2012-05-02

Postscript: Explaining "Explaining"

In the frist segment of “Evolution’s Arrow,” I addressed the meaning – or, rather, vagueness -- of “explanation”:
What is explanation? What does it mean to “explain”? A literature teacher explains James Joyce’s Ulysses. The chess master explains why it’s better not to take the bishop on move 21. A museum docent explains the Van Gogh paintings. You explain to your new friend the idiosyncratic behavior of your old friend. These are all very different, though they all go by the name explanation. Science offers a sort of explanation. Science helps us make sense of things in one particular way: namely, a way that allows for control and prediction. Religion helps us make sense of things in a different way. Where science helps us control and predict the universe, religion helps us befriend our world, enter into a relationship of love and value with it. Scientific understanding lets us know what’s going to happen. Religious understanding lets us feel at home in this universe, at peace with it, whatever may happen.
On Facebook, I linked to that blog post, along with the question: “Science and religion have no more to do with each other than auto mechanics and flower arrangement?” It’s a multi-valent question: whether you think the science-religion connection is tighter than the auto mechanics-flower arrangement connection depends not only on how connected you regard the former, but also on how connected you regard the latter. (Indeed, as the bud vase in VW’s “New Beetle” illustrated, perhaps auto mechanics and flower arrangement are connected after all).

My facebook update was favored with a comment from Lyn Robbins. Lyn and I were students together at Baylor for a couple years almost thirty years ago. Lyn blogs over at Blogarithmic Expressions. He’s an articulate and thoughtful Christian, and, Lord knows, the world could use more of those. (The world could also use more Unitarian Universalists committed to spiritual cultivation, but that’s a topic for another time.) Quoth Lyn:
Meredith, you will not be surprised that I disagree at some level. Science and religion are in fact related: they are both human attempts to explain the work of God. Certainly they come from (apparently) different starting places, make (some) different assumptions, and use (mostly) different methods. But at their core, they both ask why the sun rises, why two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen make water, and why the human being is different from all other created animals. And then, the similarities cease, for while science can and does describe each of these questions with more detail and perhaps with bigger words, science has to answer each of them "I don't know."
I replied to Lyn, and I confess I was a touch on the cranky side because I thought I had already answered this “explain” thing on Lake Chalice, and I didn’t know whether Lyn had bothered to actually read it. Probably he did – and, as usual, I was neither as clear nor as persuasive as I deliriously imagine myself to be. (It’s also possible that I might not be as right as I imagine, but, naturally, I don’t think that’s it. Must be that I just haven't been clear. My view on the subject hasn’t changed except insofar as clarifying a view does change it.) Quoth I:‎
1. My status update is asking a question, not stating a claim with which one could disagree.
‎2. The key word is "explain" but we have no clarity on exactly what "explaining" is. The variety of activities that get called "explanation" is vast. A chess player might feel that chess explains life. A musician might say that music explains life. But that doesn't mean chess and music have much to do with each other.
3. I appreciate Lyn's conclusion that science must end in "I don't know." Religion, too, must end in that "I don't know" of mystery and wonder. So science and religion have at least these two things in common: (a) they both explain, and (b) they both utterly fail to explain. (Auto mechanics and flower arrangement have more concrete similarities than that--precise positioning of physical parts, for example.)
4. RE: "why the human being is different from all other created animals" Actually, I find both science and religion to be more gratifying, more helpful, more inspiring, and more whole when they facilitate awareness of the similarities and connections (rather than the differences) between us humans and the rest of creation. "How we are like them" tells us a lot more about who we are than the vain project of glorifying slight differences.
Lyn was curtly dismissive:
Mer, I will continue to be sorry that your religion "utterly fails to explain" and leaves you with "I don't know."
So I shot back:
Lyn, any religion that doesn't bring us to a god of mystery and wonder isn't worthy, and any god boxable within the categories of human knowability is too small a god to be of interest.
Lyn:
Meredith, I don't claim that we can or will (this side of Heaven) know or understand everything about God, and I fully embrace the concept of the mystery of God. On the other hand, the inherent purpose of the incarnation is that in Christ we can and do know God. To say that we know God is not to say that we know and understand all the details of God. I cannot explain all details of H2O, but I can land on God as an explanation for why things are the way they are. Pure science, if it is honest, always reduces (much like a 3 year old) to the question "Why?", and that is the difference between science and religion... at least my religion. Christianity reduces to the answer "God."
At which point, Jon Zila, a friend from my El Paso days, jumped in:
"Christianity reduces to the answer "God."" That is not the answer. That is still a question. While you might "know" god, in the sense that you have had an experience with god, to know everything about god (to which you agree) is two different things. You may not know how H20 works, but to ultimately say it's just god is me saying "I don't know what makes this car move as fast as it does, yet I know it's because of physics." Both of which are things I do not know well. Although I know physics more than I know cars. You are replacing one thing you don't know with something else you don't know. The true miracle is the wonder of it all. To ultimately try to reduce it to a label is what takes away from that wonder. To write anything off as a simple word is what (imo) takes the miracle away.
Lyn:
I am sorry that I have articulated this poorly. I am not eliminating miracles or mystery and I don't claim that knowing God means we understand all the wonders of the universe. My point is only that saying that God is the source of physics and chemistry and biology is a huge step that pure science cannot take, and when coupled with knowing that God produces a far different answer than does the "I don't know" of science. I admire both fields - but they both try to answer some of the same questions, and religion gets much further down the road.
Ah, and what road would this be? It would seem to the old “explaining” road. Lyn, I gather, is saying that religion explains "more" than science does. Gone are the days when I was interested in debating, on its own terms, whether science or religion “explains more.” What I now want to say is that the notion of “explaining” is itself confused and illusory. Once we clear that up, we will see that the question of whether X or Y explains “more” is itself a nonsense question.

