[MD] Theism and literalism

[Scott Roberts]

DMB,

I've changed the subject heading, was "False Messiah". My first post in the 
False Messiah thread was in response to Anthony, who said "I would tend to 
agree with [Marsha] if only because modern religious training has so much 
static intellectual and social baggage already with it even before you 
start.  Maybe Sam can throw more light on this subject?". Since Sam is not 
here, I replied. Then SA and Peter chimed in, and then you, objecting to my 
claim about the MOQ resting on non-empirical assumptions. So now I'm somehow 
at fault for not keeping to the topic of neo-Victorians. And I did not 
ignore what you said about "preferences". My reply was that if one does not 
want to make non-empirical assumptions, one should not say there is value or 
preferences in the inorganic (once one has rejected a mechanistic view), 
since one has the option of not saying anything -- which reply you ignored. 
So please watch your accusations.


DMB said:
And as I understand the terms "Faith" and "God", its hard to reconcile 
"faith in
God" with intellectual freedom and intellectual values.

[and]

As I understand the term, one can't be a theist without being a literalist.

Scott:
Precisely. So I suggest you change the way you understand the terms 'Faith' 
and 'God' -- and 'theism' -- the way many theists have, before you judge 
theism. And I'm not just talking about a few post-modern intellectuals. I am 
talking about millions of liberal Christians. They have moved beyond the 
static thought of the past. You have not, as your inability to understand 
what Sam was saying shows. (He is not saying he has no faith in God. He is 
saying that "God exists" is an overly literal statement, as is "God does not 
exist". That you find this contradictory is a consequence of your insistence 
that anything a theist says must be taken literally.)

DMB said:
"I don't think there is any important difference between Pirsig's 
"willingness to believe falsehoods" and the dictionary's "firm belief in 
something for which there
is no proof".  Twain's view that "Faith is believing what you know ain't so" 
differs from these only in the level of funniness"

Scott:
No important difference between "no proof" and "ain't so"? Then the MOQ 
ain't so, since there is no proof that Quality is prior to subject and 
object, or that there is Quality in the inorganic. Metaphysics is not about 
provable things. Nor is religion.

And even if you do acknowledge that there is an important difference between 
"no proof" and "ain't so", by the dictionary's definition, since there is no 
proof, those who have a firm belief in the MOQ have faith in the MOQ.

DMB said:
As I understand it, Augustine, for all his
intellectuality, still supported the idea of Christ as a unique historical
figure and supported the laws against saying otherwise. As I understand it.
Origen, like Eckhart and others, is one of the figures who were condemned
for this heresy, the heresy of the non-literalist and the non-theist.

Scott:
In the first place, trying to judge the reasonableness of thinkers of that 
time from the standards of this time is unreasonable (read Barfield to find 
out why -- see below). In any case, neither Origen nor Eckhart denied God, 
or that Jesus was the Son of God. Their writings were condemned because it 
was thought they were overly pantheistic (and Origen believed in 
reincarnation). When I say that Augustine was non-literal, it was because he 
recognized that God (and the Trinity and the Incarnation) was beyond human 
understanding. One cannot be literal about that which cannot be understood. 
One can only be metaphorical.

DMB said:
I would also point to the fusion of Christian theology and Aristotle's
physics. (Aquinas and the age of scholasticism.) There is a literalistic
assumption in the very attempt to fuse spiritual and physical truth in such
a way.

Scott:
The fallacy here is that thinking of the physical as the literal didn't come 
about until after Aquinas. Again, see Barfield. The history of consciousness 
that Barfield explicates is all about the gradual separation in 
consciousness of the physical from the spiritual, a process that didn't 
reach its culmination until modern times. It was only then that "literal" 
came to mean physical (or objective). So, again, it is a mistake to judge 
"reasonableness" among pre-modern thinkers from the standpoint of modernism.

DMB said:
And, as far as the conflict between faith and reason, the big
problems really began when physics changed and the spiritual truths did not.
They were no longer in sync once guys like Copernicus came along. This is
what I mean in suggesting that the problems began much later than 200AD.

