Avdat

In which I teach the ontological argument to undergraduates

I'm teaching Intro to Religion this summer at a local community college. Last night we did the chapter in the textbook on Faith and Reason, in which numerous philosophical proofs for God's existence are analyzed. Anselm's ontological argument generated by far the liveliest discussion. (If you're unfamiliar with the argument, I will direct you to the Wikipedia article, or Anselm's own words, rather than rehashing it here.)

In order for the argument to carry water, you have to accept Anselm's definition of God as "that than which nothing greater can be thought," and you have to grant that existence is a perfection. Put differently, to exist in reality is greater than to exist in the mind alone.

I expected push back on the definition. I also expected a certain amount of not-understanding for as long as it would take Anselm's tongue-twisting definition of the term "God" to sink in. I wondered if someone might not object along Guanilo's lines, i.e., Just because you can imagine a perfection doesn't mean said perfection exists, an objection that, by the way, Anselm disposes of when he points out that not just any mental construct of perfection necessarily exists, but only this one, given its unique features. I doubted that anyone would say what the textbook says, that the ontological argument doesn't prove God's existence, but only that you've defined the word "God" in a non-contradictory manner, but had someone proffered that objection, I'd have given them an A for the course on the spot.

Instead, what I got what push back on was the idea that existence is a perfection. "We can all agree, can't we, that to exist in reality is better than to exist in the mind alone, right?" I asked. Vigorous shaking of heads. No, no, no. Mental constructs are unlimited. Things in the real world are limited by time and space.

I was completely taken aback. Completely unprepared to defend this seemingly common-sensical assertion. I floundered around for a while until a student piped up, "Y'all think what's in your head is more real than reality? Y'all crazy!" I grabbed this lifeline and ran with it: "If you think the voices in your head are more real  than my voice telling you they aren't real, then we need to stop this class and get everybody to a hospital." And with that I moved on.

It was fascinating to watch facial expressions once they fully comprehended the argument. I could see a knowing, almost sly smile develop on the face of one bright student who self identifies as a Christian. Another good student who self-identifies as an agnostic pointed vigorously at the chalk board and exclaimed "That's really cool!" A third student, whose religious views are unknown to me, but plays the role of class cynic, almost came out of his chair. "Nah, man! But that... you can't... Nah man!" It was as if he'd realized he'd been had by Anselm's deceptively innocuous definition.

I identify with the third student because that's basically the same way I reacted when I first read and comprehended the argument.  I kept re-reading ch. 2-4 of the Proslogion in a disbelief bordering on anger thinking, "It can't be that simple, can it?"

The rest of the class? Who knows? They did seem entertained by all the arguing.

But I keep going back to the students' flat-out refusal to concede that real things are more real than mental images of them or anything else. What's that all about? Is it something about young adulthood that is reluctant to trim down unrealized potentiality into particulars, a particular job, spouse, locale, etc? Or is it me? Any tips in the comments on how better to teach the Ontological Argument will earn you an A++ in my grade book.

More Monday morning Paschals and fewer Occams, please

Both Deadspin and Yglesias are defending Bill Belichick's bone-headed decision to go for it on 4th and 2 from inside the Patriots' own thirty yard line. Both link to this seemingly unassailable proof at Advanced NFL Stats:

With 2:00 left and the Colts with only one timeout, a successful conversion wins the game for all practical purposes. A 4th and 2 conversion would be successful 60% of the time. Historically, in a situation with 2:00 left and needing a TD to either win or tie, teams get the TD 53% of the time from that field position. The total WP for the 4th down conversion attempt would therefore be:

(0.60 * 1) + (0.40 * (1-0.53)) = 0.79 WP [win probability]

A punt from the 28 typically nets 38 yards, starting the Colts at their own 34. Teams historically get the TD 30% of the time in that situation. So the punt gives the Pats about a 0.70 WP.

"Lies, damned lies and statistics!" I say. Leave the actuarial mumbo jumbo to baseball; take a step back, and look at the big picture. The Patriots weren't playing teams called "Historical" or Typically." They were playing the undefeated Colts. Team Historical has started David Carr. Team Colts starts Peyton Manning. Maybe it would be worth the risk to give team Typical the ball with a short field and the game on the line, but not the Indianapolis Colts.

