Practical Benefits of Philosophy 3. Existentialism

From the 1926 to 1973, a large electric sign greeted train travelers going in and out of Chester, Pennsylvania -- a town near Philadelphia -- that simply stated “What Chester Makes Makes Chester” – a reference to the city’s former stature as a recognized manufacturing power.  I don’t know if anyone from the Philadelphia Electric Company, the outfit that erected the sign, appreciated this, but the sign suggests a new non-Aristotelian way of looking at what makes a thing be what it is.

As Jim now knows well from his DVD course, any number of centuries after Aristotle, Jean Paul Sartre challenged Aristotle’s essentialism.  Sartre attacked the notion that there are pre-existing blueprints and declared that – at least for us humans – “existence precedes essence.”  In other words, a person appears on the scene and then chooses what he or she will become. For Sartre, the first principle of existentialism is this: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

Sartre does not deny that human beings are limited or constrained by all sorts of external or internal conditions. A paraplegic is not free to become a long distance runner (although with the advanced technology of artificial limbs, this is not always true).  Freedom exists only within specific conditions. But within such given conditions, people always have choices to make to define who they are. They are not predetermined like objects or animals; they live within a space of possible alternatives.  What Chester makes does indeed make Chester.

So, according to Sartre, no one can simply say, “it was in my nature” as an excuse for behavior.  Ultimately, whatever a person is, that existence is dependent upon his or her own choices and commitments.  People have no one to blame (or praise) but themselves.  Thus, says Sartre, the task of existentialism is to make everyone understand that they are responsible for their own existence.

Next:  The Question

Where's the NBA when we need it?

This is the perfect time for the National Bomb Association to bribe members of Congress to support legislation for the right to bear arms in the form of bombs. Take a lesson from the NRA. (Aren't bombs just the AK47 of firecrackers?)

Boston April 2013

Back when I was in law school, I ran a 5 mile race in North Park.  They happened to be running a marathon the same day over the same course as I ran – only that I ran it once, and the marathoners had to run it 5 times and then some. 

Once our race ended, we stayed around and watched some of the marathoners finish.  I remember one fellow in particular clearly in pain, straining his utmost on obviously totally spent legs.  When he hit the finish line, he gave out a cry of exultation followed by open weeping.  He had seen his time and knew he had qualified for the Boston Marathon by just a few seconds.

I read an article recently that asked the question:   is there a group of people with more will than a group of Boston Marathon qualifiers?   The article suggests that these were the wrong people to try and intimidate.  I’m guessing that they’ll all be back next year.

The Day I Met Kurt Vonnegut

I met Kurt Vonnegut through Joseph Heller. Yes, I traveled in those kinds of literary circles—but only for a day. It was a day that will take pretty severe Alzheimer's to forget.

While I would not view my life as Vonnegut once described the American experience: "an impossibly tough-minded experiment in loneliness", I am, as many judge themselves, shy. I've encountered obstacles and missed opportunities because of it. Like most shy people, I try to compensate.

So it was a supreme act of compensation when I hesitantly approached the desk of my 'Modern Novel' professor after class to ask if I could attend a cocktail party for Joseph Heller. I explained that I was writing a paper for his class about the time element in Catch 22 and needed clarification on a particular sequence of events. I didn't tell him that after reading the book two or three times and studying it as if it were the Paris Metro map, I had discovered an inconsistency—as if that meant something. If you are familiar with the book, you may remember that temporal events are as confusing as war-time morality. It is central to the structure of the novel—but only because it is tangled. For some strange reason that I can only attribute to my future accounting sensibilities, I felt that straightening out the jumbled mess chronologically would reveal some higher meaning. Wait, who am I trying to kid? I analytically mapped out every incident repeated ad infinitum in the book and found a chronological error, and thought that by confronting the great Joseph Heller, I would be hailed with English esteem everywhere as the one who unraveled Catch 22. Think about that for a second. I wanted to unravel Catch 22, a book I loved, as if it were some sterile scientific entrails—perhaps Snowden's. Well, maybe that is the apprehensively meticulous way a shy person approaches life.

Maybe the truth lay somewhere in between. I did love the book. I did find what appeared to be an error in the chronology of events. I did want to ask Joseph Heller about my discovery. But mostly I desperately wanted to meet and talk with the man who wrote this wondrous book that couldn't be read in the library because I would vocally burst out laughing.

Something about my story sounded sincere or at least elicited pity, for he gave me his permission and the address of the professor's house where the selective gathering would take place. The party was an afternoon affair held prior to Mr. Heller's talk on campus at Washington Hall, the 130 year old auditorium that sits to the right of the administration building, the one with the gold dome. The day was Thursday, April 4, 1968, my final year of college.

