Andrew Klavan is on fire these days. If you haven’t done so yet, you may want to check out his magnificent recent piece in City Journal, ‘Can We Believe?’
“…for a glimpse of how the Enlightenment Narrative’s embrace of pure reason can undermine the very foundations of the Western civilization that created it, you have to turn to Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Though full of quirky insights and fascinating information, it is a textbook example of how materialistic logic can lead to philosophical pathology.
Harari’s central contention is that the “ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language.” He goes on to say that “fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively,” by creating what he calls an “inter-subjective reality,” or “inter-subjective order existing in the shared imagination of . . . millions of people” and thus allowing them to work together in ways other animals can’t. “Inter-subjective phenomena are neither malevolent frauds nor insignificant charades,” he writes. “They exist in a different way from physical phenomena such as radioactivity, but their impact on the world may still be enormous.”
Among the fictions that create these intersubjective phenomena are religion, nationhood, money, law, and human rights. “None of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.”
Here is an area where I can speak with some expertise. I am a lifelong maker of fiction, and I am here to tell you that this is not what fiction is; this is not how fiction works. Good fiction does not create phenomena; it describes them. Like all art, fiction is a language for communicating a type of reality that can’t be communicated in any other way: the interplay of human consciousness with itself and the world. That experience can be delusional, as when we hear voices, mistake infatuation for love, or convince ourselves that slavery is moral. But the very fact that it can be delusional points to the fact that it can be healthy and accurate as well. When it is healthy, the “common imagination of human beings” can be regarded as an organ of perception, like the eye. Fiction merely describes the world of morality and meaning that that organ perceives.”
Because Harari does not believe that this world of moral meaning exists, he thinks that it is created by the fiction, rather than the other way around. For example, he refers to women as sapiens “possessing wombs” and declares that only “the myths of her society assign her unique feminine roles,” such as raising children. No one who has ever met a woman outside the planet Vulcan can imagine this to be the actual case. Harari himself speaks quite tenderly of the maternal feelings of sheep. What myths have the rams been telling the ewes? Different male and female roles are a human universal because womanhood is a complete inner reality. Myths describe it truly or falsely; they don’t make it what it is.
Harari can imagine the “complex emotional worlds” of cows. He believes that the existence of these worlds creates an obligation in us to treat cows more kindly than we currently do. Fair enough. But why, then, can he not deduce the reality of human rights, natural law, economic value, and femininity from the far more complex inner experience of humans? “Human rights are a fictional story just like God and heaven,” he told an interviewer. “They are not a biological reality. Biologically speaking, humans don’t have rights.”
This language may not necessarily be malign. It may not suggest that Harari has no visceral respect for human rights. But it does not inspire confidence in his ultimate commitment to those rights, either. It is not exactly “Give me liberty or give me death!” In fact, Harari has argued that increasing information may require increasing centralization of power, the old progressive canard that the world has become too complex for individual freedom and must now be run by experts. This sort of thing makes one suspicious that Harari and other reason-worshiping thinkers are living justifications for Marcello Pera’s fears that freedom cannot defend itself without specifically Judeo-Christian faith.
It is the Enlightenment Narrative that creates this worship of reason, not reason itself. In fact, most of the scientific arguments against the existence of God are circular and self-proving. They pit advanced scientific thinkers against simple, literalist religious believers. They dismiss error and mischief committed in the name of science—the Holocaust, atom bombs, climate change—but amberize error and mischief committed in the name of faith—“the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, the European wars of religion,” as Pinker has it.
By assuming that the spiritual realm is a fantasy, they irrationally dismiss our experience of it. Our brains perceive the smell of coffee, yet no one argues that coffee isn’t real. But when the same brain perceives the immaterial—morality, the self, or God—it is presumed to be spinning fantasies. Coming from those who worship reason, this is lousy reasoning.”
I think there is an important difference between the likes of our Christian brother Klavan and Jonathan Sacks and Peterson, or even someone like Brett Weinstein, in the sense that the former two believe God; the ultimate meaning-maker, is genuinely outside the system- universe or multiverse. Stanciu lays out a similar picture to Klavan, protesting the common western science vs Christianity myth:
“In the twenty-first century, the “ever accelerating progress of technology” means humans are “approaching some essential Singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them” cannot continue. “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” The explosive increase in computing power will produce superintelligence that transcends the “limitations of our biological bodies and brains.”
