Corrective Thomism

Ten or fifteen years ago, had you asked me about what kind of philosopher I was, I might have replied "I'm a Thomist" or maybe (more modestly but also more accurately) "I'm an amateur Thomist." Today, if you asked me the same question and I was in a reflective enough state of mind to answer rightly, I might reply that I am a "corrective Thomist."

What I mean by this response is not that I am a particular type of Thomist, e.g. a neo-Thomist or a scholastic-Thomist or an Aristotelian-Thomist; rather, I look to St. Thomas* to help correct my philosophy when I become aware of disagreement or error between us. The same may be said of my theology, in some sense. Thus, I need not know everything that St. Thomas teaches as a philosopher or as a theologian; I need not even agree with everything I do know of what he teaches--but when I encounter a disagreement, I try to take it very seriously and to discover whether this means I have an error in either my reasoning or the principles, axioms, or evidence from which I reason. Saint Thomas was not infallible, of course, but when I encounter a disagreement between us, I may then suspect that my conclusions are on less stable ground than I might have previously supposed.

Thus, I do ask at times "What would St. Thomas conclude here?" as a means of approaching what is likely true in this case.

I suppose that in another sense, my theology might be said to be "corrective Catholic." I strive to think as the Church does, often miss the mark, but take the teachings of the Church to be corrective in such a way that if I am made aware that there is a disagreement between what I believe and what the Church teaches, then I need to stop and discover where I have gone astray. Is the disagreement in conclusion running afoul of an actual dogma, of a doctrine, or merely of a pious opinion? Even the lattermost of these should give me some pause.

There is, indeed, one more important question still: what does God say is true here? What might the Father reveal? What might Jesus, the Son, teach? To what conclusion may the Holy Spirit lead me**?

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*Primarily, St. Thomas, but there are other reliable guides of course. He draws on many of them, and other stand upon his shoulders in turn.

**As a faithful Catholic, I would note that the Holy Spirit primarily leads us through the Church, offering the most direct correctives through the Church's infallible dogmas.

Comfort and the Middle Class

I've been reading through Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences (finally!). It is a good read--the man taught rhetoric, so it is well-written, generally--and quite thought-provoking. There are some passages which read as odd, or even "cranky" at times, and not merely because they challenge some of the underlying assumptions upon which our modern society is built.

However, I have found that there is one long-lasting distraction through this book, which is that Weaver had a serious axe to grind against the Middle Class. He can't seen to make it more than a few pages before returning to the common theme, which is that the great ills of society ought all to be laid at the feet of the Middle Class (he does, in fact, use the term "bourgeoisie" on numerous occasions) to to those who have capitulated to it.

He does this to the extreme of complaining that one great turning point of civilization away from the good was during the late Middle Ages when the educated society turned its attention from Plato to Aristotle:

"The way was prepared for the criteria of comfort and mediocrity when the Middle Ages abandoned the ethic of Plato for that of Aristotle. The latter's doctrine of rational prudence compelled him to declare in the Politics that the state is best ruled by the middle class. For him, the virtuous life was an avoidance of extremes, a middle course between contraries considered harmful.... 

Here the conception of Plato--expressed certainly, too, by Christianity--of pursuing virtue until worldly consequence becomes a matter of indifference, stands in contrast. Aristotle remains a kind of natural historian of the virtues, observing and recording them as he observed techniques of the drama, but not thinking of a spiritual ideal. A life accommodated to this world and shunning the painful experiences which extremes, including those of virtues, entail was what he proposed for his son Nicomachus. 

One could anticipate that this theory would recommend itself to the Renaissance gentleman and later to the bourgeoisie when their turn came. In Thomism, based as it is on Aristotle, even the Catholic church [sic.] turned away from the asceticism and the rigorous morality of the patristic fathers to accept a degree of pragmatic acquiescence in the world."

Here Weaver seems like the ascetic who believed that asceticism is necessary for all people, all the time--he rails against any modern comforts, and the middle class consumers of them. At times, this feels like a breath of fresh air--we could all use a little asceticism in our lives--but elsewhere he appears to fall into the tap of appearing to argue that modern comforts are bad simply because they are comforts.

