I've been memed by Sapientiae Amator. OK, here goes:
1. Hot Chocolate or apple cider?
Hot chocolate, I suppose, but I also really enjoy orange chocolate, that delightful drink wherein orange juice is substituted for the milk (and sugar is left out). Reminds me of the “chocolate orange” one can buy at Trader Joe’s.
2. Turkey or Ham?
Ham. I’m from Arkansas, where the state mascot is a pig, and I suppose that has corrupted me. I like most greasy foods.
3. Do you get a fake or a real Christmas tree?
We had a small fake one for a while, but we don’t have one at the moment. I’m thinking about waiting until the day after Christmas to buy another fake. Eventually my hope is to have a real but potted tree that I can move in and out of the house.
4. Decorations on the outside of your house?
No, but my neighbor has an enormous plastic bubble with a giant Santa’s sleigh that moves round and round. I figure he has enough in his yard for the two of us.
5. Do you prefer a white Christmas?
I grew up with cold but brown Christmas’s and did not experience the “White Christmas” until adult years. In the end, I suppose I prefer the snowy weather because it encourages everyone to stay inside and pursue leisurely conversation over a hot cup of something.
6. Do you enjoy singing Christmas carols?
Yes. I’m working at teaching my children to sing, but the progress is slow.
7. Favorite Christmas carol?
Well, define “carol”. Is there a difference between “carol” and “hymn” when it comes to Christmas music? Taking “carol” to be folksy but not exclusive of religious subjects, I suppose my favorite is “O Holy Night”. If we can include non-folksy stuff and if Advent music counts, then my favorite by far is Rorate Coeli.
8. How do you feel about Christmas movies?
I like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Carol”. All the others I have seen are entirely devoid of the religious element that makes Christmas tick—and even those two are on the border in some ways. In general, my family does not watch movies more than once or twice a year.
9. Favorite Christmas movie?
One of the two mentioned above.
10. Stockings before or after presents?
Before, or whenever. I don’t see the point of them otherwise. Manifestly the idea of having gifts hidden in stockings is so that children can discover them, not so that they can be fitted into some kind of pre-arranged schedule.
11. Do you open a present or presents on Christmas Eve, or wait until Christmas day?
Always Christmas Day. And the next day. And the next. Hopefully we can reach the point of having gifts for all twelve days.
12. Go to someone else's house?
This is our first year entirely at home—ask me later what I thought of it!
13. Do you read the Nativity Story? If so when?
We read it in various forms again and again throughout the Advent season. It’s a kind of catechesis for our children.
14. Do you go to Mass on Christmas Eve, at midnight, or Christmas morning?
It varies depending on the ages of the children.
15. What is your favorite holiday smell?
I don’t have a strong sense of smell, so I suspect that this particular avenue of holiday appreciation is less intense for me than for other people. That said, everything with (a) nutmeg, (b) cinnamon, or (c) fresh evergreen is a winner.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Taking Jesus' Promises Literally
This just in from the question box:
“The reason I believe the Catholic church is the true one because it's most biblical, and it seems to follow the New Testament (excluding Revelations) most literally. However, if we take John 6 literally to the point of cannibalism, then what about Jn 14:12, and other promises made in the gospels that we will do greater things than Jesus, heal the sick, the blind, deaf, and lame, cast out demons, and other things? If the apostles did all these things in Acts, then why don't they happen today?”
Let's take it piece by piece.
“The reason I believe the Catholic church is the true one is because it’s most biblical....” Let’s stop there for a moment. The idea that you everybody should read the Bible and then decide which Church is the true one doesn’t really cash out when you think about it. What was everybody supposed to do before the printing press came along and made it possible for everyone have their own copy of the Bible? For 1500 years after Christ ascended into heaven, even a major cathedral would not likely have all the books of the Bible, because they were big, hand-made, expensive things; your average Joe in the pew would not have owned even a single book of the Bible, even if he were lucky enough to be able to read! The system Jesus had in mind for how we find his church could not have been that we were supposed to read the Bible and then decide—that just would not have been practical. As a matter of fact, it goes the other way around: the way Joe Pew would know whether X, Y or Z “gospel” is in fact a book of the Bible would be to ask at Church! You find the books of the Bible by looking to your Church instead of finding the Church by looking to your Bible.
“...and it seems to follow the New Testament (excluding Revelation) most literally.” To make sure we’re clear about what this means, let’s define some terms. Our words signify certain things by convention: for example, the word “ox” signifies a beast of the field, and that is the literal meaning of the word. When St. Paul says “You shall not muzzle the ox when it is treading out the grain” (1Cor 9:9), the literal meaning of “ox” is a beast of the field. But when you think about that ox, you realize that Paul is using the ox as a symbol of something else, namely an apostle preaching, and that is the figurative meaning of “ox”. So here’s the definition: the literal meaning of Scripture is whatever the words signify by convention, while the figurative (non-literal) meaning is what you get when the thing signified by the words is itself taken as a sign of something else. Here’s another example: Jesus says in John 15:1, “I am the true vine.” The literal meaning of that phrase would be that Jesus is a creeping plant with big leaves that bears grapes, because that’s what you get when you just take the conventional meanings of the words. But then you realize that Jesus understands that creeping plant with big leaves as a sign of something else, namely as a source of life for the branches. Then you see that what he means is that Jesus is a source of life for us the way a vine is the source of life for its branches. That is the figurative meaning, because that’s what you get when you take the thing signified by the words (“vine”) and understand that thing itself as a sign of something else.
Now, it is true that certain kinds of Protestants take literal interpretation as the best, and pride themselves on interpreting Scripture more literally than anyone else, as though it’s this big contest and whoever can manage to interpret Scripture most literally wins. This gives us Catholics an edge when we talk with them because in fact the passages we interpret differently we usually do interpret literally. But it should be clear if you think about it for a moment that interpreting Scripture literally is not really the goal. For example, surely we shouldn’t take “I am the true vine” literally! It just isn’t true that we should take Scripture literally everywhere.
So what is the goal? Well, here’s the way I understand it: the reason some Christians are proud of interpreting Scripture literally is that they know they aren’t using some kind of figurative interpretation as an escape hatch when the going gets rough. They are willing to take whatever Scripture tells them and just swallow it, no matter how bitter it may taste. If you take everything in Scripture figuratively instead of literally, then you can pretty much interpret Scripture to mean WHATEVER YOU WANT. These Protestants are proud, and rightly so, that they are obedient to Scripture instead of making Scripture say what they want to hear. So I think what they are really driving at is that you should take Scripture literally unless Scripture itself seems to indicate that you should interpret it figuratively. In other words, the goal is to take literal passages literally and figurative passages figuratively, but always in obedience to Scripture.
OK, so how do you decide when a passage should be taken figuratively? I think there are three factors: 1) convention, 2) context, and 3) possibility. Sometimes a particular phrase has a figurative meaning that everyone understands because it is conventional, like “I tried to get that job, but I STRUCK OUT.” Nobody will think that you lashed out at your interviewer in physical violence, because everyone in America knows that “I struck out” is a figurative expression taken from baseball, and we all know the meaning of it. Sometimes you have to judge based on context: for example, somebody not quite so familiar with the phrase “I struck out” would still be able to guess what you mean by it just because you brought it up in connection with your unsuccessful attempt to get a job. Finally, sometimes your first clue that something should not be taken literally is that the literal meaning is something impossible, like when Jesus says “I am the true vine.” He simply is NOT a creeping plant with big leaves, so he MUST mean something else!
Here’s an example from real life. My brother and I met with our families at the big aquarium in Chicago for a day of fun. After some six hours or so of moving from display to display, eating lunch, watching the dolphin show, etc., my brother turned to me and said, “Well, I’m a pumpkin.” Here’s what happened in my mind in less than two flicks of a bat’s eyelash: first, that statement failed the possibility test immediately and thoroughly. My brother is NOT a pumpkin, so I was sure that he did not mean that statement to be taken literally. I racked my memory for something about pumpkins that would fit the context, and bingo! Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin when it was time to go! My brother’s word “pumpkin” signified a large orange vegetable, but that large orange vegetable was itself a sign of something that needs to go home. He meant that he needed to go home. So you see the factors of possibility and context at play there. Over time I have heard other people use the same phrase, and eventually I realized that it is a common phrase for people to use in that situation: had I been more hip, I would have understood my brother’s figurative statement immediately just by knowing its conventional meaning—that’s the convention factor coming in.
The tricky part is the possibility factor. What you think is possible is not always what someone else thinks is possible. We all agree that my brother cannot be a pumpkin, but what if he had turned to me and said, “I’m an alcoholic”? Maybe I think that’s not possible, but maybe I’m just fooling myself because I don’t want to face the truth. If I don’t want to face up to the possibility that my brother is an alcoholic, then I could use a figurative interpretation of his statement as an escape hatch. On the other hand, if he isn’t an alcoholic, then a literal interpretation would be a big insult to him. It takes prudence and sensitivity to context to navigate the situation, but the goal is clearly to interpret the statement the way that he meant it—the goal is not just to take it literally no matter what. [By the way, my brother has no problems with alcohol. I just took that as an example of something somebody could say.]
