timeimmortal

Barefoot flatters me too greatly, initially, in his latest posting; I’m hardly deserving of the term “most intelligent, literate, philosophically astute theist”, except perhaps the part in which I am described as a theist. Methinks my debate partner needs to spend more time in the library and archives of the Vatican website, as there are much more literate and reasoned works there than I could ever hope to produce. I would also suggest a visit to New Advent, where among many other delights can be found the full English-language text of the Summa Theologica.

Which, interestingly, brings me back to Fides et ratio and the first major essay I devoted to our discussion. Barefoot seems to have completely abandoned that from consideration, which I can not count as a credit to him. Overall, in all other things, he’s been fair and articulate…and I do hope that this was just oversight.

But for the moment, no matter. On to things, then, that do matter.

They’re not “rococo” he says, just elaborate, multi-layered, arbitrary and entirely unnecessary. Oops, my bad.

Firstly, a lesson for a lesson. Mr. Bum rightly pointed out to me some of the finer points of web etiquette, and so in turn I must offer a similar lesson in citation etiquette: don’t accuse the other person of things they did not say. While I conceded then, and do again now, that theological epistemology is more elaborate and multi-layered than something as relatively crisp and concise as the scientific method, I did not call it “arbitrary” or “entirely unnecessary”.

Those last terms are Mr. Bum’s own inventions, although their inclusion in his not-quite-quotation of me is interesting in that it tips his own hand a bit prematurely. In a sense, we could end our discussion on that note alone, since while I’m more than willing to indulge his own analytical methods (which, being educated in the sciences myself, I fully understand the value and necessity of) and yet cannot count on him to indulge any of my methodologies with a similarly open mind.

Which is, I confess, a pity…more so, because the same terms are used as sniping remarks at varying points in his essay. I can acknowledge the attempt to be pejorative and recognize it, and it’s fun. But it’s also, ultimately, not all that constructive, nor is it particularly conducive to rational discussion (or the continuation thereof).

Actually, overall, the tone of his entire article is mocking, which I regret. He accuses me of “not actually [giving] any real principles, just arbitrary, subjective preferences hardly better than flipping a coin.” I suppose I can see where he’s coming from, and were I to reject all epistemic systems I do not currently accept as valid as a matter of course without the slightest thought that my own assumptions on that issue may be incorrect, I’d probably reject everything I just said in the last major essay as irrelevant coin-tossing as well.

Notably absent in Barefoot’s own posting, though, is any substantiative, consensus-driven, non-abritrary “meat” of the argument. When he’s not mocking me he’s…not…saying much else, really.

But be that as it may, let’s continue.

Firstly, a confession of sorts. I did, in fact, write the following:

The first step, then, in religious epistemology is to isolate and consider only one religion at a time, at least at first. … Which one is considered is not so important at this point, although it will become more relevant in a while.

…and then promptly did not get on to the “while” portion of the discussion, an oversight I can only blame on a lack of a proof-read. I do, at the end of my more recent essay, briefly note the following:

And I have not addressed all issues in this posting — the issue, for example, of which religion (if any) is more correct than any other has not been addressed herein (although the careful reader of the site will know that I have attempted, in the past, to discuss this issue, and that aspects of that discussion appear in other articles on the site here).

That’s kind of a mea culpa, and kind of a dismissal of the discussion of which Scripture to consider. The essay had already gotten quite long, and I trust the reader will forgive my desire not to extend it unduly (it was already well past the limits of normal human endurance in its length). I have discussed issues relating to the particular validity of certain Scriptural canons, and the invalidity of others, in the past, and the reader will find some samples of those writings on the site at present. The rest will have to wait, unfortunately, until I finish tweaking the code I’m working on to more effortlessly port Mambo database entries over to the Wordpress database format.

So, where to start in responding to Barefoot? To be sure, I’m not sure at all. I suppose I could get into a historical quibble, or I suppose I could correct Barefoot’s mis-reading of my statement on why one can safely reject the Protestant canon of Scripture. That latter error is based on a misreading of exactly one phrase that I used, “religious fervor”. My point there was simply to note that in the grand scheme of things, the reason Luther wanted to use the reduced canon is that the expanded canon did not fit his personal theology — for the same reason, he tried to excise James and Revelation from the New Testament.

Luther had his points to make, and he made them well, but he also made a lot of theological errors that one doesn’t even need a heavy amount of Scriptural epistemology to refute; the plain text of the Bible is sufficient in and of itself for that role. My point was that Luther’s rejection of the expanded canon of the Septuagint was for purely political reasons, as opposed to having some reasoning grounded in religious faith or spiritual inspiration.

This stands in sharp contrast, then, to Barefoot’s “counter”-example of the First Council of Nicaea, which — though it did have political dimensions — was convened primarily to address issues of faith; indeed, the lasting legacy of that Council was the promulgation of a creed that is still uttered as a declaration of faith by millions of Catholic faithful every week. I don’t deny that there has often been a political dimension to Catholicism as well, but my point in rejecting the condensed canon that Protestants tend to use in their Bibles was simply to point out that the adoption of the reduced canon was driven by pettiness and error, and was purely political. Faith didn’t really enter into it.

My goodness, but semantic hangups do seem to cripple so many people.

What follows after that point is more needless sniping, with little actual quality content, although I might point out that I would have expected Barefoot to be a little more…open to the idea that there are more ways to interpret Scripture than just assuming that it’s either all meant to be taken literally or not meant to be taken literally at all.

