Is Steve Beshear Untouchable? The KY media's double standard on religion

Let's see if I've got this straight: Steve Beshear goes to a solemn Hindu religious rite and makes it into a cheap campaign photo op and it's Beshear's critics who are disrespecting the religion?

This, at least, seems to be the attitude of the Kentucky’s liberal media.

Let's be honest here. If David Williams had gone to a Christian church and participated in some religious ceremony and his Senate office had sent out photos of it, editorial writers from the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader would be falling all over themselves lamenting that Williams was pandering to his base—if not violating the separation between church and state—and their reporters would be calling up left-wing professors at the state's universities and writing stories about it.

In Friday's CJ, Peter Smith took both me and Republican gubernatorial candidate David Williams to task for remarks about Beshear’s very solemn and respectful exploitation of a Hindu rite. He and other reporters covering the story went out and got the comments of Hindu organizations, at least one of which demanded an apology from Williams—an apology they rightly never got.

Smith charges Williams—who had portrayed Beshear as sitting in the Lotus Position, with a red mark on his forehead, bowing and praying to Hindu deities—with mischaracterizing the Hindu ceremony:

In fact, that incorrectly describes Beshear’s sitting posture or that of anyone else in the photo. None of them could be mistaken for assuming the tight, cross-legged meditative lotus position.

The Lotus Position, it turns out, is a cross-legged sitting posture in which each foot rests on the opposite thigh. In addition, he says:

Hindus have said that sitting in the ceremonial pit of such a ceremony and receiving the ceremonial “tilak” on the forehead does not necessarily mean one is engaging in Hindu worship.

In other words, the governor wasn’t sitting in the Lotus Position receiving the ceremonial “tilak” on the forehead with his eyes closed and his head bowed and with incense burning in a religious ceremony that involves making offerings to various gods and worshipping them.

No. It wasn't anything like that. All he was doing was sitting cross-legged receiving the ceremonial “tilak” on the forehead with his eyes closed and his head bowed and with incense burning in a religious ceremony that involves making offerings to various gods and not worshipping them.

Glad we’ve got that cleared up. I mean, who could possibly have mistaken one for the other?

Beshear claims to be a Christian. But one thing is for sure: Shadrach the governor is not. Or Meshach. Or Abednego. This is clearly not a man who will ever find himself in a lion's den--not with all the available alternatives.

And then, of course, there was my post, in which I made light of the whole thing and employed a number of blatant and obvious stereotypes in order to do it. The problem there? I used blatant and obvious stereotypes to do it.

He’s got me there.

And then there was the fact that I was making light of it at all. My post “makes one-liners out of issues that deserve serious discussion in their own context.”

Well, I suppose if my intention had been to discuss the issue seriously in its own context I would have discussed the issue seriously in its own context. But as it so happens that was not my intention.

In fact, getting serious about religion is not something the media does particularly well. Smith is certainly well-intentioned, but here is his comment on the Hindu caste system:

The oppression of Hindu untouchables is also real, serious—and also draws resistance from within the Hindu community itself. The Hindu American Foundation says “caste-based discrimination is not, and has never been, intrinsic to the essential teachings of Hinduism.”

And it's David Williams who is mischaracterizing Hinduism? Not only has the caste system been considered (in and outside of the religion) as an essential part of Hinduism throughout its history, but it is integral to its belief in reincarnation, and rebellion against it is considered to result in a lower rebirth in the next life. In fact, the only thing that has moderated the caste system in recent times is the introduction of Western beliefs into Indian thinking.

This is the thing about multiculturalism: the Western liberals who spout it never allow the real beliefs of non-Western thought systems to complicate their presentation of it. Many non-Western beliefs, it turns out, are racist and sexist, among other unfortunate things. So they have to clean it up first and make it presentable. The next thing you know we'll be reading news stories about how Hinduism isn't polytheistic.

CJ reporters need to be careful about how they characterize Hinduism. If they're not careful, they could end up being reborn as politicians.

Pop Quiz: Which act displays the more serious attitude toward a religion: participating in one of its holy rites for purposes of a cheap political photo op (or, for that matter, downplaying its potentially objectionable beliefs), or taking it for what it is and arguing against it because you think it's wrong?

If you take Hinduism seriously, as Williams clearly did, you’re intolerant. If you make light of it, then you’re insensitive because you’re not taking it seriously. It’s important to realize the dilemma you can get into here.

Otherwise you might think it was just bad Karma.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Peter is a great guy and really wasn’t as hard on me as I suppose he could have been. But I’m trying to remember the last time he or any other CJ reporter went out and sought a request for apology from a Protestant denomination or Catholic church for, say, one of State Rep. Tom Burch’s hostile outbursts during one of his committee meetings at the State Capitol—or for that many any of the frequent and equally hostile remarks about Christianity made by State Sen. Kathy Stein.

In fact, I’m trying very hard to think of any similar display of media indignation at any instance of ill-intentioned criticism of Christianity and I’m just not coming up with anything.

Maybe I’ll remember it in my next life.

In fact, has Smith ever heard of the Page One Kentucky blog (That’s a rhetorical question. Of course he has. All the CJ reporters read it), where Jake Payne takes almost daily potshots at conservative Christianity? Has he ever written a column condemning Payne for religious intolerance?

Ever?

When it's a liberal Democrat showing favor to a non-Western religion, the media sings its hosannas to the principle of religious tolerance, but when it's a conservative Republican showing favor to Christianity, they call fire down from heaven.

Even a liberal Democrat can't escape impaling himself on one or the other horn of the media's contradictory Tolerance standard. Just compare on the one hand the treatment Beshear himself received when he actually participated in a Hindu ceremony for the camera (solemn and starry-eyed respect for all the religions of the earth and lectures about all the world singing together in perfect harmony), and on the other when Beshear granted tax incentives for the building of the Ark Park, which is formally not even a religious organization (grim rhetorical expressions and hostile, school-marmish finger-wagging about how we should be very careful about crossing the line between church and state—the only thing the media thinks is really holy).

Will there be any observations forthcoming from the state media about the inconsistency between the Beshear administration renaming the state Christmas tree the state “Holiday” tree because it is too religion specific on the one hand, and on the other actually participating in a religion-specific Hindu ceremony?

If the media worshipped a god, it would be the Roman god Janus, who has two faces pointing in opposite directions.

Rush Limbaugh attacks the education of the founding fathers

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh tied his whole brain, not just half of it, behind his back. In the process he ended up sounding a whole lot like the cultural barbarians he claims to be fighting.

Limbaugh, channeling his inner Gradgrind, launched on a tirade today against classical education, saying that a classical studies degree from college is a "worthless degree." Provoked by a sign-carrying Wall Street occupier who bemoaned her "useless" classical studies degree and her resulting lack of employment, the conservative talk show host charged colleges with scamming students by not telling them that their degrees in classical studies are "worthless" and won't result in being able to find a job.

"Can you tell me where you would go to apply for a job with a classical studies degree?" asked Limbaugh. "[S]omebody at the university ought to say, 'Babe, you are wasting your time in a nothing major, we are stealing your money, you're going to be qualified for jack excrement when you get out of here."

He then went on to question what the term even meant:

Any of you at random listening all across the fruited plain, what the **** is classical studies? What classics are studied? Or is it learning how to study in a classical way? Or is it learning how to study in a classy as opposed to unclassy way? And what about unclassical studies? Why does nobody care about the unclassics? What are the classics? And how are the classics studied? Oh, so you're going to become an expert in Dickens? You're assuming it's literature? You're assuming we're talking about classical literature here? What if its classical women's studies? What if it's classical feminism? Who the Hell knows what it is? 

... For all of you young skulls full of mush out there, ...when you go to college, do not do classical studies. What the **** is it anyway?

The segment reminded me of when I walked into the Republican leadership offices of our state senate one day and, while I was waiting to see someone, watched Glen Beck on the office monitor give a short disquisition on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. It's times like these that you just fell embarrassed for the person. And its times like this that Limbaugh's own lack of formal education begins to loom large.

His extended sililoquy on the subject was, to be charitable, a confused pastiche of half-thought out rants about liberal colleges and socialism and communism and feminism and postmodernism, the perceived association with which is somehow supposed to constitute an indictment of classical education.