Scott:
This is a conflict between faith and science, not between faith and reason. 
Reason changed (by starting to emphasize the empirical, thanks to the change 
of consciousness), and it is true that this led to a huge conflict between 
science and religion. But that conflict is over, except between 
fundamentalists and anti-religionists -- that is, those who continue to 
treat religious dogma literally. (By the way, I hope it is clear that when I 
say "treat dogma literally" that this covers both those who take dogmatic 
statements as being literal claims, and think they are true, and those who 
take dogmatic statements as being literal claims, and think they are false.)

When I say there was conflict between faith and reason since 200AD I am 
saying that there were those who felt that intellect should play no role in 
religion (such as Irenaeus with his famous "I believe because it is absurd", 
and much later some Protestant sects). Regardless of how one now judges the 
thought of Augustine or Aquinas, they, and all "Doctors of the Church" felt 
that intellect's role was central, that proper faith seeks understanding 
(and Eckhart was no exception). Indeed, some of the mistrust of mystics was 
over their apparent rejection of reason. On the other hand, some mystics 
became Doctors of the Church.

- Scott


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "david buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 3:41 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] False Messiah


Scott and all MOQers:

Before I get into it, I want to thank Scott for taking the time and spending
the energy....

Scott said to dmb:
...you are hell-bent on treating as enemies those who should be your allies
in this struggle, namely theists who support intellectual freedom and social
justice -- and their name is legion. Apparently, anyone who says they have
"faith in God" has -- for you -- no redeeming social or intellectual role. I
would call that prejudice, based, like all prejuduce, on severely static
thinking.

dmb replies:
Those who support intellectual freedom and social justice aren't the
problem. Like I already said to you, there is plenty of room for some
interesting religious thinkers here. Bring them. But post-modern
philosophers of religion are not the problem and if the names you've dropped
so far are any indication, its a bit of a stretch to call them theists. And
as I understand the terms "Faith" and "God", its hard to reconcile "faith in
God" with intellectual freedom and intellectual values. To make that work,
you'd have to alter the meaning of those terms to the extent that they are
no longer relevant to my criticisms of theism and faith. I would describe
Ken Wilber and Joseph Cambpell as non-theistic philosophers of religion, for
example. I have quoted both of them favorably many, many times. Obviously, I
think the MOQ takes on the issue from an intellectual perspective too. My
purpose here is certainly not to rule out such a possibility. Quite the
opposite. I would even go so far as to say that you're trying to make that
same distinction. We just disagree about where certain lines are drawn. As I
understand the term, one can't be a theist without being a literalist.

dmb quoted the dictionary:
Merriam-Webster Online says, "Faith" is defined as 1. allegiance to duty or
a person: LOYALTY: fidelity to one's promises: sincerity of intentions. 2.
belief and trust in and loyalty to God: belief
in the traditional doctrines of a religion: firm belief in something for
which there is no proof: complete trust. 3. something that is believed
especially with strong conviction. - in faith: without doubt or question:
VERILY. Now I suppose you're gonna say the standard dictionary definition
"belittles" the term? Who is being absurd here? And do I dare make the
obvious point that people of faith might tend to prefer a more self-serving
definition of the word?

Scott replied:
No, the dictionary definition does not belittle the word. Pirsig sure does,
though, when he calls it "a willingness to believe in falsehoods". Further,
the Christian thinker goes a lot deeper into the question "what is faith"
than a dictionary will, just as a philosopher of science, say, will not stop
at a dictionary definition of science, or as a MOQist will not stop at a
dictionary definition of 'quality'.

dmb says:
I'm not saying we should STOP with the dictionary. I'm just saying its a
good place to START and that defying the dictionary is sloppy. And let me
remind you that I was quoting the dictionary against your charge that Pirsig
and I are using some unusual and prejudiced definition. I don't think there
is any important difference between Pirsig's "willingness to believe
falsehoods" and the dictionary's "firm belief in something for which there
is no proof".  Twain's view that "Faith is believing what you know ain't so"
differs from these only in the level of funniness. In any case, I quoted the
dictionary as a relatiy check against your bizarre definition of faith as
something that can stand up to reason, which is approximately the opposite
of what it means in normal, common sense reality.