French playwright Moliere gave us a famous illustration of illusory explanation. In his play, “The Imaginary Invalid,” Doctor Bachilierus addresses the question of why opium cause people to go to sleep. The doctors “explains” that this is because of opium’s “dormative power.”

You see the problem here. The proferred explanans (“Opium has a dormative power”) merely restates the explanandum (“Opium puts people to sleep”).

Yet the reason Moliere’s lampoon works is that the reality of “explanation” isn’t much different. We can see how a listener (one not quite as clever as we are) might have the impression that Dr. Bachilierus has actually explained opium’s sleep-inducing tendency. His “explanation” does have a momentary “explanatory feel” to it. When re-statings of an explanandum are a little more elaborate, the illusion of “explanation” gets much harder to see through. Some of us find that “because of God” has a very satisfying explanatory feel to it, while others of us find that offering “God” as an explanation feels as circular and uninformative as “dormative power.” On the science side: some find that Newton’s laws of motion have a satisfying explanatory feel, while others point out that Newton’s laws don’t explain motion but merely describe it.

What are we really doing when we (think we) “explain” something? Fundamentally, this human activity we call “explaining” is narrative. Humans are a story-telling species. For us, stories give us the feeling that things make sense. So when we assess some “explanation” as “satisfying” or “further down the road” or “incomplete,” we are making a literary judgment – not unlike the judgment we make when we assess Dickens’ novels as more developed that Defoe’s.

Does this mean that if scientists took a few courses in literature criticism, they’d be better equipped to evaluate the explanations of phenomena that appear in the science journals? Maybe. Or maybe it’s enough that scientists-in-training stick to a science curriculum because the science curriculum IS a form of training in literature criticism.

In the preceding seven segments of “Evolution’s Arrow,” I spoke often of evolution as a “story,” and not at all as an “explanation.” “Explanation” is essentially story-telling, but there are certain pitfalls that we avoid by saying “story” instead of “explanation.”

One pitfall is the chimera of the “complete explanation.” No one supposes that fiction-writing would ever develop to the point that no further story need be told. Stories aren’t aimed at an endpoint – whereas if we say “explanation” we can fall into the mistake of imagining that they are aimed at an endpoint.

Another friend from El Paso, John de Castro, wrote this week of attending some “International Symposia for Contemplative Studies”:
Last evening we attended a panel discussion of the nature of consciousness. The anel consisted of an internationally renowned neuroscientist, a Tibetan monk and aide to the Dali Lama, and a renowned Philosopher. After wonderful thoughtful presentations by all about consciousness from completely different perspectives, they all came to the same conclusion! Consciousness cannot be understood within any current paradigm.
What does this mean? “Understood,” like “explained,” sounds like an allusion to an endpoint. But there is no such thing as THE understanding or THE explanation. There is only AN understanding and AN explanation – just as there is no such thing as THE story but only A story.

It’s true we don’t have the final understanding of consciousness, but that’s because there’s no such thing as a final understanding of anything: rocks, oranges, algebra, love, death, or Australian-rules football. There’s no final story about anything.

