17.8.02

VVV I just finished Daniel Quinn's The Story Of B, which, like Ishmael, I read straight through in a day. Like Ishmael, it presents a lot of interesting ideas about ecological philosophy, but grounds them in a misunderstanding of the cultural ecology of the origin of agriculture. But The Story Of B also presents an interesting -- though likely inadvertant -- message about Christianity.

The surface message of B as it pertains to Christianity, and probably the only level Quinn was thinking about it on, is a fairly familiar argument (despite the narrator's protestations of originality). Christianity, along with every other philosophical strand of post-agricultural-revolution thought, is implicated in creating an exploitative attitude toward nature, which has led to our current ecological and social crisis. In the book, the narrator is a priest sent by the Roman Catholic church to investigate whether a revolutionary philosopher lecturing in Germany, known to his followers as "B", is the Antichrist. The book expounds B's view of the ecological unsustainability of our culture and ultimately concludes that he is the Antichrist, but that that is a good thing. Rejecting the (often Christian) exploitative philosophy of our culture is the only way to survive.

My initial reaction was typical of how I feel when I read this type of argument. I protest that the destructive philosophy attributed to Christianity isn't the "real" Christianity, or at least that the Christian tradition is salvageable and even contains the seeds of a more ecological philosophy (as the article linked two posts ago examines). But as I read the last page of the book, it struck me that B's viewpoint is in fact very Christian, in a very mainstream way. B is the Antichrist to the church as an institution (and thus a Roman Catholic priest makes an excellent symbol), which has been part of a great deal of troubles in its history (and makes possible the defense that what has been done by Christians in the name of Christianity is not what Christianity is really about). But when Jesus' message is considered in itself, what B is proposing is simply a retelling of the Biblical story on an ecological, rather than spiritual, plane.

B's mytho-history of human civilization in a nutshell is this: Through most of human history, humans have been "Leavers" -- that is, people who are content to let nature (aka the gods, as they are animists) decide what to provide for them. But several thousand years ago, one tribe in Mesopotamia got a new idea that led them to become "Takers" -- people who take on the role of god for themselves and appropriate nature for their own use. While the Leaver strategy is time-tested and in accordance with the laws of nature, our present state is clear proof that the Taker strategy is about to fail. We can't manage the environment; we have to let it manage itself.

This outline resonates with how Christianity (and what sprung to mind first was how it is presented by Jehovah's Witnesses) answers the Problem of Evil, namely, why does a loving God allow bad things to happen? I'm focussing here on how this theology is envisioned by Jehovah's Witnesses for two reasons. First, they can conveniently represent, in contrast to the Catholic church, a de-institutionalized version of Christianity, as they take very seriously the Reformation ideas of the importance of direct study of the Bible and a renunciation of the earthly politics that has gotten the Catholic church in so much trouble over the centuries. And second, I'm more familiar with their theology as a coherent system due to discussions with a Witness on the Brunching board.

Jehovah's Witnesses summarize human history as follows: God set everything up so that people could live in harmony with the world, and He would take care of things. But then Adam and Eve got the idea that they could decide better than God how people ought to live, and ate the forbidden fruit. God's response was essentially "you think you can figure out how to run things better than I can? Well, go ahead and try." The sufferings that followed serve as proof that people can't do it alone, and eventually the human system will collapse as foretold in the book of Revelation.

The parallels between Takers' relationship to the laws of nature and humanity's relationship to God's commands should be obvious. There are differences, to be sure. Quinn makes a big issue out of the fact that most human societies chose to remain Leavers until the Takers wiped them out, whereas Jehovah's Witnesses would say we're all descended from Adam and Eve. And since there is no ecological afterlife, Quinn's focus is on the idea that if we return to choosing the laws of nature we can avoid Armageddon, whereas Jehovah's Witnesses would say that the system has to be left to collapse under its own weight before we (as a society) can pick ourselves up and try living God's way. But the similarities are strong enough to make me stop and think about how B can be seen as a book not just about the relationship between Christianity (and other civilized philosophies) and animism, but also about the relationship between Christianity as an institution and Christianity as a religion.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:38 -- link --

VVV I think that "wymyn" are going about it all wrong.

