Tag Archives: Philosophy

Thoughts of a Solitary Walker V: The Logic of Extremism

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My mind ranges far and wide on my solitary walks. Today I want to bring you into a recent internal conversation that focused on clarifying the notion of extremism. One can become an extremist in any area of thought: theology, morality, metaphysics, politics, and many others. What is extremism? How do “extreme” positions become plausible to those who come to hold them? How do you know if you are an extremist? Is there any objective way to determine what positions are extreme? Or, are extremes “in the eye of the beholder”? Is the label “extremist” simply one more rhetorical weapon in a struggle for cultural control?

The Nature of Extremism

I have seen people move gradually from what seemed to me moderate theological, moral, theological, and political positions to extreme ones. During this process their entire system of beliefs and even their personalities change. How does this happen? Many factors come into play. Changes in psychological, physical, and political conditions can facilitate changes in beliefs. But I am not going to address these factors. I want to focus on logic.

I focus on logic because whatever other factors influence our beliefs, we always assert our beliefs as true. And once the mind latches on to a belief as true, two mental processes get triggered. First, the mind begins automatically to unfold the implications of that belief. This process is driven by the logical law that says that the valid implications of a true proposition are themselves true. Second, the mind becomes very sensitive to propositions that directly or by implication contradict that belief. We cannot believe that two contradictory assertions are both true at the same time.

The Path to Extremism

Once we embrace a belief as true for whatever reason, rational or irrational, our minds begin the process of extending its reach and defending it against rival beliefs in the neighborhood. If it weren’t for challenges from other people, our minds might be content to adjust a few of our other beliefs in the immediate vicinity. Clearing a little space around our beloved belief might reinforce it enough to put our minds at ease. But when we are confronted with competing beliefs, we must make a choice. We can modify our treasured belief to take into account the force of its competitors or we can double down and deny any truth to the alternatives. The second option is the path to extremism! Happily, most people don’t follow this path all the way to the extreme. I won’t say they are lazy. Perhaps they are simply pragmatic enough not to be bothered by their inconsistency and arbitrariness.

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

The first mistake extremists make is assuming that any belief/proposition can embody “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Extremists will not allow any other truth claim to modify their axiomatic belief because any change in that belief would imply that it was not originally “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” A dispiriting prospect of endless modification and compromise would loom before them. Extremists treat beliefs as if they are either wholly true or wholly false. And if it’s discovered to be partially false it must be in fact wholly false. The logical law of the excluded middle would seem to support them, that is, for any proposition P, P is either true or false. There is no middle ground between true and false. When dealing in abstract symbols such as P and Q, which are bereft of existential content, no one can doubt the law. But in ordinary human language it does not work. Concrete existence cannot be translated clearly and without loss into language. Words and sentences are always imprecise and incomplete.

Gravitational Logic

We noted above that the move to extremism can take the straight path of the logic of implication—sometimes called “the slippery slope”—or a zig zag path of reacting to contradictions, sometimes called “dialectical logic.” Both of these logics tend toward extremism. But I think there is also another form of logical adjustment by which one may minimize the temptation to extremism. For lack of a better term, I call it gravitational logic.

Consider the way the entire universe consists of one gravitational field in which every point and particle is in communication with every other. The closer objects are to one another the more powerful the attractive force and the further apart, the less. But no matter how far apart, the gravitational interaction between two physical objects never reduces to zero. Likewise, the more massive an object, the more gravitational force it exerts. Any change in one place affects the whole and every point within it to some degree.

Let’s apply the analogy of the universal gravitational force to logic, the science of relationships among propositions. Every assertion about any state of affairs within the universe simultaneously asserts something about the whole universe, even if it mentions only one thing explicitly. This must be true because every particular thing in the universe exists only in relation to every other thing and the whole. To change one’s belief about one state of affairs requires adjustment in every other belief. The closer (logically) one belief is to another or the larger (that is, more general its scope) the more adjustment will be required.

The moon’s gravity affects the ocean tides on earth twice as much as the Sun because, though much less massive, it is much closer to earth. And the harmony or tension between two moral beliefs will be much more apparent than harmony or tension between a moral belief and belief about the geology of Australia. Moral beliefs live in the same neighborhood and speak about things within the same space. And yet, beliefs about morality, history, cosmology, and geology speak about the same universe and condition each other however slightly.

Avoiding Extremism without Falling into Relativism

In my view, this analogy helps us avoid extremism without falling into a morass of relativism and never-ending compromise. First, because in our world everything is related to everything, there can be no statement in human words that embodies the ideal of “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” There is always more to learn and some adjustments to be made. Extremism is thus deprived of its basic premise. However, because beliefs live in regions, neighborhoods and even local streets—such as morality, natural science, metaphysics, history, etc.—we can assert with confidence the reliability of our beliefs as long as we take the lay of the adjacent land into account and stumble on no unanswerable objections. Though it is not impossible, we need not worry that a belief about a state of affairs in another galaxy will defeat or severely modify our beliefs about matters nearer to home.

Next Time: Shall we experiment with some beliefs to see how this works?

Thoughts of a Solitary Walker IV: Is the World a Machine?

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In the previous essay, I addressed the question “Do we live in a material world?” I argued that the existence of matter is a philosophical postulate rather than a scientific observation or theory. Moreover, I explained further that matter, understood as something completely impervious to mind, contradicts the Christian doctrine of creation. In that essay I warned that if we accept materialism, even in its pseudoscientific form…

Matter becomes the enduring substance of the world and effectively takes the place of the sustaining power of God. We can no longer see God doing anything or feel God’s presence. And the loss of a sense of divine presence and activity in the world lies at the origin and growth of modern agnosticism and atheism.