We do have stories to tell about consciousness – just as we have stories to tell about quasars, rain forests, transfinite cardinals, and monogamy. We may, of course, hope for and continue to work toward more satisfying stories about consciousness just as we hope for and continue to work toward more satisfying stories about everything else. What will count as “more satisfying” will depend as much on changes in the sensibilities of the readers as it does on changes in the stories.

Also back in the first segment of “Evolution’s Arrow” I mentioned that science helps us control and predict the universe, while religion helps us befriend it.

Science could continue to do what it does without thinking of itself as engaged in the project of producing something called explanation. It could, instead, simply say, “If we tell this story, then here are some cool research projects that might further extend our ability to control and predict.”

Likewise religion could continue to do what it does without thinking of itself as engaged in the project of producing anything called explanation. It could, instead, simply say, “If we tell this story, then we provide narrative support for certain practices – and the practices and story together help increase our ability for love, connection, inner peace, and joy.”

* * * * *
This is a postscript to the seven-part Lake Chalice series, "Eschatology: Evolution's Arrow."

Previous: Part 7: "Thank God for Evolution"
Beginning: Part 1: "Science, Religion, and a Bud Vase"

11 comments:

  1. Sorry for deleted comments above. I had technical issues.

    Let me try again.

    First, Mer, I am sorry for appearing to have been "curtly dismissive." That is an inherent problem with cyber-conversations. In real life, I think you would have understood that I was simply offering the next sentence in the conversation. I was waiting for a reply, not intending to be either curt or dismissive. Sorry for the miscommunicatin.

    Second, yes I did read the blog and its other sections. I read your conclusion as infinitely regressive - each answer produces more questions, never leading to any "answer" but producing further narrative for the journey. Your conclusion is that there is no real "understanding," nor, would I guess, do you think there is truth that can be found.

    I offer "understanding" in God not in that I understand all there is to know about God or in how the universe works. After all, it was God Himself who cautioned us, though his conversation with Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the universe?" But, what I can and do understand is that God understands and that God is the source. And that understanding is sufficient, not because I have made a random choice to land there but because I have relationship with God.

    When I remind my daughter to clean her room because her mother wants her to, I don't have to explain the origins of my wife or the truth of "cleanliness." It is enough that Mom wants it. My daughter may disobey, but it will not because she does not "understand." It will be a choice she makes.

    Here is where your use of the word "religion" does not fully encompass what I am saying. Christianity is primarily a relationship, not a religion. Christianity is not built on dogma, ritual, or creed. Oh, we have our dogma and our rituals, and some brands of us have our creeds, but none of those is the sine qua non of Christianity.

    The nature of science is hypothesis testing. Every new experiment leads to more questions. That is how science ought to be. Moisture evaporates into clouds which rain water which flows into rivers and thence into oceans and evaporates. We have a water cycle. Why? Because we do. That is how science works.

    Faith takes me "further down that road" because I can and do know God. That provides me a foundation and an understanding. That is a place that science cannot take me. It is not just a narrative, although it certainly provides a narrative.

    There is such a thing as truth. There are answers, and they can be understood. That does not mean every detail can be understood or needs to be understood.

    Understanding is a worthy goal. That I cannot understand it all does not mean that I cannot understand. That God knows more does not mean that I cannot know God.

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    Replies
    1. When I said "curtly dismissive," I was (more-or-less intentionally) saying more about myself and the way I was choosing to receive your words than I was saying about you. My guess is that you know that. Now you know that I know it, too.

      I appreciate again -- as I believe I have told you before that I appreciated -- your "relationship not a religion" distinction. Along with Jon Zila, I don't think "religion" is quite the right word to best make the point I believe you're making. I gather you're talking about dogmas and rituals -- and, since I don't use the word "religion" to refer to a set of dogmas and rituals, can we agree that relationship, rather than beliefs/rituals, is what is central to the religious/spiritual life?

      And if that agreement goes through, then I'd like to generalize our relationship-beliefs distinction into a distinction between nonlinguistic experience and language.

      I'm only a postmodernist about language. Anything we can put as a sentence is "just one more optional story." As direct, nonlinguistic experience, I'm in agreement with you: yes, we can know God. It's just that as soon as we say anything about it, we've left "knowledge" and "truth" behind. As we say in Zen: "Open your mouth and you're wrong." If, however, we stand in humble silence before (a metaphor for relationship) the infinite, then we know, and what we know is truth.

      We go astray, though, when we pretend knowledge and truth can be attributes of mere sentences.

      So, two questions: (1) We good? and (2) If you skip the first segment of the "Evolution's Arrow" segment, the remaining six pretty much stand independently. What's your take on those?

