Longe Vite Bohemia!!

So I've realized that among the anti-theists, there seems to be a running theme. It is the theme of Bohemianism. For those out there who may not know what Bohemianism is, or who want my personal definition (by which definition Bohemianism will hereafter (I've been working at a law firm too long) will be defined) then I would say that Bohemianism is a sensual, carnal, Epicurean way of life. In short, it is satisfying the wild, whimsical tastes of the flesh on the basis that "it isn't doing anybody harm who doesn't want it."
This is the lifestyle of excess, the lifestyle of rebellion, the lifestyle of the sensualists. All is fair as long as it doesn't infringe on another's rights. Promiscuous sexual activity with consenting parties is fine, laudatory remarks about the base and carnal are the norm, wealth and indulgence to excess are permitted and discipline is frowned upon. This is not the stated position of such men as Dawkins, and Hitchens, but when there views are evaluated, one realizes they are as guilty of "moral relativism" as anybody, a stance which leads them to make comments that support a Bohemian lifestyle.
The irony of the Bohemian lifestyle is that though it is presented as the position of the sophisticated ant eh erudite, it has no philosophical standing, and, when rationally evaluated, falls apart under the smallest scrutiny. Consider the following: Alasdair MacIntyre, in After Virtue, states plainly that one finds the answers to morality in either Nietzsche or Aristotle. In other words, we are teleological creatures, as Aristotle says, or we are driven by the will to power, as Nietzsche says.
In my opinion, however, the analysis is easier. It boils down, in my mind, to a system of Nihilism or Mysticism. Either it is a mystical experience, and everything that we see, experience and do, has some form, some purpose and some grounding. This position holds up for more than a strictly Christian or mono-theistic standpoint. The average Buddhist, for example, would see the harmony, and the Taoist would support the idea of nature providing a cosmic balance. Ecologists as well tell us of the necessity for each specific organism to provide a necessary role for the specific ecosystem.
On the other hand, what is our role in the universe? The planet earth occupies an infinitesimally small part of the universe, and our lives are equally insignificant as far as overall effect and lifespan. In the words of Camus, like Sisyphus, all we can do is learn to love the rock. If not everything has some greater cosmic significance, than it can't be that any of it really does, otherwise it is a matter of arbitration, of imperfect judgment on our parts.
I, for my part, fall on the side of mysticism. I believe that there is harmony and purpose to all that is. For this reason, I cannot see the sense in the Bohemian lifestyle. While it is true that one must live in such a way that his life does not harm someone else in his actions, it is also true that his actions can inadvertently harm others. Engaging in debaucherous behaviors might not have immediately damaging repercussions, but they certainly do have an affect. The Bohemian can say, for all he is worth, that his actions have no far-reaching consequences, but the fact remains that the values he has retained are derived from the Christian/Islamic/Judaic/Buddhist/Hindu/Taoist society he is rejecting. He has picked and chosen his values. And for that reason, without religion his position would either be based on Confucius and Socrates or Nietzsche and Sartre.
But rather than taking these positions, he has hybridized Christianity with the things he does not like about it. For this reason, he has declared that Christianity is a blight, because it does not fit his standard, one which, he ought to admit, is arbitrary and only right based on a relativistic understanding of no positions being actually right. For this reason, the Bohemian is ridiculus (yes, the Latin spelling, not the English) when he declares religion to be the great evil, and when his position is scrutinized boils down to pure rhetoric and fails to withstand the gauntlet of rationality. Thus, it is more or less the antithesis of men such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh--it takes an opposite stance, but it is no better as far as being a reasonable position to hold.

