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Absolutely Wrong

This is a follow up to my post entitled "Absolutely True." I'm still open to discussing absolute truth as a general concept, but I would now like to focus in on moral absolutism. The wikipedia defines moral absolutism as "the belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act."

Let's talk about lying for the purpose of this discussion. For now, I'm going to define "lying" as "an inaccurate or false statement." (see dictionary.com) It seems to me that there are three ways we can view lying:

1. Making a false statement is always wrong, regardless of the situation.
2. Making a false statement is not wrong if it is done for a higher good.
3. Lying is always wrong, but sometimes making a false statement is not lying.

Some Things Are Just Stupid

The following is from an editorial review of Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid by Ryan Dobson:

"Whatever" is now the password into civilized youth culture. Alarming numbers of Christians eighteen to twenty-five years old believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Yet, Ryan Dobson proclaims, we can't even function if we believe that everything is relative. In his first book, the impassioned youth speaker explains God's establishment of absolutes, using relevant examples to awaken Christians to the world's desperate hunger for absolute truth -- and the church's duty to proclaim it.

Ryan, questioning absolute truth does not make everything relative! This is the kind of false dichotomy that is misleading a lot of Christians today. It seems to me that both absolutism and relativism are false. We have to be careful about completely accepting any human-made philosophical view, whether it's modernism, postmodernism, or antidisestablishmentarianism. (Click here for a fun list of other "isms.") I think we need to learn what we can from philosophy and combine that with faith and praxis.

As for the title of Mr. Dobson's book, this is the kind of thing that make Christians look bad...and for no good reason. The Bible tells us that the gospel will offend people.^† That doesn't mean we are called to a mission of offensiveness, which is what he and others seem to believe. Dictionary.com defines "tolerance" as "a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, etc., differ from one's own." It seems to me that there are views we should not permit. Nonetheless, I think that tolerance is a good policy to follow, generally speaking. We should "err on the side of grace" as they say. We should also do everything we can to try to understand another person's point of view.

I freely admit that I have not read Ryan's book so go ahead and correct me if you know more about it. In the meantime, I'll enjoy being able to tag my post with the word "antidisestablishmentarianism!"

^† For example, see 1 Cor. 1:23.

Absolutely True

What does it mean to say that something is absolutely true? There is a lot of debate about "absolute truth" these days and sometimes I wonder if everyone involved is talking about the same thing. The following is my attempt to give a basic definition of the term and to discuss some relevant questions.

According to Whatis.com, "absolute truth is whatever is always valid, regardless of parameters or context." To say that absolute truth is always valid means that there are no exceptions whatsoever. There are no instances or situations in which an absolutely true statement can be said to be untrue, in part or in full. We should add that the existence of absolute truth does not have to be dependant on our own observation. In other words, absolute truth could exist regardless of whether or not we experience it as such. As Steve Robiner put it, "An entity's ability to discern these things is irrelevant to that state of truth."

The Search for God

Dictionary.com defines the word "religion" as:

a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

In How (Not) to Speak of God, Peter Rollins writes about the problems with religion as "resolute commitment to a system." (45) He relates this subject to a comparison of "law" and "justice." The purpose of a law is to define justice, if you will. The example he gives is that "those who destroy private property ought to be punished." (45) Most people will agree to this, but what about "people who have destroyed private property (such as military equipment about to be used to bomb cities) in the name of justice?" (45) We can add to our laws to make room for this kind of exception, but here's the problem:

In this way the law is never complete but is always open to change in light of new situations. This means that the law, as a system that attempts to embody justice, always falls short of justice. (45)

The Slippery Slope

I would like to talk about a rhetorical device called "the slippery slope." The Wikipeda has an interesting article about this device here. The argument goes like this:

If A occurs then the chances increase that B will occur. (quoted from the article mentioned above)

This movement toward B is usually assumed to be a negative one, thus the analogy of sliding down a slope. The problem is that even if A often leads to B, this does not mean that B is inevitable. When confronted with a slippery slope argument we should question the connections that are implied. Does A really lead to B? A good sign that a slippery slope argument is fallacious is when the invoker is actually saying something like this:

If A occurs then the chances increase that A1 will occur and if A1 occurs then the chances increase that A2 will occur and if A2 occurs then the chances increase that A3 will occur and if A3 occurs then the chances increase that B will occur.