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  2. In response to Meredith:

    "What are we really doing when we (think we) “explain” something? Fundamentally, this human activity we call “explaining” is narrative. Humans are a story-telling species. For us, stories give us the feeling that things make sense. "

    I invite you to watch the following talk by Jill Bolte Taylor. (You may have watched it already.)
    http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/12/jill_bolte_tayl/

    It provides great insight to what we as human beings are doing at a neurological level when we are story telling. This is a perfect example of how science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but ultimately are trying to answer the same question "What is reality?".

    "Gone are the days when I was interested in debating, on its own terms, whether science or religion “explains more.” What I now want to say is that the notion of “explaining” is itself confused and illusory. Once we clear that up, we will see that the question of whether X or Y explains “more” is itself a nonsense question."

    And I think this is the best place one can be in.

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  3. In response to Lyn:

    "Here is where your use of the word "religion" does not fully encompass what I am saying. Christianity is primarily a relationship, not a religion. Christianity is not built on dogma, ritual, or creed. Oh, we have our dogma and our rituals, and some brands of us have our creeds, but none of those is the sine qua non of Christianity."

    Lyn, I think you fail to understand that there is a word for this. It's called religion. Most people of their own religions can say (or simply may say) the exact same thing. Islam can be called a relationship with Allah. Taoism can be called a relationship with the Tao.

    When people ask me what Buddhism is about, after I explain it they tend to say "then it's not really a religion, is it?" They are referencing the fact that there isn't an explanation of god or the afterlife. But, modern convention seems to have ingrained a sense of power over things when we can label them. So Buddhism is still considered a religion.

    And guess what? I don't care that it is. The label you put on it will not have an effect on my views. And neither should it affect you. It seems you are defensive that Christianity is called a religion, otherwise (I would surmise) you wouldn't have brought it up.

    "Faith takes me "further down that road" because I can and do know God. That provides me a foundation and an understanding. That is a place that science cannot take me."

    When your foundation is faith, you are saying that your foundation is nothing more than you believe it because you simply do/have to/want to. That does not provide more understanding that someone who has evidence/foundation of logic. I find that most people use the word "faith" as a reason to be willfully ignorant. They choose to not to think about anything that doesn't follow their beliefs. And while I could argue that it provides less understanding because you have decided that you don't want new information unless it coincides with your own beliefs, it completely ignores what Meredith was saying when he said "Once we clear that up, we will see that the question of whether X or Y explains “more” is itself a nonsense question."

    "There is such a thing as truth. There are answers, and they can be understood. That does not mean every detail can be understood or needs to be understood.

    Understanding is a worthy goal. That I cannot understand it all does not mean that I cannot understand."

    I agree. I personally feel though that if you add a mystery to an existing mystery, it makes it more complicated and less knowable, not the other way around. (This applies to any type of troubleshooting: you eliminate one part at a time until you find the problem. If you don't know what the problem is, you don't add things to it to try to explain it.) Hence why I feel that just simply adding "it's because of God" doesn't explains it more, it explains it less. Either way, to debate whether knowing god is more helpful to understanding doesn't help us understand more.

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  4. Response to Jon, Part One:

    Wow, Jon, I have thought long and hard about how to respond. I don't know you, and you don't know me. I wrote my comments to Meredith, whom I do know (or at least did know once, when giants walked the earth) and who does know me. I don't believe Meredith would agree with you that I am defensive in my use of terminology, that I have "decided [I] don't want new information unless it coincides with [my] beliefs," or that I am "willfully ignorant." He certainly would disagree with you if you said that I am one who "chooses not to think about anything that doesn't follow [my] beliefs." I will chalk those comments up to your hasty use of rhetorical flourish and philosophical standby language rather than assuming they are meant as ad hominem attack.

    Of course I understand that Christianity is a religion. My comments were directed, as I think I said carefully, specifically to Meredith's use of the word "religion" as juxtaposed to "science" in the search for "understanding." My point was not to defend all "religion" but rather to make a case uniquely for Christianity as an avenue - in fact ultimately as the avenue - toward understanding.

    I do not believe the Taoist would argue that his/her religion is fundamentally a relationship with God. It is clear from your desription of Buddhism that a Buddhist would not make that claim.

    I think some Muslims would make a claim about relating to Allah, although I do not know any Muslims who claim that their relationship with Allah is the basis for their religion. If anything, they hope to hear a word from Allah some day. Their religion is very much a set of works, dogmas, actions, and rituals, and I don't really think Muslims would dispute that.

