[MD] FW: Other sorts of truth

[david buchanan]

Steve said to dmb:
Author Tim O'Brien: "A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth." If you agree, can you unpack O'Brien's claim for me?

dmb says:

Never heard of him but I guess he just means that real and true are two different things. What happens in general is real but truth and falsity is what happens to an idea. Although, I don't really understand how something can be true or real if it didn't happen. 



Steve quoted Paul Tillich's The Dynamics of Faith:
"Neither scientific truth nor historical truth can affirm nor negate the truth of faith. The truth of faith can neither affirm nor negate scientific or historical truth." and "Philosophical truth consists in true concepts concerning the ultimate; the truth of faith consists in true symbols concerning the ultimate." and "The philosophical implications of the symbols of faith can be developed in many ways, but the truth of faith and the truth of philosophy have no authority over each other."

That stuff is all gold to me. Recall that my current project is to carve out a space where religious beliefs need not submit to demands for evidence. A concept of faith as Tillich describes it needs not necessarily frustrate the needs of others, so it need not submit to demands of evidence.

dmb says:

Gold? I think it's so vague that it's virtually meaningless. Maybe it wouldn't look that way if I knew what Tillich meant by "the truth of faith" and "the ultimate". Since Campbell's view is that myth evokes experience, faith is unnecessary. So it's hard to imagine they could be making the same case. Also, the idea that art, science and religion can be united on an empirical basis seems to be very much at odds with Tillich's assertions about their autonomy. They're already autonomous. Their distinction and separation is one of the main features of modernity and in the fact the problem now is that they have become hostile to each other. Part of that is a kind of scientistic literalism wherein poetry is mistakenly treated as fact, as Campbell points out, but this doesn't mean that science and history have to be factual and empirical while art and religion get off the hook. They still have to be "factual" and empirical in ways that are appropriate to those domains.
And I don't like this idea that we can hold beliefs in the absence of evidence just so long as it doesn't hurt anybody else. What if you have diabetes and you're convinced that boston creme pie has the right combination of chemical to cure you. Because of the belief, you're filled with hope and joy as you eat and of course the "medicine" itself is quite a pleasure ingest. Now why should some busy body know it all ruin his "faith"? It makes him happy. He's not hurting anybody else. He's even made friends with his local pastry chef. Obviously, religion won't kill you like cake will kill a diabetic but there is a psychological theory that says faith is often used as a coping mechanism for people who are deprived a some basic needs, like a sense of purpose or meaning, social needs for companionship, self-esteem problems and the like. The problem is not that people so afflicted get some comfort there, it's that the comfort forestalls any actual healing. This can even be a dangerous situation in the case of cults. For people like that, the analogy is not much of an exaggeration. For people like that, faith is like candy to a diabetic or booze to an alcoholic. He'll love you for supplying it even though your generosity is killing him. 

Steve said:First I should say that Tillich's whole deal in this book is to unpack his description of faith as having an "ultimate concern." That's important. As a hint to what this can mean, for the Communists, the ultimate concern is the state. (Note how such faith fails criterion 2.)

dmb says:

What? I would have thought "justice" was the ultimate concern of communism. Anyway, I get the idea of ultimate concern. It's something like the highest priority or the most important thing. I see that faith has one of these, but I'm still not sure what "faith" means. Does it mean something like "dedication" so that one is dedicated to their ultimate concern? Sound tautological to me. 
Tillich: > Criterion 1 "Faith has truth in so far as it adequately expresses an
> ultimate concern."  ... "But the life of symbols is limited" ...  "Symbols
> which for a certain period, or in a certain place, expressed truth of faith
> for a certain group now only remind of the faith of the past. They have lost
> their truth, and it is an open question whether dead symbols can  be
> revived. Probably not for those to whom they have died!"..."...the criterion
> of the truth of faith is whether or not it is alive."
> 
> Criterion 2: "The other criterion of the truth of a symbol of faith is that
> it expresses the ultimate which is really ultimate. In other words, that it
> is not idolatrous."..."The criterion of the truth of faith, therefore, is
> that it implies an element of self-negation. That symbol is most adequate
> which expresses not only the ultimate but also its own lack of ultimacy."
> (This is why he favors Protestantism over Catholicism. It's the whole
> infallibility thing.)
Steve said about Tillich:
This sounds like some pretty cool shit to me. If I were going to be religious, this is how I would like to think of faith. But I suspect there is no hope for me in that regard. It's a criterion 1 problem. The symbols are dead to me.

dmb says:

Really? I think it sound like nonsense. Faith has truth if it expresses concern? Expresses the ultimate that really ultimate? Sorry, but that literally means nothing at all. Without some kind of explanation of his terms, it reads like pure drivel.


Steve said:
Okay, now I'd like to offer a concrete example of an assertion that we might think of as being true, but not true in the scientific historical sense: Tillich: "Faith can say that the reality which is manifest in the New Testament picture of Jesus as the Christ has saving power for those who are grasped by it, no matter how much or how little can be traced to the historical figure who is called Jesus of Nazareth." Again, this sort of shit is dead to me. But is it true in some way nevertheless?


dmb says:
What does he mean by "saving power"? Saved from what? Religious people really do seem quite insane to me. And he's one of the more reasonable theologians. The idea that the story of Christ should be read as myth instead of history doesn't mean we can have beliefs in the absence of historical evidence. It means that the historical evidence shows that myths like the Christ story existed long before the historical Jesus lived or was supposed to have lived. And both can be true. Actual historical figures can later be mythologized and I think that's probably true in this case. I mean, the truth of myth as Campbell conceives it is not at all at odds with historical evidence and can actually find support there as well as in psychology, sociology, comparative religions and other human sciences. But faith? I just can't get past Mark Twain's definition. It seems to obtain even here. "Faith is believing what you know ain't so". I realize it's a stingy, ungenerous reading but it does kind of look like he's saying faith has power regardless of whether it's true or not, that the "power" is the truth. Yuk. No thanks.




 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469226/direct/01/