The Riddle of The Sphinx

"It chanced that the face was toward me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile  on its lips. It was greatly weather worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease." The Time Machine by H. G. Wells 

 I once watched a lecture by historian Tom Holland where he expressed his view that Western culture is saturated in Christian values, even when it is at its most secular. He contrasted these values with those of the classical world of pre-New Testament civilizations such as Greece and Rome. Western secularism thinks of itself as having outgrown the "superstitious" beliefs of core Christianity, beliefs which affirm Jesus as a co-equal member of the Trinity & the Resurrected Savior of a humankind mired in Sin. But according to Holland even in the absence of this supernatural kernel, faith in Christ's teaching about humanity's moral duties still informs Western thinking. 

In a similar vein I was intrigued to see an article in the June 2022 edition of Premier Christianity magazine by a Glen Scrivener. In this article Scrivener picks up on a theme similar to Holland's and runs with it; in fact he has written a book on the subject called "The Air We Breathe", the same title of his Christianity article. The book got a good review in the same copy of Christianity. 

In his article Scrivener lists the values of equality, compassion, consent, science, freedom and progress as ostensibly an axiomatic part of Western moral mores. These mores all have their roots in what he calls "The Jesus Revolution". Above all, concern for the poor, the weak and the victimized, a stance which at least gets lip-service in Western humanist thought, was very much part of Christ's teachings.   

However, we should bear in mind that there was a long gestation-period before these Christian values  surfaced substantially into social discourse and subverted the status quo.  It was only during the slow demise of the aristocracy and serfdom that we start hearing that familiar "freedom and human rights" language (e.g. The 1381 peasants revolt) and see a drive to advance science (e.g. Francis Bacon). But having said that we nevertheless find Christian values embedded in Western history going a long way back before the peasants revolt and Bacon: That very peculiar tendency of Christianity to glorify courage and service in the face of vulnerability was there all along: e.g. Many of the churches of Norwich celebrate martyrs who like Jesus himself submitted themselves to those who would kill them for their faith. Examples  are  St, Edmund, St. Peter, St. Clement, St. Laurence, St Stephen and St John all of whom have at least one ancient church in Norwich memorializing their life and heroic deaths. A sacrificial life is the epitome of heroism in the Christian play book and these churches glorifying sacrifice come right out of the depths of the aristocratic middle ages. Christ's teaching had so sunk into the consciousness of the war-like Germanic tribes of Angles, Saxons, Danes and Normans et. al. that they started to perceive a romantic heroism in a life of serene vulnerability.***

Humanly speaking it's a strange paradox that Christianity celebrated submission unto death  This was surely a revolution and an inversion of the old might is right ethos that dominated civilizations such as Egypt, Assyria and Rome; these civilizations glorified, above all, victory in war and in the building of empires, their despotic rulers claiming a large slice of the glory. Set that against Philippians 2:1-11

But when contemplating Holland's and Scrivener's theses we should also bear in mind that many latter day interpretations of Christianity are regressive and repressive and have become the receptacles of ugly attitudes and false beliefs such as European empire building, fundamentalism, brutal certitudes, anti-science thinking, young earthism, flat earthism, fideism, gnosticism, heavy shepherding, spiritual intimidation & abuse, demagogic leaders, conspiracy theorism, Christian dominionism and the like. Our understanding of the effects of "The Jesus Revolution" must have built-in qualifiers: Typically of the human predicament, progress is a backwards and forwards motion, a zigzagging to and fro somewhere between the good, the bad and the ugly.

But then Christianity itself has an explanation for this very mixed picture: Human beings, Christian and otherwise are moral shades of grey and always face the challenges and uncertainties of an imperfect epistemology: But that's why Christ came; He came to not only reveal Himself but to also save us from the ultimate consequences of human sin. But without that supernatural centre around which those important values of humility, serenity, meekness and service orbit, the way to hell is paved with good intentions: The French revolution and Marxism all made claim to laudable Christian humanist values about liberty, fraternity and equality but human beings are apt to corrupt those values beyond recognition. As Sir Kenneth Clark said in an episode of his epic "Civilization"* series, the leaders of the French revolution....

              ....suffered from the most terrible of all delusions: They believed themselves to be virtuous. 

