If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this to me is the final test. This is how I distinguish between dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams; I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner; I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I can see it, but because by it I see everything else. 

- C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry” in The Weight of Glory

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

- George Orwell

Literature encourages tolerance - bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they’re so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can’t see them also as possibilities.

- Northrop Frye

Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four.

- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Perhaps, after the Fall, Truth - the immense and beautiful tapestry that is Truth - was cut up into pieces, puzzle pieces, and now we spend our lives trying to put all of the pieces back together in their correct order.

Every piece of information that we receive, via the senses and otherwise, is a piece of this puzzle. We start our attempts to put the pieces together probably before we are born.

But a map is needed, something that gives us clues as to where the pieces go, like the picture on the top of a puzzle box.

But we don’t have the puzzle box or any other complete photograph or map of the tapestry.

Have you ever tried putting a giant puzzle together with no idea what picture you are trying to create? What would you do? You would start by trying to find at least two pieces that seemed to fit together, and then you would build from there.

But even with just two pieces you cannot help but try and create some kind of map for yourself by projecting the pattern further beyond what you have already constructed.

Others offer maps that attempt to explain your reality and fit more of your unexplained/poorly-fitted puzzle pieces together. But these maps are often wrong, usually as a result of sin.

Sin is our attempt to avoid God and get to the Truth without Him. But He is the Truth.

The Bible is the only good map that we have. It is not a clear photograph (like the puzzle box top), but it is not overly simplistic either, and it leads us always ever deeper into the mysterious complexities of the Truth.

If we were to see the tapestry of Truth now in full we wouldn’t understand or be able to comprehend it.

We are always in the process of creating and modifying our own internal map of the Truth. Some refer to this map as their “philosophy of life”. It consists of 1) all of the pieces that we have encountered and fit together up until now, and 2) our map that we have constructed that “makes sense” of those pieces and projects a bigger pattern.

This isn’t quite it… We don’t hang onto the puzzle pieces themselves (the little and big bits of data that we process in our lifetimes), we just use them to construct the internal map. Most of the pieces are tossed aside and forgotten once they have been used to trace out their place in the map.

Some of the pieces are similar (if not identical), and sometimes it is hard (if not impossible) to figure out where they go. Sometimes a piece can seem to fit just as well in several different pieces.

So it is with the map fragments that we are given or create. They come in many different sizes, and if you look close enough they lead in many different directions. One fragment may make perfect sense of a given set of pieces, yet does not fit with other large maps that have been constructed.

Some important components so far:

• the tapestry = Truth
• the puzzle pieces = the bits of input out of which we construct reality.
• maps = sketches, photographs, attempts (some better, some worse) at recreating some part (greater or smaller) of the original tapestry. The Bible is the only reliable map.
• Sin = our rejection of God (and therefore Truth), which led to the initial fragmentation of the tapestry and our separation from Him.

Beauty

The tapestry is beautiful beyond all words. Therefore, one good way to know if a map fragment (whether great or small, and whether understandable or not) is correct is that it is beautiful.

Now we cannot always see beauty when it is before us, so we cannot then say that all correct maps will always be beautiful to us. Sometimes we are blind.

But also there are times when we encounter beautiful things that we don’t understand. We cannot see how these beautiful map fragments fit in with the rest of our map or even why the are beautiful, yet we must keep them! For true beauty is always at least a little bit mysterious and beyond words. This is because Truth is so much more than we can comprehend, even in its unfragmented form.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

- Francis Bacon

Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.

- Paul Valery

Every human act of integration moves us from one rationality to a profounder one. The process is only partially expressed in an inference from premises to conclusion. To advance our grasp of the real is to allow our sense of the rational to conform to a reality that we have yet to grasp. If we are not open to this, we are blind to further knowledge.

- Esther Lightcap Meek (Longing to Know)

The eyes of others are our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

- Virginia Woolf

Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to its reality.