Let me back track a bit. This was 1968, the year of student demonstrations (of which, thus far, we had failed miserably), campus riots, the My Lai massacre, the Tet offensive, Robert Kennedy's assassination, LBJ's stepping down, the Chicago Democratic Convention, and a whole series of circumstances which would turn society on its head. Lost as a consequential event, however, was the inaugural Notre Dame Sophomore Literary Festival, billed as the 2nd annual—a Vonnegut-ism, surely. The year before, a student from Mississippi had put together a literary event to celebrate William Faulkner. But, for all practical purposes, the 2nd Annual Notre Dame Sophomore Literary Festival was the first of its kind—one which would bring every major writer to campus for the next 25 years.

During this week of March 31, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, William Buckley Jr., Wright Morris, and, yes, Kurt Vonnegut spoke on campus. As English professor Don Costello said years later, "Of course, it couldn't be done. That's the beauty of the naïve sophomores. They were too naïve to know it couldn't work." Both the Saturday Review and the New York Times ran articles about that first (2nd annual) event. The festival's run lasted until 1996 when authors expected more for personal appearances. Recently, a more modest version has been revived.

The 1968 festival, by whatever name, was the child of sophomore, John Mroz, the Steve Jobs of Notre Dame, if this excerpt is any indication:

"We were pretty aggressive, to say the least," said Mroz, describing trips out to New York and California where the students literally knocked on the authors' doors to persuade them to come to the festival. 

The famously reclusive Ellison was stunned to see a group of college kids on his doorstep. 

"He said, `I told you `No' by letter, I told you `No' by phone and now here you are at my door in New York!'" remembered Mroz. "But we got him to come."

Now I was coming too. I was elated and intimidated. I carefully crafted my supposed error in the book's time sequence and wrote it out on a slip of paper so I would not be confused in the asking. It was not straight forward and depended on evidence from a few different passages. I was getting more apprehensive by the moment.

At the appropriate time with the appropriate English-lit style sport coat, I handed the taxi cab driver the address. Soon I was in front of the small suburban home not far from campus. As soon as I entered I could see who must be Joseph Heller. He stood in the living room surrounded by university types—faculty and friends, I supposed, and the more diligent, less shy, students. In fact I remember more students than adults at the party; perhaps 20 or 30 people in all; maybe less. It was definitely an informal, relaxed occasion. Heller was dressed like a New York banker in a dark suit. He looked good, tanned for April, and was confidently fielding questions and comments from a circle of about a dozen admirers. He appeared to be holding court, articulate, and enjoying it.

I flittered around the outside circle catching bits of conversation. When not about his book, they centered around the war and socio-political issues—nothing new, curious, or radical, at least for the times. He was different than I expected for the author of maybe the funniest, darkest, most eccentric book I had read—three times. The atmosphere was just too encouragingly normal. The more I thought about trying to frame my question so it sounded intelligent, meaningful and respectful, the more reticent I became. Everyone here knew the emperor had splendid clothes. Why bring up the possibility of a small rip? After a while I defeatedly slunk off to the kitchen. Perhaps a drink would help.

The smallish, narrow kitchen was another world. There, in the corner on a stool slouched over the counter—as far away from the living room court as one could possibly get without leaving the house, sat a tall, disheveled man—the jester in Heller's retinue. His sport coat could have passed for one of our old, worn, food encrusted diner jackets ironically required for dining hall entry each night. He wore loose baggy pants and shirt, longish frizzy hair, and held a glass with a bottle beside him on the counter. And he chain smoked. Yes, he had comfortably dissolved my entire court metaphor into a bar scene. No one but students grouped around this man, and only three or four of them. Now this, obviously, was a writer.

I was immediately drawn to this character who I soon found out was Kurt Vonnegut—not that I knew anything about him at the time. Unfortunately, the kitchen was too narrow with a refrigerator of drinks inconveniently placed for me to get close enough to easily join in the conversation. I could scarcely follow it. But it was nothing like that in the living room. It sounded like the author was talking about spacemen—little ones, I think. Looking back, it was probably Tralfamadorians, but I hadn't read any of Vonnegut's books at this point. Rest assured he was as crazy, imaginative, and gentle as you picture him, but always with a touch of depression. I can barely remember the conversation, but if I had to guess, he touched on aliens, time travel, war, human cruelty and stupidity. I might have added a comment or two, but perhaps I was too shy to even do that. I mostly listened. Joseph Heller could be mistaken for a Wall Street banker; Kurt Vonnegut could only be the writer of his works.

If I was slightly disappointed at the normalcy of Joseph Heller, I was more than pleased with this strange, quirky author. He was neurotic enough to make me start to feel confident again about asking my question. Joseph Heller, I'm sure, would have attempted an answer; Kurt Vonnegut would have made an ironic joke out of it.

