorant, fundamentalist religious freedoms -– just so long as not militant. Not a shade longer. For militant means not just ignorant –- but criminal. Nevermind combining militant criminality with incurably intolerant fundamentalist ignorance -– that’s both criminally insane and insanely criminal. So. We manage tolerating fundamentalist ignorance -– barely. But anything getting militant hereabouts goes direct to jail, does not pass go -– and totally does not collect $200. And we do much better without fundamentalism in the first place, thanks so much. That’s why we not only separate church from state –- we even have second thoughts public funding prayer in schools.
Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Because we’re getting militant Islamic fundamentalism -– the meaning of it -– in the (relatively) tolerant West. Not (only) since 9/11. That’s a myth. That we’ve become Islam-phobic since 9/11. In the tolerant West we don’t mistake all Muslims for militant fundamentalists. We know far better. But since 9/12 through 9/whenever –- that’s different. We’ve seen the collective 9/12 dancing in the Middle-Eastern Muslim street. Seen it on T.V. Seen it on Al-Jazeera and CNN. The 9/12 collective rejoicing. We tried laughing it off –- i.e., with (non)Muhammad cartoons. Tried laughing it off as we would Christian or Jewish fundamentalism. Tried laughing it off as we would any ignorance. But that Islamic fundamentalism is too militant. Too criminal insane. It rules the ignorance of Islamic fundamentalism as it has not ruled Christianity for hundreds of years -– or Judaism for thousands.
No way can Christiane Amanpour confuse us. Not when we kept falling asleep during her breathless narrating Christian and Jewish fundamentalism. But militant Islamic fundamentalism? Hell. We can’t get nowhere near sleeping without it falling down the stairs. Blowing up the house right along with the stairs. Militant Islamic fundamentalism blows up and keeps right on ticking. Like some crazed vaporizer bunny. Blows up nightly, blows up daily. Keeps on ticking. No way will it go gently into no sweetly slumbering good night. Not on our lives, it won’t.
There’s no laughing militant Islamic fundamentalism off. Not while it keeps us up nights – and blows us up most days. No laughing it off in Chechnya, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iraq or Lebanon. Not in Asia, Africa, Europe or America. No laughing off how it worships death, how it suicide-murders innocents as eagerly in the West as the mid-East or the North or the South.
But what’s the point Michael Coren getting all upset at Christiane Amanpour -– or anyone at CNN? They’re just doing their jobs making news. Just show business as usual. Reporting things that move. Like wind. Undocumented workers. Fundamentalists. Whatever. Reporting the meaning and significance of movements –- like, why things move –- is so not part of Christiane’s job description. Not at CNN.
Christiane did a great job. Just indiscriminately pointing out fundamentalism. It is indeed a huge problem. She did a superlative job –- simply as a mainstream conversation starter. So that now, six years after 9/11, we can finally begin really talking about it. Right out in the open mainstream. So that more thoughtful individuals can start reasoning why Islamic fundamentalism is such a huge problem –- whereas both Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are not.
That’s the issue. Why on the Islamic shore, as Columbia University’s Mark Lilla puts it, “.. political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority..” -- while on non-Islamic shores they aren’t. That’s the issue, the difference our understanding of which Lilla declares “.. the most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time.” And the way Lilla declares this -– right out in the open mainstream rather than all covert in some merely academic journal –- owes plenty to Christiane Amanpour. To her tearing into and through the mainstream indiscriminately as an icebreaker.
So here we are. Right out in the open mainstream. Owing plenty to them that broke the ice. Like Rosie O’Donnell, proclaiming Christian fundamentalism equally dangerous to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet far more so to Christiane Amanpour’s “appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument” that Islamic, Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are all equally dangerous. Michael Coren ought to be grateful rather than furious. But now that we’re here, right out in the open mainstream, it’s time to figure out what makes Christiane so spectacularly wrong. We’d better make some headway following Mark Lilla in figuring out this “most urgent intellectual and political task”.
