Is it kiss and make up for science and religion?

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THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED.

It is also interesting that you noticed how the full implications of an idea can be submerged and not lived out—I deduce this from the fact that at some point you basically decided “its better not to focus on it”—and so turned around from that darkness and went back towards a greyer area, towards light, and a more humble and loving quest.  But you also were constrained to retain the key CONCEPTUAL elements of a certain skepticism about reality, and a general refusal of the idea that there is a personal presence behind all this that we see, along with a very conflicted skepticism about the very reality of love in the world.  You were able to make a certain theoretical nihilism compatible with getting on with your life.  But it wasn’t by being consistent with the inner trajectory of being a man whose supports have all fallen away.  And even if you had reduced the visible effects of these ideas on your way of life to an absolute minimum, if they were “surprisingly ineffective against mediocrity” (to invert the context of a well-turned phrase that you used), it wouldn’t mean that they aren’t naturally destructive to human communion and knowledge.

So I need to start with a few comments on your thoughts existentialism before we return to epistemology.  You synthesized a lot of important points with you comment that you realize that ideas can make you sick and can make you well.  There are good ideas and bad ideas, and they both have ways of being alluring.  The obsessive fascination with the absurd in the universe, together with the self-satisfied arrogance of “the pointless why game”, both of which isolated you from human goodness, inclined you to give up on the possibilities of love and responsibility, and even nudged you toward some form of suicide (as they did much more strongly for Camus), were genuinely evil—a kind of mad, titanic devouring of your own hands.  And you saw that this didn’t concern only you, but that this arrogant self-hatred that also would only make the world a worse place for the innocent and the guilty alike.

Brother Joseph,
I’ve tried to find a clear definition of Pastoral Ministry. You’ll have to help me with that. I detect a change in the tenor of your posts. I am not a supplicant, nor have I fallen in love with French Nihilism. I intend to continue this conversation as an equal. If the conversation has no meaning to you outside the context of your ministry you should be honest about it. If, however , your interested in a respectful, ‘intellectually serious’ discussion then you’ll never run across anyone more serious than I am.
David Page

Lastly, an important thing to consider before we go on to particular points is this: if you had someone to answer all of the questions that you have smouldering inside about God and goodness, to really give reasonable responses that you didn’t expect and that give you light to recognize God in the way that a human being can—would you take the interest to change something at the heart of your life and to entrust your life to God in real terms, even if that wouldn’t free you from every mental suffering or self-doubt?  “Why am I asking?”; “what would it take?”; understanding these questions simply is a good help in avoiding running in circles with the kinds of head-games that can be so tempting to us natural blow-hards, head-games that are an obstacle to real intellectual seriousness.

Dear David Page,

I’m going to post my response in installments, to make it easier to digest.  Once again, I’ve written a lot – but you’d have to admit that you did, too, and turned it into a much bigger question!

I appreciate your notes about your biography.  Here are a few salient points of my own: I, too, was raised Catholic.  During high school I also fell in love with my own cleverness in a way that made me start walking away from God and the Church, but some fine people in my life helped me get beyond that before it took over.  I studied philosophy in college and at the end saw that I was made to enter a monastery (one that runs a prep school and is rather involved in pastoral ministry; I’m not called to be a hermit) in 2003.  You can learn more about the community at http://www.cistercian.org.  My Abbot sent me to Rome for these two years to study more advanced theology with the Jesuits so that I’ll be better equipped as a teacher later on.  I mention this just because I could have easily ended up on the path that you have followed up to now, or, just as easily, on one that would have been much more arrogant and jaded, without the concern you feel for others and the truth.

What you wrote me was at points very profound.  Here are a few further comments.  But overall, I have to first encourage you in your simple concern for other people and your reverence for the truth.  Living these things and making them real is the key to authentic progress, especially when the question of falling in love with the absurd universe of French nihilism is at hand, or when one realizes that absurdity is bad and decides not to drive himself crazy with it, but still doesn’t end up in the realm of devoting oneself to a fundamental decision to follow what is good and what is true.