At his best, Weaver makes arguments which might be said to compliment--or be complimented by--those in Joseph Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture (to name one work), as comforts and convenience and riches do have certain spiritual drawbacks. Where modern "convenience" enslaves us to the devices which make it possible, and where "comfort" and "relaxation" and "amusement" distract us from contemplation, leisure, or wonder, these former are for the worse. But they do remain secondary goods, and the problem is desiring them inordinately, or desiring them above the latter, "primary" goods. Weaver at times seems to lose sight of this in his eagerness to embrace "sentiment" and "ideal", to say nothing of the spiritual and philosophical.

Man or Rabbit? A Reading

This is a pretty well done video-reading of an essay by C.S. Lewis:


Enjoy!

Leisure and Life

I've started reading Josef Pieper's Leisure: The Basis of Culture, and already one passage has stood out to me:

"The original meaning of the concept of 'leisure' has practically been forgotten in today's leisure-less culture of 'total work': in order to win our way to a real understanding of leisure, we must confront the contradiction that rises from our overemphasis on the world of work. 'One does not only work to live, but one lives for the sake of one's work,' this statement, quoted by Max Weber, makes immediate sense to us, and appeals to our current opinion. It is difficult to us to see how in fact it turns the order of things upside down."

Pieper goes on to say that Aristotle would counter this by saying (as he does in the Nicomachean Ethics) that rather, "We work in order to be at leisure." Further, the actual word for "work" used by Aristotle translates as "not-at-leisure." This is a thing worth remembering, even for those of us who have gone into what is supposedly the most leisurely of all professions, academia*. This is not to praise mere "laziness" or "shiftlessness." The shiftless man is not at leisure either, but rather is at the business of staying on the move, and unemployed.

Putting that aside, the ending statement that this worldview of "total work" ultimately "turns the order of things upside down" really stands out because we are seeing it in the world today. The US, for example, has no legal provisions for maternity leave; and you can forget all about paternity leave, even at most places of employment where women get 3-6 months off. Nevermind that the father is often "up" alongside the mother at all hours of the night with a newborn: after getting 2-3 hours of sleep per night for 2 weeks running, I was still expected to be at work, teaching classes (and contributing to my group's research efforts).

That is not, however, the worst of the points at which we have gone wrong. Abortion claims 90% of those children diagnosed with Downs Syndrome in the US; they are murdered before they can be born, because they are seen as a burden to the parents and as "useless" to society. At the other end of life though by far less common in the US, the elderly retired increasingly opt (or are coerced into) suicide under the banner "death with dignity." Having attained an age at which "serious work" is no longer possible, they are disposed of as quietly as can be, if not by suicide then by abandonment to the nursing homes.

I say this not to condemn society's members for doing that--we deserve, and we will get plenty of that if we do not collectively repent--but rather to warn. If we do not recover the concept of leisure as being a high and noble purpose in life, then we are lost as a culture.

I wonder, too, if I can't perhaps find leisure among the retired elderly. Too many have become convinced that since they are no longer able to engage in the business of living, then they must commence the business of dying, whether quickly by suicide (or euthanasia) or more slowly by "boredom and booze," or self-induced depression and general withdrawal. I wonder at times if all of this isn't so many masks for despair, and if perhaps only the actually hopeful can find time for leisure in this life--might it not prepare us for leisure in the next?




*For what it is worth, I probably work close to 55 hours per week right now (possibly more if you count what I bring home), and I haven't yet started to do any research. That may be a rant for another day, though I have to guard myself against any envy of my myriad friends (and some relatives) who go to work at 9 and return at 5, and then have weekends and evenings entirely off. Life is better since finishing grad school, but sometimes not by much. On the other hand, some would say that mine is "leisurely work"--I don't exactly have to toil at my labors.

Expert Bias

An acquaintance of mine semi-recently wrote that he has learned one thing in his years of trying to follow "expert opinions." This is that while the experts almost certainly have their biases, he surely has his own, and his are probably much worse off, much harder to see around, and much more likely to give in to error.

After mulling it over for some months, I have three thoughts about this.

The first is that there is certainly some credence to this notion. It also gives an interesting twist to Matthew 7:5 and Luke 7:42:

"Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye" (Luke 6:41-42).

The second is to wonder who gets to decide who the experts are. There are biases in that process, too. Is it those who have a degree, or especially an advanced degree? Certainly some such people should be experts, but then again there are those who have studied the problem on their own--and whose funding (read: livelihood) is unlikely to depend on the answer they give.