So what happened? How come Islam musters endless Islamist armies, each militant fundamentalist soldier of which is so bolstered by divine authority that they are eager to die if only it means bringing God’s truth to those of us infidels they kill? How come we in the (relatively) tolerant West scarcely manage raising even sporadic few divinely authorized militant fundamentalists –- and that whenever we do, we hunt those down as if criminally insane and insanely criminal both?
Mark Lilla says what happened -– accounting for Western democracy and, arguably, also for Canadian tolerance and multiculture such as in Toronto -– was the “Great Separation”. And that we can blame it all on Hobbes:
Something far more culturally tectonic did happen. God turned up dead one day. The eighth biblical day, perhaps -– when we killed God. That’s what turned the mantle of divine authority to rags.
How did we wind up killing God? Unintentionally. All the while our materialist Enlightenment prophets -– Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin –- were demonstrating everywhere God was not found, the nature of truth was shifting beneath us. Took about one thousand years for truth to turn entirely and categorically from ontological idealism to epistemological materialism.
Prior to shifting, truth and authority were divinely revealed and granted. The actuality of God was incontrovertibly definitive for St. Anselm. God was the greatest possible. Therefore, God couldn’t just be an idea. God had to be real. For if God were just an idea then God would not have been the greatest possible. Which, of course, God was –- the greatest possible. But, hundreds of years later, after Copernicus and other materialist prophets kept demonstrating how fully reliable God wasn’t, there was a tide of doubting God’s greatness. Descartes sought to stem the doubting. Tried to demonstrate how there was some God given truth -– given directly to human minds –- we could be certain of. But Descartes failed. Among many others, Hobbes maintained only science reliable in providing -– only evidently provisional -– knowledge. More strongly, La Mettrie pretty much ridiculed Descartes. Claimed that lacking evidence could mean nothing but ignorance. And then, after Darwin made such monkeys of us, doubting God’s greatness flooded the West. Today, in the West, truth has turned entirely -– from certain as God given to -– provisional. Since we now know that anything’s possible, we reject that purportedly greatest. Anything’s possible –- so there can always be greater. Hence God, the greatest possible, can’t be real. There can be no greatest when there can always be some greater. Therefore, as the greatest possible, God can only be an idea. And a rather silly one at that.
That’s what killed God in the West. The way the nature of truth shifted between back then, in St. Anselm’s day, and now. A stark and categorical difference the practical significance of which is easily illustrated by before-and-after thought experiment.
Imagine, for instance, that there’s a bible passage pronouncing all swans white. And imagine any true, devout believer, familiar with that bible passage, living sometime in middle-ages. Imagine, finally, that some fellow arrives carrying a large black bird -– loudly declaring he’s found himself a black swan.
What to do? As a true, devout believer, one surely tries to help. For the fellow’s own good. For sake of his immortal soul. One calls his attention to the bible passage pronouncing swans white. One encourages him to realize his error -– that the black bird he holds can’t be a swan. Right? Swans are white. But, madman that he is, the fellow starts to laugh. What can it mean? Is he possessed? Is he rebelling against God’s word? Is he a heretic? No telling. Must call on the village priest. Still, the fellow will not admit his error. His pride is such that, rather than recant, he vomits his sacrilege high and low. The priest has no option but to call on higher authority –- like the local inquisitor.
Fast forward a few hundred years. It becomes conceivable -– for some –- that swans are not necessarily white. The heretic becomes a naturalist. The devout believer begins having some difficulties remaining true.
Fast forward to the present. The heretic has become a scientist. The devout believer is now regarded as an ignorant fundamentalist. Western society permits and respects religious freedom to such ignorance only so long as it does not (re)turn militant.
That’s what happened. That’s what accounts for the difference. And that’s why still, six years post-9/11, instead of joining forces to deal with climate change, with icecaps melting as we breathe, humanity is clashing cultures like there’s no tomorrow. There can be no tomorrow until we emerge from our bloody past.