That’s a dichotomy that I both reject and refuse to perpetuate.

Anyhow, after he’s done being snippy, Barefoot goes on to remark thusly:

It’s certainly true that “both Scripture and science can be fully reconciled to each other in all important matters.” It’s trivially easy if you look at scripture as a purely human literary endeavor. It gets a little more problematic when you start talking about things like the resurrection of the dead, virgin births, the sun standing still in the sky, and the like.

I’m just going to go out on a limb and suggest that, much like my stance on the whole apparent abiogenetic process by which non-living proteins coalesced into the first living organisms, my own view of things like resurrection and virginal birth is considerably more “sanguine” than his is. Be that as it may. On the issue of the sun standing still, I’m willing to put that down in the “less than literal” category, and I suppose I’m “sanguine” about that as well. Be that as it may, as well.

I suppose I could approach the issue from a much more close-minded perspective and deny that any of it was possible, but of course that would make the whole “being a Catholic” thing a bit more problematic. I suppose, to the non-religious, such things seem to be trivial considerations.

Barefoot goes on to remark about my mention of Francis Bacon and the Message-Incident principle:

But this is pure double-talk. The idea that there can be a single “message” apart from the literal text (even the idea that the literal text can be univocal) ignores a century of linguistics, philology and analytic philosophy. This “principle” allows the reader to arbitrarily change the meaning of the literal text to extract a “message” from it.

I’m almost — almost — tempted to ask Barefoot to propose a better suggestion, but I suppose I don’t need to (and anyway, why open the door to another snide remark?). I’ll concede, readily, that the idea that there is but a single message apart from the literal text was not immediately implied by what I wrote (except by my use of the phrase “separate the message”, as opposed to “separate the messages” — see my above on semantic hangups.

But even if a particular passage of text can have multiple messages that we might derive from it, does that render our method invalid? Or, in a process analogous to the way in which we may have to alter the parameters of the experiment to adjust for unexpected results in the science lab, does this possibility of multiple messages mean that we have to adjust our analytical style a bit more and then keep going? It’s said that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy…and likewise, it’s been my experience that no theoretical methodology survives first contact with its real-world implementation.

One could be dishonest in using the Message-Incident principle, twisting the “message” of the text to suit whatever particular end one wants. But then, a scientist can distort his results to fit a pre-determined conclusion. That has happened before, often, and recently. So what? All this goes to show is that honesty is a pre-requisite of any epistemic method, scientific or theological.

I gladly acknowledge that there are multiple messages to be derived from the same passage of Scripture — indeed, I think that’s part of the Spirit’s wonderful design. But here’s where it gets really interesting: we can extract multiple messages from the same piece of text, but a lot of the time they are complementary, rather than contradictory, messages.

Which really just means, of course, that the Spirit has buried a lot of teaching into a comparatively small amount of text. Again, this ought not to come as a surprise, any more than it should come as a surprise that we can glean a few different meanings from poetry or music.

Barefoot finishes thusly:

He does go on to compare religion not to epistemology but to art. Well, art consists pretty much of making shit up. As a metaphor for religion, I can’t find much to argue there. But at least artists don’t go around making shit up and then calling it true.

Not all art is making shit up, though — much of art is about the portrayal after the fact of actual events in history, and the portrayal of wondrous things. Now, as a metaphor for religion, that also is not bad. Truth be told, this was the most heartbreaking passage to read; I had honestly hoped for a bit more reasoned discussion, and instead I got…sniping and snide remarks.

Which leaves me with a difficult decision to make, although it became somewhat easier after my fiancé called to ask about our plans for tomorrow. My emotions creep readily into my voice, and although I managed to keep our phone call on topic, she could tell something was troubling me. And indeed, something was.

I remembered something another commentator said:

The Barefoot Bum is a take-no-prisoners troll. He starts out civil enough, but has a pattern of soon latching onto blogs with which he disagrees and loading them with invective. Be cautious.

And I’ve decided that we’ve hit that wall. Oh, I’m not calling Barefoot a troll, although he has become the most consistent presence on this site. And he’s only just getting to the point where the invective is beginning to take over and substitute itself for rational arguments and civil discourse. But the point is that it’s starting.

And I don’t need that.

I was genuinely, honestly disheartened when I read what he had to say, not because I think he’s said anything substantial that has completely thrown theistic arguments into tatters, but because he didn’t say…anything, really. All he really had to offer in this latest outing was some sniping and a bit of foul language. And if that’s what our discussion has become, I want no part in it. Substantiative amounts of the text I have written and cited remain unaddressed, and he could have seen fit to comment on any of these.

But instead he chose to put words in my mouth, swear, and snipe. And to be perfectly honest, our discussion cannot progress further anyhow, until he’s willing to be a bit more open-minded about alternative forms of epistemology, and a bit less demanding of scientific rigidity and precision in those alternative epistemic systems. Until and unless that happens, at best all he and I will be able to do at this point is talk past each other.

Or start being snippy with each other, as he as now done.

So I’m done, and this discussion is over. And I’ve finally seen fit to ban someone from the comments form, using a few different keywords and phrases that the site has reported to me whenever Barefoot has left a comment here.

However, I’m also willing to keep a very Catholic attitude about all of this. I haven’t banned Barefoot from the contact form, and if he wants to apologize and offer some manner of contrition, I’ll gladly resume what has been, until now, an academically and intellectually engaging discussion. Until and unless that happens, though, I’ll be enjoying greener pastures of discussion.

~ by Kenneth on June 28, 2007.