Limbaugh was right, of course, about the state of higher education, about colleges who don't tell students that taking out loans for majors that are not designed to make you marketable, and even about the state of many classical studies departments.

But the state of higher education has affected the fate of all the academic disciplines; going into debt as a business major (or political science, or economics, or psychology, or a whole host of majors) makes you in many cases no more marketable and no less financially unsound than doing it to fund a classical studies degree; and if many colleges have given way to political correctness in classical studies, that is hardly an indictment of reading the classics. The fact that the academic left has corrupted many classics departments is not a reason to train our fire on the classics: it's a reason to defend them.

The classics are the natural ally of conservatism, and when prominent conservatives like Limbaugh use the excuse of the liberal assault on them to assault them himself, he is only contributing to the decline of the civilization he prides himself on defending.

In fact, in many ways Limbaugh's attack on classical education was an unfortunate case of friendly fire. Before the advent of the modern education agenda we see at work now, studying the classics was what education consisted of--almost exclusively. In fact, we ought to be glad the founding fathers didn't have Limbaugh's attitude about classical studies, since it was through their knowledge of classical political theory that they were able to frame the government which we still enjoy to this day.

The education of the founding period was universally classical. When you went to school, you studied Latin and maybe Greek--only occasionally Hebrew. And you used that knowledge to study the great works of Western civilization in their original languages. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson all had a solid classical education, and quoted classical authors interminably. The framers were soaked and steeped in Aristotle's Politics, Publius' Histories, and Cicero's De Re Publica, De Legibus, and De Officiis. They read them, they quoted them, they discussed them, and they debated them--and they leaned heavily on them in their construction of the American republic.

I defy anyone to read the letters between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and say that these men weren't thoroughly grounded in the great works of Western civilization--or that it didn't make a difference in what they thought and did.

Without this knowledge, this country would not exist as we know it.

Lurking behind Limbaugh's remarks were assumptions that real conservatives have no business employing, among which is the idea that the purpose of education is job training. In fact, part of the irony of Limbaugh's remarks here is that he's marching under the same flag as people like Hilary Clinton, whose utilitarian views on cultural issues, including education, Limbaugh claims to despise.

Modern education is a confused and toxic admixture of progressivism and pragmatism. Progressivism is the idea that schools should be used to change the culture, and is on clear display in the political correctness and secular religion of Diversity that infect schools from Kindergarten to college. Pragmatism is the idea that schools should be used to fit students to the present culture, and takes the form primarily of vocationalism.

Many people think that public schools fail at what they try to do. And that is partly true. They do a pretty good job of political indoctrination--a process that is not terribly complicated--but do a pretty poor job making students employable. But the primary problem with schools is that they don't even try to do what they should be trying to do.

The alternative to progressivism and pragmatism is the philosophy of education that preceded them: classical education. The purpose of classical education was neither to change culture through political indoctrination nor to fit children to the culture through vocationalism. The purpose of every school before the advent of John Dewey and others in the late 19th century was to pass on a culture, and one culture in particular: the culture of the Christian West.

The sad thing about comments like these from Limbaugh is that, although he spurns the progressivist half of the liberal political agenda, he accepts the pragmatist half of it hook, line, and sinker. The utilitarian idea that education must make a quantifiable contribution to the money economy is the product of the thinking of those Edmund Burke, the progenitor of modern conservatism, called "sophisters and calculators."

In fact, the modern conservative tradition that extents back to Burke and that lives on into this century in the persons of T. S. Eliot and Russell Kirk will have no truck with the idea that education is a purely instrumental concern. In fact, when I listened to the recording of Limbaugh's show yesterday, I couldn't help but imagine people like Burke, Eliot, and Kirk rolling over in their graves.

Finally, let's answer Rush's main question: "What the **** is 'classical studies'?"

Classical studies--and this may come as a shock to people who don't read very carefully--is studying the classics, and it is a part of the broader educational program that is more commonly called "classical education," which is, in its ideal form, a study of literature, language, and the humanities, as well as the disciplines of math and science. It is the academic focus on what Matthew Arnold once called "the best that has been thought and said," as well as training in the linguistic and mathematical disciplines of the liberal arts. It not only teaches what to think, more importantly it teaches you how to think--something most of our academic institutions have admittedly abandoned.

An education like this would certainly have prevented Limbaugh from making such a misguided attack on a program of study that ought to be championed by conservatives, not spurned by them.

Are science and religion incompatible?

Essays lauding the superiority of science over religion are not uncommon, and Julian Baggini, atheist editor of Philosopher's Magazine, gives us another one in the Guardian. Biologist Jerry Coyne, of course, is much impressed, as he is with any such pronouncement, no matter the quality of them.

Baggini acknowledges that science is focused on how questions, and religion on why questions, but contests the non-overlapping magisteria view of the late Stephen J. Gould--that religion and science deal with two completely different kinds of questions that do not impinge on one another--and correctly so. This is, in fact, one of the places in which the New Atheists are correct: you can't place religion and science in two hermetically sealed compartments and expect them never to get mixed:

This means that if someone asks why things are as they are, what their meaning and purpose is, and puts God in the answer, they are almost inevitably going to make an at least implicit claim about the how: God has set things up in some way, or intervened in some way, to make sure that purpose is achieved or meaning realised. The neat division between scientific “how” and religious “why” questions therefore turns out to be unsustainable.

So far, so good. There are claims made by Christianity that are empirically testable: That Christ was born without a human father, lived at a particular time, spent his life in particular place as a member of particular tribe who performed specific miracles, was executed on a particular mountain under the reign of a specific governor of Judea, and was raised after a specified number of days from the dead and seen afterwards by hundreds of people. And that his disciples went around afterwards preaching and baptizing and performing some of the same miracles as Jesus did in His name.

Now you can believe those claims or not, but they are the claims Christianity makes (in fact, its central claims) and they are "scientific" in the broad sense of being explicitly empirical and subject to proof or disproof by the methods of whatever empirical discipline would apply to them, which, in this case, happens to be history. Some are only empirical in theory and are not practically verifiable, but others of them are subject to at least some empirical scrutiny.

There are also philosophical or metaphysical claims made by Christians (but not necessarily by Christianity per se) who are operating in the realm of natural theology that are subject to proof or disproof. Examples of this would be the traditional proofs for the existence of God. These arguments can philosophically prove particular theistic beliefs, such as the existence of God, but if someone were to disprove any one of them, it would not affect the central claims of Christianity itself--it would only prove that some particular Christians (St. Anselm, St. Thomas Aquinas, etc.) were mistaken.

Despite the fact that he is a philosopher, Baggini says nothing about these metaphysical issues which are neither strictly theological nor empirical. In fact, Baggini seems to somewhat confuse the two when he speaks of "an evidence-led, rational examination of a view." A view could be "evidence-led" and not rational, or rational and non "evidence-led." The traditional proofs for the existence of God (or for that matter certain theorems in mathematics) are rational, but not "evidence-led," at least in the sense of being empirically testable.

But the main problem with Baggini's piece is that he seems to see every case in which religion makes an empirical claim as a case in which science and religion are in conflict:

[H]ow easily science and religion can rub on together depends very much on what kind of religion we're talking about. If it is a kind that seeks to explain the hows of the universe, or ends up doing so by stealth, then it is competing with science. In such contests science always wins, hands down, and the only way out is to claim a priority for faith over evidence, or the Bible over the lab.

Coyne too chimes in too, shaking his pom-poms:

This, of course, is just another take on something many of us have long maintained: any theistic religion—that is, one that posits a God who is active in the universe—must perforce make claims that can in principle be empirically examined or tested. And that is a “how” question. On the level ground where science and faith must compete to answer such questions, religion always loses, and always will.

The fact that two approaches may happen to focus on the same subject does not automatically put them into conflict. Conflict only comes when one approach says one thing about it and another approach says something contradictory. If historians say that historical records show that there was a comet in the sky in 627 B.C. and astronomers say there wasn't, that's a conflict. But if they both approaches conclude there was a comet in the sky at that time, then there is not conflict. The two are perfectly compatible.

If science is "incompatible" with theology because they arrive at truth through different methodologies, then science is also incompatible with history, and with ethics--and with philosophy, Baggini's own discipline.