And how about that “God’s Warriors” miniseries? Wasn’t that worth watching? Wasn’t it hilarious?
Toronto Sun’s Michael Coren watched it. Didn’t much like it, though. Didn’t like it so much -– he got fuming incendiary at CNN.
Comparing Christiane Amanpour’s CNN miniseries to a suicide attempt, Coren wrote that,
.. CNN ran three shows on religious fundamentalism, making the appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument that the Christian, Jewish and Islamic varieties were not only similar but equally hazardous.Well.. yeah. Sure. CNN programming can get fatuous, alright. But why get upset? Why expect meaningful significance when viewing footage of Anderson Cooper exclaiming how strong the wind blows? Or when Lou Dobbs declares undocumented workers are waging war on Americans -– regardless how such workers stand, fall and risk their lives for the American dream? Or when Wolf Blitzer comes at us live as smoke grenades from the over-stimulation room -– quivering to make news even when there’s nothing to report? Because, like Wolf told Bill Clinton, he’s a newsman and that’s his job -– making news?
So why get upset at Christiane Amanpour? She’s just doing her job. Accidental tour-guiding us to fundamentalist footage. And look -– see? There’s some Christian fundamentalism here. Alright –- keep very still. There! That was Islamic fundamentalism. And if we all just look behind this rock -– quietly! There! Yes! Jewish fundamentalism.
Of course Christiane neglected telling how the time to worry about Christian fundamentalism was hundreds years back. When Christian soldiers really got crusading the heathens. Or how the time to worry about Jewish fundamentalism was thousands years back. When their tribes spilled from the dessert and got genociding anything that moved if it worshipped false idols. Whereas the time to worry about Islamic fundamentalism is now more than ever. Particularly when in potential conjunction with weapons of mass destruction -– as reported repeatedly.
Right? We don’t lose much sleep over Christian or Jewish fundamentalism any more. We did for a while. Kept waking in the wee hours. Wondering if the militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist terrorists were coming to make pastries of our blood. But when militant fundamentalist terrorists did arrive, when we woke to explosive pounding, there weren’t any Christian or Jewish fundamentalists to be found. None. Nowhere. Oh, we looked. We searched. After the dust settled, we searched high, searched low, searched sideways. Behind stones. Behind trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds.
“Hey there, stone,“ we’d ask, “are there militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalists hiding behind you?”
And the stones –- trees, bushes, shrubs and flowerbeds –- invariably replied, “Nah. Haven’t seen any those lately. Not the past hundreds years. Thousands, even.”
Not one militant Christian or Jewish fundamentalist to be found when terrorist dust settled. What we found, invariably, was militant Islamic fundamentalists. Islamists. Invariably. Got real used to finding those whenever dust settled. We’re getting so familiar how they tick -– pretty often now we find them even before they blow up.
Sure there’s Christian and Jewish fundamentalists. Absolutely. Might be there’s a couple Jehovah’s Witnesses in the flowerbed this very instant. But Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Those are not the variety found when terrorist dust settles. And in event of singular exception, when Christian or Jewish fundamentalists do grow sufficiently militant to assassinate or spontaneously blow up –- we don’t run the streets celebrating. We don’t celebrate, admire or venerate anyone remaining in Christian or Jewish fundamentalist ignorance. We manage tolerating their ignorant, fundamentalist religious freedoms -– just so long as not militant. Not a shade longer. For militant means not just ignorant –- but criminal. Nevermind combining militant criminality with incurably intolerant fundamentalist ignorance -– that’s both criminally insane and insanely criminal. So. We manage tolerating fundamentalist ignorance -– barely. But anything getting militant hereabouts goes direct to jail, does not pass go -– and totally does not collect $200. And we do much better without fundamentalism in the first place, thanks so much. That’s why we not only separate church from state –- we even have second thoughts public funding prayer in schools.
