Irreconciled Naturalism, Faith, and Populist Education

The Irreconcilability of Naturalism with Faith

by Curtis Edward Clark

Not one person on Earth needs formal training to make a judgment about the world he/she lives in, in the sense with which this article deals. We all make those kinds of "world-view" judgments everyday of our lives.

Theology, alike with physics, requires more formalized education with which to conclude such "world-views." As a matter of fact, physics accepts almost no "world-view" that is not its own, naturalistic and unassuming of a supernatural presence in the structure and origin of existence. Theology accepts almost no "world-view" that does not assume a creator’s existence; and theology also assumes the intelligibility of the universe solely on the basis of that creator’s existence.

Without the influence of religion, science seeks the intelligibility, the cosmos-from-chaos, through individual thinking and peer review; yet one man may uniquely stand against all his fellows in science and be correct yet shunned, until one day the world discovers he was correct, in which case the “Copernican effect” http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/jupiter_satellites.html alters forever the cosmology of the civilization which accepts the logic, i.e., the line of reasoning; or the scientist stands alone until the world beginning with his peers disproves his theories convincingly.

Theology (proper) seeks to make cosmos-from chaos only from theories of the "faith-based" humanities, as opposed to physically or mathematically provable scientific concepts. Where no explanation of the cosmos results from such faith-based theorizing, religion joins reason to faith, "insofar as is possible" to do so, [Boethius] to create a dogma, a papal bull, or some other form of edict which is taken as policy and as gospel truth, until a proper theological explanation can be rendered. All theological explanations presume the existence of a creator.

The Copernican effect shook the foundations of the Roman Church. Dogma and papal edicts had to be radically changed because of the effect this naturalistic scientific idea had on doctrine. Scientific naturalism is epistemic and the logical metaphysical concomitant for most or many scientists is metaphysical naturalism, which is defined as denial of the existence of the supernatural, and thus of a creator.

Naturalism "holds that the universe requires no supernatural cause and government, but is self-existent, self-explanatory, self-operating, and self-directing" through the cause-and-effect nature of the elements on the Periodic Table interracting with each other. No such effect as "gravity", for example, can exist without being "caused" by such elements interacting as they will by their own scientifically defined nature upon the same defined nature of other elements.

But epistemic naturalistic science does not presume or deny the existence of God. The epistemology of it naturally leads to the search for demonstrable proof, either empirical or mathematical. In the scientist's personal life, God may be a fact, and in fact for some scientists it is fact. But for purposes of peer review using proper standards of math or of physics, any theory or other demonstrable proof of science must be naturalistic in its epistemic foundations.

"The moons of Jupiter [also] had a major impact on cosmology. In 1610 the traditional Aristotelian cosmology had come under attacks from Copernican astronomers. Aristotelians had a number of arguments against the Copernican System, one of which was now made obsolete," http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/jupiter_satellites.html by Galileo's observations and conclusions about the heliocentricity of the moons of Jupiter. If it was true there, could Copernicus be correct about our entire solar system? [italics added]

Could science be correct about much more than what the any church is willing to consider? Only two or three hundred years ago, the modern marvelous discoveries and conclusions of science would have been branded "heretical" by the Church, as "vacuum" once was, and the proponents of our modern science would have been hounded and harrassed by clergy and the fanatical faithful.

(I do not imply that all "faithful" are "fanatical." Those who are not "fanatical" are capable of taking such "heresy", even by any other name, in stride, and sometimes even come to its defence.) Five hundred years ago our "heretical" scientists would have been murdered, perhaps as witches.

Cosmological science was originally contrasted with ontology, metaphysics, and natural science, but according to the "Dictionary of Philosophy," “treatises which profess to deal with one of them usually contains considerable material on the others; yet in this science" it continues, quoting Hegel, the topics of cosmology are generally “contingency, necessity, eternity, limitations and formal laws of the world…” and includes “…the nature and interrelationship of space and time,” and related matters, as a totality of all phenomena.
Dagobert D. Runes, Editor; Littlefield, Adams; 1968

Overall, science undertakes the study of "related matters as a totality of all phenomena," because one phenomenon is Man’s sentience of his own sentience. It is said that by observing an action of life, we change the action, e.g., a dog may perform differently if it knows his master is watching. What is the change in effect upon our scientific or theological theories when included in those theories must be the recognition that we are cognizant of our own cognizance, i.e., sapient of our own sapience? We watch ourselves theorizing, and we can watch ourselves watching ourselves, and this has led some philosophers to discount Man's mind as unreliable even in the sciences.

This skepticism has led to disastrous results in the humanities, foregoing the ancient "liberal arts" for politically charged theories of Man's inhumanity to Men; of Man's "meddling" in the universe; of Man being a festering disease upon the face of the planet; of America as a nation attempting to take over the world, as we so rightly accused the Soviets.

This substitution of science and reason for "populist humanities," not to mention the debacle over whether men are responsible for global warming or whether we are simply in a historical, natural warming period led Senator Joe Biden to declare in the Vice Presidential debate (9.03.08) that climate change was entirely "man-made." Biden attacked Palin, asking, "If you don't know what the cause is, how can you solve the problem?"

You can't solve it, necessarily, even if you know the cause. You can only do what seems reasonable and hope it helps. Man may indeed be adding to the problem of climate change, but he is not responsible for any part of it that nature itself creates, as with the very late arrival of the solar eruptions in the last cycle. That late arrival caused a drop in the mean temperature of the earth's atmosphere. Did that cause the Arctic ice to disinitegrate? I might have said man could have been one of the causes but for one other climate anomaly: man could not have caused the new 17 inches of ice that now exists at the south pole.

