First Council of Starbucks

This is a paper I wrote for my Christian Metaphysics class as an argument against the fideism of Gould's NOMA proposal and the rational nature of faith. It is based around a conversation at Starbucks. Enjoy!

Edit: I should probably explain, at least in summary, what Gould's NOMA proposal is and what fideism is. NOMA stands for "Non-Overlapping Magisterium". It is essentially a separationist view of faith and reason. He says that reason has its field of authority, which is public, verifiable, rational and dealing with facts, and faith has its field in private, unverifiable, non-rational and dealing with values. So, he says that much of the confusion comes from when people try to use faith to argue facts, or reason to argue values, but this is not so, since reason deals with facts and faith with values. As I explain in my paper, this is an inadequate theory for faith and reason, and the intergrationist view of faith and reason working together is better suited to deal with what believers actually say and the way in which faith and reason actually work.
In addition, fideism is the belief that reason is rational and faith is non-rational. By separating faith and reason in the way Gould has, this implies a sort of fideism, since faith is unverifiable and dealing with just values.

Faith and Reason: The First Council of Starbucks
Philosophy 439: Christian Metaphysics
Dr. Michael Tkacz
by Michael Humpherys
© 2009

My dearest friend, as I was enjoying my caramel machiato and listening to you explain the virtues of Gould's NOMA proposal, I was pondering your claims. Gould tries, as you have explained to separate faith and science into different categories by suggesting that religion deals with values while sciences deals with facts. However, I must say that I am somewhat disturbed by the inadequacies that Gould's proposal has in understanding what religious traditions are actually saying. Further, I think it is quite a large leap to believe that Gould's is the only rational proposal that is available. Thus, I would like to propose to you, my dearest friend, that not only does Gould misunderstand what religions are actually saying, but also that there is another rational proposal of the integration of faith and reason, that is more in line with religious and scientific belief and understanding.

Let me begin by explaining why I believe that Gould's NOMA proposal lacks the explainitory power to account for what religions, and in particular Christianity, say. Goulds attempt to explain religious claims as just values is simply not the case. Christianity claims from the very beginning to be deal with facts. In the Gospel of Luke, the Evangelist writes: “Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us...” (Holy Bible, 1.1-2 emphasis added) So, Luke is claiming that he, along with others, is writing the eyewitness testimony of the historical life of Christ, and not merely a expression of how Luke, and early Christians, found value in the world and Christ's message. Further, if the Gospel writings were just expressions of values and in fact a work of fiction, then we have some trouble with the genre of the writings. “If the events in the Gospels did not really happen, then these authors invented modern realistic fantasy nineteen centuries ago.” (Kreeft 163), because the writing style of the Gospel is unlike any of the other religious myths of the time. Thus, Christians are not merely making value statements about the universe, but rather are transmitting and deepening their knowledge of truth of God. Hence, Gould's proposal of separation does not take into account what Christians really say.

Now, let me explain another rational possibility that incorporates the truths of Christianity and science. Let's begin by examining the structures of knowledge that science and religion have. With science we have the testimony of those who have actually conducted the research, those who have actually seen the evidence. In Christianity, we have the exact same type of testimony coming from the Apostles and early disciples, who actually saw the miracles of Jesus and His resurrection. In science, we have the expert opinion that we trust based on their years of work in the field and knowledge of the testimony handed down to them. In another parallel, Christianity has its theologians, whose expert opinions are based on a similar work of research. Finally we have the established knowledge of the field, for science based in theories and in Christianity, its doctrines or teachings. Thus, in science and Christianity, we have parallel structures of knowledge, which shows that Christianity is structured in the same rational way as science, but the story does not end here.

While we have these parallel structures, some may object that faith is based in beliefs and science on pure evidence, yet both the knowledge of reason and of faith are depend on some beliefs. To quote that famous saying of St. Anselm, “I believe so that I may understand.” In science, I must at least believe that there exists a natural world to investigate and that that world is intelligible to my mind. Further to make any progress in science, I must believe in the testimony of my predecessors, since there is no way I would be able to do all of the research of previous scientists and then do additional work given the shortness of human life. However, if my predecessors are trustworthy experts, then I can accept their work and make additional progress. In a similar way with faith, I must begin by believing in how God has revealed Himself, through nature and through the person of Jesus Christ. As with science, if I refuse to accept this self-revelation, progress and deeper understanding is impossible. However, since God is the fullness and source of all truth and He can neither deceive nor be deceived, then it is certainly wise and rational to accept His testimony.

