Dostoevsky’s Quote on the moment of eternal harmony

Posted on February 6, 2012 by PaulVK

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”   Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

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Conversation with an Atheist Facebook Friend

Posted on February 6, 2012 by PaulVK

Good points.

1. I’d segregate the points I make in a philisophical discussion from how I treat people in real life. You and I only know each other via FB and mostly via these conversations so point taken. Most of my friends and acquaintences who are atheists, agnostics and doubters in “the sky daddy” aren’t nihilistic at all. What perhaps has convinced me is Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and their observations on human behavior based on rather unexamined foundations.

2. If I think about existence and limit my allowed universe to that which physics and science can penetrate there seems to have hope for no meaning beyond the meaning I experience in the now as an individual.

I’d encourage you to read (if you haven’t already) Bertrand Russell’s A Free Man’s Worship. http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/A%20Free%20Man’s%20Worship.htm . Russell IMHO makes the contemporary crew of atheists seem clumsy and inelegant. Russell knew his Bible far better than most contemporary atheists I think partly because he grew up during Christendom. The challenge of worldview propagation isn’t really rational argument, but whether it warms the heart and attracts the imagination. Russell had far more power with words than the contemporary sort. Alvin Plantinga wipes the floor with Dennett not just because he’s a better logician, but because he’s got wit and a sort of folksy humor that really works in the academy.

Anyway, I digress. I am in my core a very self-interested creature who isn’t satisfied doing my duty to better the race. I’ve produced 5 wonderful children, but that isn’t enough. I suspect I am not alone in this regard.

I can reasonable posit no meaning for this life if all I currently love and care for will either be obliterated by the inevitable cooling of the sun, or more personally by the cessation of my biological function. This problem does not belong to me alone, but to all of my race. I’m not satisfied with imagining a world of beauty, love and meaning that has been obliterated for the billions that have passed before us. For what have they labored? (Read Ecclesiastes up until 12:8, no further).

Some may say it is enough to enjoy family and friends, to see the sunset, to walk the beach. Our imperial victories have afforded many of us in North America the kind of indulgences few of our race have ever enjoyed, but that is still not enough. We play on the beaches where our ancestors slaughtered the whales and each other, and we will do it again. To make matters worse, I find in my self not only the capacity for such evil but a complicity to enjoy its fruits.

I’m not accusing atheists of being nihilistic, I am nihilistic. I as a rational being don’t find that science affords me anything but. Some will say “eat drink and enjoy” but I like Qohelet have seen much and fund much vanity in human pursuits.

What grips me rather is a vision of a love that is stronger than death, and stronger than my capacity to maintain it. I believe that the value of thousands of civilizations and billions of lives has been loved and not lost by one with the capacity to keep them. I believe that there is one who is capable of winnowing history in such a way that the chaff is consumed and the wheat preserved.

Science affords me no such belief. Neither do I find science prevents me from holding it.

As to not taking religion literally? I find that word too distorted in our present context. Christians have played stupid games with that word and have spoiled it. It’s better to ask what we believe in.

I can watch movies that give me a vision and make me feel a certain way. They can give me a feeling of meaning and that’s fun. I’m not satisfied with that. I know enough to know a movie is a masterful presentation of a story. I want the real thing, nothing less.

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Giving our communal ancestors seats at the table

Posted on January 27, 2012 by PaulVK

Wrote this for CalvininCommon.org in a discussion about Bishop Spong’s complaint about the church looking back to the 1st century all the time.

I’m working on my Acts 11 sermon while Bont’s Spong comments rumble around in the background of my imagination as I read Willimon’s comments on the text. According to Luke (even many critical scholars regard 11:19-26 as having some historical solidity about it) this new Jesus thing had gotten way out in front of what the apostles in Jerusalem imagined it should be. You’ve got unwashed Gentiles in important cities like Caesarea and Antioch experiencing spirit manifestations and calling Jesus Lord. Some undoubtedly were uncircumcised regular attenders in synagogues while others were fresh in from who knows what temple or community from the “civilized” world. These could have been slave, or slave owning, polygamist or poly-amorous, rich or poor, with or without political connections, and they’re trying to get their imaginations around this resurrection that the group was asserting. Jews I imagine struggled with the notion that these folks were re-defining Yhwh. I can’t imagine what was bending the minds of Stoics, Epicureans, and who knows what else.

Jerusalem then sends Barnabas, someone not unfamiliar with life in the broader empire being a Levite from Cyprus who apparently had some personal wealth, at least enough to make a remembered donation.

