Mike, it's a strange mindset that coopts a pre-Christian world view (that of the Greeks, particularly Plato), one that largely shaped Christianity, not the other way around, and decides that it shows that Christianity is not only true, but the only non-pathological conclusion at which one could possibly arrive from philosophy. It's sort of like saying that the Shakespearean style proves that the only true, uncorrupted literature is the Victorian novel.
Bob, I’m going to just start calling religion, and your religion in particular, an infantile neurosis, and use a few other Freudian terms not so much in argument for that position, because it’s not like you ever argue for your position that we’re suffering from some sort of psychopathology, but to make it sound serious. It’s a good way to avoid having to deal with ideas you, or I, don’t like: call it a pathology, and a fundamental one at that. You take your Voegelin, I’ll take my Freud, and we’ll just lob psychoanalysis at each other. Other than that, I don’t see how it’s possible to engage you on this subject.
Civilization is always collapsing to the generation that's no longer in control of it. When we reach Bob's age (assuming we haven't already), there's a good chance we'll be convinced that civilization is collapsing too. It almost seems like it's hard wired into us.
OK, that was dismissive, for which I apologize. I recommend reading the full text of the wager passages <a href="http://www.reformed.org/master/index.html?mainframe=/apologetics/classical/pascals_wager.html"here. What you'll find is a discussion that is, from the outset, taking place "according to natural light," which is to say, Reason, or Natural Reason, or the Natural point of view. The wager takes you, the nonbeliever (and I don't mean you specifically, Blaise -- and this is getting strange now, calling you Blaise), through a few versions, ultimately to get you (the nonbeliever) to the realization that it is not reason that keeps you from believing, but “the passions” (“But to show you that this leads you there, it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks”). The whole point is that it is reasonable to have faith, even if that faith is in the existence of something the nature of which one cannot know. For Pascal, faith is precisely the means of knowing the existence of that the nature of which is unknowable. That’s where the passage you quote comes in.
Anyway, despite the fact that I am a nonbeliever, I find Pascal’s version of the wager to be a powerful outline of an argument: it says, in essence, that if all that is blocking your way to faith is the misguided belief that faith is irrational – a misguided belief that has dominated popular atheism for the last few years, it must be noted – then this perspective, the one in the wager, gives a fairly strong counter. Granted, it doesn’t stand alone, but there’s no reason to believe Pascal meant for it to, since a.) it’s not an argument for the existence of God, b.) it is part of a larger apologetics of faith in his fragments, and c.) it’s only aimed at someone who is, in essence, an agnostic. It has no real force for an atheist. If you take it for what it is, it is anything but stupid, which is why it’s not surprising that it was carried on by people like Arnauld or Locke, who weren’t exactly idiots (even if Arnauld and Locke’s versions are a bit more facile, and much less weighty).
Blaise, as I'm sure you're aware, there's little evidence that Pascal's wager is as a proof of God's existence, or as a conversion tool even (at least not from atheism to theism), and it has naught of hell in it. It's not really even an argument, since it's a fragment of a note of what, we can assume, was to be an argument (in dialogue form, probably). It's not even the fragment of one argument; it's the fragment of three.
What it points to, at least, is an argument for the reasonableness, from the perspective of Natural Reason, of faith in God, and for the notion that rejection of faith as irrational is not, thereby, a product of Reason but of feelings, emotion, whatever (we'd probably call it bias, these days).
I fail to see how it's a dumb thing, much less the dumbest thing that he wrote. Even in its fragmentary form, it's really quite powerful.
With the exception of my transition, and it was a years long transition, from Catholicism to atheism, I can't think of any time when I've awakened, or even transitioned slowly, from one belief to a blatantly conflicting one. For the most part, my belief change has been the filling of holes where beliefs were missing.
I suppose there have been cases in which I've learned new facts that have caused me to reevaluate something I believed. Hell, much of grad school was that, and much to my chagrin, doing research has been as well (argh, embodied cognition). But similar to what Jaybird said about calculus, this feels different from waking up with beliefs that have less to do with obvious empirical facts than with values or more amorphous foundations.