The Machine Metaphor

In this essay, we will explore the companion idea almost always associated with matter, that is, the machine. How shall we explain the movement, change and transformation that occurs within the physical world? For about 2,000 years before the modern scientific revolution Aristotle’s explanations of natural phenomena had been the norm. Aristotle understood all movement through the analogy of a living organism, which is moved by an internal principle, soul. Every living thing possesses a soul that moves it toward its natural end. The cosmos as a whole is moved by a world soul.

A defining mark of early modern science is rejection of Aristotle and the organic metaphor. But if the world does not move, change and transform in the way an organism moves, changes and transforms, how then does it move? The machine provides an alternative metaphor that seventeenth-century scientists appropriated to their ends. A machine possesses no soul or mind, no internal principle of unity; it does not strive toward an end. Its constituent parts relate to each other externally and transfer movement by physical contact. Having no internal consciousness or hidden purposes, machines are not mysterious and can readily be understood mathematically. And perhaps—I am speculating here—the desire for simplicity and clarity is the reason Galileo, Descartes, and Gassendi were attracted to the machine metaphor. As I argued in “Thoughts of a Solitary Walker II,” excluding from science everything that cannot be measured in mathematical terms—psychological, aesthetic, moral and causal qualities—makes it clear, simple, and comprehensible.

Machines All the Way Down?

A machine is made of components. Understanding a machine scientifically—a mechanical watch, for example—requires differentiating the components from each other and discovering how they relate to one another and in what order and measuring their movements in mathematical terms. But machines in the microworld are composed of components that are themselves composed of components. But how do we know that the mechanical/mathematical model of explanation explains the movement of all physical things? Perhaps in the hidden world, beyond the reach of empirical experience, there is a psychic/spiritual reality at work that manifests itself in our macro world as machine-like behavior? (Think of how our own minds manifest themselves in the movements of our bodies. Indeed, common sense finds it implausible to think of any animal as a machine.) If we cannot rule this out, we cannot know that our mathematical formulae impart real knowledge of nature.

The Buck Stops with Atoms and Corpuscles

Early modern scientists were aware that we cannot prove that the mechanical model applies to every dimension of the physical world. Hence along with the postulate of the existence of matter as the substance of the physical world, they postulated the existence of tiny parts they called atoms or corpuscles. The Greek word “atom” means uncuttable or indivisible. The existence of atoms was first postulated by presocratic philosophers in approximately 500 B.C. Pierre Gassendi and Robert Boyle used the word corpuscle, a word derived from Latin that means “little body.” Though functioning like atoms, they are not necessarily indivisible.*

The postulate of the existence of atoms or highly stable corpuscles allowed the new mechanical/mathematical science to assume as a working hypothesis that all movement and change of any kind in the physical world conforms to the model of mechanical interaction of material components.

To Summarize

The postulate of the existence of matter exorcised all inner psychic factors from the physical world, and the postulate of the existence of atoms or corpuscles justified applying the mechanical model to all movement in the physical world.*

A Working Hypothesis Becomes Metaphysical Truth

As I have emphasized throughout this essay and the previous one, these two postulates were unprovable working hypotheses made to guide research and scientific explanation. Even as working hypotheses I doubt that they are completely innocent of metaphysical hubris. However, it is very tempting to conclude that their success in giving satisfactory explanations of physical movement and change warrants treating them as true representations of metaphysical reality. Many people followed this path into practical or theoretical deism, agnosticism, or atheism, each of which is devoid of the sense of divine presence in the world.

Misplaced Realism Again

The methods used by empirical/mathematical science of the 17th or the 21st century cannot prove—or even provide evidence for—a metaphysical hypothesis, whether material/mechanical or psychic/organic. It cannot distinguish between appearances caused by material atoms interacting externally and mechanically or those caused by internal psychic powers striving to achieve ends. A decision between these two opposing views must be made on other bases. For my part, I believe modern culture has been unwarrantedly and thoughtlessly confident in the material/mechanical hypothesis. So many impressive phenomena of nature and human experience are discounted by this hypothesis. It’s time to rediscover and reconsider the undeniable mental and psychic dimensions of the world. And in doing so we may very well recover a sense of God’s presence and activity all around and within us.

*I have simplified a very complex topic conceptually and historically. Hopefully, I have not falsified it. See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for greater nuance. Search for “atomism” and other relevant terms.

Thoughts of a Solitary Walker III: Do We Live in a Material World?

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In this series, I am sharing with you some thoughts I had on my daily walks. And yes, I really do think about such things on my solitary walks. Walk with me as we explore connections among ideas that have stimulated the minds and stirred the hearts of people from ancient times to today. Thinking won’t solve every problem, but no problem will be solved without it.

Misplaced Realism

In my account of Solitary Walk II, I mentioned a thought I did not pursue. Early modern natural science rejected Aristotle’s hypotheses about why things behave the way they do, calling them “occult” (that is hidden or non-observable) only to replace them with their own occult entities. Instead of things being moved by inner strivings toward ends and given structure by intelligible forms, the new scientists postulated tiny material particles that relate to each other the way the parts of a machine relate in the macro world. And they treated this imaginary model as if it described what is truly real. I don’t know for sure whether Galileo, Gassendi, and Newton took these models realistically or merely as guides for further discovery. But many of their followers took them literally, and that is the way westerners have been taught physics and chemistry ever since.

This misplaced realism has had a profound cultural and religious impact on the modern world. Treating the material/mechanical model as truly describing the constitution and activity of the real world dramatically changes our relationship to the natural world. The external world gets evacuated of every spiritual, mental, psychological, and aesthetic quality. These qualities are transferred to a God outside and beyond nature or inside the human mind.  The world becomes a material machine that exists and runs on its own. Matter becomes the enduring substance of the world and effectively takes the place of the sustaining power of God. We can no longer see God doing anything or feel God’s presence. And the loss of a sense of divine presence and activity in the world lies at the origin and growth of modern agnosticism and atheism.

But the material/mechanical model should never have been taken realistically. The model has not and cannot be shown to be true by the mathematical methods of modern science. And there are good reasons to think it false.

