R.I.P.E.

At Bakersfield Christian High School (BCHS), we use an acronym to communicate part of our philosophy of education. This helpful tool was developed by Randy Martin, our senior Bible and Ethics teacher. Here I would like to use this meaningful paradigm to evaluate an important characteristic of the three major worldviews--namely, how each answers the philosophical problem of the one and the many.

So, to begin, I should explain what the R.I.P.E. acronym stands for, and I will also define the philosophical problem of the one and the many.

R.I.P.E. stands simply for Reality, Identity, Purpose and Ethics. The working thesis is that one's view of reality has a crucial and determinative role in the development of one's identity, and one's view of identity will shape one's view of purpose on down the line to a person's concrete behavior. The four controlling questions are as follows:

R - What is the nature of reality?
I - Who therefore am I?
P - What therefore is my purpose?
E- How therefore should I behave?

What we attempt to do at BCHS is to help students develop a coherent and integrated approach to these four questions. Surely it is clear that if one answers the first question by maintaining that there is no God, then it will have a ripple effect in how one lives.

Hopefully that makes sense. I'm sure that Reverend Martin could explain it better, but this piece only requires a basic outline.

And now what is the philosophical problem of the one and the many? It is a problem that goes all the way back to the pre-Socratics, and probably further back than that. The essential question is one of the dignity of the whole and the dignity of the parts of the universe. Does my individual life matter, or is it merely folded into the whole? Is there only one undifferentiated thing that exists, matter or god or the will of God, etc.? Or is there only a random collection of disparate occurrences in the universe? What is the relationship of the many to the one? What is changeless and stable and what is always changing? And there have been any number of attempts to solve this question.

Can we use the R.I.P.E. acronym to analyze the three worldviews on the question of the one and the many (or unity and diversity)? Here is my attempt:

Atheism

R - Essential Diversity

Bertrand Russel once claimed that the destiny of the universe was "material particularization." It will simply die a heat death. The universe began with a grand explosion, randomly scattering material phenomena about. The universe will return to an equilibrium of randomness. All of the matter of the universe will be simply dispersed without plan or pattern, which raises the question about its current condition. Is it not merely randomly dispersed now? Perhaps we see order and unity, but that also could be an imposition of the human mind upon the random universe. I think Hume was trying to indicate something of this sort when he said that we can only know the various individual experiences we have had, but any philosophically unitive paradigms will have to be met with skepticism.

I would also ask the reader to try to understand the relationship of chance to unity. Is not chance the quintessential opposite of any unifying principle? Even when it comes to the natural laws of the universe, which seem to be a refuge for atheists hungry to find some unifying principle, we now know that these laws didn't have to be what they are. Gravity could have been stronger or weaker. Electromagnetism could have been different. The physical laws themselves, according to the atheist, are not unitive in the sense that they were necessary ordering boundaries. They just randomly happened to be this way. And so the boundary condition is random, and within the boundaries only random events occur.

What does nature do? It scatters disparate beings about for no particular reason. Wind the clock of human evolution backwards and start it up again and unguided nature would have produced beings of a totally different sort than human beings. I think it was the atheist Gould who pointed this out. Why are you here? It just happened, for no particular reason. Why is there life on this planet? A fluke, simply luck. All of this sounds rather like the philosophical antithesis to unity. How did the universe even come into being? It just did. There are lots of theories, but at this point, it seems that it just popped into existence for no reason and matter is just doing some things.

I - Thrown-Inness

I'm borrowing a term from Jean Paul Sarte, the French existentialist. I think he called it merely "thrownness." The idea is that since we can find no objective meaning (no unitive principle) in the universe, then we must accept that we are thrown into this potentially chaotic dance to create meaning for ourselves. One must accept the existential burden that meaning is not to be found "out there;" it must be asserted against the universe. Identity is manufactured. The universe does not have you or me in mind. We are ejected and fermented star dust destined for annihilation, so in the meantime we should create some meaning or purpose for ourselves, and any one person's meaning can be fundamentally different from someone else's. Even the meaning of survival is questionable.

P - To pass from state A (unification in thought) to state B (particularization).