OK, let’s look at the particular passage you were asking about, John 14:12-13: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” That last statement about “Whatever you ask in my name” is obviously limited in some ways: for example, you could not ask that only your own prayers and nobody else’s be answered—God would not do THAT for you, because that would contradict the promise itself! And obviously God will not give you anything that you want for wicked purposes, because then the Father would not be “glorified in the Son.” So there are limits. The two key questions about this promise are 1) what are the limits and 2) why does Jesus make a statement that sounds unlimited (“Whatever”) when in fact there are limits? I’m not too worried about the answer to question #1, because the passage itself does not spell out clearly what the limits are. Opinions could be different. But I think I can answer question #2: Jesus uses a word like “whatever” because there is NO LIMIT on the SIZE of what God will give. You don’t need to worry about budget limits or lack of resources or power. It’s like when the company president hands you the company credit card and says, “OK, get the job done and buy whatever you need—you want it, you got it.” He obviously doesn’t mean that you can buy anything your heart desires, and so there are actually limits, but no purchase is too great for getting this job done.
In particular, Jesus specifies that the size of the miracles he worked during his own earthly ministry do not set a cap on what you can ask for. You don’t need to think to yourself, “Well gee, Jesus never moved a mountain, so I probably shouldn’t even think of praying for that.” Nope—sky’s the limit. Ask away.
If you look at the definitions I gave above, I think you would say that I am interpreting Jesus’ statement literally. I am just running with the conventional meaning of the words and taking what I get, but it seems to me that what he is literally saying is something limited in one respect and unlimited in another.
Here’s where the last part of your question comes in: “If the apostles did all these things in Acts, then why don't they happen today?” I should note from the outset that Jesus does not go into this kind of detail—how long, where, on what occasions, etc.—so at this point I am not interpreting his words anymore. I am speculating about his plans based on what has happened. First off, I would say that the Church needed more miracles right at first to get off the ground, but once the Church was going she needed fewer supernatural confirmations to convince people. She could point to things like the miracle of her own growth—from 120 disciples in the upper room at Pentecost to most of the known world within a couple of generations and without a single sword drawn. Once people were not in danger of being killed for becoming Christian, it was easier to persuade people to do it. For any number of reasons, miracles were more necessary early on than they were later. Secondly, I would say that miracles DO happen today, but they are almost impossible to verify if you aren’t personally on the scene. The Church requires a certain number of certified miracles before she will canonize a new saint, and she is canonizing them faster than ever now, so SOMETHING is going on out there. But it is generally very difficult to be certain about these things second-hand. You can examine evidence for miracles and decide for yourself about specific ones—I have a handful that convince me.
“The reason I believe the Catholic church is the true one because it's most biblical, and it seems to follow the New Testament (excluding Revelations) most literally. However, if we take John 6 literally to the point of cannibalism, then what about Jn 14:12, and other promises made in the gospels that we will do greater things than Jesus, heal the sick, the blind, deaf, and lame, cast out demons, and other things? If the apostles did all these things in Acts, then why don't they happen today?”
Let's take it piece by piece.
“The reason I believe the Catholic church is the true one is because it’s most biblical....” Let’s stop there for a moment. The idea that you everybody should read the Bible and then decide which Church is the true one doesn’t really cash out when you think about it. What was everybody supposed to do before the printing press came along and made it possible for everyone have their own copy of the Bible? For 1500 years after Christ ascended into heaven, even a major cathedral would not likely have all the books of the Bible, because they were big, hand-made, expensive things; your average Joe in the pew would not have owned even a single book of the Bible, even if he were lucky enough to be able to read! The system Jesus had in mind for how we find his church could not have been that we were supposed to read the Bible and then decide—that just would not have been practical. As a matter of fact, it goes the other way around: the way Joe Pew would know whether X, Y or Z “gospel” is in fact a book of the Bible would be to ask at Church! You find the books of the Bible by looking to your Church instead of finding the Church by looking to your Bible.
“...and it seems to follow the New Testament (excluding Revelation) most literally.” To make sure we’re clear about what this means, let’s define some terms. Our words signify certain things by convention: for example, the word “ox” signifies a beast of the field, and that is the literal meaning of the word. When St. Paul says “You shall not muzzle the ox when it is treading out the grain” (1Cor 9:9), the literal meaning of “ox” is a beast of the field. But when you think about that ox, you realize that Paul is using the ox as a symbol of something else, namely an apostle preaching, and that is the figurative meaning of “ox”. So here’s the definition: the literal meaning of Scripture is whatever the words signify by convention, while the figurative (non-literal) meaning is what you get when the thing signified by the words is itself taken as a sign of something else. Here’s another example: Jesus says in John 15:1, “I am the true vine.” The literal meaning of that phrase would be that Jesus is a creeping plant with big leaves that bears grapes, because that’s what you get when you just take the conventional meanings of the words. But then you realize that Jesus understands that creeping plant with big leaves as a sign of something else, namely as a source of life for the branches. Then you see that what he means is that Jesus is a source of life for us the way a vine is the source of life for its branches. That is the figurative meaning, because that’s what you get when you take the thing signified by the words (“vine”) and understand that thing itself as a sign of something else.
Now, it is true that certain kinds of Protestants take literal interpretation as the best, and pride themselves on interpreting Scripture more literally than anyone else, as though it’s this big contest and whoever can manage to interpret Scripture most literally wins. This gives us Catholics an edge when we talk with them because in fact the passages we interpret differently we usually do interpret literally. But it should be clear if you think about it for a moment that interpreting Scripture literally is not really the goal. For example, surely we shouldn’t take “I am the true vine” literally! It just isn’t true that we should take Scripture literally everywhere.
So what is the goal? Well, here’s the way I understand it: the reason some Christians are proud of interpreting Scripture literally is that they know they aren’t using some kind of figurative interpretation as an escape hatch when the going gets rough. They are willing to take whatever Scripture tells them and just swallow it, no matter how bitter it may taste. If you take everything in Scripture figuratively instead of literally, then you can pretty much interpret Scripture to mean WHATEVER YOU WANT. These Protestants are proud, and rightly so, that they are obedient to Scripture instead of making Scripture say what they want to hear. So I think what they are really driving at is that you should take Scripture literally unless Scripture itself seems to indicate that you should interpret it figuratively. In other words, the goal is to take literal passages literally and figurative passages figuratively, but always in obedience to Scripture.
OK, so how do you decide when a passage should be taken figuratively? I think there are three factors: 1) convention, 2) context, and 3) possibility. Sometimes a particular phrase has a figurative meaning that everyone understands because it is conventional, like “I tried to get that job, but I STRUCK OUT.” Nobody will think that you lashed out at your interviewer in physical violence, because everyone in America knows that “I struck out” is a figurative expression taken from baseball, and we all know the meaning of it. Sometimes you have to judge based on context: for example, somebody not quite so familiar with the phrase “I struck out” would still be able to guess what you mean by it just because you brought it up in connection with your unsuccessful attempt to get a job. Finally, sometimes your first clue that something should not be taken literally is that the literal meaning is something impossible, like when Jesus says “I am the true vine.” He simply is NOT a creeping plant with big leaves, so he MUST mean something else!
Here’s an example from real life. My brother and I met with our families at the big aquarium in Chicago for a day of fun. After some six hours or so of moving from display to display, eating lunch, watching the dolphin show, etc., my brother turned to me and said, “Well, I’m a pumpkin.” Here’s what happened in my mind in less than two flicks of a bat’s eyelash: first, that statement failed the possibility test immediately and thoroughly. My brother is NOT a pumpkin, so I was sure that he did not mean that statement to be taken literally. I racked my memory for something about pumpkins that would fit the context, and bingo! Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin when it was time to go! My brother’s word “pumpkin” signified a large orange vegetable, but that large orange vegetable was itself a sign of something that needs to go home. He meant that he needed to go home. So you see the factors of possibility and context at play there. Over time I have heard other people use the same phrase, and eventually I realized that it is a common phrase for people to use in that situation: had I been more hip, I would have understood my brother’s figurative statement immediately just by knowing its conventional meaning—that’s the convention factor coming in.
The tricky part is the possibility factor. What you think is possible is not always what someone else thinks is possible. We all agree that my brother cannot be a pumpkin, but what if he had turned to me and said, “I’m an alcoholic”? Maybe I think that’s not possible, but maybe I’m just fooling myself because I don’t want to face the truth. If I don’t want to face up to the possibility that my brother is an alcoholic, then I could use a figurative interpretation of his statement as an escape hatch. On the other hand, if he isn’t an alcoholic, then a literal interpretation would be a big insult to him. It takes prudence and sensitivity to context to navigate the situation, but the goal is clearly to interpret the statement the way that he meant it—the goal is not just to take it literally no matter what. [By the way, my brother has no problems with alcohol. I just took that as an example of something somebody could say.]
OK, let’s look at the particular passage you were asking about, John 14:12-13: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” That last statement about “Whatever you ask in my name” is obviously limited in some ways: for example, you could not ask that only your own prayers and nobody else’s be answered—God would not do THAT for you, because that would contradict the promise itself! And obviously God will not give you anything that you want for wicked purposes, because then the Father would not be “glorified in the Son.” So there are limits. The two key questions about this promise are 1) what are the limits and 2) why does Jesus make a statement that sounds unlimited (“Whatever”) when in fact there are limits? I’m not too worried about the answer to question #1, because the passage itself does not spell out clearly what the limits are. Opinions could be different. But I think I can answer question #2: Jesus uses a word like “whatever” because there is NO LIMIT on the SIZE of what God will give. You don’t need to worry about budget limits or lack of resources or power. It’s like when the company president hands you the company credit card and says, “OK, get the job done and buy whatever you need—you want it, you got it.” He obviously doesn’t mean that you can buy anything your heart desires, and so there are actually limits, but no purchase is too great for getting this job done.