- Esther Lightcap Meek from Longing to Know

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

- Bertrand Russell

If you know only one language, you’re a prisoner, stuck in the tyranny of that one language.

- Andrew Cohen

Why is man so inclined to flee from the contemplation of deeper issues and expend all his mental energy on the mundane? Clearly there are much deeper issues which confront him on a daily basis, and the address of these issues would result in dramatic changes, if not improvements, in his life. Two reasons stand out to me now.

First, the confrontation of these issues would force upon him the urgency of the matter and, consequently, the weight of his own responsibility to respond and act. This generates fear in him as well as shame, as he feels incompetent to deal with the weeds that he has allowed to grow up in his own garden.

The second reason stems from the first, but seems now to me to be more primary, viz. when he allows his mind to rest a while on issue of true import, he begins to see just how incomprehensible all things are. His mind is led down a path into an ever more densely overgrown wood, out of which he begins to see there is no way out. If he is a particularly intelligent man, he may at first pursue these ideas with a confident stride as thoughts unfold before him with ease and he sees no barrier that could lie between him and the mysteries of the universe. At this point his attitude will often grow arrogant and cavalier as he bounds over walls that others have been unable to climb.

But sooner or later he will be met with an obstacle that he cannot overcome, at which point he has a choice to make.

1. He can recognize his own inability to figure out this problem and choose to withhold judgment on the matter, or at least hold to a tentative position.
2. He can muddle through the problem, guessing at answers while feigning a confidence and self-assurance to himself and others, and ultimately latch upon a solution that he knows in his heart to be spurious, but which he holds to the more tenaciously.
3. He can put the idea out of his mind altogether, avoiding the issue until such a time when he may happen upon a solution.

The last option seems to be the one chosen by the majority of individuals on the majority of topics of real importance. These people, when faced with their own inability to comprehend, are afraid and offended by the notion because, like the rest of proud mankind, they want to think of themselves as much more than they truly are, and so they flee from or viciously attack anything that confronts them with this reality.

Those who chose the second option, much in the spirit of the majority, are also ruled by their own pride and fear. In this group may be found most philosophers and scientists. They have been gifted with the ability to observe and perceive much of reality, but when confronted with the problem of what to make of these observations, they often chose to put forward ideas and propositions that they know to be ill-founded. Some of this is due to pressures that are placed upon such persons to provide answers to problems. Philosophers and scientists are supposed to come up with precise conclusions and solutions, not more questions and mysteries. Only the poet is allowed the luxury of presenting his ideas in all their unrefined complexity and intricacy without being expected to answer all of the questions that he raises.

It is one thing to be a good observer of what may be seen. It is another to be able to make good judgments about what is not seen by what may be seen.

To be continued…

I feel the workings of a presumptuous spirit that would account for everything, and venture to dispute whatever it cannot comprehend.

- John Newton

2/23/00

It may take courage to admit the possibility that there is no God or any kind of absolutes, but it requires even more courage than we are humanly capable of generating for us to admit that there is a God, and that He is more than we will ever be able to comprehend.

copied from entry on 2/23/2000:

Logic ≈ Deductive Thinking

• it can only work within a given set of rules.
• it cannot prove anything, it can only disprove.

My definition of “Rationalism” - the theory that Reason is able to recognize absolute truth, and that it is the only function of the mind which is able to do so (NOT Logic or sensory perception).

It is possible to conceive of something logically, yet unreasonably.

Reason ≈ Inductive Thinking

• intuition?
• cannot prove anything
• what “makes sense”

It is impossible to conceive of something that is reasonable, yet illogical.

