Howdy again, folks. I suppose I ought to change the name of the blog to something not containing the word “daily,” especially now that I have a new gig occupying a lot of my time. It’s been ten days since I posted. Sorry about that; I hope you’re all still out there.
Today (well, yesterday, technically) my friend and I went walking around the local main-street shops in the next town. One of them turned out to be one of those crystals-and-incense places full of new age hocus pocus. We couldn’t stay in there long, because the incense was chokingly intense (and as a cigar smoker, that’s saying something) but we did poke around long enough to get a good look at the books and stickers and ceremonial daggers (!) and spirit stones and other magic-and-fairy related gewgaws and trinkets. Bumper stickers that say things like “Witches do it in circles” and books about how to get in touch with your inner animal guide or whatnot. And of course, guides to performing magic.
Hm. Magic. I’m going to start by assuming this is not the Arthur C. Clarke magic, the kind that’s actually “sufficiently advanced technology.” No, I’m pretty sure this is the old fashioned idea of magic, wherein you perform a ritual, or cast a spell by speaking a special incantation, and something supernatural happens. The normal laws of cause and effect are then bent in your favor, apparently, so that something (say, for instance, doggerel recited to the empty air) that ordinarily wouldn’t cause something else (for example, good health) actually does cause it, and breaks the ordinary chain of cause and effect that would normally result in the poorer health you would otherwise experience. Do I have that right? I hope so, because sometimes I have a hard time actually explaining back spiritual bullshit.
This is all good fun when it appears in fiction. The Harry Potter stories are witty and entertaining with their alternate world of people who can do things like light a fire by waving a stick and barking “incendio!” (though they still need to explain exactly what advantage this has over a butane lighter). But there is a significant contingent of people who believe – or believe they believe – that these things actually work in real life, in spite of a complete absence of provable evidence. Witchcraft and wizardry are not real, but that doesn’t stop a certain type of person from practicing them anyway.
This tends to piss off christians.
Not all christians, I hasten to note. I have been called to task by commenters for lumping all christians in with the least rational of them. Sometimes that’s appropriate, because in many cases the least rational christians are the ones who actually read their scriptures literally and don’t play fast-and-loose with the bible to make the uncomfortably stupid and scary parts palatable to civilized sensibilities. (They have other reasons for playing fast and loose, but I’ve covered those elsewhere, and I digress.) In this case it’s not appropriate to lump them all together, because I’m pretty sure the bible doesn’t actually say you should deliberately cultivate an inability to distinguish between generally harmless goofballs who have trouble separating fact from fiction (on the one hand) and people who actually want to be evil (on the other). So in this case the christians I’m talking about are the Fred Phelps spittle-spraying variety who try to get Harry Potter removed from the public library and pick fights with store clerks because they don’t want to be served by a non-christian. You know the type.
I think this type of christian fears sorcery not because it’s foolish and clearly doesn’t do anything, but rather because they are afraid it might actually work.
How could anyone believe something so obviously foolish, you might reasonably ask? Well, think a moment. What is prayer, exactly? What are church services? Why, they’re rituals to be performed, and doggerel incantations recited to the empty air, in the expectation that something supernatural will happen in your favor, and the normal laws of cause and effect suspended. In other words, they are exactly what the books in the crystal and incense store promise. They are magic. And it stands to reason that the most rabid christians would feel the most threatened by non-christian “magic,” because they’re the most likely to believe in the reality of their own christian “magic” which differs from the other type mainly in the trivial details of the rituals and the words, not in the actual underlying superstition: say these words and make these motions and speak the name of this imaginary being, and things will happen without physical cause.