Whence the Concept of Matter?

Consider the idea of matter, beginning with common experience. We encounter the world in two fundamental ways. On the one hand, we think the intelligible world of ideas, patterns, concepts, feelings, imaginings, and our own minds. These things exist inside our minds and do not conform to the physical laws that describe the external world. They do not occupy physical space. It takes no more space to imagine a galaxy than to imagine an electron. On the other hand, we experience the world as brute resistance, impenetrable by mind, unordered stuff out of which every physical thing is formed. We cannot think matter. We experience it as a dumb medium that impacts the five senses only to unload (or download!) the information encoded in it.

Let’s consolidate. The only world we can think, understand, or feel exists within our minds. Where else could we get in touch with it? And yet, there are two reasons we naturally believe that there exists an external world. First, we do not have a sense that we generate the countless ideas and endless variation of things that constitute the world we experience. Second, we experience the world as offering resistance to penetration by our minds. It confronts us with an apparently unthinking and unthinkable substance, a mere medium, which we call matter.

Let me make one more important distinction. We often confuse the concept of “the physical” with the concept of “the material.” We can experience and at least partially understand physical things. A physical thing, whether a rabbit or an atom, is a combination of a thinkable, intelligible order and what common sense calls matter. No physical thing is purely material. Matter is the physical stripped of all intelligible order. So, kicking a stone or pounding your hand on a table does not prove that there is a material world. At best, it points to the physical world.

Matter is Not a Scientific Idea but a Philosophical One

Ancient Philosophy

Plato reasoned to the necessity of matter by deducing the necessity of a place or space where the intelligible forms—the ideas of things—can exist as physical. What we would call “matter” is for Plato emptiness not substance. For Aristotle, the concept of matter is necessary to account for continuity of existence through the process of substantial change. For example, a burning log loses its substantial “log” existence and becomes smoke and ash. Matter is the unchanging stuff that accounts for the continuity within the change. Otherwise, substantial change would result in annihilation and re-creation from nothing. Matter never exists on its own. It exists only as a contributing cause to the existence of physical things.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas adopts Aristotle’s rather than Plato’s concept of matter. Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that matter is necessary to account for continuity through substantial change—log to smoke and ash. However, whereas for Aristotle both matter and form exist eternally, for Aquinas God created matter from nothing. God alone exists eternally and possesses the power of self-existence. Created matter functions within the created world much like eternal matter functioned in Aristotle’s eternal world. However, two great differences stand out. First, created matter, because it is not self-existent, cannot function as the ultimate ground of the persistence of the physical world through all changes. Second, matter cannot be purely opposed to mind, absolutely unintelligible. For whatever God creates, God thinks and understands. For us, matter may be an unintelligible medium for information or mere resistance, but God sees right through it. Everything that exists, exists within God’s mind. So, the distinction we make between form and matter is secondary, relative to our experience of the world and not absolute. For God—and therefore in truth—there is no non-mental world.

Escaping the Material/Mechanical Model

Once we understand that the material/mechanical model is a philosophical postulate—not an empirical observation or a scientific theory—and that taken realistically it contradicts the Christian doctrine of God and creation, we can get free from its mesmerizing power and begin to recover our sense of God’s presence and activity in the world. Realizing that the power that holds the world together is not matter but God’s continual command of “let it be” opens whole new vistas of perception. We now can perceive the presence and activity of God in the presence and activity of physical things. The beauty, rationality, purpose and goodness we see in the world can be received as the beauty, rationality, purpose and goodness of God. The durability of the world can be felt as the faithfulness of God.

Next Time: We will take another walk. Can the order and activity of the world best be explained as that of a big mindless machine or of a living organism. Do plants have souls or are they machines within machines?

Thoughts of a Solitary Walker II: Is Science Really Omnicompetent?

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In this second installment of this series, I will share some thoughts from my most recent walk.

As my frequent readers know, I have been thinking, writing and reading for many years in search of an answer to the question, “Why do modern people find it tempting to live as if God does not exist?” Another way to put it is: “Why does God seem absent from modern the world?” It wasn’t always true. Before 1500, God seemed very present and active in the world and in the human soul and mind. But something happened between 1600 and the present to change that. What was it? What was lost and what was gained by the changes? And can we recover that sense of “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)?

In other places, I have argued that the modern scientific revolution lies at the root of this change in perception. It was not the empirical, observational, and mathematical aspects of modern science that cause the problem; it was a mistaken realism that refused to recognize the limits of empirical science. That is to say, the models that guided the new natural science—the machine and the material particle—were treated as if they described what is truly real, the basic building blocks of the world.

Modern science developed in conscious opposition to Aristotle’s theories. Aristotle proposed organic, teleological, and metaphysical explanations for natural phenomena. Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, and other pioneers of modern science rejected Aristotle’s organic model and replaced it with a mechanical one in which material corpuscles (or atoms) interacted through contact in a way that could be described mathematically. Modern science has been spectacularly successful in disclosing and describing the empirical phenomena of nature in mathematical terms. And it has used these discoveries to create technologies that have revolutionized the way we live.

Modern natural science is so impressive that many people assume—or even proclaim—that it will eventually explain everything: If science can’t explain it, it doesn’t exist. Its methods can answer every legitimate question. Perhaps I will address at length these claims in a future post. Here I can make only a brief refutation of these extraordinary claims.

What does modern natural science do? Answer: it measures empirical phenomena—that is the appearances we receive through our five senses—using simple or sophisticated mathematics. It does not explain why things happen, that is, science cannot translate the concept of causality into mathematical terms. Causality is not a phenomenon that can be measured! Contrary to popular belief, natural science cannot rationalize causality; that is, it cannot explain why the transformations we find in nature are necessary. Consider for example Einstein’s famous formula:

E = MC2

It says in words: “the measure of Energy (in Joules) equals the measure of Mass (in kilograms) times the Velocity of Light (in meters per second) multiplied by itself.” Each of the letters in the formula stands for a number that measures a quantity of something we perceive through the senses, a phenomenon. The equal sign is also a mathematical symbol.