Anyone with sufficient gray matter between the ears can of course redefine Christianity (or anything else) in any way they so chose. I might enjoy imagining Paul Spyksma sneaking off to exotic locations to participate in the ESPN World’s Strongest Man competition, but that’s just me. It seems, however, that very early on in this religion the community maintained a value of trying to connect their contemporary manifestations and struggles with what remains of the witness of their communal ancestors. Jesus, and the apostles reach back to the Hebrew Scriptures. Their pattern of submission as found in the New Testament is of course a bit curious to us, both in its reverence and its liberty of interpretation but judgments always belongs to the judgers. The book of Acts itself bears witness to some remarkable revisionism, but always with a certain degree of respect and responsibility to dead authors. It’s not a simple thing but it’s also not bad thing I think. pvk

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Bertrand Russell’s Free Man’s Religion Quotations

Posted on January 6, 2012 by PaulVK

Tim Keller used this in his sermon “Save in the Plan”. I found it to be a quote used by others. I’ll include the full paragraph.

Such, in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere, our ideals henceforward must find a home. That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.

It’s found in Russell’s brief piece “A Free Man’s Worship” and the entire piece is worth reading.

Given this world known to us through science, beneath some unjustified “ought” to limit us to this world, Russell outlines his religion. Towards the end there is also this paragraph that nicely relates it. The man was a good writer.

The life of Man, viewed outwardly, is but a small thing in comparison with the forces of Nature. The slave is doomed to worship Time and Fate and Death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour. But, great as they are, to think of them greatly, to feel their passionless splendour, is greater still. And such thought makes us free men; we no longer bow before the inevitable in Oriental subjection, but we absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves. To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things — this is emancipation, and this is the free man’s worship. And this liberation is effected by a contemplation of Fate; for Fate itself is subdued by the mind which leaves nothing to be purged by the purifying fire of Time.

United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible forces, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need — of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed.

Brief and powerless is Man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for Man, condemned to-day [sic] to lose his dearest, to-morrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; disdaining the coward terrors of the slave of Fate, to worship at the shrine that his own hands have built; undismayed by the empire of chance, to preserve a mind free from the wanton tyranny that rules his outward life; proudly defiant of the irresistible forces that tolerate, for a moment, his knowledge and his condemnation, to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.

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Thoughts for a New Year

Posted on January 2, 2012 by PaulVK

I’ve long quietly grumbled about the new year marker, vestigial paganism. 🙂 It is good, however, to stop to ponder this journey that I walk often too mindlessly.

I’ve been around the sun 48 times now, seems like not many, but it also reminds me that we don’t do that many laps.

Many of my memories I can’t write, because they don’t just belong to me. Someday I might write more. That seems to be a gift given to those with more laps.

I think I have a better sense of the world than I did last year, both its joys and its griefs. I suspect I could have said that last year, and I’ll be able to say it again next year.

I like Rodney’s longings. I share a number of them both for him and from my own place and for my own place. I’m sure there are way more longings he has that aren’t appropriate to write about here.

I often realize I’m a poor steward of the economy of time that I’ve been given. I seldom find, however, that the suggestions of others are always that helpful. Seeing clearly involves dealing with both distortion and perspective.

Living longer makes me hope more firmly in the resurrection because if it is not true then the losses by the age of decay are simply too grim to tolerate.

I’m cheered by existence itself in this because why should things exist at all if there be no meaning to it and no memory to preserve its enjoyment?

I don’t know how the resurrection will be managed, but I do long for the losses of this world to be undone. pvk

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Chesterton Quote on Happiness

Posted on December 31, 2011 by PaulVK

If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if he is not astonished at the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. The whole point depends upon his being at once humble enough to wonder, and haughty enough to defy. So our attitude to the giant of the world must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt: it must be one particular proportion of the two–which is exactly right.

We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us to make us tread fearfully on the grass. We must also have enough disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars. Yet these two things (if we are to be good or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one particular combination. The perfect happiness of men on the earth (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the satisfaction of animals. It will be an exact and perilous balance; like that of a desperate romance. Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2009-10-04). Orthodoxy (p. 75). Public Domain Books. Kindle Edition.

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Plantinga Dennett Debate

Posted on December 14, 2011 by PaulVK

A few links on Alvin Plantinga:

NY Times piece on Plantinga’s book.

Transcript of Plantinga’s paper and Dennett’s comments 

YouTube version of the same recording of Plantinga’s paper and Dennett’s comments. 

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Will New Brain Science Encourage Calvinists?

Posted on December 5, 2011 by PaulVK

Scot McKnight is doing some blogging on Calvinism. He kicks off the series with this piece on Roger Olson saying this: Roger Olson is right: at the heart of the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism (or non-Calvinism) is this question: Is grace resistible or irresistible?

As I’ve mentioned before I read the book “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain” and mull some of it over as I read different things. At the heart of the contention of the book is the our decision making process lies mostly beneath the level of our consciousness. McKnight himself alludes to something like this in his history of his relationship with Calvinism.  We choose things for reasons we seldom fully fathom or appreciate.

