Nielsen and Kierkegaard

The Nielsen saga has been interesting to me, but I haven't known exactly what to think of it all. He was at BYU in the philosophy department (which already endears him to me... I've spent some time there myself) and was fired for taking a public stand against the church on the gay marriage issue. Considering my own very conflicted feelings on the subject, I have to sympathize. We teach children to stand up for what's right, even when it means you might be unpopular (at least my mom did). And here's a guy who thought that's exactly what he's doing, and it's the LDS church that takes him down. Not that that's surprising or even inappropriate--it's pretty much a clear expectation of employment at BYU that you don't call your employer's owner immoral and publicly criticize them (at least, I think it is).

The latest piece in the paper from him has a curious effect on me. I agree with everything he says from a secular perspective, but I can't swallow it as one who believes the church is led by God. Never does he acknowledge that the leaders of the church are considered prophets--those who speak for God--in his comments. He compares the LDS church to "any organization" and cautions against considering the leaders infallible. That's all nice, Nielsen, but you seem to be a pretty bright guy for having missed such a central premise of the church.

"Unexamined belief is not faith, but superstition, and we must clear away superstition to make way for genuine faith," says Nielsen. Was it superstition, then, that led Abraham to submit to God's completely unacceptable commandment to murder his own son--a son He gave Abraham fair and square? How exactly did he rationalize that away? He examined it and, yup, it's still ridiculous. What was it about his obedience that was so significant then?

Back in my days studying philosophy at the BYU (hee hee-the BYU... I'm so old), I read some of Kierkegaard's thoughts on Abraham. I didn't really get it. But whatever the hell Kierkegaard really thinks, it ultimately left me with the impression that there's a paradox to faith. My take home point was that you can examine certain things rationally till the cows come home and they'll come up unexplainable, and that there's a particular power in accepting God's curious position anyway.

The real question is whether we are justified in viewing leaders of any organization, even those of the LDS Church, as infallible when they make a doctrinal or policy pronouncement.... If they want to be considered infallible, then they have every reason to worry about members like me who will always refuse to surrender those most precious divine gifts, namely mind and moral agency, to another human being....

Is the church led by human beings then or ultimately by God? You can believe either way, but Nielsen sure seems to want the latitude to take his pick for whatever issue du jour comes along. I've always been taught that being obedient gives us more moral agency, and that there's merit to obeying every word of command with exactness. To the extent a leader misleads, he is responsible and not me. Yes, I see the many problems with this oversimplification of the issue, but it seems a good rule considering the complexity (and ultimate failure) of the other ways people see to reconcile mistakes from priesthood leaders. Rules can have exceptions, but if I wrote them out trying to anticipate them, they would be part of the rule.

I can imagine the Israelites, "Hey Moses, do you honestly think going in and wiping out all the Canaanites is a good idea? I mean, they've got children in there. Aren't the children innocent?"

Moses: "What the hell do I know? God just said to do it."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I just don't think I can sacrifice my most precious gifts to you--my mind and my moral agency. Killing children is wrong."

"Umm... okay. I guess you've got to do what you've got to do. The whole walking across the Red Sea as if it were dry land didn't persuade you that God is captain here and not just me?"

"Well, you've got a point there, certainly. I'll think about it. But I think I've got to ultimately be true to myself and I was taught not to kill. It's one of the commandments."

"Yeah, I'm familiar with those."

Nielsen later lectures the leaders of the church on the Golden Rule. Does he think the comparison to polygamy has escaped them? Does he honestly think their belief on this issue is "unexamined"? Do I? Am I willing to stand up and criticize an unjust church, the very same one that taught me how important it is to stand for the truth! I suppose I would, if I thought the church really was unjust... if I thought it wasn't God's church. But I think it is. I don't get everything that's going on with gay marriage, but I'm working from limited information and God's not.

Answer

Chris asked a question of me in a comment on a recent post that I thought I would answer today.

You are a man of science and rationality. Your chosen profession of medicine demands it. You have written often and eloquently of the need for rigor in understanding scientific data. And yet, you do not seem to demand the same kind of rigor when it comes to matters of religion, even when it impacts you in a profoundly personal way.

Why?

Religious thought should receive the most scrutiny and the most rigorous examination of any human endeavor, in my opinion. Certainly, not less than science. But the kind of scrutiny is totally different. It's a different universe of discourse with different assumptions and different endpoints. Science is determined to describe the truth about the natural world we find ourselves in. It lends itself perfectly to empiric investigation. Religion (to me) is an investigation into the truth about the supernatural world. It's why we've found ourselves anywhere at all.

Supernatural and natural inquiries have different sets of rules, and because I've written a little on this before I'm somewhat surprised you would characterize my religious views as not rigorously examined. I suspect this may be a form of this idea: if you and I haven't come to the same conclusion then you just haven't thought about it enough.

Additionally, I want to go on record with some qualifiers. I am flattered that you have described me as a man of science and rationality. But one of the things that rationality has given me is a healthy skepticism for science. Science done correctly has done immeasurable good for our society. And science done badly has done (and continues to do) immeasurable harm. There are lots of reasons why scientifically accepted dogma is plain wrong. The data was measured wrong. The methodology was flawed. The analysis was biased. Over time we've improved as a society in picking out these errors and building safe-guards into the methodology. And over time the spin-masters, the marketers, and the plain liars have gotten better at obscuring the scientific flaws (perhaps sometimes deliberately). Gay issues are a major caution zone, I've noticed.