    As you believe I have misunderstood the word "religion," I believe you misunderstand the word "faith." In your attack on all those who rely on faith, you assume that faith is an excuse to believe the idiotic, or at least the unreasonable. You draw a bright line between those who rely on their faith and those who rely on "evidence/foundation of logic." Your clear implication is those of us people of faith eschew evidence and logic.

    You are forgiven your misunderstanding of faith, and I hope you will let me offer an explanation. I realize that it will be new information that does not coincide with your own beliefs, I hope you will consider it.

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  5. Resonse to Jon, Part Two:

    Faith is not a substitute for reason. Faith is certainly not "no more than [I] believe ... because [I] simply want to." If that were the case, my religion would be "Lynism" and it would be different for me than it is for the millions of other Christians in the world who have never met me and do not know how I personally work through issues. No - faith is the extension of reason to things unseen, to things that cannot be scientifically proven. If I had not had real experiences to support my faith, if I did not have a personal relationship with Christ, if my life did not repeatedly back up and support the arguments and claims of scripture, I would not be a man of faith. This is not about blind following of the musings of prehistoric Middle Eastern shepherds who wrote some things down and never dreamed they would be collected and used to start a religion - this is about understanding how the universe works and how the Creator works in and through it. Because God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit work in the world - and because God is constant - the experiences and faith of Christians find common ground and consistency. Our basis is the same. We call that "understanding."

    If you read my blog to which I linked in the previous comment, you would see that I strongly hold to what we "know" as Christians, not to some blind acceptance of a random wish list.

    I get the fact that you are not at a place to share my faith. Since I don't know you, it is doubtful that I can lead you to that place through internet blog commentary. There are, however, many many folks around you who can help you get there if you are willing to inquire. That ought to peak the interest of the philosopher you clearly are.

    My point in opening this dialog with Meredith - and with others like you who want to join - was originally to take issue with a narrow point that Meredith raises concerning "understanding" and ultimately the post-modern idea that we cannot reach truth or find real answers. I continue to take issue with Meredith's basic point of the "nonsense question." That is the philospher's infinite regression, arguing that we can never reach an answer. I disagree.

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  6. "I don't know you, and you don't know me."

    You're absolutely right. Maybe I was hasty in my assumption of what you were trying to say. That probably stems from the fact I've heard the same words said many times, and my response to you was the assumption that you meant the words in the same way it is typically used which I will explain and maybe you can inform me how you meant it otherwise. Maybe I was the one being curtly dismissive. :)

    "My point was not to defend all "religion" but rather to make a case uniquely for Christianity as an avenue - in fact ultimately as the avenue - toward understanding."

    What I find is a lot people like to try to make themselves out to be different by saying something like "well, it's not really liberalism, because..." or "you can't just call it a car because of ...". In either case, people somehow believe that because the label doesn't directly define what they are describing, that it somehow validates it. I would chalk it up that inherently, deep down inside, we know that as soon was we tried to describe what we are talking about, we limit it.

    In the case of Christianity (I also have friends that follow Druidism, Pantheism, Wiccan, etc. that do the same thing) they say that it's not really a religion.

    re·li·gion/riˈlijən/
    Noun:
    The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods.

    But, by that definition, many religions (including Christianity) fits. And when I mention that, people tend to get defensive (like it somehow invalidates their belief) and try to debate otherwise. My thought was you were saying the same thing.

    "Their religion [Islam] is very much a set of works, dogmas, actions, and rituals, and I don't really think Muslims would dispute that."

    The group I know that would typically dispute that would be the Sufis, but the general population of Muslims may agree with you.

    "You are forgiven your misunderstanding of faith, and I hope you will let me offer an explanation. I realize that it will be new information that does not coincide with your own beliefs, I hope you will consider it."

    I absolutely will. I try to reevaluate myself on a daily, if not a moment by moment basis and I would be glad to hear your explanation.




    Just a quick interjection about faith (and a background of my understanding of it so you know where I'm coming from). When most people use the word "faith" around me, it is exactly what I described to you. A typical conversation I have goes something like this:

    "So, since the speed of light travels at 186,000 mps it takes 8 minutes for the light of the sun to hit us. Our north star, which is the next closest star to us takes 4 years. So when we see something that is 13.5 billion light years away, it means that the light we see is 13.5 billion years old. The universe has to be at least this old, not a mere 6000 years."

    "Well, you just have to have faith."

    And you can see why when you used the word "faith", my assumption was that you were using it in the same sense.