Can Biden, and Al Gore, and the other left-wing populists account for the extra ice there, or for the severity of China's winter last year, or for the fact that on the mountain peaks of Washington and Colorado America still had snow in June? This indicates weather patterns that are changing; it does not "prove" global warming, but it might prove global weather pattern changes.

In short, skepticism has led us to the irrationalization of our civilization's knowledge base. We are all skeptics of something cosmological; some of us are skeptic of most things cosmological, or at least metaphysical. Physicists are hardly interested anymore, as they were in Galileo's time, of being metaphysicists. Right-wing populists are a little more rational than those on the left, but only because their conserv-atism puts them a decade or so behind their progress-ive compatriots, for whom "progress" means going in the direction of humanism, demonstrable logic be damned.

The original "liberal arts" of the ancient world right up to nearly the beginning of the twentieth century, were: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic [the trivium], arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy [the quadrivium.] The nature of these subjects causes the mind to use its natural and acquired logic more stringently, deeply, and scientifically--even when that science is often "joined insofar as is possible" with faith. Faith as the abnegation of reason is always wrong; but theology as rational thought is not always wrong, and has at times been correct, but for the wrong reason: its faith-oriented epistemology.

It would not be to the detriment of students in the twenty-first century to learn those ancient subjects. In fact, it would be to the advantage of our entire society, getting us back to education that was not "dumbed down" for the less-comprehending of our students.

Under the current educational system, no one is allowed to rise to the level of his/her incompetence unless they buck the system--or they are genius; everyone else is held back to the level of the incompetence of the slow, less-comprehending students.

Critical-thinking is all the rage these days, but it comes with the territory when we study the old Liberal Arts and the attendant subjects. Studying them gives students a deeper intellectual insight into the world by causing the use of formalized logical principles. I occasionally learn bits and pieces of those subjects, myself. And I try to lose any skepticism that is not to the advantage of my rationality to have.

Next Monday: The unnatural attempt to reconcile metaphysical naturalism with "intelligent design."

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Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC


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Readers Question, and I Answer

Q. Is law a basic code of ethics that all people are forced to live by? And is a man a bad person if his ethical code is not contingent with the law?

A. People break the law all the time and get away with it. Not because they are not caught, but because there are times when we are forced to disobey the law and obey the higher authority of our conscience. That is presuming our conscience is of a higher standard than even the law.

For example, a felon breaks the law by owning a gun, but then in his home he kills a mass murderer in the middle of the night who broke in. He must face the consequences of owning that gun, but if the prosecutor or the jury decide that this particular felon has owned the gun for 10 years and never fired it, they might find it justified and merely give him a slap on the wrist. Otherwise, if he's fired it before, he could go back to prison. Ethics are often accepted in law as being better than the law--if and when there is justification for it.

Q. What is your ideology of excellence?

A. One example of "excellence" is meeting the standards Aristotle called "qua." What ever is the standard of the "perfect" this or that is its "qua". Perfection does not mean "free of mistakes." It means that a thing meets the standards that belong to the nature of that thing.

"Qua" is different for each thing, but it is the standard which best describes that entity. "‘Qua’ is a technical expression Aristotle uses to indicate an aspect under which something is to be considered. The study of 'being qua being' concerns the most general class of things, viz., everything that exists. And it studies them under their most general aspect, namely, as things that exist. It thus raises the question of what it is for something to exist." "Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy"; S. Marc Cohen; http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/433/arintro.htm

Excellence when viewed as meeting the standards of what it is for something to exist requires understanding the form and function of the thing that exists. In art, for example, it is aesthetics that makes such judgements. In human anatomy, it is the scientific understanding of the organ in question, or of the human taken as a whole. An "excellent specimen" of humanity would have a head precisely 1/7 the length of his/her entire body, his/her brain would be of a specific weight, there would be no deformities, no mental abberations, no diseases, etc.

The boundaries of what is "excellent" are being pushed further all the time. The "excellent" performance of the Americans in the first Modern Olympics would not meet the worst performances of today's Olympians. A new, round diamond larger than any found before it is now the standard of "round diamonds qua round diamonds," in other words, the new standard of "excellence" in the diamond industry.

Thus, "excellence" is based on the knowledge of what it means for any thing according to the highest standard of existence for that thing.

Q. Why is philosophy called Queen of all Sciences?

A. Actually, philosophy is called the Science of Sciences, or sometimes the First Science. The Queen of Sciences has been, at times, either Theology, or Mathematics, and sometimes it merely depended on who was doing the defining. Leonardo da Vinci regarded it as math. ""Let no man who is not a mathematician read my work," da Vinci once wrote about the 50 pages of his mostly "technical" drawings on view at the National Museum of History and Technology in Washington, in 1974.

Philosophy is the First Science because "Science was born as a result and consequence of philosophy;" wrote Ayn Rand [and] it cannot survive without a philosophical (particularly epistemological) base. If philosophy perishes, science will be next to go." It is not the special sciences that teach man to think;" she said elsewhere, "it is philosophy that lays down the epistemological criteria of all special sciences."

The Naturalism that was advanced by the first philosophers, the pre-Socratics and the Atomists, endured for nearly 1000 years until Augustine undercut Naturalism with theism. Without philosophy, man would perish, because what we call "philosophy" is "formal." But man's mind works philosophically whether he knows it or not; epistemology is necessary for him to form his base of knowledge; metaphysics gives him his "world view"; ethics is the way he believes he ought to treat other people; and politics is ethics tranlsated into law.

Man had all these forms of philosophy in his mind before the pre-Socratics discovered they existed.

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause" CEC


mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the SM of the
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists LLC.
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism TM,
The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger TM, and
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism Blogger Extra TM
are the educational arms of the LLC and are:

© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®