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Jesus Creed introduced Peter Kreeft’s series on Thomas Aquinas in a post called Learning St. Thomas Aquinas, recently, evoking these thoughts below.

I can relate to people’s ambivalence regarding “proofs” of God.

I like many of the distinctions Charles Sanders Peirce offers. He says that we can interpret Occam’s Razor vis a vis the word “simple” in terms of epistemic facility rather than ontological complexity. In other words, it’s not the needless multiplication of ontologies we need to avoid; instead, we need to pay attention to the facility or ease with which an abduction or hypothesis comes to mind when we’re confronted with a problem because that, in my words, is often truth-indicative. He also distinguishes between an argument, the initial abduction or hypothesis formulation, or, in his words, “any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief,” and argumentation, in his words, “an argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premises.” Peirce devised what he called the “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” but he derisively considered formal argumentation, where God was concerned, a fetish. He distinguished, too, between God’s so-called “existence” and God’s “reality.”

I found it curious, at first, that folks like Charles Hartshorne and Kurt Godel would fool with (modal) ontological arguments but better came to appreciate what they were doing through time. One of the better modal arguments, in my view, has been advanced by Christopher McHugh. Those are all names worth Googling if one likes this type of approach. Also, Mortimer Adler and Ralph McInerny.

Peirce employs a cable metaphor for knowledge, which takes our different arguments to be strands, any which alone could not lift this or that epistemic load without breaking (my crude wording), that when wound together gain strength and resiliency.

In other words, most of our knowledge in life does not proceed from mere formal argumentation via indubitable premises with clearly disambiguated concepts and logical validity to incontrovertible proof. Most of our knowledge comes from a cumulative case-like approach, is very much informal and probabilistic. From a rigorously philosophical approach, formal proofs of God, taken alone, lead only to Scottish verdicts of unproven. Taken together as arguments (facile abductions) along with other evidential, experiential, presuppositional and existential strands, we have quite a strong and resilient cable of belief that is eminently reasonable and existentially actionable, which is to say, with more than sufficient epistemic warrant.

There is a reason that radical empiricism, logical positivism, scientism and modernistic rationalism fell into general disrepute, philosophically: pragmatically, they don’t work. Common sense is a better guide, as fallible as it is. Most people may not be able to articulate the reasons for their beliefs using epistemological jargon and many may thus be unconsciously competent, but they are competent, indeed, and their beliefs are very well warranted.

My chief caveat is that metaphysical formal argumentation, taken to an extreme, can lead to a sterile, scholastic and naive realism, foundationalism and essentialism (with their overly a prioristic, physicalistic, biologistic, absolutistic, infallibilistic and rationalistic approaches to human moral realities, such as regarding gender roles and human sexuality).

Postmodernity has gifted us a more critical realism, which comes in the form of weakened foundationalism, nonfoundationalism or postfoundationalism, all pretty much the same from a practical perspective as long as they affirm metaphysical and moral realism. Of course, it has also “gifted” us with postmodernISM, which as a radically deconstructive approach is epistemically bankrupt. I appreciate aristotelian-like thinkers as long as they do not caricaturize as strawmen all postmodern approaches, such as fallibilism, in terms of radical deconstruction. The postmodern, in and of itself, is not the bogeyman. Sometimes, Peter Kreeft and his ilk can be a tad too syllogistic, in my view.

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Human knowledge advances incrementally, building on what we learned in and from the past. We see how this plays out in our word usage as we add various prefixes and suffixes and come up with new words (neologisms). Three prefixes come especially to mind: 1) post-, 2) trans- and 3) meta-.

In the way I most often use these prefixes, 1) post- means after, 2) trans- means beyond or through and 3) meta- means more comprehensive. None of these prefixes necessarily also means without (which is most often indicated by the prefix a-). Not even the prefix non- necessarily means without; it primarily means we are talking about something else.

The postmodern critique remains a critical assessment of modernism. In my view, it suggests, for example, that modern methods should not be considered systems, modern practices should not be confused with conclusions and philosophical approaches should not misconstrued into schools of philosophy. It recognizes that the best methods, practices and approaches are fallible but self-subverting, self-critical, self-correcting and guided probabilistically (in other words, neither absolutely, infallibly nor apodictically). Our closures are then provisional.

