Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Lecture Series
Lecture 4: Challenges to Education, Part III, The Narcissistic Culture

I'm struck by the Social Media/Reality TV world in which we live. Everyone thinks his or her life is fascinating. People today are always complaining that they have so little time and yet so many have ample time to nourish an endless vapid preoccupation with emotional narrative for its own sake.

As a philosophy teacher, I'm beginning to wonder what my teaching is going to mean to the increasing numbers of narcissists in my classes. The ideas are king in my class, not personal stories about my life or the lives of my students. Frankly I think that the Trinity doctrine is fascinating (because God is fascinating) and my life compared to the central theological and philosophical ideas is like comparing the scribblings of a child to the genius of Michelangelo. The irony is not lost on me. I'm utterly enthralled with topics like the nominalist/realist discussion while my students are captivated by stories, and stories that aren't even that interesting. They like stories about how funny a movie was, or how militant their parents are, or how another celebrity cheated on his wife. If I were to stop one of my lectures and just share a story about my daughter throwing up on me they would sit at rapt attention, even if the story was utterly unrelated to anything significant.

Some of my complaint here falls into the category of, "the ravings of a cranky, middle-aged high school teacher," and I'm fine with that. But just as teens have so little interest in the things I find profoundly important, so I have little interest in their insufferable preoccupation with the dramatics of high school dating relationships or Instagram selfies. And I'm tired of the excuse that they are immature, and so I should cut them some slack. There are, of course, exceptions to this staggering shallowness, but those few don't constitute a large enough number to challenge the present generalization.

And it is not wholly, or even primarily, their fault. This is a culture that is ideally suited to the production of narcissists. As I understand the term, the modern narcissist is the sort of person so self focused that he simply cannot develop a worldview or philosophy of life. He defaults to a self-view. The world exists as a stage upon which he is the star attraction. Other people exist only as mirrors, reflecting back to him some feedback on himself. In fact, he ceases to be interested in individuals. His interaction with the outside world becomes one unbroken self defining and self promoting exercise. For the narcissist, one is either above this mass of humanity or one is subsumed into it, and the narcissist feels entitled to be above it.

The curious thing about the modern narcissist is that, as students of our culture, they have seen others rise above the mass without doing anything significant. They watch regular people become celebrities on reality shows just because they have abrasive and colorful personalities, and for no other reason. They watch others become fashion experts on entertainment programs. They amass hundreds of followers on various social media sites and write a blog (cough, cough), all because they have come to believe that what they presently are is what the whole world should notice and value. The only problem for the narcissist apparently is being noticed by the right people rather than being the right person to notice. In fact, what I just said is so abstract that the narcissist would think it both boring and unworthy of the time necessary to understand it.

And so the narcissist firmly believes that she is presently a wonder of the world, worthy of a larger share of attention. She need not study, pursue a craft, improve on a talent or be a team player to build something larger than her name or image. All of that is for the nameless, faceless nobodies of society. They may need time for training or improvement, but she is ready for primetime. Just look at how hot her selfies are.

The narcissist is not a listener. She is a commentator... on everything, because she is an expert on everything, including the things that people should or should not be experts about. Anything she doesn't know is deemed unworthy of knowing, of course. Her most devastating attack against anything uninteresting to her is to call it "boring," meaning, in most cases, things she can't understand. What to others is listening to her is only a pause in her running monologue about the world as she sees it. Every story, every idea, every metaphor in literature, every discussion of politics, movies, or any interaction with the outside world is a prompt for her to share some thrilling aspect of her life or perspective to others.

This is why the narcissist cannot understand philosophy. Philosophy has to do with thinking deeply about the nature of the world, how we come to know anything, what is real, what happens after death, what is ethically right, etc. But the narcissist already knows all of this without reference to "other people." Just raise any philosophical question and he'll tell you the answer. His emotions and intuition are sufficient to guide him wisely, and to guide you wisely. If you respond by saying that philosophers have already rejected his rather shallow ideas, he will just stare at you blankly, and up will come his devastatingly bored expression. And the conversation will be over. He need not develop a worldview because the world has shrunk to the narrow circumference of his life and experiences. Anything else is utterly irrelevant. He won't even argue with you about whether your answers are better than his. He will just yawn at you and proceed to the party, where a hundred friends writhe rhythmically to music that blares so loudly that it crushes all conversation, and people laugh at one liners while stumbling in the fog of consciousness brought on by beer, drugs and the role playing world of adolescent thought. Greatness is found there, but it is all make believe; a kind of translation back into reality of the realm of social media. It is a place to be seen and not to find love, truth, humanity or anything of substance. It is a world of walking three dimensional selfies.

The narcissist is dreadfully discontented. Eventually reality intrudes. What is the percentage of people who become even pseudo-famous (reality show famous)? Minimal at best. How many high school narcissists will actually achieve fame and fortune? Precious few! And even the ones that do, if they do so as narcissists, will have won the world and lost their souls. But what about the rest of them? Those who expected the world to rise up in ceaseless applause, and never realize this dream, come to hate the world. And why should they respond any other way? Imagine the poor pathetic narcissist in the winter of her days, having desperately attempted to be noticed only to discover that she remains insignificant, nameless, unknown to the world.

