Looking back over my posts here the past few years, I see I’ve devoted what some people might view as an inordinate amount of verbiage to what is popularly (and inaccurately) referred to as the “conflict between science and religion” (or vice versa).
One reason I’ve focused (or maybe obsessed) on this “debate” is because, as a student of Philosophy, I’m looking at the discussion from somewhere in the middle, seeing merits and demerits on both sides. Another is that from my perspective, the debate appears to be defined – in the popular media at least – by the extremists on both sides: Christian fundamentalists on the one hand and hard-core atheist-materialists on the other.
As is the case any time extremists get involved in a discussion, sober and rational examination of the issues gets shouted down by sophistry and propaganda and the basest kind of appeals to emotion. We are all invited to choose sides, but then we’re presented with loads of overheated rhetoric and logical fallacies as a basis for making that choice.
Much of the problem, as I’m sure I’ve said before, is that the current debate or conflict is not between Science as such and Religion as such but between certain narrow, and to some degree disingenuous, constructions of the two. The atheist-materialists represent that their worldview is synonymous with science, though it is not, and attack Fundamentalism as a straw-man proxy for all religion. And the fundamentalists are all too happy to concur that their own idiosyncratic approach to religion is, indeed, the only valid one.
It’s important to keep in mind when evaluating the claims of the self-styled advocates of Science that what they’re advocating is never science alone. Science is not, in itself, a comprehensive understanding of reality; it is simply a tool, a way of investigating reality, and nowadays of investigating only one aspect of reality, the physical/material. The claim that physical/material reality is the only reality is, of course, not a scientific statement, but a philosophical assumption. In other words, the promoters of Science over Religion are in fact promoting Science plus an unacknowledged and largely unargued philosophical stance.
Recognizing this, we ought really to regard the debate as not between science and religion but between naturalism and supernaturalism or between physicalism and metaphysicalism (if there is such a word). But of course that would put the debate into the realm of philosophy, and it’s blindingly obvious that the people who are participating the most energetically in the science-vs.-religion debate are woefully unequipped for a real philosophical discussion.
It’s all very unfortunate indeed, I think, because I’m convinced that a wholesale rejection of either science or religion is a serious mistake, with serious consequences not only for each individual but for society and the world at large.
In my day job as a journalist, I regularly see what I firmly believe are the destructive consequences in individual lives and in society of the absence of a middle ground on these issues. On the one hand, we have an ethical vacuum in which materialism encourages us to believe that physical security, well-being and especially pleasure are the only goods toward which we can realistically aspire. On the other hand, we have a chorus of doubtfully trustworthy men and women (but mostly men) hectoring us to believe that if we don’t adhere to an archaic and fossilized set of externally imposed laws, of which they are the sole reliable interpreters, we will be consigned to eternal torture.
As a result, I see people almost daily who have made astonishingly bad choices because on the one hand they are driven to satisfy their physical desires – whether for money, pleasure, command of other people, social success, adulation, etc. etc. etc. – and on the other, they affiliate with a form of religion that encourages them to make a verbal profession of faith without supplying them any means of making that faith a real part of their lives, or, indeed, of suggesting that they really need to.
To put it bluntly, every day of the week, “good Christians” are being put on trial for crimes of all sorts, not to exclude rape and murder. I’m not suggesting that they commit these crimes because they are Christians (even fundamentalist Christians) but rather that the readily available forms of Christianity in many communities don’t give them sufficient reason not to commit them.
And nor does the prevailing “intellectual” paradigm, as is evident from the ease with which, for example, the titans of Wall Street justify to themselves, and to our lawmakers, the plunder of their clients and the pillage of the national treasury. In fact, prevailing economic theories based on “rational agents seeking to maximize their personal good” are nothing more than a pretext for financial predators to excuse their predations.
It may be arguable whether the polarized and largely fraudulent debate over “science vs. religion” is a cause or an effect relative to our increasingly fragmented and angry society. But it certainly isn’t helping. A reframed, more realistic, more sincere discussion of these issues might draw us together as humans instead of dividing us, and help heal some of our social and personal ills. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen.
Showing posts with label materialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label materialism. Show all posts
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
A Dog's Life
One summer evening a few years ago, I was sitting in my backyard unwinding with a bottle of Warsteiner after a day’s work when something struck me that has stuck with me ever since. Our backyard at the time was a rectangle surrounded by a chain-link fence, and as I sat there I could see through to the other backyards, which were also rectangles surrounded by chain-link fences.
What struck me was how much the houses and yards along our block resembled the kennel where my wife and I had boarded our two dogs not long before. It was one of those nice kennels, where each dog had a nice big cage inside and an opening to a nice individual fenced-in “run” outside. We felt good about leaving our dogs there for a week because they were free to go in and out, they weren’t as confined as they would have been in one of those old nasty kennels where they had to sit in a cage all day waiting to be walked.