Scott said to dmb:
No. (Scott doesn't "think the conflict between faith and reason was
something that developed much later than 200AD?") The famous phrase "what
has Athens to do with Jerusalem" (that is, the side that sees faith and
reason as being in conflict) dates from the late 2nd century. Most of the
Greek and Latin Fathers (e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine,
Evagrius Ponticus, the Cappadocians) argued for reason, and won the
argument.

dmb says:
Well, I'd point out that this thread started out as a discussion of the
neo-Victorian moral decline in the present period, but I'd like to take this
as an opportunity to get at what I was saying about the false messiah as it
relates to theism and literalism in the history of the church. You may
recall that I had said a few things about that central heresy in this
thread's opening post. As I understand it, Augustine, for all his
intellectuality, still supported the idea of Christ as a unique historical
figure and supported the laws against saying otherwise. As I understand it.
Origen, like Eckhart and others, is one of the figures who were condemned
for this heresy, the heresy of the non-literalist and the non-theists. As
Ken Wilber puts it,..

"For all of Augustine's undoubted brilliance - for all of that, he cannot
shake his dualistic dogma that this world is merely a preparation for the
next world; he is locked into the myth of the FUTURE resurrection of the
body, not its present divinization by a change in percepton; and thus even
such an ardent devotee of Augustine as Paul Tillich can summarize his view
as: 'On the one hand, there is the city of God, on the other the city of
earth or the devil.' This is no spiritual ontology; this is mythic
disscocitation.    I do not mean to pin this dualism soley on Augustine; it
is a mythic dissociation inherent in the worldview which, for other reasons,
he felt compelled to embrace. Augustine, I am tempted to say, is actually
the very best one can possibly do with the Plotinian system if it must be
strained into a mythic worldview. But both Augustine's fans and detractors
have pointed to this unstable dualism in this system, and to his
'otherworldly' bent, the stamp of frustrated Ascent. And if 'Augustine is
the foundation of everything the West had to say,' well then, everything the
West had to say was; frustrated Ascent, spiritus interruptus. And thus no
true Descent, no true divinization of this Earth, of this body of this
life."

See, even this is a kind of literalism. Despite the fact that Christian
mystics tend to love Augustine, he was stil advocating a transcendent God, a
supernatural God. And it only gets worse from here.

I would also point to the fusion of Christian theology and Aristotle's
physics. (Aquinas and the age of scholasticism.) There is a literalistic
assumption in the very attempt to fuse spiritual and physical truth in such
a way. And, as far as the conflict between faith and reason, the big
problems really began when physics changed and the spiritual truths did not.
They were no longer in sync once guys like Copernicus came along. This is
what I mean in suggesting that the problems began much later than 200AD. But
more to the point, no matter how subtle or sever the level of literalism,
the problem comes in treating spiritual achievers as a threat to religion
rather than the point of religion. Again, Ken Wilber. The emphasis and
parenthetical info is his...

"...the mythic-military Christian empire put tolerance - never a strong
point in mythic structures - virtually out of the question. Any outspoken
person who evidenced a structure of consciousness higher than the
mythic-rational was, correctly enough, viewed as a POLITICAL threat and
condmned, in effect, for treason.    The condemnation was often pandemic;
the structure of Reason (and science) were condemned because they demanded
EVIDENCE (reason was therefore allowed only in service of Dogma). The
psychic level of nature-nation mysticism was condemned because it brought
God 'too much into' this world, it 'dragged God down' from His celestial
throne and the Heavenly City above. Subtle-level mysticism was condemned, or
at best barely tolerated, because it brought the sould UP TOO CLOSE to God.
And the Church becam absolutely apoplectic if anybody expressed a
causal'level intuion of supreme identity with Godhead - the Inquistion would
burn Giordano Bruno at the stake and condemn the theses of Meister Dckhart
on such grounds.    But that was on old story for causal-level Realizers at
the hands of mythic believers, stanrting with Jesus of Nazareth, whose own
causal-level realizaton (I and the Father are One) wold not be treated
kindly... His reply that 'we all ALL sons (and daughters) of God' was lost
on the crowd, and that realization led him, as it would al-Hallaj and Bruno
and Origen and a long line of subsequestn Realkizers, to a grisly death for
both political and religious reasons..."