The narcissist cannot even be good at something because she obsesses about greatness. To be good is to be nothing. To be a good mother is not to be a famous mother. To be a good singer, perhaps making a modest living at it and improving one's craft, is to be nothing. To be a good writer or teacher or lawyer is not to be great, famous, noticed, and so to be good is to be insignificant, another member of the herd. If the narcissist discovers that she will never be great--that is, noticed--at something, then she will no longer bother trying to be good at that thing. Only being noticed for greatness matters. She has turned all goods into instrumental goods, in the words of Plato. She doesn't want to be a good mother because it is good in itself. She wants to be a great mother because there will be some personal payoff, some glory, that will belong to her if she works to that end.

Further, the narcissist will never view life as meaningful if it is not noticed on a grand scale. Curiously the narcissist equates meaning with attention. Attention is meaning. Name any person who was significant in your family, who substantially moved your whole family line towards civility, grace, wisdom and happiness, and then consider if they were known. If they were not known, and certainly if we don't know them now, then their lives are without meaning. This is truly how the narcissist thinks. No wonder she responds so easily to half-wit celebrities and responds with vacant eyes to the teachings of Jesus, or even Confucius.

Let us say at the end of this discussion that the quintessential opposite of the narcissist is the humble man or woman, whose life exists for glories beyond himself or herself.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Lecture Series:
Lecture 3:Challenges to Education, Part II, The Image Culture

What if our arguments incite no passionate attacks, but only yawns? In our day, it is not as if truth is a matter of controversy, igniting heated debate on both sides of an issue. One is much more likely to find people willing to summon their passion in defense of their football team rather than in defense of their worldview, if they know what a worldview is. Your views about truth are not offensive to the typical pop-culture clone; they are just boring and irrelevant.

Neil Postman wrote a controversial and ground-breaking book detailing what he believed was a cataclysmic cultural shift away from a "word culture" to an "image culture." In this lecture, we will discuss the merits of some of his ideas.

But before we get into the basic outline of his work, let's consider an important historical movement, beginning with the time of Christ. And the way we will do this is to consider a key philosophical question: Where must we go to find the truth?

Jesus' day was an "oral culture," meaning that few people had access to books. Books were expensive and tedious to create, and were usually made of the skins of animals or papyrus, a plant substance from Egypt. They were meticulously hand copied by scribes who often dedicated the whole of their lives to this science.

In Jesus' day, the answer to the question about where one can find truth was simple, "in the scribe, or prophet, or sage, etc." The medium and the message were wholly integrated in the person who knew it. So, when Jesus says, "I am the truth," he means this literally, but also as an invitation to seek the truth that is not in a book, but rather is in Him.

In 1456 a remarkable event occurred. Discovery channel listed this invention as the most important invention in the history of man: You guessed it, Gutenberg invented the first movable type printing press. Before this event, the purchase of a Bible would cost a nobleman a year's salary. After its invention, even common peasants began to have access to the text. Culture shifted from "oral dependency" on a few intellectual aristocrats to the independence that comes with the written age. In short, culture ceased to be merely oral and became a written or book culture. And a slight but significant shift occurred: The medium and message began to be separated. The scribe or the sage were no longer needed because all one needed was a book, thereby allowing ideas to become disembodied and decontextualized from the original speaker. One did not need to go to the village shaman for healing; one could go to the library. One did not need to go to Jesus because He was now confined in a book, and one could go to him at one's leisure.

The downside of this is that an encounter with truth became not only disembodied from the speaker but also freed from its context in relationships. For example, if a person wanted to know whether he should divorce or not in Jesus' oral culture, and came to Jesus for advice, he would find himself embroiled in dialogue that would leave him without the possibility of misinterpretation. In the written age, one brings his questions about divorce to the text, but it doesn't answer back, so one is left with the possibility of interpreting it according to one's desires. God becomes not a person to encounter, but an idea confined to the pages of a book that I go to at my convenience and interpret according to my whims.

Of course the intention of the advocates of the written word were pure. Primarily they sought to capture permanently the essential truths of God and human nature, etc. They sought to use a medium--the written word--that they felt was well suited to this aim. In other words, their desire was simply that the medium would always be subservient to the message. And perhaps they were right. Perhaps most if not all of Jesus' teaching has been well preserved in the texts of Scripture. That is not presently my argument. My only argument is that one has certain liberties with an inanimate object like a text that one would not have with the living person of Jesus Christ standing in front of you. This shift from an "oral culture" to a "word/written culture" is significant.

One other interesting point about the word culture. It was generally believed, despite the challenges in finding the authors intended meaning in what he or she wrote, that the authors meaning could be found in the text. Finding meaning was paramount. In fact, it could reasonably be stated that, in practice, once an authors truth was discovered, the text itself could be discarded, because it had done its job in leading the seeker to the truth.

But culture shifted again, according to Postman, with the advent of television. If the culture of Jesus' day was an "oral culture," and that culture was replaced by a "word/text culture," then the culture that has displaced them all is the "image culture." The core premise of Postman's book appears to be the nature of the relationship between medium and message in such a culture. If in the oral culture, the medium and message are deeply integrated, and in the written culture the medium serves the message, then the image culture essentially discards or trivializes the message in favor of the medium. Note well the inversion from the written age, from sublimating the medium under the message to sublimating the message under the medium. According to Postman, now the medium is everything and the message is little more than an occasion or an excuse to engage the medium.