Ironically and tragically, there has been a perversion of this critique from a method into a system, a practice into a conclusion, an approach into a school of thought. This tragedy, postmodernism, mimics the failed school of modernism in its over-reaching. Modernism, for its part, was guilty of epistemic hubris. Postmodernism, a tonic turned toxic, proceeds with an excessive epistemic humility, which is manifestly unwarranted.

Silliness thus abounds. Modernity gone awry with its conflation of methods into systems gave us scientism, an arrogation of science into a full-blown philosophical school, as well as fideism, a subjugation of faith via its divorce from reason. A metaphysic, misconstrued, imagines it can decouple from physics and many claim to be transrational whose approach is, in fact, arational. All manner of insidious -isms abounded as the approaches of modernity were inflated into such schools as logical positivism and radical empiricism. Religious approaches were perverted into encratism, pietism, rationalism, quietism and every variety of absolutist fundamentalism, including both sola scriptura and solum magisterium approaches of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

As a therapeutic critique, the postmodern perspective would have us go beyond the modern not without it. We go beyond science but not without it. Faith, narrowly conceived as an epistemic leap beyond such nonrational presuppositions as nihilism, solipsism and relativism, is an indispensable prerequisite to knowledge. More broadly conceived, faith is a super-reasonable and existential response to reality that can be considered a forced (not to choose is to choose), vital (pertains to our ultimate concerns, most urgent and insistent longings, and most deeply cherished values) and live (neither empirically measurable nor logically demonstrable but still rationally equiplausible and practically defensible) option.

Our great traditions, with their interpretive approaches to ultimate reality, and our science and philosophy, with their descriptive and normative approaches to more proximate realities, are all ordered, evaluatively,  toward human value-realizations, which can be in turn assessed for how well they institutionalize our ongoing conversion and transformation, intellectually, affectively, morally, socio-politically and religiously (what Gelpi building on Lonergan might equate with a growth in human authenticity).

What is the way forward?

If it is indeed going to be posthierarchical, in addition to being more dialogical and democratic, will it necessarily be ahierarchical? or even necessarily noninstitutional? Or will some hierarchical and institutional apparatus inevitably emerge as a necessary evil, at least where it is, so to speak, developmentally-appropriate? For that matter, if authentically post-Western, post-European and postcolonial, won’t we much more narrowly conceive the meaning of developmentally-appropriate, especially vis a vis language, practices and cultural traditions? Under any other circumstances, it positively must be postpatriarchal and postpaternalistic?

Certainly, it will be postfoundational, recognizing a plurality of methodologies and the primacy of narrative in all human knowing, but will it also acknowledge certain indispensable propositions and essential metanarratives? Certainly metaphysical and moral realisms are indispensable presuppositions?

It will affirm that science, philosophy, culture and religion are methodologically-autonomous but will it acknowledge that they are also axiologically-integral?

Will it eschew evidentialism, rationalism, presuppositionalism and existentialism in favor of a more holistic perspectivalism but without defining holism in terms of a facile moderation or simple balancing act, acknowledging that certain approaches will sometimes enjoy at least a primacy if not an autonomy? This is to ask, then, if the dual and nondual approaches to reality might better be described as the transdual, which necessarily goes beyond, but not without, our dualistic, problem-solving mind in approaching life’s most important values, primarily, from a nondual approach?

Whatever we do, let’s not be silly. Let’s avoid modernism and postmodernism as we embrace the best of the modern and postmodern, as we embrace reality, one another, ourselves and our God.

When we encounter a seemingly insoluble conundrum or deep mystery, we will not a priori know whether such a paradox might resolve dialectically (in an Hegelian-like synthesis), dissolve perspectivally (from a simple paradigm shift, changing how we approach the problem or overcoming a category error), best be maintained in a creative tension between competing aspects in a both-and manner or might present in a truly antinomial fashion (such that a reductio ad absurdum cannot be overcome without sacrificing the basic presuppositions of reason, itself).

