A brief conversation on the miraculous

In class, we’ve been talking about NDEs. Perhaps one of the most fundamental questions that can be asked about them is this: “Are NDEs even possible?” Is there something after we die? Something miraculous, even? Is it ever reasonable to believe in the miraculous? David Hume would say almost never, but what did he know anyways?

Perhaps a deeper question is, what do we base plausibility off of? All of the beliefs we hold depend on some prior beliefs, and no matter how well thought-out our beliefs are, they all ultimately rest on assumptions. Some assumptions might be more reasonable than others, but they are assumptions nevertheless. This is not necessarily good or bad, it just is, but it is crucial that we at least recognize this.

Our underlying assumptions and foundational beliefs are what make up our background beliefs, which influence most of what we think about. So how does this relate to the miraculous? Our background beliefs are what guide us when we are deciding whether something is plausible or not, even before testimony is given. In the case of David Hume, his background beliefs about reality lead him to discount divine intervention as a legitimate reason for events, even before hearing any particular story. 

To illustrate this matter further, let’s consider two fictitious stories.

I am sitting in Philosophy & Christianity with Rajah and Sarah. For some reason or other, I was on time and Randy is running a few minutes late. He arrives, and informs us that it is snowing outside. I am inclined to believe this, because it is January and the forecast predicted snow. I believe Randy, even though it was not snowing when I walked to class. The fact that it is snowing is probable even without Randy’s account, and my background beliefs about January in Iowa are enough to overcome the fact that I did not witness the alleged event.

In church, a man tells of a time when he was driving through the Mojave. He says he ran out of gas in the middle of the desert, but he prayed that God would keep his car running without gas. The man says God answered his prayer, and he drove for 30 miles with no gas in his tank. Now, two major background beliefs are coming into play here. First there is my background belief about how engines work. They don’t run without gas, plain and simple. However, the man also made a claim about God. What I think about the possibility, frequency and type of intervention God makes in the world will ultimately affect whether I deem the account to be true or false, and there are many possibilities here. The man could be telling the truth, lying, insane, self-deceiving or honestly mistaken, but my background beliefs are what determine the plausibility of the account before testimony is given.

In conclusion, when thinking about the miraculous, it is important to consider background beliefs. They are unavoidable and intimately connected to how much plausibility is given to miracle claims. Some may completely rule out the possibility for the miraculous, while others might irrationally offer divine intervention as a reason for easily explicable scenarios.

Descartes' Ontological Argument

In the fifth Meditation, we meet the Ontological argument, in a form almost identical to the first put forward by Anselm in the Proslogion. In chapter two of the Proslogion, Anselm says that God is that which nothing greater can be thought, and since that which exists is better than that which does not exist, God must exist if he is the Supreme Being. Descartes arrives at it through his method of vivid and clear perception. He says that the idea of a supremely perfect God presents itself vividly and clearly to his mind. Something that is perceived as being vivid and clear is necessarily true in essence, but it is not necessarily extant outside of the mind. Descartes would point to perfect triangles and other geometric shapes as a good example of this. However, the idea of God necessitates existence, because existence is part of the very essence of a supremely perfect God. To have the idea of a non-existent God would then be an utter contradiction.

Perfect Creator, Imperfect Creature?

Up to this point, Descartes has established that he is a thinking thing, and that a supreme being, God, exists. Descartes realizes that he is not complete by himself; instead, he is a dependent being. God, as the Supreme Being, is wholly independent, possessing limitless power and knowledge and goodness. God, as the Supreme Being, while possessing the power to deceive, would not be deceptive, as the desire to deceive is a weakness. So God would not give his creatures minds that are capable of deceiving them. But there seems to be a problem with the thinking thing that God made. Descartes knows that he is capable of making errant judgments, and is often deceived. Thus a problem arises: why would a perfect God create imperfect creatures?

So many ideas...

Reading response for the Third Meditation: Explain why Descartes thinks that an idea itself cannot be false.  (This may involve saying something about what an idea is for Descartes.)  If ideas themselves cannot be mistaken, where and how does the possibility of error enter the picture?

Up to this point, Descartes has only established that he exists as a thinking thing. Now, as a thinking thing, he must think. But how can he know that the ideas that exist in his thoughts are true?  Descartes’ benchmark on the matter is that anything that he perceives vividly and clearly is true. He distinguishes two categories of ideas that he can perceive in this way: simple ideas, like mental images, and volitional ideas, like emotions, which can act upon other ideas. Both categories exist vividly and clearly in Descartes’ mind, so the ideas are true in his sense. But Descartes makes an important distinction. While the ideas themselves cannot be false as they exist in his own mind, he could make an error in judgment by attributing the cause of these ideas to something outside of his mind. While ideas could come from outside the self, it is also possible that they are innate or even invented. In this way, an idea could be true in the sense that it is present, vividly and clearly, in the mind, while one could be mistaken as to the source of that idea.