Christiane Amanpour can’t confuse us. Because we’re getting militant Islamic fundamentalism -– the meaning of it -– in the (relatively) tolerant West. Not (only) since 9/11. That’s a myth. That we’ve become Islam-phobic since 9/11. In the tolerant West we don’t mistake all Muslims for militant fundamentalists. We know far better. But since 9/12 through 9/whenever –- that’s different. We’ve seen the collective 9/12 dancing in the Middle-Eastern Muslim street. Seen it on T.V. Seen it on Al-Jazeera and CNN. The 9/12 collective rejoicing. We tried laughing it off –- i.e., with (non)Muhammad cartoons. Tried laughing it off as we would Christian or Jewish fundamentalism. Tried laughing it off as we would any ignorance. But that Islamic fundamentalism is too militant. Too criminal insane. It rules the ignorance of Islamic fundamentalism as it has not ruled Christianity for hundreds of years -– or Judaism for thousands.
No way can Christiane Amanpour confuse us. Not when we kept falling asleep during her breathless narrating Christian and Jewish fundamentalism. But militant Islamic fundamentalism? Hell. We can’t get nowhere near sleeping without it falling down the stairs. Blowing up the house right along with the stairs. Militant Islamic fundamentalism blows up and keeps right on ticking. Like some crazed vaporizer bunny. Blows up nightly, blows up daily. Keeps on ticking. No way will it go gently into no sweetly slumbering good night. Not on our lives, it won’t.
There’s no laughing militant Islamic fundamentalism off. Not while it keeps us up nights – and blows us up most days. No laughing it off in Chechnya, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iraq or Lebanon. Not in Asia, Africa, Europe or America. No laughing off how it worships death, how it suicide-murders innocents as eagerly in the West as the mid-East or the North or the South.
But what’s the point Michael Coren getting all upset at Christiane Amanpour -– or anyone at CNN? They’re just doing their jobs making news. Just show business as usual. Reporting things that move. Like wind. Undocumented workers. Fundamentalists. Whatever. Reporting the meaning and significance of movements –- like, why things move –- is so not part of Christiane’s job description. Not at CNN.
Christiane did a great job. Just indiscriminately pointing out fundamentalism. It is indeed a huge problem. She did a superlative job –- simply as a mainstream conversation starter. So that now, six years after 9/11, we can finally begin really talking about it. Right out in the open mainstream. So that more thoughtful individuals can start reasoning why Islamic fundamentalism is such a huge problem –- whereas both Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are not.
That’s the issue. Why on the Islamic shore, as Columbia University’s Mark Lilla puts it, “.. political institutions are conceived in terms of divine authority..” -- while on non-Islamic shores they aren’t. That’s the issue, the difference our understanding of which Lilla declares “.. the most urgent intellectual and political task of the present time.” And the way Lilla declares this -– right out in the open mainstream rather than all covert in some merely academic journal –- owes plenty to Christiane Amanpour. To her tearing into and through the mainstream indiscriminately as an icebreaker.
So here we are. Right out in the open mainstream. Owing plenty to them that broke the ice. Like Rosie O’Donnell, proclaiming Christian fundamentalism equally dangerous to Islamic fundamentalism. Yet far more so to Christiane Amanpour’s “appallingly relativistic and fatuous argument” that Islamic, Christian and Jewish fundamentalism are all equally dangerous. Michael Coren ought to be grateful rather than furious. But now that we’re here, right out in the open mainstream, it’s time to figure out what makes Christiane so spectacularly wrong. We’d better make some headway following Mark Lilla in figuring out this “most urgent intellectual and political task”.
So what happened? How come Islam musters endless Islamist armies, each militant fundamentalist soldier of which is so bolstered by divine authority that they are eager to die if only it means bringing God’s truth to those of us infidels they kill? How come we in the (relatively) tolerant West scarcely manage raising even sporadic few divinely authorized militant fundamentalists –- and that whenever we do, we hunt those down as if criminally insane and insanely criminal both?