Hah, I wasn't speculating, I was wondering. There's a difference.
My guest post would look exactly like this (feel free to move this to the front page):
Dude, Stalin was really bad, and he killed millions of people, targetings several groups, including Ukrainians, Jews, and the officer corps. It really sucked to live in the Soviet Union under Stalin; even worse than it sucked to live in the Soviet Union under other leaders, which is saying a lot. And that's assuming you lived. Did I mention that Stalin murdered or encouraged the murder of millions of people? Also, read Life and Fate.
I wonder if he’d mention that Stalin targeted Jews on more than one occasion.
You know, it was official Soviet Policy not to talk about the extermination of Jews, specifically, by the Nazis, because it was thought that it would minimize the suffering of the other Soviet citizens. This is one of the reasons why Grossman’s Life and Fate was banned.
An amazing book by the way, if you haven’t read it – the letter from Shtrum’s mother is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read. It looks like you can read all of it here: here, starting at page 80.
I honestly can’t figure out what you’re going on about here. It takes a perverse “reasoning,” if it can be called that, to get anything from Wall’s post that suggests he’s excluding or denying any other genocide or crime against humanity, and as James said, you just seem to be saying that no one should talk about one genocide without talking about the ones that you’re interested in. I notice, though, that you haven’t once mentioned the Armenian genocide. Do you, sir, not think human rights are universal?! (See how silly that sounds coming from someone else?)
The mind is not rational, despite our every attempt to pretend it is.
That statement is even more opaque than the first. What does it mean for the mind to be rational? It certainly obeys an order, even if that order alludes us, and may forever do so. And it's a mistake to conclude, as many philosophers have done (at least in the modern era), that "emotion" or "feeling" is not rational, or that our heavy reliance on it, mentally, makes the mind irrational, because emotions are quite rational, as you'd expect from an evolved creature.
The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits, as some French dude once said. The question is, how do you react to the absurd? For most, the answer seems to be, adding even more unknowable stuff, that is, more absurdity, on top of it in order to make this stuff feel a little less absurd. I find it somewhat amusing that Bob, channeling Voegelin, thinks that is the less disordered approach.
If it's a bias, it's a bias towards the present, towards things that affect us clearly, directly, and frequently. If we were in a Buddhist country, people like me, or Jason, or Sam Harris, would focus on Buddhism, and your equivalent there would suggest we had an anti-Buddhism bias, as evidenced by the fact that we don't spend even close to as much time talking about Christianity.
I just meant I'm not sure where you think the bias comes from. I know quite well where it comes from.
I'm not sure what Blaise meant by that particular proposition, but I agree with what you're saying. Too often today "rational" becomes identified with "science," which is to say, with measurement, causal explanations, probabilistic predictions, etc., and while the life, and the world in general, is certainly not encapsulated in that, this does not imply that there is not some other sort of order to it, some reason to it, where order and reason are more than just causal order and reason.
I can't speak for Jason, but I personally will start making jokes about the silly end of the world predictions of the loopier adherents of Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc., as soon as those groups begin to have the sort of impact on my daily life that Christianity does -- big enough, at least, for the crazies among the believers to start to appear on my radar. Until then, the crazies in those other religion just don't matter to me.
Does that make sense? That the dominant religious group where you are would get more attention, including negative attention? Or are you like Tom, and convinced that this is some sort of anti-Christian bias born of... I don't know what, but something.
I believe that if he does not receive authorization by today, he has 30 days to cease military operations. So come back in 30 days.
I hope you've also noticed that members of Congress from both parties have been speaking out about the need for Obama to get congressional approval. It's not really a team issue at this point (and really, it's difficult to take anyone who uses the "team" labels seriously).
Tom, the '67 borders has been official U.S. policy for as long as I can remember. It's true, that's not often shouted to the world, but I'm quite sure Israel knew it, even if they didn't know he was planning on telling everybody on television.