For life’s most important questions and most pressing concerns, don’t expect easy problem resolutions and dissolutions. One best learn to nurture creative tensions and to live with absurdity. All of the great wisdom traditions are in agreement about this reality; in Christianity, it’s called the Cross. In the end, our trust in this process must go beyond our rational problem-solving and apologetics to be grounded in a relationship, which believes and hopes for the sake of love, alone, and loves for the sake of love, itself; in Christianity, this relationship is grounded in Jesus.

Note: Most of the posts on this blog deal with epistemology, an exploration of how we know what we know. And they eschew any notion of a religious epistemology over against any other epistemologies, defending a stance that says that epistemology is epistemology is epistemology. I invite you to explore both the Christian Nonduality Blog and Website and to connect with me, Radical Emergence, on Twitter.

This conversation continues here>>> (more…)

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Tim King, at his Post-Christian Blog, writes about change and says: “I hope I’m around to see a world where diverse and disparate faiths learn to celebrate what each has to offer to help all of us understand the Numinous a bit better than we do now.”

The changes Tim describes, the moves he prescribes, very much resonate with what I have gathered from reflecting on Thomas Merton’s writings over the years. And I have been trying to say it in so many ways myself and keep trying different approaches.

Today’s thought is this:

Our disparate faiths, including many indigenous religions as well as the great traditions, have a certain core competency. From that core competency derives the nature of their distinct contribution, their unique role, in our lives. This role is not to describe reality scientifically, not to prescribe reality morally or ethically, not to norm reality philosophically, not to manipulate reality practically, and not to govern reality politically. These functions belong, rather, to the cosmological story told by science and philosophy, what some have called Everybody’s Story, and rightly so, because it transcends cultures. And it does include our rather rudimentary, vague understanding of a Creator Spirit, one could say, pneumatologically.

There are other stories to be told by religions and cultures, which are axiological. Their role is to help us interpret reality evaluatively. More plainly, their distinct contribution is to help us celebrate and value reality.

The opposite of good religion is neither bad science nor bad morality, although many would leave us with that impression. The opposite of religion is indifference and nihilism, an attitude that reality offers nothing of enduring value to celebrate. We cannot talk people out of such an attitude with empirical evidence, logical reasoning or moral persuasion because these basic attitudes are not constructed of formal arguments. Instead, good religion forms people through exchanges of stories about lives well-lived, and through moments of celebration, and through the handing down of formative and transformative practices and through the comfort and enjoyment of fellowship in community.

Inter-religious dialogue, then, is much more an exchange of practices and has very little to do with conclusions. It has a lot more to do with celebratory methods and transformative processes and very little to do with philosophical systems and products of moral reasoning. Religion is more so a participatory engagement and much less a propositional exchange.

In my view, then, much of the strife on our planet comes from religion masquerading as cosmology, attempting but failing to co-opt the prerogatives of good science and good philosophy with  pseudo-religion. Creationism isn’t bad religion; it’s bad science. Theocratic rule isn’t bad religion; it’s bad political science. Misogyny and homophobia aren’t bad religion; they’re grounded in bad anthropology and are bad morality. Such dysfunctional approaches to reality inevitably result when religion departs from its core competency, strays from its distinct role and fails to attend to its own unique contribution, which Merton emphasized was transformation not socialization.

Below is a more philosophically nuanced discussion of these dynamics. (more…)

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Thom Stark at Jesus Politics is sponsoring a competition, which I couldn’t really enter because I don’t buy the contest’s premise that would require me to demonstrate that Thom employs erroneous presuppositions that control his interpretive options, especially regarding Biblical hermeneutics. The whole discussion is evocative though and, in response, I wrote this tongue-in-cheek parody, below.

Hang Down Your Head Thom Stark

A thoroughgoing solipsist, still, Thom finds it useful to suspend his disbelief in other minds. An incurable nihilist, still, Thom finds it useful to suspend his disbelief in reality’s intelligibility.