To make this more concrete let me offer an analogy. Say that there is a blind man, who has a dear friend, like you are mind, and he trusts him completely. His friend tries to explain what he looks like to his blind companion. The man, due to lack of ability, has no way to come to understanding of what his friends “looks like” by his own power, but he can obtain some imperfect understanding, through his friends testimony. This is similar to God's testimony about Himself, which is necessary due to the limits of human reason in order for us to know Him. Yet, we can trust his self-revelation since He is our dearest friend and can neither deceive nor be deceived. But you might stop me here and say: “Aha! This 'trust' in God is exactly the kind of leap of faith that separates faith and reason.” Yet, my trust in God is not ill placed. If God is the Christian God, then my faith is well placed in his authority as the fullness of all good and the one who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Now, whether this sort of God exists is a matter of evidence that we can arrive at through our sense and reason. So, my trust in God to give me reliable testimony is as rational as my trust in scientific authority to give me reliable testimony. Hence, reason and faith begin from the same basis of belief, though the knowledge which they engage may be different depth and knowability.

Finally, I would offer you John Paul II's understanding of faith and reason that “each contains the other.”(§17) I argue that reason, properly oriented towards truth, leads us to faith. By this I mean, reason seeks to know reality and to know those deepest truths of reality. However, given the limits of human ability these deepest truths are unattainable by our power alone, but reason still urges us on to that deeper knowledge. This deeper knowledge is the object of faith, the fullness of truth in the revelation of God. God, who created all, is the source of all truth and indeed is Truth itself, and thus is that deepest knowledge which reason seeking truth is oriented towards. Thus, reason points to faith. Further, I contend that faith leads us to reason. When we embrace the object of faith, God and His self revelation, we are filled with a desire to know and understand God in the ever deepening relationship that his revelation reveals we are called to. This calls us to use our reason to understand the world that God has created in order to understand Him better. Further, when we understand that God has created us in His image as rational creatures, we can see that God created us to investigate the world and his revelation in order to understand Him and bring Him glory. In this way faith leads us to reason. To put in the words of John Paul II: “Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has a trust in it,” (§43) since God imparted reason upon us. Hence in the integrationist view, faith and reason are not in competition nor completely separate, but in cooperation and feeding each other.

So then, my dearest friend, I believe that the integrationist view is not only a rational option, but also can explain what Christians are really saying, unlike Gould's NOMA proposal. To reiterate, Christians are making truth claims about the universe and these claims are structured and supported the same way that scientific claims, at least within the limits of human ability. Further, faith and science are both supported by the same need for belief before understanding can be had, thus belief is integral for both. Given all of this, it seems that faith and reason, religion and science, are integrated in structure and purpose of knowing the depths of truth in the world. And finally, faith and reason are not separate magisteria as Gould would suggest or in competition as the materialist might suggest. Rather, as St. Thomas Aquanis writes, they cannot be in contradiction and indeed they cannot be separate since they are both aimed towards the same fullness of truth. Therefore, I propose that we adjourn this the First Council of Starbucks as I have a philosophy paper to write.

Creation Ex Nihilo

Something that has touched me deeply these past days is thinking about how God has created the world out of nothing and the philosophical consequences of that.
In my Christian Metaphysics class, we have been talking about Aristotle's ideas concerning the the categories of change. The important thing that I will try to talk about is the idea of "matter". Aristotle talks about matter in a very different way than we do. He speaks of matter as "potentiality". Let me try to explain. A piece of wood actually exists as a piece of wood, but it could be altered to become a desk, to use Dr. Tkacz's example. So, the wood is actually a piece of wood, but it could potentially be a desk, among other things, and this potentiality is called matter. Indeed it is this matter that allows the piece of wood to become and maintain the form of a desk.
Now the thing that is really important about this idea is that God created us out of nothing. So, the "matter" of all existence is nothing. So, because we come from nothing, our matter is nothing, thus we are not being held together by any matter. Now, the key here is that we at each moment continue to exist even though we were created from nothing, so then why do we go on existing if we have no potential for existing in any form. The answer is God's continuing agency in keeping us in existence. Hence, God continually wills our existence.
Now, I think of my mother conceiving, bearing me for nine months, and then giving birth to me, and I'm extremely grateful for this, since it show how much my mother cared for me that she would work so much to bring me into the word. Now my mother's love is so very great for me, but at this point she pretty much has to put up with me whether she likes it or not, because I'm here and without taking violent action against me, which she wouldn't, I'm not going anywhere.
I think about that and then I think about God who is continually willing me into existence. If He was just tired of me, than he would just have to cease willing my existence and no more problem. This compounded with how often and deeply I offend Him everyday speak of levels of love that I could only possibly describe as parental. It is quite amazing that God really wants me here, and indeed He wants everyone here from the most glorious saints to the most wicked sinners. He loves us and seeks us all as our Father.
That is all...