The same is also true of Newton’s second law, which says that force equals mass times acceleration:

F = Ma

One more. This time consider a chemical reaction between sulfuric acid and sodium hydroxide, which yields sodium sulfate and water:

H2SO4 + 2NaOH → 2Na2SO4 + 2H2O

Again, every mark in this chemical equation stands for a mathematical quantity or a mathematical operation. The arrow (→) stands for a mathematical equality and a transformation reaction. It is true that the quantities relate to substances (sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide and water) but those substances are themselves known scientifically only in mathematical terms: atomic weights, number of electrons and protons. Of course, these different substances affect the senses differently…but modern natural science does not consider sense perception of qualities—color, taste, odor, sound, and texture—to be scientific knowledge.

In none of these formulae is causality quantified, that is brought into the sphere of scientific (ie mathematical) knowledge. As David Hume pointed out in the 18th century, causality cannot be perceived empirically and therefore cannot be understood in terms of empirical, mathematical science.

Don’t miss this: modern natural science can say nothing about causality in scientific terms! It cannot get beyond the common sense of the non-scientist. People do not believe anything happens without a cause. Why does everyone believe this? Because nothing makes sense without it! And we know that we act causally in some of our actions. We want to raise our arms and we make it happen. We are the proof that some things act causally.

Here then is my refutation of the omnicompetence of modern, empirical, mathematical science: it can’t explain why anything happens…it can only measure it. But causality (the why) is the glue that holds the universe together and makes sense of it all.

Next Time: Another walk and another thought

Thoughts of a Solitary Walker

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I take a walk almost every day. Not only is walking healthy for the body, it is good for the soul. It also stimulates the mind. In this series, I want to share with you some thoughts–philosophical, theological, moral, and political–I’ve had while walking.

Let me tell you first about my title “Thoughts of a Solitary Walker.” Years ago, in preparing a lecture for one of my classes, I ran across a book of essays by J.J. Rousseau by the title The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Each chapter describes Rousseau’s experiences and feelings on a walk. Rousseau (1712-78) is known as the “father of the romantic movement.” I am amazed at his ability to describe his inner feelings and reactions to passing scenes. My admiration for him is limited to his gifts, however, not the use he made of them. Though brilliant and extraordinarily talented, Rousseau was a deeply flawed man. Like Karl Marx, Percy Shelly and other unemployed intellectuals that came after him, he was a narcissist, a moocher, and a grifter. He sponged off of his friends and abused them when they complained. He forced his mistress to surrender their five children to the local orphanage.

Nevertheless, to begin this series I want to give credit to Rousseau for my title and for the idea of the series. Below I quote Rousseau’s account of his fifth walk. In the lecture to which I referred above, I have students compare and contrast the experience Rousseau describes in this reading with the experiences Augustine describes in his Confessions, Books 9 & 10.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Fifth Walk)

“I have noticed in the vicissitudes of a long life that the periods of the sweetest joys and the most lively pleasures are not, however, those of which the memory attracts me and touches me most. These brief moments of delirium and passion, however lively they may be, are still, and by their very vivacity, only points scattered along the line of life. They are too rare and too rapid to constitute a state. And the happiness that my heart regrets is not composed of fugitive instances but is a simple and permanent state—a state which is nothing lively in itself but whose duration increases their delight to the point of finding there, at last, the supreme happiness.

All is in a continual flux on earth: nothing on it keeps a constant and fixed form, and our affections, which attach us to exterior things, pass and change necessarily as the things pass and change. Always ahead of us or behind us, they recall the past which is no longer or anticipate the future which often is not to be: there is nothing solid there to which the heart can attach itself. Also, here below one scarcely has anything but fleeting pleasure; as for lasting happiness, I doubt that it is known here. Scarcely is there in our most lively joys an instant when the heart can truly say to us: I wish that this instant would last forever; and how can one call “happiness” a fugitive state which leaves us with a heart still troubled and empty, which makes us regret something before or still desire something after?

But if there is a state where the soul finds a solid enough base to rest itself entirely and gather together there its entire being without having to recall the past or to step over into the future; where time is nothing for it, where the present lasts always, without, however, marking its duration and without any trace of succession, without any other feeling—of privation or joy, of pleasure or pain, of desire or fear—than that alone of our existence, and this feeling alone can fill it completely; [then] as long as this state lasts, whoever finds himself in it can call himself happy, not with an imperfect happiness poor and relative such as what one finds in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient happiness perfect and full which leaves in the soul no void which it feels the need of filling. Such is the state where I found myself often on the Island of St. Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether lying in my boat which I let drift at the mercy of the water, whether sitting on the shore of the agitated lake, whether somewhere else on the edge of a beautiful river or of a brook murmuring on the gravel.

What does one enjoy in such a situation? Nothing exterior to the self, nothing except the self and one’s own existence. As long as this state lasts, one is sufficient to oneself, like God. The sentiment of existence, stripped of all other affections, is by itself a precious sentiment of contentment and peace which would be sufficient alone to make existence dear and sweet to whoever knows how to set aside from himself all the sensual and earthly impressions which ceaselessly come to distract us from it and to disturb its sweetness here below. But most men, agitated by continual passions, hardly know this state and, having tasted it only imperfectly for a few instances, keep only an obscure and confused idea of it which does not make them feel its charm. It would not even be good, in the present constitution of things, that, eager for these sweet ecstasies, they would be revolted by the active life for which their needs, always reborn, prescribe the duty to them. But an unfortunate who has been cut off from human society and who is no longer able here below to do anything useful and good for others or for himself can find in this state some consolations for all human happiness—consolations that fortune and men could not take away from him” (pp. 68-69).

Next Time: Is the world a material machine or a spiritual organism?

Why the Plausibility of Unbelief?