Except, Blaise, that his stated reason for leaving the party was the purge of the Jewish doctors. It's true that it happened after Stalin's death, his leaving that is, but that's because information from the Soviet Union came slowly, and they only learned of the purge and its ruse after his death. That's actually in Eribon's book (which is excellent). If you'd read it instead of quoting a review of it you might know that! You may say that he was a Stalin denialist, but leaving the party because of Stalin's actions pretty much makes that bullshit, or worse.
By the way, he was never a particularly active member, nor was he a Stalinist.
that a.) doesn't point to denialism, and b.) contradicts Foucault's own stated reason for leaving the party when he did: the purge of Jewish doctors, by some guy of whose actions you claim Foucault was in denial. And I say this as someone who thinks Eribon's biography is a great read (your text, by the way, is from the review, not from Eribon's book). One could argue that Eribon understood the reasons for Foucault's leaving of the party in '53 that Foucault himself would likely be reluctant to talk about, at least in '53, but the very fact that he was quite clear that the purge was the last straw for him contradicts your assertion about his denialism.
And recall that a.) Foucault was not a very active member, and b.) he was never a Stalinist.
Dude, I hate to be the one to point this out, but you just continue to make stuff up, and on topics that I actually care about.
Foucault made much of differences between things, but pressed to take sides against the culture of denial and repression in Stalin’s USSR, he remained in the camp of deniers.
Foucault left the PCF in 1953 precisely because of what was happening under Stalism. I don't see any evidence in his actions or his writings to suggest he was a denialist. He was young, and only in the party for 3 years. After that, he was pretty objectively anti-Stalism and largely anti-Soviet socialism.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Changing Minds”
Mike, it's a strange mindset that coopts a pre-Christian world view (that of the Greeks, particularly Plato), one that largely shaped Christianity, not the other way around, and decides that it shows that Christianity is not only true, but the only non-pathological conclusion at which one could possibly arrive from philosophy. It's sort of like saying that the Shakespearean style proves that the only true, uncorrupted literature is the Victorian novel.
"
Well said.
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Bob, I’m going to just start calling religion, and your religion in particular, an infantile neurosis, and use a few other Freudian terms not so much in argument for that position, because it’s not like you ever argue for your position that we’re suffering from some sort of psychopathology, but to make it sound serious. It’s a good way to avoid having to deal with ideas you, or I, don’t like: call it a pathology, and a fundamental one at that. You take your Voegelin, I’ll take my Freud, and we’ll just lob psychoanalysis at each other. Other than that, I don’t see how it’s possible to engage you on this subject.
"
Civilization is always collapsing to the generation that's no longer in control of it. When we reach Bob's age (assuming we haven't already), there's a good chance we'll be convinced that civilization is collapsing too. It almost seems like it's hard wired into us.
"
OK, that was dismissive, for which I apologize. I recommend reading the full text of the wager passages <a href="http://www.reformed.org/master/index.html?mainframe=/apologetics/classical/pascals_wager.html"here. What you'll find is a discussion that is, from the outset, taking place "according to natural light," which is to say, Reason, or Natural Reason, or the Natural point of view. The wager takes you, the nonbeliever (and I don't mean you specifically, Blaise -- and this is getting strange now, calling you Blaise), through a few versions, ultimately to get you (the nonbeliever) to the realization that it is not reason that keeps you from believing, but “the passions” (“But to show you that this leads you there, it is this which will lessen the passions, which are your stumbling-blocks”). The whole point is that it is reasonable to have faith, even if that faith is in the existence of something the nature of which one cannot know. For Pascal, faith is precisely the means of knowing the existence of that the nature of which is unknowable. That’s where the passage you quote comes in.
Anyway, despite the fact that I am a nonbeliever, I find Pascal’s version of the wager to be a powerful outline of an argument: it says, in essence, that if all that is blocking your way to faith is the misguided belief that faith is irrational – a misguided belief that has dominated popular atheism for the last few years, it must be noted – then this perspective, the one in the wager, gives a fairly strong counter. Granted, it doesn’t stand alone, but there’s no reason to believe Pascal meant for it to, since a.) it’s not an argument for the existence of God, b.) it is part of a larger apologetics of faith in his fragments, and c.) it’s only aimed at someone who is, in essence, an agnostic. It has no real force for an atheist. If you take it for what it is, it is anything but stupid, which is why it’s not surprising that it was carried on by people like Arnauld or Locke, who weren’t exactly idiots (even if Arnauld and Locke’s versions are a bit more facile, and much less weighty).