Furthermore, molecular nanotechnology and genetic engineering will radically change human life. Death is now a technical problem that scientists can solve, and soon, they will have the technology to make themselves and others immortal. The last days of death are imminent.
After a long, arduous ascent, Homo sapiens becomes Homo deus, fulfilling a desire long hidden in the human heart—to become God.
Oddly, the Singularity and the presumed apotheosis of Homo sapiens brings up back to the Christian narrative.
“Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild creature that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat of any tree of the Garden?”’ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the Garden; but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the Garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate.”
Eve ate the forbidden fruit because she wanted to be like God. She knew that Adam not only loved her but also loved God, for he was absent from her when he walked in the Garden in the cool of the day with God. Eve desired to have all of Adam’s love; she wanted no one to exist for Adam outside of her, and believed that if she became like God, then she would be the sole recipient of all Adam’s love.
Adam, too, desired to be like God. He wanted Eve to love him, nay, to worship him, as if he were the Lord of Creation. Adam wanted Eve to glorify him, to become the Lord God for her.
The Fall of Man was caused by misdirected love, not sex. Both Adam and Eve desired to be loved as if they were the center of all existence. An exclusive self-love separated Adam and Eve from God, and ultimately from each other.
Storytelling
We take as our guide for the art of storytelling the eminent novelist E. M. Forster. He distinguishes story from plot: “A story is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence…. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.” Forster gives a beautiful illusion of the difference between story and plot: “‘The king died and then the queen died,’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief,’ is a plot.” In a plot, the time sequence is preserved, but overshadowed by causality. If the death of the queen happens in a story, we ask “What next?”; if the death occurs in a plot, we ask “Why?”
In the Grand Narrative of Science, “the universe began with a Big Bang, followed by three early epochs” is a story, and not of much interest to either Forster or us. “The universe, including all aspects of human life, is the result of the interactions of little bits of matter” is the plot of the Grand Narrative, because that simple statement is the principle of causation, always present for scientists and of main interest to us and to most laypersons.
The narratives of science and Christianity are obviously not novels, nor works of fiction, for both claim to tell the true story of humankind—where we came from, what we are, and where we are going. To determine if either of these narratives is true, we must assess the plot.
We have already seen that the plot of the Grand Narrative is false: the interaction of tiny bits of matter—neurons—cannot explain the basic aspects of human life—we perceive, feel, and think. Brain function alone cannot explain our experience of the impersonal, stark beauty of mathematics and physics, or of the pungency of Stilton cheese, the softness of cashmere, the dance of cherry blossoms, the smell of the ocean salt air, the wonder and mystery of nature, or of the poetry, drama, and music that touch the transcendent.”
Peterson’s and Weinstein’s are arguably moreso two ‘sciences’ of history. However iterated they may be. Agnostic and atheist versions of one type. Klavan’s article, this attached talk and Rabbi Sacks’ book each seem to implicitly suggest this.
The following quotes from Sacks helps frame the difference, I think:
“So, to summarise: Science is the search for explanation. Religion is the search for meaning. Meaning is not accidental to the human condition because we are the meaning-seeking animal. To believe on the basis of science that the universe has no meaning is to confuse two disciplines of thought: explanation and interpretation. The search for meaning, though it begins with science, must go beyond it. Science does not yield meanings, nor does it prove the absence of meanings.
The meaning of a system lies outside the system. Therefore the meaning of the universe lies outside the universe. The belief in a God who transcends the universe was the discovery of Abrahamic monotheism, which transformed the human condition, endowing it with meaning and thereby rescuing it from tragedy in the name of hope.
For if God created the physical universe, then God is free, and if God made us in his image, we are free. If we are free, then history is not a matter of eternal recurrences. Because we can change ourselves, we can change the world. That is the religious basis of hope.
There are cultures that do not share these beliefs. They are, ultimately, tragic cultures, for whatever shape they give the powers they name, those powers are fundamentally indifferent to human fate. They may be natural forces. They may be human institutions: the empire, the state, the political system, or the economy. They may be human collectivities: the tribe, the nation, the race. But all end in tragedy because none attaches ultimate significance to the individual as individual. All end by sacrificing the individual, which is why, in the end, such cultures die.
There is only one thing capable of defeating tragedy, which is the belief in God who in love sets his image on the human person, thus endowing each of us with non-negotiable, unconditional dignity.”