So I think those christians who are threatened by the wiccans and other new agers and their books of spells are not angry because they think it’s false; I think they’re angry because they fear it’s true – because if it is, it’s new competition in the magic biz, and we all know how ruthlessly religions pursue monopolies. And, of course, given the with-us-or-agin-us mindset that tends to come along with that kind of christianity, if it’s not the work of Jesus (as decided by them, of course) then it’s the work of the devil. Thus ordinary Harry Potter readers and harmless mud-smeared neo-hippies banging djembe drums around a campfire are transformed in the minds of christians into agents of satan spreading evil magic around, which can only be countered by redoubling the christian magic and encouraging others to do the same (unless, of course, it devolves into physical violence, which happens occasionally, though not as often here as in places like India or Africa, thankfully).
When viewed from outside, the whole thing takes on a bizarrely surreal aspect; one group taking up imaginary weapons to fight against another group, who mostly don’t even know they’re in a battle, and don’t even think their imaginary weapons are weapons at all. Imagine watching, say, a light saber battle in Star Wars before the special effects and sounds were put in, so that you have a bunch of people running around waving sword handles with no blades at each other. That’s what this looks like. Now imagine the actors think they can actually see and use the missing blades. It’s beyond weird. It would be funny if the people doing it weren’t threatening to cripple the secular world for the rest of us in the process, to make things safe for their particular brand of magic. It’s like a gigantic game of Dungeons and Dragons that spills over into the real world – not in the sense that orcs and dragons are roaming the streets, of course, but the tiresome fanboys (christians and new agers alike) are, and they’re almost as bad.
Niggle: Magic is technology, merely technology that doesn’t work. Clarke’s dictum sounds very grand but is thus ultimately incoherent (sufficiently advanced tech-that-works is indistinguishable from tech-that-doesn’t-work. Say what?). Homeopathy is thus magic too. Jen and her readers call it all “woo”.
You are, of course, entirely correct about Christian magic. At the very beginning of my escape from the memetic infection I used to go on about “name it and claim it” being sorcery, and that was when I still sort-of-believed, so you might find rational Christians to agree with us here. The big difference is in whether prayer is considered as petition or as coercion. I used to find it profoundly disturbing that a person who supposedly considered himself a sinner was cool with the idea of coercing the creator of the universe to do the bidding of said sinner, that is, someone whose will was self-seeking and corrupt. You can only get around this by means of even weirder doublethink than usual. And then there is Transubstantiation……….
“And then there is Transubstantiation………. ”
The other white meat.
I have always found it interesting (read “bizarre”) how important it is to believers that they also believe in one or more alternate deities. Satan, for instance, is critical to a comprehensive Christian religious philosophy. It is insufficient to believe in the essential invisible being, but critical to also believe in competitors, and with equal fervor. You cannot convince a dyed-in-the-wool Christian to drop the belief in the devil and his minions. This alternate god must exist and be devoutly believed in for a believer to be complete. Even Jesus himself had a stake in Satan’s existence (e.g., “Begone, Satan!”) So it’s no wonder that Christians object to folks tampering with the occult–the occult is a cornerstone of their belief system and a real threat to their god.
“Satan, for instance, is critical to a comprehensive Christian religious philosophy.”
Not really, Mr. F. There is no shortage of theology in which Satan plays little or no role. I wouldn’t know how to count this but it might even be most theology. Certainly there are sects, mainly Fundamentalist or Evangelical, which have developed a starkly dualistic theodicy which gives such power to Satan that it’s very hard to call them monotheistic and keep a straight face. These sects do have a major TV presence in the US. Granted, but you’ll hear very little about Satan in most Roman Catholic churches. It’s there on the fringes and flares up from time to time, similar in that way to the virus of gnosticism which also just won’t go away, but it’s more of an embarrassment to the Vatican, hardly a centerpiece, philosophically or otherwise.
That’s over half of Christianity right there that this broad generalization just doesn’t work for. The Roman sect is not only very large, it has also been an academic, theological, not to mention publishing, powerhouse for a very, very long time. Villiage Atheist arguments that get smug ‘WOOT! WOOT!’s in online forums wouldn’t stand a whif of a chance against many a parish priest, much less any Jesuit. You can’t just bracket the Roman Catholic Church and pretend that you are still talking about Christianity.