A simple evaluation of this by culture:

The oral culture and ethical instruction: If a controversial ethical question arose, the people would turn to the village prophet/scribe/sage for advice, or hold a town meeting in which the wisdom of various elders could be heard.

The written culture and ethical instruction: If a controversial ethical question arose, the people would "hit the books." Then the problem of interpretation would come up, in which case experts might be consulted, but they would be experts on the text.

The image culture and ethical instruction: If a controversial ethical question arose, the people would listen to the wittiest, most moving, most engaging person or story. The image of the speaker would win and not the best idea, for what can that even mean? This is why in our day Bill Mayr and John Stewart have more dutiful disciples than does Jesus. This is also why the "image pastor" will have a huge church in our day, but the "idea pastor" will always have a small one.

On a practical level, Postman notes that it is simply naive to think that medium and message are or can be unrelated. And yet many Christians say things like, "It doesn't matter how you present the gospel, as long as the gospel is presented." But how something is presented is essential. Students often complain that it is difficult to absorb the droning of a monotone teacher, but what about a preacher who tells only funny stories for 20 minutes and then a 5 minute "message?" What about a death metal band inaudibly screaming, "JESUS LOVES YOU?" Is the medium aligned with its message in these cases?

Postman's basic message in this is that television comes freighted with inherent limitations. It is inferior to the written word in its ability to convey deep and complex truths. Obviously television uses words, but Postman notes that they become "accessories to images."

By way of illustration, Postman discusses the fact that TV preaching is neither good TV nor good preaching. Generally no one watches it because it is merely a "taking head" projected superfluously under the pretense of "spreading the good news." The true motive is often megalomaniacy (a desire for glory, or worse, money). And so, on the one hand the medium is not suited to the message. People rightly wonder what the point can be of merely watching the preacher remotely rather than just going to the Church and hearing it in its community context. And on the other hand, the message is often shaped to the demands of an image/entertainment medium, so that the preacher abandons depth to maintain broad commercial interest, and to fit the message into the appropriate time constraints.

In his book, Postman notes four major changes in the way people think due to the advent of the image culture. They are:

1. People can no longer process complex linear arguments.

I would suggest that much of this has to do with an ideological shift and not merely a methodological shift, but certainly both have conspired to undermine linear thought. By that I mean that postmodernism has itself created a culture that celebrates contradiction, relativism and thus sheer randomness of thought. The typical student today has a hundred incompatible ideas swirling about in his head simultaneously, and he will parrot each depending on the context. And he will do this uncritically, in a state of absolute obliviousness to the fact that the idea he argued yesterday discredits the idea he argues today. Now combine this ideological randomness with an audio visual environment pulsating constantly with randomness, and one has all the necessary ingredients for the creation of a culture which is itself wholly without grounding in truth or concern for truth; "driven and tossed by every wind of doctrine," as Paul says. One can see the impact of this by merely considering how few products of the entertainment culture pursue math and the sciences. When was the last time you saw a frat boy pop culture clone working as a physician? When was the last time you met a fashion obsessed young woman working for NASA, or even for a good pharmaceutical company? People must shut off the noise if they are to run deep in anything.

To illustrate this change from an ability to traffic in complex linear argument to the reality of our own time, Postman discusses the Presidential debates of the past and sermons of the past.


In the election battle between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, the two men would debate sometimes for hours on end. And their audience was comprised of mainly blue collar workers, whose capacity for complex argumentation, vocabularies and attention spans are frankly baffling to most of us today. The language of men like Jefferson, Lincoln and even John Muir, if spoken in the typical high school classroom today, would be nearly incomprehensible.

Sermons in Puritan America were at least an hour in length, and often took on the character of literature read aloud. No doubt many of you are familiar with the legends of Jonathan Edwards, the famous Puritan minister in Massachusetts during the first great awakening in the 18th century. It is told that he had a rather severe vision problem and would hold the manuscript of his sermon close to his face and simply read it, occasionally glancing down at his audience to be sure they were still present. He was also a scholar, and not particularly charismatic in his delivery. His sermons were all substance and little style. Try this in any local church today and half the audience will either be passed out or busying themselves on their cell phones. And of course they will be sure that the problem is with the preacher and not them. He would be the one to have "lost touch."

2. The current image-media culture creates an environment that shocks people into a "techno-stupor."

I have students whose attention to varying forms of illuminated screens is almost totally unbroken throughout a typical day. And if they had the choice, some would spend their whole lives interacting with digitized reality rather than people, books, ideas, silence.

Some people today wake up to the screen, look at the screen while driving, while in classes, between classes, while eating lunch with five others also staring at screens, on the way home, at home, and finally the hum of the screen provides a lullaby as they fade into sleep.

Postman suggests that all of this input is too much for us to manage, and so we go into a passive-mind state. Perhaps an illustration is in order. Imagine that someone is shooting puzzle pieces at you machine-gun style, and it is your job to process these pieces and fit them into place. Perhaps at first you make the attempt, but before long it becomes futile. They are coming at far too great a speed for you to do anything meaningful with them. So you cope by standing there and letting them hit you and fall to the ground. Perhaps a few stick to your clothing here and there randomly, but you have given up trying to manage the puzzle pieces to construct some coherent picture.