And
“So meaning is made, not just discovered. That is what religion for the most part is: the constant making and remaking of meaning, by the stories we tell, the rituals we perform and the prayers we say. The stories are sacred, the rituals divine commands, and prayer a genuine dialogue with the divine.
Religion is an authentic response to a real Presence, but it is also a way of making that presence real by constantly living in response to it. It is truth translated into deed.”
– Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Great Patnership.
Pastor Jeremy Treat in his lovely new paperback, Seek First, reminds us that people are taken in not by some unimpeachable logic but the story of scientism and proclaims that we must offer the higher order story of The Kingdom; which includes all the goods of Science and everything else. He cites the Philosopher of modernity, Charles Taylor. Elsewhere, this famous Canadian, who features on David Cayley’s website and where he has exerted considerable influence on series such as The Myth Of The Secular*, proclaimed:
“Modern “secularization” can be seen from one angle as the rejection of higher times, and the positing of time as purely profane. Events now exist only in this one dimension, in which they stand at greater and lesser temporal distance, and in relations of causality with other events of the same kind.”
― A Secular Age
Later, he quotes the great Chesterton, who true to Ecclesiastes made time for every purpose under heaven:
“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”
―
How and why we use technology is of central importance in a time of supposed ultimate purposelessness. (See Walter Ong SJ, Jacques Ellul, Jacob Shatzer) What might be most interesting is how they go in different directions vis a vis Artificial Intelligence. I personally do not see Humanism as a suitable bulwark against the dangers of AI and agree with Ehrenfeld in his book on The Arrogance Of Humanism and share the concerns of Matthew Miller at Logos Made Flesh. Whose video on Ex Machina points to the perils it could bring.
Furthermore, Jonathan Pageau’s recent video on Avengers posits the return of human sacrifice en masse, even more than is already the case; new technologies could exacerbate this greatly. He helps illuminate the importance of ultimate meaning by differentiating sacrifice of others from ascetical self-sacrifice. The centrality of this particular meaning of love if most obvious in The God-Man and how He effects everything, taking us up into His story. ”The biblical story is not, as the narrative of economic globalization has been called, a cultural tidal wave sweeping away all the wonderful diversity of human culture. Perhaps the miracle of tongues at Pentecost in Acts 2 is a symbol of this. It is a miracle that symbolically transcends the diversity of human languages: they no longer divide people or impede understanding, as they did at Babel. But this diversity of human languages is not abolished. Everyone hears the gospel in their own language. The miracle was in one sense quite superfluous, since virtually everyone there could have understood Greek, Aramaic or Latin. There was no practical need for such profligate speaking in all kinds of local languages. But God reverses Babel in such a way as rather conspicuously to affirm human cultural diversity. When Paul states that in Christ there is no longer Jew, Greek, barbarian or Scythian (Colossians 3:11), what he denies is cultural privilege, not cultural diversity. The biblical story is not only critical of other stories but also hospitable to other stories. On its way to the kingdom of God it does not abolish all other stories, but brings them all into relationship to itself and its way to the kingdom. It becomes the story of all stories, taking with it into the kingdom all that can be positively related to the God of Israel and Jesus. The presence of so many little stories within the biblical metanarrative, so many fragments and glimpses of other stories, within Scripture itself, is surely a sign and an earnest of that. The universal that is the kingdom of God is no dreary uniformity or oppressive denial of difference, but the milieu in which every particular reaches its true destiny in relation to the God who is the God of all because he is the God of Jesus. We may recall once more the Bible’s final book, where Babylon, the ruler of the kings of the earth, comes to nothing, destroyed by its clash with the narrative of God’s kingdom, but where also the nations bring their glory and honour into the new Jerusalem, that is, they bring all they have to offer as glory and praise given to God (Revelation 21:24-26).” Richard Bauckham, Bible And Mission
This is articulated with particular acuteness in the work of Orthodox Theologian Fr John Behr:
“It is sometimes said that for antiquity truth is what is, for enlightened modernity it is what was, and for postmodernity it is that which will have been. The historicizing approach of modernity places the truth of Jesus Christ firmly in the past—how he was born and what he did and said—and subject his truth to our criteria of historicity, which are ultimately no more than a matter of what we find plausible (as is evidenced by the “Jesus Seminar”). For antiquity, on the other hand, the truth of Christ is eternal, or better, timeless: the crucified and risen Lord is the one whom scripture has always spoken. Yet, as the disciples come to recognize him, as the subject of scripture and in the breaking of bread, he disappears from their sight (Lk 24.31). The Christ of Christian faith, revealed concretely in and through the apostolic proclamation of the crucified and risen Lord in accordance with scripture, is an eschatological figure, the Coming One.”