The third is to note that the experts do in fact still have biases, often systematic ones, and at time ones which are unwarranted. Funding is an easy example, but there are plenty of others. The "experts" in psychology state that homosexuality is not (ever) a mental disorder (or a moral one--but they never admit this)--but at this time one of the requirements for becoming a certified (read: licensed, degree-holding) expert in psychology is to state that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Meanwhile, the "experts" who write textbooks on embryology once universally stated that an unborn child was in fact still a fully human child--right up until 1973, when the Supreme Court decided otherwise. Suddenly the textbooks altered their phrasings--hardly an unbiased point.

Annulment and Material Adultery

The news surrounding the upcoming "Synod on the Family" has generated a lot of discussion, and not only in the Catholic blogosphere. I will not even remotely attempt to link to all of it--from the seeming feud between Cardinals Burke and Kasper (and their respective supporters and detractors) over permitting divorced Catholics to remarry to questions about (and confusion concerning) the annulment process (and the various proposed changes to it), this synod does seem to be generating more than the usual amount of buzz.

Because they do more than just rehash the argument over what is and isn't in Canon Law (and what can or should be changed about it), the posts by the Zippy Catholic on the matter caught my attention. In particular, he mentions (and not for the first time) one of the inadvertant side-effects of annulment: that when an annulment is improperly determined, it then makes accidental adulterers of the spouses when they remarry:

Modern annulment practice is unique in the history of the Church, inasmuch as it treats a possible sacramental irregularity – based on purely subjective considerations – as a two way street. It doesn’t provide a way forward, it provides a way backward, in the name of a false ‘mercy’. This is terribly unfair in a way in which carrying out the death penalty without objective third-party evidence would be terribly unfair. Errors in death penalty cases result in killing the innocent; errors in ‘internal forum’ annulment cases turn various people (including innocent ‘spouses’, past and future) into material adulterers. This is just the very modern phenomenon of turning doubt or ignorance into an eighth sacrament: it pretends that mercy means letting people stew in objective evil with no real way out. 

This is further clarified in an earlier post of his (linked in the original text of the quote):

One of the reasons that the annulment process should be very rigorous, and should err very strongly on the side of declining to invalidate a marriage, is that if the tribunal makes a mistake – and as a juridical institution it is certainly liable to do so – the resulting annulment and ‘remarriage’ turns the parties into material adulterers. This is a gross injustice against everyone involved, and most especially against any “new” spouse not previously married.

Actually, it has long since occurred to me that there is a second effect of annulments, albeit one which cannot be avoided via reform. An annulment confirms that a particular given marriage was not sacramentally valid from its beginning. But this means that the couple which attempted to consummate their non-marriage would, in fact, be material fornicators in a sacramental (though not a civil) sense. This may not be so grievous as the material adulterors created under Zippy's scenario, fornication being less materially grave than adultery in any event, but it is nevertheless a side-effect of a null marriage.

One Real Cause of Rape Culture

First, it's worth stating that "rape culture" is a bit overblown in the numbers. I'm fairly confident that the number of women who experience an actual rape in college does not approach 20% (1 in 5). But, with that prefatory caveat aside, even 2% or 0.2% is still not a good thing. I should note that while I find date rape to be vile and frankly intolerable, I do not equate it with rape*.

With those caveats aside, I can believe that both are much higher than they should be, and I can even believe that both are on the rise as compared with decades past. There is a compelling article posted on the Aletiea website explaining one of the root causes of why this might be so:

The issue of “rape culture” on college campuses swept into public consciousness through the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which states that nearly 20% of college women in its survey experienced rape or attempted rape.   

Whether that high a percentage of young women are being victimized is much debated. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute, using a standard rule of thumb for reported versus actual cases (12%), ran the numbers for Ohio State.  He came up with the far lower percentage of 2.9%. 

Still, a serious problem exists.... 

Every examination of this issue has noted the close relationship of “hookup culture” with violent sexual assaults. Over the last four decades, dating and romance have gradually vanished from college social life, replaced by parties where college men and women meet, drink heavily, and then, in Lady Gaga’s words (from “Do What U Want”), “get naughty.”   

Universities countenance, and—in their non-judgmental way—even affirm the desirability of casual sex. A women’s counselor at Dartmouth, for example, explains that what’s important about a hookup is that “each person gets something out of it. If it's to get off, then that's great. . . . If it's to work some issue out—like sexual assault—then that's great. It's basically to get pleasure and enjoyment out of it . . . the hookup culture is good for experimentation, and what someone does for experimentation is up to them." The counselor does admit, however, that she never got much out of her own hookups.