Veritas Invenere

I apologize, first off, for my long absence. The last few months have been fairly hectic, and what with writing papers, organizing club stuff, being an RA and applying to grad schools, I haven't put much effort into keeping this up.
I came back into Vernal yesterday. And while I'm not going to comment on Vernal right now, on the three hour car ride home, I had a lot of time to think about whatever it is that I wanted to contemplate. I utilized the ride to think about why it is that there are so many differing belief sets in the world.
It occurs to me that there must be a certain appeal to any given philosophy or faith. There must be some aspect of it that attracts men and women to it. I feel, then, that any given practice of beliefs must have some truth within it. I believe, as Socrates, that humans can recognize certain truths. This, of course, would be why there are similar beliefs in remote parts of the world--similar in how they conduct themselves and even, to a certain extent, what they believe about our final ends and the governing powers of the universe.
However, we observe that there are also a great deal of differences between the various beliefs. I would submit that this is because, as Aquinas says, it is possible to come to a fullness of truth, but not everyone could come to the truth, and it would only be done by long and arduous labor. So, often, when someone comes upon some great truth, he synthesizes doctrines based on this, though often erroneously.
Of course, these sets of beliefs get propagated because man eventually feels the compulsion to find the truth. As Blaise Pascal said, every man, eventually, comes to the realization that death is coming hurtling at him. When we come to grips with our temporality, we realize seek to find some kind of reason for our being. So often, men turn to philosophies or faiths, especially those wherein they see a truth that they recognize.
But it cannot be the case that every single philosophy or religion is right. So many of them openly contradict each other, that it would be utterly incomprehensible to have a pantheistic or panphilosophic attitude. So the task lies on us to figure out which ones we can embrace and which ones to reject.
Of course, with the differing doctrines within each one, it is impossible to take a look from any perspective of the schools of thought to examine what we should do. Plato thought we should seek to live virtuous lives. Luther taught that we are saved through our faith by Grace, and that our works cannot achieve heaven for us. Hedonists and Nihilists claim that nothing we do has any moral or eternal bearing. If we are already attached to one thought, we cannot fairly judge any other school.
So I will not lie and say my opinion is unbiased. But I will try to demonstrate what I think the correct answer is and why. If the Hedonists, Nihilsts, and even some of the Existentialists are right, then we have no moral obligation to anythin. However, this is not the case, because it is obvious through the ways that societies work that at some level, we have a moral obligation to fulfill. If Locke and Hobbes, and for that matter Caesar and all the current talk show hosts, are right, then our moral obligation is only to the state, and that is wherein our salvation lies. However, this cannot either be the case, since states rise and fall all the time, and oftne men outlive their own body politic (read: in a relatively recent example, East and West Germany, the Soviet Union, etc). So it must be to some greater force, for some greater good. If we follow Luther, then salvation requires faith. My biggest problem with this doctrine is not that we are saved through Grace, but rather that our faith is necessary. This seem ridiculous when there are people in parts of the world who have no access to the Gospel, nor did our ancestors if we go back far enough. Thus, salvation excludes a significant portion of the population, and Grace doesn't really seem like Grace.
So, I find myself taking on a more Platonic ideal. I will not say that we need to try to embrace every single virtue in either a Socratic or Aristotelian method, but we do need to live our lives with a sense of what it is to be a good person. Righteous living is the key to our salvation. Even Vatican II made provisions for the "virtuous pagan" an idea that suggests that morality is actually universal, though faith in Christ Jesus is not.
So, I think that whether or not we devote our entire lives to honoring God is irrelevent, but living our entire lives as if we were serving Him or His children is absolutely relevent. Our salvation lies not in how many times we pray, nor in how often we attend church, but it absolutely depends on how we see our brothers and sisters and how we honor the light of God within them.