In other words, the connection between A and B is not actually that close. It is only through a long series of circumstances that A might cause B.

I should point out that slippery slope rhetoric is not always fallacious. It can actually be a valid point that A increases the chances of B. What I don't appreciate is when the slippery slope mentality is used as a scare tactic. One of the books that I really resonated with early on in my move away from fundamentalism is The Post-Evangelical by Dave Tomlinson. One of the things he talks about is the way some people try to frighten others by suggesting that they are becoming "liberal."

"If you carry on talking like that," one well-known speaker was chided by a leading evangelical, "people are going to think you've gone liberal, and before long, you'll find that you won't be seen as fully evangelical, and then doors are going to close, and then..." (p.61)

Tomlinson compares this kind of argument to parents telling their children that the "bogey-man" will get them if they don't do such and such. This kind of argumentation frustrates me because if something is true, then it's true. If I believe A to be true, I can't change my mind just because it might lead me to believe B.

Let me end with two important caveats:

1. I'm not saying one should not consider the consequences of what one believes.
2. I'm not saying we should assume those who invoke the slippery slope are purposely using it as a scare tactic.

Which Tradition?

Part 1 of this series: A Web of Beliefs
Part 2: Which Web?
Part 3: Lakatos on Theology

In this post I want to introduce one last philosopher. Alasdair MacIntyre is currently a senior research professor of philosophy at Notre Dame. This post will once again deal with the subject of justifying our beliefs. Like Lakatos, MacIntyre provides us with a model for justifying our whole research program or web of beliefs. He has done a lot of work in the area of moral philosophy, so in this case we'll be talking about competing moral traditions. In order to avoid moral relativism, you have to have a way of  comparing differing views on what is moral.

MacIntyre talks about the way that traditions typically begin with some kind of authoritative text. Interpretations of this text are called into question when challenges arise (i.e. from a competing tradition or some new experience). The tradition is changed in some way in an attempt to resolve the conflict.

Of course, this doesn't just happen once, but is an endless cycle in any tradition. Note, also, that the authoritative text is not itself changed. Rather, we come to new ways of understanding, interpreting, and incorporating our past narrative into the present day.

It's interesting to think about the Bible in this light. First of all, our understanding of the Christian scriptures has evolved. Please understand that I'm not assuming every new view of the Bible is better than the previous one. It's up to us to decide what is appropriate in that regard. One of the reasons why I believe we have evolved in our understanding of the Bible is that we have simply experienced "more of God's future in our past," as N.T. Wright put it. In other words, we have over two thousand years of challenges to Christianity that we are hopefully learning from. The establishment of the canon, itself, may not have taken place if it weren't for those challenges. Another example is the way that doctrines like "the Trinity" were formed in order to combat various heretical movements.

Second of all, it's interesting to think of the Bible itself as a record of the cycles mentioned above. My prophets class last quarter, for example, challenged me to think about how Hebrew prophets, living around the time of the Exile, sought to change the way the Israelites thought about God and their relationship with him. Jesus is another, superb example. He challenged the way people thought about the Law and their expectations for what a messiah should be.

Next time I'll share a little more about how MacIntyre says we can compare moral traditions.

Lakatos on Theology

Part 1 of this series: A Web of Beliefs
Part 2: Which Web?

Using Lakatos's model, what would be a "hard core" theory of Christianity? Put another way, what is Christianity's basic idea? Here are a few answers Christians might have to that question:

1. Loving your neighbor as yourself.
2. Experiencing God and glorifying him.
3. Furthering the kingdom of God.
4. Saving peoples' souls.
5. World domination.

Okay, that last one is a little sarcastic, but Christians have tended to think that way, haven't they? So what, then, is our "protective belt" of hypotheses? They are our doctrines or various conceptions of key principles. What is the data that affects these hypotheses?

1. The Bible
2. Teachings about the Bible (historical theology, sermons, etc.)
3. History (studies of biblical cultures, archaeology, etc.)
4. Experience
5. Revelation/Inspiration?

I threw that last one in because I think God still speaks to us. I also want to comment that we ought not to shy away from the reality of experience affecting our faith. Conservative Christians, in particular, seem to shy away from the notion. We shouldn't rely only on our experiences, we can't deny that these have a huge impact on what we believe.