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A question that has haunted me for years is this: why do modern people feel that God is absent from their daily experience of the world and themselves? In much of my reading over the last decades I’ve looked for an answer to this question. I recently read an excellent book that directly addresses this issue: Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age (2023). Minich attempts to explain why, in contrast to premodern people, moderns don’t sense God’s presence in the world. Perhaps I will review this book in the future. It is not an easy read!

In the course of making his argument, Minich quotes a section from Max Weber’s 1917 essay “Science as a Vocation.” In that section, Weber addresses the subject of the difference between how modern people experience nature and their own lives and how premodern people experienced them. He focuses on two experiences: (1) whereas premodern people experienced nature as mysterious and active, we expect everything to be rational and mechanical; (2) whereas premodern people as they approached death after a long life could feel fulfilled and satisfied, many modern people feel like they are missing out on future goods. Death seems arbitrary and meaningless. Listen to the great German sociologist:

Weber on the Disenchantment of Nature

“Scientific progress is … the process of intellectualization which we have been undergoing for thousands of years.

“Let us first clarify what this intellectualist rationalization, created by science and by scientifically oriented technology, means practically. Does it mean that we, today, for instance, everyone sitting in this hall, have a greater knowledge of the conditions of life under which we exist than has an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened to get into motion. And he does not need to know. He is satisfied that he may ‘count’ on the behavior of the streetcar, and he orients his conduct according to this expectation … The savage knows what he does in order to get his daily food and which institutions serve him in this pursuit. The increasing intellectualization and rationalization do not, therefore, indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under which one lives. It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one but wished one could learn it at any time. Hence, it means that principally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation. This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means and calculations perform the service. This above all is what intellectualization means.

“Now, [concerning] this process of disenchantment, which has continued to exist in Occidental culture for millennia, and, in general, this ‘progress,’ to which science belongs as a link and motive force…do they have any meanings that go beyond the purely practical and technical? You will find this question raised in the most principled form in the works of Leo Tolstoi. He came to raise the question in a peculiar way. All his broodings increasingly revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a meaningful phenomenon. And his answer was: for civilized man death has no meaning. It has none because the individual life of civilized man, placed into an infinite ‘ progress,’ according to its own immanent meaning should never come to an end; for there is always a further step ahead of one who stands in the march of progress. And no man who comes to die stands upon the peak which lies in infinity. Abraham, or some peasant of the past, died ‘ old and satiated with life ‘ because he stood in the organic cycle of life; because his life, in terms of its meaning and on the eve of his days, had given to him what life had to offer; because for him there remained no puzzles he might wish to solve; and therefore he could have had ‘enough’ of life. Whereas civilized man, placed in the midst of the continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowledge, and problems, may become ‘tired of life’ but not ‘satiated with life.’ He catches only the most minute part of what the life of the spirit brings forth ever anew, and what he seizes is always something provisional and not definitive, and therefore death for him is a meaningless occurrence. And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is meaningless; by its very ‘progressiveness’ it gives death the imprint of meaninglessness.”

Thoughts on Disenchantment

Concerning the first issue, disenchantment of nature, modern people tend to treat nature as we treat our own technology. Because our creations come from the human mind—even if not my mind—we believe we could understand them if we tried. No human creation is utterly alien and mysterious. We have been seduced by a superficial understanding of natural science into thinking nature is simply a highly complex machine rather than a deep mystery. Given time, we could understand it as clearly as we see through our own creations.

Concerning the second issue, the meaninglessness of death, I get it. Sometimes I feel something like what Abraham may have felt. I have passed through many stages of life already and, as I grow older, I feel content that this life will be enough. At other times, I feel as though I’ve only tasted a little bit of what may come to be in the future after centuries of technological progress. Hence, I feel sadness at my insignificance and therefore meaninglessness.

Perhaps we moderns cannot fully re-enchant and recover the magic and glory of nature. But I believe that discovering why we moderns don’t often experience a divine presence in nature and our lives is the first step in the process of recovering our sense of God’s presence. The second step is to return to nature with new eyes viewing it not as a machine but a living work of art and a theater of divine beauty. Others include rediscovering the meaning divine providence and omnipresence and learning to worship.

God, UFOs and the Standard Argument for Extraterrestrial Life

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Given all the interest, hype, and conspiracy about UAPs (formerly UFOs) and the speculations about life elsewhere in the universe, I thought I’d point out something I’ve not heard discussed. Cable news talking heads assert that given the mind-boggling number of galaxies and stars in the universe, there’s a good chance that there are many other planets in the universe capable of supporting life of some kind.

I have no problem with this assertion, because the physics of planet formation is easily understood and we have earth as one instance of this occurrence. But the further assertion that the existence of life on some of these planets is likely or even certain, has me raising my eyebrows in skepticism, at least of this line of reasoning:

The Argument for the High Probability of Extraterrestrial Life

1. The argument begins with the obvious fact that we are here on earth in the universe as observers. Hence life is possible in our universe. And, if the conditions of life are present in other parts of the universe, life is possible there also. Possible!

2. Given the trillions of galaxies and the trillions of stars and planets each galaxy contains, the probability is high that life has come to exist in some of those galaxies.

Analysis and Critique of the Probability Argument

3. However, there are two unstated assumptions in this argument, one negative and the other affirmative. They are:

  • (a) that life on our planet came to exist by a combination of chance and physical law (regularities) uninfluenced by intelligence, freedom, and purpose.
  • And (b) that if the right chemical components and the right conditions obtain, life’s evolution is inevitable.

Only if we accept these two assumptions can the notion of probability be applied to the evolution of life.

4. But if the coming to be of life on earth is the result of intelligence, freedom, and purpose, the notion of probability is meaningless. And if the idea of probability cannot be meaningfully applied to the origin of life on earth, then it does not apply anywhere else in the universe.