Humanity vs the robots

No, I'm not speaking of some cheesy sci-fi B movie. I'm speaking of what it means to be human.
Normally I wax Theologic, but today I fear my tone will be more philosophical than anything else.
What does it mean to be human? Are we, as Aquinas defines us, the "rational animal?" Are we simply the most intellectually developed biological system? Are we evolution's greatest accomplishment?
We erect monuments and towers. We write books. We have history. All of these things I have noted before. And as I have noted, this denotes that there is more to us than the systems of organs and bones.
Psychology, which many accept as a branch of Philosophy, has long tried to unlock the real mystery behind that one organ which denotes us as superior to our animal cousins, the brain. While there are several schools of psychology, some of which are highly controversial and others which are more concretely scientific, there are a few which strike me for their approach to the human mind.
Gestalt theory, which comes from the German word for "whole" believes that 1+1 does not equal 2 but equals 3. There's a heavy emphasis that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, the human mind is so much more than neurons firing impulses and neurotransmitters relaying signals. Their approach is to examine the person as a whole and prescribe treatment that emphasizes a holistic approach. A human then, is not simply a rung on the ladder of evolution nor is it a mass of biological material. A human is a human, and the definition of that is more than one can easily grasp.
Then comes my personal favorite psychological school. The humanists. Carl Rogers is often cited as the founder of this particular school. His theory of human sanity and the human mind was a system of needs. He believed that we must fulfill a certain set of needs, such as basic survival needs, before we can move on to more advanced needs, such as emotional needs. Eventually, when we have fulfilled all of our needs, we will find ourselves self-actualized. His list of self-actualized people reads like a list of "Who's Who in Philanthropy." To Rogers, self-actualization was the pinnacle of what it means to be human.
I take a lot of stock in the Rogerian system. However, it must be noted that many of the people on his list, such as Mother Teresa, were on that list despite not fulfilling some of their more "primitive" needs.
So it is that I have come to understand humanity as taking a two-course route through life. There are those who, as Rogers suggested, go through life seeking to fulfill some basic needs. These people often get caught up in some basic desire. They seek money, a survival asset at minimum. But they do it to excess. They become misers. There are also those who seek love too greatly. And rather than finding love they find cheap company and no sense of security. There are those who seek seek recognition and spend their lives working for the approval of others.
Most all of us are guilty of these things in some way or another. We all want to be able to feel like our needs are fulfilled. We do not want to feel as if we're lacking something. Worse yet, we don't want to feel deprived of something we need.
Then there are those who go straight for self-actualization. Some of these people are self-sacrificing. Others are simply philanthropists. Their needs are not as important for them to fulfill. They seek, rather, to fulfill the needs of others. These people are the ones who truly make the world go round. Their love and generosity are the warm fires by which all of humanity either stands or perishes in the cold.
Thus we come to another topic. The idea of human happiness and how it relates to the human person. Humans, at worst, are emotional, reckless, feckless, beasts which have the added disadvantage of questioning their purpose in the universe. It can be truly easy to be lost in the sea of humanity, wondering how to find happiness or to fulfill our destinies.
Those who genuinely seek to be happy and make others happy, seem to me to be true humans. They seek to fulfill their telos as humans. They seek to rise above the mechanical, simple biological functions passed on by millions of years of evolutionary instinct. They love more deeply, and they live more fully. These are the fortunate few who love life with a fulness that others who seek simply to survive lack.
Then there are the robots. These are the people simply trying to fulfill a basic need. Their evolutionary programming dictates what they do with their lives. They live by the pleasure principle. These people are like machines that have a basic programming that they seek neither to exceed nor to leave unaccomplished. They store money like squirrels for the winter. They mate like rabbits in the Spring. They preen and pout like peacoks in mating season.
How then are we different from the rest of the animal kingdom if we do not at least look at our direction? Socrates stated that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Have we examined our lives? Are we striving to fulfill biologic instincts or are we rising to our place among the heavens? Have we simply made our lives more convenient or have we truly contributed to this world?