Reading is a slow and deliberate process which allows one to manage the various pieces of information flowing towards the reader. As such, reading requires an active mind in order to sort and synthesize information. This is in no way required of most image-oriented entertainment media. All one need do is sit there and "receive." A thin smattering of information is retained while a thousand shallow impressions are made. The result is that the knowledge of the child of the image age is a mile wide and an inch deep while the readers knowledge is often deep, but only as wide as deliberately selected.

Ted Coppell put it this way, "How does one explain, or perhaps more relevant, guard against the influence of an industry (popular media) which is on the verge of becoming a hallucinogenic barrage of images, whose only grammar is pacing, whose principal them is energy? We are losing our ability to manage ideas; to contemplate, to think."

3. Many cannot function in abstract thinking because the media requires no meditation on concepts like "beauty," "truth," "deception," and the like.

Plato suggested in his own day that the average man was not concerned with "the forms;" his term for abstract and unchanging principles. For Plato, only the philosopher cares about such things as "the good life," and "justice," and "piety." The average man cares only about his physical safety and his physical appetites. It turns out that Plato had a rather low view of humanity. My question is this: If Plato is right, would the emergence of the image culture move the culture towards a contemplation of the abstract or away from it? It sure seems that the image orientation of our culture does not facilitate abstract thought. Plato's questions to the average man of his own day would be seen as irrelevant to survival and pleasure. Plato's questions in our day are simply not entertaining. In his own day, the average worker walked past Plato because he had no time for philosophical speculation. In our day, the average man has abundant time for Plato, but simply prefers Stephen Colbert. Apparently Plato's image fails to sell among the young American demographic.

If you question Postman's point here, consider a simple question: When the words "success" or "feminine beauty" are raised, do you think of an image or an idea? Have you worked out a philosophy of success or feminine beauty, or do you need not contemplate such things because various images are already assigned to those words--in fact, these images have supplanted any prior definitions for these words. Are you aware of the historical development of these words? Are you aware of the cultural discussions over the meanings of these words? Do you even care? Surely a cursory observation of our culture confirms Postman's point here.

4. Memory is reduced to a cluttered mass of superficial and unrelated pop-culture sound bits.

The great Christian evangelist of the Calvary Chapel movement Greg Laurie put it this way, "We remember the things we ought to forget and forget the things we ought to remember." The typical person in our culture has immediate access to a million trivial pop culture sound bits. He can quote movie lines at will with his buddies. He sings along with his favorite musicians. He is even seen to be witty if he can supply a funny line from a film or TV commercial at the right moment in conversation. But ask this same person to recognize the teachings of Plato, Jesus or even the literature class he just attended, and you will be met with a "deer in the headlights" expression.

Lecture Series:
Lecture 2: Challenges to Education, Part I, Postmodernism

Is there such a thing as truth? Is truth possible?

This may seem an unimpressive or laughable question to you, but, unfortunately, it is a necessary question due to present cultural conditions.

A brief history lesson: During the Reformation, people began to question the previously unassailable authority of the Catholic Church. For over a thousand years, the Church commanded the confidence of the faithful, and generally uneducated, population of Western Europe.

An man named Lorenzo Valla, an Italian Christian Humanist, noticed that the Catholic Church had lied about certain documents granting them land rights. He then noticed that the Latin Vulgate Bible was also riddled with errors. He dared not publish this second discovery, and so he hid his manuscripts. Erasmus later found them, understood them, and published them posthumously (after all, who is going to kill a dead man for heresy?). The dam was beginning to break.

Then Martin Luther discovered that the teaching of the Church was at odds with Scripture and vociferously denounced the corruptions within the Church, especially on the doctrine of salvation.

The Church was losing its grip. Its authority was deteriorating rapidly. If the Church was wrong about salvation, the Bible and history, then how could it be trusted at all?

Not long after this, a Christian philosopher named Descartes didn't just distrust Catholic authority. He began his project further back, questioning the reliability of even our senses. He asked why we should trust our senses when they deceive us. He wondered if there could perhaps be an evil god who is deceiving us. (Note, Descartes had a lot more to say here, but for now we'll let it rest.)

But David Hume took this line of thinking even further. Hume didn't doubt that we are really sensing something in the world, but he wondered if that is all we are doing. Hume didn't believe that we have any obvious proof of causation, because we have no "simple impression" of causation as a principle (we don't experience causation by sensing it with the 5 senses). We experience one event following another event, but we don't "see" causation. Causation is an idea we impose upon the events under observation. Could it be that the world is a totally random collection of events and we are merely imposing the idea of causal connections in order to "create" some meaning out of it all? We can't know if this is or isn't the case. It could be, and so Hume's skepticism emerged.

Then the existentialists came along, claiming that we cannot find rational certainty on most of the crucial philosophical questions, such as free will, evil, morality, rationalism v. nominalism, etc. But we can live individually and authentically according to our own bold vision. We are "thrown into" this absurd existence, says Sarte. So we must make meaning out of our meaningless lives.

And then came Darwin, with his "evidence" that we may indeed be nothing more than a purely accidental natural phenomenon and nothing else; a product of undirected, purposeless processes.