Brother Joseph, it seems as if there are two separate discussions going on here. On the one hand we’re talking about a distinct religion with somewhat rigid rules and regulations and on the other hand were talking about intimations of the divine, God’s grace, insights and things like that. There is a great chasm between these two discussions. Recognizing one does not necessarily lead to the other. In fact an argument could be made that recognizing one precludes the other. How can an openness to insight, to the divine, lead a person to a dogma? How can a dogmatic view lead to insight? I have seen magic in the world and all it taught me is that there is magic in the world. I hope that makes sense.

Brother Joseph, I’m familiar with Descartes’s Evil Genie and why it led him to his ‘one true thing’, to steal a phrase from Hemingway. Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Sartre would reply that the self that thinks is not the self that says ‘I am’. A world could be imagined where that could be true. But sticking with Descartes, I think that one has to live in the world that his senses provide for him. One has to pretend that the appearance is the reality. Otherwise you’ll end up like a character in a Dostoevsky novel. Kirilov deciding that suicide is the only possible act of free will. I spent years driving myself crazy with questions like that. Is free will possible? Is there any such thing as an unselfish act? If life has meaning then does it have meaning for an infant born into pain and destined for an early death? Because Christianity seems to answer those questions does not, for one minute, mean that it’s true. Even in a construct where Descartes’s Evil Genie is not running rampart. A religion like Christianity requires an extra leap of faith quite beyond accepting the evidence of your senses. You point out that the message of Christ is ‘surprisingly positive and unique’, and it is. Unfortunately most of the Christians I know don’t pay the slightest attention to it. It is surprisingly ineffective against mediocrity.

Brother Joseph, your right, existence doesn’t explain itself. Wasn’t it Pascal who asked the question, ‘why is there something instead of nothing’. But it is a long way from recognizing mystery to accepting the Bible as the unfiltered word of God. I can accept that some people can live their lives with a minimum of contradiction within the parameters of Christianity. Would they have done just as well anyway? Are some people good because they’re Christians or are they good people who are Christians. Why would god care whether or not I believed in him. Why would he want to be worshiped. if we are made in his image then why is it that something that is shameful in us (the desire to be worshiped) is not shameful to God. I’m tired. I will write more in a couple of days. Goodnight.

Brother Joseph, thank you for your understanding. I’m going to answer you piecemeal. The last month has been busy and I haven’t had much time to myself. I’m not complaining because I have known people who had few demands on their time and I did not envy them.

I think I would first like to say, in regard to Benjamin Franklin, that not everyone takes these questions as seriously as you and I do. I was raised a Catholic. When I left the Church at the age of thirteen I did it a piece at a time. I then dropped Christ and then the idea of a personal god. I questioned everything and came to think of myself as pretty darn clever. I played a game where I would make a statement and then ask why. I would ask ‘why’ to each succeeding answer until I reached a point where I could no longer get my head around the problem. The world would seem to dissolve into chaos. One night in my early twenties all my supports fell away. I was absolutely adrift and it scared the hell out of me. The world was bleached of color and joy. If I saw people laughing and happy I would wonder why they didn’t understand what a dreary, hopeless place the universe was. I was sorely tempted to believe anything that would prove my terrible insight to be false.

The problem was, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to believe something simply because I wanted desperately for it to be true. I couldn’t go back. I was both mortal and alone. I couldn’t undo that knowledge. I was also haunted by the idea that some people came into the world, never knew joy or kindness and then died. I will never reconcile myself to that. I got past my own depression and am now glad I didn’t take what would been for me the easy path. So these questions are not academic. I know that ideas can make you sick and ideas can make you well again. I didn’t mean to burden you with my personal story but I wanted you to understand that none of it is frivolous to me.

David Page,
Your comment that ideas take time and thoughtful absorption, more than a quick read-through, signifies that you already understood a major part of the point I was trying to make about how we reason—which is great!
Since I don’t know what question remains for you as most central, I’ll hold off on further comments on the points that we have raised until I hear from you further. 
Naturally, we’re both busy and have clearly decided to carry out this discussion in a way slow enough to be serious, not a hobby for people who like to argue (even if that can be a sometime vice of mine, I don’t know about you!).  But I see you working honestly and searchingly through some of the same sorts of questions that I have had to confront and have had the gift of studying with very good teachers and quite a lot of time.  So, to make a personal comment (I who was just writing about “personal reasoning"), to the extent that I can share the fruits of that work in a way that will help you continue forward with these questions and transform them into more profound and luminous ones, it is a special and joyful correspondence for me, as well.  We thirst for truth because it exists and can be found!