Now, I can understand the desire to reform the language to more properly reflect the philosophy of those who are using it. And it makes sense not to want the word for "adult female human" (AFH) to look like a derivative of the word for "adult male human" (AMH). But twisting the spelling of "woman" does not seem the most satisfactory way of going about that. "Wymyn" (or however one spells is) presents three problems. First, it remains two syllables long, while "man" is only one. This creates an imbalance in the language. Rhythm-wise and space-wise, they aren't interchangeable. Second, it presents the two words as fundamentally different. The purpose is to eliminate the commonality between "man" and "woman," which then implies that they're two completely different creatures. Third, it presents the corrollary problem of expunging "man" from compound words like "chairman" and "manhole," so as not to make those words gender biased. This leads to awkward phrasings like "chairperson."

What I propose is to return the word "man" to its archaic definition as "person," and find a new word for AMH. This word would be patterned on "woman" -- a derivative of "man." The words for AMH and AFH would indicate that they are specific sub-categories of men. One possibility for this new word would be "yoman." The Y seems an obvious choice, as a parallel to the Y chromosome that is uniquely male. And the word evokes the idea of a yeoman -- a person from the middle ages who was neither master nor serf. Thus it would have positive connotations of upright moral character, freedom, and self-reliance. "Yoman" would preserve the linguistic commonality between AMHs and AFHs, while allowing "man" to be used as a convenient monosyllabic root indicating a person.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 11:15 -- link --

16.8.02

VVV

Christianity And The Survival Of Creation We will discover that the Creation is not in any sense independent of the Creator, the result of a primal creative act long over and done with, but is the continuous, constant participation of all creatures in the being of God. Elihu said to Job that if God "gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together . . . " Job 34:15). And Psalm 104 says: "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created.... " Creation is God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian, Philip Sherrard, has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden being." Thus we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate. ... We will discover that, for these reasons, our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them.

This is a very long essay, but an interesting one. The author is responding to environmentalists who have rightly pointed out the ways Christianity has been complicit in the desctruction of the world through history, but who have wrongly concluded that this attitude is truly Christian, that the religion is unsalvageable. He looks into the Bible and finds a religion promoting deep respect for nature, one that rejects the popular dualism of creator/creation and spirit/body. And he points out that truly religious action involves not going through rituals but recognizing and respecting the holiness of creation in all our actions. His Christianity is at heart a nature religion. And I like it.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 11:53 -- link --

VVV Amanda and Marty have returned to the blogging world. With new designs. Everyone's changing their templates! Oh the craziness!
posted by Stentor Danielson at 08:48 -- link --

15.8.02

VVV

Evangelist Graham Comments on Muslims Muslim leaders haven't done enough to show their sorrow over Sept. 11, says the son of evangelist Billy Graham, adding to his harsh criticism of Islam. Franklin Graham challenged the leaders to help rebuild New York or compensate the victims families. "The silence of the clerics around the world is frightening to me," he said. "How come they haven't come to this country, how come they haven't apologized to the American people, how come they haven't reassured the American people that this is not true Islam and that these people are not acting in the name of Allah, they're not acting in the name of Islam?" Graham writes in his new book, "The Name," that "Islam — unlike Christianity — has among its basic teachings a deep intolerance for those who follow other faiths."

It's frightening how, in many people's eyes, Muslims can't apologize enough for September 11. As if you're responsible for the actions of everyone who calls god by the same name you do. And it's surprisingly widespread -- the Grahams have a substantial following, and quite a few people posting in the Yahoo! message board at the end of the story agreed. I remember a letter in the Scene last year that insinuated that Omid Safi was an America-hating terrorist because he didn't condemn the attacks loudly or vocally enough.