...and may I add believed themselves to be the sole supplier of veracity, the only truth tellers. Such attitudes, it seems, can be found among those with triumphalist visions of utter certitude: From Marxists, through Christian sects, to Islamic fundamentalists** they see themselves as the last word for mankind,  But Scrivener, as a good Christian should be, is well aware of the failings that also plague churches: "I could go on. Criticisms of the church abound and many of them are entirely valid", he says. But he then says that such criticisms are actually using Christ's moral compass as the standard against which a flawed church is measured.  I feel that Scrivener and Holland are very much on the right track.....Christianity has had a very humanizing effect on us very flawed humans. Christ's teachings not only act like salt & light halting the rot somewhat but also, in places, reverses that rot. 

Finally, I would like to draw attention to one very profound observation that Scrivener makes. Viz:

The deepest clash between "belief" and a purely secular worldview does not occur between Christians and non-Christians. It occurs within the Western secularist, because the secularist is a believer too. They navigate their life by roughly the same stars we do - equality, compassion, consent and so on. On a daily basis, they walk according to these convictions, and yet as they look up to such supernatural values they insist that they are standing on purely natural ground. They claim to have a (practically) atheist account of the world, even as they live by (basically) Christian assumptions. 

Scrivener then goes on to make further observations that I would identify as the secular paradox: Viz: Christ's teachings so obviously give meaning and purpose to life and yet when they are seen through the lens of a purely secular interpretation of the cosmic perspective there seems to be an overwhelming disconnect: Where do those Western moral values we aspire to come from given the wider context of what to the secularist looks to be at first sight a huge impersonal universe apparently guided only by a ruthless survival ethic and which will eventually end in oblivion? There is an apparent mismatch of incommensurables here more stultify than the mismatch between gravitational theory and quantum mechanics.  Atheism teeters on the brink of the nihilist abyss..... This is the Riddle of the Sphinx for today's secular milieu.

Footnotes

* See the episode "The Fallacies of Hope"

** Critical Theory, which tries to trace (all?) human problems back to the observable conditions of the cultural, economic and political milieu, is likely to fall short of the mark if it fails to acknowledge that individuals, which are the seat of the first person conscious perspective, will naturally enough be tempted to look after self first under any circumstances.

*** It is possible that other religious leaders at one time or another preached similar values, but it seems that it is Jesus who is the almost exclusive source of these values in the modern world.

New Ager Capitalizes on Spiritual Thirst and Disaffection with the Science Establishment

The false assumptions of science according to New Ager Gregg Braden
Personally I don't know what he's talking about. 

This post fits into my series on New-Ageism of which there have only been two other posts so far. That is:

https://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/whats-gone-wrong.html

http://quantumnonlinearity.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/new-agers-and-fundamentalists.html

The above picture was posted on Facebook by my New Age friend I identified as "Frank Saucepan" in the first of the above links. It appears that he had photographed his screen whilst looking at the website of a New Age guru (More about him later). Frank's accompanying comment to the above picture was:

I trust science to keep me in a safe plane, heat my house and let me communicate via a telephone.

When I was at school 20 years ago these 5 assumptions were taught as scientific fact- now disproved

This is why I don't trust science for the more mystical questions of life - it fails

What I think Frank is trying to tell us is that although he trusts science when it comes to putting his life in its hands when he flies he nevertheless feels let down, even lied to, by established science's failure to address his spiritual need for meaning, purpose and sacred mystery.

But Frank is inconsistent. Frank has a history of interest in conspiracy theorism and as my first link above shows, the flat earth conspiracy theory is something that has attracted him. It seems, therefore, he has ambivalent feelings toward science. On the one hand he trusts science when he uses an aircraft, a technology that necessarily, by the way, depends on the global model of the Earth and yet on the other hand he distrusts science's spherical Earth theory. This model, in fact, ties into a coherent intelligible whole a myriad evidences. Some of those evidences are even apparent to the man in the street if he cares to look; from views across the sea to celestial observations. But the trouble is that the global model, except for the minority that journey a long way into space, cannot be taken in with one sweep of the eye: For the Earth bound the evidences of the global model are joined together by what to the suspicious science-alienated laymen can appear as beguiling, convoluted and complex logic.