And then the news came on the TV and everything became subdued. The party was breaking up anyway as Joseph Heller had a talk to give. He wondered now if he should, but everything had been planned. It was the 2nd Annual Sophomore Literary Festival after all.

Fortunately, there was room in a car going to back to campus, and I grabbed a ride. I hardly remember the talk at Washington Hall though I'm sure I sat through it. Now it felt as inconsequential as my desire to hammer out a time line. Heller read excerpts from Catch 22 and some from his new play, We Bombed in New Haven. Polite applause, and everyone left—weighed by the news.

The next day before class my teacher asked me if I had found the answer to my question. I was too shy to answer truthfully. I lied and said I did, and thanked the professor for letting me attend the party. Perhaps I had been too shy to ask Heller. Perhaps I realized that the question and answer resolved nothing. Perhaps my factual discrepancy actually enhanced the novel by bringing the muddle to life. No matter how jumbled, no novel could match the jumble of life. I had discovered that humanity mattered more than fact. I had discovered a crazier humanity, who would become my favorite author for years. So I lied and said I had gotten my answer. In truth, when I did write my paper, I left out my finding entirely. In truth, the answer lay in what I would later find voiced in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, "God never wrote a good play." Everything turned out differently than expected. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.

Practical Benefits of Philosophy 2. Essentialism

The ancient Greeks – Aristotle in particular – were fascinated by the idea that things could change and yet remain what they are.  We can crumple up a piece of paper and despite its change in shape it remains paper.  But, if we burn it, it stops being paper and becomes something else entirely – ashes.

Aristotle sought to explain this difference by saying that every object had two types of properties:  those that are only accidental to it and those that are essential to the object’s existence.  The essence of an object is a property or set of properties so fundamental to it that we cannot conceive of the object existing without that property.  An accident, however, is not fundamental to the being of the object, and it can continue to be what it is without that property.  Consequently, if an “accident” is changed, the object remains what it is.  But once an object’s essential quality is changed, the thing ceases to be what it is and becomes something else. 

For Aristotle, the ability to reason is an essential property of being human.  While reasoning ability might be addled in a madman, the madman still reasons.  But we cannot conceive – at least Aristotle couldn’t – of a human who entirely lacks the faculty of reason in a way that, for example, a plant does.  At the same time, there are innumerable qualities which any particular human being might possess but which are not essential to being human, such as height or hair or eye color.  These for Aristotle are accidents.

This distinction between accidental properties and essential properties of a thing has led some thinkers to conclude that in Aristotle’s system “essence precedes existence.”  In other words, there must already be some pre-existing blueprint to allow us to figure out which properties are only accidents and which are essential properties.  Properties are essential to a thing only if it was “meant” to have those properties.  Interestingly enough, the Greek phrase that the Romans translated into essentia was to ti ên einai, literally, “the what it was to be.”  The phrase itself suggests that the “what” existed before the thing itself.  For Aristotle, the essence of an object precedes its existence.

 

Here are a few sort of hot-button examples of essentialist thinking at work today.  The anti-same-sex marriage people take an essentialist view of marriage.  For them, an essential characteristic of the thing we call marriage is that it involves a single man and a single woman.  Any other arrangement – while it might be something else, like a civil union – is not marriage.   Similarly, there is a lot of essentialist thinking about men and women – women, the child-bearers, are more thoughtful and caring, while men are the leaders and risk-takers.  The leaders of the Catholic Church take an essentialist understanding of the priesthood, and cannot conceive of a priest as other than a male.  The main point of essentialism is that things are intended to be a certain way.

Similarly, we also give individuals essential characteristics, mostly ourselves.  How many times have we heard something like this:  “That’s just who I am,” “I’m no good at math,” or “I can’t eat Chinese food.”  In other words, according to this sort of essentialist thinking, there are particular characteristics that define you and make you who you are, without which you’d be someone else.  You cannot conceive of yourself as lacking this characteristic.  The presumption behind the advice to “be yourself” is that there is already a pre-existent blueprint of yourself to which you can conform.

Next:  Existentialism

Practical Benefits of Philosophy 1. Introduction

People like to say that philosophy offers no real, practical benefits, which is one way of saying that it’s pretty much just a waste of time. Oh sure, it’s fun to think about stuff, but what difference does it really make? 

I’ve long suspected, however, that a person’s big ideas actually do affect things, particularly his or her own behavior. Now, recent studies show that I may be correct after all. These studies were not conducted by philosophers or by anyone who knew anything much about philosophy. But they have a lot to say about the connection between particular understandings of the world and the way people act.