There is really no sense in talking about whether whether science and religion are compatible. If they look at the same alleged fact and come to differing conclusions about it, then so be it. Let it be decided using the methodology that is appropriate.

If the subject is the chemical makeup of something, then apply science. But if it is the existence of God, then science is going to have to bow to philosophy; if it is the genuineness of a historical event, then it's going to have to bow to history; and if it is the nature of the doctrine of justification, then it's going to have to bow to theology.

From the earliest times, Christianity has made empirical claims as evidence of its truth--largely having to do with miracle and prophecy. If scientists like Baggini and Coyne want to dispute them then let them have at it.

But so far they not only don't seem to have refuted them: they're too busy talking about whether magisteria are overlapping to even try.

The Book of Jake, Chapter XIII, in which Jake waxeth hot concerning the evil thing which Steve Beshear hath done

Now it came to pass in that day that Steve Beshear, King of the Democrites, spoke unto the people saying, "We shall celebrate this day the writing of the King James Bible, and there shall be an entire month in which the King James Bible shall be celebrated, and there shall be feasting and gladness, and the whole kingdom shall celebrate this thing."

But when these words came unto the ears of Jake, a prince of the Liberalites (a tribe of people allied with the kingdoms of Sodom and Gammorah), he rent his garments and became wroth and sware exceedingly, and made an oath against Steve Beshear, and blogeth against him, saying that the King had done evil in the sight of Jake and that the celebration of the King James Bible was an abomination, and asked, "What crack hast thou smoked, O King, that thou wouldst make such a proclamation, saying 'We shall celebrate this day the writing of the King James Bible?'"

And so Jake called unto him the wise men from among the Liberalites to seek counsel concerning the evil thing which had been done by Steve Beshear, who had spake unto his people saying, "We shall celebrate this day the writing of the King James Bible," saying "Now therefore come, I pray thee, and give me counsel concerning this evil thing which Steve Beshear hath done, so that I may find the words to speak against the king this day so that we may prevent Steve Beshear from bowing down before this abomination."

But finding no wise men from among the Liberalites, the anger of Jake swelled within his breast and so he threw a tantrum, and spake maledictions unto Steve Beshear, saying that the King pandereth unto his people in that day when he hath said "We shall celebrate this day the writing of the King James Bible."

And so Jake foamed at the mouth and cursed Steve Beshear saying that his words had been spoken because he was loved by the Democrites only because he was not David Williams, King of the Republicrites, with whom the Liberalites had made war, and that, in saying "We shall celebrate this day the writing of the King James Bible," Steve Beshear had done greater evil than when he had bowed himself down and made obesience to Ken Ham and had made an alliance with the Hamites and had granted unto the Hamites thousands of shekels from the taxes of the people so that he might build for himself an altar unto the ark, with rides, in a park which the Hamites had resolved to build to worship this thing.

But the words of Jake reached only the ears of the Internites and the Politicites and the Journalites, whom in past times had listened to Jake, but had not hearkened unto his words. And so the King James Bible which Steve Beshear had proclaimed, saying, "We shall celebrate this day the writing of the King James Bible," was celebrated throughout the kingdom with gladness and joy.

Rebels Without a Clue: Why liberals can't even protest competently

You know things are getting bad when you start looking back with nostalgia on the Watt's riots, and when anti-war demonstrations, sit-ins, and the burning of draft cards seems like the good old days. Two recent riots underscore the extent to which rabble rousing no longer includes much that can be called "rabble," and is characterized by little that could be portrayed as "rousing."

Riots in the old days were organized in the back rooms of coffee houses or smoke-filled dorm rooms and were always about something: better race relations, the subversion of authority, opposition to the War. At their worst, they were nihilistic. Nihilism is specifically about nothing, which is at least something.

Today's riots? They're broadcast on Facebook and have the feel (and practical danger) of just another lifestyle app: the cultural equivalent of a fashion accessory.

When 60s radical Abbie Hoffman penned Steal This Book, he did it as a protest against the establishment, and he knew his message would be noticed--even if those who read it hadn't paid for the book.

One of the most salient facts about the recent London riots was that the rioters looted all kinds of stores: shoe stores, clothing stores, and computer stores. But they left the book stores untouched. "[B]ooks are losing out to high-end jeans and Apple-made gadgets," said the Economist.

It got so lonely in Waterstone and WH Smith, two British chain bookstores,  that one aggrieved employee even dared the rioters to loot his store. "If they steal some books," he said, "they might actually learn something." About, you know, ideas.

You can say one thing for book burning, it sends the message that, whatever form the protest takes, it at least has something to do with ideas.

The protesters of yore could at least muster a real physical threat.. At my alma mater, the University of California at Santa Barbara, we could boast that students in the 70s (the decade in which most of the 60s really happened) had burned down the Bank of America building. It wasn't a particularly constructive demonstration, and it was that much less impressive for the fact that it was performed by a bunch of spoiled teenage children of upper middle class families who wouldn't have known suffering if it had a sign on it.

But they at least had some coherent platitudes they could spout as a reason for burning things down.

The protesters of the 60s questioned authority; made love, not war; tuned in, turned on, dropped out; and Hell no, wouldn't go. What would the London protesters paint on their signs if such an alien thought had struck them? "Give Reeboks a Chance!" "Bring our toys home!" And, had they had Barnes & Noble in London: "Steal this Nook!"

They didn't steal bras in the 60's. They burned them.

The Occupiers of Wall Street can't bring themselves to burn anything. It has been the wimpiest protest in the history of mankind. And ideas? They're not sure what they're problem is, how to solve it, or who is responsible. In fact, some of the protesters seem to be there for purely therapeutic reasons--as a way to deal with their ennui.

"I was too young for the civil rights movement," said one 66 year-old woman. "And during the Vietnam War, I was too serious a student. Now, I just want to stand up and have my voice be heard." For some people, in other words, this is just one big, boisterous encounter group.

The media has made a big deal out of the fact that, for many of the protesters, it was their first time. So maybe that's the problem: a lack of experience. I'm now in favor of federal subsidies for protester training: how to set something on fire; how to formulate a reason to protest; and how to write a proper slogan

The 60s protesters had enough courage of conviction to constitute a palpable threat. The Wall Street protesters, lacking conviction in anything in particular, haven't even managed enough of a legitimate physical threat for police to resort to their riot gear. And the only possible use for tear gas would have been to disburse the crowds of reporters who were trying to figure out why exactly these people were marching.

It is a measure of the ideological seriousness of the protesters that one woman was overheard on a bus saying that she was going to return to a department store from which she had stolen some clothes to exchange them for something else.

The political and philosophical emptiness of the protests in London and Wall Street don't even rise to the level of nihilism. Nihilists are actually dangerous--like the ones in Dostoevsky's The Possessed, a book the London protesters could have burned, if they hadn't been so busy trying on the clothes they were stealing.

In fact, had the London protesters not been standing in line patiently waiting for their turn to steal (no joke--It's apparently a British thing), they could have been  down the street at Waterstone Books, where, in the process of looting, they could have taken a few moments to leaf through Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, a book in which Nietzsche prophesies that, once Western culture has given up on Christianity, it will, in its death throes, produce what he called "The Last Man."

The Last Man is a figure who merely seeks warmth, has no real commitment or passion for anything, is averse to any real risks, and, because he lacks the imagination even to dream, is completely incapable of anything great.

The Last Men of this Seinfeld Revolution can't tell you what they are protesting because they don't know, and the signs they carry don't tell you much, other than that they want the government to do everything for them and that they don't like credit card swipe fees.

Translated, what they mean is they want America to become the North American equivalent of Greece.

These people may be rebels, but they're rebels without a clue.

Trigger Can't Dance: What does it mean to say that humans are rational animals and other animals aren't?

When I was in junior high school, I had a horse that could count to three. I would say, "Count the three," and she would scrape the ground three times. She could do it for one and two as well. She also nodded her head when she was told to say "Yes," and shook her head for "No." For me it was a chance to impress visitors. For her it involved a carrot.

But Lady Anne was not as smart as Trigger, Roy Rogers horse.  Look here Trigger dances, and here he actually acts!