Logos (parvae animae III ex III)

Now we come to my favorite part of the soul. The Logos. Logos is the word from which English words like logic, and every single ology comes. Literally, Logos means word, but it also incorporates in its definition all cognitive movement. So, apparently in ancient Greece, speaking and verbal communication was tied to thinking. How ironic that in today we often associate too many people as speaking without thinking.
The word Theology was originally translated not as the study of God, but as speaking with God. Thus, the logy part was not originally seen as studying. Similarly, we might view other sciences and areas of academic inquiry as dialogues rather than as "studies." Of course, this is not a fail-proof system. We can't call Biology and Zoology speaking with life and speaking with animals, respectively. In these instances, it is much more appropriate to define them as the study of life, or the study of animals. So, once again, we see again that even though Logos is speaking, it is tied with studying.
Logos is the highest function of the soul. Intellectual movement, to Socrates, is the greatest ability our souls possess. Logos is what gets us out of sticky situations, it's what prevents us from making rash decisions, and it's what advances us as humans and as a society. The Logos should reign in the soul over the Ethos and the Pathos, much as Plato's philosopher rules the Republic, over the protectors and the workers.
This is not to say that we should completely block out Ethos and Pathos, but we should make efforts to regulate them. Logos by itself in the soul is similar to a computer; soulless, emotionless and cold. We should have emotions. We should feel joy, sorrow, love, euphoria, dysphoria, emnity and all other emotions that we feel. However, we cannot let fleeting feelings regulate us as people. We must be able to differentiate between the good and the bad emotions and let our intellect regulate them. We should also embrace our loyalties. We can be religious, or patriotic, or devoted lovers. However, we should also not let the appeal to these attributes be unchecked by our own reasoning.
Unlike the Pathos and the Ethos, our Logos is not as appealed to by rhetoricians. If we want to be logically appealed to, we have to go to a library. We have to read academic journals, encyclopediae, and textbooks. We hear logical appeals from teachers, professors and tutors. We rarely see movies that appeal to us intellectually. If we do, it is not for entertainment value, generally it is for intellectual development. The documentary is the Logos' response to the drama of the Pathos. However, as movie sales show, documentaries never do as well as the action movie or romance playing at the same time.
The reason why we are not appealed to logically by rhetoricians is simple: it is not in their realm to appeal to us logically. A professor I had once told my class that in the ancient world there were three ways to tell somebody something they didn't know. There was rhetoric, which was what was convincing, philosophy, which was demonstrating, and theology, which was revealing. As shown by this example, the Logos' realm is that of philosophy. Rhetoricians, as such, do not try to convince people with concrete facts. Otherwise they would likely be scientists, and not rhetoricians.
Theologically speaking, Logos is the most highly valued part of the soul. Theologians of times past and present seek to talk about God in an academic fashion. St Thomas Aquinas, patron saint of philosophers, theologians, students and universities, spent his entire life devoted to demonstrating how being a Christian makes sense. Professors of theology in universities world wide teach students how to be a believer in the most academic ways possible. They teach us how to confront a world that increasingly relies on science and Logos to refute faith. Priests, as well, are trained not only theologically, but also philosophically.
But the most well-known use for the term Logos in the theological world is for Jesus. The opening verse of the Gospel of John read thusly: "In the beginning was the Word (Logos). And the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Much theology has arisen from those few verses. In Mass, we call Jesus the Word made flesh. St Augustine told us that Jesus' relationship to the Father is that of the Logos. In this way, since God is pure action, and His action is brought about by His thought, then the Logos has been around since the beginning, and the Son has been with the Father from the beginning.
If we view this as the order of God, then we can see for ourselves that we should also make efforts to embrace our Logos over our Ethos and our Pathos. Furthermore, as God's Logos provides a way for all mankind to be saved, then perhaps it is our own Logos that will allow us to save humanity.

A product of our times?