As did Kurt Vonnegut, Thom enjoys his life in this incredible chronosynclastic infundibulum, where all is at once both true and false (this recognizing that Thom has also suspended his disbelief in the silly notion that such concepts as true and false successfully refer). While so-called First Principles, like noncontradiction and excluded middle, certainly entertain Thom, he sees that they only work within formal symbol systems, the axioms of which remain otherwise unprovable within that system, which, itself, remains either incomplete or inconsistent. Incompleteness and inconsistency are concepts which, paradoxically, do appear to make successful references to reality insofar as they add no new information to Thom’s otherwise unintelligible tautological accounts.

Even if these interpretive stances remain otherwise empirically indemonstrable and rationally unprovable, still, Thom finds them practically indispensable. Of course, Thom’s pragmatism is strictly strategic and in no way philosophical. Thom feels this way notwithstanding any reductio ad absurdum arguments, which could only serve to suggest that his approach is to many unpalatable and not to otherwise demonstrate that it is – to use their categories, not Thom’s – untrue. So, Thom actively suspends his disbelief in other minds, in reality’s unintelligibility and in so-called First Principles because he finds such noninferential, nonpropositional, evaluative posits just positively liberating.

This silliness continues below. (more…)

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I appreciate the insights that folks like Campbell & Jung brought to anthropology. They are important & deserve serious consideration from a scientific perspective. However, I’m not among those who consider them theologically competent.

For some, all religious myth is mythopoeia, God’s expressions thru the minds of poets.

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Wim Drees defines theology as a cosmology plus an axiology. Drees notes that, and serious emergentists might pay special attention, the discontinuity in emergent reality threatens the unity of the sciences. Because laws, themselves, emerge, we are on thin theoretical ice when speculating metaphysically re: the nature of primal reality, causal joints for divine prerogatives, and so on.

While cosmological and axiological approaches are integrally-related, they are methodologically autonomous. Cosmology answers the questions 1) Is that a fact? (descriptively) and 2) How do I best acquire/avoid that? (normatively). Daniel Helminiak, a Lonergan protege, would describe these as positivist and philosophic activities and rightly affirms, in my view, the philosophic as spiritual quest.

Even if one concedes, for argument’s sake, our ability to travel from the descriptive to the prescriptive, given to normative, is to ought (and Mortimer Adler well-demonstrates that we can get from an is to an ought) still, due to our universal human condition, wherein we are all, for the most part, similarly situated, even if our reasoning differs for certain precepts & would be theoretically relativistic, still, from a practical perspective our precepts are going to be remarkably consistent.

The practical upshot of all of this is that cosmology, thus narrowly conceived, is truly Everybody’s Story, which is to say we really shouldn’t go around wily-nily just making this stuff up because it isn’t really negotiable but is given.

Axiology answers the questions 3) What’s it to me? (evaluatively) and 4) How’s all this tie-together? (interpretively). Here we are dealing with human value-realizations, their definitions and prioritization, and with religion. The reason we even have such a category as interpretation results from our radical human finitude. It is not that we don’t affirm such a metaphysical realism as recognizes the validity and soundness of a putative best interpretative “vision of the whole,” but that, at this stage of humankind’s journey, it is exceedingly problematical to fallibly discern and adjudicate between competing interpretations, especially as they fit into elaborate tautologies, all which are variously taut in their grasp of reality.

In some sense, our cosmology comprises the propositional aspect of our metanarratives (aspiring to successful and robust descriptions with indications of correspondence) and our axiology comprises the narrative aspect (aspiring to vague but successful references with invitations to particpate). The postmodern critique does not instill incredulity toward our metanarratives per se; rather, it takes note of how every narrative aspect of our metanarratives is rooted in myth (yes, including scientism no less than fideism).  Analogous to Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, we cannot prove our system’s axioms within the system (evidentially, rationally, presuppositionally or propositionally), itself, but this does not mean that we cannot taste and see (existentially, as recommended by Ignatius, the Psalmist & enlightened speculative cosmologists …) the truth of those axioms, which we would necessarily express – not formally, but – through narrative, story, myth.