But was Lady Anne really "counting"? And could Trigger really dance? And act? All Lady Anne knew is that if she performed a certain action in response to a certain command, it would result in a carrot. She didn't understand what she was doing. She could clearly distinguish between commands, and which one was calling for which action, but she didn't know anything about the concept "one," or "two" or "three." What Trigger's reward was, I don't know, although it apparently largely involved the emotional reward she got from the relationship with Roy Rogers, who, I heard Dale Evans say once, was an amazing one.

These animals can't reflect on what do, which would involve mentally stepping outside of themselves and viewing as a third person, they just do it.

When Lady Anne scraped the ground with her hoof, she couldn't think about the idea of "scraping the ground with your hoof." She could eat a carrot, but she couldn't think about the idea of "eating a carrot". This involves some kind of abstract conceptual realization that animals do not possess, but that humans, as rational animals, do.

One of the questions that has come up in the comments section of the post on the controversy over Adam and Eve is the nature of the difference between humans and non-humans, and whether animals can conceptualize like humans. The Aristotelian distinction separating man from animal is rationality, and that rationality has been said to consist in some inherent metaphysical ability to conceptualize.

Our beloved Singring, the chief rabble rouser in the Peanut Gallery, claims that primates have the ability to apprehend abstract concepts, but he keeps pointing to instances which do not demonstrate what he claims. He keeps posting links to websites that show or describe apes engaging in certain technical procedures that are clearly clever, but don't give any indication of an ability conceptualize in an abstract way.

So what exactly is the difference between humans and animals in regard to conceptualization? I would submit that man's "rationality" consists in his ability to apprehend universal concepts through process of abstraction (the process by which one intellectually moves from a particular instance of a thing to the concept or idea of the thing), to make judgments about those concepts which are expressed in statements, and to make deductive inferences using those judgments. And animals cannot apprehend universal concepts because they are incapable of abstraction, and they cannot therefore make judgments, because judgments are made up of those concepts which they cannot apprehend, and they cannot make deductive inferences because they are made up of judgments, which they are incapable of making.

For example, a dog might be able to apprehend that his master is feeding him, but he cannot articulate, even his his own mind, "The man (the physical thing in front of me now) is feeding me," since that involves the predication of one concept of another, and he can't apprehend concepts. And he can't think "Man is a rational animal" or "Dogs are mammals." And he can't reflect back on any of these thoughts, viewing them as grammatical procedures, nor can he reflect on the fact that he had these thoughts in the first place.

In other words, animals cannot conceptualize, predicate, judge, or deductively infer. And nothing Singring has said shows he can do any of these things that rational animals are capable of. And this, by the way, is why animals don't have language of the kind humans use.

Oh, and, smart as he is, Trigger can't dance or act either.

Were Adam and Eve real? Another case of atheist scientists jumping the gun and failing to make important distinctions

When my youngest son was about eight, he would assault his 16 year old brother by simply rushing him, while my oldest son would calmly put out one arm, catching him by the head and just hold him him there as my youngest son's arms would just flail about in the air, not harming anybody. Undaunted, my eight year old son would simply repeat the same method of attack--getting the same ineffective result. But even though he never got anywhere by doing this, I admired his spunk. He is now 16 himself and trains in mixed martial arts and his technique has improved dramatically.

This is the image that came to mind seeing the most recent exchange between atheist biologist Jerry Coyne (the eight year-old in this saga) and Christian philosopher Edward Feser. Jerry rushes at Ed, all arms flailing, Ed holds hand out, stopping the charge, calmly pointing out to Jerry that his facts are wrong, his arguments are invalid, that he is completely missing the point, or that he has failed to make a crucial distinction, at which point Jerry, in seeming ignorance of the points Ed has made, just keeps repeating the same futile procedure over and over and over again.

But if you can't appreciate his logic (and he makes it very difficult), you at least gotta admire his spunk.

In the most recent episode, the issue is whether there could have been a literal Adam and Eve. It is a debate, Christianity Today magazine asserted, that constitutes "a groundbreaking science-and-Scripture dispute, a 21st-century equivalent of the once disturbing proof that the Earth orbits the sun." While it is not quite equivalent to the issue of whether Jesus actually rose from the dead, a literal claim without which there would literally be no Christianity, the Apostle Paul does clearly assume a literal Adam, making it a truth claim the disproof of which would seriously cripple the philosophical and theological integrity of Christianity, particularly the doctrine of original sin, which asserts that, in the words of the old New England Primer, "In Adam's fall, we fell all."

There are Christians, of course, who try to fudge on this issue, claiming that one could believe in a figurative Adam and Eve (i.e., that Paul was mistaken) and still be an orthodox Christian. Former head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins and his colleague Karl Giberson attempt this position. But it's not a terribly convincing.

The Catholic Church has long taken the position that the origin of the human body--whether it comes from "pre-existent and living matter"--is not the material issue. One can take the position that the human body was the result of biological development as long as one did not deny that "souls are immediately created by God." Leo XII's statement on this issue in his encyclical Humani Generis also states that polygenism (that we are descended from multiple parents rather than one particular set) is not a belief that is reconcilable with orthodox Christianity. In addition, he said, such a belief would conflict with the belief in original sin.

Protestants are not limited by any particular theological authority other than their own personal interpretive inclinations, a fact that has resulted in a riot of diverse schools of thought on such issues, but the Catholic teaching is clear and unambiguous. We are descended from two original human parents. So the questioning of this dogma is important indeed.

Enter Coyne, who declared recently on his blog, "[T]he scientific evidence shows that Adam and Eve could not have existed, at least in the way they’re portrayed in the Bible."

And, lest his assertion was not clear, he added, "Unlike the case of Jesus’s virgin birth and resurrection, we can dismiss a physical Adam and Eve with near scientific certainty."

And, just in case there was still any doubt about what he meant, he concluded, "[T]he genetic data show unequivocally that humanity did not descend from a single pair that lived in the genus Homo."

Coyne tries to base his claim on genetic research that ironically derives in part from the person whose appointment to head the Human Genome Project he adamantly opposed on the grounds that he was an evangelical Christian: Francis Collins. Collins wrote, in a 2006 book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, that, as Christianity Today put it, "humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 years ago—long before the apparent Genesis time frame—and originated with a population that numbered something like 10,000, not two individuals."

Richard Ostling, writing in Christianity Today, recounts the position of Dennis R. Venema, a biology chairman at Trinity Western University and a fellow at Biologos, an organization with which Coyne has shown little but scorn because of their "accommodationist" (i.e., that science and religion are consistent approaches to truth):

Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to use the genetic diversity within modern humans to estimate primordial population sizes. According to a consensus drawn from three independent avenues of research, he states, the history of human ancestry involved a population "bottleneck" around 150,000 years ago—and from this tiny group of hominids came everyone living today. But the size of the group was far larger than a lonely couple: it consisted of several thousand individuals at minimum, say the geneticists.

So Coyne, armed with evidence uncovered in part by an evangelical Christian who only several years earlier he proclaimed could not be trusted on such issues--and flailing away, announces that there were no Adam and Eve. Coyne then goes on to catalog various evangelical rationalizations of the problem, all of which he finds wanting, at which point he does his end zone dance.

But it was all effective enough to convince John Farrell to write a piece in Forbes magazine where he unaccountably finds Coyne convincing on this issue, quotes him, and expands on Coyne's points (misstating the Eastern Orthodox view on original sin in the process), and challenging the Catholic Church to renounce its "silence" on the "challenge of genomics."

Apparently the continuous public witness of the Church over the course of centuries to the truth of the Aristotelian-Thomist position, which articulates a full view of man as a physical and spiritual creature that bears only partial resemblance to the being Farrell, Coyne and others discuss in their arguments, and making clear public statements which are easily available to anyone who is serious about wanting to know the Church's position are just not sufficient.

Despite this, Coyne accuses theists "of rationalizing, post facto, hopes and ideas that one pulls out of thin air."  Statements like this serve as atheist like a sort of spell to keep .

But just in case anyone needed to be reminded, Catholic philosopher Ed Feser enters the fray. Feser, who is fast becoming the go-to guy when it comes to defending the Ancient Faith against its less than intellectually impressive detractors (and who you can just imagine sighing once again and shaking his head), then pointed out a few uncomfortable facts to Jerry (and John), among which is that, in his post on this issue, Coyne didn't even bother taking into account the view of the Christian institution that has been around the longest, an institution that has made an implicit distinction between the concept of homo sapiens as a biological category and the concept of rational animals as a physical and theological category.