Scott said to dmb:
Do you recall that Sam preached a sermon saying that God does not exist? Yet
he is a theist. My point is that what one can squeeze into a dictionary
definition may not hold up as one goes more deeply into the matter. In fact,
the dictionary authors clearly left out such thinkers about God as the
Pseudo-Dionisius (c. 500) and others who said that God was beyond being -- 
that one cannot apply the category 'existence' to God. In other words, your
attack upon theism is based on accepting this definition literally.

dmb says:
Yes, my attack on "theism" uses the standard definition of that term. I
think this is a good thing and that perhaps some people would be easier to
understand if they did the same. Sam's not here to defend himself, but since
you mentioned it, I have to object. A theist that doesn't believe in God? At
the very best, this is a sloppy and confusing way to describe one's
position. I could describe myself as an atheist who believes in God, but
wouldn't that be a rather stupid way to put it even if it were true? I think
so. Besides, you've probably noticed that I disgree with Sam about most
things, especially in this area. As far as psuedo-Dionysius goes, well of
course he's not in the dictionary. I think your efforts to deny the meaning
of these basic concepts only makes your argument look wierd and silly. I'm
definately not impressed that move, Mr. Roberts.

dmb said to Scott:
The objection to faith and theism and literalism does NOT just apply to
fundamentalists. And so those who would assert that God is a metaphor for a
mystery are NOT the problem and that's exactly what my criticism are aimed
at. I'm opposed to the notion of a supernatural creator, of a unique
historical incarnation of that God, of the idea of God as an all powerful
agent who intervenes in human history and the notion of God as other.

Scott replied:
You are making my point. You are taking these descriptions of God literally,
and oppose them. Thinking theists do not take these descriptions literally.

dmb says:
No, I'm not taking them literally. I'm criticizing those who do. Those who
don't take it literally are not the targets of my criticism. Again, this is
the distinction I've been trying to make - for years. As I tried to show in
this post, via Wilber, thinking theists certainly do take it literally, even
the brilliant thinkers who founded the West's theistic Christianity. As I
understand it, non-literal, non-dual, non-theists are relatively rare in the
West because it went wrong so long ago, pretty much from the start. This is
the heroic blasphemy I've been getting at all along. Again Ken Wilber...

"The Church would produce MANY great philosophers (reason), and MANY great
psychic and subtle mystics, but no matter how much these realizers tried to
downplay the myths, but no matter how much they allegorized them or as-iffed
them or interpreted them AWAY, there was always the one fundamental dogma
that hung like a weight around their attempts to transcend, that crashed
down on their sholders and pinned them to the ground and never but never
budged an inch; THE UTTERLY UNIQUE AND NONREPRODUCIBLE REALIZATION OF
JESUS."

Scott said to dmb:
Dictionaries tell us what the static patterns are. To defy them is to think
dynamically. Interesting that you consider the dynamic to be bullshit. Well,
you did say "almost always". But of course the exceptions you will make are
those that bolster your opinions, while those who question those opinions
are not allowed to make exceptions. Very convenient.

dmb says:
Defying the dictionary is dynamic? Oh, please. You're not creatively bending
the rules. You're just being sloppy, confusing and a bit scatterbrained too.
(Did you notice that I've deleted your irrelevant tangets on neo-Darwinism
and the preferences of particles.) If you will recall, this thread began by
making a case IN FAVOR of those who would creatively break the rules, IN
FAVOR of those who would defy static dogma of the theists. As in the case of
the theist who doesn't believe in God, I'm not rejecting these exceptions,
I'm just rejecting that sort of non-sense and other contradictions. You've
all but ignored my central point about the dynamic contrarians and seem
quite willing to avoid any discussion about the neo-Victorians. You've
ignored my central point about the "preferences of particles", which I made
despite the fact that it is outside the scope of this thread. You've taken
my criticisms of the current Republican administration as if they were
directed at psuedo-Dionysius and Origen. You've defied common sense and
dictionary definitions in order to make your points and have otherwise
ignored, evaded, confused or obfuscated the issues at hand. That, my friend,
is very far away from being a work of art.

Thanks again,
dmb

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