Did someone say "risk?" Aha! I see your algebra, and raise you some philosophy. Consider Pascal's wager. As you can tell from the graphic, Pascal attempted to show that belief in God was prudent because the worst case scenario of serving God (missing out on all that Saturday night sin and Sunday morning tee times for nothing cuz God don't exist) is not nearly as bad as the worst case scenario of not serving God (going to hell if he does exist).

Now, apply the same logic to the game Sunday night. The worst case scenario of going for it (giving Peyton a short field with the game on the  line) is far worse than punting (giving Peyton a long field with the game on the line). Yes it would have been great if they'd made it, but is that a risk you really want to take?

In fact, we wouldn't be having this conversation if any other coach had gone for it on 4th and 2. This is all about the Cult of Belichick's painfully public failure to adjust in the face of massive cognitive dissonance. The Cult of Belichick says, "If Belichick made the call, it must be a good call because Belichick is the apotheosis of NFL coaching awesomeness." Ask yourself, If Jim Zorn had made this call, would it have been just as good a call? That's what I thought.

Please, spare me this strange Boston sports bar nominalism.

The 2000s suck but the '90s were even worse

All that the talk about Inglourious Basterds has done is remind me how much I absolutely loathed Pulp Fiction. I realize I'm coppin' to a massively uncool opinion here, but coolness was never something I excelled in in the first place.

I can usually say what I think about politics and religion, but I find articulating my (dis)pleasure at the cinema more difficult, so I scanned the Wikipedia article on Pulp Fiction, and I think that Foster Hirsch gets it just right:

If the film is actually about anything other than its own cleverness, it seems dedicated to the dubious thesis that hit men are part of the human family.

Yup. And please, spare me the briefcase speculation; I don't care what's in the briefcase, and if you spend more than ten seconds speculating on "the meaning of the briefcase," then you've been punked. Pulp Fiction "means" nothing. The trail of pop culture inside jokes goes nowhere. It wasn't the violence that offended me, not even the poor spectacle of the unfortunately-named Marvin having his brains splattered all over the inside of that car. It's the proposition that nihilism is cool that offends me.

I was thinking that Pulp Fiction's G-rated twin would be Seinfeld, a show unabashedly about nothing, but I've decided that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is a better choice. The host, Regis Philbin, dresses like a gangster, and the ideal contestant is a person who gets all the inside jokes in Pulp Fiction. In other words, a person whose head is full of information but who's got jack for knowledge. Much less wisdom.

Building on this cultural quicksand is a fourth estate whose doyens fault politicians who care too much about public policy, and elected officials who dress up vacuous postmodern philosophy in the chain mail of political thuggery--who think that facts don't matter; violence is beautiful, and war criminals are heroes.

Put differently, this is an awful decade, what with war, terrorism, torture, and greed, but it was a long time coming. Doesn't a nihilistic culture deserve leaders like Bush and Cheney and a political discourse dominated by utterly cynical shouting about non-existent death panels?

God, I woke up angry! And I have to work a double!

If it weren't for the Reds, we wouldn't have Tang

One of the curiosities of western intellectual history is that the scientific revolution didn't happen before it did, says Norman Cantor's The Civilization of the Middle Ages. The reintroduction of Aristotle to the West planted the seed, but Thomas Aquinas, the most adept exploiter of Aristotelian thought, only used Aristotelian thought to confirm Christian Platonism. Cantor views Thomism as something of an intellectual cul-de-sac.

Proving Christian Platonism with Aristotelian method is a tour de force, but a lot of people at the time (the Franciscans) were unhappy with Thomism because they thought that religion was a matter of the heart and will, not reason and intellect. So to secure the revelatory basis for religion, they turned away from Aristotle, but they did use his methods for science. In the 14th and 15th centuries thinkers unknown to us were positing theories of inertia and gravity, but their theories never gained wide circulation because nobody was interested in funding their work. It was only when European military leaders started experimenting with artillery fire that anybody got interested in physics, because they needed reliable rules to predict how shells would fly through the air.

The more things change...