• Logic is a function of Reason. Therefore, Reason is not accountable or obedient to Logic.
• No thoughts are “irrational”. That would imply that there is no reason for why we have these thoughts.
• Reason is founded upon absolutes.
• Counter-rational thinking is possible because we can conceive of things that are contrary to absolute truths.
• There may be absolute contradictions to absolute truths. But Logic, insofar as it operates exclusively on a deductive level, can never reveal anything but apparent contradictions.
• Correlate: Logic can never disprove a rational concept.

copied from entry on 2/20/2000, 3:30 AM:

1. Preface - explaining purpose, organization and reasoning behind organization.
2. Personal Definitions of Key Terms and Concepts
3. Intuited Concepts and Extra-logical Conclusions
4. Logical Conclusions within the paradigm of #3
5. Logical Conclusions within other paradigms (including Science and other philosophical approaches)
6. Logical Conclusions resulting from comparison and contrast of #3 and #5.
7. List of Issues to be covered in 3-6.
8. Collection of resources and references to resources pertaining to issues in #7.

2/23/00

All complex words and concepts must be defined in the simplest and clearest terms possible when writing my comprehensive philosophy. This must be done in order to tear down (as much as possible) the barrier that denies us direct access to and sharing of Reason, viz. Language.

(Am I reconstructing the Tower of Babel?)

copied from journal entry dated 1/31/00:

The key ingredient in all areas of applied organized thought - from theology to biology - is consistency.

It is impossible for the mind to accept two concepts that it recognizes as being mutually exclusive or contradictory. There may indeed be times when I act on or allow contradictory beliefs into my operative philosophy, but once I consciously recognize contradiction, I am not able to convince myself that both can be true. 

Moreover, I hold any actions taken according to contradictory beliefs to be cowardly and reprehensible. 

This idea of consistency is a major cornerstone of my personal philosophy of life, and many of my other beliefs are strongly influenced by it. 

One major problem is that it is impossible for us to hold up each concept presented to our minds and to check it against all those that we have formerly accepted. Therefore it often happens that we unwittingly operate by conflicting philosophies.

But, as if this were not a big enough problem, we also do this consciously, when we simply choose not to recognize these contradictions as such. If it is possible for us to sin against ourselves, then it seems to me that this may be the worst of such transgressions. 

I also think that it is important to note that, since our minds are not capable (as far as I know) of judging absolute truth, there are often concepts that are only in apparent contradiction with each other and, upon further examination, it may be proven that they are not. by this, I do not mean that our minds are capable of uncovering all such errors of judgment. Some of these we may never understand.

I think that one area of philosophy involving many such apparent contradictions is where religion and modern science meet. I, personally, accept most of the findings of modern science, and I also believe the message that is put forward in the Bible. Although many people now consider the two to be mutually exclusive, I believe that the concepts of science can make sense within the context of Scripture. Those scientific theories that do run in direct contradiction to  my theological beliefs I question thoroughly for error. But if I were to find one such concept of science to be completely consistent with the rest of my beliefs about science, and if I was unable to conceive of any alternative approaches, and if this idea were to be found completely inconsistent with my theological beliefs, then I would be forced to re-examine the latter for internal contradictions. I accept the teachings of both science and Christianity only to the extent that they contain neither internal contradictions, nor contradictions with each other. 

 

I post this entry here with a certain degree of trepidation because of how it might be taken by others, particularly in light of a lot of theological debate that has been going on in my current circles. I must note that my personal views on the nature of Scripture and its relationship to science have developed significantly since writing this entry. I post it here only to help myself and others to locate my present thinking within a trajectory and that I might be able to pinpoint when certain ideas first began to develop and why.
Feel free to critique what you read here and leave your comments. It will help me to continue to think about these things more carefully. But please do so knowing that this does not accurately reflect my present perspectives on the matter.

I am like a slave who, enjoying an imaginary liberty during sleep, begins to suspect that his liberty is only a dream; he fears to wake up and conspires with his pleasant illusions to retain them longer. So insensibly to myself I fall into my former opinions; and am slow to wake up from this slumber for fear that the labors of waking life which will have to follow the tranquility of this sleep, instead of leading me into the daylight of the knowledge of truth, will be insufficient to dispell the darkness of all the difficulties which have just been raised.

- René Descartes from Meditations on the First Philosophy