In particular, Jesus specifies that the size of the miracles he worked during his own earthly ministry do not set a cap on what you can ask for. You don’t need to think to yourself, “Well gee, Jesus never moved a mountain, so I probably shouldn’t even think of praying for that.” Nope—sky’s the limit. Ask away.
If you look at the definitions I gave above, I think you would say that I am interpreting Jesus’ statement literally. I am just running with the conventional meaning of the words and taking what I get, but it seems to me that what he is literally saying is something limited in one respect and unlimited in another.
Here’s where the last part of your question comes in: “If the apostles did all these things in Acts, then why don't they happen today?” I should note from the outset that Jesus does not go into this kind of detail—how long, where, on what occasions, etc.—so at this point I am not interpreting his words anymore. I am speculating about his plans based on what has happened. First off, I would say that the Church needed more miracles right at first to get off the ground, but once the Church was going she needed fewer supernatural confirmations to convince people. She could point to things like the miracle of her own growth—from 120 disciples in the upper room at Pentecost to most of the known world within a couple of generations and without a single sword drawn. Once people were not in danger of being killed for becoming Christian, it was easier to persuade people to do it. For any number of reasons, miracles were more necessary early on than they were later. Secondly, I would say that miracles DO happen today, but they are almost impossible to verify if you aren’t personally on the scene. The Church requires a certain number of certified miracles before she will canonize a new saint, and she is canonizing them faster than ever now, so SOMETHING is going on out there. But it is generally very difficult to be certain about these things second-hand. You can examine evidence for miracles and decide for yourself about specific ones—I have a handful that convince me.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
All blogged down....
Classes have begun! All my courses are new this year, so every class preparation is a new preparation. I spend an entire day to prepare for two classes, and often more.
The bad news is, I have not been able to blog much lately.
The good news is, I have not seen Ray Moose or his ilk around campus. To tell the truth, there has not been much to blog about: I spend all my time reading good books and talking to intelligent faculty and students.
OK, I did read something by Nestorius recently. But he was not ignorant--he just couldn't distinguish between the individual and the instantiated nature, that's all.
The bad news is, I have not been able to blog much lately.
The good news is, I have not seen Ray Moose or his ilk around campus. To tell the truth, there has not been much to blog about: I spend all my time reading good books and talking to intelligent faculty and students.
OK, I did read something by Nestorius recently. But he was not ignorant--he just couldn't distinguish between the individual and the instantiated nature, that's all.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Ray Moose and the breakdown of the family
This is a bit old, but the Hound of Ulster brought my attention to one of the saddest pieces of ignorance I have seen in a long time. Here's the LINK.
The seeds of this debacle were sown back in the Moose-man's heyday, when he used to claim that "Ray" was short for his native-American name, "Rainbow Moose"--not that he was really native-American. It was an identity he adopted to accomplish certain goals. I think I may have mentioned before the hippy cult he led at the time.
Anyway, the results of Ray's experiments were less than happiness and flowers, although few caught up in the 60's Moose Movement would admit that today.
The seeds of this debacle were sown back in the Moose-man's heyday, when he used to claim that "Ray" was short for his native-American name, "Rainbow Moose"--not that he was really native-American. It was an identity he adopted to accomplish certain goals. I think I may have mentioned before the hippy cult he led at the time.
Anyway, the results of Ray's experiments were less than happiness and flowers, although few caught up in the 60's Moose Movement would admit that today.
Pounding it home with the grammar hammer
I cannot guarantee that today’s subject really has to do with Ray Moose. It’s not his style, really. But this particular bit of grammatical ignorance has bugged me more and more as time goes by, not least because it has taken absolutely everyone in. To my knowledge, I am the only person on the planet who understands this issue.
Take this sentence: “Hopefully we’ll see you at Christmas.” According to a consensus of all school marms and grammatical gurus, that sentence is incorrect. Because “hopefully” is an adverb, it should modify and adjective or a verb; there’s no adjective here, so it has to modify the verb; but the sentence does not really mean that we will see you at Christmas in a hopeful manner. Quod absurdum est. Therefore the sentence is ungrammatical.
That, at least, is what everyone says but me. Here is the truth of the matter: in that example, “hopefully” modifies neither adjective nor verb but the very saying of the sentence. It means that “we’ll see you at Christmas” is said in a hopeful manner.
My, you should have heard the howls of laughter that greeted me the first time I propounded this simple insight. A den of grammatical jackals, it was!
There can be no question that English speakers could use a word that way if we wanted it to. The issue is whether we have a convention of using adverbs that way. Were there not some strange blockage in the brain caused by fluoride in the water that prevents people from applying logic to grammar, I think the example of “hopefully” above would prove the case all by itself: there is this convention because that is the obvious meaning of the sentence. Given the present situation (and thank goodness my house is on a well), the only remedy is to multiply such examples until doubt becomes not simply unreasonable but unpardonable.
Here goes example number one: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Raise your hand if you think the sentence means, “I don’t give a damn in a frank manner.” Anyone? Any takers? No?
OK, then consider the possibility that the sentence means that “I don’t give a damn” is spoken in a frank manner. And remember that this construction is exactly parallel to the example of “hopefully” given above.
Take this sentence: “Hopefully we’ll see you at Christmas.” According to a consensus of all school marms and grammatical gurus, that sentence is incorrect. Because “hopefully” is an adverb, it should modify and adjective or a verb; there’s no adjective here, so it has to modify the verb; but the sentence does not really mean that we will see you at Christmas in a hopeful manner. Quod absurdum est. Therefore the sentence is ungrammatical.
That, at least, is what everyone says but me. Here is the truth of the matter: in that example, “hopefully” modifies neither adjective nor verb but the very saying of the sentence. It means that “we’ll see you at Christmas” is said in a hopeful manner.
My, you should have heard the howls of laughter that greeted me the first time I propounded this simple insight. A den of grammatical jackals, it was!
There can be no question that English speakers could use a word that way if we wanted it to. The issue is whether we have a convention of using adverbs that way. Were there not some strange blockage in the brain caused by fluoride in the water that prevents people from applying logic to grammar, I think the example of “hopefully” above would prove the case all by itself: there is this convention because that is the obvious meaning of the sentence. Given the present situation (and thank goodness my house is on a well), the only remedy is to multiply such examples until doubt becomes not simply unreasonable but unpardonable.
Here goes example number one: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Raise your hand if you think the sentence means, “I don’t give a damn in a frank manner.” Anyone? Any takers? No?
OK, then consider the possibility that the sentence means that “I don’t give a damn” is spoken in a frank manner. And remember that this construction is exactly parallel to the example of “hopefully” given above.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
The Kirby Vacuum guy
A Moose operative appeared at my door this week, disguised as a Kirby Vacuum Cleaner salesman. Maybe it was a random visit, but maybe my blog has begun to touch a nerve. Anyway, I had never seen one of the “super-vacs” at work before, so my curiosity led me unwittingly to admit the agent into my house.
What followed was outRaygous. He buzzed his machine over my couch cushions and showed me the resulting crud on a special display filter in the Kirby vac. “Would you sit on this?”, he asked, brandishing the filthy filter. No, of course not, I said. He pointed dramatically to the couch: “Sitting on that is the same thing!”
I pointed out to him that if it were really the same thing, then all that crud would come off onto my pants whenever I sat down or onto the floor whenever I shifted the cushions, and then the crud wouldn’t have been there for his machine to pick up.
He was undeterred. Whipping out yet another of the 141 attachments that come with the Kirby, he vacuumed off my ceiling fan and showed me the crud on his special display filter. “Do you ever run that fan?”, he asked. Yes, of course I do, I said. He waved a finger ominously in the air: “Every time you turn the fan on, all that dust goes into the air and into your lungs!”
Of course, if all that dust went into the air every time I turn the fan on, then how would all that dust be there for his vacuum to pick up? But you can’t expect too much from one of Ray Moose’s men.
The one “demonstration” that really floored me was what he did on the carpets. He ran the Kirby vacuum cleaner over our recently-vacuumed floor for just two seconds and showed me a quarter-inch pile of crud on his display filter; he repeated this several times on different parts of the carpet. I’ve read about this kind of thing, but had never seen it done: the Kirby vacuum guy will come to your house, run your expensive vacuum over the floor, and then show you how the Kirby can still pull up crud that your machine missed. In fact, a vacuum salesman for some other brand did precisely that at my sister-in-law’s house and left her very upset about how badly she was cleaning her carpets.
Very convincing. What a super-vac! Almost he persuaded me to part with a great deal of money to buy the wondrous machine….
But after he left, I got curious. He had left a few of his display filters sitting around, so I jammed one into my own cheapie vacuum cleaner and ran it for a couple of seconds over the carpet that he had shampooed with his Kirby. I looked at the filter and—by golly, a quarter-inch pile of crud! I tried it again on the exact same place on the carpet and—same results!