Near Death Experiences

Our conversation about heaven and hell moved away from The Great Divorce this past week, and we focused more on Near Death Experiences, or NDEs. There has been a veritable glut of books in the past decade or two of people claiming to have been to heaven or hell – or something else. Many of these people are coming from varying Christian traditions, and they want to tell us that they spent 90 Minutes in Heaven, that Heaven is for Real, or that they spent 23 Minutes in Hell.

Books by Christians on the afterlife are kind of an interesting thing to me. While the Bible talks often enough about seeing visions of God, accounts of disembodied experiences in heaven or hell are pretty much absent. There isn’t much in the Bible that leads us to believe that soul and body are two different substances, so the whole idea that people can have an out of body experience seems to be lacking Biblical support, no matter what near-death.com says. And once you hear some of the stories… Well, let’s just say I’m skeptical at best.

What compels people to write books claiming that they have had experiences in another world? There are four obvious answers. First, they actually experienced what they claim to have experienced. Second, they are lying for personal gain. Third, they could be mad. Fourth, they are mistaken. Maybe they had a vivid dream, or maybe there is some scientific explanation for the experience.

If you’ve ever read an account or someone who claims to have had a NDE, the first possibility seems pretty improbable. There are accounts of demons getting pleasure from torturing people (What happened to hell being punishment for them?), of rainbow horses, of “elevator Jesus,” and so on. Some of these things just seem unlikely; some of them fly in the face of not only reason, but what the little the Bible says the afterlife will be like.

The second claim seems likely enough for me, especially considering how popular these stories have become. There must be a few folks clever enough to watch the increasing popularity of the genre who realize that they could spin a story that people would eat up. And when looking at the literary quality of some accounts, it seems about as easy to jump into as writing romance novels. While the… captivating prose of 23 Minutes in Hell does not necessarily discount the possibility that the narrator actually experienced the things he describes, it certainly does not help his case!

The third option might be possible, but I think it would be fairly unlikely that a mad individual could get published. It’s possible, but very improbable.

The fourth option is the most interesting to me personally. I try to be gracious when considering what people have to say, and this seems like an out of sorts. It is totally possible that, after going to bed at three in the morning, the author of 23 Minutes in Hell simply had a bad dream, rather than being plunged into the literal hell as he claims. He didn’t even have a NDE. Scientific explanations have also been put forward. Studies have linked low oxygen in the brain to the “light” and “tunnel” aspects of NDE stories. There isn’t really anything that can account for the vivid details that some report, but there is certainly the possibility that a few of these options could be blended.

In the end, I am quite skeptical of NDE claims. The probability that they are true is simply quite low. And the circumstances surrounded many of these claims don’t give me much reason to really take them seriously.

Descartes - "I think, therefore I am"

In the Second Meditation, Descartes famously states, "cogito ergo sum.” I think, therefore I am. This is the first foothold for him in his search for certainty. He posits that a thing that thinks must exist, and he points out that, whatever else he may be, he is a thinking thing. Therefore, he must exist.

Now, Descartes has already called into question the trustworthiness of the senses in an argument from illusion, and also that of the imagination. So how can he perceive anything? To answer this question, he considers a piece of wax. He realizes that he is using his senses to detect it, but also acknowledges that, without thinking, his senses give him nothing but disjuncted images. How is it that he can identify a piece of wax in solid and liquid states, and in any shape? Is it his imagination? Descartes says no, because there are an unimaginable number of configurations. The body has failed to give a clear idea of what the wax is. What, then, can illuminate what the wax is?

Descartes says it is the light of the mind. He concedes that the wax may not actually exist externally, that it might be a figment of his imagination. But the act of scrutinizing the wax with his intellect goes beyond sense perception and imagination. It gives him the truest knowledge of the wax. It is only through the intellect that he can understand what the wax is. And in this act of understanding by way of the intellect, Descartes can be sure that he himself exists.

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door

Or, in the case of our travelers in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, it’s a dangerous business stepping onto the omnibus that will take them into the Valley of the Shadow of Life. Good can have a sort of Terrible quality to it. A Terrible Good, as our friend Charles Williams says, is perhaps exactly what we might expect.