Feminists in particular are quick to look for an institutional cause of the "rape culture" which can be blamed and then "fixed." It's always about what they can make other people do (a strange irony when looking for a means of fighting against a "rape" culture), and especially what that can force men to do in the name of fighting rape. To be fair, the guys are about half of the problem here. But all the "rape awareness campaigns" and marches and so on are just technical attempts at alleviating a very obvious moral problem--while at the same time institutionalizing one of the very causes of that problem.


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* On the other hand, there are different levels of "date rape," some of which might be arguable worse than violent/"forcible" rape. Violence is very bad, but treachery can be worse.

Newton's Third Law and Causes Prior to Effects

Newton's Third Law is often paraphrased that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A more thorough stating of this law is that if object 1 applies a force on object 2, then this will simultaneously cause object 2 to apply a force of equal magnitude but on the opposite direction back on object 1. Thus, if I push on my desk with my hand, it might be said (and rightly) that I am causing there to be a force exerted from my hand onto the desk, and that this pushing also causes a second force to be exerted from the desk back on my hand.

However, the two forces spring into existence simultaneously, and then begin once I begin to push on the desk. Therefore, a cause does not necessarily precede an effect in time. It is therefore to be concluded that logical priority does not imply temporal priority.

Actually, We're Pretty Much All "Born That Way"

There is an interesting opinion article on The Daily Caller about how the actual intellectual-scholars of LGBT(Q?) history states decisively that Nobody is "born that way." Most of these scholars are themselves members of the LGBT(Q?A?) communities themselves. An excerpt:

But scholars don’t think the ancient Greeks had a gay minority. Rather, that civilization thought homosexuality was something anyone could enjoy. In addition to a wife, elite men were expected to take a younger male as an apprentice-lover, with prescribed bedroom roles. The system was so different from ours that to describe specific ancient Greeks as gay or straight would show profound disrespect for their experiences, and violate the cardinal historical rule against looking at the past through present-colored lenses.

Another example in which evidence of same-sex relations has been misinterpreted to depict a gay minority involves 18th-century upper-class female romantic friendships. Even those women who probably had genital contact with each other in that context thought about sex, gender, and intimacy in such culturally specific ways that scholars have spurned the viewpoint (nearly universal among non-scholars) that any two females who wrote each other love letters and shared a bed were obviously lesbians.

Interesting reading, to be sure. However, there is another way of looking at it. The problem is not that some people are born that way and some are not. Rather, with some few exceptions [1] we are all to some extent "born that way." It's called "Original Sin" (or "the effects of the Fall"). In some cases, that leads to some proclivity (willed or not) towards the particular sin of sodomy (gay or straight), or towards illicit romantic involvements (whether between a married woman and a man who is not her husband, or between two single women, or two siblings, or a man and several women all of whom he attempts to wed). It could also be towards some other sin, such as gluttony (in particular, alcoholism) or sloth (for example, drug addictions).

And many of these other sins cannot really find licit satisfaction, either. Some alcoholics are so badly addicted that a single sip ends in drunkenness (and worse) every time. The kleptomaniac cannot steal even one purse, nor the man whose blood boils with wrath swing even one punch against a defenseless target.

Everybody is tempted by something. We all experience some kind of appetite or some passion or some desire which cannot be satisfied here. We all need temperance, and fortitude, and justice. We all need to die a little to ourselves, because we all have some desires which not only won't, but can't, be satisfied in this life.

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[1] The New and Old Adam and Eve.

The End of Man

Q. "Why did God make you?
A. "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next."

There was a time when we knew this from memory and had internalized it. It was a rote answer, yet for many people it nevertheless came form the heart.  Now it's been forgotten--or worse, pushed aside--with the result being that life has become fleeting yet endless.

Man was made to be happy, was made for love; and on the other hand, to seek truth, to know. Happiness is found in meaning, love is found in truth. In abandoning this simple wisdom, and in turning away from God, man loses not only truth and meaning, but also ultimately knowledge, happiness, love, and indeed his very identity, his very soul.