This may seem like an unfair way of classifying the purpose of an atheist's life. But what I mean here is that the atheist, if he is correct about the R and the I, is constrained to this purpose. He must pass from the subjective process of trying to unify things in thought to the utter material breakdown of the instrument by which he subjectively unifies things. Literally, his brain (he has no mind or spirit) will eventually cease to function and succumb to decomposition. It could be the case that some worm will devour the section of his brain that thought about love, consume it for food and then scatter it about as excrement.

If he was unified as a sentient being at some point, then that unification was desperately fragile, and not in any way essential to the universe or its functioning. All things return to the equilibrium of particularization.

E - Relativism

This is no hollow accusation. Most atheists just blatantly claim relativism as their ethical theory. There are some who have developed intricate relativistic systems, like utilitarianism, contract views or pragmatism, but they all share in common a fundamental belief that morality is made up by human animals in their various language communities. Moral systems evolve, constantly subject to reinterpretation.

Bottom line: If culture A comes into conflict with culture B over an ethical matter, there is no unitive system of morality to adjudicate their claims. They must merely assert their own view, hopefully peacefully, but that is not a requirement. Each ethical system is an "island in the sky." In short, it is individuation at the expense of unity, which certainly is wholly consistent with all that has been said for atheism.

Pantheism

R - Essential Unity

In pantheistic systems, there may be room for some form of fragile individuation, or individual choices, but in the end all things are subsumed into the whole. The whole is more important than the parts, and is the essential state of the universe. One can speak of this as Brahman, or Oversoul, or Energy. The divine permeates all and englobes all individual contributions and choices in such a way that there is no meaningful distinction in the end. Everything flows into everything else. Think of movies like Star Wars and its doctrine of the force here, or Avatar, and its belief in the unification of all living things.

I - Individual Identity is Illusory or Irrelevant

Perhaps the single problem in pantheistic religions is ego, or the assertion of self against the whole. Some even do meditative practices to break up reliance on logic, which apparently keeps one locked within his or her own limiting mind. Individuality consciousness itself is not the natural state of the universe. What must happen is that the individual soul must pass through numerous reincarnative stages in order to give up its hold on a singular perspective. Zen Buddhism speaks of this as experiencing all things so as not to be attached to any one thing.

P - To pass from state B (particularization in thought) to state A (unification).

Of course this is the precise opposite of the atheistic view. But they both share a common feature. Since unification and the progressive dissolution of distinctions is essential to pantheism, then individuation is a desperately fragile, and subjective, state. Just as it is simply inevitable that a unified human person will be utterly scattered in atheism, so an individuated person must be broken down and assimilated into the whole in pantheism. One can participate with this process or the universe will simply do it to each individual.

E - Detachment, Apatheia, Desirelessness

It is interesting to note that in each pantheistic system, there is a detachment mandate. The world need not change. There can be no evil, because all things are expressions of the divine. Since the world contains no objective evil, then one need not change the world; one needs to change one's reactions to the world.

The best illustration of this is the Stoic image of the river, which I've sited elsewhere. If all of nature is like a majestic river, and each of us is swept along by the current of this powerful river, then there can be no reason to resist its flow. When things happen in the river and we are tempted to call such events evil, we must learn to accept that all events are necessary for the greater good. The river is good and it is carrying us all to a good outcome, and so we cannot become distracted by individual events that transpire within the river (the death of a loved one by injustice, etc), because to do so is to resist the flow of the river, and resisting the river will only bring more misery upon us and the river will flush us downstream anyways. And so one must practice apatheia, or resignation, an acceptance of the fact that nature on balance is good and that any perceived evils that I suffer are due to my inadequate perceptions.

Surely it is fascinating to consider that a consistent atheism leads to relativism and a consistent pantheism leads to detachment. One says there is nothing but you against the universe. The other says there is nothing but the universe, so relinquish any thought of "you." Christianity avoids both of these extremes.

Christianity

R - Essential Unity and Diversity

Not only is creation designed to be an essential interrelation of parts to whole, in which the dignity of both is preserved, but the very being who created the universe is Himself an essential unity and diversity. The Triune God is a little society, or community, out of which all things are produced. There is a cauldron of love and creativity at the very center of reality, and God produces beings like himself, who can take up a deep pattern of unity and diversity, even participating in relationship with Him.