Every Knee Shall Bend Before His Name

Last night Fr. St. Hilare gave an excellent homily on a reading from scripture, where Jesus criticizes the Pharisees and Scribes for their insistent reliance on the Law and rituals, while forgetting the burden it puts on the people, and indeed the thing is was getting at was that they did nothing to help the people with their burdens.
What I got out of this was the continual need to focus on the conversion of the heart and not making sure that everyone is doing the right ritual. Proverb 15:8 says "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight." So, indeed it is the heart that is important, rather than solely the act itself. Also, let us not the difference between sacrifice and prayer (I don't know if this is a significant point given the Hebrew culture or if there is truly a meaningful difference, but it is currently useful to my purposes, so I will take a guess that it is and proceed with the grace of God if I'm a fool or getting at something important), while the wicked man offers something seeming "greater" in his sacrifice, it is the "lesser" prayer of the upright that is pleasing to God. This is also connected to the story of the wealthy who give great sacrifices and the poor woman who contributes only a few coins (Mark 12:42-43). It is not how much we give, but with how much love as Blessed Mother Teresa would say.
As St. Paul goes on at some length talking about how worthless the wonderful gifts we have are if we do not have Love. Thus, I believe that it is important as a future priest that we work for the conversion of the heart, and not just be rule hounds like the Scribes and Pharisees. And as a person who bent his knee before Christ's name for several years with a wicked heart, I can attest the need for a conversion of the heart.
Yet, the story does not end there, because as that kind of person, I also know the beauty of the rituals and indeed how helpful they can be. Even if we have wicked hearts, the act of kneeling before Christ can begin to stir in us the that conversion of heart. Indeed the rituals are very important, because not only do they stir in us that conversion, but they also are designed to raise our hearts and minds to God. Truly, we need to remember that we are a sacramental people and the physical stuff matters deeply and was given to us by God for our salvation.
Thus, every knee will bend before the name of Christ for He is truly our King and Savior, but we must work as Christians to strengthen that notion of God's glory in each other and spread it wherever we should tread. So, while rituals are extremely important in helping us lift our hearts to God, we must also keep in the conversion of the heart that need always to take place, and also remember that the rituals can help bring about that conversion.

Two Interesting Passage from the Bible

In the Old Testament there are two particular passages that I found profound and inspiring, since ancient Hebrews wrote them. The first is the Genesis story. Now most people know the story of the creation of the world in seven days, but the thing that really surprises me about the whole story is that God creates the world ex nihilo, out of nothing.
Now to us now a days this doesn't seem all that impressive since it has been deeply rooted in our culture for centuries. The thing that is quite amazing about it is that it stands out among the other creation stories of ancient time. All of the other creation myths, that I'm aware of, begin with a god or gods creating the world out of some material that is already there, but never explains where that material came from. So, the Genesis story stands out among the majority of ancient creation myths as truly trying to explain where everything came from. The only thing that exists before the world is God, and this is indeed an amazing assertion, since it seem counter intuitive that everything came from nothing, since our every day experience shows that things always come from other things. However, this story seems to answer the first cause problem that arises thousands of years later.
The second passage that really amazes me in the Old Testament is in Exodus where God reveals that "I am whom am" or "I am that I am". So, what God really says here is that he isn't the god of thunder, death, the sun, etc., but that God is being itself. The depths of this statement can never truly be fathomed, because we are finite beings and can hardly come to a comprehension of what the fullness of being is in God. But among all of the fertility, war, and thunder god of the ancient world, we have God who reveals himself as not this natural thing or that, but being itself. It is an amazingly advanced assertion from the ancient Hebrews.
In fact these assertions seem so advanced for the ancients, that it gives validity to them being the self revelation of God.