This framework establishes a certain amount of epistemic parity between worldviews and religions, which then get authenticated by how well they institutionalize conversions: intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious and adjudicated with an equiplausibility principle, which looks for life-giving and relationship-enhancing criteria when choosing between otherwise ambiguous courses of action. We can also remain on the lookout for Gospel norms like a language of descent or “downward mobility” and a prophetic element (self-criticism). So, we do draw distinctions between a theory of truth and a test of truth and we do recognize that some aspects of reality are best grasped through correspondence while other aspects grasp us through participation.

One lesson we take away is that our reliance on myth reveals that reality overflows our ability to process it, that creation, Creator and people present unfathomable depth dimensions that no encounter can capture or exhaust. If in our cosmologies, with their empirical, logical and practical foci, it is very much our intent to get the right answers, when it comes to our axiologies, with their relational foci, then, our quest is to get the right questions (Whom does the grail serve?).

Our fundamental trust in uncertain reality requires no apologetic, then, and fashioning one is as futile as explaining why we love our Beloved in empirical, logical and practical terms (as if only extrinsically rewarding). Embodiments of truth, beauty, goodness and unity are their own rewards (intrinsically); they grasp us and possess us as we participate in these values with our existential orientations to these transcendental imperatives. As we distinguish between wants and needs, real and acquired desires, lesser and higher goods, our axiologies orient and dispose us to the higher goods, which we can enjoy without measure, and properly dispose us to the created goods that we really need in moderation and not in a disordered (John of the Cross) or inordinate (Ignatius) way.

Our cosmology, which is scientific and philosophic, descriptive and normative, also includes our essentially spiritual quest, which is shaped by the positivist and normative sciences and addresses the orthopraxes of our ethical and moral strivings as well as those ascetical practices and disciplines that enhance awareness, including certain meditative practices, many which come from the East and are not inextricably bound to any religion or worldview (hence some are indeed spiritual without being religious, explicitly anyway). In our cosmology, we better come to grips with our empirical, logical and practical foci of concern and foster intellectual, moral and social conversions.

Our axiology, which is interpretive and evaluative, goes beyond but not without our cosmology and is shaped by our religious myths and liturgical celebrations, which address the orthopathos of our prayer and worship, public and private, forming and reinforcing our aspirations and hopes, answering the question “What’s it to me?” in a manner that is properly ordered, truly fitting and proper, which is to say, Eucharistically. There is no worldview or metanarrative without either an implicit or explicit axiology that is integrally related to one’s cosmology (so we’d best tend to an explicit axiology in a consciously-competent manner). In fact, in addition to their methodological autonomy, our axiologies enjoy a primacy in relation to our cosmologies, although otherwise axiologically-integrated.  It is our orthopathos that mediates between our orthodoxy and orthopraxis to effect an authentic orthocommunio. If our unitive strivings come up short, whether geopolitically or in our primary communities and families, we might look at our prayer lives for, if we invoke, it is only because we have been convoked. In our axiology, we better come to grips with our relational foci of concern, where our value-realizations are trust, assent, fidelity, loyalty, faith, hope, love, eros, philia, agape and so on and we better foster affective and religious conversions.

We do our best to discern where Lonergan’s conversions have been institutionalized, looking to see which interpretive approach best fosters ongoing intellectual, affective, moral and social growth and development, leading to human authenticity. But we’re clearly in more negotiable territory here with discourse dominated more by dogmatic (non-negotiated) and heuristic (still-in-negotiation) concepts, this contrasted to cosmological discourse, which has more theoretic (negotiated in community) concepts and semiotic concepts (non-negotiable b/c meaning, itself, is invested in them).

In defining what my own Radical Emergence approach would be about, then, I see it as an axiological vision of the whole. In such a metanarrative, cosmology is left to the positivist, empirical scientific methodologies, and to the philosophic, normative sciences. Religion, an interpretive endeavor, is constrained by the positivist & normative sciences, and employs a different & autonomous methodology (myth and liturgy), even though integrally-related to the other methodologies in every value-realization. To be clear, by “integrally-related,” I am suggesting that a cosmology presupposes an axiology and vice versa, that our descriptive, normative, interpretive and evaluative foci of human concern presuppose each other.