Today, I do not look at the broad spectrum of belief. That study will have to wait for another time. Rather, we will focus on one particular philosophical debate -- and see how behavior is affected based on where people stand in that debate. The dispute we consider is the argument between two philosophical viewpoints popularly known as essentialism and existentialism. 

 Stay tuned.

 


Next:  Essentialism

Tenacious Posts

As with all things, it started with games.  The first was Betwixt, a game that lacked only the insights we later gained from playing The Dasein Methods of Ordering Game.  Not long after that, we went to Pictures at an Exposition, which proved that appearances are often deceiving and that the answer to the question of "what is real" can be tricky.   At that point we graduated to real content and were introduced to Quantum Week, an exciting exploration of the quantum world.  This series was so well conceived and produced that I understand that one could obtain college credit for it from several prestigious universities.  Next came Kidnapped!  This was a serial adventure of one man's courage pitted against a sad example of human incompetence.  Unfortunately, like The Mystery of Edwin Drood, the story remains unfinished, and we are despairing over whether we will ever learn the final outcome.  ("Does Little Nell yet live?")  The next bit of serial writing was somewhat offbeat:  The Hermeneutics of Wishes.  Here, we learned what wishes were, why we have them and why we should worry about what we wish for.  If nothing else, we now know that every wish you make forecloses a thousand other wishes.  Finally, we have the most ambitious project to date:  The Top Ten Definitions of God.    As one commenter observed:  This series "delivered up for us a -- shall I say, joyous? -- array of views of the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds."  Once you've read this series, you can skip seminary altogether and just send away for your ordination certificate.  And the beauty of this series is that it will qualify you for ordination in just about any religion.

These are what we might call the "series posts."  I've also called them chronic posts or tenacious posts:  they are persistent.  Up to now only Jim has offered them.  But, for the first time in the history of this blog, someone else will be posting a series, namely me.  The content I assure you will be totally new.  It goes by an inauspicious name:  The Practical Benefits of Philosophy.  I know it sounds a bit dry but, stay with it and I promise you that the rewards will be great.  Sure, it tackles philosophy, but it also considers psychology, education and even takes slight detours to Chester, Pennsylvania and Chicago.

I can't say exactly when each of the posts will appear.  Like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in George C. Scott's "A Christmas Carol," being "more mercurial, [they] will arrive in [their] own time."

The Blog: More than just games and humor

I often wonder why more don't contribute to In Progress…or even read it (especially after Myk's promotional poem). Oh there are the usual suspects such as time, but I have a sneaking suspicion it is more than that. I also wonder, at least for those who don't read it, what they think it is. Bill, not long ago told me he has redoubled his efforts to contribute—to the point of changing his reading habits. I assumed he meant reading more about games and humor, which I suppose is the blog's trademark—indeed the trademark whenever we get together.

But I'm always looking to expand the core areas of interest. In this vein I'm making a post on gardening, one of the few subjects I'm not sure we have broached.

This year's favorite flower for me may be the icelandic poppy, also known as Papaver nudicaule.

The flower is a perennial, at least in zones 5 and above. Apparently it blooms in Europe, Asia, North America, and the mountains of Central Asia . . . but not in Iceland. The reasons for its favorite status with me this year are the following:

• Orange is a favorite garden color of mine.
• They bloom most of the summer. While the flowers themselves last only a couple of days, new ones constantly rise up on the foot-to-two-foot stems.
• Last year they bloomed until frost.
• They multiply. I assume by reseeding. I was shocked last year to find a dozen small plants growing when I had only purchased one the year before. (Actually I purchased two, but one died.)
• This year I have a couple of dozen—one very large plant, a dozen medium-sized and perhaps a dozen small ones which I will transplant a little later to appropriate spots.
• They require practically no care and are drought tolerant.
• They attract hummingbirds—really!

Here is what they look like when first coming up. Luckily I did not weed them out last year.

The Myth of Sisyphus

The Letter Not Sent

I did something some time ago that I’ve never done before in my entire life.  I was so angry over a sermon I heard at Mass one Sunday that I wrote as pointed a letter as I could muster to the responsible assistant pastor (now moved on).  When I began the letter I was absolutely resolved to send it.  But, by the time I had finished it, my anger had dissipated enough for me to realize that the whole project was pointless and self-indulgent.  So, the letter was never sent.

But, after spending so much time on it, I figured someone ought to read it.  So here, while we still bask in Easter’s glow, is the letter not sent.

    

Dear Fr. S____________,

I write to you to respond to comments made in your homily given on the weekend of ____________, which I believe reflect neither Scripture nor Catholic tradition.  Because your homily was such a substantial departure from any recognized Christian principle, I felt it necessary to take this extraordinary step.