In fact, you can take any vacuum cleaner and perform the same “demonstration”. Let your friend vacuum her floor with her machine, then take yours and show her that your machine can pick up all this crud that hers left behind! Just don’t tell her that hers can also pick up crud that yours leaves behind. As long as she doesn’t think to try the experiment in reverse, you might can sell her your fifty-dollar cheapie-vac for the “bargain” price of $500.
You see, carpets are just so gross that they always have piles of crud under them. Even if your friend has a wonder-vac, it will leave piles of crud in the carpet because that’s the way carpets are. The real explanation of the Kirby demonstration is not that Kirbys are so great, but that carpets are so bad.
I wonder if the Kirby man himself knows that his display is bogus.
Probably not. After all, he’s a disciple of Ray Moose. I almost hope he comes back….
What followed was outRaygous. He buzzed his machine over my couch cushions and showed me the resulting crud on a special display filter in the Kirby vac. “Would you sit on this?”, he asked, brandishing the filthy filter. No, of course not, I said. He pointed dramatically to the couch: “Sitting on that is the same thing!”
I pointed out to him that if it were really the same thing, then all that crud would come off onto my pants whenever I sat down or onto the floor whenever I shifted the cushions, and then the crud wouldn’t have been there for his machine to pick up.
He was undeterred. Whipping out yet another of the 141 attachments that come with the Kirby, he vacuumed off my ceiling fan and showed me the crud on his special display filter. “Do you ever run that fan?”, he asked. Yes, of course I do, I said. He waved a finger ominously in the air: “Every time you turn the fan on, all that dust goes into the air and into your lungs!”
Of course, if all that dust went into the air every time I turn the fan on, then how would all that dust be there for his vacuum to pick up? But you can’t expect too much from one of Ray Moose’s men.
The one “demonstration” that really floored me was what he did on the carpets. He ran the Kirby vacuum cleaner over our recently-vacuumed floor for just two seconds and showed me a quarter-inch pile of crud on his display filter; he repeated this several times on different parts of the carpet. I’ve read about this kind of thing, but had never seen it done: the Kirby vacuum guy will come to your house, run your expensive vacuum over the floor, and then show you how the Kirby can still pull up crud that your machine missed. In fact, a vacuum salesman for some other brand did precisely that at my sister-in-law’s house and left her very upset about how badly she was cleaning her carpets.
Very convincing. What a super-vac! Almost he persuaded me to part with a great deal of money to buy the wondrous machine….
But after he left, I got curious. He had left a few of his display filters sitting around, so I jammed one into my own cheapie vacuum cleaner and ran it for a couple of seconds over the carpet that he had shampooed with his Kirby. I looked at the filter and—by golly, a quarter-inch pile of crud! I tried it again on the exact same place on the carpet and—same results!
In fact, you can take any vacuum cleaner and perform the same “demonstration”. Let your friend vacuum her floor with her machine, then take yours and show her that your machine can pick up all this crud that hers left behind! Just don’t tell her that hers can also pick up crud that yours leaves behind. As long as she doesn’t think to try the experiment in reverse, you might can sell her your fifty-dollar cheapie-vac for the “bargain” price of $500.
You see, carpets are just so gross that they always have piles of crud under them. Even if your friend has a wonder-vac, it will leave piles of crud in the carpet because that’s the way carpets are. The real explanation of the Kirby demonstration is not that Kirbys are so great, but that carpets are so bad.
I wonder if the Kirby man himself knows that his display is bogus.
Probably not. After all, he’s a disciple of Ray Moose. I almost hope he comes back….
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
The Bible According to Ray, part 3
I must apologize for taking so long about this, but I have hesitated before a difficulty. The next words in Ray’s theorem, “but not in matters of science or history”, are ambiguous: they can mean either (a) something stupid or (b) something bad. Should I be charitable and present only the stupid meaning? Or should I be thorough and raise the specter of the evil?
After due consideration, I think it would be confusing to my reader if I did not comment on every possible meaning, and confusion is always in favor of the Moose.
The Bad Meaning. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. If you take “in matters of science and history” as referring to passages in Scripture that talk about science and history—that’s taking the words “materially” for those of you who speak Aristotle—then we can put this little syllogism together:
So, for example, Jesus’ resurrection is not a “historical” event, and that the world has not been around for an infinite length of time is not in any way related to “science”.
To put it more generally, Scripture is inerrant about the “squishy” subjects like our interior convictions or how we should behave, but not inerrant about the “hard” subjects like history or science. If it is subject to objective verification, then it is not one of the things that Scripture has authority about.
Some folks do think this way. Some are intimidated by the idea that modern discoveries in history or science could disprove the Catholic faith, and find it more comfortable to separate the faith out into its own little, inaccessible box. Others think that all religions arise from an interior human impulse and have no objective truth about them. Either way, it’s handy to bifurcate the brain into the “religious” side and the “factual” side.
Hard to argue with the bad folks. Once a man has performed this intellectual lobotomy on himself, there is not much to say beyond “please” and “thank you”.
The Stupid Meaning. If you take the words “in matters of science and history” as referring not to particular passages but to the reason why Scripture is or isn’t inerrant—taking the words “formally” for you Aristotle buffs—then there is no need to dial 134. [That’s the number for the Inquisition, by the way, 134—only call if there is a true emergency.]
In other words, it may well be that Scripture speaks authoritatively about something historical, but the reason Scripture has authority in that case is because the historical event in question is related to faith. Scripture does not speak authoritatively about historical events considered as historical events, but only insofar as they are matters of faith.
Confused? Perfect.
The bottom line is that we are right back at the absurdity I talked about in Part I. If you want to know whether we should believe what Scripture says about historical event X, then you need to have a list of all the things we are supposed to believe; you check the list, and if historical event X is on that list then you should believe Scripture. In other words, you have to know whether you should believe it in order to find out whether you should believe it.
As vicious as this circle may be, the folks who believe it are not usually vicious. They’re more like the wimpy guy in a bad neighborhood who keeps a pit bull in the yard because he’s scared of criminals. Otherwise nice people buy into this nasty circle not because they are nasty but because they are scared.
Big, bad scientists or even meaner historians could come along at any second and disprove something Scripture says! No need to worry: if somebody proves that X is not historical, we can just delete that from our list of “matters of faith” and then we’re not committed to saying that Scripture is right about it. After all, no scientist or historian can say what should be on our list of things to believe. What would they appeal to?
Scripture?
Other folks are scared in a better way, but still scared. They see that there are some BIG problems with saying that Scripture is completely inerrant, and they are afraid that if they say Scripture is inerrant then people will be scandalized by the problems and go away. They don’t want to be unfaithful to the Church or a scandal to the faithful, so they get as close as they can to affirming the inerrancy of Scripture without either compromising their intellectual integrity or causing scandal to others.
I have a lotta lotta sympathy for this last group. They are genuinely good people. This is just the Ignoramus Blog and no place for hashing out the subtle difficulties they see in Scripture, but I hope this series of posts has at least shown that they should not buy into Ray Moose’s disastrous theorem.
The Moose solution is to take all authority away from Scripture. To say that Scripture is authoritative in a given place, we have to have our list of “matters of faith”, but Scripture itself cannot tell us what to put on that list. It has no real authority, ultimately. And that is not what this last, good group of scholars wants.
Please, gang—I know I haven’t offered a fix for all your problems, but I beg you, for the sake of everything you are really trying to achieve:
After due consideration, I think it would be confusing to my reader if I did not comment on every possible meaning, and confusion is always in favor of the Moose.
The Bad Meaning. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. If you take “in matters of science and history” as referring to passages in Scripture that talk about science and history—that’s taking the words “materially” for those of you who speak Aristotle—then we can put this little syllogism together:
Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith (and morals);In other words, let’s say that all the matters of faith are in this room. This is the room of things where Scripture is inerrant. All the matters of science and history are outside the room, out there where Scripture is not inerrant. Faith never has to do with science or history.
Scripture is not inerrant in matters of science and history;
Therefore, no matters of science or history are matters of faith.
So, for example, Jesus’ resurrection is not a “historical” event, and that the world has not been around for an infinite length of time is not in any way related to “science”.
To put it more generally, Scripture is inerrant about the “squishy” subjects like our interior convictions or how we should behave, but not inerrant about the “hard” subjects like history or science. If it is subject to objective verification, then it is not one of the things that Scripture has authority about.
Some folks do think this way. Some are intimidated by the idea that modern discoveries in history or science could disprove the Catholic faith, and find it more comfortable to separate the faith out into its own little, inaccessible box. Others think that all religions arise from an interior human impulse and have no objective truth about them. Either way, it’s handy to bifurcate the brain into the “religious” side and the “factual” side.
Hard to argue with the bad folks. Once a man has performed this intellectual lobotomy on himself, there is not much to say beyond “please” and “thank you”.
The Stupid Meaning. If you take the words “in matters of science and history” as referring not to particular passages but to the reason why Scripture is or isn’t inerrant—taking the words “formally” for you Aristotle buffs—then there is no need to dial 134. [That’s the number for the Inquisition, by the way, 134—only call if there is a true emergency.]
In other words, it may well be that Scripture speaks authoritatively about something historical, but the reason Scripture has authority in that case is because the historical event in question is related to faith. Scripture does not speak authoritatively about historical events considered as historical events, but only insofar as they are matters of faith.