We cannot find any of these things ultimately in the world. We catch glimpses of them, in temporary, incomplete, and imperfect forms: so many reflections as in a glass. In turning away from God, we turn away from that which we are seeking, that which makes us happy, or wise, or really loving. We substitute purpose for meaning for end, and kindness for charity for love, with the result that even kindness seems bitter, and our purposes seem empty and contrived.

Why Divorce hurts Children

It is a simple fact that divorce hurts children. It has been said (I think by Fulton Sheen) that when parents go through a divorce, they lay their crosses on the shoulders of their children. There are a lot of reasons why divorce hurts children: they become objectified, just another strategic objective in the battle between separating spouses; they have no stable home environment, especially if mom gets a new boyfriend every month and dad takes up drinking; there's no unified parental front for making and upholding rules, and any attempt by either spouse to do this might get undermined by the other spouse trying to be the "fun" parent.

It occur to me that there is another reason why divorce hurts children, and this psychologically. Children need to be loved, and this is a thing which goes beyond (though does encompass) simply being told that they are loved. What's true in fiction is true in life here: show, don't (just) tell. But love becomes an informed attribute in divorce, because the children have been told time and again by both parents that they are loved by those parents; but they know that at some point, the parents also said "I love you" to each other. They now witness that their parents don't really love each other, or don't anymore, and so "I love you" becomes an empty platitude between the spouses. Might it not also be an empty platitude between mother and daughter, between father and son?

Quote of the Day: Chesterton on Nietzcshe and Nihilists

I have been re-reading Chesterton's story, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. I had just read the part in which a detective and an actor has infiltrated the anarchist council by playing the part of a nihilist and is telling his part of the story (spoiler alert for those who haven't read it):

"I am in profession an actor, and my name is Wilks. When I was on the stage I mixed with all sorts of Bohemian and blackguard company. Sometimes I touched the edge of the turf, and sometimes the riff-raff of the arts, and occasionally the political refugee. In some den of exiled dreamers I was introduced to the great German Nihilist philosopher, Professor de Worms. I did not gather much about him apart from his appearance, which was very disgusting, and which I studied carefully. I understood that he had proved that the destructive principle in the universe is God; hence he insisted on the need for a furious and incessant energy, rending all things in pieces. Energy, he said, was the All. He was lame, short-sighted, and partially paralytic."

I'm not going to turn this into a Nietzsche hate-fest post. I still don't like Nietzsche, and (after having spent a little more time with his writings) haven't found much there to convince me of his greatness as a thinker [1]. Actually, I've only heard/seen three people whom I respect really defend him: two friends who sort of share a name, and one well-respected Thomistic philosopher. The rest have said some nice things about him at times, but have largely said that he has done more harm than good (and a few have had nothing positive to say about him at all). I haven't read anything of his which convinces me otherwise, though I still haven't read enough to say that I am a Nietzsche expert, nor enough for a proper synthesis of his thought.

Suffice it to say that Chesterton's description of Professor de Worms is in fact his caricature of Nietzsche, the man who would not soften his heart and thus suffered a soften head (as Chesterton notes in Orthodoxy). But it is even better than a caricature of Nietzsche, whom a few good thinkers have admired and still more respected: it is a reflection of the many people who wanted to imitate Nietzsche's Nihilism without tempering it with Nietzsche's pessimism, or really his utter despair.

Nietzsche may be received by many today as the prophet of pessimism, or the doctor of despair. On the other hand, de Koninck has argued that Nietzsche did not quite go far enough: he wanted it all, but did not know what it all meant. And thus all that he wanted fell short of everything, just as the superman ultimately fell short of the Son of Man. Many of Nietzsche latter-day followers in turn fall short of his own desires: where he wanted it all yet despaired of getting it all, they start by wanting nothing and then end in despair of getting even that.

Nietzsche almost certainly knew that he would himself fall well short of being the superman--hence his despair and eventual madness. But Nietzsche might be credited for this foresight, since some of his other imitators failed to have this realization. The scholars say that Nietzsche would not have been a Nazi, but there were more than a few Nazis who would style themselves Nietzscheans: they would at the least co-opt some of his ideas for the superman and corrupt them to be a super-race. But the Nazis did not despair of finding their supermen, but rather embraced the idea as a sort of cult, employing every means to obtain that end: from eugenics to executions to "educational" propaganda. For all their optimism in  the overman, the Nazis ultimately only succeeded in creating several under-races, in particular the Jews.