Euthyphro's Problem

Today in my ancient philosophy class, we talked about the Platonic dialogue Euthyphro. In this the question arises first about what is piety, but an even more deep question about the gods arise along side it. The question is: Is what is pious, pious because it is loved by the gods, or do the gods love it because it is pious. This has led to the more modern question of: Is what is good, good because it is commanded by God, or does God command it because it is good. On first thinking about this, I began to think about God's perfection and that God cannot command anything other than what is good, because to do so would mean He was less than perfect, thus He would not be God. However, I wasn't sure where this fit into the two opitions that were given, until one of my brother seminarians point out that it is a false dychotomy.
Indeed the answer I was thinking of is a third option, that God Himself is the fullness of the Good. If God is the fullness of the Good, then whatever he commands is good, otherwise he would not be the fullness of Good and thus not be God.

Morality in our Biology?

During my History of Ancient Philosophy class, my professor spoke about some of the Sophists and how they believed that laws were merely conventional and were in contention with nature. This lead us to the subject of if morality is part of the human biology. There seems to be evidence of lower primates who have some sort of social norms and limited morality, which is punished by a third party, in much the same way that we do in our court systems.
Further, there has been additional thought and work done into finding biological reasons for our morality. The professor offered several books that supported the claims that morality has biological origins. The girl who was sitting next to me shook her head, closed her notebook, and started packing up. She was clearly uninterested in such a hypothesis. Clearly, she felt this was an unacceptable hypothesis, because - I imagine - it could potentially eliminate God as the origin of the morality we believe in.
However, I don't feel that this is necessarily case that because at least some morality has biological origins means that somehow trumps God. I think there are two important things to always keep in mind in these instance: (1) God is Creator of all, including our biology and (2) to paraphrase St. Thomas, what is known through reason cannot contradict what is known by faith, because they are both aimed at the fullness of truth.
Thus, the fact that some of our morality has biological origins is very reasonable from the Christian perspective, since God created our morality and indeed if He made our whole morality as opposed to our biology, then we certainly would not have survived for very long. Further, since we are spirit-bodies (a union of body and spirit) , in makes sense that what God has written upon our hearts or spirits would have representations in our biology. This is of course not a new development in Christianity, we have always believed that God put in us, in our consciences, basic morality, and certainly these basics can be derived from nature, which God also created.
The step some philosophers and the like make that I think is unvalidated is the claim that all morality comes from biology. One of the big problems that people who make these claims have been having is with strong altruism, or helping people with no genetic ties which you will gain nothing with and indeed the case of dying for such a person. This seems directly opposed to our biology in that our genetics are lost, if we die, we gain nothing from the actions, and indeed inferior genes continue on. So, altruists like Mother Teresa don't fit into this neat category

Is Homosexuality Natural?

One of my brother's protestant friends, who is a youth minister, got into an argument with some of the Catholics I know about whether homosexuality is natural or not. My brother's friend tried to argue that it is unnatural, and in fact cannot be natural, because it is opposed to God and God created the homosexual person in question, or at least this was the argument he was seeming to make. I'm not sure what point my Catholic friends were trying to make, but the ultimate worry of the youth minister I think was that if we accept that homosexual are that way by natural means, then we have to accept that they are just that way and we cannot really say that homosexual acts are a sin.
I think that isn't true, based on the idea that nature itself is fallen and broken, like human beings. What do I mean by this? Well I mean that genetic disorders, hormonal imbalances, diseases, etc. are all part of nature, but they are not part of our Nature. A woman can be barren by genetic defects, but it is in our Nature to be fertily and have children, because that is part of what humans are and do. A man could have some chemical imbalance that makes him antisocial, but this is not part of our Nature, because we are social creature. Are these people less human, certainly not, but like the rest of us they have a broken nature, that falls short of our true and complete Nature.
So, to with homosexuality. If a man is born homosexual, through whatever reason, it still remains a disorder because it is not part of our Nature, because we are made complimentarily, man and woman, and homosexuality ignores that part of our Nature. Now as before, they remain human and are dearly beloved by God, but as I've thought for a long time, it doesn't matter if a person is born homosexual or choses to be homosexual, because either way it is opposed to our true Nature.