Confused? Perfect.
The bottom line is that we are right back at the absurdity I talked about in Part I. If you want to know whether we should believe what Scripture says about historical event X, then you need to have a list of all the things we are supposed to believe; you check the list, and if historical event X is on that list then you should believe Scripture. In other words, you have to know whether you should believe it in order to find out whether you should believe it.
As vicious as this circle may be, the folks who believe it are not usually vicious. They’re more like the wimpy guy in a bad neighborhood who keeps a pit bull in the yard because he’s scared of criminals. Otherwise nice people buy into this nasty circle not because they are nasty but because they are scared.
Big, bad scientists or even meaner historians could come along at any second and disprove something Scripture says! No need to worry: if somebody proves that X is not historical, we can just delete that from our list of “matters of faith” and then we’re not committed to saying that Scripture is right about it. After all, no scientist or historian can say what should be on our list of things to believe. What would they appeal to?
Scripture?
Other folks are scared in a better way, but still scared. They see that there are some BIG problems with saying that Scripture is completely inerrant, and they are afraid that if they say Scripture is inerrant then people will be scandalized by the problems and go away. They don’t want to be unfaithful to the Church or a scandal to the faithful, so they get as close as they can to affirming the inerrancy of Scripture without either compromising their intellectual integrity or causing scandal to others.
I have a lotta lotta sympathy for this last group. They are genuinely good people. This is just the Ignoramus Blog and no place for hashing out the subtle difficulties they see in Scripture, but I hope this series of posts has at least shown that they should not buy into Ray Moose’s disastrous theorem.
The Moose solution is to take all authority away from Scripture. To say that Scripture is authoritative in a given place, we have to have our list of “matters of faith”, but Scripture itself cannot tell us what to put on that list. It has no real authority, ultimately. And that is not what this last, good group of scholars wants.
Please, gang—I know I haven’t offered a fix for all your problems, but I beg you, for the sake of everything you are really trying to achieve:
IGNORE RAY MOOSE!
Thursday, July 20, 2006
The Bible According to Ray, part 2
After a great deal of thought, I finally conceded that Ray might be onto something when he says that Scripture is inerrant in faith AND morals.
At first I wanted to say that the distinction is absurd. We saw in the last post that every area Scripture is inerrant is ipso facto talking about a matter of faith, so how can Ray separate out another area of biblical inerrancy? If we take “morals” to mean “what we must believe about morality”, which is a subheading of “what we must believe”, which is the same thing as the area called “faith”, then Ray’s distinction is just nonsense.
But then I saw a way out. It could be that “faith” refers to what we must believe, while “morals” refers to what we must do. Hang with me, here. It could be that “morals” does not refer to Scripture saying “the moral thing to do is X” but to Scripture saying “Do X.” The first case would be something we must believe, while the second case would be something we must do, and Scripture could have authority with regard to both.
Of course, we do tend to associate the word “inerrant” with propositions that are either true or false. If someone said something erroneous, our first thought is that he said something false; if someone is said to be inerrant, our first thought is that he says things that are true. And if “Scripture is inerrant” refers only to statements that are true or false, then that kinda slams the door on my “way out”.
Two things incline me to believe that my “way out” is the right way to go. First, the idea of “error” is broad enough to include bad advice. If someone says “the moral thing to do is X” when the moral thing to do is not-X, we can say that he “erred” in the broader sense of going in the wrong direction. He “steered me wrong”, as the saying goes.
Second, Ray Moose just isn’t smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time. It would take a genius. He’s bound to be right once in a while. And as we’ll see in the upcoming posts, I just can’t find anywhere else where he even might be right on this issue, so I figure this must be it!
At first I wanted to say that the distinction is absurd. We saw in the last post that every area Scripture is inerrant is ipso facto talking about a matter of faith, so how can Ray separate out another area of biblical inerrancy? If we take “morals” to mean “what we must believe about morality”, which is a subheading of “what we must believe”, which is the same thing as the area called “faith”, then Ray’s distinction is just nonsense.
But then I saw a way out. It could be that “faith” refers to what we must believe, while “morals” refers to what we must do. Hang with me, here. It could be that “morals” does not refer to Scripture saying “the moral thing to do is X” but to Scripture saying “Do X.” The first case would be something we must believe, while the second case would be something we must do, and Scripture could have authority with regard to both.
Of course, we do tend to associate the word “inerrant” with propositions that are either true or false. If someone said something erroneous, our first thought is that he said something false; if someone is said to be inerrant, our first thought is that he says things that are true. And if “Scripture is inerrant” refers only to statements that are true or false, then that kinda slams the door on my “way out”.
Two things incline me to believe that my “way out” is the right way to go. First, the idea of “error” is broad enough to include bad advice. If someone says “the moral thing to do is X” when the moral thing to do is not-X, we can say that he “erred” in the broader sense of going in the wrong direction. He “steered me wrong”, as the saying goes.
Second, Ray Moose just isn’t smart enough to be wrong 100% of the time. It would take a genius. He’s bound to be right once in a while. And as we’ll see in the upcoming posts, I just can’t find anywhere else where he even might be right on this issue, so I figure this must be it!
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
The Bible According to Ray
The most popular position on the authority of Scripture is that Scripture has no authority at all. It is a human document like other human documents, and like other human documents it is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.
The second-most popular position on the authority of Scripture is that Scripture is one-hundred-percent authoritative. Everything that Scripture says must be believed: it is a matter of faith.
Both of these positions are self-consistent, rational positions that a thoughtful person can hold. They can’t both be true, but they are both logical.
However, the third-most popular position about the authority of Scripture emerges from the offices of Ray Moose and is disseminated through his accomplices, both the knowing ones and the unknowing. This third position enjoys neither the proud rationality of the first nor the thoroughgoing consistency of the second, but muddles along in typical Moose fashion. Here it is:
That, my friend, is the hallmark of Ray’s work. He always manages to sound moderate so that his opponents will always sound extreme. Only when you unpack the meaning of his words do you realize that he has sacrificed real intelligibility for apparent moderation.
So let’s look at this Moosian theory piece by piece, starting with the phrase, “Scripture is inerrant.” When we say that Scripture is “inerrant”, we do not mean that we have checked all through it and found no mistakes; in that sense, lots of people write “inerrant” texts, and lots of school-children turn back “inerrant” quizzes. No, what we mean is that Scripture has authority so that we have to believe what it says. The second-most popular position mentioned above is that Scripture is entirely inerrant, meaning that it is all authoritative: we have to believe by faith everything that Scripture says.
The Moosian theory tries to limit Scripture’s clout by saying that it has authority when it speaks about some things but not when it speaks about others. This is all very well: my geography teacher has a kind of authority when he speaks about geography but not when he speaks about mathematics. Perhaps Scripture has authority when it speaks about politics but not when it speaks about astronomy.
But let’s look closely at the first phrase Ray uses to limit Scripture’s authority: “Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith....” In this context, “matter” means the subject matter, i.e., what the text is about. So “matters of faith” means subjects that have to do with what we believe by faith.
Now we can put together the meaning of “Scripture is inerrant” with the meaning of “in matters of faith.” Here it goes:
To find out whether a biblical statement is one of the things we must believe you have to find out whether it is talking about the things we must believe; to find out whether it is talking about the things we must believe you have to know all the things we must believe and check to see if this biblical statement is talking about those things; to know all the things we must believe you have to know whether this biblical statement is one of the things we must believe!
The Moosian theory on Scripture is like the man who says, “You can always know whether I am telling the truth, and here’s how: I always tell the truth when I’m talking about one of the subjects about which I tell the truth.” How helpful is that?
Confused? Let’s look at it from another angle. Suppose there is a statement in Scripture that we have to believe by faith. The very fact that we have to believe this statement by faith tells you that it’s talking about a subject that has to do with what we believe by faith. So any statement in Scripture that we have to believe by faith is a statement relating to matters of faith. If Ray tells us that Scripture has authority in matters of faith, he hasn’t told us a darn thing.
Coming up next: Ray Moose makes a VALID distinction!
The second-most popular position on the authority of Scripture is that Scripture is one-hundred-percent authoritative. Everything that Scripture says must be believed: it is a matter of faith.
Both of these positions are self-consistent, rational positions that a thoughtful person can hold. They can’t both be true, but they are both logical.
However, the third-most popular position about the authority of Scripture emerges from the offices of Ray Moose and is disseminated through his accomplices, both the knowing ones and the unknowing. This third position enjoys neither the proud rationality of the first nor the thoroughgoing consistency of the second, but muddles along in typical Moose fashion. Here it is:
Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith and moral, but not in science or history.Now that doesn’t sound so unreasonable, you say—it actually has a rather moderate ring to it.
That, my friend, is the hallmark of Ray’s work. He always manages to sound moderate so that his opponents will always sound extreme. Only when you unpack the meaning of his words do you realize that he has sacrificed real intelligibility for apparent moderation.
So let’s look at this Moosian theory piece by piece, starting with the phrase, “Scripture is inerrant.” When we say that Scripture is “inerrant”, we do not mean that we have checked all through it and found no mistakes; in that sense, lots of people write “inerrant” texts, and lots of school-children turn back “inerrant” quizzes. No, what we mean is that Scripture has authority so that we have to believe what it says. The second-most popular position mentioned above is that Scripture is entirely inerrant, meaning that it is all authoritative: we have to believe by faith everything that Scripture says.