I included the last paragraph because I like pointing out that after the Catholic Spanish ousted the relatively tolerant (for that age) Muslim Moorish regime, they started the Inquisition.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:32 -- link --

VVV

Bush, in Shift on Egypt, Links New Aid to Rights The Bush administration will oppose any additional foreign aid for Egypt to protest the Egyptian government's prosecution of human rights campaigner Saad Eddin Ibrahim and its poor treatment of pro-democracy organizations, administration sources said yesterday. The Ibrahim case makes it "impossible" for the administration to contemplate extra money for Egypt, according to a White House official who said President Bush will soon advise Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in writing of his decision. Existing aid programs will not be affected. Bush's decision to criticize Mubarak and connect Egypt's human rights performance to economic aid is a notable shift in policy toward a longtime ally considered essential to U.S. efforts to calm the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and remove Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

A tiny step in the right direction. But past experience doesn't give me much confidence that this represents any kind of shift in policy.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 08:49 -- link --

14.8.02

VVV

Chronic Self-Doubters Tend To Be More Materialistic "For those people who are chronically insecure, materialism seems to be a coping mechanism that they use when they are put in a situation that makes them doubtful about themselves," Arkin said. "Chronic self-doubters are not interested in possessions because they bring happiness or because they simply like owning a lot of things," Arkin said. "They are interested in possessions because of their meaning, the status they confer. They believe their possessions demonstrate success." But whether a person suffers from anomie or self-doubt, Arkin said materialism is a poor coping mechanism. Other studies have shown that a materialistic orientation to life is linked with poor psychological functioning and lower life satisfaction.

I think advertisers have known this for years. They play on people's insecurities (such as their penis size, to take a common example), and offer their product as a solution. For another example, take the most recent Dell commercial, in which Annoying Guy's nerdy roommate wins a trip to Paris because his mom bought him a Dell. The viewer identifies with the nerdy roomate, both because having a computer is still a slightly nerdy thing, and because Annoying Guy is presented as so archetypally cool that he's beyond most people's abilities. The commercial then reassures us, by showing Annoying Guy trying to help out his nerdy roommate. Finally, he succeeds -- through the magic of Dell, of course. The Dell giveaway is especially relevant because it's something you win -- which means it can be both a huge gain, and a stamp of specialness because so few people win.

But because material gain can't assuage insecurity, the cycle snowballs. Insecurity planted now will still be there for the next round of advertising. And it can ultimately create a habit of looking to material things for satisfaction, rather than pushing people to see how unsatisfying *stuff* proves to be.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:30 -- link --

13.8.02

VVV (yeah, lots of posts today. I'll just quote the good part of this article, "commonplace blog"-style)

Philosophy Is Essential To The Intelligent Design Debate But there is no reason to think that "truth" plays a major role in this discussion. Science constantly produces new theories and discoveries that are powerful, useful, and enlightening. But does that imply we are approaching "the truth"? Alas, no--although many scientists would like to think so. Given the continuing success of science, this limitation is not an easy idea to grasp, especially for scientists. To better understand it, compare the progress of science with that of biological evolution itself. Organisms evolve; new ones emerge from the old, which results in the impressive array of living systems around us that are, for the most part, wonderfully adapted to their present environments. Does this mean that the process of evolution was directed toward a goal? That the present living forms were preordained in the primeval soup? Of course not. The life forms that exist now just happen to be the ones that arose from a vast number of initial possibilities. Likewise, scientific theories evolve according to how well they answer, at any given time in history, the immediate questions of interest to scientists. As a result, the present impressive array of theories has developed to satisfactorily answer the questions that interest us now. But that does not mean that science is goal-directed and thus progressing toward the "truth." The present theories were not predetermined to be discovered, any more than the first amphibians that crawled out of the oceans many years ago had the concept of humans encoded for future emergence. Science works--and works exceedingly well--because of its naturalistic approach, predictive nature, and methods of operation. To be valid, science does not have to be true.

posted by Stentor Danielson at 17:43 -- link --

VVV It's amazing how similar people's feelings about skeptical debunkers' books are to their feelings about books about the stuff they're debunking:

From a review of Frauds, Myths, And Mysteries: Science And Pseudoscience In Archaeology: "I personally was reminded how easy it is to fool people who want to believe something and aren't moved to investigate or challenge the beliefs they are comfortable with. The gist of the book seems to be that people who rely mostly upon faith can end up believing just about anything, while those who are inclined to question and test new information via logic, scientific methods, and common sense are more likely to actually uncover the facts for themselves, doing away with faith altogether."