Qualifier two is that not all the rules are different for scientific and religious inquiry. Naturalism, yes. Inviolable physical laws, yes. Absolute consistency, yes. But God Himself asks us to "prove me now herewith"... to test things for ourselves. I can think of a number of "clinical trials" in the scriptures, so to speak. I can think of favorable references to logic and reason. It's a big part of what God expects of us. And far from accepting the premise of your first question, I believe my faith to be perhaps one of the most exquisitely consistent and logical of any I know. But ultimately it's a "faith" and not a "science". And therefore I'm okay when people disagree or come to different conclusions. I expect the same courtesy of them, even if what I believe bothers them. And that's the beauty of America--it was built on a constitution codifying just such a sentiment.

By the way, I've written on this before. Oh, and here and here.

Pain problems

Bill Clinton's biography includes his acknowledgment that he began to question his religious roots because he couldn't understand how a loving God could allow so much suffering and pain in the world. I don't remember exactly how he put it, but it was another iteration of the problem of pain discussed in theology and philosophy classes around the globe. It's a problem I appreciate.

If God wants us to be happy, and he most assuredly does, then why does he "make" us in a manner that we desire something forbidden to be happy? For some, the reductio ad absurdum argument ends there and the conclusion is not that happiness doesn't lie with the forbidden thing after all, but that he in fact doesn't forbid it. It's the more pleasant way to resolve the issue. Is it a fallacy? I hope you won't be offended by my offering my opinion that it is.

God doesn't take suffering lightly. He makes it clear throughout scripture that whatever else we do, if we fail to help the suffering, we are in big trouble. But, at the same time, he doesn't keep even the best from suffering. Christ, of course, suffered more than anyone. Job suffered immensely, and the list of martyrs is long. People suffer all the time, and God not only puts up with it, but seems to let it happen to the best. And, it even seems to me that God Himself suffers because of His children's poor choices. This makes me think that presence or absence of suffering isn't a big component in the happiness I'm looking for in life. Maybe it's only the presence or absence of suffering in those around me that counts. I dunno. Maybe there's something distinctive about different kinds of suffering.

Long ago I was told that the key to success is the endurance of pain. I've thought on that quite a bit and realized that subjecting oneself to certain kinds of "suffering" does indeed foster success, discipline, sacrifice, self-control and many other virtues. It's the purported antithesis to happiness that brings the most success and consequently more happiness. Where in all this does embracing gay love or gay sex lie? Does abstaining count as virtuous suffering that will make me stronger? Or does it count as frank unhappiness on the surface?

Morality and reason

Let us suppose for a moment that the harder virtues could really be theoretically justified with no appeal to objective value. It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous. Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that "a gentleman does not cheat," than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism… about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use.

C.S.Lewis,
in The Abolition of Man

This book is quite complex, and any quotation threatens to be misinterpreted as out of context. The entire book is the context. It’s short and hard to isolate aphorisms. Anyway, the "trained emotions" he is referring to is traditional values. He is testifying (I think) to the importance of having been taught independently moral principles. He is making the case for teaching sentimentalism. Teaching children patriotism. Teaching morality. He makes the interesting case that without natural moral law, there can be no valid arguments to create morality through reason.

The Innovator is trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premises in the indicative mood: and though he continues trying to all eternity he cannot succeed, for the thing is impossible. We must therefore either extend the word Reason to include what our ancestors called Practical Reason and confess that judgements such as society ought to be preserved …are not mere sentiments but are rationality itself: or else we must give up at once, and for ever, the attempt to find a core of "rational" value behind all the sentiments we have debunked.

The abolition of man

…Righteousness, correctness, order, the Rta, is constantly identified with satya or truth, correspondence to reality. As Plato said that the Good was "beyond existence" and Wordsworth that through virtue the stars were strong, so the Indian masters say that the gods themselves are born of the Rta and obey it. The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar. "In ritual," say the Analects, "it is harmony with Nature that is prized." The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being "true."

C.S.Lewis,
in The Abolition of Man

Moving past Parks, today I picked up The Abolition of Man, by C. S. Lewis. That man is a smart guy. Unfortunately, much of what he writes is difficult for me to understand. This is probably due to some combination of his use of British idioms, the date of the text, and ubiquitous allusions to literature I’ve never studied. Oh yeah, and that it’s just thick stuff. Regardless, I always find it a pleasure to consider his thoughts. I’ve had this book for over 10 years (as part of a Lewis set) and today was the first time I’ve read it. I usually go back to favorites I’ve read in the past. But perusing this today turned out to be quite apropos.

Comments on my Parks posts reminded me that I’ve noticed two disparate views on the homosexual condition. Proponents of one view seem to hold a relativistic philosophy in general. Love, truth, and good are all to be discovered from within. Lewis doesn’t mention homosexuality a single time, so the application to this topic is purely my own. But I would hold that Lewis would object to such views. Lewis believes in natural moral law—independent of preference or dislike. And I find it difficult to consider the alternate view as plausible, based on the explanations I’ve heard.