The Moosian theory tries to limit Scripture’s clout by saying that it has authority when it speaks about some things but not when it speaks about others. This is all very well: my geography teacher has a kind of authority when he speaks about geography but not when he speaks about mathematics. Perhaps Scripture has authority when it speaks about politics but not when it speaks about astronomy.
But let’s look closely at the first phrase Ray uses to limit Scripture’s authority: “Scripture is inerrant in matters of faith....” In this context, “matter” means the subject matter, i.e., what the text is about. So “matters of faith” means subjects that have to do with what we believe by faith.
Now we can put together the meaning of “Scripture is inerrant” with the meaning of “in matters of faith.” Here it goes:
What Scripture says must be believed by faith when it talks about subjects that have to do with what we believe by faith.WARNING: DO NOT READ THE PRECEDING SENTENCE TOO MANY TIMES, OR YOU WILL GET DIZZY AND FALL DOWN. IT IS A CIRCLE—A VICIOUS ONE.
To find out whether a biblical statement is one of the things we must believe you have to find out whether it is talking about the things we must believe; to find out whether it is talking about the things we must believe you have to know all the things we must believe and check to see if this biblical statement is talking about those things; to know all the things we must believe you have to know whether this biblical statement is one of the things we must believe!
The Moosian theory on Scripture is like the man who says, “You can always know whether I am telling the truth, and here’s how: I always tell the truth when I’m talking about one of the subjects about which I tell the truth.” How helpful is that?
Confused? Let’s look at it from another angle. Suppose there is a statement in Scripture that we have to believe by faith. The very fact that we have to believe this statement by faith tells you that it’s talking about a subject that has to do with what we believe by faith. So any statement in Scripture that we have to believe by faith is a statement relating to matters of faith. If Ray tells us that Scripture has authority in matters of faith, he hasn’t told us a darn thing.
Coming up next: Ray Moose makes a VALID distinction!
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Moose Preserves
A lunchtime mystery: the label on this red glop says, “Strawberry Preserves”, but the small print claims, “No preservatives added.”
Come again?OK, Ray, here’s the scoop. Sugar is a preservative. Your little game is exposed, right here on the Ignoramus Blog.
SPANK!
Thursday, July 13, 2006
KIDNAPPED - Conclusion
By now, I fervently hope that my reader is convinced that Ray Moose is in fact behind the mind-bogglingly silly article on Aquinas’s “five ways”. After all, a magazine’s reputation is at stake: the “James Kidd” who penned that piece would make a fine associate editor for This Crock Magazine, but is an embarrassment for the good name of Catholic Answers.
But more than that, a man’s life is at stake. What has been done with the real James Kidd?
Who can say? Karl Keating, if you are reading this—for heaven’s sake, DO something!
KIDDNAPPED, part 4
There. The worst is done. We have reviewed all the silliest moments in Ray’s ridiculous satire on Thomas Aquinas, and have exposed them to—well, not to the brilliant light of truth exactly, but to the 40-watt bulb of common knowledge. The unpleasant work is over.
In this post, I want to highlight what is actually a legitimate question from Ray Moose:
A clue can be found in his little summa for real beginners, the Compendium of Theology. In the third chapter of that little book, he gives the same argument from motion that we know as the “first way”. It is not until chapter fifteen that he shows that “God” is not a species predicated of many individuals.
In other words, the “first way”—or any of the five ways—shows that “God” exists in the same way that archeological digs can show that “man” existed long ago. The archeological dig does not show us which man exists, or that only one man existed, but that “man”—the species “man”—existed. Similarly, the five ways demonstrate that “God” exists, but for all we know “God” could be the name of a species: there could be any number of individual “Gods” within the species “God”.
One of my professors at the ITI used to emphasize this point by refusing to capitalize “god” in his translation of the five ways. The question St. Thomas asks in the Summa, Question 1, Article 3 is “Does god exist?”; only later do we find out that God alone is god, and there can be no other.
In point of fact, this is true of every argument for God’s existence. Whether it be the ontological argument or the cosmological argument, the appeal to reason or the appeal to beauty, the argument from morality or the argument from history—all of them conclude initially to the existence of the divine. But atheism is never just the rejection of the God of Jacob, but the rejection of any divine element in the cosmos. If there is even a small deity, even a god of the meadow, atheism fails.
Perhaps for cultural reasons, people who lose their faith in the God of Jacob rarely lapse into polytheism: they “convert” to atheism. Conversely, people who forsake atheism rarely take to worshipping a local deity: most leap over the logical hurdles to embrace the God of Christianity.
So for apologetical purposes, the fact that arguments for God’s existence conclude only to the existence of “god” is not a problem. It is not a problem with Descartes’ argument (which has problems of its own), and it is not a problem with Aquinas’s arguments.
OK, credit where credit is due: good question Ray—even though I know you didn’t mean to provoke an inquiry into truth!
In this post, I want to highlight what is actually a legitimate question from Ray Moose:
But the problem is with Thomas’s next statement: "We call this being God." As we will see with the rest of the five ways, this is an enormous logical leap. While it is correct that the A-B-C string of movers proves that there must be a First Mover, how do we know that it is identical to the First Mover of X-Y-Z? Couldn’t there be as many First Movers as there are lines of movers? How do we know that there is only one Unmoved Mover? And even if there is only one, how do we know that it still exists or that it is to be identified as God? The answers to these questions are not found in the first way itself.I remember this question coming up the first time I read Aquinas. The solution depends on having some experience with the way Aquinas proceeds. He states his question in very precise terms, and then answers only the question he has stated, leaving any further points one might want to know about for a later article. So the question to ask is, What question does St. Thomas actually answer in the Summa Theologica, Question 1, Article 3?
A clue can be found in his little summa for real beginners, the Compendium of Theology. In the third chapter of that little book, he gives the same argument from motion that we know as the “first way”. It is not until chapter fifteen that he shows that “God” is not a species predicated of many individuals.
In other words, the “first way”—or any of the five ways—shows that “God” exists in the same way that archeological digs can show that “man” existed long ago. The archeological dig does not show us which man exists, or that only one man existed, but that “man”—the species “man”—existed. Similarly, the five ways demonstrate that “God” exists, but for all we know “God” could be the name of a species: there could be any number of individual “Gods” within the species “God”.
One of my professors at the ITI used to emphasize this point by refusing to capitalize “god” in his translation of the five ways. The question St. Thomas asks in the Summa, Question 1, Article 3 is “Does god exist?”; only later do we find out that God alone is god, and there can be no other.
In point of fact, this is true of every argument for God’s existence. Whether it be the ontological argument or the cosmological argument, the appeal to reason or the appeal to beauty, the argument from morality or the argument from history—all of them conclude initially to the existence of the divine. But atheism is never just the rejection of the God of Jacob, but the rejection of any divine element in the cosmos. If there is even a small deity, even a god of the meadow, atheism fails.
Perhaps for cultural reasons, people who lose their faith in the God of Jacob rarely lapse into polytheism: they “convert” to atheism. Conversely, people who forsake atheism rarely take to worshipping a local deity: most leap over the logical hurdles to embrace the God of Christianity.
So for apologetical purposes, the fact that arguments for God’s existence conclude only to the existence of “god” is not a problem. It is not a problem with Descartes’ argument (which has problems of its own), and it is not a problem with Aquinas’s arguments.
OK, credit where credit is due: good question Ray—even though I know you didn’t mean to provoke an inquiry into truth!
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
KIDDNAPPED: an excursus to parts 2 and 3
As we have seen, the Moose claims that Aquinas's five ways would not work as demonstrations because they all begin from sense experience. More than that, he claims that Aquinas himself shared the skepticism of modern philosophy with regard to sense experience, and so did not even intend the five ways to be taken as demonstrations. Ignorant though I am, and unable to reckon with the deep things of philosophy, even I can see through that claim for the anachronistic--um, anachronism that it is.
In this post I want to develop an aside to this line of thought. It occurs to me that Ray's skepticism about the senses is not only historically wrong as applied to Aquinas, but more or less irrelevant.
Suppose we assume that Ray Moose is right, and that Descartes's evil deceiver could be tricking us into believing that we are sensing things when in fact we are not. For the purposes of argument, let's assume that the evil deceiver is tricking us, all the time. Everything that I think is real life is in fact a dream or mirage conjured up by this deceiver. What happens if we re-boot the five ways on this operating system?
The 1st Way. Strange though it may sound, my dreams do have some reality about them: they are real dreams, at least. And the images in my dreams do move. An image of a bird that is presented as over there is then presented as over here, and certain actions in my dream are presented as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. In other words, my dream has certain potentialities that are gradually realized as actualities: the dream is potentially this way, and then later is actually this way.
Well, folks, that is motion in the Aristotelian sense of the word. And the existence of motion in this sense is all the premise that Aquinas needs to get the first way off the ground!
The 2nd Way. On the supposition of the evil deciever--let's just call him the ED--the ED causes certain things to happen in my mind, and then these things in my mind cause certain reactions in me. By golly, we have a chain of efficient causes! And that's all the premise Aquinas needs to get the second way going.
The 3rd Way. My dreams are very ephemeral things. Sometimes I have an image of one thing, sometimes of another, and there is no necessity that any one image will continue to have even that shadowy sort of being that mental images have. The images in my mind are contingent beings.