I remember pondering this thought years ago as I took a class on justified belief at Calvin College with Nicholas Woltersdorff. We believe what we believe because we believe it. “Incognito” has some fascinating passages about how the brain develops narratives to justify beliefs even if those justifying narratives are complete fabrications by the brain.

The implication of some of this brain science it seems to me casts doubt on some of our conventional wisdom as to what a mental decision really is.

Short of a fuller treatment of the book that I’d like to write, one of the best ways of assimilating some of what is being proposed in this book, and resisting the blunt assertion of the book that “blameworthiness” is a completely obsolete concept rests in understanding that a human being is distinct but not isolated from an entire system. Beliefs are not fully our slaves, but we are subject to them.

This seems not a radical idea, obviously. We value belief based on experience outside of ourselves but what the book highlights is that the relationship between experience and belief is hardly as straightforward as we like to imagine. Accounting for what we find ourselves believing seems like something we’ll have little certainty about.

To cut to the chase here, I imagine that brain science will on the whole likely bolster the Calvinist position over the Arminian one as the ontology of decision continues to come under assault. Our decisions are far less free, perhaps, than we imagine.

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Believing in Climate Change, Believing in Jesus

Posted on December 1, 2011 by PaulVK

I’ve been pondering the correlations between the climate change discussions and religious discussions.

1. Most people arrive at their position depending upon relationships with people they trust.

Climate change, as well as many religious issues, is so large and esoteric that the vast majority of people are not in a position to come to a conclusion based on empirical evidence. They can read the pro or con position into just about anything they see affirming whatever position they embrace. They simply operate out of an extended network of trust relationships. Because a group of people that they align with believes one way on the issue (along with complex web of other issues and positions on various fronts) they side with them or at least give them the benefit of the doubt.

2. Both discussions are considered by their adherents as being “ultimate”

Many consider ignoring climate change concern as “global suicide”. You won’t hear language dissimilar to that from many Christians regarding moral issues, adherence to Jesus as Lord, etc.

Is this a helpful observation? pvk

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Evolution and Intent

Posted on November 28, 2011 by PaulVK

I’m reading Alvin Plantinga’s latest book on the relationship between Christianity and evolution.

One of the thing that comes clear quickly is that much of the disagreement between believers in theistic evolution and those who assert that evolution not only entails atheism but demands it involves intent. The Christian claims that the process involved intent, the atheist claims it did not.

I have a couple of thoughts on that.

Intent itself is a very interesting thing both scientifically and pastorally. I just finished reading “Incognito” on the brain and part of what that book wishes to assert is that our conception of intent itself is rather illusory. We do things because the parts of our mind that are not accessible to conscious volition demand it and other parts of our mind create a narrative in which we imagine ourselves the free agents. What strikes me is an implicit suspicion on the part of materialism that intent by thinking creatures doesn’t exist at all. It would be interesting to explore the ramifications of such a position.

It is also interesting to me that a good deal of legal work, relational work, and pastoral work involves intent. If someone looses control of their car and careens into a crowd of people intent becomes a vital issue legally and pastorally.

If the 9/11 hijackers simply wished to hijack aircraft and hold them for ransom but were colossally bad pilots and by some incredible coincidence managed to plow their hijacked airliners into some of the most symbolic buildings in America we would remain upset but the incident would be viewed differently by many.

Intent is a crucial element of how we live our lives and how we view our world. A world without intent is somehow not interesting to us at all. It is enormously consequential for the relational level that we all value and find often of utmost importance to our identities.

Pastorally the question of God’s intent in many things comes quickly to the fore. Did the God intend that some evil which might devastate one’s family happen to us? People struggle to maintain their relationship with the God based on their perception of God’s intent. Every time there is a natural disaster with great loss of life the conversation surround God boils down to a question of intent. Did the God intend to kill that many people?

Lord’s Day 10 of the Heidelberg Catechism in fact is all about shaping expectations regarding intent. It is a naked assertion of the benevolent intentionality of the God. The assertion is that in fact this approach to our relationship with the God is more preferable than harboring suspicions regarding the God’s intent for our lives.

Many others, in fact walk away from belief in the God precisely over this matter.

An irony in all of this is the fact that even in our most mundane relationships intent is an enormously difficult thing for us to arrive at certainty within.

My sons play basketball, and they are fine players but they have spent their share of time on the bench. As a parent I have spent games speculating about the intent of the coach with respect to my son. I go around and around wondering about the coach’s intent.

Other significant relationships likewise live deeply within this economy. Was my spouse sending a message with some action? Was my parent or my child saying something with that look or refusing eye contact?

Presuming intent is a speculative business, one that we in fact are not very good at.

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