While the Roman church soft-pedals the Satan in its theology and liturgy, no small amount of thought and writing has accumulated over the centuries to explain his existence, purpose, rebellion/sin, role in the lives of the faithful, etc. This betrays at least a fascination with Satan, if not an inclusion of him in the elements of Catholicism.
Nevertheless, to debate with anyone, Jesuit or otherwise, the nature of angels and Satan, and their aspirations to deification, their capacity to imagine such, their motivation to challenge their god, and the like is not much different from debating the nature of Santa Claus’s reindeer with a five-year old. The beings do not exist, and the believers are delusional. Or if you prefer, to discuss the aliens that populate the Star Wars opus makes as much sense.
You are right to call me on my cavalier hyperbole. It was overstatement for dramatic effect. I still maintain that Christianity needs and integrates devils and Satan in their believe system.
You obviously know somewhere between very little and nothing at all about theology that you can characterize it as you do in your second paragraph. That may work for a certain type of medieval meditation, but there’s just a lot more to it than that. Knocking down starwmen may make you feel better, but it’s pretty beside any point worth making.
Ooh, a flame war looms. And for once it’s not me doing it.
For what it’s worth, Urban, I think you and Fnort are just not understanding each other. If I understand this correctly, you are taking him to mean that theologians haven’t put a lot of thought into their positions, whereas I think he actually means it doesn’t matter whether there is careful thought in them or not because the whole exercise is pointless.
If I have you both right, then I agree with him. It’s like making mud pies. You can make it your life’s work to create the most exquisite and perfect mud pies imaginable, each one the culmination of the best effort and craft you can bring to bear, but at the end of it all they’re still just mud pies.
Thank you, Dwasifar, for your insight and interpretation. For my part, you are correct.
A few points: (1) The supernatural is imaginary, thus any effort to clarify, explain, apologize, or delineate its nature or the beings it comprises is at best silly, even if (or because) the apologist is learned, authoritative, skillful, powerful, or holy. (2) I must dismiss church writings, catechisms, and other scholarship on the supernatural that exists outside of scripture as mere fan fiction–specious, self-serving, and pointless. (3) My original statement: “Satan, for instance, is critical to a comprehensive Christian religious philosophy,” still stands. The devil is raison d’être of Christianity–there would be no Christ, no prophesy to fulfill, no redemption, and no requirement for Christianity without the fall, original sin, and Satan.
Fan fiction — that’s a good word for it, mind if I steal it? Someone once described the genre whose best-known example is the Revelation of St. John as antique SF/F.
I take your point that there would be no show without Satan in the Garden, though we should note that most of what christians think they know about Satan is from John Milton, who is quite uncanonical.
Urban was thinking more about the role of Satan in the daily life of the believer, and there he is quite right — much Protestantism is dualistic rather than monotheistic. In some churches, being a christian even seems like rooting for the underdog.
I’m not sure about this, but I think I have been told that Eastern Orthodoxy is even less dualistic than Roman Catholicism, let alone American protestantism. In Orthodoxy, Christ is absolutely Da Boss — they don’t show him on the cross, only as the heavenly judge — and Satan hardly gets a look-in. Urban?
“I take your point that there would be no show without Satan in the Garden, though we should note that most of what christians think they know about Satan is from John Milton, who is quite uncanonical.”
A quick re-read of the germane passages in Genesis confirmed my understanding that indeed there is no Satan in the Garden of Eden, rather a serpent. I note further that there is no “fall of man” in Genesis. The fall comes from Plato, also quite noncanonical.
Indeed the earliest canonical mention of Satan is in the Book of Job. But there Satan is hardly a powerful Prince of Darkness, his role as God’s adversary is closer to Hamilton Burger contra Perry Mason in the old TV show, except that Satan is on much friendlier terms with God than the two rival TV attorneys ever were with each other.