How about that? I know that contingent beings exist, and that is the starting point for the third way! We're really on a roll here, despite ED's best efforts.
The 4th Way. My dreams have only the being that mental beings have, which is very slight indeed. I, on the other hand, am self-evidently a substance--that which "stands under" (substare) accidents like mental beings. So I have more goodness and nobility than do my dreams.
On the other hand, ED is obviously a higher and more powerful creature than I am, because he is able to create an entire virtual world for me to enjoy (or suffer) and can even place that world into my mind. I can't know anything at all outside my mind! So despite his proclivity for deceiving disembodied minds like me, Ed's nature is really nobler than mine, and thus has more goodness as a nature.
Bingo! We have a gradation of goodness and nobility, the very premise we needed to rev up the fourth way.
The 5th Way. The fifth way is the one that Ed's tricks really do comprimise. Aquinas's argument demands that we have real knowledge of real things that really act for real ends. But by an odd coincidence, we don't need the fifth way because we have already assumed its conclusion as true! Because we assumed that Ed is working me over, we already know that the things I "perceive" in the "world" are directed by an intelligent agent who caused them. It may sound odd to conclude that Ed is that which "all call God", but I think Aquinas would actually be comfortable with that conclusion at this stage of the game.
What do I mean by "this stage of the game"? More on that in the next post.
And the conclusion is.... Ray Moose and his buddy Ed can throw the works at us, and Thomas Aquinas's five ways are affected not at all. Every one of them concludes--unless you count the fifth way, in which case Ed supplies the truth of the conclusion for us.
In other words, Ray Moose's objection about starting from sense perception is not only historically ignorant, but just--well, irrelevant.
And the best thing to do with the irrelevant is: IGNORE IT. Maybe it will go away.
In this post I want to develop an aside to this line of thought. It occurs to me that Ray's skepticism about the senses is not only historically wrong as applied to Aquinas, but more or less irrelevant.
Suppose we assume that Ray Moose is right, and that Descartes's evil deceiver could be tricking us into believing that we are sensing things when in fact we are not. For the purposes of argument, let's assume that the evil deceiver is tricking us, all the time. Everything that I think is real life is in fact a dream or mirage conjured up by this deceiver. What happens if we re-boot the five ways on this operating system?
The 1st Way. Strange though it may sound, my dreams do have some reality about them: they are real dreams, at least. And the images in my dreams do move. An image of a bird that is presented as over there is then presented as over here, and certain actions in my dream are presented as having a beginning, a middle, and an end. In other words, my dream has certain potentialities that are gradually realized as actualities: the dream is potentially this way, and then later is actually this way.
Well, folks, that is motion in the Aristotelian sense of the word. And the existence of motion in this sense is all the premise that Aquinas needs to get the first way off the ground!
The 2nd Way. On the supposition of the evil deciever--let's just call him the ED--the ED causes certain things to happen in my mind, and then these things in my mind cause certain reactions in me. By golly, we have a chain of efficient causes! And that's all the premise Aquinas needs to get the second way going.
The 3rd Way. My dreams are very ephemeral things. Sometimes I have an image of one thing, sometimes of another, and there is no necessity that any one image will continue to have even that shadowy sort of being that mental images have. The images in my mind are contingent beings.
How about that? I know that contingent beings exist, and that is the starting point for the third way! We're really on a roll here, despite ED's best efforts.
The 4th Way. My dreams have only the being that mental beings have, which is very slight indeed. I, on the other hand, am self-evidently a substance--that which "stands under" (substare) accidents like mental beings. So I have more goodness and nobility than do my dreams.
On the other hand, ED is obviously a higher and more powerful creature than I am, because he is able to create an entire virtual world for me to enjoy (or suffer) and can even place that world into my mind. I can't know anything at all outside my mind! So despite his proclivity for deceiving disembodied minds like me, Ed's nature is really nobler than mine, and thus has more goodness as a nature.
Bingo! We have a gradation of goodness and nobility, the very premise we needed to rev up the fourth way.
The 5th Way. The fifth way is the one that Ed's tricks really do comprimise. Aquinas's argument demands that we have real knowledge of real things that really act for real ends. But by an odd coincidence, we don't need the fifth way because we have already assumed its conclusion as true! Because we assumed that Ed is working me over, we already know that the things I "perceive" in the "world" are directed by an intelligent agent who caused them. It may sound odd to conclude that Ed is that which "all call God", but I think Aquinas would actually be comfortable with that conclusion at this stage of the game.
What do I mean by "this stage of the game"? More on that in the next post.
And the conclusion is.... Ray Moose and his buddy Ed can throw the works at us, and Thomas Aquinas's five ways are affected not at all. Every one of them concludes--unless you count the fifth way, in which case Ed supplies the truth of the conclusion for us.
In other words, Ray Moose's objection about starting from sense perception is not only historically ignorant, but just--well, irrelevant.
And the best thing to do with the irrelevant is: IGNORE IT. Maybe it will go away.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
KIDDNAPPED, part 3
In my last post I talked about the silliest moment in Ray’s whole piece, but it is so closely tied to the second silliest moment that I really should talk about that too. At the end of the article, having argued that Aquinas did not intend his five ways to be demonstrations, Ray concludes:
Fine, you may say, but surely Thomas has an actual proof of God somewhere. Surely he didn’t leave us defenseless against the atheists and agnostics of the world. Surely he had something to say to the nonbelievers of his own day.
Well, yes and no. Thomas did not write any short treatise on the existence of God that one could whip out of one’s pocket when confronted by an atheist. Despite his voluminous writing, none of it is meant to stand alone. Nonetheless, we can piece together and paraphrase some of his other arguments in various writings to come up with a solid, irrefutable proof that not only does God exist, but he cannot not exist. That is, saying that God does not exist is a contradiction in terms. But that’s the subject of another article.
According to Ray Moose, when we “piece together and paraphrase” things Thomas says here and there, we come up with a solid proof that “not only does God exist, but he cannot not exist” because “saying that God does not exist is a contradiction in terms.” This argument, he maintains, is one that does not start from our experience of the world outside our minds, but from abstract concepts.
This kind of argument for God’s existence is called the “ontological argument”, while the argument that begins from what we sense in the world is called the “cosmological argument”. As you can see by clicking the link I just gave, Thomas Aquinas is listed among those who oppose the ontological argument.
It is odd that Ray does not mention this, because Aquinas deals with the kind of ontological argument Ray suggests just before he gives his own demonstrations for God’s existence, in Question 1, Article 1. In fact, he considers several arguments that do not begin from sense experience but from abstract ideas and conclude that “saying that God does not exist is a contradiction in terms.” The most famous of Aquinas’s predecessors to make this argument was St. Anselm of Laon, but others had come up with similar approaches. If I had to guess, I would say that Ray Moose is thinking of the argument for God’s existence given by Descartes in the Meditations, but the principle Aquinas uses to respond to St. Anselm would apply just as well to Descartes.
So we can’t scrap together the argument Ray wants from Thomas Aquinas’s writings; in fact, he is famous for opposing that kind of argument; in fact, he opposes it in the same Question of the Summa that Ray discusses in his article. It’s just—well, ignorant!
KIDDNAPPED, part 2
How even to begin? How to approach such an admirable depth of ignorance, such a blinding Ray of intellectual darkness? But I have promised my readers, so in this post I will present the silliest moment in the Moose’s recent article:
Finally, the five ways—not proofs—take as a starting point the validity of our sense perception, which is enough to disqualify them as proofs per se. We believe the information we obtain by means of our five senses is accurate, despite occasional mistakes (mirages, dreams, etc.). But while we usually have no good reason to doubt the accuracy of our senses, at the end of the day we accept the information on faith. There is no way to prove beyond all possible doubt that our senses are true; there’s always the logical possibility that Descartes’s "evil deceiver" is making you think you’re reading this article right now when in fact you are not. The only true proofs we do have—for instance, that vertical angles are congruent—are mathematical ones that hold true even if our senses are giving us false information. Thus, any argument that assumes the validity of sense perception (including the five ways) is conditional upon the accuracy of our senses.
Thus, it seems that Aquinas did not intend the five ways to be logical, mathematical demonstrations but arguments for something that we already accept.
Moose ick to my ears. It is very, VERY tempting to get into the whole can-we-trust-our-senses debate, but I won’t do it. The question here is not whether we can trust our senses, but whether Thomas Aquinas believed that we could trust our senses. Nonetheless, I can’t help putting these two statements in parallel:
“There is no way to prove beyond all possible doubt that our senses are true; there’s always the logical possibility that Descartes’s 'evil deceiver' is making you think you’re reading this article right now when in fact you are not.”—Ray Moose “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”—Romans 1:20
OK, let’s review some history. Way back in the day, Plato taught that our knowledge of the world comes from ideas that are infused into us before we are born. His student Aristotle disagreed, and argued instead that all of our knowledge comes to us through our senses; before a man has sensed anything his mind is a “blank slate”, Aristotle said, a tabula rasa.
Now, ya can’t get very far in studying St. Thomas Aquinas without knowing that he is all over Aristotle—wrote commentaries on all his major works. So, for example, we find that Thomas will quote Aristotle on the whole tabula rasa thing. In fact, Thomas bought into Aristotle’s whole account of how we come to know things, including the notion that ALL of our knowledge comes to us through our SENSES: it’s right there in the Summa Theologica, and you can read about it in English HERE or in Latin HERE.