What we had done, of course, was judge the kennel according to our human standards. Without realizing it, we had boarded the dogs at a kennel that essentially was modeled on our own living space: a box in which we felt safe and sequestered when that was what we wanted, and an attached open area where we could go out and be “in” nature when that was what we wanted, but safely marked off from our neighbors’ parcels of ground. We were imputing to our dogs the same kind of need for a well-defined freedom that we felt for ourselves.
Now, it may seem invidious that I’m comparing an average American suburban home to a dog kennel, but I don’t mean it that way. On the contrary, the comparison really depends on the fact that we love our “companion animals” and want only the best for them. The point is simply that we conceive the “best” for them in the same terms we conceive it for ourselves: as having a certain kind of private, personal space in which we are free to do what we want, when we want.
If there is anything invidious in this, it’s the contrast between this rather limited – one might almost say compromised – version of freedom and the “Freedom” with a capital F that people make such a fuss over in the sphere of public discussion and action. It’s perhaps a little hard to reconcile the Freedom that people have fought and died for with the freedom to have a barbecue and burn tiki torches.
Still, the two kinds really aren’t totally unrelated. Where they are related is in the understanding that you and I have a right to do whatever we want to do in our personal spaces. (Within reason, of course: If my neighbor is committing sex crimes or torturing puppies in the house next door, I need to interfere with him doing that.) This is precisely why the ownership of a home is the core of the American Dream: because my home is a space where I can exercise my sovereignty as an individual, and of course individual sovereignty is what America is all about.
Freedom also involves, of course, the freedom to work at the job one chooses so as to be able to afford a home. And for some fortunate few, their work itself provides the kind of fulfillment we all seek, while for others work is just a means to obtain the kind of personal space we need to practice whatever else gives us that fulfillment (“I work to live, I don’t live to work”).
I happen to live in a kind of middle space in this regard: As a journalist, I sometimes am lucky enough to wander into a story that actually does some kind of good for others, and that’s about as rewarding as it gets. But I also have an inner life that I pursue in the privacy of my home that gives me some satisfaction even on those days when my job totally sucks.
I imagine a lot of us are in somewhat the same situation, doing what we can in our careers to give something to the world, and/or seeking in our “leisure” hours to cover whatever we feel as a lack in our spiritual or psychological lives. This sort of thing is, I believe, exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote that we have an “unalienable right” to “the pursuit of happiness.”
What I find regrettable in our society in regard to these things is the widespread tendency to confuse means with ends. It appears that many of us expect to find fulfillment in the acquisition of the personal space and its accoutrements, rather than the use. There’s a bumper sticker that sums up the attitude: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Many of us seem to believe that it’s the mere having of a home, or the size of the home, not the life lived inside it, that matters most. Once they have it, what are they supposed to do with it?
It appears that for many, the “pursuit of happiness” within one’s private space or in public means eating as much, drinking as much, owning as much, playing as much as one can, with no thought for the consequences to oneself or the world at large. Such an attitude is truly tragic, because it focuses on the most ephemeral things the world has to offer and leads people away from the sources of real, lasting happiness.
Our consumerist economic structure of course encourages this sort of belief and behavior, and the recent shakiness of that structure is a warning about its unsustainability – as if further warning were needed on top of our repeated energy crises, our “obesity epidemic,” our high crime rates and all the other social ills that are so obviously traceable to our society’s tendency to want more, more, more.
As much as I would like to see increased regulation of businesses, I would be the last person to suggest that we impose further restrictions on people’s private behavior. “An ye harm none, do what thou wilt” strikes me as a pretty good ethical principle. The challenge is getting people to understand the “harm none” part, especially in a world in which we seem to have moved from the idea that “all men are created equal” to a belief that “individual sovereignty” means every man is entitled to be a king. Regrettably, it appears that the king everyone wants to be is this one:
What struck me was how much the houses and yards along our block resembled the kennel where my wife and I had boarded our two dogs not long before. It was one of those nice kennels, where each dog had a nice big cage inside and an opening to a nice individual fenced-in “run” outside. We felt good about leaving our dogs there for a week because they were free to go in and out, they weren’t as confined as they would have been in one of those old nasty kennels where they had to sit in a cage all day waiting to be walked.
What we had done, of course, was judge the kennel according to our human standards. Without realizing it, we had boarded the dogs at a kennel that essentially was modeled on our own living space: a box in which we felt safe and sequestered when that was what we wanted, and an attached open area where we could go out and be “in” nature when that was what we wanted, but safely marked off from our neighbors’ parcels of ground. We were imputing to our dogs the same kind of need for a well-defined freedom that we felt for ourselves.
Now, it may seem invidious that I’m comparing an average American suburban home to a dog kennel, but I don’t mean it that way. On the contrary, the comparison really depends on the fact that we love our “companion animals” and want only the best for them. The point is simply that we conceive the “best” for them in the same terms we conceive it for ourselves: as having a certain kind of private, personal space in which we are free to do what we want, when we want.
If there is anything invidious in this, it’s the contrast between this rather limited – one might almost say compromised – version of freedom and the “Freedom” with a capital F that people make such a fuss over in the sphere of public discussion and action. It’s perhaps a little hard to reconcile the Freedom that people have fought and died for with the freedom to have a barbecue and burn tiki torches.