Being as faithfully religious as I am, the question of the legitimacy of other faiths has occurred to me quite frequently. In fact, Alexa and I often discuss the ecumenical nature of faith, and the exact reason why I find Catholicism to be validated against this principle (Vatican II).
However, I would be remiss if I pondered these questions without asking the question: Are my beliefs truly as valid as I think that they are, or am I merely a product of Christianity's two thousand years of history and theology?
As it stands, that question is a very legitimate question, seeing as Christianity does only have two thousand years behind it and religion in general has been traced back at least five thousand years (and by the Old Testament standards, six thousand). If my beliefs about God become man only go back to the early Christians and theologians such as Athanasius, Origen, Jerome, Augustine and others, then what am I to say about those who lived before?
Not only that, but some of the most popular religions in the world predate Christianity by quite a long time. Buddhism has five hundred years on Christianity, while Hinduism has at least six hundred. Judaism can be traced at least another thousand years before Christ. Where does that leave those people? If we might state that the proof of Christianity's validity is in its longevity than what do we say about these faiths? Or what about Islam which is only six hundred years younger than Christianity?
Questions such as these give some people a reason to doubt their faith. Others claim that God did simply not reveal himself to these people. Some see other faiths as stumbling blocks and scandals in the way of Christianity (specifically those who read the Apocalypse of John literally).
However, I find my faith validated in various other places. As a bit of a Classics scholar, the Romans and Greeks fascinate me. Of course both of these nations worshiped a plethora of gods, and neither one of their religions have survived the test of time. But what seems peculiar to me is not their faith, but those who were not of their faiths.
One of my favorite philosophers of all time, Socrates, was accused of being an atheist. However, peculiarly, in nearly every dialogue I've ever read of his, he mentions deity, or Providence or some kind of reference to a God. Furthermore, in his Apology, Socrates talks at length about the spirit that always spoke to him. From a Christian perspective, a lot of Socrates' philosophy seems to mirror Christian thought (which is not surprising considering many of the Christian theologians and philosophers were trained in the Greek style). So I find some encouragement in Socrates' Christian-like thinking.
Furthermore, it seems to me that faiths such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam started more or less as national faiths. Hinduism, Islam and Judaism all filled in religious vacuums in the cultures where they started. Buddhism came around in a Hindu setting, but it migrated East to more accepting climes. Christianity blossomed in the Jewish region of the Roman Empire. Christianity had to fight against two strong religions, and yet still grew, even when it became outlawed in the empire, and Christians were killed for sport.
So it is that I have faith in the Christian faith. By this I mean not only that I have faith in the guiding principles of Christianity and in the Divinity of Christ Jesus, but also in the faith itself. I believe that Christians can relearn to love. I believe that Christians can relearn to accept others who are different and reach out to those marginalized by society. I believe that Christians can help the poor, protest war, and stand as real witnesses of the love that God gave us. We preach Christ crucified. A doctrine whereby we profess that God's mercy and love were so great that he forgave us all our follies. As Christians and followers of this God, it is our duty to show that Christianity's strength lies not in the power of its followers, but in their love.

Anima Aeterna

So the thought occurred to me that one thing that most monotheistic faiths lack is a sense of the whatever comes before this life.
Of course that comes from the simple fact that as being travelers on this journey we call life,we are far more concerned with where we're going than where we're coming from. However, faiths such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Mormonism all provide explanations of what has come before. Socrates provided an explanation, as well, as did Vergil in the Aeneid.
I have to wonder, then, why it is that Judaism, Christianity and Islam does not seem to put such emphasis on this facet of our faith.Truly, if we claim that the soul is eternal, per Aquinas, then we have to ask where we came from.
I suppose this is a good opportunity to examine the case for eternality. Does eternality mean an infinite amount of time on both sides? Is eternity more like a geometric line or a ray? Does something eternal have a beginning or has it always existed?
Suppose we say that something is eternal. Therefore, it necessarily has an infinite amount of existence. Thus, it will continue to exist forever and whether or not it was created seems irrelevent because it will always exist. However, if we say it will always exist, this is different than saying it does always exist. If something is created but will never cease to be created once it's created, then we can always measure how long something has been around. On the other hand, if something's existence goes back ad infinitum then we can never say how long it has been around.
What I'm trying to say is this: If everything that is has always existed in some sense, then our souls necessarily have always existed in some sense. But, if we believe that at some point everything was created, then our souls were created as well. Simply because Newtonian laws dictate that everything that is will always be in some form or another does not mean that it always has been.
Here's the conundrum: if our souls have not always been around, how can we be sure that they will always exist? And if they were not created at some point, how can we say that our God is all powerful?
Perhaps this is the reason why monotheism has never addressed this issue. Buddhists have no real concept of an all-powerful God, therefore omnipotence isn't an issue. Hindus have a group of gods that work in concert, but none of them are all powerful either. The gods of the Greeks and Romans were little more than super-powered human beings. And Mormons' concept of divinity rings like a combination of monotheism with the Olympian gods, by which method humans can become gods and God himself is limited in the heavens.
Thus, the idea of our souls existing since forever seems to be absent from those who believe in a god who has all power in the universe.