5. For free acts of divine creation can be assigned no probability because they do not arise solely from chance and physical law…but from divine intelligence, purpose and freedom, which escape both deterministic law and chaotic chance.

6. Is there life anywhere else in the universe? That depends on God’s choice, and for all we know God’s purpose was fulfilled by creating life only in one place in the universe.

How Critical Race Theory Operates And How To Defeat It

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Today we continue our conversation with James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory. In the three previous essays we defined CRT, discussed its twelve central beliefs, and documented its immediate sources. My intention at the beginning of this series was to devote an essay to each chapter of the book and end the series with a Christian assessment of CRT. However, as I grappled with the fourth chapter [“The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory” (pp. 159-220)], I realized that I could not summarize this chapter in a way that would benefit my target audience. It deals with the thought of Karl Marx (1818-83), G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), and J.J. Rousseau (1712-78)—some of the most obscure thinkers and difficult concepts in the history of thought. Compounding the chapter’s difficulty, Lindsay leaves many of these difficult concepts underdeveloped.

Also, Lindsay’s goal and mine differ. He wishes to demonstrate that CRT is Marxist to its core. This goal is important to him because advocates of CRT are subversive and slippery; they will deny that they are really Marxists. He wants to make their denials completely implausible. My goals for the series are (1) to get clear on what CRT is, what it believes, how it operates, and how to respond to it, and (2) subject it to a theological critique. I think my first three essays go a long way toward accomplishing the first goal. I believe I can skip reference to chapter four without detriment to the series. In this essay we will examine CRT’s agenda for taking over institutions and develop strategies for defeating it.

How Critical Race Theory Operates

What does CRT do? According to Lindsay, it does only one thing: it cranks out more Critical Race Theorists (p. 224). In classrooms, government agencies, boardrooms, media, and in churches, it carries on its own form of evangelism. It prefers soft persuasion but is not above using coercion and extortion. It assumes that once enough Critical Race Theorists hold positions of power, a new era of “racial justice” will dawn.

Lindsay describes several CRT strategies:

(1) “Divide, Scoop Up and Conquer.” An entity—a university, academic department, or government agency—will in good faith or in hopes of warding off charges of racism, invite a CRT activist to join the team. Some supposedly “racist” event will occur. The CRT activist will generalize the event as a sign of “systemic racism.” Those who do not immediately jump on the CRT bandwagon will be labeled racists and silenced. The organization has been effectively commandeered by CRT. Its original purpose—education, profit, witness to the gospel—will be replaced by its new purpose: creating more Critical Race Theorists.

(2) CRT focuses almost entirely on “systems” of power. When they cannot point to a specific incident of injustice or abuse attributable to racism, they point to group disparities and cry systemic racism. Such systems are vague and diffuse. It is impossible to understand how they work to produce a particular incident of injustice. If ordinary people don’t get it, Critical Race Theorists “accuse them of not understanding systemic thought, or, more simply of being stupid and intellectually unsophisticated” (p. 233). Lindsay replies that “when a Critical Race Theory calls something “systemic,” what it really means is that it has an all-encompassing Marxian conspiracy theory about that thing” (p. 233).

(3) “The Critical Inversion of Language.” Critical Race Theories adopt “highly specialized and contextual definitions of otherwise familiar words. In fact, it inverts the meaning of everyday words” (pp. 240-41). Such words as racism, justice, antiracism, democracy, belonging, diversity, inclusion, and many others are used to mean the opposite of what they mean in ordinary usage. Once these words have been enshrined in policy by naive policy makers, CRT activists begin to exploit their specialized meanings to “gain institutional and personal power” (p. 245). Anyone who objects is accused of racism.

(4) Theory trumps fact. One of CRT’s twelve beliefs declares that “Racism is the ordinary and permanent state of society.” Whatever word, state of affairs, characteristic, or practice that Critical Race Theorists think hinders their quest for power arises from and embodies racism. Defending yourself against a charge of racism is racist. Asking for evidence of racism to support CRT’s assertions is racist. CRT wisdom in a nutshell: “Of course you would claim to be innocent. That is what guilty people do.” Or, as Ibram X Kendi observes, “Denial is the heartbeat of racism” (How to Be an Antiracist, p. 9; quoted in Lindsay, p. 247). In interactions with CRT, it’s always a “lose-lose” proposition (p. 250).

How to Defeat CRT

In his last chapter Lindsay lays out a strategy for defeating the cynical and manipulative Critical Race Theorists (“What Can We Do About Critical Race Theory,” pp.253-86).

(1) Stop assuming that CRT has good intentions. It does not. “It has only one intention: seize as much institutional authority as possible to raise enough “racial consciousness” to establish a Dictatorship of the Antiracists that will enforce Critical Race Theory on everybody” (p. 254). Lindsay advises, “Do not attempt to compromise with Critical Race Theorists. Just tell them no” (p. 254). If you try to meet their demands halfway or admit any truth to their Theory, you will “lose every single time” (p. 255).

(2) Do not play CRT’s language games. Make them define their terms. And don’t get into a fine-grained debate about the meaning of words. Instead, call their definitions “absurd,” “Orwellian,” or “conspiratorial,” because that is what they are. Don’t set foot in their linguistic world where nothing is as it seems. It’s a word game only insiders can play. Each distortion supports and is supported by all the other distortions. Your only options are to submit to the “superior” gnosis of the CRT specialist or to exit the game into the real world. Let them know you are not playing their game.

(3) “Stop being afraid of the consequences of speaking up and pushing back” (p. 255). There are only two alternatives: total surrender or total resistance. Until they gain total control, their power rests in their threat to label you a racist, which makes sense only in their made-up world.

(4) At an institutional level, Critical Race Theorists must not be promoted to positions of power and influence and must be fired from those positions if they occupy them. Lindsay makes this point clearly:

“They must be fired, forced to resign, voted out of office, sued, defunded, and limited in their ability to abuse power for Critical means by both law and institutional policy…The thing about people who abuse their power is they abuse their power and don’t tend to care too much what anyone thinks of that so long as it doesn’t impact their ability to keep abusing their power” (pp. 258-59).