My point? This Satan business is not ab ovum, rather later accretion rationalized back into scripture. So how could it be essential?
As for your assertions of superstition, Mr. F., I have a question. Do you believe in the existence of other minds or are you alone in the universe? Since real solipsism is extremely rare, and a real solipsist wouldn’t bother reading blogs, much less commenting on them, I will assume that you do believe in the reality of other minds, that they are not products of your imagination. But you can’t prove it. Yet you cling to this superstition even as you ridicule the superstitions of others. How do you explain this contradiction?
Well, Mr. Fortner was talking about “Christianity” as a system, and I assume that the serpent of Eden was identified with the Satan of Job — and with the “adversary like a roaring lion” mentioned by Jesus, also with “the devil and his angels” — at a very early date. The theology of the Fall is in Romans, although it doesn’t use the word. (What, by the way, was Plato’s Fall? Not the one in the Symposium, I take it.) We ought really be asking some Jews about their take on Satan, since they were there first.
I think Mr. F. has a case for the notion of the world having been mucked about by an evil player being part of core doctrine, but not necessarily so very much more.
It’s worth remembering that you have all sorts of wicked beings in at least popular oriental religions. “The devil made me do it” is probably an ineradicable meme in the human mind. Who wants to blame himself?
Urban, perhaps the belief in other minds is not a superstition at all, at least not in the way that a belief in a god is a superstition. The essential difference is that for all practical purposes, the existence of other minds (inter alia) is indistinguishable from my hallucination of other minds, while the existence of a god is posited without evidence. To clarify, whether you are real or you are a phantom, the you I perceive acts as real, whereas to the best of my ability to detect unambiguously, gods do not act (i.e., do not do anything that I can perceive). The real/imaginary you thinks, writes, replies, engages me–whether a figment of my imagination or in the flesh. Conversely, various acts attributed to a god are superstitiously applied without foundation. Those who believe have named their ignorance “God”. Absent a Keanu Reeves, I may be stuck in a “matrix” yet I will never be able to know this, so mox nix. On the other hand, if I imagine a god to account for things I don’t understand, then this is superstition. In sum, one is an epistemological condition; the other a delusion.
I will continue to correspond with whomever without investigating whether my correspondent is real or imagined.
The story of the Fall, and of Original Sin, is confused at best among Christian faiths. While many people believe that baptism removes the sin from the individual, many also profess that Christ’s death (sacrifice) is essential to redeeming mankind. Regardless of which smirch is cleansed, which redemptive technique is applied, and which theologian explains it, the instigator is the devil, or Satan. Without Satan’s felicitous act of deception and subversion of the first couple, there is no Christianity.
I think, if Urban has not tired of this thread yet, that he is about to reiterate that Genesis mentions a serpent, not Satan.
Personally, I think either one is problematical for an all-powerful god. Either a snake can slip past his omniscient eye, or the devil can, and in any case Adam and Eve can. Not very impressive. A rent-a-cop watching camera monitors could do better.
“Urban, perhaps the belief in other minds is not a superstition at all, at least not in the way that a belief in a god is a superstition.”
One man’s superstitiomn is another man’s warranted set of assumptions that are so self evident that they require no demonstration. All such closed systems look coherent from the inside. They would. Wouldn’t they? To a rattlesnake handling, poison from fruit jar swilling charismatic it all makes perfect sense.
I prefer to face my superstitions more directly. I embrace the notion that there are other minds because I would be intolerably lonely were I alone. I’ll never get to find out, but I suspect I would tire of my imaginary friends and faux adventures quickly. It is congenial for a social creature such myself to have others. Yes, hell is other people. But heaven is other people too. I’m comfortable with that state of affairs. And yes I believe that the universe is arranged for my psychological comfort and convenience. Therefore other minds exist. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
“What, by the way, was Plato’s Fall? Not the one in the Symposium, I take it.”