Your homily focused on these words of St. Paul to his companion, Timothy:  “First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers, petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone, for kings and for all in authority, that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life in all devotion and dignity.”  I Timothy 2:1-2.[1]  You spoke about about the virtue of a “quiet and tranquil life.”

I might quibble with you over the merit of a “quiet life” in a free democracy – whose quality and character depend on an active and engaged electorate – as opposed to what we might reasonably expect from a small dissident sect trying to survive under an autocratic foreign rule.  But my more serious objection is to the final comments made in your homily – remarks that were beside the point as far as I could tell – namely, your criticism of government programs designed to improve peoples’ lives.

As I recall, you said that these programs “crowd out” quiet efforts of individuals to care for family, neighbors and co-workers.  You said that government programs provide care impersonally from a great distance by people unfamiliar with the local situation.  You used the example of a parent facing the need to pick up his or her child from school, and pointed out that another family member, a neighbor or a co-worker would do a much better job providing help in this instance than some nameless bureaucrat in Washington. 

The impression you left us with was clear:  all government efforts to aid its distressed citizens were not only ineffective, but at times harmful and at least marginally immoral, and were motivated by politicians’ desire for self-aggrandizement rather than any genuine concern for those in need.

I believe that much of your characterization of government programs was wrong on the facts but more importantly for our purposes your broad-based attack on government social programs is not consistent with either the Gospels or Catholic teaching.

Jesus makes it clear that “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”  Matthew 25:40.  That seems to include pretty much everything.  Nowhere in the gospels does Jesus suggest that he endorses only small-scale action on behalf of those in need.  And the Church recognizes this.  As early as 1919, American Catholic bishops called for government involvement in establishing a social safety net following World War I:  “The state should make comprehensive provision for insurance against illness, invalidity, unemployment and old age.”  Program of Social Reconstruction, U.S. Bishops, February 12, 1919. 

In particular, the American bishops have endorsed national health insurance and social security.  In their pastoral letter on Health and Health Care of November 19, 1981, the bishops called for an adequately funded national health insurance program for all Americans:

Following on these principles and on our belief in health care as a basic human right, we call for the development of a national health insurance program. It is the responsibility of the federal government to establish a comprehensive health care system that will ensure a basic level of health care for all Americans. The federal government should also ensure adequate funding for this basic level of care through a national health insurance program.

The bishops’ commitment to a national health care policy was again reiterated in “A Framework for Comprehensive Health Care Reform: Protecting Human Life, Promoting Human Dignity, Pursuing the Common Good,” June 18, 1993:  “For three quarters of a century, the Catholic bishops of the United States have called for national action to assure decent health care for all Americans.” 

The U.S. bishops have also unequivocally endorsed national social security, and “strongly urge[d] all Catholics to support and participate in the Social Security System,” concluding that “we believe that the Social Security System in the United States is a program that is vital to the protection of human dignity for millions of Americans.”  1983 Statement on Social Security.  This commitment to social security was reiterated in “A Commitment to All Generations: Social Security and the Common Good” published in 1999.

While these statements hardly exhaust Catholic thinking on the role of government in society, I believe that they are sufficient to show that your views do not reflect the historic Church position.  Clearly, under the teaching of the bishops, government has an important role in providing for the welfare for its citizens.  Your wholesale rejection of this role, then, amounts to teaching as doctrine the precepts of men.  In my view, it is a serious abuse of priestly authority to squander the few precious minutes allotted for a homily – the only opportunity in the entire week that most members of the congregation will have to hear the Gospel message amid the clamor of the world – hawking your own personal political views.

Beyond its inconsistency with basic Christian tenets, your narrow ideological position ignores both the nature of social problems and the services government provides.  Unlike your universal condemnation of government efforts to provide care for its citizens, I don’t suggest that a government solution is always and everywhere the best solution.  But when the problem is national, such as widespread poverty among the elderly or the growing crisis in health care, a national response is warranted.  Individuals, even with the best of intentions, are no more equipped to solve these problems on their own than they would be to repel the invasion of a modern, mechanized army.  I agree that I would not ask someone in the welfare department to pick up my child from school; but neither would I request my neighbor or co-worker to put out the fire if my home were in flames.  A trained, properly equipped and publicly funded city fire department would no doubt do a better job.

Some time ago, my father-in-law died after an extended illness. As his last days approached, arrangements were made for Hospice care.  The Hospice workers came to his home, bathed him, changed his bedclothes, made him comfortable and kept him as free from pain as possible.  They were able to help in ways that my mother-in-law was unable to do both physically and emotionally.  They visited almost every day, and became intimately involved in the rhythms of the household.  They not only brought comfort and dignity to my father-in-law in his last days but also provided enormous support to both my mother-in-law and my wife.  Through perhaps an act of Providence, the Hospice workers happened to stop by the house within minutes of my father-in-law’s death and, as a final kindness, helped the family through that most difficult time.  The cost of this Hospice care was covered to the last penny by the United States government though Medicare.