"
Yeah, I said hell's not in the wager. It ain't. And you missed so much in the wager that I honestly think yoy read it for the first time today.
"
Blaise, as I'm sure you're aware, there's little evidence that Pascal's wager is as a proof of God's existence, or as a conversion tool even (at least not from atheism to theism), and it has naught of hell in it. It's not really even an argument, since it's a fragment of a note of what, we can assume, was to be an argument (in dialogue form, probably). It's not even the fragment of one argument; it's the fragment of three.
What it points to, at least, is an argument for the reasonableness, from the perspective of Natural Reason, of faith in God, and for the notion that rejection of faith as irrational is not, thereby, a product of Reason but of feelings, emotion, whatever (we'd probably call it bias, these days).
I fail to see how it's a dumb thing, much less the dumbest thing that he wrote. Even in its fragmentary form, it's really quite powerful.
"
With the exception of my transition, and it was a years long transition, from Catholicism to atheism, I can't think of any time when I've awakened, or even transitioned slowly, from one belief to a blatantly conflicting one. For the most part, my belief change has been the filling of holes where beliefs were missing.
I suppose there have been cases in which I've learned new facts that have caused me to reevaluate something I believed. Hell, much of grad school was that, and much to my chagrin, doing research has been as well (argh, embodied cognition). But similar to what Jaybird said about calculus, this feels different from waking up with beliefs that have less to do with obvious empirical facts than with values or more amorphous foundations.
On “How to Think About John Demjanjuk”
Ugh, sorry about the link. I've always had trouble with Google Books links. Just Google "Life and Fate," look in Google Books, and go to page 80.
That review is wonderful as well. Thank you for posting it.
"
Hah, I wasn't speculating, I was wondering. There's a difference.
My guest post would look exactly like this (feel free to move this to the front page):
Dude, Stalin was really bad, and he killed millions of people, targetings several groups, including Ukrainians, Jews, and the officer corps. It really sucked to live in the Soviet Union under Stalin; even worse than it sucked to live in the Soviet Union under other leaders, which is saying a lot. And that's assuming you lived. Did I mention that Stalin murdered or encouraged the murder of millions of people? Also, read Life and Fate.
"
I wonder if he’d mention that Stalin targeted Jews on more than one occasion.
You know, it was official Soviet Policy not to talk about the extermination of Jews, specifically, by the Nazis, because it was thought that it would minimize the suffering of the other Soviet citizens. This is one of the reasons why Grossman’s Life and Fate was banned.
An amazing book by the way, if you haven’t read it – the letter from Shtrum’s mother is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read. It looks like you can read all of it here: here, starting at page 80.
"
I honestly can’t figure out what you’re going on about here. It takes a perverse “reasoning,” if it can be called that, to get anything from Wall’s post that suggests he’s excluding or denying any other genocide or crime against humanity, and as James said, you just seem to be saying that no one should talk about one genocide without talking about the ones that you’re interested in. I notice, though, that you haven’t once mentioned the Armenian genocide. Do you, sir, not think human rights are universal?! (See how silly that sounds coming from someone else?)
On “Liveblog at the End of the Universe”
it's not a dismissal. Particularly when it's in agreement with what you said.
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I can't, of course, though I find neuroaesthetics interesting as a line of inquiry.
I don't see how the question is relevant, unless you equate unknown with not rational, which would be naive.
"
The mind is not rational, despite our every attempt to pretend it is.
That statement is even more opaque than the first. What does it mean for the mind to be rational? It certainly obeys an order, even if that order alludes us, and may forever do so. And it's a mistake to conclude, as many philosophers have done (at least in the modern era), that "emotion" or "feeling" is not rational, or that our heavy reliance on it, mentally, makes the mind irrational, because emotions are quite rational, as you'd expect from an evolved creature.
