I’ve been bandying back and forth with Andrew on City of God (here too) over the weekend about pacifism and the justification for the State’s (meaning government in general, not specifically the USA) use of force. I thought I would post the comment here regarding Romans 13. It’s nothing new, but I think it’s useful.

God has ordained the State’s power. He has not only ordained its power, but has approved its use of force. How do we know this?

From Romans 13 we know the State has force (it bears the sword) but we also know that it is right for the State to use that force (it does not bear the sword in vain – lit. inconsiderately; without just cause).

According to the passage, the State does bear the Sword unjustly. Who is the arbiter of justice? The Lord. Who has placed the sword into the hands of government? Also the Lord. Therefore, the Lord has deemed it just (thus right) for the State to use the sword. In fact, the State exists for that very purpose.

Now, if one takes “not in vain” to mean “God uses evil for good,” I think one is playing fast and loose with the passage; it is emphatic that what we see here is not the “accidental” will of God, but rather the very specific, foreordained will of God. God is not turning lemons into lemonade. Granted, force wouldn’t be needed if there was no sin, so in a way there will always be an “accidental” quality to justice. This, however, does not mean that God’s will for the State to use force in a fallen economy is itself accidental. The passage has a bias and this bias is toward intentionality. God is not improvising, He’s being intentional regarding the State. Thus, in it’s justice it is justified.

Now, Rom 12 just told us not to take revenge for ourselves, but that revenge is the Lord’s…

“But Apostle Paul, how does the Lord avenge us?”

“Keep reading! It’s in the next chapter!”

Sometimes the Lord is pleased to avenge us through Divine intervention, but He often works through a minister or agent. What is His agent of revenge? Who bears the sword on His behalf? The State! How do we know this? Rom 13 says so! It calls the State a minister of God’s justice – an avenger.

Consider, much of the law, the “10 Commandments” in particular, are directed toward individual conduct. This is why the Israelite army could go and kill yet not be in violation of the Law. God was not being inconsistent in anyway or creating a special “alternate” Law so that He could calling them to war – different rules apply to the State than do to the individual.

Therefore, Paul’s reminder not to avenge ourselves does not necessarily apply to the State. In fact we see that Rom 13 justifies the State in using force (God establishes the State so that it can execute His judgments, and it wields the sword rightly, justly, “unaccidentally”).

Parents use the family credit card – children cannot. I must obey the speed limit – police can be exempt. The judicial system can incarcerate someone for decades – I would be prosecuted for doing the so.

What is true for the individual is not always true for the group, and the apparent tension between Romans 12 and Romans 13 is resolved when we grant this.

Blogging has introduced me in a new way to disagreement. You write something, you publish it, people argue, you fire back, ad infinitum (or so it seems, sometimes). It’s a great exercise. It’s refining. And, if conducted with some level of maturity, it is mutually beneficial.

But how often do people come to agree? How often is convincing someone even possible? It’s one thing if people share the same view beforehand, and need to iron out some semantical issues. But how often is person A able to convince person B, thus changing person B’s world view (I am of course talking about matters of philosophy, theology, ideology, etc)?

It seems that no matter how compelling an argument is or how salient the reasoning, there is seldom a winning over.

Consider the entire history of philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead said that philosophy is a “a series of footnotes to Plato” — I’d substitute Aristotle. It is between Plato and Aristotle that we see a symbol of the ongoing philosophical disagreement. Since then (and likely centuries prior) the dialectic has had full momentum, in some form or another. Between realism and idealism. Mysticism and naturalism. Republicans and democrats.

Think about it: every major work of philosophy has had an equally compelling counterpart claiming contrary points. In the 2000+ years of western philosophical tradition, we have not established a single solitary point that everyone can agree on. There is no commonly accepted epistemology. There is no real philosophy of mind or definition of human nature. There has never been more disagreement of the reality of God than in present day.

As other fields focus and approach some degree reliability and conclusion, it seems that in this one field, everything is spiraling outward in a tangle of threads that will never be woven together.

If convincing is so seldom possible, does that make the discussions ultimately moot?

I think losing my moleskine set me back more than I had realized. It literally took the wind out of my sails; that and I’ve been really preoccupied with starting an upcoming album (more to follow!).

Anyway, I’m going to try and write everyday. So to my 3 readers, expect content!

Cheers.

The great irony of the scientific method

What I’m about to suggest might seem, to some, absolutely outlandish, but I think if you follow the reasoning, you’ll see that there is some merit – that science is inherently self-defeating – inherently unscientific.

For something to be considered a scientifically valid hypothesis, if must meet a few requirements. The hypothesis must be testable and those tests must be repeatable. The results must be observable. The hypothesis must be falsifiable.