Overall, I think the book is addressing not only heaven and hell, but also God’s goodness. There seems to be an elephant in the room that American evangelicals are finally recognizing. How on earth (bad word choice?) could some people end up in hell if God is all-good and all-powerful? If Christianity boils down to “accepting Jesus,” what happens to all of the people that never had a chance? Why shouldn’t God bestow his grace upon them? And what about those who have “accepted Jesus,” but failed to actually accept Him? Can their salvation be denied, or are they themselves capable of denying it even as they cry, “Lord, Lord?” If we have a choice to become who we are in Christ, doesn’t that imply that we have a choice to withdraw into ourselves as well? Obviously there are more questions than this, but let’s continue on.

I find two things to be striking in The Great Divorce, as far as structure goes. First, a good deal of the book is made up of overheard conversations between “ghosts,” the remaining fragments of people, and their magnificent, resurrected (fully realized?) friends or family. It is apparent that Lewis is the one listening in, himself a ghost.

Second, Lewis, while explicitly telling us in multiple places not to take any descriptions of the afterlife as literal by any stretch of the imagination, nevertheless employs many scenes in which he uses his imagined (dreamt up?) ideas of what some aspects of heaven or hell might be like. We are presented with specters of half-people, solid water, unimaginably heavy apples, and stampeding unicorns. There is an interesting blend of the familiar and the fantastic.

In addition to these structural observations, a few of Lewis’s reoccurring themes and ideas appear here. Two that particularly pertain to the topic of this class are 1. The idea that everything is coming to a point and 2. Time is a lens that we mortals must look through, but God and the truest of realities exist in an ever-present now. These two ideas are quite intertwined. Lewis thinks that good and evil appear to be, and indeed become more distinct as time goes on, and not only this, but even different goods become more distinct from one another. Things become what they truly are; the past appears as it truly was. Looking at it from the perspective of time, this is a sort of eschatological view of the past. In retrospect, the identity of everyone in the ever-present now of eternity is the sum of all past choices.

With the big picture now laid out, let’s join Lewis in listening in on a few select conversations.
_______________

The Big Man

One of the first conversations we overhear is between the Big Man, an employer, and one of his employees, Len. The Big Man can’t comprehend why he, a self-described honest, hard working man, is in the Grey Town, while Len, who murdered his friend Jack, is in the High Country. He demands his rights, over and over. Len informs him that the only way forward is to give up his rights for something so much better. The Big Man is insulted; he doesn’t want any “bleeding charity,” even though the “Bleeding Charity” is the only thing that can save him. Len didn’t get what he deserved, and he informs the Big Man that he wasn’t such a good chap after all. He was uncharitable and downright nasty to not only his employees, but also to his family. The Big Man appeals to his rights. “I’m not taking any impudence from you about my private affairs.” But of course we find out that “there are no private affairs” in the end.


The Episcopal Bishop

This conversation makes me a little uneasy, probably because I see my own reflection in this man.
Here we have an interesting fellow, an Episcopal ghost who has become so consumed in thinking about God academically that he has completely lost sight of God. He has become so enamored with free inquiry that he cannot palate knowing the truth when it is offered in full certainty. The Bishop’s friend asks, “Because the Middle Ages erred in one direction, does it follow that there is no error in the opposite direction?” Does this mean that all seeking must end, though? Lewis seems to say that searching for the truth with the abstract intellect might end, but it will replaced by the thing itself. Truth will be fully experienced. As Lewis often says, desired were made to be fulfilled, and our longing for truth will be satisfied in full. In the end, the bishop does not wish to be satisfied, and he turns back from the edge of that which he claimed to seek. Lewis seems to think it is fully possible to choose hell, even while humming “City of God, how broad and far.”


The Grumble

The literary Lewis is met by none other than George Macdonald, the man he considered his greatest teacher. From here on, they are together. They come across a poor little ghost, who is incessantly grumbling to the Spirit that has come to talk to her. Lewis feels quite sorry for her. Surely, she should be alright! She is more silly than wicked, having fallen into the habit of grumbling. Macdonald says there is hope for her – if she is still a grumbler, and not a grumble. He goes on to say that the best way of understanding damnation is an approach to nothingness. Hell is chosen when the self is given up.