So lets put it all together and see what we get. Can't trust Church + Can't trust senses + Can't trust reason (Hume's skepticism) + Existentialism + Darwinian naturalism = Postmodernism!

If you want to know why the default answer to philosophical questions in our day is, "I don't know," or "It's just my view," or, "No one knows for sure," or "Truth is relative," etc., the reason is the equation listed above.

So what is postmodernism? To answer, let us consider Dr. J.P. Moreland's effective synopsis:

Posmodernism is a form of cultural relativism after the modern, or enlightenment, era. Cultural relativism is the idea that there are no unchanging, permanent principles. Principles are created and maintained in cultures, even down to the importance of science and mysticism. The Buddhists want to meditate while Europeans generally want to test things in a laboratory. Some cultures prize mysticism and some science, and all have their own independent right to "create" truth for themselves.

During the Enlightenment, thinkers like Descartes and Locke, even Jefferson and many of the founding fathers, held certain ideas; ideas that are largely rejected today.

Those ideas are as follows:

1. Metaphysical Realism (sometimes referred to simply as "realism"): This is the idea that reality is independent of mind. And it relates not merely to objects like "the desk," etc., but also to abstract ideas, such as love. The "realist" (as contrasted with the "nominalist") says that love is not merely a mental activity, but is "anchored" to the reality of love, just as my idea of the desk is anchored to the reality of the desk "outside" of my mental activity.

The postmodernist rejects this notion. Truth is whatever cultures define it to be. This shows up in debates about the definitions of marriage and family. The postmodernist believes that marriage is something we just made up and so we can make it different. Some textbooks will claim that there are many different kinds of families, and that family is something we just made up and so we can "redefine" it if there is a cultural need. Perhaps the best way to address this notion is to ask a few questions: Can we define the family as a man and his pets? Can we define a marriage as a man and a harem? Can we define a marriage as a man and a corpse? Is a family in which there are willing participants in incestuous relations an acceptable family? If the postmodernist complains here that there are some standards for family, then he has abandoned postmodernism for realism and has neglected to tell us the foundation of his realism. What standard is he using to determine that the harem is wrong?

2. The Correspondence Theory of Truth: This is the natural extension of "realism." If I believe there is a real world that my thoughts either rightly or wrongly appraise, then truth must have something to do with aligning my thoughts with reality. Thus the simple definition afforded by Dr. Moreland is, "When things are the way one takes them to be." He goes on to explain that truth is a relationship of correspondence between a thought or a sentence and reality. If I think that someone is slandering me when they are not, then my idea is false. If I think that God exists and He does, then I think truthfully.

The postmodernist thinks that truth is an attribute or a property of the speaker and not a relation of correspondence with reality. The speaker or writer has his truth and you have yours. In theory, the postmodernist must believe that it really is true for the Christian that God exists, and also that it really is true for the atheist that God does not exist. It is almost as if he is claiming that you can walk from the atheist student union to the Christian fraternity, and in that short walk God will magically come into existence because you've crossed into a community that "believes him into existence."

3. Psychological Objectivity: The claim here is that one can be objective in considering a philosophical question. And psychological objectivity has to do with "absence of bias" on the question at hand. Let's say for the moment that the question is Calvinism v. Arminianism. Some Christians might insist that one cannot be objective on this question since we are shaped by our cultural upbringing. If I am raised in a Methodist church, will it be likely that I will become a Calvinist? Perhaps it is not likely, but is it impossible?

Dr. Moreland points out that it seems apparent that people are not often psychologically objective, but that doesn't preclude the possibility. People are most often psychologically objective when they first consider a question. It is in these moments that people are generally neutral on a question. If one has never considered the question of Calvinism v. Arminianism, then perhaps one would consider the best arguments on both sides and then make a decision. It seems at least possible that a person can be objective in this sense.

But a question remains: Is it a good thing to be objective in this sense? One is tempted to say yes, but is it really good to be psychologically objective indefinitely? Is it good for us to be "neutral" on a question forever? Can you imagine a person moving to Tibet to become a Buddhist monk for years, then to Spain to become a Catholic, then to India to become Hindu, then to Saudi Arabia to become Muslim, and never committing to any one of them, because "neutrality" is better than "narrow-minded" commitment? Of course this is absurd. The curious thing about it is that the postmodernist has made a commitment to neutrality, which is surely narrow-minded, since it is at least possible that one worldview is true.

4. Rational Objectivity: The claim that one can discern good and bad arguments even with a bias towards one view. According to Moreland, enlightenment thinkers believed that a Christian, for example, could recognize and assess sound arguments against his worldview. Anecdotal experience is perhaps sufficient to support this claim. In my own life, I have noticed several good, even initially devastating, arguments against the Christian position. And my bias did not keep me from being able to recognize a reasonable refutation of Christian theology or philosophy. On deeper analysis, I've yet to find a rational argument against Christianity that holds, but certainly at least many of them require a well reasoned response.

The postmodernist denies this possibility, claiming instead that one's bias so clouds judgment as to make unbiased reasoning impossible. For example, a person raised as a Christian simply can never disentangle himself from his predilections towards that worldview in order to consider the merits of Islam, or atheism.