I suspect that you do not share this belief, but it is my conviction that on the Last Day, when all accounts are settled, credit will no doubt be accorded the American people for their resolve carried out through duly elected representatives to allot a generous portion of their own resources, not only to care for the people like my father-in-law in their last hours, but also to aid countless other citizens who – with or without aid from family and neighbors – still require help to meet basic needs or obtain a hand up in difficult times.  It puzzles me that you cannot see the fundamental decency in this. 

       

---

[1]

An aside here that was not in the letter:  the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof expresses sentiments similar to Paul's when he is asked if there was a blessing for the Tsar:  “A blessing for the Tsar? Of course! May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!”

The Evils of Evil or is anything sacred, relatively speaking?

Tolkien fans, perhaps you are familiar with The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Yeskov, and recently (2010) translated from the Russian by Yisroel Marokov. I was not. Everything you need to know about the book can be found here including a link to a free, legal downloadable copy. At least, the author of the Salon article, Laura Miller, implies it is legal.

The Physics of LENR (or how to beat the high cost of oil)

For any who are interested, here is a recent slide show of a presentation by Lewis Larsen of the Widom-Larsen theory of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction or LENR. Note the notes by Lewis Larsen below the slide show.

Definition of God series "Changed my life!"

Reports have been streaming in across the internet in praise of the "In Progress: Top Ten Definitions of God". "OMG!" exclaimed In Progress long time reader Seamus McMurphy. "When I saw the first article I said to myself 'Oh crap! Another lame religious rant.' They're more popular than porn. I was going to cancel my subscription. But then in a weak moment I read it and was hooked! It changed my life! Sign me up for five more years."

Reverend Right of St. Swithin's parish in Beltzhoover wrote, "JMJ! Powerful stuff. I learned a lot. Who knew about Paul Tillich or Rudolf Bultmann or even St. Paul, for that matter? I had my eyes opened. We are returning our newly ordered Baltimore Catechism, LXXVI edition, for copies of The Cost of Discipleship. Our CCD program is going to be completely updated for the first time since, well, for the first time. Thanks so much for waking us up to the modern world."

"I've been following In Progress ever since I discovered it is done by the same people who scared the vomit out of me and my kids on Halloween. Now they've done the same thing with God," emailed 'good neighbor'. "You guys taught me not to get my science from uneducated bozos who think trees get their mass through roots or gravity from massive bodies. Now I learn the same thing about God and religion. Makes sense to me. I'm going to the experts. I now have Barth and Whitehead next to my Darwin and Bohr."

Celebrity blogger, ZZZ, also chimed in. "Like top ten lists are so cray. I'm reaching the God definitions. I need a make-over. No chirp, the list was styll."

—APRIL FOOLS

Easter Lesson

It's All Over But The Shoutin'

Nate Silver is never wrong.  He has no bias (or so he claims); he just looks at numbers.  His state-by-state predictions in the last presidential  election were frighteningly accurate.  He even accurately predicted this year's Oscar winners -- at least in those categories for which he said he had enough data.

So, I've found myself not worrying so much about  the outcome of the same sex marraige cases just argued before the Supreme Court, either Hollingsworth v. Perry, challenging California’s Prop 8, or United States v. Windsor, challenging DOMA.  In a sense, thanks to Silver, we've already been to the mountaintop on this one.  We can see the promised land, and it really doesn't matter what happens with these cases now. 

Back in 2011, Silver projected public support for same sex marriage using mathematical analysis way too complicated for me.  Here are his predictions, if ballot initiatives were held on same sex marriage every four years: 

In 2004, only 33% of Americans polled supported same-sex marriage.  Support for same-sex marriage then began to rise at a rate of about 2 percentage points a year, growing to an average of 37 percent in polls conducted in 2006, and 41 percent in polls conducted in 2008. It has continued to increase at about the same rate since then. At some point in 2010 or 2011, support began to outweigh opposition.  Among the 37 polls conducted since 2012, all but four have shown more Americans supporting same-sex marriage than opposed to it. As Silver shows in his analysis, there is no reason to think that this linear progression will not continue.

Jeffrey Toobin sums it up quite nicely:  "The question about marriage equality for all Americans is not if it will pass but when. The country has changed, and it’s never going back to the way it was. Though the battles continue, the war is over." 