Paul VanderKlay’s video on Peterson vs Zizek, also suggests the ultimate dead end of self-enclosed systems.
Houellebecq plays a central role: “…from Louis Betty’s terrific study of Houellebecq as diagnostician of the maladies of the post-Christian, post-religious West. Here is Prof. Betty:
”However, the causality I propose, which does justice to the totality of the Houllebecquian worldview, is one in which materialism – conceived of as a generalized belief in matter, which in its political manifestations contributes to the rise of ideologies as diverse as communism, fascism, and liberalism – represents the true menace to human relationships and sexuality in Houellebecq’s novels. From this point of view, the gradual erosion of the theological conception of the human being, which began with the scientific revolution and reached its apex in the twentieth century, has given rise to a social order in which the value of human life is restricted to the parameters of economic exchange – that is, the human being is understood in essentially economic terms. One’s attractiveness and even lovability are determined by indisputable criteria of market value, as if the human being were no different, in principle, from any other consumer product. The economic reduction of human value is fed by the materialism of modern science, which dismisses the possibility of free will and reduces the human being to a haphazard, fleeting collection of elementary particles. Humanism, which attempts to assign people rights in the absence of a deity capable of legitimating the moral order, does not stand a chance in these conditions.”
”The reason why it is not only permissible but advisable for us to ask God for 3-5 new families at both churches, a vocation to the diaconate, the game plan to meet the lonely, and the rest of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit is also captured by our Collect. For he who hears our prayers and knows the secrets of our heart set in order all things both in heaven and earth by his never-failing Providence. Our lives are always in his loving hands. Just as God has designed the laws of music so that beautiful and infinite harmonic combinations are possible, God has set the laws of creation so that the things of creation—“creatures” whether animate or inanimate—can participate in the activity of God (and this is really what the Ten Commandments are: laws of creation, laws of of creation in relationship with itself and with God) but even more so, be the means by which God’s will is known. God makes himself known through creatures.
This is the principle of “mediation,” that creatures mediate, or are a medium for, God’s salvific grace. We do not worship creatures, of course—we only worship God, and we shall have no other gods before him. But we do, and we should, not worship creatures, but venerate creatures. To venerate is to recognize the holiness of God’s presence in things. We do not worship Mary and the Saints, we venerate them because God is present in them in remarkable and even outrageous ways. In venerating Mary and the Saints, we worship God who was present in their lives, their words and deeds, and present in their sorrows and challenges.”
At the scientific level, a different way is offered by Fr Pavel Florensky, the great Orthodox polymath:
In other words, truth is an antinomy, and it cannot fail to be such. And truth cannot be anything else, for one can affirm in advance that knowledge of the truth demands spiritual life and therefore is an ascesis. But the ascesis of rationality is belief, i.e., self-renunciation. The act of the self-renunciation of rationality is an expression of antinomy. Indeed, only an antinomy can be believed. Every non-antinomic judgment is merely accepted or merely rejected by rationality, for such a judgment does not surpass the boundary of rationality’s egoistical isolation. If truth were non-antinomic, then rationality, always revolving in its proper sphere, would not have a fulcrum, would not see extrarational objects and therefore would not be induced to begin the ascesis of belief. That fulcrum is dogma. With dogma begins our salvation, for only dogma, being antinomic, does not constrain our freedom and allows voluntary belief or wicked unbelief. For it is impossible to compel one to believe, just as it is impossible to compel one not to believe. According to Augustine, ‘no one believes except voluntarily’ (nemo credit nisi volens). (P 109)
Commensurately, musical artist Bob Dylan, in response to Jean Paul Sartre’s brand of Godless existentialism, proclaimed that there is ‘no exit ‘cept the one that you can’t see with your eyes’… Spoken like a true Biblical Prophet.