Finis Orbis (Eschatology Part 2)

REM once sang, "It's the End of the World as we know it, and I feel fine." The idea of an end of the world is not a new one, but it is one that can almost only be traced to Judaic origins.
Most ancient cultures viewed history as cyclical. If there were bad times, good times were always certain to follow. If one city was destroyed, another was rebuilt. With death comes life. All the cosmos followed a cycle that mimicked the seasons of the year. With every spring, there would inevitably be a summer and an autumn.
The evidence for this is seen in how some civilizations have no concept of the end all. The Greeks might talk of battles and deaths, but they never tend to move toward anything final.
Related to this is the notion of reincarnation. If we are in a cycle of reincarnation, then there is really no final destruction that the world is headed toward. As I mentioned yesterday, the Buddhists and the Hindus believe in a system of reincarnation. Similarly, Socrates, in the Phaedo gives us an account of the afterlife wherein souls are recyled, and Vergil, in the Aeneid presents an afterlife where souls eventually lose their memory until they are ready to be reborn into humans.
In fact, the only Pagan belief system that comes to mind when talking about some sort of end of history is the religion of the Vikings, wherein the earth is consumed in fire and flood in the final battle between the gods called Ragnarok.
But Monotheists have always had an idea of history being linear. Things start off positively, like the perfect Garden of Eden. Following this, there is inevitable wickedness. Mankind continues in his path of sinfulness, only getting worse and worse until the final pivotal moment of history wherein God justifies the oppressed, punishes the sinner and restores perfection and justice to the earth.
There are numerous texts that illustrate this idea. In the Old Testament we have books such as Daniel, Jeremiah and Isaiah. In the New Testament we have passages in the synoptic Gospels, as well as in Galatians and the Revelation. These passages (with the exception of Galatians and the Gospels) are part of a literary genre called "apocalyptic." They follow a set pattern, but inherent in them are symbols, a final judgment and knowledge previously unknown to the world. There are other instances of apocalyptic texts such as the Gospel of Abraham and other texts from Qumran.
Now, to get towards the point. Many men for centuries have taken the symbols of these books, especially numbers and places, and formulated theories about when the world would end. It is obvious that the early Christians expected Jesus to return before most of them died. Numerous groups have arisen throughout history, foretelling the end of the world at a specific date. Among these are the present day Seveth-Day Adventists.
Every one of these groups claims to have seen the "signs of the times." Miller was certain the world would end on May 6, 1840. Some saw the Great Depression as a sign of the last days. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation seemed to come straight from scripture.
More recently, there was talk that January 1, 2000 would be the second coming, and now it is some time in May of 2012.
It is obvious that time and again we have been wrong about when the world would end. Why should we panic? Why should we stocking up our bomb shelters? I suggest that we live our lives as if each day is our last, but not as if the world will end. Why should we cease living the call to be in the world simply because we have used some strange math to calculate the end times? As Jesus himself says in Mark 13:30 "Of that day and time, no man knoweth."