So how do we use Lakatos's model to compare various views of Christianity? We look at how the "data" affects our "hypotheses." When we make adjustments to what we believe is it just so that we can make a new experience, sermon, or historical finding fit into our program? Are we simply making slight changes to the way we explain our various doctrines? Are we merely playing word games? Or do the changes we make actually enhance our theological understanding as a whole?

The final question is this: Are we open to the possibility that our basic understanding of Christianity is wrong?

Which Web?

The other day I introduced the concept of a web of beliefs. I find this description of the way we justify our beliefs to be helpful, but there is one small problem. If we suppose that there are a number of radically different webs of belief out there, how do we choose between them? A possible accusation against this view is that it is relativistic. The concern is that there is no way to decide between competing webs. Is it not true that we can always figure out a way to justify our personal beliefs? If so, then we must admit that there is no standard by which to compare my web of beliefs with someone who has a completely different one.

We now turn to the work of Imre Lakatos. Lakatos (pronounced Lakatōsh), working in the area of philosophy of science, provided a way to adjudicate between competing research programs. According to his view, each research program has a central theory or "hard core." This theory is supported by a "protective belt" of hypotheses that are changed as new data is considered. Research programs can be labelled either "progressive" or "degenerating" according to the way that changes are made to these hypotheses. The key is to ask if the changes being made are simply ad hoc changes—"mere face-saving devices, or linguistic tricks..." (Nancey Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism, 102) If a research program can explain the existing data and anticipate an explanation for even newer data then it can be described as progressive. If changes made to hypotheses only account for small pockets of data, but do nothing for the overall support of the theory then the research program can be described as degenerating.

How does this apply to the realm of theology? In the next post in this series I'll make some applications to the question of choosing between the multiplicity of theological webs that exist. In the meantime, does my explanation make sense so far?

A Web of Beliefs

Back in December, I tried to give a basic explanation of foundationalism. This is a very modern (as in post-Enlightenment) way of understanding knowledge and beliefs. I have found it helpful to look at this subject, which is called epistemology, in a new light. Therefore, I'm going to spend the next few days explaining the gist of what I've learned in the hopes that it will help you, too.

The foundationalist metaphor for knowledge is a building. If you seriously damage or remove the foundation of a building, you're in serious trouble! Foundationalists think of certain beliefs as  not questionable. Descarte's famous example was Cogito ergo sum—"I think, therefore I am." In trying to doubt everything, Descartes reasoned that there had to be someone there in order for that doubting to take place. In foundationalism. this sort of indubitable belief serves as a foundation for the rest of what you believe. When justifying your beliefs, you reason from the bottom up. You start from your foundational beliefs and justify other beliefs based on the "floors" below.

W.V. Quine presented us with what I think is a much better metaphor. Instead of imagining a building where beliefs are built on top of other beliefs, he gave us the image of a web. There are various points on this web where strands connect. These are our beliefs. No one point is necessarily more important than any other. The outside of the web is where we put our "experience." Experience provides the boundaries for what we believe. At the center is logic. We will rarely change this area of our web unless forced to.

The strength of the web depends on how interconnected our beliefs are. Take note, also, that we can reason in any direction, unlike in foundationalism. When changes to our beliefs are made, we usually attempt to make the change in a way that affects the rest of the web the least.

What do you think? Comments? Questions?

Reductionism

In Anglo-American Postmodernity, Nancey Murphy lists three characteristics of modern philosophy: foundationalism, referentialism, and reductionism.

Reductionism is "the strategy not only of analyzing a thing into its parts, but also of explaining the properties or behavior of the thing in terms of the properties and behavior of the parts." (p.12) In the sciences, reductionism is demonstrated in the notion that biological processes can be described by reducing them to a set of chemical reactions, which can in turn be reduced to the physics involved. This has created a hierarchy of the sciences, starting with physics (the simplest level), and working up in complexity to fields like sociology.

The crucial metaphysical assumption embodied in this view of the sciences is that the parts of an entity or system determine the character and behavior of the whole and not vice versa. (p.14)

According to Murphy, this way of thinking has not been restricted to the sciences. Ethics, political theory, epistemology, and philosophy of language are other areas that have been affected by reductionistic assumptions.