5. Linguistic Reference: This is the idea that words do in fact refer to reality, again bringing in the notion of correspondence and realism. Moreland's example is useful here. When I use the word "masculine," as a realist I at least admit that some objective meaning for this term exists, even if human ignorance and imperfection make progress in discovering it difficult.

The postmodernist insists on exactly the opposite. He insists that language is a construct of cultures, and that words only function as labels for meanings we invent and assign to our varied experiences. Back to our word, "masculine." The postmodernist would insist that in one culture the term "masculine" could stand for "strong, detached and reckless." In another community, the term could stand for, "courageous, faithful and hard-working." And both would be correct, because both have merely created a cultural sign-post by using the word however they desire.

6. Dichotomous thinking: This is the time-honored notion of either/or thinking. A subject is divided into two categories with the purpose usually of affirming the one and denouncing the other. We say some things are "good" and some "bad." Some people are "wise" and others "fools." In most cases, either/or language shows up in morality. Christians often speak of Jesus being "the way, the truth and the life," and that no one can enter heaven except by Him. This is particularly troubling language to a postmodernist.

The postmodernist, largely fueled by Nietzsche on this point, believes that dichotomous language is an oversimplification and a blatant attempt to assert one's power over others. We say "we are right" and "they are wrong" in order to feel that we are in control; that we are better than others. And so the enlightened and truly humble man will not use dichotomous language, because we are all "on our own journey," etc.

7. Metanarratives: Plainly put, a metanarrative is an "over-story." Another way of putting it is to say that it is a "big story" that is supposed to be true for everyone. Christians believe that Christianity is true for everyone, even if someone vehemently rejects it. Most atheists (the non-postmodernist variety) affirm the same thing. They believe that Christians, along with all other religious people, are hopelessly wrong about the thing that matters to them most.

The postmodernists rejects metanarratives and in their place puts the "micro-narrative" or "local narrative." In short, the local narrative is a cultural story that remains true only as long as the culture sustains belief in it. Zeus presumably was real until Christianity displaced the system of deities affirmed by the Greco-Roman system.

Assessment of Postmodernism: In short, postmodernism is irrational on many levels. This of course should surprise no one in an age when human reason has been incrementally neglected in favor of human passions.

But let's consider a few questions that expose the self-refuting, irrational nature of postmodernism:

1. Self-Refuting Notion 1: Language cannot refer to reality. Does the sentence “language cannot refer to reality” refer to any reality?

2. Self-Refuting Notion 2: Truth is defined in cultures. What if there is a culture that says, “truth is not defined in cultures?” Are they expressing a “truth?” Is the “truth” that “truth is defined in cultures” also merely a cultural "truth?"

3. Self-Refuting Notion 3: The meaning of a writer’s words is open to interpretation. What if I interpret this sentence to mean… "a writer’s words are not open to interpretation?"

4. Self-Refuting Notion 4: No such thing as an objective claim. Is this claim objective or so clouded by opinion that the opposite could be true?

5. Self-Refuting Notion 5: Dichotomous thinking is not worthy of thoughtful people. Are you dividing the world into two categories—those who use dichotomous thinking and those who claim they do not—and then saying that one is better than the other?

6. Self-Refuting Notion 6: There are no “meta-narratives. There are only local narratives. Is the opinion that there are no meta-narratives merely a local narrative or is it a meta-narrative? If it is a local narrative, I will choose to accept another narrative stating that there are meta-narratives.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Lecture Series:
Lecture 1: On Education

Why be educated? The two most common responses to this question are as follows: To achieve one's highest potential; or, to secure the best possible life. Now neither of these are poor responses, but they raise other questions.

On the first point, a series of questions naturally follows: What does "highest potential" even mean? Why is it important to achieve one's highest potential? Can a person be happy without achieving his highest potential? Is the goal of life to find and express self? Will I neglect others in my attempts at self-improvement? Perhaps it would be better to help others achieve their goals.

On the second point we see another series of questions: What is the "good life?" Why does it matter that I should have the good life? Perhaps it is acceptable to me to have an average life or an "almost good" life. Can I achieve a "successful" life without a formal education? Isn't it possible for me to learn what I need to learn through life experience? Who is a greater success? The intellectual who makes little money or the millionaire high school drop out? And if they can both be successful, what makes them successful? And if they are both successful, then isn't it true that formal education is only subjectively important (important only to certain individuals who may need it, but many, perhaps most, don't need it)?

Now the point of asking these questions is simply to highlight that the question, "why be educated," is a worldview question, meaning that one's view of reality will shape the answer. For example, what might an atheistic professor say in answer to this question? What might a pantheistic naturalist (someone who believes that the universe is God) say? Or what might a pop-culture atomaton (robot) say?

And to our point: What might a Christian say in response to the question of motivation in education? I can think of at least four sound reasons for a Christian to pursue education:

One, to examine God's world in order to become more intimately aquainted with Him. Men like Kepler and Newton believed that to do science was to "think God's thoughts after Him." For them, the sciences were a way to figure out how the genius behind the universe put it together. This enterprise only enlarged their admiration for Him. The natural theologian, William Paley, once said that the sciences provide us with an invitation to "a continued act of adoration." Do you think of your science class as an opportunity for worship? Why not? If it is mundane or boring to you, then perhaps the problem lies with you! Newton saw the whole natural world as a Cathedral and the mind as the only fitting instrument of ultimate praise.