    Either way, I look forward to hearing your response. Anytime someone can break my preconceived notions I take it as a gift. I also want to address that I did not intend to offend you. Since you were being direct with Meredith my being direct with you was under the assumption that you took the words for what they were: an explanation (here we go again :P ) of my disagreement with your views, not an attack on them or you. My sincere apologies.

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  7. Meredith, I love the way you dissect things. Makes me tests the gaps I often skip right over. I think I still have a copy of your thesis in a box somewhere. Maybe I'll have to find that and see if it still is as much fun to read through as it once was. I think it was where I first read about a distinction between horizontal and vertical infinite regression....

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  8. Meredith, (1) of course we are good. We have debated things for (literally) decades without agreeing on many things, going all the way back to the grammar of "mass noun" vs. "collective noun." Never has been personal, is not now. (2) The other six are of course well written, and you are very consistent. As for "what I think of them"... well, I have some differences. Again, some of it goes back to definition. In the evolution debate (about which I have blogged a couple of times as you know), I draw a bigger distinction than you appear to between the terms "evolution" and "adaptation." On a more substantive level, I differ with you pretty greatly on the purpose of evolution and the reason why humanity exists. I do not view us as flukes or inevitable results of chaos, given enough time. Whatever evolution (and adaptation, and growth, and change) are, I view them as tools of God toward God's specific end. I do not see any of this as random. I certainly do not think God's plan for the world could be carried out by the bonabos.

    Jon, the "6000 yearsers" whom you quote are either (1) just really dumb, in which case your argument is a straw man or (2) really smart, in which case what you are hearing as "you just have to have faith" is probably their attempt to tell you that you are relying on only some of the available evidence - the part that you have already decided is true - and that in evaluating more of the evidence they find in the world (which they shorthand into a group of evidence they call "faith"), they reach a different conclusion. Either way, I disagree with them on the facts, but I don't blame it on blind faith, at least if they are in the second group I have described above.

    Jon, thanks for the explanation. I am sure there are many "religious" people out there who make bad assumptions, offer bad arguments, and reach bad conclusions. I understand (sorry for using that word) that you might see some of my words and assume I am in the same boat. I hope, the more you read of what I write (here and on my blog), you might at least agree with Meredith that I am "articulate and thoughtful," even if you and he disagree with many, if not most, of my conclusions.

    DR, good to see you join the chat.

    Meredith, one final thought. What does it mean to be post-modernist "only ... about language"? How else is one meaningfully post-modernist? Language is our mechanism for communicating truth. I suppose one can privately ruminate about truth and understanding, but if your language is post-modern, aren't you effectively a post-modernist as far as the world is concerned?

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  9. Somehow, my technical difficulties continue. The below comment is for some reason not showing up here. If you scroll up to my comment that begins "Response to Jon, Part One," this should have followed:

    Response to Jon, Part Two:

    Faith is not a substitute for reason. Faith is certainly not "no more than [I] believe ... because [I] simply want to." If that were the case, my religion would be "Lynism" and it would be different for me than it is for the millions of other Christians in the world who have never met me and do not know how I personally work through issues. No - faith is the extension of reason to things unseen, to things that cannot be scientifically proven. If I had not had real experiences to support my faith, if I did not have a personal relationship with Christ, if my life did not repeatedly back up and support the arguments and claims of scripture, I would not be a man of faith. This is not about blind following of the musings of prehistoric Middle Eastern shepherds who wrote some things down and never dreamed they would be collected and used to start a religion - this is about understanding how the universe works and how the Creator works in and through it. Because God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit work in the world - and because God is constant - the experiences and faith of Christians find common ground and consistency. Our basis is the same. We call that "understanding."

    If you read my blog to which I linked in the previous comment, you would see that I strongly hold to what we "know" as Christians, not to some blind acceptance of a random wish list.

    I get the fact that you are not at a place to share my faith. Since I don't know you, it is doubtful that I can lead you to that place through internet blog commentary. There are, however, many many folks around you who can help you get there if you are willing to inquire. That ought to peak the interest of the philosopher you clearly are.

    My point in opening this dialog with Meredith - and with others like you who want to join - was originally to take issue with a narrow point that Meredith raises concerning "understanding" and ultimately the post-modern idea that we cannot reach truth or find real answers. I continue to take issue with Meredith's basic point of the "nonsense question." That is the philospher's infinite regression, arguing that we can never reach an answer. I disagree.

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  10. And yes, I know the word is "pique" and not "peak." Spellcheck can be a harsh taskmaster.

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