In other words, the biological condition of homo sapiens is a necessary condition for being a humans as we know them now, but it is not sufficient. The philosophical distinction of man as a "rational animal" (Aristotle's definition) is also necessary to the full definition of human being. Men are indeed homo sapiens, biologically speaking. But they are something far more than this: they are creatures who can apprehend abstract concepts in a way in which other animals do not even remotely approximate. He points in his response to an article by Kenneth W. Kemp ("Science, Theology, and Monogenesis"), which goes into gory detail about the Catholic position on this and why it is completely consistence with a bottleneck of however many thousand homo sapiens.

But Coyne, who apparently didn't actually read Feser's article but someone else's summary, does what he seems to do every time he has to deal with Feser: he fires wildly while running for cover. In this case, he criticizes Feser using an argument that Kemp's article, to which Feser had linked to, had already refuted--and then goes and hides behind Jason Rosenhouse. "I needn’t go over all the problems that Jason finds with this."

Yeah. Right.

It's hard work acting as second for someone who, every time he show up for the duel, runs off, but Rosenhouse, a mathematician who blogs at EvolutionBlog, holds forth manfully. But Rosenhouse seems to have no better ability to manage careful distinctions than Coyne.

He argues first that "the Bible does not teach anything remotely like what Feser is describing." Rosenhouse manages this criticism by assuming that Feser is somehow obligated to give Genesis a fundamentalist reading, which it is kind of hard for Feser to do since, like, he's a Catholic. As Feser himself pointed out, while it would be very convenient for atheists if all Christians took a fundamentalist position, they probably need to get used to the fact that all Christians are not fundamentalists, and that it would probably help their case (not to mention make for a more productive discussion) to actually address the arguments of Christians who, like Feser, don't match up with the stereotypes atheists are always invoking.

Rosenhouse then questions Feser's point that human being are not exhausted by their physical attributes, to which Rosenhouse responds, "we should note that Catholic theologians have not the slightest basis for saying that our nature is simply not exhausted by our physical attributes." Back to Feser:

Hear that? Not “a highly controversial basis.” Not “a basis that I, Jason Rosenhouse, find unconvincing.” No, not the slightest basis. Now, forget about my own arguments for the intellect’s immateriality (though Rosenhouse says nothing in response to them). A great many more important Catholic philosophers and theologians have also presented serious arguments for it, as have non-Catholic Christians and pagan thinkers in the Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. Secular writers like Karl Popper and David Chalmers have endorsed forms of dualism. Secular writers like Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayer, and Galen Strawson, while they do not embrace dualism, nevertheless reject physicalism. Yet others, like Thomas Nagel, Jerry Fodor, and Joseph Levine, have argued that there are at least serious difficulties facing physicalism which have yet to be answered. And many materialists who think these difficulties can be answered at least acknowledge that the difficulties are indeed serious ones raised by critics in good faith. Then there are secular non-dualists like Tyler Burge, John Searle, and William Lycan, who (as I have noted before) have expressed the opinion that the dominance of materialism in contemporary philosophy of mind owes less to the quality of the arguments in its favor than to ideological thinking.

But for Rosenhouse, it seems, none of these thinkers has the slightest basis for his views. It’s all just transparently feeble religious apologetics, apparently even with the many secularists among them. No doubt that’s because Rosenhouse read a materialist philosophy of mind book once back in college which he thinks “refuted” all the objections to materialism once and for all.

In other words, let's all pretend that these argument have never been made so we can go on arguing with our fundamentalist caricatures.

Finally, Rosenhouse says, "Intelligence and rationality appear to be things that come in degrees." He then goes on to list all the intelligent qualities animals have the men also possess, all of which are apparently supposed to add up to the qualities that men have that animals do not possess, namely, as Feser points out, "conceptual thought" that "can have a determinate, unambiguous content and a universality of reference that sensations, mental imagery, and material symbols cannot have even in principle."

Rosenhouse says that Feser's account "creates some very difficult theological problems." The problem is that none of the "theological problems" Rosenhouse identifies are actually theological problems. In fact, all they amount to is Rosenhouse saying that he doesn't understand why God would have done it that way. So saying you don't understand someone's motivations for doing something some kind of refutation of the fact that they did it?

"Also," Rosenhouse adds, "the idea of a Chosen People is itself theologically problematic. Among Jews, a very common understanding of the notion is that the Jews are unique only in their willingness to accept a covenant with God. Which is to say, it is the Jews who chose God and not the other way around." Wait, Rosenhouse was only just earlier seen arguing that Feser wasn't following the Biblical account, and now Rosenhouse is arguing this? One thing that comes through loud and clear in those accounts is that the covenant is completely unilateral in its initiation. Maybe Rosenhouse could explain how he derives Abraham's willingness out of the Biblical accounts which don't mention what Abraham thought about it at all.

Memo to New Atheists: Don't debate Feser. Go back to your caracatures. And theists? They don't need caricatures. They've got Rosenhouse and Coyne.

Logic is human: Literature is angelic

There is a sense in which literature transcends logic. Logic is limited in its access to truth by the Law of Noncontradiction: Both A and not A cannot be true at the same time and in the same respect. Napoleon was the emperor of France or he was not; water is made of two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule or it is not; It is either a fine day or it is not--in each case, both things cannot be true in the same way.

But poetry (and by that word I mean what it has always traditionally meant--namely, literature in the broad sense) is not limited in this way. Poetry transcends the laws of logic. In a story, something can be something and not be something at the same time. This is the whole power of symbolism and metaphor: one word, or one idea, or one character can be something that it is not--at the same time and in the same respect.

Lewis' Aslan is not Christ, but he is; Tolkien's Galadriel is not Mary (or Eve), but she is; Fitzgerald's Gatsby is not the American dream, yet he is; Melville's Moby Dick is not nature itself, but he is; Steinbeck's Pearl of the World, is not mammon, but it is.

Literature is angelic while logic is human. I had someone challenge me one time about my use in my logic textbook of the Porhyrian Tree, a medieval division of all substance: Everything that exists is a substance; a substance is either immaterial (like an angel) or material. A material substance is either not living (like a rock) or living; a living material substance is either non-sentient (like a plant) or sentient; a sentient, living, material substance is either non-rational (like a beast) or it is rational. Man is the only rational, sentient, living material substance.

But, I was asked, if this classification is correct, then angels are not rational, but we know they are. Therefore, this classification cannot be correct. I pointed out that angels are not, in fact, rational beings. To be "rational" is to have to go through the several step process of deductive reasoning. We are composite (or complex) beings and so we have to go to all the trouble of attaching the minor and major terms together (which constitute a conclusion) by way of a middle term which takes two premises to spell out. This is a lot of trouble, of course, and if you think it's easy, just look at my comboxes on this blog to see how few people are able to do it correctly :).

Angels, however, are not composite beings. They are simple beings. The only beings that can possibly be complex are material beings, matter being necessary for complexity. But angels are immaterial. They are constituted exclusively of form. They are therefore simple. They do not have to go through steps in the process of apprehending truth: it is immediately accessible to them without the necessity of reason. Angels are "intelligent" beings, but they are not "rational" beings, and to call an angel "rational" would therefore be, not a compliment, but an insult.

The person who challenged me on this was a Catholic, and I pointed out that my analysis here was taken directly from St. Thomas Aquinas, the "Doctor" of his own Church.

Logic is human because it requires us to go through a complex set of steps in order for us to find truth, but literature is angelic in the sense that it is simple: it is a direct avenue to the truth. It requires no steps. It makes truth immediately accessible analogically through the literary object which is the thing it symbolizes.

Even though it's not.

On Continuing to get Galileo Wrong: NCSE's Josh Rosenau still can't get science history right

After botching his science history in a post about Texas Governor Rick Perry, and having several people, including Yours Truly, call him on the carpet for it, Josh Roseau of the National Center for Science Education's Department of Historical Revisionism now writes a post trying to explain himself which basically ends up as a sort of data dump of everything he was able to find out about the Galileo incident on short notice and under the gun.