Two, to examine God's revelation more carefully, having developed the skills of a competent thinker. Many students carry around with them the unworthy idea that education is meaningless unless it is "used" later in life. They say things like, "when will I ever use this math lesson?" Or, "I'm planning to be a scientist, why should I care about the poetry of Shakespeare?" The expression of these ideas indicates a person who is either simply immature or foolish. The philosopher Martin Heideggar said, "It is not what you are going to do with philosophy that matters (the answer to that is probably nothing); but what philosophy is doing with you." The Christian understands that the purpose of education is not merely pragmatic (relevant to how I might apply it), but it is organic. It has to do with retraining my perceptions about the world, aligning them with how God wants me to see the world. It has to do with transforming me to be useful in God's purposes and plans, or at the very least to be able to detect God's purposes and plans.

Three, to set forth God's truth to the world as clearly, artfully and persuasively as I can. As Lewis says, "God never intended the Bible to replace the ordinary human arts and sciences." It is a director or guide to them all. It should be clear that if my speech regarding my faith is incoherent, it will have no impact on other lives. In fact, it may incite ridicule. It is not my place to change the hearts of people, but it is my place to be obedient to God's call to enlarge my talents as much as possible so that their use may be effective in God's hands. It is time for Christians everywhere to know what it is they believe and why they believe it and then to be able to out-think those representing other worldviews.

Four, to become my best self as an act of penitent gratitude for God's prodigious generosity with me. Here I am, a sinner, condemned, isolated from God; an enemy, guilty of treason against the high king of heaven, and yet he has redeemed me, empowered me, transformed me and set me to some glorious use in His eternal plan. What more can I do than obey His challenge to be as excellent as I can be mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually? God has asked me to participate with Him in his work of holistic transformation.

And now a few practical points with respect to this class:

One, Bible class (in this case Contemporary Philosophical Issues) should require your highest and best intellectual effort.

A few interesting facts: You will not face a single question on the Trinity on the SAT. Many schools could not possibly care less how you perform in these classes (secular schools). Most of your public school contemporaries (peers) do not take these classes and never learn this material, ever, in their lives. And yet many of them attend fine universities and eventually enjoy successful careers.

These facts have led some Christian schools to conclude that Bible classes should be emotionally and interpersonally appealing, relevant, etc. rather than academic in nature. At BCHS, we think that idea is ridiculous.

What makes the Christian school Christian is not the people, faculty, or the name Christian on the letterhead, at least not primarily. What makes the Christian school Christian is its understanding of truth. And this is a truth we will hold you accountable for learning. Of course we can't make you believe it, but is it really all that surprising that we at least insist that you know it?

A warning comes with this. If you give your best academic effort to everything else and then your leftovers to this class, your grade will show it. And more importantly, you life will show it. For the true Christian, a fervent and disciplined effort in this class will be another expression of love for God.

Response to a Common Objection: "But Bible class should be about loving Jesus, not academics."

Why must we think of the two as mutually exclusive. Such an attitude comes from the postmodern influence among Christians. In our Bible department, we do not accept the notion that faith and reason are separate and unrelated domains, or that heart and mind are separate and unrelated domains. But many Christians today think this way. They think that loving God is an affair of the heart, and science (or work, politics, even yard maintenance) is an affair of the mind. Here we adopt Augustine's view, "I believe in order that I may understand." Faith and reason are intimately integrated. Much more will be said on this in the second semester. For now, it will suffice to ask a simple question: If faith and reason are unrelated phenomena, then why would study ever be required of the Christian? All he would ever need do is move with the swelling of his passions.

Since this is our philosophy, you should not think of the Bible class as youth group. And the next point is related to this--namely, that the Bible class specializes in affairs of the mind without affirming that there is a separation between mind and heart. We cannot provide for the whole Christian experience of students, but we can assist in the development of the Christian mind. And that is our specialization. The Church is supposed to be the place where the holistic needs of Christians are met. Unfortunately in many Churches there is little if any education occurring. Much more can be said here, but let it suffice for now simply to affirm that BCHS, including its chapels and Bible classes, is not the Church, but an educational institution, commissioned by parents to assist in the whole development of their children. Of course we are going to have a limited role here, but hopefully a significant role.

For the true Christian, this academic opportunity will be interpreted in light of a desire for whole development, and as such will be received as yet another opportunity for the enrichment of the life of faith. The low minded person will see his or her theological or philosophical education as a drudgery or as an unnecessary diversion from "heart matters."

The second practical point is this: Not everyone is equally smart.

There has been in the last 40 years or so an effort in education to make self-esteem rather than accomplishment primary in education. This has fueled a culture of low expectations, both in the academic and professional worlds. Bill Gates is famous for his derision of this approach to education. He points out that in life one is applauded only after there is some significant accomplishment and not as an incentive to make the attempt. And it really doesn't matter how hard one tries. In the real world, there are no points for "trying our best." Failure is punished with harsh and often lasting consequences in the professional and adult world.