It is entirely possible--and here I can only speculate--that Nietzsche realized only too late that the real superman is the saint. Neither Nietsche's superman nor the church's saints can in the end make themselves: though it seems to me that Nietzsche's superman must make himself, whereas the saint must be conscience that it is God Who makes men and transforms them from sinner to saint. Perhaps Nietzsche knew this, and perhaps this is why he ultimately sank further into the madness of despair. In rejecting God he not only lost grace, and truth, and goodness: he also lost his only chance to become a real superman by becoming a saint.


---Footnotes---
[1] This is not to say that I have found nothing at all. I largely disagree with him, but he has a few interesting insights along the way, and (equally as important) a few other insights which others have inferred from him. Also, his attempts at blasphemy make the the modern God-haters pale in comparison. There are also a few places where he seems to go wrong more by way of premise that by conclusion, though of course a bad premise will likely as not result in a wrong conclusion. Thus, he shows us what the world might look like without God and without hope.

Quote of the Day: Charles De Koninck on Beauty

I discovered the writings of Charles de Koninck a few years ago thanks to a fellow physicist-philosopher, and suffice it to say that I can't recommend them enough. The Charles de Koninck Project is doing a good work by transcribing and translating his works to English; today I went over to their site and found this post:

The intelligence as such is a certain concrete nature, it is a natural appetite of its proper object, the intelligible. Being, considered as a term of this appetite, has beauty as a transcendental property. That is to say that every being, as an object of intelligence, is beautiful. Consequently, although mathematical being, being only a being of reason, does not at all participate in goodness, and cannot be an object of will, nevertheless it participates in beauty. And thus, like every object of intelligence, mathematical being can be indirectly an object of will insofar as will desires the concrete good of intelligence. In effect, one can distinguish a twofold good of intelligence: the good of the object considered as term of the desire to know for the sake of knowing, which is beauty–pulchrum proprie pertinet ad rationem causae formalis–but it is also the good of the concrete act which entails knowledge in intelligence taken as nature, and this act is an object of will and causes in it this characteristic joy which is as a complement to contemplation. Without being essential to the beauty which is formally in contemplation, delight is a quasi per se accidens. The enjoyment proper to beatitude which consists in contemplation is consequently an enjoyment of the object of intelligence as object of intelligence; this enjoyment, which one can call aesthetic, is the most noble of all pleasures.

All beings--whether beings of reason or real beings--participate in some way in beauty. This makes sense (and yes, it can include the demons, as St Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 11:14), that anything which is is beautiful, that it can be contemplated and appreciated for its beauty. Even the pagan philosophers recognized this (notable, Aristotle), though it took Christianity to show that this beauty ultimately points back to God, that while contemplation is among the highest acts of man qua man even here, that contemplation is elevated when it turns to God in prayer. It is further elevated in the next life, when it turns to the contemplation of God "face-to-face" in heaven.

And just as beauty in this life can be distorted (again, think of Satan, but think also of smut), so too do I think it will be distorted in the next life for those in Hell. They may contemplate God in fear and loathing, and do their own misery is increased by this loathing, this inescapable beauty upon which their backs are forever turned. Perhaps Hell is the realization that the heart's greatest desire is right there, behind you, but the inability to ever see it when you turn: always behind you, never before you.


An in related news, the Dominicana blog (St Joseph Province) has a post about modern music and heresy:

With this in mind, we return to the driver’s seat. When listening to popular music one is often most struck by the euphoria-inducing dance beat. It seems that much of the music played on pop stations is composed/generated/programmed with the intent that one dance to it at a club. Frustrated in such a pursuit, I find myself relegated to fist-pumping. And yet, when one goes in search of the other elements typically associated with music (melody, harmony, lyrics, etc.), the pursuit is many times in vain. The profusion of DJ mashups testifies to the fact that it is indeed possible to cut a record having only played four chords, and the staggering amount of forced and awkward rhyme (Yes, “man” does rhyme with “man”) makes evident a clear disassociation of modern music from substantive poetry. For example, take a song popular about four years ago: Apologize by Timbaland featuring OneRepublic. In the song, the primary artist’s sole contribution are the syllables “Eh, eh, eh” repeated some two dozen times to the exact same three notes at strategic points throughout. I note the phenomenon merely to suggest that musicality is no longer the primary criterion for the production and consumption of pop music. Where then can the casual listener turn the dial for solace?