In a passing remark on the issue of whether global warming is caused by humans, Rick Perry had said, "Just because you have a group of scientists that stood up and said, this is the fact ... Galileo got outvoted for a spell." Rosenau responded by charging Perry, on the basis of that one statement, with endorsing "the legitimacy of letting religious and political authority suppress ('outvote,' in his words) scientific results." Then, going from the not very sublime to the clearly ridiculous, he declared:

By the time Galileo was publishing on heliocentrism, the idea was already circulating and widely accepted in scientific circles, including Jesuits. He wasn't outvoted by scientists, he was outvoted by the political and religious leadership of his country. [Emphasis in original]

Rosenau was then beset by several of his own natural allies who pointed out that he screwed up.

Rosenau partly tries to hang his hat on Perry not knowing what he was talking about. Yeah, well, there's not much argument there. Perry's a politician without a very good education in science or history and was speaking out of the side of his mouth. Rosenau tried to blow it up into some significant gaffe. What's amusing about it is that Perry got more right by accident than Rosenau got right speaking intentionally from his NCSE high horse.

Rosenau quotes Thony Christie saying that Perry was "speaking through his arse..." So if Perry was "speaking through his arse" and getting it largely right and Rosenau is speaking out of the more conventional orifice and getting it wrong, then, in the contest of competing orifices, Rosenau' mouth isn't comparing too well.


After beginning his post with his obligatory personal insults which he keeps repeating, hoping, in doing so, that it will make them true, he says, "[I]t's worth teasing out some of the history." Well, I suppose that's better than running roughshod over it like he did in his first post. And "teasing out" the history of the Galileo affair, had he actually done it, would have been better than what he actually does do, which is to practically torture it to death.

His new post begins promisingly, with indications that he is now listening to other people who actually know what happened in the Galileo affair and admissions that he got key points of his post wrong. But then, all of a sudden, the points he got wrong are not keys points any more. "I don't think this alters any of the basic results," he says. No it doesn't alter any of the basic results: it blows them out of the water.

Heliocentrism, he says, "was already circulating and widely accepted in scientific circles, including Jesuits." When it was pointed out that this was not true, Rosenau then says, "When Galileo's heliocentrism was first taken up by church authorities in 1610, heliocentrism didn't have wide support, but I don't think I claimed it did." "Widely accepted" doesn't mean "wide support"?

Not, apparently, in Josh's world.

No historian who delves below the level of popular legend on the Galileo controversy thinks that heliocentrism (and Copernicanism in particular) was a proven theory of how reality really was at the time Galileo pressed the issue in the early 1600s. But there were many scholars inside and outside the official church who accepted the heliocentric theory as a more useful mathematical construct than the Ptolemaic system--as a better way, in Bellarmine's terms to "save the appearances." In fact, most scholars seemed to realize the insufficiency of the Ptolemaic system and supported either Copernican heliocentrism or, more commonly, Tycho Brahe's geoheliocentrism (in which the earth and moon are stationary and the other planets revolve around the sun) as constructs that made better sense of the data.

Rosenau then launches on his version of the history of the debate over heliocentirism, presumably to back up his point that Galileo was "outvoted by the political and religious leadership of his country." He says the period of the acceptance of heliocentrism was "extended by Galileo's persecution in the1610s." Persecution? In what way was Galileo "persecuted" in the 1610s--particularly by the "political and religious leadership of his country"?

After becoming the "Chief Mathematician and Philosopher" to the Medicis, he went to Rome, where he received a hero's welcome. Fredrico Cesi gave him a banquet; Pope Paul V give him a friendly audience; the Jesuit Roman College had ceremonies all day. This was largely the treatment Galileo received from the very politicians and religious leadership Rosenau thinks were persecuting him. And he received this kind of adulatory treatment repeatedly throughout his career by the fashionable politicians of  his time.

He was equally well treated by the religious leaders. After Barberini became Pope, Galileo's stock rose even higher. "He had six long audiences with Urban in the course of six weeks," says Arthur Koestler in his great history of science, The Sleepwalkers:

The Pope showered favors on him--a pension for Galileo's son, a precious painting, a gold and sliver medal. He also provided him with a glowing testimonial, addressed to the new Grand Duke, extolling the virtues and piety "of this great man, whose fame shines in the heavens, and goes on earth far and wide."

The Jesuits, who were perhaps the most astronomically sophisticated group of the time, were also great admirers--until, that is, Galileo began showing his posterior. After a Jesuit astronomer and several others had published their discovery of sunspots, Galileo publicly attacked them and claimed he had discovered them first, saying he had witnesses to prove it, but refused to name any.  Whenever he heard that anyone had disagreed with him in private conversations, he sent them surly letters demanding explanations, most notably the Letter to Cassini. In the the whole debate his frequent method was to level personal attacks at his opponents, questioning their integrity, calling them names, and confusing the issue (no wonder Rosenau likes this guy).

"You cannot help it, Signor Sarsi," he wrote to the Pope's Chamberlain, "that it was granted to me alone to discover all the new phenomena in the sky and nothing to anybody else. This is the truth which neither malice nor envy can suppress."

It was all about Galileo all the time.

Was it the fact that people challenged him? Is this the "persecution" Rosenau refers to? In 1614 Father Niccolo Lorini filed a complaint against him to the Consultor for the Holy Office, but it was dismissed. Then, in 1615, a rabble rousing priest came to Rome to accuse him, but the same Holy Office ruled these complaints fabrications. "For the next 18 years," says Koestler, "Galileo lived honoured and unmolested, befriended by Pope Urban VIII and an impressive array of cardinals."

What precisely is this "persecution" Galileo suffered during this period? And who were the politicians and religious leaders who perpetrated it? The only physical danger Galileo was in was eating too much at all the dinner parties his admirers were constantly throwing for him.

And then we come to the decree of 1616, where Rosenau becomes completely confused.

He writes that Galileo "chafed" at restrictions the Church placed on him, "and the 1616 ruling of a jury of theologians who declared heliocentrism 'foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture,'" he says, "further constrained him."

Really?

Rosenau is apparently unaware that the document he is quoting from is the "Consultant's Report on Copernicanism," which was issued by the Qualifiers (or theologians) of the Holy Office who met on Feb. 23, 1616, and which was quickly overruled by a higher panel of cardinals--and only became public some 17 years later. Galileo was never even aware of it until 1633, when it was referenced in his trial.

How can you be "chafed" at a document you never even knew the existence of?

The document which was made public at the time and which Galileo did see was the ruling by the General Congregation of the Index, issued on March 5, 1616. But there was no mention of "heresy" in the decree of March 5 nor was there any mention of Galileo in it. In fact, it was not even directed at Galileo. And Galileo didn't seem to be particularly "chafed" about it, writing to Picchena, on the following June 3, "I am not in the least concerned..." In fact, six days after the decree was issued, Galileo was enjoying, by his own account, a pleasant audience with the Pope that lasted for three quarters of an hour.

When a rumor began making the rounds that Galileo had somehow been personally indicted in the decree, Cardinal Bellarmine, two months later, issued a formal declaration in Galileo's defense, pointing out that "Galileo has not abjured in our hands, or in the hands of others here in Rome, or anywhere else that we know, any opinion or doctrine of his." Ironically, this is in the very documentation Rosenau links to in his post!

Rosenau then makes the strange claim that the Church was simply trying to impose theological restrictions on Galileo that science could never overcome. He quotes the part of Cardinal Bellarmine's letter in which he discusses the distinction between Copernicanism as way to "save the appearances" and as a way to see the reality of the world (something I said in my post, but which Rosenau dismissed as whiggishness), and concludes:

Again, this is not a question of being outvoted by scientists, but of holding scientific claims up to theological standards, and to absurd ones at that. Bellarmine never suggests a way to demonstrate heliocentrism, nor is it clear why the burden should be on Galileo to supply both the empirical findings and a theological justification for them.

This is utter nonsense based on a selective use of sources. What Rosenau doesn't quote is the rest of the letter, in which Bellarmine says:

Third, I say that, if there were a real proof that the Sun is in the center of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. [Emphasis mine]

This is not "holding scientific claims up to theological standards," this is a clear statement that the Church would be forced to change its theological position if scientific evidence turned up that rendered the previous theological interpretations mistaken. Rosenau has completely misrepresented Bellarmine and the Church's position.