Now here is the irony:

(more…)

Let’s throw around some ideas about truth, and what actually makes one “valid.” A skeptical person asks, “Well, what good is it? So what if there is truth outside the reach of the scientific method? No one will agree on it! It’s a waste of time.”

This kind of response reveals an ever present presumption which underpins the hard scientific impetus, and it is one I’ve not yet heard discussed. It is this:

“Truth is only valuable if every one has the potential to agree with it. No one’s demanding that you do agree, but if there is no evidence, if there are no meaningful experiments, you don’t even give dissenters the possibility of being convinced, and you’ll just wind up in a relativistic hubbub.”

This can be nothing else but a presumption, and it lies at the heart of the scientific process. That is, the value or quality of a truth is tied to the potential for every human to embrace it, or, whether it is a candidate for universal agreement. This then means that a truth, even if only subscribed to by one person is inconsequential, regardless of whether it is truth or not. The ultimate distillation of that is that truth is in and of itself, irrelevant.

(more…)

A brief aside to talk with our friend David

I’ve just been reading a passage from David Hume’s A treatise of Human Nature*, about how we can come to some level of certainty in our investigations. It makes some good points (which I agree with and have thus far in my investigation, not disagreed with), and at other points falls catastrophically on its face. Let’s go!

[Edit: I have removed the first argument I made about this passage from Hume as I possibly have misunderstood a term he uses – demonstrable sciences – and applied to it meaning which he did not. I have thus replaced the older argument with what I feel to be a much stronger one. Thank you Dan for pointing out my error – I would hate to have continued on in it!]

We are permitted to substitute words for other words which would still manage to convey the initial concept accurately. “Concepts” afford us that luxury. We will apply such a substitution here, in order to make the argument more obvious to the reader:

Hume says these two things in the passage:

(more…)

Every “why”

Now the scientist (or at least, the cynical one) would say, “Well if something exists that doesn’t interact with the 4 fundamental forces, can’t be observed, tested, or even proven to exists, then its irrelevant to us and has no impact on us – how can it? Science deals with those things and so is is equipped to answer every why that is relevant to human existence. Anything else is just guess work, and who’s to say your conclusion is more valid than mine?”

This is the expression of an entrenched philosophy (positivism), and I believe is actually the absence of any sort of mature philosophy or serious thinking the matter through.

Since we can’t verify this scientifically, we will have to do so rationally. There are only three possibilities for what the scientific process is capable of answering:

(more…)

Is science the only “way of knowing”?

Forthwith, my arguments have primarily to do with a particular persuasion, and a particular mode of thinking. This position has become the prevalent one within the scientific discipline, and in my estimation is the joining together of two separate philosophies:

Empiricism: experience and the senses are to be emphasized in truth discovery.

Positivism: the only truth that can be discovered is through strict scientific method.

For many people, positivism would simply be seen as the natural result of “empiricism,” in that empiricism (as a method) involves the process of testing a hypothesis, and establishing (or trying to establish) objectivity through evidence.

I, however, see the need list them separately so we can consider the whole equation:

(more…)

Implications of particulate knowledge

So, what’s the big deal? What impact does this have on the scientific process? It has a dramatic impact: we can only ask scientific questions about that which we have the capacity to observe. What we have the capacity to observe – what particulate knowledge we then go on to form – is a direct and explicit result of the mechanisms of the mind: programming, intent, and knowledge we’ve already formed. These all contribute to where we’ll look, how we will investigate, and what conclusions we will draw.

Our working paradigm for what is – our expectation of what can be known – is shaped entirely by our input. We have 5 sensory input pathways. That’s all. And yet, people will become violent in defense of the purity and totality of what can be known through scientific process, which only works with particulate knowledge. We do not know what lies beyond the veil of our 5 input pathways. We cannot even conceive of another sense that we could then search for it or test it.

I’ll restate it because it’s so important: we can only ask scientific questions about that which we have the capacity to observe, and what particulate knowledge we then go on to form, is a direct and explicit result of the mechanisms of the mind.

(more…)

A basic framework for the mind

So we have total data – the entirety of existence. I would now like to move on from there to talk about humans, and our capacity to apprehend.

It is my belief that the only thing humans are capable of working with is knowledge. Where we’re talking about logic, history, shopping lists, faith, or hatred, all of this I’ defining as knowledge – the contents of the mind. The analogy of binary – the 1’s and 0’s a computer uses – helps to illustrate what I mean. The exclusive and internal language or processing. Yes, the category of knowledge is far more abstract, open to debate, and uncertain as far as any fundamental property is concerned, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that a mind can only use knowledge. This would seem to be somewhat self-evident – the mind creates and interprets knowledge, and in turn, knowledge only exists in the mind.

(more…)