We do get glimpses of heaven on earth--and Hell also.

Does It Matter Who Has Better Sex?

My thoughts on that study which my co-blogger linked saying that Catholics have better sex are nicely summed up in this post by Dr Stacy Trasancos:

The information is based on a questionnaire, the National Health and Social Life Survey, conducted in 1992 by the Population Research Center. It’s not that the analysis or the conclusions are necessarily wrong; it’s that this approach could be lampoonable. 

Why? Well, if someone had used this data to convince me to consider Catholicism on the basis that Catholics have better sex because a scientific study says so, I’d have wondered why someone so sure of the conclusions needed to hide behind a study to back it up. Science is supposed to investigate what is unknown, not what is known. Then I’d point out how sketchy the data is.

Sketchy data and a lampoonable approach to evangelization is a good summary. The point of Catholicism or religion in general is not to improve one's sex life, nor to otherwise enhance one's pleasure. That's a mostly cynical look at religion, the same old "health and wealth gospel" modified for a culture which cares more about sex than money. The reason for choosing a particular religion (or other worldview) is first that it is true, and if that can't be decided then second that it is good (though goodness is so intrinsically linked to truth that there can scarcely be goodness without truth).

When a study like this is used to pitch conversion to Catholicism, it's somewhat akin to saying, "We can't know whether the Catholic Faith is true or not, we can't even know whether the Catholic Religion is good or not, but you should still join the Catholic Church because you'll likely have better sex. In other words, join the Church because it feels good!" "Because it feels good" is not sufficient grounds for making major moral decisions, and this is the very attitude against which Christianity in general (and Catholicism in particular) has to contend. This attitude is, in short, rather antithetical to a religion which claims to be followers of the Truth.

That point is complimented by the fact that this study itself is rather poorly constructed. Asking people if they feel loved during intercourse or whether they enjoy intercourse with their partner doesn't exactly provide a stable metric for determining who is having the best sex {1}.  The frequency and duration of sexual intercourse are more solidly measurable by "scientific" means, though this study only attempted to measure the former and not the latter). And who buys what kind of underwear how often is hardly an indicator of who is having the best sex, or even (for that matter) the most "kinky" sex--a different story entirely.

I submit that we don’t need to be talking about how loved someone feels during intercourse as a measure of “better sex”, and neither do we need to be talking about how often people have sex, whether people think it’s okay to have sex just for pleasure, or the specifics of their underwear buying habits as a measure of the quality of the Catholic experience. Frankly, that information is none of anyone’s business anyway. I would refuse to participate in such a survey on those grounds too.

What I’m trying to say is: Don’t rely on science to answer non-scientific questions.

There’s a better way.

This is the crux of the scientific analysis of this "study," and Dr Trasancos goes on to analyze some of these findings in a more theological manner by linking them to the Trinity. I also agree with her assessment. I want to go back to where I started by stating that this is not the kind of thing which is necessarily good for evangelization. To the extent that it will be taken by people who don't understand the science/methodology/problems underlying the study and then pitched as "food for thought" to people who do, it may actually become a roadblock. It's the kind of thing that looks like bad science on the surface, which then turns of people who understand the difference between good science and bad by convincing them that the best Catholicism has to offer in its defense is pseudoscience.

I will grant that no apologia alone can convert a person, and few can even get most people to stop and consider conversion, or even to consider simple fairness apart from conversion. But we live in an age where science is king (along with Sports and Sex), and where "Science" is invoked as a stick with which to beat the Church: namely, "The Church is against science and impedes scientific progress while supporting junk science." Therefore, when a study of dubious scientific quality is invoked as reason to convert to the Church, and when it is subsequently demolished by scientific-minded people from outside the Church, it reinforces in those peoples' minds their own chief (stated) objection to the Church.

My point, then, is that science can be an aide to (but not a cause of) evangelism, but only if done right. Studies like this might make a man stop to consider other claims of the Church--if the study is done well. But if the claim he is considering is that because more practicing Catholics express satisfaction with sex than other people, he's more than likely to brush the whole thing aside, or worse use it to reinforce his own prejudices if he sees that such a study is being touted by Catholics as "Science."

Such studies are good for a laugh, and can be entertaining as conversation-starters. In some ways, they may even be no-brainers {2}. They are not, however, a substitute for good apologetics or a joyful witness to one's Faith.