Brother Joseph, you certainly did write a lot, but ideas take as long as they take. Give me a few days to absorb it and then I will reply to you.
Peace to you, as well.

Lastly, the case you mention of Ben Franklin is actually extremely interesting in this regard.  IF we have understood him rightly, that would make him someone who believed Jesus was sent from God, but didn’t interest himself much in the consequences of that.  That would make him like someone who was persuaded that he had a son that he didn’t know about, but decided not to be his father in any way – he was persuaded by the available arguments, but his spiritual intelligence (or his good will, which of course also plays a role in spiritual intelligence) was not up to further recognizing that this new knowledge had to change his life in some fundamental way.  The reason why a person could say he believes that Jesus is the Son of God and find his life changed by that knowledge is not because he needs some incredibly unusual spiritual experience (some kind of a vision or something) in order to “give evidence to his faith” (although that wouldn’t exactly “prove” anything either, as you can see from my analysis above), or better, to make him really firmly confident in his faith.  His problem is not one of philosophical or historical reasonability, but one of how his heart processes reality and lives it out.  And it is here, in the mystery of the heart’s reasoning, that I say that we especially and uniquely need God’s grace—his still, small voice, just barely audible in the depth of our souls—to take us from the level of exterior reasonability (which is something quite accessible, as I would be happy to indicate you in the case of the historical evidence about Jesus if you are still very interested) to the level of personal conviction and then full lived integrity.  Thus, this is a grace to request in prayer; fortunately, making the request is a sign that it is already significantly in play.

I hope this clarifying.  Peace!

First of all, I realize that most people who entrust themselves to Jesus can’t tell me all of their reasons for it, and that’s just what I’d expect, because of the importance and richness of the question and the fact that the same goes for the question of how they knew that it was wise for them to marry their spouses.  Second, (and here I’m going to summarize dryly a whole biography, so forgive me for being sloppy), if I try to categorize some of the different methods of reasoning that people can point out, I might come up with some of the following as the most prominent: historical reasoning – Jesus of Nazareth clearly existed, and he and his followers and their message about God have been linked to an extraordinary number of extraordinary phenomena, changes of heart, and even outright miracles; this Jesus clearly claimed to be the Son of God, sent by his Father with a unique message and mission for mankind; his Church and his doctrine have been surprisingly unique and positive forces in the tortured course of human history (by the way, this last one requires a lot of spiritual intelligence in addition to a broad and objective historical understanding); philosophical reasoning – right and wrong exist, are terribly important, and are sometimes incredibly hard to separate or heed without extraordinary assistance, so it would be good if God helped on this account; if the good suffer on this earth, and then cease to exist, it seems that the world is not constructed according to goodness, which would be bad; metaphysically speaking, existence does not explain itself, and it is at least possible that its mysterious Source is in fact perfect in every way, i.e., God; the Christian scriptures and tradition promote an extremely ethical and positive way of life;

David Page:
In any case, I suspect you also know of Descartes’s question of “the evil genie”, and therefore how unworkable it is to construct a human epistemology based primarily on the criterion of absolute proof and indubatibility – as Descartes himself recognized.  And I’m sure you can imagine why it is unwise to pretend to apply the criteria of experimental-scientific “proof” (or of abstract mathematical/ logical proof) to the really important questions of life, such as children, God, and marriage.  I think it’s much more helpful to speak in terms of “reasonability” or perhaps “credibility” than proof when we are talking about the richly textured evidence that regards any given “big question”.  What’s more, the inquantifiability of this kind of evidence, which is woven from innumerable different kinds of sources at once, means that every individual human being has to make the discernment for himself, (often subconsciously)weighing the rich array of reasons and counter reasons; he may be able to show another that something he is absolutely convinced about is reasonable (for example, the fact that this boy his wife says is your his is actually his son), that is not the same thing as persuading him that it is true.  Our words are often just not adequate to our souls and minds in this sense.

(On this epistemological question I can go on and on, because it’s been very important to me; let me know if I’m still unclear and I’ll send you something else I’ve written on it.)

Now, if I apply this more directly to the question of whether or not someone can guide his life according to his faith and trust in Christ, here’s what happens…