Harvey's Place

Original Shakespeare

Some highly unusual Shakespeare was performed at the O'Reilly Theater today. I joined Peter and Lisa and Martin in watching Liberty School participants compete for the grand Shakespearean prize of Pittsburgh. The star of the show was the precociously gifted Michael in the roll of Juliet in a scene from Romeo and Juliet.

We all know that originally Shakespearean females were played by males. Michael's group of four went one better. In true Shakespearean tradition all the sexes got mixed up. Juliet's tyrannical father was a suitably overbearing (on stage) girl to Michael's weeping Juliet. The father's wife and Juliet's maid were both males. Barely two words were out of Michael's mouth when one of the judges just lost it and let out a howl. I suspect this gang of four will be back for an encore. If Shakespeare has been fading lately in our culture, he just got a big boost.

Harvey March Madness Bracket Challenge

If anyone would like to take part in the Harvey Family & Friend's March Madness Bracket Challenge, I created a group here: http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/en/group?groupID=56759

You just need to sign up using your email address or facebook.  The password to join the group is harvey.  The tournament starts on the 21st I think, so get them in!  Each person can submit up to two brackets.  It makes watching the games a little more exciting. Obviously, anyone is welcome to join- they would just need the link and password.

Hope everyone is well!

Patricia

The Top Ten Definitions of God - 1

1. God is that which destroys all gods which we might ever want to use as cover or as justification for our actions

— Michael L. Harvey, holy man

Nepotism be damned. The number one definition for God comes not from a (canonized) saint or (as yet) famous philosopher, but from our own midst. Perhaps it was revealed by the Loving Surprise Herself. It is so great I need another top 10 list of reasons why:

10. Like The active relation between ideal and actual, it can appeal to both sides, the simple atheist and the simple believer. Wait! It can even appeal to those seeking more educated answers than either of those certainties. There is no dogma or doctrine involved. It is non denominational.

9. Like God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands, it focuses on what God does, i.e. destroys, not what God is. God is not an aloof, static entity, but a continual force, one event after another, and each event is personal in which we have an active roll. Further, it promotes the give-and-take relationship with God. We recognize that without God there is no us, but, perhaps more important, without us, there is no God.

8. Like There is no God but God, it avoids the idolatry of giving God attributes. It has scriptural backing of all the world's major religions. All warn against idolatry. All hold us accountable for our actions.

7. Like the Tao Te Ching, it provides the way. It is not metaphysical, as much as ethical. It is not intellectual, as much as psychological. It is an operational definition, challenging us to find the way of God.

6. Like God is that which calls us into being, it is understandable without a degree in theology, philosophy or a deep knowledge of scripture. It requires no elaborate metaphysical scaffolding. It is practically self evident.

5. Like God does not exist, it is not pantheistic or humanistic or onto-theological by turning God into the universe or what we learn from the universe or some philosophical construct. In fact it does what practically no other definition does—constantly warns us against the idolatry of making God into our desired image.

4. Like God is the mother of all metaphors, it does not embrace a particular religion or doctrine. On the contrary, it unequivocally addresses the common (mis)conceptions that religion is based on certainty or that it is a set of beliefs. It explicitly tells us we cannot rely on a set of rules or beliefs when dealing with God.

3. Like God is love, it makes a difference in living our life. It calls us to action. What need is there for a God that doesn't change our life? It is not self-referential by simply saying God is unknowable. In fact it is quite specific and personal. An impersonal God is useful only in theological arguments.

2. Like God is surprise, it is mysterious and completely unfair (in human terms). We are thrown into a situation (life) for which we have no cause nor responsibility, yet are called to be responsible—that's so typically God.

1. Most importantly God is not irrelevant, nor even ancillary. God is the primary force in keeping you from making excuses for your behavior. It reminds us that God's only importance is influencing how we live, how compassionate we are, how much we take responsibility for our actions. If God doesn't change our life, as defined here, then God has no purpose, which is infinitely more important than God's existence.

*****

I'd like to end by encouraging thought and criticism. Myk's Santayana comment under God is Love nails the purpose of this series and, indeed, the purpose of philosophy and theology in general. Unlike science, philosophy adds no new facts, but it does something more powerful and dangerous. It changes us. It makes the familiar strange. It distances us from our settled beliefs. Philosophy should come with a warning: Herein lies lost innocence. Like the last definition, it destroys our comfort of certainty. And there is no guarantee that the change makes us better. It could make us worse.

In fact, a common reaction to philosophy or theology—or this top ten list, might very well be: what's the point? It's just a lot of bullshit—all fluff, with no answers. We've been asking the same questions for thousands of years and, if this list is any indication, we haven't settled anything. Well, philosophy has a word for that. It's called skepticism. It can paralyze us with apathy or despair. Philosophy also can respond to skepticism. I'll let Immanuel Kant handle it, "Simply to acquiesce in skepticism can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.”