I could take Frank in hand and say, "Look Frank, what quantified sense to do you make of these evidences?".  But I may as well go herding cats and than channel Frank's thoughts into a rigorous scientific line of inquiry. He wants clear and obvious answers: He will simply say "Spherical Earth? Show it to me!" And I can't do that without reference to the data provided by various scientific authorities, authorities he would distrust. Moreover, he would probably have little patience in being guided through the logic which links all this data into a coherent and elegant whole; to him it could all be sleight of hand with me as a stooge whose mind has been manipulated by the Illuminati.

It is striking how similar all this is to Christian fundamentalist diffidence toward science and  like Frank these fundamentalists have ambivalent feelings about society's scientific authorities. On the one hand they oppose so many conclusions of science and on the other hand they don't want to look like anti-intellectual rubes. So they invent the distinction between "observational" science and "historical science"; the former they think of as rigorous & respectable evidence based science whereas the latter is regarded as dubious speculative science based on presuppositions driven by an a priori worldview, perhaps even a product of a conspiracy. Certainly, the Christian fundamentalist flat earthers have to resort to conspiracy theorism as part and parcel with their theory of cosmology.

But as I have said before all science is at once both observational & historical, and non-trivial scientific objects seldom, if ever, classify as directly observational.  This is really far too subtle a point for the average fundamentalist who is looking for a pretext to do away with science which contradicts his world view fundamentalism. (I've posted on this subject many times before. See here for example)

***

The screen shot above actually comes from a New Ager called Gregg Braden. It is clear that he has set up a straw man that he can then knock down in front of his gullible fans. Let me comment on each point:

1. Evolution: explains life/human life. Evolution, in its most basic sense of being natural history, that is a history of change,  is "settled science" although just what mechanism drives evolution is not quite so settled - see here, here and here. So exactly what concept of evolution is Braden claiming to be false? 

2. Civilization began about 5000 years ago: In as much as this idea is the best construction that can be placed on the evidence it still holds good in my opinion. Both written history and archaeology point in this direction. However, I have always had a reservation at the back of my mind that perhaps the end of the ice age flooded continental shelves which hosted civilized societies - although if the continental shelves did host such societies they weren't big enough and/or civilized enough to leave a strong global trace in the archaeological and historical records.

3. Consciousness is separate from the physical world. This seems to be an allusion to the so-called "ghost-in-the-machine", a concept that  isn't readily testable and so not likely to classify as the object of formal science. If anything I would have said that scientific opinion and especially philosophical opinions attached to scientific culture are rather diffident about such an idea. In fact I myself have long since come to the conclusion that consciousness cannot be divorced from some kind of material nexus which expresses it. So Braden seems to have got this wrong; science doesn't dogmatically teach a clear distinction between consciousness and the physical world.  The jury seems to be out on this one. 

4.The space between things is empty: My scientific background has never lead me to this view. Initially, in geometry, space was taken to be a set of relations between points, relations that had all sorts of interesting mathematical properties; that hardly classifies as "empty" to my mind. And of course since the advent of quantum  mechanics space seems anything but empty! So once again I don't know what Braden is talking about. It's just a straw man. 

5. Nature is based on the survival of the strongest. If you modify this statement to include something to the effect that "Nature is based on the survival of the luckiest" then Braden's accusation might be approximately right! But therein lies the rub: It is this kind of statement which spiritual (wo)man finds difficult to swallow because it seems to entail an empty, meaningless, purposeless world teetering on the edge of the nihilistic chasm.  To many people this seems morally repugnant and so it is no surprise that those who offer spiritual hope get a hearing.

***

It is true that the modern cosmological picture is a big intellectual challenge to those (like myself) who wish to make anthropic sense and purpose of the cosmos (but I find it a welcome challenge because I like mysteries).  New Agers and Fundamentalists are trying to do this in their inimitable, emphatic and suave way, devoid of self-doubt as they exploit disaffection with the scientific establishment. They attempt to give reality a spiritual gloss and if science gets in their way then so much the worse for science.

It is ironic that New Agers and Christian Fundies have so much in common. Whimsical it may be but it is appropriate, then, that Gregg Braden has a passing resemblance to Christian fundamentalist Ray Comfort! As a Christian myself, however, I can understand the appeal of both: They head up a reaction against the current scientific establishment which either leaves one with a sense of abandonment at the edge of thecosmos, facing an existential crisis and postmodern nihilism or having to interpret life with a teeth gritting atheism determined to make the best of a bad job. 

Is it just me or does Gregg Braden bear a resemblance to Ray Comfort?
Suave and persuasive they lead their flocks into spiritual vistas