From a review of Forbidden Archaeology: The Hidden History Of The Human Race: "Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson have brought the facts, the hard evidence and the ideas based on them into the light, and one can not overvalue that. The book has rather had a double impact - first, the authors showed to the public the hidden truth that is striking, much impressing, but based on the facts; second, they inevitably make us realize how unbelievable the position of the modern science is - "don't trust your eyes, trust my theory" is what may best be a slogan of those "real" scientists. The second part of the "impact" is rather most important - one more time a reader has a chance to see how a modern science can be an obstacle on the way of the general scientific progress, how a widely accepted theory can prevail over the logical and really scientific approach, how an established scientific society can hide or destroy the evidence that opposes the official views only in the name of pure officially supported theory."

We all think we're rationally considering the evidence in an unprejudiced manner, while those who disagree are dogmatically clinging to a theory and only listening to the evidence that supports it.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:22 -- link --

VVV

Catholics Reject Evangelization of Jews The Catholic Church, which spent hundreds of years trying forcibly to convert Jews to Christianity, has come to the conclusion that it is theologically unacceptable to target Jews for evangelization, according to a statement issued yesterday by organizations representing US Catholic bishops and rabbis from the country's two largest Jewish denominations. Citing teachings dating back to the Second Vatican Council, and statements by Pope John Paul II throughout his papacy, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops declared unequivocally that the biblical covenant between Jews and God is valid and therefore Jews do not need to be saved through faith in Jesus. ''A deepening Catholic appreciation of the eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people, together with a recognition of a divinely-given mission to Jews to witness to God's faithful love, lead to the conclusion that campaigns that target Jews for conversion to Christianity are no longer theologically acceptable in the Catholic Church,'' declares the document, ''Reflections on Covenant and Mission.''

On the one hand, hooray for the Catholic Church becoming more tolerant and all that. But on the other hand, I don't quite understand the theology behind it. Granted, I'm not a Catholic, and I can't find the document itself (so I've only got the reporter's summary of their reasoning to go on). But it seems to conflict with the mainstream Christian understanding of Jesus' mission. Jesus presented himself not just as a person coming in with a new religious perspective, but specifically as the messiah promised to the Jews -- that's where he derives his authority from in mainstream Christianity. So I don't quite understand how the bishops can now say that the Jews were never meant to become Christians, and that it's God's plan for them to continue being Jewish.

Now, I can understand why the bishops would want to make a statement like this. They've taken an awful lot of (justified) criticism for centuries of persecution against Jews, up through complicity in the Holocaust. And the sex abuse scandal certainly isn't discouraging them from trying to clean up their image. But it strikes me as odd because it illustrates the loss of the middle ground between "kill the infidel" and "every religion in just as valid as every other." The bishops seem to be indicating that they can't find a way to be part of a pluralistic society without losing the proposition of being the "one true faith." While I don't believe there is one true faith (and if there is I doubt it's Roman Catholicism), I don't think it's impossible to maintain that you have the truth and that other people should convert, without targeting specific groups for conversion, or using invasive and coercive means to get converts, or treating people like they're beneath you in some way. It simply requires a commitment to the idea that the search for religious truth is a matter of personal conscience, and to respect others' right to search even if you're convinced they're looking in the wrong place.
posted by Stentor Danielson at 11:30 -- link --

11.8.02

VVV William inspired me to join up with BlogTree. So I guess that makes him my BlogTree parent. *contemplates creating blogtree-tree.com*
posted by Stentor Danielson at 19:38 -- link --