Rosenau then says "Galileo's books built on solid observational science to argue that not only was heliocentric math easier, it better described the shape of the solar system."

Solid observational evidence?

Galileo repeatedly attacked those who agreed with him that heliocentrism was a more economical way to interpret the data of heavenly movements but disagreed with him that it was proven. In fact he finally ended up alienating most the Jesuits who had formerly supported him. When he was challenged by Bellarmine and others to prove his case he simply obfuscated the issue with personal attacks and rhetorical demonstrations that did nothing to supply a proof. He eventually raised the stakes so high by continuing to push the issue that he was forced to offer something.

What "solid observational evidence" did Galileo finally produced to prove heliocentrism as a reality?

His theory of tides.

Galileo had repeatedly hinted that he had the decisive physical proof of the Copernican theory, and it was the idea that the tides could be explained by the combined motions of the earth that caused the water to move at a different speed from the land. Never mind that Kepler had already figured out that the movement of the tides resulted from lunar gravity several years earlier, Galileo dismissed Kepler's idea as a superstition--just like he dismissed Tycho Brahe's largely correct view of comets, calling them "optical illusions."

He also argued tried to establish heliocentrism on the basis of a spurious theory of sunspots.

Galileo produced no "solid observational evidence" for heliocentrism and to say so is to demonstrate an utter lack of knowledge of the facts of the case. The only thing "solid" about Galileo's evidence is that it was solidly wrong.

"Copernicanism was a slogan," says Koestler, "but not a defendable system of astronomy." As E. A. Burtt says in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science:

It is safe to say that even had there been no religious scruples whatever against the Copernican astronomy, sensible men all over Europe, especially the most empirically minded, would have pronounced it a wild appeal to accept the premature fruits of an uncontrolled imagination, in preference to the solid inductions, built up gradually through the ages of men's confirmed sense experience ... Contemporary empiricists, had the lived in the 16th century, would have been the first to scoff out of court the new philosophy of the universe.

And then of course, there was the problem with the stellar parallax, a problem which Galileo just avoided: If the earth really orbited round the sun, then, given the beliefs at the time in regard to the distance of the stars, the stars should have appeared to move in relation to the earth. They didn't. It was only in the 19th century that this problem was resolved.

"The truth is," says Koestler, "after his sensational discoveries in 1610, Galileo neglected both observational research and astronomic theory in favour of his propaganda crusade. By the time he wrote the Dialogue he had lost touch with new developments in that field, and forgotten even what Copernicus had said."

Despite the fact that Galileo did not have proof of heliocentrism (nor did anyone else at the time), he tried to claim that the burden of proof was on those who disagreed with it. Go figure. It was a silly gambit that Bellarmine threw back in his face, resulting in the spurious tides theory.

Finally, at his trial, Galileo defended himself at his trial by simply lying. After writing his Dialogue on the Great World Systems (which Galileo wanted to call Dialogue on the Flux and Reflux of the Tides, highlighting what would later be shown to be his mistaken view of tides, but which the Pope convinced him, in an attempt to help him, to rename), in which he clearly argued for Copernicanism as an explanation of reality, he denied that that's what he had done.

"... I held," he said, "as I still hold, as most true and indisputable the opinion of Ptolemy, that is to say, the stability of the earth." He knew he was lying and the Inquisitors knew he was lying. But, as Church officials had continually done throughout the history of the dispute: they gave him a break. They could have easily convicted him of perjury and imprisoned him, but they didn't. "And as nothing further could be done in execution of the decree," said the Inquisitors, "his signature was obtained to his deposition and he was sent back."

Was the Church wrong in putting him on trial? Probably. But the Church attempted in numerous ways to avoid a confrontation and Galileo did everything in his power to provoke it. After tricking the Pope by breaking an agreement concerning the publication of his book and publicly embarrassing him, Urban (not one of the better popes mind you) finally had had it. But all they basically did was to embarrass Galileo. They shouldna oughta done it. But historically speaking, the motivation was at least understandable.

What is clear, however, is that the real story is nothing like it is portrayed in the popular accounts.

What happened to him? He was sentenced to ... reject the Copernican opinion (which he already claimed he had done), and say weekly for three years to come the seven penitential Psalms.

Oh, and then there's that little matter of "imprisonment," a term Rosenau uses to characterize what happened to him afterward although, and then in another part of the post, in typical Rosenauian fashion, he says he wasn't. In fact, he went to the Grand Duke's villa at Trinita del Monte where he was furnished with an apartment "covered in silk and most richly furnished." Then he returned to his farm and later to his house in Florence. Not exactly what you call "hard time."

And those penitential Psalms? He had his daughter say them for him.

Becoming as rational as we think we are

G. K. Chesterton once said that the "whole modern world is at war with reason." "The tower," he added, "already reels." In what sense can this be true? When we think of ourselves in all of our modern glory—unadulterated by the myths and superstitions of the past, don't we think of ourselves as more informed, more enlightened, more rational than we have ever been? Indeed we do, but is it due to the fact that we are, or the less sanguine fact that we understand less than ever before what reason is and how we have deviated from it?

Perhaps the chief reason we consider ourselves rational is our mastery of technology. When Jesus spoke of moving mountains, he was speaking of a thing quite impossible for his hearers. For us, however, it is not only not impossible, but not uncommon. We dynamite through mountains to make way for roads, and lay them waste in our search for coal. We can even transform them into islands by the simple expedient of damning a river and making a valley into a lake.

Science looms large in our view of ourselves. We are like Marlowe’s Faust in the German legend who lusts for power over nature and, after selling his soul for knowledge, accounts himself a god:

Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky,
Lord and commander of these elements.

Faust, a scholar and alchemist, is encouraged by the magician Cornelius to study the magical arts—“to be renown'd”:

And more frequented for this mystery
Than heretofore the Delphian oracle.

Like Faust, we mistake power for knowledge, and knowledge for wisdom.

In fact, magic provides an interesting comparison to modern science. Despite the disdain with which the modern scientist views the magician of old, there is a serious question whether he is really so different after all. Both concern themselves with power—most particularly, the power over nature. The modern scientist would like to say that the tools of magic were irrational while the scientist's are rational.

But is this true?

Before the advent of reason, there were the gods. Mythology, which interpreted the world on the basis of the imagination, provided men with their explanations of the world. Then came the philosophers with their rational account of reality, based upon the intellect. The mythical and the rational accounts of the world were consolidated in the Christian worldview, which was at once both religious and reasonable, and which reached its zenith in works like St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica during the middle ages.

But then came science.

The science of the 18^th century proposed to dispense with the need for spiritual and imaginative theories of things, and sought to explain the world on the basis of rational principles—or at least empirical ones. It came with a new method—two methods, in fact. The first was mathematics, and the second empirical investigation. By these two mechanisms, they would interpret the world.

The new science pictured the world through a new analogy. Before Galileo and Isaac Newton, the world was seen as like an organism. It would now be seen as like a machine. We—and many scientists in the natural sciences—still think of nature in terms of Newton’s mechanistic view of the world. One particle acts on another particle and that particle affects another and so on. What most people do not know is that this view of the world was utterly destroyed by 20^th century physics.

“The physics that came of age in the seventeenth century,” says Philosopher Joe Sachs, his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics:

and seemed to have answered all the large questions by the nineteenth, is limping toward the end of the twentieth century in some confusion. Mathematics and technology have coped with all the crises of this century, but the picture of the world that underlay them has fallen apart.

The most successful school of science ever devised is quantum theory. “No one,” said the late physicist Roger S. Jones, “has ever made a measurement that quantum theory could not correctly predict.” No other scientific discipline can boast as much. But quantum theory, far from providing us with a rational account of nature, has actually undermined it. Quantum theory is not just a scientific theory; it is a theory about science. It is, says Jones, in his Physics for the Rest of Us, “a radically new conception of science.” Far from giving us certainty about nature, it has given us the opposite: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is, in fact, “the very cornerstone of the quantum theory’s foundation.”

The chief question leading to the development of quantum mechanics historically was the question of the composition of light. Light was originally seen as made up of particles. But experiments in the early 20^th century led some scientists to conclude that light was not made up of particles at all, but of waves. The problem facing physicists in the early days of quantum theory was that the two theories were completely inconsistent: light could not be made up of both particles and waves—logically, it was one or the other. How did they settle this question?

