[Bill,
October 10, 2007]
Down the rabbit hole ...
Yesterday we discussed the main questions of philosophy, with a particular emphasis on the main question: How do I know? Today I'd like to give a [very] broad overview of where everything went wrong.
In the beginning, you had an argument between Plato and Sophists. This argument has been continued, in various ways, ever since. Plato held that abstractions have reality; sophists laughed at him. Critical theorists of today are merely the sophists of old, but without the sense of humor, and with a far more totalitarian agenda.
So how did philosophy go from an ennobling enterprise to a totalitarian philosophy of brute power? Basically, flawed epistemology. A good epistemology is Aquinas' faith-guided-by-reason.
Epistemology must be rooted first and foremost in mysticism. That said, the mind boggles at the danger of mysticism. Mystics claim all sorts of things, and usually cannot be talked out of it. See Mohammed, founder of Islam. That said, mysticism can be an extremely effective way of answering the big questions, to wit, is there a spiritual dimension to life? And: Is there a God?
You strip away mysticism, and you're left using the remaining tools, which are reason and empiricism — and they just don't get you far enough. You tumble down the rabbit hole, asking narrower and narrower questions, into darker and darker realms, until you're so far down the hole you can't see the entrance. Pretty soon, you can't be sure of much of anything, so anything goes.
Mysticism, thus, must precede both reason and empiricism. But wait ... I'm going further. Mysticism isn't enough either. How can we know, for example, that the 10 Sikh gurus, whose followers took mystical experiences and applied reason to those messages, have any less of a cornerstone on truth than the Christian? Islam also has a mystical faith and reason component. How can we distinguish among mystical experiences, between so-called revelations?
The answer, for the Christian, is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. A historical claim, for which there is a great deal of evidence. All Christian claims hang on a historical fact in space-time, in the incarnation. It's not just mystical revelation to the person, but a revelation to the entire world.
I'm not sure I'm explaining this well. In the end, if you focus on mystical experiences, reason and empirical reality, you can still end up just about anywhere, believing just about anything. (You might be down the rabbit hole, e.g., Satanism, Islamism, and Wicca, or you might be walking around in the sun, like the Muslims and Sikhs.) In the end, though, you're still living in a world of abstract concepts and concrete things.
But when Christ comes, these two realms come together, they cross paths. God-as-man simply offers an answer that no other form of mysticism or revelation can respond to, except to deny the incarnation and resurrection of Christ.
Does this make sense? I'm really failing to explain this. I'm saying an epistemology goes something like this:
Historical revelation
Mystical confirmation
Rational testing.
Empirical testing.
Refinement of understanding of mystical experiences.
Further mystical experiences, go back to Step 1.
That is, the tools must be appropriate to the question.
For example, historical revelation. What evidence do we have that Jesus Christ existed and He was who he said he was? Well, we have reports, we have people willing to die rather than renounce the fact, we have amazing teaching ... I'm not trying to get you to believe, only saying that we can rationally look at the question of the incarnation using the rules of evidence. It's a rational question. But by choosing to believe, we experience a mystical confirmation. Yet, that still doesn't tell us the earth is round, not flat. It's a different order of question: You need reason and some observation for that.
Does this make sense? I feel like I'm missing something here. I'm not able to really explain that there's an interaction among all these forms of epistemology that helps us understand, not pure truth, but enough of it to see, "Now through the glass darkly."
In the beginning, you had an argument between Plato and Sophists. This argument has been continued, in various ways, ever since. Plato held that abstractions have reality; sophists laughed at him. Critical theorists of today are merely the sophists of old, but without the sense of humor, and with a far more totalitarian agenda.
So how did philosophy go from an ennobling enterprise to a totalitarian philosophy of brute power? Basically, flawed epistemology. A good epistemology is Aquinas' faith-guided-by-reason.
Epistemology must be rooted first and foremost in mysticism. That said, the mind boggles at the danger of mysticism. Mystics claim all sorts of things, and usually cannot be talked out of it. See Mohammed, founder of Islam. That said, mysticism can be an extremely effective way of answering the big questions, to wit, is there a spiritual dimension to life? And: Is there a God?
You strip away mysticism, and you're left using the remaining tools, which are reason and empiricism — and they just don't get you far enough. You tumble down the rabbit hole, asking narrower and narrower questions, into darker and darker realms, until you're so far down the hole you can't see the entrance. Pretty soon, you can't be sure of much of anything, so anything goes.
Mysticism, thus, must precede both reason and empiricism. But wait ... I'm going further. Mysticism isn't enough either. How can we know, for example, that the 10 Sikh gurus, whose followers took mystical experiences and applied reason to those messages, have any less of a cornerstone on truth than the Christian? Islam also has a mystical faith and reason component. How can we distinguish among mystical experiences, between so-called revelations?
The answer, for the Christian, is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. A historical claim, for which there is a great deal of evidence. All Christian claims hang on a historical fact in space-time, in the incarnation. It's not just mystical revelation to the person, but a revelation to the entire world.
I'm not sure I'm explaining this well. In the end, if you focus on mystical experiences, reason and empirical reality, you can still end up just about anywhere, believing just about anything. (You might be down the rabbit hole, e.g., Satanism, Islamism, and Wicca, or you might be walking around in the sun, like the Muslims and Sikhs.) In the end, though, you're still living in a world of abstract concepts and concrete things.
But when Christ comes, these two realms come together, they cross paths. God-as-man simply offers an answer that no other form of mysticism or revelation can respond to, except to deny the incarnation and resurrection of Christ.
Does this make sense? I'm really failing to explain this. I'm saying an epistemology goes something like this:
Historical revelation
Mystical confirmation
Rational testing.
Empirical testing.
Refinement of understanding of mystical experiences.
Further mystical experiences, go back to Step 1.
That is, the tools must be appropriate to the question.
For example, historical revelation. What evidence do we have that Jesus Christ existed and He was who he said he was? Well, we have reports, we have people willing to die rather than renounce the fact, we have amazing teaching ... I'm not trying to get you to believe, only saying that we can rationally look at the question of the incarnation using the rules of evidence. It's a rational question. But by choosing to believe, we experience a mystical confirmation. Yet, that still doesn't tell us the earth is round, not flat. It's a different order of question: You need reason and some observation for that.
Does this make sense? I feel like I'm missing something here. I'm not able to really explain that there's an interaction among all these forms of epistemology that helps us understand, not pure truth, but enough of it to see, "Now through the glass darkly."