The holy eucharist is offered in remembrance of Christ. “Do this in remembrance of Me.” Remembering Christ, and offering all things to God in and through Him, the Church is filled with the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the Divine Liturgy, the Holy Spirit comes “upon us and upon the gifts here offered.” Everything is filled with the Kingdom of God. In God’s Kingdom nothing is forgotten. All is remembered, and is thereby made alive. Thus, at this moment in the Divine Liturgy the faithful, remembering Christ, remember all men and all things in him, especially Christ’s mother, the Holy Theotokos, and all of the saints.
It is important to note here that as the Divine Liturgy is the real presence and power of the unique saving event of Christ for His people in all of its manifold elements and aspects, it is always offered for all who need to be saved. Thus the liturgical sacrifice is offered for Mary and all of the saints, as well as for the whole Church and the entire universe of God’s creation.
Again we offer unto Thee this reasonable worship for those who have fallen asleep in the faith: ancestors, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, ascetics, and every righteous spirit made perfect in faith.
And especially for our most holy, most pure, most blessed and glorious Lady, Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary.
While the choir sings a hymn to the Theotokos, which often changes during the Church Year according to the various seasons and celebrations, the celebrant incenses the consecrated gifts and continues to ask God to remember John the Baptist, the saints of the day, the departed faithful, the whole Church and the entire world. Following the specific remembrance of the bishop of the given church, the people sum up all of the remembrances with the words: “And all mankind!”
There then follow even more prayers asking God to remember the city, the country, the travelers, the sick, the suffering, the captives, the benefactors of the Church, those who themselves “remember the poor” and all of the people. There is also the provision made at this point in the liturgy for remembering by name persons in need of special mercy from God.
In the Liturgy of Saint Basil, which is generally much longer and much more detailed than that of Saint John Chrysostom the remembrances are very specific and numerous, going on for more than three pages in the liturgical service book.
It is necessary to remember once again that remembrance in the Orthodox Church, and particularly the remembrance of God and by God, has a very special meaning. According to the Orthodox Faith, expressed and revealed in the Bible and the Liturgy, divine remembrance means glory and life, while divine forgetfulness means corruption and death. In Christ, God remembers man and his world. Remembering Christ, man remembers God and his Kingdom. Thus the remembrances of the Divine Liturgy are themselves a form of living communion between heaven and earth.” … “The true sense of worship is to be found not in the symbolic, but in the real fulfillment of the Church: the new life, given in Christ, and that this eternal transformation of the Church into the Body of Christ, her ascension, in Christ and with Christ into the eschatological fullness of the Kingdom, is the very source of all Christian action in the world, the possibility to “do as he does” … not a system of astounding symbols, but the possibility to introduce into the world that consuming and transfiguring fire for which the Lord pined—“and wished that it were already kindled…” Alexander Schmemann
References:
- file:///C:/Users/markc/AppData/Local/Temp/religions-07-00127.pdf
- 1- https://www.city-journal.org/faith-western-civilization
- 2- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Partnership-Science-Search-Meaning-ebook/dp/B0057MLPOG
- 3- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pygPTzxVxE&t=59s
- https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/worship/the-divine-liturgy/rememberances
- 4- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rArLPP4rsi4&t=6s
- http://www.alexandermen.com/Christianity
- 5- http://echipamortii.blogspot.com/2017/08/pavel-florensky-antinomic-truth-andrew.html
- 6- http://www.davidcayley.com/podcasts?tag=David+Ehrenfeld
- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Philosophical-Foundations-Christian-Worldview-Moreland-ebook/dp/B002W5GQ3G/ref=sr_1_13?crid=3OQI186AAZUKW&keywords=william+lane+craig&qid=1556739178&s=gateway&sprefix=william+lane+craig%2Caps%2C133&sr=8-13
- 7- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgqGUBP3Cx0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5_qCIxnWvo&t=523s Mitch Stokes on Epistemology
- 8- http://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/04/10/the-liturgical-critique-of-technological-culture/
- https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/05/death-god-new-stories-george-stanciu.html
- 9- http://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/04/24/youre-gonna-serve-somebody-with-technology-but-whom/
- http://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/07/14/remembering-creation-through-the-saturday-sabbath/
- 10- https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystery-Christ-Life-Death/dp/0881413062
- https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-prophetic-houellebecq/
- 11- http://echipamortii.blogspot.com/2017/08/pavel-florensky-antinomic-truth-andrew.html (See also Fr Andrew Louth’s Modern Orthodox Thinkers.)
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