Mark Lilla says what happened -– accounting for Western democracy and, arguably, also for Canadian tolerance and multiculture such as in Toronto -– was the “Great Separation”. And that we can blame it all on Hobbes:
This liberal-democratic order is the only one we in the West recognize as legitimate today, and we owe it primarily to Hobbes. In order to escape the destructive passions of messianic faith, political theology centered on God was replaced by political philosophy centered on man. This was the Great Separation.This might very well be right. Lilla’s “Great Separation” may account for the cultural shift in the moral and political character of the West. But even so -– how could the mantle of divine authority have become such a rag, to be discarded so out of hand, if we continued even to suspect God was watching us? From no matter how great a distance? No. Something far more fundamental, more culturally tectonic must have occurred to account how we’ve discarded divine authority. How we’ve thrown off that divine mantle once indispensable to ruling as if it became a rag of ignorance and impotence.
Something far more culturally tectonic did happen. God turned up dead one day. The eighth biblical day, perhaps -– when we killed God. That’s what turned the mantle of divine authority to rags.
How did we wind up killing God? Unintentionally. All the while our materialist Enlightenment prophets -– Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and Darwin –- were demonstrating everywhere God was not found, the nature of truth was shifting beneath us. Took about one thousand years for truth to turn entirely and categorically from ontological idealism to epistemological materialism.
Prior to shifting, truth and authority were divinely revealed and granted. The actuality of God was incontrovertibly definitive for St. Anselm. God was the greatest possible. Therefore, God couldn’t just be an idea. God had to be real. For if God were just an idea then God would not have been the greatest possible. Which, of course, God was –- the greatest possible. But, hundreds of years later, after Copernicus and other materialist prophets kept demonstrating how fully reliable God wasn’t, there was a tide of doubting God’s greatness. Descartes sought to stem the doubting. Tried to demonstrate how there was some God given truth -– given directly to human minds –- we could be certain of. But Descartes failed. Among many others, Hobbes maintained only science reliable in providing -– only evidently provisional -– knowledge. More strongly, La Mettrie pretty much ridiculed Descartes. Claimed that lacking evidence could mean nothing but ignorance. And then, after Darwin made such monkeys of us, doubting God’s greatness flooded the West. Today, in the West, truth has turned entirely -– from certain as God given to -– provisional. Since we now know that anything’s possible, we reject that purportedly greatest. Anything’s possible –- so there can always be greater. Hence God, the greatest possible, can’t be real. There can be no greatest when there can always be some greater. Therefore, as the greatest possible, God can only be an idea. And a rather silly one at that.
That’s what killed God in the West. The way the nature of truth shifted between back then, in St. Anselm’s day, and now. A stark and categorical difference the practical significance of which is easily illustrated by before-and-after thought experiment.
Imagine, for instance, that there’s a bible passage pronouncing all swans white. And imagine any true, devout believer, familiar with that bible passage, living sometime in middle-ages. Imagine, finally, that some fellow arrives carrying a large black bird -– loudly declaring he’s found himself a black swan.
What to do? As a true, devout believer, one surely tries to help. For the fellow’s own good. For sake of his immortal soul. One calls his attention to the bible passage pronouncing swans white. One encourages him to realize his error -– that the black bird he holds can’t be a swan. Right? Swans are white. But, madman that he is, the fellow starts to laugh. What can it mean? Is he possessed? Is he rebelling against God’s word? Is he a heretic? No telling. Must call on the village priest. Still, the fellow will not admit his error. His pride is such that, rather than recant, he vomits his sacrilege high and low. The priest has no option but to call on higher authority –- like the local inquisitor.
Fast forward a few hundred years. It becomes conceivable -– for some –- that swans are not necessarily white. The heretic becomes a naturalist. The devout believer begins having some difficulties remaining true.
Fast forward to the present. The heretic has become a scientist. The devout believer is now regarded as an ignorant fundamentalist. Western society permits and respects religious freedom to such ignorance only so long as it does not (re)turn militant.