We don't want anyone thinking that they are inferior, and so various theories are offered to level the playing field. The suggestion was made by various intellectuals that perhaps everyone is equally smart, just in different ways. Some are kinesthetic (body) smart, others book smart, others relational, still others verbal, or visual, etc. But really is this adequate? Is it really true that everyone is equally capable of high level problem solving, comprehension, memory and all the other marks of truly exceptional thinkers? Of course not. No one would suggest that everyone is equally capable physically. Can everyone run a 200 meter dash in 20 seconds? As a teacher, it seems to me obvious that, as we see various levels of physical skill, we also see various levels of mental skill.

Once I encountered a coach who informed me that coaches were superior to teachers because they could take an athlete at a given skill level and bring him into the team and make use of his unique talents, even significantly improving on those talents over time. Nobody felt inferior or left out because the coach saw to it that everyone had a role that fit his giftedness. And he believed that teachers couldn't accomplish this for every student in a classroom and that is why they failed certain students. This, to him, was a sign of the failure of the teacher and not the student. As it turns out, he was upset with me for failing a couple of the members of his baseball team. So his basic premise was that I was not able to work with these students who had various academic disadvantages and that made me inferior to a coach who can work with various athletic disadvantages. I asked him one question that ended the conversation. I said, "I hear you coach, but did you make any cuts before the season began?" He got the point.

The simple fact is that not everyone is equally smart, and that says nothing about the inherent value of people before God. Jesus died on the cross for the intellectually advantaged and the intellectual disadvantaged, but a school need not affirm that everyone is or ought to be equal intellectually.

But... and this is a significant But!... It is clear from the parable of the talents that God expects everyone to make the most of what they have.

Practically this means two things: One, it is the teachers job to create an environment of academic pressure, of stress, that will call students to excellence while not expecting that everyone will become Augustine or Lewis. And two, it is the students job to aim for perfection while giving himself or herself permission to be in process. If a student is not willing to do this, then he or she should get out of the way!

Now, I've emphasized disparity in intellectual ability. But there is also the issue of disparity in intellectual curiosity and desire (work-ethic). It has been my observation in 14 years of high school teaching that those people we refer to as the "smartest" are often not the most capable, but are simply the most diligent. One can consider the stories of Jerry Rice and Peter Jennings as examples of this phenomenon.

Peter Jennings was the news anchor for ABC for years. A few years ago he died of lung cancer and during the various tributes to his life and work, it became clear that his thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. The man never earned a college degree and yet he knew more than most degreed individuals because of his relentless pursuit of knowledge.

Jerry Rice is the greatest wide receiver in the history of the NFL. It is widely known that his best 40 yard dash time was a paltry 4.6 seconds. He came from a rather small college and was not a particularly high draft pick. No one could have guessed that this rather average athlete, at least by NFL standards, would become arguably its greatest player of all time. Over his time in the NFL, Rice's secret became clear. His work-ethic literally defied comprehension. He would run a 6 mile track up the hills surrounding San Francisco at near sprint speeds. Other players tried to match his workouts and collapsed in exhaustion every time. Rice's attitude was always, "You will not outwork me!"

In my experience as a high school teacher, this has been the attitude of the finest students I've encountered. Granted, many of them possessed rare intellectual gifts, but not all of them. And imagine what a student with great intellectual gifts can accomplish if they match those gifts with a sound work-ethic.

Now it is possible to go too far with this into "overwork." Ben Franklin once said, in praise of a rigorous work-ethic, "There will be plenty of time for sleep in the grave." The problem with this attitude is that one will reach the grave quicker and will undermine one's capacity for longevity if it is seriously applied. Some of you may need to think about this. Can you really do all that you've committed to do, and do so with excellence? Perhaps it is better to do 3 things well than 6 poorly.

But is this the general problem with our culture today? I would say no. Most people don't need encouragement to make more time for leisure, for television, etc. Most people suffer from simple laziness, which, according to Plato, is the fundamental flaw in humanity.

And now a third practical point: Education is necessary to achieving true human excellence.

Of course, one's understanding of "human excellence" will have to be provided by his worldview (philosophy of life), but here we will work with the assumption that human excellence has to do with achieving one's potential and being generally successful, in the way society commonly defines those terms.

Given those definitions, the most common objection to point three is, "Look at men like Edison and Einstein or Bill Gates. They struggled in school and were still geniuses. In fact, they did poorly in school because they were bored with school."

The obvious response to this is to note that each of these men were highly self-educated. Self-education does not mean you receive no help. You simply control the times, people and frequency of the help you receive. And usually they seek more help than the average degreed individual, not less.

So yes, you may be bored with high school because you are genius. My advice would be to drop out, take the equivalency exam and conduct your education so that you can move on to greater heights than is possible here.

But if you are not Edison, Einstein or Gates, then perhaps you should just sit quietly and consider that there is knowledge here to be gained.

And now a few moments of straight talk:

Some of you listened to this, others heard only more academic static.

Some of you later in life will blame parents and teachers for a deficiency in your understanding, or your inability to get into the college you want, etc. But that will be foolish. You have no excuse.
Some of you in your educational life will learn only how to jump through academic hoops. In other words, you will learn to work the system, give the teacher what he wants and do the minimum to "earn a grade" rather than learning.

Some of you will earn diploma's, even BA's, and still be poor thinkers.

Some of you will even cheat your way through high school, college and your job, and you won't be caught.

It is possible that someone in here could become a millionaire fool.

And some of you will become wise. Who will be the philosophers among us?