(5) At the cultural level, we must energetically assert common sense, beauty, objective truth, unambiguous facts, and our common humanity against group-based, identity politics. Most people will reject divisive and race conscious identity politics as soon as they understand what it is. For most Americans, the liberal order of individual freedom, work, individual competence, individual rights, and equality under law, still seems superior to socialist theories of utopia. Assert these truths without compromise.

Next time: Is CRT compatible with Christian faith?

The Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory

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Today we continue our review and dialogue with James Lindsay, Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory. In the two previous essays we defined and set forth CRT’s twelve central beliefs. In this essay, we will turn to the story of its origins. In Chapter Three, Lindsay uncovers “The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory” (pp. 87-158). The sheer number of authors, books, papers, and different movements covered in this long chapter is overwhelming. I will do my best to summarize it concisely, accurately and fairly. But I cannot help but oversimplify. There is another complicating factor I must mention. Attempting to discover and describe the origins of any historical phenomenon is fraught with many dangers. Among the most obvious are (1) the past is too complicated to describe completely and (2) historians, despite their best efforts, harbor their own prejudices.

The Two Main Sources

According to Lindsay, “Critical Social Justice Theories, including Critical Race Theory, arise from a deliberate fusion of Critical Theory (neo-Marxism) with postmodern Theory” (p. 89; emphasis original). This fusion was accomplished in the 1980s and 1990s, mostly in academia. At a minimum we need to understand the essential features of three things: Critical Theory, postmodernism, and the process of their fusion.

Critical Theory, Or Neo-Marxism

Karl Marx (1818-83) claimed to have discovered the true science of history. History began with the communism of tribal society and passed through two other forms of society until it arrived at capitalism. The capitalist system will inevitably reach a crisis point wherein the exploited workers will revolt and take over the means of production to institute socialism. Socialism will naturally transform itself into communism similar in form to tribal communism but now worldwide. That was the theory.

But by the 1910s and 1920s it had become apparent that something was wrong with Marx’s theory. Capitalism had raised the standard of living in Europe to the point that workers no longer felt themselves miserable and exploited. The workers had adopted what Hungarian Marxist György Lukács (1885-1971) called a “false consciousness,” that is, they thought they were free and happy when in truth they were enslaved and miserable. The neo-Marxists realized that the socialist revolution was not inevitable. They held on to the Marxist belief that capitalism was unstable, but experience had taught them its advance toward socialism was but one possibility. It could also slide into fascism. Hence, the neo-Marxists developed an agenda of “consciousness raising;” that is, a program to convinced people who are relatively satisfied with their condition that they were oppressed in ways of which they were not conscious.  Marxist theorist Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) named this new approach to revolution “Critical Theory” in his 1937 essay “Traditional and Critical Theory.”

For the process of consciousness raising to succeed, the “cultural hegemony” of capitalist society must be challenged. Marxists must pay attention to the places in culture where identity, consciousness, and values are formed. Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) named five cultural institutions that Marxists need to infiltrate to cultivate a “counter-hegemony,” that is, an alternative narrative favorable to Marxist revolution: religion, family, education, media, and law. Critical theorist Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), in the 1950s and 1960s, despaired of awakening the satisfied American middle class to revolutionary consciousness. He looked instead to urban blacks, the unemployed, and university students to form the vanguard of a revolutionary coalition. In his books, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Counterrevolution and Revolt, An Essay on Liberation, and One-Dimensional Man, Marcuse outlines an ideological strategy for completing the Gramscian project of creating a Marxian consciousness as a challenge to the dominant culture. Brazilian educational theorist Paulo Freire (1921-97), in his highly influential book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, packages Critical Theory in a form designed to liberate students from their “false consciousness” and create in them a revolutionary consciousness.

Critical Social Justice theories, including CRT, incorporated neo-Marxism’s critique of capitalism and liberalism, its theory of false consciousness, its strategies of institutional infiltration and consciousness raising, and its ideal of communism—all while re-centering its social critique on race.

Postmodern Theory

Whereas Marxism and neo-Marxism critique the values and knowledge claims of liberal capitalist society in view of their own truth-claims about a truly just society (Communism), postmodernism debunks all truth claims and grand narratives—including Marxist—as expressions of power. They are in effect post-Marxist as well as postmodern. The most famous postmodern thinker Michel Foucault (1926-84) underlined the ideological nature of all knowledge claims by using the term “knowledge-power” whenever speaking about assertions of truth (p. 127).

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) considered language a prison from which we cannot escape into truth. Words refer only to other words and can never take us to real things. For postmodern thought, linguistic expressions, culture, social order, and law are “constructions” created consciously or unconsciously to acquire or retain power. To the unknowing, these constructions have the appearance of truth, fact, and reality. Hence the task of postmodern criticism is to unmask, to “deconstruct,” these deceptive structures. All of them! Those trained to think in postmodern terms see a power play, a conspiracy, in every assertion of truth, value, or fact. In Lindsay’s words, “It isn’t clear that postmodernists had much interest in doing anything further than taking things apart and playing in the wreckage, however” (p. 132).

At this point we are left asking how CRT can benefit by incorporating postmodernism. For in postmodernism, CRT’s central concepts—“race,” “systemic racism,” “Blackness,” “Whiteness,” “justice,” “equity” “diversity,” “inclusion,” etc.—are just as much power constructions as are rights, free markets, merit, and other liberal values, facts, and truth claims. They too must be deconstructed to reveal cynical masks for power, which would empty CRT’s rhetoric of its moral force.