As an axiological endeavor, the Emerging Church would foster the intentional evolution of the interpretive and evaluative aspects of human value-realizations, which would enhance (and transvalue), also, our cosmological modeling power without interfering with its autonomous methodologies (faith illuminating understanding). Over against both scientism and fideism, the Emerging Church would not conflate or compromise the autonomous methodologies of science, philosophy and religion, of descriptive, normative and interpretive endeavors, but would integrate them axiologically.

What would intentional evolution address? Nothing less than creed, cult, code and community (institutionalized), which are deconstructible, as semiotic realities ordered toward truth, beauty, goodness and unity, which are not deconstructible. How would it address them? Through the amplification of epistemic risks as ordered toward the augmentation of human value-realizations.

Less abstractly and more concretely, how does one amplify epistemic risks? Understanding yields to faith, memory to hope, will to love and alienation to community.

More programatically, what route do I advocate? A Radical Emergence, rooted in the orthopathos and orthodoxy of tradition, as articulated and valued by some in the Radical Orthodoxy movement, and open to the orthopraxes and orthocommunio of the future, as articulated and valued by some in the Emerging Church conversation.

Specifically, one efficacious route to ecclesial and personal transformation is the surrender to the contemplative stance, the 3rd Eye seeing, of nonduality, which is what http://christiannonduality.com/ is all about.

Update on 06 Sept 2009 -See Tom Roberts “In Search of the Emerging Church” the contemplative tradition grounds emerging Christianity

Emerging Church Pillars:

I orthodoxy = honest Jesus scholarship

II orthopraxy = peace & social justice

III orthopathy = contemplative tradition, nonduality

IV orthocommunio = noninstitutional vehicles (complementary & happily on the side)

There are rather clear archetypal themes playing out in our cosmologies and axiologies, likely related to brain development and individuation processes.

A cosmology engages mostly our left-brain (thinking function of the left frontal cortex & sensing function of the left posterior convexity) as the normative and descriptive aspects of value-realization alternately establish and defend boundaries; we encounter the King-Queen and Warrior-Maiden with their light and dark (shadow) attributes as expressed in the journeys of the spirit and the body, primarily through a language of ascent.

An axiology engages mostly our right-brain (intuiting function of the right frontal cortex & feeling function of the right posterior convexity) as the interpretive and evaluative aspects of value-realization alternately negotiate (e.g. reconciliation of opposites, harnessing the power of paradox) and transcend boundaries; we encounter the Crone-Magician and Mother-Lover with their light and dark attributes as expressed in the journeys of the soul and the other (Thou), primarily through a language of descent.

Our propositional cosmologies and participatory axiologies seem to best foster transformation when, beyond our passive reception of them as stories about others, we actively engage the archetypal energies of their mythic dimensions with a contemplation ordered toward action, and also, when in addition to our rather natural expectations, they include 1) a priestly voice that sings of the intrinsic beauty to be celebrated  in seemingly repugnant realities 2) a prophetic voice that is robustly self-critical when speaking the truth 3) a kingly voice that articulates a bias for the bottom, expressing both a privileging of the marginalized and a principle of subsidiarity when preserving goodness 4) a motherly voice that, seeing and calling all as her children, draws every person into her circle of compassion and mercy with no trace of exclusion, only a vision of unity.

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Humans do not need a god-concept to establish a cosmic origin, free will, human intelligence, reality’s intelligibility, morality or spirituality. And while it is quite natural for us to aspire to interpret reality through religious questioning, we don’t need definitive answers to such questions in order to consider life good, for the most part, notwithstanding that reality remains very much ambiguous for us and undeniably ambivalent toward us. A theodicy, as a cognitive proposition, results from category errors. As an evaluative posit, a theodicy strikes me as cruel. +++ No apocalypse. No hell either. At the most, it might be a necessary theological construct to convey the reality that God would not coerce a relationship on anyone. For all practical purposes, for various reasons, in my book, it’ll be empty. I’m open-minded re: immortal soul, but, push come to shove, what serves us as a soul, in my view, ain’t likely immortal. Good conversation. +++

Ursula Goodenough (Chlamy) wrote:

@ John Sylvest How cool to have you with us! John and I have never met but we are long-time episodic e-correspondents on the topics at hand. And I love the choice that he so wonderfully lifts up. One can immerse oneself in Everybody’s Story as the narrative from which to construct one’s religious orientations, or one can so immerse oneself, and then do religion. It’s a more challenging move — I trust John will agree — than for those of us who only work with one story, but I find descriptions of these moves to be most intriguing (if not yet dispositive!).