So to say that Aquinas couldn’t have meant the five ways as demonstrations because they start from sense knowledge is—well, ignorant! It’s typical Ray Moose, folks; the best thing to do is IGNORE HIM.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
KIDDNAPPED
The folks over at Catholic Answers are not ignorant. In fact, they specialize in a kind of direct, clear, facts-checked style of writing that is the bane of ignorance. I was hardly surprised, therefore, to find that Catholic Answers has come under attack by Ray Moose. What took me off guard was the bold insidiousness of the attack.
A recent issue of Catholic Answer's This Rock Magazine features an article supposedly by the associate editor, James Kidd. Kidd supposedly maintains that Thomas Aquinas did not intend his famous "five ways" as demonstrations of God's existence but as five arguments about or perspectives upon God's existence, and procedes to find fault with the arguments on various grounds such as that we might just all be dreaming instead living in the real world.
I hear my reader’s voice: "You've got to be Kidding." But I am not.James Kidd clearly did not write this. James Kidd is a very pleasant and intelligent man whom I never met once in a sushi bar in San Diego, a man whose firm conviction that sushi bars really exist in San Diego makes it impossible that he would pen the above-mentioned article. Are you sitting down? Cause this may come as a shock.
James has been kidnapped by Ray Moose. The whole article is a forgery.
The claim is outlandish, I know, but I can back it up by showing just how ignorant the article is, and therefore how impossible it would be for James Kidd to have written the thing. This will be the burden, not only of this post, but of several posts to come. For the present, I will focus on one particularly silly claim, namely that we can see that St. Thomas did not intend the five ways to be taken as true demonstrations because
Thomas never refers to the five arguments as "proofs" in the modern sense of the term. In the preceding article (ST 1:2:2), he asks "whether it can be demonstrated that God exists" (Utrum Deum esse sit demonstrabile). The word demonstrabile has a precise meaning in Latin as a logical, geometrical proof. Thomas then proceeds to argue that the existence of God can be established by this kind of proof. But in article 3, Thomas suddenly abandons the language of hard proof in favor of a softer term: "Deum esse quinque viis probari potest," usually translated "The existence of God can be proved in five ways." But, unlike the narrow meaning of demonstrabile, the word probari has a wider meaning that does not necessitate a rigorous, irrefutable proof. A more accurate translation would be "The existence of God can be argued for in five ways."Ray Moose—I refuse to call the author “James Kidd”—rarely states a flat falsehood; he prefers to say what is only partially true, and then capitalize on the part that isn’t. This is a case in point. Probare is a “wider” term than demonstrare, but it is not a “softer” term. There is no opposition here between “hard proof” and “soft argument”; in fact, every demonstrare is a probare, even if not every probare is a demonstrare. This is why an objector in Question 46, Article 2 of the Summa can say that demonstrative probari potest quod Deus sit causa effective mundi, “It can be demonstratively proven that God is the effective cause of the world.” You can probare something demonstrative.
OK, back to the question about God’s existence. Unknown to Ray, St. Thomas takes up several of the same arguments for God’s existence in another book, the Summa contra gentiles. In the last part of book 1, chapter 9, St. Thomas outlines what he will do in the following chapters, and there he indicates what will be his first task:
Inter ea vero quae de Deo secundum seipsum consideranda sunt, pramittendum est, quasi totius operis necessarium fundamentum, consideration qua demonstrator Deum esse.“Among those things which are to be considered concerning God in Himself, one must set out first, as a sort of necessary foundation of the whole work, the consideration by which it is demonstrated that God exists.”
Keep in mind that this is his introduction to the SAME ARGUMENTS as those he uses in the Summa, and he says that by this consideration it is “demonstrated” (demonstratur) that God exists.
Then we find the same movement of thought as in the Summa: first he takes up the position that proving God’s existence is not necessary, either because it is self-evident (ch 10) or because we can only know it by faith (ch 12); then he procedes to his arguments for God’s existence (ch 13). We also find the same move in terminology:
Ostenso igitur quod non est vanum niti ad demonstrandum Deum esse, procedamus ad ponendum rationes quibus tam philosophi quam doctores Catholici Deum esse probaverunt.
“Having shown therefore that it is not useless to try to demonstrate that God exists, let us procede to set out the reasonings by which both the philosophers and the Catholic doctors have proven that God exists.”
Whoah! Did you see how he changed from demonstrare to probare?! Does this mean that, somewhere between the last line of chapter 9 and the first line of chapter 13 he has changed his mind and doesn’t really thing that his arguments will demonstrate God’s existence?
Turns out, the answer is “No.” After reviewing two versions of the argument from motion in gruesome detail, he notes two possible objections. With regard to the second, he says,
Secundum est, quod supponitur in praedictis demonstrationibus primum motum, scilicet corpus caeleste, esse motum ex se.
“The second [objection] is that it is supposed in the demonstrations just given that the first thing moved, namely the heavely body, is moved by itself.”
In referring to the arguments from motion, he still uses the word demonstratio, “demonstration.” In other words, he thinks that—as the objector from Question 46, Article 2 put it—he has demonstratively proven that God exists, with no opposition between the words demonstrate and prove.
You see then how silly and ignorant Ray’s argument is! But this only scratches the surface; in my next post, I will touch on the most ignorant argument of all….
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Ignoramus Begins
I am a very ignorant man.
Not too many years ago, I knew a great deal. I knew more than any politician, more than most philosophers, and a great deal more than many Catholic bishops. More to the point, I knew more than you.
All that changed when I went to the Institute for Trained Imbecility (ITI), followed by Mental Upheaval (MU). With each passing month I knew less and less. Where before I could read a book and discourse learnedly about the author’s errors, now I could do little more than tremble and gape.
Ignorance had overtaken me.
So deep is my ignorance and so dark is my mind that I was almost convinced I must be the most ignorant man on the earth. The question tormented me, and at length I went to the oracle at Delphi to ask, “Who is the most ignorant man on earth?” The prophetess inhaled the ecstatic vapors of the cave, swooned and cried out in her trance, and fell down in a slumber.
It was something of a letdown. Not to be defeated, my friend and I kicked her in the side and threw water on her face until she woke enough from her drugged stupor to mumble the words, “Ray Moose.”
Eureka! One man on the planet more ignorant than I, and his name is Ray Moose!
Months of feverish activity followed as I tried to find this mysterious, this elusive, this most stupid of men. At first I thought I had identified him as the local newspaper editor; then I was sure that he was a congressman from Massachusetts; after that, my investigation led me to the door of a famous actor in Los Angeles. Only slowly did the truth dawn on my benighted brain: Ray Moose is everywhere. He is the single most influential man in the United States. He owns newspaper chains, television stations, universities; his lackeys are in congress, on the city council, in Hollywood; he writes novels, publishes web pages, maintains an active blog.
He is also fond of hiking in Alaska, but that is neither here nor there.
This blog is dedicated to repelling the ever-growing power of this mysterious man whom nobody knows but everyone quotes. Perhaps if we refute him, he will go away. Perhaps if we throw the cold water of reason on his hot-tempered conclusions, people will ignore him.
If I can see through him, I who am the second most ignorant man on the planet, surely others can. So I beg you:
IGNORE RAY MOOSE!
Not too many years ago, I knew a great deal. I knew more than any politician, more than most philosophers, and a great deal more than many Catholic bishops. More to the point, I knew more than you.
All that changed when I went to the Institute for Trained Imbecility (ITI), followed by Mental Upheaval (MU). With each passing month I knew less and less. Where before I could read a book and discourse learnedly about the author’s errors, now I could do little more than tremble and gape.
Ignorance had overtaken me.
So deep is my ignorance and so dark is my mind that I was almost convinced I must be the most ignorant man on the earth. The question tormented me, and at length I went to the oracle at Delphi to ask, “Who is the most ignorant man on earth?” The prophetess inhaled the ecstatic vapors of the cave, swooned and cried out in her trance, and fell down in a slumber.
It was something of a letdown. Not to be defeated, my friend and I kicked her in the side and threw water on her face until she woke enough from her drugged stupor to mumble the words, “Ray Moose.”
Eureka! One man on the planet more ignorant than I, and his name is Ray Moose!
Months of feverish activity followed as I tried to find this mysterious, this elusive, this most stupid of men. At first I thought I had identified him as the local newspaper editor; then I was sure that he was a congressman from Massachusetts; after that, my investigation led me to the door of a famous actor in Los Angeles. Only slowly did the truth dawn on my benighted brain: Ray Moose is everywhere. He is the single most influential man in the United States. He owns newspaper chains, television stations, universities; his lackeys are in congress, on the city council, in Hollywood; he writes novels, publishes web pages, maintains an active blog.
He is also fond of hiking in Alaska, but that is neither here nor there.
This blog is dedicated to repelling the ever-growing power of this mysterious man whom nobody knows but everyone quotes. Perhaps if we refute him, he will go away. Perhaps if we throw the cold water of reason on his hot-tempered conclusions, people will ignore him.
If I can see through him, I who am the second most ignorant man on the planet, surely others can. So I beg you:
IGNORE RAY MOOSE!
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