We visited the spectacular Smithsonian Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport last December. It really brings out the little boy in you. Walking down the corridor to the gigantic hanger containing the exhibits, you're looking down the nose of an SR-71 Blackbird. Cool. Intimidating. The museum also contains a Concorde (a frakking Concorde!), the Space Shuttle Enterprise (the prototype that never flew), and all kinds of space capsules.

There's also plenty of military aircraft, including the Enola Gay. As you walk through the exhibits, it's quite striking how quickly aerospace technology evolved during the wars. The stuff that was flying before 1914 is primitive compared to what was in the air just four years later.

Which makes me sad. If kids like it, it's cool, right? Dinosaurs, planes. Stuff that's bigger and faster is cool, especially to those who are slower and littler, and kids are the slowest and the littlest. It's just too bad that the leading reason why all this cool stuff is on display is that 20th century Europe was hell-bent on self-destruction.

Christendom: what really happened

In The Origins of Christendom in the West Alan Kreider has written an interesting essay on what it meant to convert before and after Constantine.  Prior to its legalization, Christianity was a rather exclusive club.  You couldn't just join up.  Other Christians had to vouch for you at the beginning of an arduous and lengthy membership process (up to three years!)

The initial focus was almost exclusively on morality and ethics.  As the time drew near for baptism, the focus changed to doctrine--the mysteries of the Incarnation and Resurrection that were the underpinnings of Christian practice.  Finally, after a season of intense study and extended fasting, you were presented for baptism in the wee hours of Easter Sunday morning.  It was a cathartic experience:  the cold, naked, hungry, exhausted convert was doused with water, and remade. 

And it wasn't just the physical drama--although I'm sure that helped.  Now you were cut off from society at large, unable to be a soldier, a gladiator, or an actor, and unable to participate in the patriotic duties of revering the Emperor.

It's unclear whether Constantine's conversion to Christianity was the cause or the effect of Christendom.  Paganism was a spent force long before Constantine had his vision, the last new pagan temple being constructed around 285.  The Emperor didn't embrace Christianity until a generation later--finally going where a great many of his subjects had gone before. 

But as the religion became tolerated and then favored by the State, the ethics/doctrine balance in the new Christian curricula was turned on its head.  Now, as Christianity was the ideological glue that held the Empire together, you had to get clear on the ideology first.  Morals would come later.  And both would come after baptism, not before.

So by the time you get to Caesarius, a 6th century cleric in Gaul, he's preaching conversion to the already baptized, which now means abandoning a lifestyle of nominal Christianity, often mixed in with elements of Roman or Frankish paganism, and entering a monastery.

Krieder writes,

Recent studies of missiology recognize that the Christian message must be inserted into a cultural framework... If the assimilation is done thoughtlessly or too quickly, the result is "syncretism"--a bad thing; if it is done properly, the result is "a truly critical symbiosis"--a good thing.  For the latter to happen, there needs to be a second stage which Hans-Dietrich Kahl has called innerkirchliche Nacharbeit (intra-ecclesial follow-up work) of catchism and life formation.  In the Europe of the 6th to 8th centuries this second stage never materialized.  In Merovingian Gaul there was virtually no catechesis; the councils of the period were tediously interested in church property and episcopal rights, but they showed no interest in encouraging the priests to teach the people.  Nor is there a record of a "formal, ecclesiastical post-baptismal catechesis for children."

Now we're getting somewhere. 

A lot of people see the cure for what ails the post-Christendom church as a new, antagonistic attitude toward state and culture.  That's a bit off.  The modern state is both larger and smaller than the Roman Empire, but by no means analogous.  It's larger in terms of its intrusion into the economy and society, but smaller in terms of the religious and ideological devotion it demands.  The Pax Americana is not the Pax Romana, and the United States of America is by no means the whore of Babylon, although she is in need of repentance. 

And there's no warrant in the lean, mean, pre-Constantinian chuch for picking a fight with liberalism, for as I've already argued, the most creative thinkers of that period plundered the reigning ideology of Neo-Platonism.  They did not shun it.