That’s what happened. That’s what accounts for the difference. And that’s why still, six years post-9/11, instead of joining forces to deal with climate change, with icecaps melting as we breathe, humanity is clashing cultures like there’s no tomorrow. There can be no tomorrow until we emerge from our bloody past.
9 Comments on "Defusing God’s Warriors: The Nature of Truth":
So, is it that Islamic fundamentalism is caught in a case of being too late to the ball? If it had gotten its act together back in the "My God can kick your God's ass" days of "might makes right", it might be in the same state as Christian and Jewish fundamentalism today?
Reasonable hypothesis, Frank. I've also wondered if that might be the case.
Trouble is, the cultural "shelf-life" of fundamentalism is almost infinitely debatable. One might try to perform some sort of cost/benefit or algorithmic analysis... But I can't think of any practical way to test it.
No testing (human) cultures in labs. Clashing cultures might be the only solution to answering that sort of question.
But I'd speculate that fundamentalism gets culturally outgrown only after the following questions become burning.
Why has god abandoned us?
What the hell is wrong with god, anyhow?
Was it really god's doing - or have we only got ourselves to blame?
I didn't get a chance to watch the CNN, but it sounds like it is possible that the three types of fundamentalisms are the same, except removed by time, and sadly, the technology to inflict much, much, much more damage, and to reach many, many, many more people.
Let's face it, while the rack and sword pale in comparison to the IED and car bomb, the goals are still the same, to convert people into your belief system and eliminate those who won't.
Hmmm. I think fundamentalism gets culturally outgrown when we have the opportunity to truly examine a different point of view, as opposed to paying lip service to "diversity" or just not listening at all. Hence, the need for fundamentalists to destroy disagreement and disent. The process is accelerated when science begins to explain away a lot of what people used to take as "acts of God". Then religion becomes mythology.
Totally agreed, Frank. There's some faith in science too. False over-generalization (universal statements) are the entailing hearts of theories.
Not much difference between saying all action entails reaction -- and saying all intentional killing (murder) entails damnation.
The difference is how we've learned to take evidence seriously -- and in event of refutation, admit we're wrong.
To stop clashing cultures and save some future we must put dogmatic ideology behind us. To put dogma behind us, we must put love of truth above all else. Even god. Especially god.
Can't be led by imams and priests no more. Since, for love of god, imams and priests abandon truth.
But only love of truth means learning better. Love of god must get out of the way.
It's a little harsh to say that imans and priests abandon truth, but they believe in an absolute truth, that comes from their deity of choice.
That's the new cultural clash today, the battle between absolute and relative truth.
"Thou shalt not kill" has always been the interesting one, as the word "kill" will get twisted into "murder" in order to justify capital punishment or war. It points to an observation I've made about people and religion. If the current state of their religion justifies their beliefs (for example, homosexual behaviour is immoral), then there is no search for the truth, no digging into the religious texts for alternate meanings. However, if their religion does not back up their beliefs, there is this search for why they are still correct. So, in the end, it's still all relative.
But of course, even with science, there's still a leap of faith involved. We may feel more justified because of the scientific method, but in the end, science isn't perfect either. The only difference is that the scientific method allows for its truths to be altered, but in theory, religion does not. For religion, it just happens, slowly, but surely, admidst the proclamations that their truths are absolute and unalterable.
Absolutely. Science requires no less faith than religion. Science goes the extra step backward, though -- away from ideals and principles that get proven false or harmful in practice.
Yeah, it is harsh to say imams and priests abandon truth. Almost like saying they're liars. Devils, even. But it does follow. Like this:
We can't do without ideals and principles. Ideals and principles are at heart of (not only) both scientific theories and morality. BUT. We must learn to do without ideology. Because ideology means hanging on to ideals and principles regardless how wrong or harmful they prove.
By definition, imams and priests are precisely those who won't do without religious ideology. For love of god. Hence, they abandon truth.