Their answer consisted of saying that light is now seen as being made up of “photons.” But what is a photon? A photon is a “wave-particle”! But if light cannot be both waves and particles, then how can it be a wave-particle? The answer, said Neils Bohr, the pioneer of quantum theory, lay in the principle of “Complementarity.” “This principles states,” says Jones:

that our descriptions of the micro-world present mutually exclusive views that are inconsistent with each other but which are complementary. The different views complement each other in the sense that all views are needed to form a complete picture.

In other words, there is no answer. The principle of Complementary is just a nice-sounding way of saying that nature is at bottom irrational—at least according to quantum theorists. More surprising still, however, is that physicists do not deny this. In fact, the principle of Complementarity is their way of embracing it.

After having helped to birth it, Albert Einstein spent the rest of his life trying to fend off quantum theory because he saw its irrational implications. “I know enough about the fundamental structure of the world to know that some things cannot happen,” he said. But quantum theory proved that those can happen. The man who had proved that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light was faced with the quantum discovery that the observation of one particle at one end of the universe could have an instantaneous effect on another particle at another end of the universe. Einstein couldn’t accept it; but at the same time he couldn’t deny it. He called it “spooky actions at a distance.”

The occult forces science thought it had dispensed with in the 18^th century reasserted themselves in the 20^th with a vengeance. “The progress of science has now reached a turning point,” said philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead. “the stable foundations of physics have broken up … The old foundations of scientific thought are becoming unintelligible.” Quantum theory, mathematical science's greatest achievement, can only predict; it can no longer explain.

There is a sense in which the new magic of quantum physics is worse than the old magic of the astrologers and the alchemists. At least the old magic thought that the way to master the world was to understand the elements—to know what things are. Faust would “canvass every quiddity thereof” in his quest for power. But modern science has given up on canvassing the quiddity— the “whatness”—of things.

“Quantum theory denies that phenomena have any inner reality,” says Jones:

It provides answers only for the results of actual experimental observations, and it tells us nothing about what happens between our observations … Quantum theory provides us with remarkably accurate quantitative predictions of atomic phenomena, but it denies us any picture of the inner workings of nature.

Science, in other words, has given up on the idea of reality—because is cannot provide a rational account of it. It has dispensed with the whatness, the “quiddity,” of things in the interest of simply gaining predictive control over it. “It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is,” said Neils Bohr. “Physics concerns what we can say about nature.”

Quantum theory has proved many things, and one of the things it has proved is that science cannot provide man with a rational account of nature. The gods of ancient man were arbitrary and capricious, but, with the advent of Christianity, these were replaced by a rational God. Not content with that, however, man took his place during the Enlightenment as the highest of beings, only, in short order, to use his own power to displace himself, with nature as the highest of all things—and now nature itself has turned out to be arbitrary and capricious, and so man is back where he started.

The scientific project of explaining the world in rational terms is effectively over, and the question we must now face is what view of the world can take its place.

We will never find a rational account of the world in what has come to be called the “Age of Reason”—the scientific age. We will find it only in the Age of Faith. The most thoroughly rational period of history, ironically, was the Christian middle ages. It was an age which had taken account of the philosophical discoveries of the ancients, and had incorporated those discoveries in a larger Christian worldview.

Whitehead, in his great analysis of modern science, Science and the Modern World, pointed out that it was only in a Christian civilization that the original goal of science—to explain the world in rational terms—could have come about in the first place:

When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilizations when left to themselves, there seems but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.

Part of the faith exercised by classical thinkers in general and the great medieval Christian thinkers in particular, was a faith in the order of the cosmos. “Faith in reason,” says Whitehead, “is the trust that the ultimate natures of things lie together in a harmony which excludes mere arbitrariness. It is the faith that at the base of things we shall not find mere arbitrary mystery.”

Christianity is often thought of as a religion of faith, and indeed it is. But it is a faith in a rational God, a rational universe—and a rational man.

In the New Testament, God is himself identified with reason: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God," says the writer of the Gospel of John. The term translated "Word" meant much more than that in the original Greek. The Greek word logos not only meant speech or discourse, but thought or reason. To some it was also a reference to the animating and ordering principle of the universe. One scholar goes so far as to say that the verse could just as easily have been rendered, "In the beginning was the Logic and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God." It may sound awkward, but it is not without justification.

There are some who believe that the rational tendency in Christianity was some sort of syncretistic imposition on an earlier, theologically purer form of Christianity. There is a whole school of thought among evangelicals, in fact, that tries to ferret out the Greek influences on Christianity in order to cleanse the faith of these alien elements. But the rational element, later developed by Greek thinkers, was there from the very beginning.

Whatever you believe about the chronological order in which God created the world, there is one thing undeniable about the creation account in Genesis: it is logical. And part of the rational aspect of the creation account is its clear hierarchy: it begins at the bottom of things, so to speak, and moves to the highest created thing: man. “What stands out,” says Leon Kass in The Beginning of Wisdom, his great commentary on the Book of Genesis, is the "utterly logical and intelligible structure of the entire account":

The main principles at work in the creation are place, separation, motion, and life, but especially separation and motion. Places are regions necessary for the placement of separated kinds of beings and backgrounds for the detection of their motion, whereas life may be looked at—at least at a first glance—as a higher and more independent kind of motion. Further, one can treat locomotion as a more advanced kind of separation, in which a distinct being already separated from others also separates itself from place. Thus, we could say that the fundamental principle through with the world was created is separation. Creation is the bringing of order out of chaos largely through acts of separation, division, distinction.

Kass points out that the word "divide" or "separate" appears explicitly five times in the creation account.

In the old Aristotelian logic (not the modern logic of the mathematicians), defining and dividing or classifying are essential elements. God employs a series of consistent divisions in his ordering of the world. Kass points to the observation of the philosopher Leo Strauss:

[From] the principle of separation, light [which allows discernment and distinction]; via something which separates, heaven; to something which is separated, earth and sea; to things which are productive of separated things, trees, for example; then things which can separate themselves from their courses, brutes; and finally, a being which can separate itself from its way, the right way.

Why is it that plants are introduced in the creation account before the sun? Plants are dependent upon its light. In a logical ordering, this makes complete sense: the division between those things which do and do not inhabit regional space is more fundamental than the division between those things that have and do not have the ability of local motion, as the accompanying chart demonstrates.

This rational universe created by a rational God is also productive of a rational creature: man. “In the cosmology of Genesis,” says Kass, “human beings clearly stand at the peak of the creatures.” Under the Darwinian view, which is purely mechanistic, this cannot be. Darwin, as Jacques Barzun points out, wrote a note to himself in his notebooks: “Never use higher or lower.” “Insofar as evolutionary theory offers any standard for higher and lower,," says Kass, "that standard could only be a standard of success, namely, most surviving offspring—in which case, at least in Chicago, the cockroach would be the highest being.”

Man is not only the end of creation insofar as he stands at its termination; he is also the end of creation as being its goal. “Man is the ultimate work of creation,” says Kass, “he is the last of the creatures listed in hierarchical order, and once he appears, the work of creation is complete.” Unlike all the other animals, he bears the image of the Creator himself. He is like God, but he is not himself a god. He is like God to the extent that he “exercises speech and reason, freedom in doing and making, and the power of contemplation, judgment, and care.”

The cost of bowing to the new scientific theories that posit an irrational world is not only a rational cosmos, but a rational man. But do we need to give up our own rationality for the sake of the newest scientific theories? In asking us to accept belief such as the Principle of Complementarity, however, that is what we are being asked to do.

It was this classical view of an orderly world—a world which was conceived in order and which retains its hierarchical structure—that informed the thought of the early scientists. It is, in a strange historical turn, what the reigning theory in physics now asks us to abandon. Philosophers like Whitehead and R. G. Collingwood—and Joe Sachs—have proposed that the only alternative is to return to the classical view of the world which expressed itself in classical philosophers like Aristotle—and which was implicit in the Book of Genesis.

“O, something soundeth in mine ears,” says Faust to himself. “’Abjure this magic, turn to God again!’”