Author: SDG

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with a roundup of some responses to reader comments from the four preceding posts (one two three four).

I found this post quite interesting. … I tend to wince a little bit every time a paragraph begins "From the materialist perspective" and then goes on to assert something as if it is obvious that every materialist must believe it ("From the Christian perspective, the only important thing in life is to treat others well so you can go to heaven" – your reaction to this probably parallels my reaction to the "From the materialist perspective" paragraphs).

Fair enough. I am doing my best to describe how materialism looks to me, and how I think I would necessarily look at the world if I were a materialist. At least some of my observations are meant to describe conclusions that I do think logically follow from materialism itself and would logically be acknowledged by all consistent materialists, which, if I am right, would mean that materialists who don’t accept the conclusions must be missing a logical step somewhere. Of course I cheerfully admit that I can make mistakes too.

I don’t think it’s really coherent to talk about a meaningless universe since meaning seems to be a property we attribute to certain inclinations we have. On the other hand, it’s perfectly coherent to talk about a universe without God which I think is telling for the argument that Godlessness implies meaninglessness…

I think you’re confusing coherence with plausibility. A meaningless universe is at least as coherent a concept as a universe without God, just not one that most of us find plausible. Alternatively, it may be that if we ever hash out the metaphysics to a sufficient degree, the concept of a universe without God might turn out to be truly incoherent, but that’s an argument even I don’t have the wind to make.

I think it’s important to distinguish between two issues: 1) Is there a naturalistic explanation for our moral intuitions? and 2) As reflective beings who must decide how to live, are we being arbitrary if we insist on privileging our moral judgments over our other inclinations? (like our sex drive or our desire for self-advancement).

I would answer "yes" and "no" respectively – that is, there is a naturalistic explanation for our moral intuitions and we are not being arbitrary in assigning them the priority and importance that we do – but I think the distinction between 1) and 2) is critical in discussing the moral argument for the existence of God.

The burden of my series has been that "Yes" is not an entirely satisfactory answer to 1), and "No" is a far from satisfactory answer to 2).

Moral intuitions are partly related to naturalistic factors; but some moral intuitions, particularly the intuition that we are always morally bound to do the right thing, cannot reasonably be explained naturalistically, certainly not in a way that suggests that this intuition itself ought to be followed.

It seems to me, and I’ve argued, that on a naturalistic worldview, it just makes sense sometimes to ignore one’s conscience given sufficient justification in the other direction, just as we sometimes ignore every other affective response, whether aversive or attractive, given sufficient justification.

And yet those who clearly hear their own conscience know this is not true. We are always morally bound to do the right thing (and avoid the wrong thing); we cannot consider "right" and "wrong to be relative incentivizing factors among many others which many or many not tip the balance as to what we will eventually choose. And this is something that just does not make sense in a materialistic worldview.

This is because only point 1) actually relates to God’s existence. If there were reason to think that a naturalistic explanation of our moral intuitions was impossible, this would suggest that a supernatural explanation was necessary. However, if there were a naturalistic explanation for our moral intuitions but it was one that made them seem unjustified or on a par with our other emotions and inclinations, then there would be no basis for the inference that a supernatural explanation is necessary.

I disagree. I think the absolutist claim of conscience is itself an indication that our moral affections are not rooted in instinctive or affective responses. Instinctive and affective responses do not demand always to be obeyed.

Even the instinct for self-preservation is not absolute. The voice of conscience is. No materialist ethic I have ever encountered can account for this.

Now, you might reply – OK – but why do we then say, "I *should* help that drowning child rather than continue on my way to work"? I think a satisfactory response is simply, creating brains with this kind of feeling was the best way for evolution to actually get us to behave in this way.

Maybe. But once we realize that rationally the child’s death is an event of no greater cosmic significance than the drowning of a dog or a hedgehog, if we would not risk our life to save a drowning dog or hedgehog, why should we choose to listen to that feeling rather than getting on with enjoying our own lives?

Put it another way. Granted that you yourself would choose to save the child, suppose you met a man who cheerfully admitted that he allowed a child to drown rather than stepping in to rescue him because he decided to listen to his instinct for self-preservation rather than his altruism-instinct. Would you feel disgust or outrage? And if so, would this be any different from the flutter in your gorge if you saw him eating haggis (or whatever)?

As a practical matter in almost any situation imaginable in present society, the harm done by the adultery due to the violation of trust in the relationship (and the difficulty of trusting again) would exceed any benefits from improved skill as a lover.

But what is the object of "trust"? As long as the husband comes back to his family and continues responsibly addressing the practical interests of his wife and children, empirically speaking, what "trust" has been violated? Only a "trust" that is bound up in notions of fidelity and betrayal that exceed rational calculation, that go beyond empirical considerations.

My assertion so far is that "morality" results from a desire to not be ostracized from the group.

And yet one of the most celebrated heroic traits is the conviction and integrity of sticking to one’s principles even at the cost of ostracization, opposition, sanction, banishment, even execution.

Part 1 of SDG’s post, and the thread that followed, was involved with the sources of these criteria. But as far as enforcing is concerned, personal preferences follow the same rule as moral beliefs, or any other kind of belief: they are exactly as strong as the power of the people holding them.

FWIW, I wasn’t concerned with enforcement per se, only with the moral basis for enforcement. If the basis is "We’re strong and we can impose our will on you," that’s fine, but let’s not flatter ourselves that this is somehow fundamentally different from the bully’s basis for imposing his own will on the bullied.

It seems the whole series, except for a few gems (and SDG, in his brilliance, always produces at least a few), has failed in that it is the same over-simplistic argument about why materialists can’t have morals. Epicurous covered these points quite will during his life, and answered most questions quite excellently. Kant’s system, though he uses it to argue for God, would still work just as well without One, for Kant’s God is not the originator of morals. Not all materialists are utilitarians. Some are deontological, some follow a virtue ethics, some suggest an emotive ethics, and some are pragmatic.