The most popular objection to this view would likely be that it makes no sense to conflate scientific principles with moral ones. Like, we don't say that all action "must" have equal and opposite reaction. Whereas we do say "must" not kill.
But so what? If we thought Darwin was god then we sure would say action "must" have equal and opposite reaction. The 'must' merely urges prescriptive or definitive rather than descriptive interpretating.
So, if you are genuinely godly, then you "must" reject killing. Similarly, if you are genuinely Newtonian, you "must" admit action as having equal opposite reaction. If you are genuinely Pythagorean, you "must" admit 180 degrees as the angular sum of triangles. Etc.
So (for example) if someday, it can be shown, at the quantum level, that not every action has an equal and opposite reaction, would a genuine Newtonian:
1. Claim the research faulty, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary?
2. Claim that the result only applies at the quantum level and hence Newtonian physics is still valid for "real life"?
3. Have a crisis of faith?
4. All of the above, in that order?
What about if someday, it is proven that there is no god, or there is no god who gives a crap about what's going on with these specks of carbon and water, living in the backwaters of the Milky Way galaxy, would a genuine godly person:
1. Claim the research faulty, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary?
2. Claim that their religion still applies to human beings (because it was given to human beings when god still cared) and hence is still valid for "real life"?
3. Have a crisis of faith?
4. All of the above, in that order?
I think it's more likely that a Newtonian will accept the results than a godly person. In a way, s/he would be right to claim that it doesn't change the way they live their lives. I don't think the same can be said about the godly person. It is the worst case scenario in Pascal's Wager - you've lived like there was a god, but there really is no god.
Heh. Like the way you put it.
Let's not underestimate how traumatic it likely was for true Newtonians to start embracing relativity. Thing is, Netonians were not all determined to maintain Newtonian ideals (principles/axioms) regardless how false, absurd or harmful those ideals proved.
Regardless how traumatic, many Newtonians would not have chosen to let their ideals become ideological. Mostly they were glad to participate in the grand game of science: testing our ideals of the world against our experience in the world.
But let's say some hadn't wanted to participate in the game of science. That they would have preferred to deify Newton, instead.
In that case, almost no experience in the world would have got them to abandon their ideals. No matter how ideological their ideals became. Because any experience contradicting their faith in Newtonian ideals would just have meant Newton was testing their faith.
And for any culture definitively cleaving to Newtonian ideals.. well, any ideals which aren't Newtonian literally become meaningless. It just isn't 'action' unless having equal opposite reaction.
Just like, if it were to say in some holy book that "all swans are white", then no black bird can conceivably be a swan. Right? Like, which part of all swans being white didn't you understand? And if it's god given truth that all swans are white, then anyone claiming some black bird to be a swan can only be uttering sacrilege. Can only be an enemy of god.
Thus, even attempting to negotiate what it means to be a 'swan' becomes heresy. And fundamentalist cultures have been known to defend their cultural ideologies by burning heretics on stakes.
In just one nutshell: Newtonian fundamentalism was less probable than garden variety religious fundamentalism mostly because situated in a context of negotiating meaning in light of experience.
The grand game of science has changed the nature of truth for us. Mostly -- not entirely -- for the better.
Don't get me wrong. Fundamentalism is fundamentalism.
The atheist trend (especially in the US) towards the removal of any signs of religion from anything that can be preceived as public (government buildings, schools, etc) is a form of fundamentalism in itself.
The whole concept of "We cannot prove that God exists. Therefore, God does not exist" is as absurd as "We cannot prove that evolution is 100% right. Therefore, evolution is 100% wrong". It actually goes against the very heart of scientific inquiry, which allows for imperfections, but hopes for a move towards better answers. It allows for the "yet" factor.
I see the same thing happening with the debate on global warming/climate change. There's really not much debate anymore because neither side actually cares what the other has to say. It's either "junk science" or "the greatest potential disaster of our time". (And I wouldn't take the change of hearts of Mr. Harper or Mr. Bush as proof that Mr. Gore is right).
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