John Sylvest (John_Sobert_Sylvest) wrote:

@Robin wrote:”It feels like religion and ideas shouldn’t be bounded by nature, somehow. Like by relying only on what we see and hear and know, and holding only that sacred, we are losing something essential, fantasy and imagination and possibility maybe? It just feels sad to me somehow and I am not sure why.”

Robin, what if we say that Everybody’s Story, which is what we all know (from descriptive science), is both necessary and sufficient to provide humankind with morality, ethics, logic, aesthetics and such (our normative understandings) and with what we value, like truth, beauty, goodness & unity (our evaluative posits), which are intrinsically rewarding (iow, the pursuit of same is its own reward)? These descriptive, normative & evaluative stances would form one’s core cosmology. It’s a cosmology that really works for me & speaks of abundance, even given life’s tragic aspects. I’m relying only on what we see and hear and know to discern a cosmology, something I feel like we all share as spiritual quest. My interpretive axis of interpretation, or axiology, while not essential for morality & value-realization, is theistic, something I pursue as a religious quest, hoping & believing (not w/o warrant) there might be MORE!

John Sylvest (John_Sobert_Sylvest) wrote:

@Ursula Goodenough (Chlamy) – I am very pleased to see your thoughts made available in this NPR forum, which I hope expands your audience. I still struggle for ways to articulate my own outlook in a manner that is accessible to more people, shorn of philosophy-speak & techno-jargon. No one worked with me more patiently and longsufferingly to help me better tell my story than you, Ursula, which is a testimony to a great heart in addition to that incredible head of yours! From my response to Robin and other category parsing exercises, one might see that I am in agreement with Wim Drees that axiology may be a more apt focus for theology than cosmology.

John Sylvest (John_Sobert_Sylvest) wrote:

Let me more directly address one thing @Ursula addressed: “It’s a more challenging move — I trust John will agree — than for those of us who only work with one story …”

Yes, Ursula. The Everybody’s Story narrative and the RN response that you describe both well articulate what I call my cosmology, which is something I feel like I KNOW (without getting rigorously philosophic about what “know” might mean). What I call my axiology, my axis of interpretion, is oriented to a putative reality for which I feel like I can HOPE and in which I feel like I can TRUST, and not without a great deal of difficulty at times, faith & doubt being a single polar reality.

For those of a more philosophic bent, I feel like my cosmology enjoys an epistemic justification, which means that I look at competing cosmologies and feel like they are not equally probable, and I feel morally compelled to go with the most probable account, even if it is a provisional closure. Now, when it comes to my axiology, or my interpretive stance toward reality’s putative initial, boundary & limit conditions, competing stances do seem rather equiprobable, more so equiplausible. A normative justification, pragmatic criteria, then govern this wager (cf. Wm. James).

John Sylvest (John_Sobert_Sylvest) wrote:

@All – I echo all of these sentiments. Whether one employs good old common sense or a rigorous philosophy, we can reasonably say that questions beg. And it seems that – not only do we not have all the answers – we don’t even have all the questions. And of all the possible questions, it is highly problematic knowing which questions successfully refer to reality.

Emergence, itself, is a powerful heuristic device that provides us some conceptual placeholders. It does not aspire to explanatory adequacy. Along with novel structures and properties, new laws emerge. In some attempts to probe the depths of nature, folks will often extrapolate these emergent laws into putative descriptions of a primal reality. But some of these laws, for all practical purposes, may be as local as the by-laws of our neighborhood bridge club.

We often see such terms juxtaposed as chance or necessity? pattern or paradox? order or chaos? random or systematic? But nowhere in reality have we seen a physical instantiation of a so-called necessity. And reality is clearly not wholly described by chance or randomness. We do see nature presenting us with probability. But probability is premised on a temporal reality, which also emerged. Metaphysics? Caveat emptor.