I - Created for Unity with God that leads to Blessedness (Eudaimonia, Self-Actualization)

Blessedness here refers to God's efforts to separate from himself a being that he can build to be excellent. Blessedness in Scripture literally refers to God's act of "stooping low to elevate another." In other words, God's creative act does not merely extend His own glory, but defines and accentuates the individuality of other excellent beings.

Aristotle's term is "Eudaimonia," meaning the "full flourishing" of our humanity. Aristotle thought of this in rather Greek terms--namely, excellence in virtue, but primarily the virtue of wisdom. A Christian can in general terms agree here that God's creative act of making man in His own image will involve the full flourishing of his own individuality as a human being.

Maslow's term was "self-actualization," or the development of one's highest individual potential through the growth process. Again, the Christian can co-opt this term and agree that God created him with the desire that impels him to develop his own individuality and creativity as made in God's image.

We are created intentionally by God for individuation and union, and that union is to be with God and with others that He created. The Triune pattern of unity and diversity is extended by God analogically into creation, but most completely in humanity. If there had been no fall of mankind into sin, then union with God and complete individuation would have occurred without obstacles.

P - To pass from disharmony (both A and B) with God and others to harmony with God and others.

Since sin has entered the picture, it is God's purpose, and therefore our human purpose, to be restored to harmony with God and with His redeemed community. In our present fallen condition, it is obvious that we lack both the quality of union with God and others for which we were made and we lack whole individuation and blessedness.

Surely one of the effects of the saving work of Jesus Christ is to bring the redeemed back into alignment with the Triune God and with the Triune pattern in all relationships.

Note that the apostle Paul discusses this phenomenon as it relates to the Church. We are to celebrate each other's joys and feel each other's pains. We do this because we are brought into one body by the work of the Incarnate Son of God. But while we are brought into a unity with God and with His redeemed community, we are simultaneously restored and even enhanced in the various expressions of our individuality. In short, our purpose is to be joined to the divine while discovering our utmost individual potential.

E - If these things are true, then what can that mean in the realm of ethics? Since the loss of individuality and the loss of unity are both extremes that are against God's design for man, then we must resist behaviors or ethical systems that would exalt one over the other or that would move towards imbalance.

In simple terms, a healthy marriage is one that celebrates the uniqueness of both individuals while both experience a tangible union. The same can be said of good friendships. Clearly an unhealthy marriage will be one in which individuality is lost in order to assert unity, or uniformity, such as when there is abuse or resignation. But the same can be said of the opposite problem. Clearly it is an unhealthy marriage that allows the individuals to merely drift from one another or merely assert individuality against unity, such as in constant fighting.

Also note that in Christian ethics relativism and resignation should never result. On the one hand, there is a unitive ethical structure that must be the final arbiter of all ethical truth claims. I have to check my individual ethical views against God's standard. And on the other hand, this unitive structure has in mind my individual good and the good of other individuals. If evil occurs, it is not as if we must throw up our hands and say, "well, the universe doesn't mean good… for me… it must mean good for the universe in general." No, from a Christian perspective, God will have something to say, and indeed will act decisively, with respect to every evil that has occurred in history, because every act of evil touches one of his image bearers. Thus the glories and complexities of the doctrine of atonement.

Also, think of how practical this can be in the area of governmental systems. Many governmental systems emphasize unity to the diminution of individuality, such as communism and tyranny. Other systems emphasize individuality to the diminution of unity, such as democracy. Of course, the ultimate expression of a lack of unity is anarchy, but that would be the lack of any unitive governmental system at all. There is literally no hope of any governmental system maintaining this tension without seeking the God who possesses the perfection of unity and diversity in His own nature.

In closing, let me also note that Islam is a religion that in effect takes tyranny to the level of the divine. God himself is not creating for unity and diversity; He is creating for unity. He desires only that His will be done and not that any human being should know Him or have a relationship with Him. I have more to say on this in my piece on Islam. For now, suffice it to say that there is a reason that most Muslim countries have apostasy laws that shock people in the west. Islam is a power religion and not a religion of love. Looking at its history, is this really surprising to anyone?