So I challenge you to pursue "the restlessness of reason". Hopefully, we are now asking better questions. Yet, there is something radically more important than all the philosophical enquiries we can ask. As stimulating as this list may be in catching a glimpse into what religious experts have said about God, it means nothing without acting. Karen Armstrong sums it up with her criticism of the religious, though it could be said of everyone: "a lot of religious people would rather be right than compassionate." You can't be right, but you can choose to be more compassionate. 

[Link to beginning of article]

The Top Ten Definitions of God - 2

2. God is surprise 

—David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk

The definition is itself a surprise! Throughout this list we've felt the continual undercurrent of God as other, unknown, and what God is not—even to the point of not existing. Now we find interfaith Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast asserting, "The only name that does not limit God — is Surprise." From the moment we are born to the moment we die, this is how we know God. From existence to science to imagination to, well, life, it's one surprise after another. And even the repetition of, say, the sun coming up each morning, is a surprise beyond anyone's wildest imagination. Heaven is always depicted as solid on a deep foundation of serious and stable truth—in short, boring. Where does that come from?—not from our experience. I picture heaven as an infinite ring circus where each surprise tops the last. God is action, creativity and riddles.

Surprise is eye-opening action, and only through God's act can we talk of God, said Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann. Like others we have seen, he preached that God was, by definition, 'wholly other'. However, he not only stripped away the metaphysical doctrines of the church fathers, but also the mythological and historical stories of the Gospels—surprising for a Biblical scholar. In this Bultmann may have gone further than any other theologian in opposing idolatries of God. You would think that no theologian could go beyond "God does not exist", but Bultmann, it could be argued, asserted that everyone, who thought of God as something, or even acting, in the world, was an atheist or idolater. "To be sure, it is wanton and shameful to proceed from some fixed concept of God.", and "God is not the essence and origin of the word of mind of which humanism speaks.", and for Biblical scholars and pantheists, "God's revelation can never be in history. . . . God's revelation is not at the beck and call of human criteria: it is not phenomenon within the world, but his act alone."

According to Bultmann, we can only speak of what God does to us. "Since human life is lived out in time and space, man's encounter with God can only be a specific event here and now." To my mind, 'surprise' seems to capture the essence of that event. Bultmann writes, "Indeed, what is God, if not the infinite fullness of all the powers of life that rage around us and take our breath away, filling us with awe and wonder? . . . who is full of creative might and joy, of endless forms and riddles?" God is not only surprise, but your own personal surprise.

Surprise is not an idea or thing, but an event; it is not just an event, but our personal reaction to an event; it is not belief or dogma, but a challenge to accept and understand. Surprise, by definition, is born of the unknown, but it is we who give it meaning.

For some surprising reason, until recently, we thought that assigning a logical explanation to how the heavens go, i.e. planetary motion or evolution or electromagnetic fields, explained away the (God of) surprise—as if consistency denies wonder. Even Chesterton, the prince of paradox, did not go far enough. He believed "mathematical and logical sequences" are fundamentally true and necessary in Elfland as in our world. "Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne: and we in fairyland submit." He couldn't foresee that science and quantum logic would surprisingly question human logic. (No cards or letters please. I, and more importantly Bultmann, do not imply that the loss of current human logic in any way proposes that God is now back running the universe, as some 'religious' people believe. He may or may not be, but theologian Bultmann says only science explains the universe, not God, and if you think God runs the universe, that is idolatry.) The point is, if you think everything can be explained logically, be prepared for a surprise.

God is even surprise to holy men and theologians and, yes, atheists. It's surprising how much our notions of God have changed over the years. Certainly it's surprising to an atheist to discover that he has been both right and a believer at the same time when he learns from Tillich that "God does not exist." It reminds me of an old sufi story (on which I will take poetic license):

Mullah  Hodja sat on a river bank when an atheist shouted to him from the opposite side: "Hey! how do I get to the other side?"
"You are on the other side!" Hodja shouted back.

And here's another sufi surprise:

Mullah Hodja was serving as qadi (judge) listening to a case. (It may have been about God's identity.) After hearing the plaintiff present his side, Hodja remarked, “You’re right.”  

Then, after the defendant had presented his case, Hodja again remarked, “Yes, you’re right.”   

All the people in the court rose up and shouted, “that doesn’t make any sense—how can both the defendant and plaintiff be right?” 

“You know what?” the mullah responded. “You’re right, too!”

As theologian Karl Barth said, "The Gospel [God] is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question-mark against all truths."

[Link to beginning of article]                    [Link to next part]