Fusing Neo-Marxism and Postmodernism

Lindsay takes Kemberlé Crenshaw’s 1991 paper “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color” to be a pivotal text in the creation of CRT. As Crenshaw sees it, postmodernism’s assertion that all group identities, values, and cultures are socially constructed—a view called antiessentialism or constructivism—can be useful to critical social justice movements such as CRT. Incorporating postmodernism into CRT enables it to expose and deconstruct hidden systemic racism. But Crenshaw also sees the need for marginalized groups to maintain a strong sense of group identity. She says, “At this point in history, a strong case can be made that the most critical resistance strategy for disempowered groups is to occupy and defend a politics of social location rather than to vacate and destroy it” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 139).

The dominant group (white people) intends the categories “black,” “woman,” “queer,” etc. to be negative and disempowering. Crenshaw welcomes the postmodern insight that these labels are pure power constructs with no basis in the essence of the people to whom they are attached. Nevertheless, these categories possess a sort of reality that must be acknowledged. Crenshaw observes, “But to say that a category such as race or gender is socially constructed is not to say that that category has no significance in the world” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 137). Identity categories “are imposed, thus made meaningful and real, by systemic power and those who hold and wield it” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, pp. 139-40; emphasis original).

In this way, Crenshaw can embrace postmodern constructivism as useful in critiquing the dominant group’s justifications for maintaining its privileges without giving up the reality of marginalized group identities useful in the quest for liberation. There is a huge difference, says Crenshaw, between saying “I am a person who happens to be black” and saying “I am Black.” To say “I am Black” accepts the imposed identity but transforms it into “an anchor of subjectivity…a positive discourse of self-identification’ (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 138). Think of the way certain gay people have embraced the insult “queer” and turned it into “Queer,” a proud assertion of identity. For Critical Race Theory, Black identity is a “matter of lived experience no one has standing to challenge” (“Mapping the Margins,” quoted in Lindsay, p. 137).

According to Lindsay, Crenshaw’s contribution to CRT was to figure out a way to incorporate the advantages of postmodern constructivism while making the category of race-identity immune from deconstruction. The assertion “I am Black” is irrefutable. Thanks to Crenshaw and others, CRT is Critical and Constructivist, that is, neo-Marxist and postmodern. It can exempt itself from the critique it makes of others. Liberal accusations of racism in CRT or postmodern attempts to deconstruct it will be interpreted as manifestations of systemic racism and white supremacy.

What Is “Critical Race Theory”?

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Today I will begin a series of essays in review and dialogue with James Lindsay’s book Race Marxism: The Truth About Critical Race Theory and Praxis (Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2022). This book addresses matters of great importance to the church, Christian higher education, and American society. As readers of this blog know, I try to stay away from partisan political issues. My central aim has always been to help Christian believers, individually and corporately, to think clearly about their faith and remain true to the original, biblical faith in confusing times. In so far as I touch on politically controversial issues, I do so only in service to this central aim.

My Political Philosophy

You would not believe me if I claimed to have no political philosophy. So, let me tell you where I am coming from. I believe that the American constitutional order, along with the original Bill of Rights (and most of the later Amendments) set up in 1787/90, has been a great blessing to the church and the world. I believe the liberal order thus instituted—limited government, separation of powers, the rule of law, representative democracy, individual rights, personal, religious and economic freedom, equality before the law, etc.—is the best system of government ever devised. I am instinctively suspicious of any movement toward state control of private spaces in the name of public good. I reject all dreams of humanly constructed utopias—anarchist, communist or theocratic.

Overview

As is obvious from his book’s title, Lindsay argues that Critical Race Theory (CRT) should be understood as “race Marxism;” that is, CRT is a Marxist program that makes race instead of economic class “the central construct for understanding inequality” (p. 5) in society. We cannot grasp CRT’s convoluted vocabulary, methods and aims, asserts Lindsay, unless we first understand it as a Marxist program. Lindsay supports this charge with quotes from the original writings of the movement and a thorough examination of its historical antecedents. The book contains six chapters and 297 pages:

  • 1. Defining Critical Race Theory
  • 2. What Critical Race Theory Believes
  • 3. The Proximate Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
  • 4. The Deep Ideological Origins of Critical Race Theory
  • 5. Critical Race Praxis—How Critical Race Theory Operates
  • 6. What Can We Do About Critical Race Theory

Defining Critical Race Theory

CRT is a belief system and an activist program, originally centered in the nation’s elite law schools (in the 1970s and 1980s) but now present in almost every college and university in America. It asserts the belief that American society is, and always has been, constructed on a foundation of white supremacy. America is racist to the core. CRT insists that the system of government that I praised above—the American constitutional order, limited government, separation of powers, the rule of law, representative democracy, individual rights, personal, religious and economic freedom, equality before the law—puts people of color at a disadvantage and was designed from the beginning with this end in mind. It cannot be fixed from within but must be replaced with a new socialist order empowered to commandeer and reallocate economic and social goods to create equity among racial groups.

Lindsay quotes CRT insiders Richard Delgado and Jean Stefrancic (p. 26):

What is Critical Race Theory? The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars interested in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power…Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law” (From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, NYU Press, 2001).

Lindsay provides his outsider definition of CRT:

Critical Race Theory is a revolutionary and broadly neo-Marxist mode of activism based upon the belief that the fundamental organizing principle of society is “systemic racism,” which it asserts was created and is maintained by white people in order to preserve a social structure that provides a multitude of unjust advantages over people of color, especially blacks (p. 16, bold and italics original).

Academic Interest Only?

I hope you will stick with me as I take you through Lindsay’s argument. He argues that CRT is not just another kooky academic theory. It is of a piece with the Marxist utopian visions that can be implemented only by totalitarian regimes, which have murdered hundreds of millions only to fail time and again. CRT must not be mistaken for liberalism or progressivism. It is intolerant and regressive. It is not compatible with Christianity or belief in God. It is a replacement for God and Christ. It is not truly antiracist but racist. Indeed, Lindsay finds the “Iron Law of Woke Projection” to be true every time: Of whatever crime or sin CRT accuses its opponents, you can be sure that it is guilty of the same.