The Painter

Lewis and Macdonald overhear a few more ghosts before coming upon a ghostly painter, and one of his glorified contemporaries. The ghost is appalled to find out that he cannot continue making art straight away. The Spirit informs him that his problem lies in missing the point of art. “Light itself was your first love: you loved paint only as a means of telling about light.” There is a danger in art, leading further and further away from this first love of what is, down through the love of telling to the petty hunger for reputation and success. We are granted the gift of seeing all art, even our own, as it truly is, without the cloud of pride or modesty obscuring its true beauty. The ghost wonders in horror, “Do you mean there are no famous men?” To which his old friend responds, “They are all famous. They are all known, remembered, recognized by the only Mind that can give a perfect judgment.” This is too much for the ghost to take in, and he heads back to hell, resolving to save art.


Mother Pam

One of the hardest conversations is between Pam and her glorified brother. Pam seems like the last person to deserve hell. Her crime seems to be that she loved her son Michael too much. But, as we find out, it was not truly love, but a corruption of it. She expected too much from Michael, and after he died, she held it over the heads of everyone, not the least being her husband and daughter. Her problem was she claimed ownership over that which was never hers in the first place. If she had learned to give up Michael, she could have truly loved him. Another one of Lewis’s reoccurring themes is voiced by Macdonald here.

"There’s something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite cold be led on. But there’s also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly… And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil."

We don’t see the end of this conversation with Pam, but this idea is clearly shown through what was seen.
_______________

There are obviously many more conversations and ideas to be explored, but I’m not going to reveal all of them. There needs to be some incentive to read the book yourself!

The birth of the Matrix

In Modern Philosophy, we have begun with the father of the movement, Descartes himself. In his Discourse on the Method, he sets forth a new sort of epistemology, a way of knowing. It is a sort of reductionism, the sort that tells us to take nothing for granted and to deconstruct everything into its smallest possible components.

In his First Meditation, Descartes sets out to call every one of his opinions into question. He presents possible outcomes and challenges in two tones, hopeful and doubtful. Painters are brought up by the doubtful voice. Descartes has called into question the reality of our perceived existence. In a scenario completely borrowed from the Matrix (I do realize the opposite is true!), he asks, “What if this is all just a dream?”

This mightn’t be such a problem, though. Descartes points out that just as a painter must refer to extant creatures when dreaming up a fantastical one, experienced reality, if it is indeed an illusion, still must refer to some further reality. Even if an artist goes so far as to imagine wholly new forms, the artist must depend on the physical properties of light and shape to give his new idea life.

Some problems are presented here. If reality cannot be distinguished via the senses, then methods of knowing based on the senses cannot be trusted. However, the simpler, more theoretical studies may still hold the key to unlocking something about actual, rather than perceived, existence. Perhaps the "useless" study of mathematics provides humanity with the only way of actually knowing something about reality.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one I was forced to take

Hello, I'm Gabe, and I am terrible at writing.

I don't necessarily mean that the words I write form incoherent thoughts (Although that is entirely possible), or even that my writing is a complete bore (Again, totally possible). Rather, I have a difficult time disciplining myself to actually do the act of writing. I just cannot sit still long enough to get the jumbled ideas in my head down on paper or into binary code.

All of this is about to change.

Well, maybe.

I recently decided to add a philosophy major in addition to my biology major. Now, I enjoy reading philosophy. I enjoy thinking about philosophy. Hell, I even enjoy talking philosophy!

Enter the Senior Thesis.

My arch-nemesis.

A class, or a rather a paper, that laughs in my undisciplined face. Oh, the horror!

And between me and this behemoth are three philosophy classes. And what wonderful, interesting classes they are! I'm lucky enough to call thinking philosophically about the natural sciences, Christianity, and the ideas of modern philosophy my job this semester.

But I believe Randy Jensen (God bless him!) has conspired with the forces of evil to dream up a totally reasonable idea: "Let us make students write!"

And write I shall. A few papers. I like a few papers. I get to think of an idea, deconstruct it, and try to make heads and tails of what it means. It's a distinct assignment. A one-shot thing, in a way.

But that is not all.

No, I have to take part in those dreadful things called... Journals.

2,000 words a week for Philosophy and Christianity.

Admittedly, significantly less for Modern Philosophy.

Remember when I said I was terrible at writing? Well, it looks like I don't have the luxury of continuing down that blessed path.

And if I'm going to write, I might as well post some of it. In my mind, it's almost a way of keeping myself accountable. You can see if I wrote anything or not. Worse, you can all see if I am completely misunderstanding Descartes or spewing nonsense about Heaven and Hell. It won't be just Randy.

Well that's all for now. My first tentative steps on this path have actually been far less painful than I was expecting. Here's to holding out hope that I may one day become something other than a terrible writer!