Still, the two kinds really aren’t totally unrelated. Where they are related is in the understanding that you and I have a right to do whatever we want to do in our personal spaces. (Within reason, of course: If my neighbor is committing sex crimes or torturing puppies in the house next door, I need to interfere with him doing that.) This is precisely why the ownership of a home is the core of the American Dream: because my home is a space where I can exercise my sovereignty as an individual, and of course individual sovereignty is what America is all about.
Freedom also involves, of course, the freedom to work at the job one chooses so as to be able to afford a home. And for some fortunate few, their work itself provides the kind of fulfillment we all seek, while for others work is just a means to obtain the kind of personal space we need to practice whatever else gives us that fulfillment (“I work to live, I don’t live to work”).
I happen to live in a kind of middle space in this regard: As a journalist, I sometimes am lucky enough to wander into a story that actually does some kind of good for others, and that’s about as rewarding as it gets. But I also have an inner life that I pursue in the privacy of my home that gives me some satisfaction even on those days when my job totally sucks.
I imagine a lot of us are in somewhat the same situation, doing what we can in our careers to give something to the world, and/or seeking in our “leisure” hours to cover whatever we feel as a lack in our spiritual or psychological lives. This sort of thing is, I believe, exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he wrote that we have an “unalienable right” to “the pursuit of happiness.”
What I find regrettable in our society in regard to these things is the widespread tendency to confuse means with ends. It appears that many of us expect to find fulfillment in the acquisition of the personal space and its accoutrements, rather than the use. There’s a bumper sticker that sums up the attitude: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Many of us seem to believe that it’s the mere having of a home, or the size of the home, not the life lived inside it, that matters most. Once they have it, what are they supposed to do with it?
It appears that for many, the “pursuit of happiness” within one’s private space or in public means eating as much, drinking as much, owning as much, playing as much as one can, with no thought for the consequences to oneself or the world at large. Such an attitude is truly tragic, because it focuses on the most ephemeral things the world has to offer and leads people away from the sources of real, lasting happiness.
Our consumerist economic structure of course encourages this sort of belief and behavior, and the recent shakiness of that structure is a warning about its unsustainability – as if further warning were needed on top of our repeated energy crises, our “obesity epidemic,” our high crime rates and all the other social ills that are so obviously traceable to our society’s tendency to want more, more, more.
As much as I would like to see increased regulation of businesses, I would be the last person to suggest that we impose further restrictions on people’s private behavior. “An ye harm none, do what thou wilt” strikes me as a pretty good ethical principle. The challenge is getting people to understand the “harm none” part, especially in a world in which we seem to have moved from the idea that “all men are created equal” to a belief that “individual sovereignty” means every man is entitled to be a king. Regrettably, it appears that the king everyone wants to be is this one:
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Imagine This
Imagine a world where no one ever dies, no one ever suffers any pain, no one ever loses anything they have, no one ever has to say goodbye to someone they love. Imagine a world where everything is always in flower, radiant with sunshine, suffused with warmth and pleasure, echoing with happiness. Imagine a world where every taste of life is delicious, every stroke of fortune is warm and fuzzy, every word is encouraging, every sight is a delight to the eyes.
Imagine such a world if you can, if you wish – and then forget it.
The world in which we actually live is very different from Paradise. People die daily, many for the wrong reasons. We all suffer pain. Everything physical passes into nonbeing, so we inevitably lose whatever we have, and anyone or anything we love will be ripped away from us sooner or later. The seasons change, the world rolls along its complicated path, and we take from it what we must have, if we can.
Accepting that we live in such a world is wisdom. Believing that we can live in the imaginary world of endless, perfect self-gratification is foolishness.
The Founding Fathers of the United States were philosophers. There’s an important distinction to be found in the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The distinction is this: We have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right to be happy.
Further, each of us has a right to define happiness.
But if we decide to define happiness as Paradisal existence, free of any of the consequences that common sense would admit are integral to human existence, then we are asking too much. What we must acquire and spend to obtain such a life is too costly for ourselves and everyone around us. My Paradise creates your Hell.
Imagine such a world if you can, if you wish – and then forget it.
The world in which we actually live is very different from Paradise. People die daily, many for the wrong reasons. We all suffer pain. Everything physical passes into nonbeing, so we inevitably lose whatever we have, and anyone or anything we love will be ripped away from us sooner or later. The seasons change, the world rolls along its complicated path, and we take from it what we must have, if we can.
Accepting that we live in such a world is wisdom. Believing that we can live in the imaginary world of endless, perfect self-gratification is foolishness.
The Founding Fathers of the United States were philosophers. There’s an important distinction to be found in the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The distinction is this: We have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right to be happy.
Further, each of us has a right to define happiness.
But if we decide to define happiness as Paradisal existence, free of any of the consequences that common sense would admit are integral to human existence, then we are asking too much. What we must acquire and spend to obtain such a life is too costly for ourselves and everyone around us. My Paradise creates your Hell.
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