Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 10

The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all—the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so; we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear skepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.
I agree with the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is not the whole matter; that there is an authoritative need to believe the things that are necessary to the human mind. But I say that one of those necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute. But precisely one of the things that he must think is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a matter of human needs; and one of the first of human needs is to be something more than a pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully attacks. The determinist (who, to do him justice, does not pretend to be a human being) makes nonsense of the human sense of actual choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be specially human, makes nonsense of the human sense of actual fact.
Exactly as complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere “willing” really paralyzes the will. Mr. Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real difference between the old utilitarian test of pleasure (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and that which he propounds. The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn’t. You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.  Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 6

Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I believe in immortality I need not think about it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must not think about it. In the first case the road is open and I can go as far as I like; in the second the road is shut. But the case is even stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet more strange. For it was our case against the exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his humanity. Now it is the charge against the main deductions of the materialist that, right or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity; I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. For instance, when materialism leads men to complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a liberating force. It is absurd to say that you are especially advancing freedom when you only use free thought to destroy free will. The determinists come to bind, not loose. They may well call their law the “chain” of causation. It is the worst chain that ever fettered a human being. You may use the language of liberty, if you like, about materialistic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same language when applied to a man locked up in a madhouse. You may say, if you like, that the man is free to think himself a poached egg. But it is surely a more massive and important fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in the reality of the will. But it is a much more massive and important fact that he is not free to raise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, to rebuke tyrants, or even to say “thank you” for the mustard.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.  Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Lisa Randall on science and religion

Can a scientist be religious? Only at the price of inconsistency, she argues, because scientific determinism is not compatible with belief in a deity who can willfully intervene in the world. Sympathetic though I am to her conclusion, I would point out that scientific determinism is equally incompatible with free will and moral responsibility. Jim Holt, "Will the Large Hadron Collider Explain Everything?" a review of Knocking on Heavens Door, by Lisa Randall, Harvard physicist, New York Times Book Review, October 9, 2011.

Thanks for reading.

God and quantum indeterminacy

In a previous post, I briefly discussed, in relation to a book by Kitty Ferguson, what modern physics says about the unpredictability of sub-atomic particles. This fundamental uncertainty may be a way for God to act without being detected:

Let's say that God wants to alter my consciousness in a certain way (so as to communicate a message to me) or to alter the course of a disease. If we assume determinism, then either God couldn't do it, or God would have to, at least temporarily, suspend natural causal determinism in order to do it. This alternative depends on whether we think of determinism as true independently of God or as an order established by God, and hence subject to cancellation at God's pleasure. But on quantum theory there is no such problem. The relevant physical laws only provide for a large probability or one outcome rather than another in a given situation. And the highly improbable can sometimes happen without violating probability laws. Hence God can, consistent with quantum theory, do something to bring about a physically improbable outcome in one or more instances without any violation of physical law. And even if these interventions are all on the sub-atomic level, they can, if properly chosen (and presumably God would be in a position to do so), snowball so as to make a difference to macroscopic states of affairs. Hence, divine activity that makes specific differences at particular times and places is quite consistent with a quantum theory of physical causality. Perhaps God designed the universe to operate in accordance with probabilistic laws so as to give room for God to enter the process as an agent. William P. Alston, "Divine Action, Human Freedom, and the Laws of Nature," pp. 185-206 in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, 2nd edition, ed. by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and C. J. Isham. (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1996) Quote is from pp. 188-9.

Note that I said "may." As a matter of fact, Alston, the author, says that he does not believe that it is necessary to invoke quantum indeterminacy to explain God's action. He believes that God's occasional action is compatible with physics at not only the micro level, but at the macro level. I, too, suppose that God is quite capable of acting on quarks and neutrinos, but also on mountains and planets. Believing that God operates only on things we don't understand is a dangerous type of theology known as "God of the gaps." If God is God, He is God not only of things we can't explain or predict, but of things that we can. As a friend of mine once said, "God is not just the God of eternity. He is also the God of 2 + 2." The danger of such a belief is that, as we think we understand more and more, we push God more and more into irrelevancy, in our own minds. Just because we think we understand, say, the orbits of the planets, does not mean that God had nothing to do with them, anymore than understanding how, say, a kitchen range works doesn't mean that someone (or a lot of someones) didn't originally invent them.

I expect to continue the series with more direct musings on Ferguson's book in the near future. Thanks for reading.