----Notes---
{1} I will note as an aside, though, that it does give an indication as to whom is most satisfied with their sex life: the Catholics maybe are having better sex, or it could be that they value what sex they are having more than anybody else.

{2} This is arguably an even better conversation-starter, and one which actually is helpful for helping to evangelize.

Multiverse Musings

I'm may be a little late to this party, but Dr Stephen Barr has an article on First Things about multiverses and the LHC. It is a sort of follow-up to an older article of his, both of which were recently linked by Michael Flynn. In the article in question, Dr Barr discusses the likelihood that we live in a multiverse, and comes down in favor pf the idea.

I found this interesting, because I was under the impression that the people who largely favor the idea of a multiverse are those who do so for the ideological grounds of getting around fine-tuning arguments for theism. As an argument for atheism (of sorts)--this is largely the context that I have encountered the multiverse in, aside from Star Trek (but I repeat myself). Oddly enough, of the four authors of the paper which Dr Barr references (and is a co-author of), two are Catholics and one is an atheist.

Another musing on the same subject: the multiverse might (or might not) serve as an argument against a theistic basis for fine-tuning. Sure, it provides a multitude of universes, perhaps even infinitely many. But infinitely many does not mean "every possible combination," and we could indeed have infinitely many universes in which everything is nearly fine-tuned for life on earth: or even infinitely many in which all of the parameters relevant to the creation/evolution of life on earth are still so-tuned.


I also agree with Ye Olde Statistician (TOF)'s remark that physicists do themselves a disservice when referring to connected localities as universes. While I understand Dr Barr's exchange with commenter Boonton about two interpretations of the multiverse and the difference between the multiverse and many worlds, the change in the word's definition without any real fanfare does lead to confusion, and not just for amateurs.  Universe, cosmos: these two things have generally been used to mean "everything there is" (or at the least, "everything there is in the natural order" in the case of the universe). Thus, saying that the multiverse consists of a multitude of universes tends to make the reader think of something akin to the mirror universe in Star Trek, even though many physicists merely mean a realm of connected space-time and matter in which the various physical constants are, well, constant. It also gets the physicists into trouble when they attempt to comment on philosophical matters (which tend to use more traditional definitions like "the universe is defined as everything which exists in the natural order").


Finally, it occurs to me that regardless of whether there are infinitely many "universes" in the multiverse, none of St Thomas Five Ways are encessarily refuted. Indeed, the Fourth and Fifth way in particular might plausibly be said to be strengthened by the exist of many universes--and that's true whether we mean universes in the sense used by Dr Barr and other "cosmologists", or in the science fiction sense of "parallel universes," or in the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics (to say nothing of philosophy).

Short Thought about Thinking

"I don't necessarily want you to think the same way about this issue as I do, but I do want you to really think about this issue."

So was the (since-deleted) response to one of my comments in a recent exchange I had. It really doesn't matter what the issue in question was here--the sentiment is awfully arrogant. I have far more sympathy for the person who says, "I do want you to think like I do (e.g. to agree with me) on this issue." Indeed, if the point of discussion is to get at the truth underlying an issue, then honest discussion means that all participant really do want each other to agree. Playing devil's advocate is one thing, but really advocating the diabolic philosophy that it's more important to "really think" about something than to come to the right conclusion concerning said issue is something else entirely. It's this latter bit of rank sophistry which makes any genuine conversation difficult--and that is the attitude of far too many in these times of cultural decadence.

Just thinking about something is good, but the point of pondering a question is to gain an answer, and not just any answer but the right answer. This is true even if we don't arrive immediately at the right answer, or at the whole answer. "Really thinking" about something is only worthwhile if we hope to uncover at least a part of the truth of the thing. And that, in turn, is only possible if there is a truth of the thing to be uncovered.

"Evolving"

Truth does not evolve, though our understanding sometimes does. This is because truth is anchored to reality, to existence. There is "your understanding" and "my understanding" (subjective) but this is not the same thing as "your truth" and "my truth" (objective). This is because we share a common reality, accessible to all of us, and which transcends our existence. That is to say, reality exists and continues without you, without me; and truth therefore, is prior to you and prior to me. I does not evolve, and certainly does not evolve as our attitude and understanding change. Rather, attitudes and understanding can changed to be more or less well-aligned with truth. That is a truly freeing thought.