But there does seem to be some valid analogies between our situation and that of early Christendom--the failure to do the "intra-ecclesial follow up work."  We have sort of banked on cultural familiarity with the names and events of the gospel to educate our children, and socialize the newcomers on Sunday morning.  In the mainline Church, this has meant many and various calls for "justice and peace" on the assumption that everyone knows what that means and where it comes from.  But without a disciplined and sustained process of Christian education, people don't.

Now we might want to cut the first bureaucrats of Christendom some slack.  Civil society was collapsing.  Wars raged.  New people were turning up in what was left of the cities and all over the countryside.  In the chaos, some preoccupation with property rights was understandable. 

The same thing is true in a lot of corners of our culture.  In inner city ghettos and dying Appalachain towns, a minister is going to be hard-pressed to craft the perfect Sunday School lesson when there are so many social service needs, and he or she might be the only community leader who's both smart and compassionate enough to give a damn about hungry kids, and get them fed.

Still, I think that the way forward is for the Church to celebrate those aspects of culture that are good (the gender, racial and individual equity that is the bedrock of liberal ideals) while working harder and harder to teach its faithful what the good life truly is:  forgiveness, fidelity, generosity.  And this teaching needs to happen on the front end:  prior to confirmation for children, and prior to baptism, or a transfer-of-letter for adults.

I'm nothing if not relevant

"So what are you blogging about?"  asked my wife.  "Plotinus," I replied.  "Oh, that'll draw in the readers," she said.  That what spouses are for--to keep you humble.

Well, Mrs. Avdat, somebody else is reading Plotinus.  That would be all these people who, contra the philosopher, argue that beauty does depend on symmetry, rather than the soul's taking delight in what it sees of itself in the world.  In fact, we can boil it down to mathematical precision:

Stephen Marquardt, a retired California plastic surgeon who researches attractiveness, has moved from beauty's medical side to its mathematical side. He notes that a certain ratio has been found to recur in beautiful things both natural (flowers, pine cones, seashells) and man-made (the Parthenon, Mozart's music, da Vinci's paintings). This "golden ratio" is 1:1.618, with the number rounded to 1.618 known as "phi."

Using phi as his guide, Marquardt designed a mask that applies the golden ratio to the face. For example, the ideal ratio between the width of the nose and the width of the mouth is -- you guessed it -- 1:1.618. The closer a face fits the mask, he finds, the more attractive the face is perceived to be. "Even average-looking people fit the mask, just not as closely as really attractive people," he says. "A lot of this is biology. It's necessary for us to recognize our species. Humans are visually oriented, and the mask screams, 'Human!'"

 Marquardt's Web site shows the mask on timeless beauties from Queen Nefertiti to Marilyn Monroe (it works on all ethnicities, with slight variations). There's also a mask for men -- a close fit on Pierce Brosnan, but not quite right on Tom Cruise. To see how well your face fits, go to beautyanalysis.com.

Plotinus hints that his thoughts on the soul's descent into the realm of the physical were to some degree sparked by his own mystical experience of intellectual ascent into and return from the divine.  But his thoughts on beauty may have had more to do with him missing a big chunk of his nose and blowing that ratio clean out of the water:

Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep

I keep getting email forwards warning me about Oprah's new course on a New Age Jesus.  So does Ben Witherington.  He copied and pasted the email into his blog, if you care to read it.

Some people have asked me what I think about this course.  Of course I think it's claptrap, but I'm not bristling with indignation about it the way that the author of the email is.  These heresies are best knocked down with laughter, not with anathemas.

For instance.  Just read this little lesson by Oprah's partner in this project, Marianne Robinson, about how you can loose yourself from the prison of the past.  Here's a woman who's thrown some of her vague recollections of college philosophy debates about universals in with TM jargon she picked up from, I don't know, the Free Expression Tunnel (?), to create a "lesson" that sounds like she's either mocking meditation or the stupid things you debate in philosophy class.  Except that it's entirely earnest.

This guru is ripe for a You Tube send up.  Any takers out there?  No?  Maybe an SNL sketch?

Is there a philosopher in the house?

I'm not sure who's got the better of it.  Nietzsche?

Or Johnny and the Sprites?

What say you?  Brandon?  Seth?

Via Crooked Timber.