John Sylvest (John_Sobert_Sylvest) wrote:

This speaks to our wonder regarding reality’s intelligibility. Haldane said reality was not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we CAN imagine. Chesterton, otoh, cautions that we do not know enough about reality to say that it is unknowable. Clearly, we cannot say, a priori, when it is that our knowledge advance is being thwarted due to methodological constraints, epistemologically, or due, instead, to some type of in-principle ontological occulting. As far as final TOE’s, Gödel instructs us that we cannot prove a formal symbol system’s axioms within that system, itself. But human knowledge does not advance solely thru formal argument. Few need to proceed halfway thru the Principia w/Whitehead and Russell where the axioms for 2+2=4 are proved, but can taste and see the truth of those axioms. Perhaps someday a TOE will be put forth, the axioms of which we’ll find variously non/trivial, or un/interesting, or whatever? Pragmatically, when thwarted, we assume temporary methodological constraints & not ontological occulting, which would be an epistemic cul-de-sac. This is to say that a formal TOE will always be coupled w/an informal narrative. An utterly incomprehensible reality just might be infinitely intelligible?

John Sobert Sylvest February 2, 2010 at 5:12 pm

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I like to be clear regarding this project or the other regarding whether or not one is doing science, philosophy or theology. And we mustn’t forget, oh my gosh, religion! And if one is talking about ALL of these spheres of human concern, in which sphere do they begin their conversation? and, in which do they end up?

Except for the classical “proofs” by Aquinas and Anselm, and CS Peirce’s “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” and the Modal Ontological Arguments as crafted by Godel and Hartshorne only to be, in my view, lately and greatly improved by Christopher McHugh, I don’t consider much of what is going on, nowadays, to be natural theology or a natural philosophy of God. There is just not THAT much that one can say, in my view, about God, using philosophy as a starting point, at least not when methodologically restricting one’s musings to the rubrics of formal argumentation. The same is true for any other notions regarding “ultimate” or “primal” reality, using either philosophy or science as a starting point. All anyone thus establishes is a modicum of epistemological parity with alternate worldviews, i.e. elaborate tautologies.

Don’t get me wrong. I an not at all dismissive of these enterprises, which demonstrate the reasonableness of faith (or, for those of you who consider this too strong, that it is not unreasonable or is, for what it’s worth, as reasonable as other interpretive stances vis a vis their Scottish verdicts). For some, like me, they have been indispensable parts of our journeys. For most, though, I’ve been told they don’t matter very much. And I trust what they report and am better and better coming to grasp why. Even then, I’ve enjoyed many, many fruitful dialogues with many nonbelievers who do seek such apologetics and we’ve grown in mutual respect and understanding and self-understanding.

Worldviews, thankfully, are not mere formal arguments. They represent deeply and profoundly experienced existential orientations and ultimate concerns. And, if they are authentically re-ligious, they “tie life’s experiences back together” and heal us that we may survive and grow us that we may thrive. If we are not experiencing both healing and growth, both broadly conceived, well, that’s what the Prophets are for! They remind us that we are to be about the actualization of value.

The interface between science and theology is not terribly interesting, philosophically, unless our project is to disambiguate their definitions. If it remains interesting, even early in the 21st century, it is only because so many scientistic and fideistic apologists are arguing past each other, precisely because they’ve neglected the work of philosophical disambiguation, which understandably can be difficult subject matter (see my discussion of The Great Tradition, properly conceived).

Unlike philosophy (natural theology) and science, wherein we bracket, best we can, our theology, in a theology of nature we start with God and see His presence in all things and hear Her siren song from all places! From a different explanatory stance, we break out in analogy and metaphor, poetry and song, allegory and parable, joke and koan, story and dance, ritual and sacrament! And we speak of trail dust and stardust, quarks and supernovae, maidens and sailors, the Cosmic Adventure (John Haught) and the Divine Matrix (Joseph Bracken), leaping whitetails and creeping lizards, bright indwelling presence and luminous dark nights, hope and love and faith …

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