The fall is woven into many dialogues in one way or another. Yes it’s all over The Symposium. And just think of the symbolism of ‘up’ and ‘down’ developed throughout The Republic, most famously moving up out of the cave towards the sun and perfect knowledge. It starts with the very first line, “Down I went to Piraeus….”
But “The Fall” comes directly into Christianity from The Timaeus, the only dialogue known to the Latin West for many centuries. It’s an odd dialogue, very Unplatonic in many ways. Not a personal favorite. But it proved a very rich source of ready made metaphysics for the early Christian theologians to adapt and adopt.
“A rent-a-cop watching camera monitors could do better. ”
Correct, Dwasifar. It must be very difficult being a fundamentalist. I would find literalism so exhausting! The energy they must expend performing the mental gymnastics involved in finessing the thousands upon thousands of “apparent contradictions”. It’s so much easier just to accept that there are different literary modalities in this complex patchwork of redaction drawn from multiple traditions and move on.
I like the so-called ‘Problem of Innocent Suffering Trilemma’: all knowing, all wise, all powerful god who could create any world it wanted to; compassionate and loving god who cares about you and I; the prevalence of innocent suffering. How can all three possibly be true? Calvin cut off the third horn. There is no innocence. Hume shaved off the middle horn. If there is a god it is certainly not on our side. I slice off the first and the second entirely. There is no god, whether loving, omnipotent, and wise, or stupid, bungling, petty and spiteful. There is only innocent suffering. The Buddha was right. William of Occam would approve.
But the dualist answer, although unnecessarily complexicated from the perspective of my own solution, is emminently rational. There are two gods, one good and one evil who struggle with each other. The underlying idea, that polar binaries have explanatory value is extremely widely distributed and very, very old. Yin and Yang. Empedocles’ competing forces of ‘love’ and ‘strife’ and many similar variations on ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’, both scientific and mystical. Vedic cycles of creation and destruction. It just goes on and on.
Maybe the devil, in that extended sense, DID make me do it!
Schopenhauer’s answer to people who find a balance between good and evil was to ask whether one animal’s gustatory pleasure in eating another animal alive was balanced by the second animal’s pain and terror at being eaten.
The fall is woven into many dialogues in one way or another. Yes it’s all over The Symposium. And just think of the symbolism of ‘up’ and ‘down’ developed throughout The Republic, most famously moving up out of the cave towards the sun and perfect knowledge. It starts with the very first line, “Down I went to Piraeus….”
So Piraeus is ontologically inferior? I guess Plato didn’t eat fish, then. I wonder if you are not applying too medieval an exegetic style here.
“So Piraeus is ontologically inferior?”
I think Plato’s point is that Piraeus is a center of commerce and trade, full of foreigners whose presence opens the door for the Sophists, as well as the democratic stronghold of Attica. When Socrates and Glaucon try to leave Piraeus after the festival they are prevented from going back up to Athens because they are outnumbered, a sly reference to mob rule.
I don’t see why it is medieval to notice a pattern of symbolic ‘up’s and ‘down’s that illustrate one of the book’s major themes and interlock with the others. Once you notice the pattern it starts to jump out at you.
The ‘up-down’ pattern is simply everywhere in the Republic. Think of the Myth of Gyges. A chasm (cave?) opens up in the earth and Gyges goes ‘down’ into it where he finds a hollow (Trojan?) horse made out of bronze. These are not incidental details. In this context ‘bronze’ means something which will be explained in a few chapters. That Gyges will adopt a wicked Homeric ethos is prefigured by the hollow horse. That nothing good will come from Gyges’ descent is contained in the very set up for the narrative, by the simple fact that he goes goes ‘down’.
Plato is too great a poet to set up something so simplistic as: up means ontologically superior; down means ontologically inferior. They do mean that, but so much more as well. Plato’s going for all the marbles, a grand unity. That he fails doesn’t take anything away from the literary achievement.
OK, you’ve made a sale