"
The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits, as some French dude once said. The question is, how do you react to the absurd? For most, the answer seems to be, adding even more unknowable stuff, that is, more absurdity, on top of it in order to make this stuff feel a little less absurd. I find it somewhat amusing that Bob, channeling Voegelin, thinks that is the less disordered approach.
"
If it's a bias, it's a bias towards the present, towards things that affect us clearly, directly, and frequently. If we were in a Buddhist country, people like me, or Jason, or Sam Harris, would focus on Buddhism, and your equivalent there would suggest we had an anti-Buddhism bias, as evidenced by the fact that we don't spend even close to as much time talking about Christianity.
I just meant I'm not sure where you think the bias comes from. I know quite well where it comes from.
"
I'm not sure what Blaise meant by that particular proposition, but I agree with what you're saying. Too often today "rational" becomes identified with "science," which is to say, with measurement, causal explanations, probabilistic predictions, etc., and while the life, and the world in general, is certainly not encapsulated in that, this does not imply that there is not some other sort of order to it, some reason to it, where order and reason are more than just causal order and reason.
"
Bob, you spend a lot of time attacking "secularists." I wonder why you're not spending an equal amount of time attacking Buddhists.
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That, I admit, makes me want to mock Christianity more broadly
"
I can't speak for Jason, but I personally will start making jokes about the silly end of the world predictions of the loopier adherents of Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc., as soon as those groups begin to have the sort of impact on my daily life that Christianity does -- big enough, at least, for the crazies among the believers to start to appear on my radar. Until then, the crazies in those other religion just don't matter to me.
Does that make sense? That the dominant religious group where you are would get more attention, including negative attention? Or are you like Tom, and convinced that this is some sort of anti-Christian bias born of... I don't know what, but something.
On “America, Forever At War”
I believe that if he does not receive authorization by today, he has 30 days to cease military operations. So come back in 30 days.
I hope you've also noticed that members of Congress from both parties have been speaking out about the need for Obama to get congressional approval. It's not really a team issue at this point (and really, it's difficult to take anyone who uses the "team" labels seriously).
On “Only Nixon Could Go to China”
Tom, the '67 borders has been official U.S. policy for as long as I can remember. It's true, that's not often shouted to the world, but I'm quite sure Israel knew it, even if they didn't know he was planning on telling everybody on television.
On “Demoktesis”
Except, Blaise, that his stated reason for leaving the party was the purge of the Jewish doctors. It's true that it happened after Stalin's death, his leaving that is, but that's because information from the Soviet Union came slowly, and they only learned of the purge and its ruse after his death. That's actually in Eribon's book (which is excellent). If you'd read it instead of quoting a review of it you might know that! You may say that he was a Stalin denialist, but leaving the party because of Stalin's actions pretty much makes that bullshit, or worse.
By the way, he was never a particularly active member, nor was he a Stalinist.
that a.) doesn't point to denialism, and b.) contradicts Foucault's own stated reason for leaving the party when he did: the purge of Jewish doctors, by some guy of whose actions you claim Foucault was in denial. And I say this as someone who thinks Eribon's biography is a great read (your text, by the way, is from the review, not from Eribon's book). One could argue that Eribon understood the reasons for Foucault's leaving of the party in '53 that Foucault himself would likely be reluctant to talk about, at least in '53, but the very fact that he was quite clear that the purge was the last straw for him contradicts your assertion about his denialism.
And recall that a.) Foucault was not a very active member, and b.) he was never a Stalinist.
"
Dude, I hate to be the one to point this out, but you just continue to make stuff up, and on topics that I actually care about.
Foucault made much of differences between things, but pressed to take sides against the culture of denial and repression in Stalin’s USSR, he remained in the camp of deniers.
Foucault left the PCF in 1953 precisely because of what was happening under Stalism. I don't see any evidence in his actions or his writings to suggest he was a denialist. He was young, and only in the party for 3 years. After that, he was pretty objectively anti-Stalism and largely anti-Soviet socialism.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.