Killing people, for the materialist, can be wrong because of social consequences (pragmatism), because it feels wrong (emotive ethics), because it corrupts the character, and so reduces happiness (virtue), because it causes pain and pain is definitively wrong (utilitarianism), or because it is wrong in the sense of being a moral imperative (deontology). All these can be justified from a materialist framework.

Ethics doesn’t lead to God, and definitely not the the Christian God.

I wasn’t trying to argue for God, much less the Christian God. I’m only trying to refute materialism, or rather to outline the consequences I believe necessarily follow on a materialist outlook.

I never said, and indeed explicitly denied saying, that materialists cannot have morals. They can. Materialists have consciences just like everyone else, and they can and do listen to them. They may even think that they have reasons why why they must listen to their consciences even though they are materialists, and they may be satisfied with their reasons.

What I’m saying is: I’m not satisfied with their reasons. I think their reasons are full of holes. I probably agree in principle with the bulk of their moral judgments. I just don’t think they’ve thought through the metaphysical implications of their morals, or conversely the moral implications of their materialism. That’s how I see it.

Not all materialists are utilitarians. Nor are they all emotivists. Only the consistent ones.

The moral systems you refer to based on pragmatism, emotivism and utilitarianism all fail to provide an adequate basis for a truly moral system. Some of the reasons have been explored in my earlier posts. You say you find my analysis lacking, but you don’t take issue with specific arguments, so I can’t really respond further.

The "character" that is corrupted on your "virtue" theory is an abstraction of behavioral traits on a materialist system, and I think I’ve shown that morality does not always correlate with maximal "happiness" where happiness is reductionistically understood in terms of gratification of present and future desires and avoidance of pain, etc. Certainly a moral system that is based on avoidance of character corruption for the sake of avoiding unhappiness cannot give us the moral wherewithal to sacrifice our lives in a just cause. If character corruption is dangerous only insofar as it limits my prospects for future happiness, on a materialist outlook I’ll risk the character corruption and stay alive, thank you very much, just like I would rather get cancer and live than stay cancer-free and die.

Some interesting problems raised. But God doesn’t solve any of them.

Why does God’s existing make any difference? Why should I care what He says? Because he’s always good? What does good mean?

If good is simply defined as "what God is", it doesn’t justify why I should desire it.

So far I’ve been concerned with the moral implications of materialism. Grounding morals and meaning in theism is a subject for another post. I will try to get to that soon.

First, though, I have a pair of comments to respond to which call for a more in-depth response than the ones above…

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 3).

The ethical approach sketched in the preceding posts is neither a rhetorical conceit nor a straw man. There are ethicists and moralists who really advocate this kind of thinking, who advocate extramarital flings, for instance.

One school of moral philosophy — the only thing that makes any kind of sense to me on a materialist outlook, variously called emotivism, nihilism or "boo-hurrah" — explicitly reduces moral valuations to emotional expressions of aaversion or attraction.

I respect the consistency of materialists who grasp the nettle and agree that what we call moral valuations are merely flutters of aversion or attraction, no more (or less) important or normative than other such flutters, from our appetitive response to haggis to our favorite or least favorite colors.

I respect the humanity, or if you like the humanism, of those who, despite professing a materialist outlook, find "boo-hurrah" emotivism unconvincing and try to make a case for more rigorous or normative moral obligations. I find their efforts wholly unpersuasive.

I do not see that consistency and moral humanism can ever be successfully combined in a materialist outlook. (In other words, to borrow a well-known construction, you can be a materialist, or a moral humanist, or consistent, or any two of the three, but not all three.)

The gap between the empirical pluses and minuses of what we call moral or immoral behavior and the level of responsibility that human beings feel to keep the moral code as they understand it is simply too wide. What impels us to do good and shun evil is not simply an appetitive flutter that we are free to disregard whenever it is convenient to do so, or when the empirical pluses and minuses don’t seem to warrant it.

On one level, I can certainly understand a materialist who says something like: "Look, it’s very simple: I love my partner, and no incentive could induce me to betray her/him, or even entertain the notion. Our relationship makes me happy, and anything else would only harm my happiness, not add to it."

Humanly speaking, I well understand how he feels. Certainly it’s how I feel, blissfully married to a goddess as I am. But then my marital bliss is substantially rooted in a trans-materialistic perception of what love is, and who and what Suzanne is, in a way that I for one can’t imagine sustaining if I personally were thoroughly persuaded of materialism.

My usage of "goddess," of course, is neither literal nor cultic. Like "louse" feelings, "goddess" is here a figure of speech, a hyperbolic metaphor. In my case, though, this figure of speech is at least intended by me to express something real about her — not just something about the state of my emotions or feelings. I can hardly put it better than C. S. Lewis did:

You can’t, except in the lowest animal sense, be in love with a girl if you know (and keep on remembering) that all the beauties both of her person and of her character are a momentary and accidental pattern produced by the collision of atoms, and that your own feelings are just a sort of psychic phosphorescence arising from the behaviour of your genes. ("On Living in an Atomic Age")

Some materialists (not all) will no doubt dissent from this. I understand how they feel; I don’t understand what they are thinking.

If persons are no more than the sorts of bio-electrical-chemical processes we’ve been discussing until now, all our gas about morality, as well as human dignity, personal rights, love, respect, honor and so forth, are very much the same sorts of delusions that Dawkins says God himself is. Lewis again:

Animism, apparently, begins at home. We, who have personified all other things, turn out to be ourselves mere personifications. Man is indeed akin to the gods: that is, he is no less phantasmal than they … Almost nobody has been making linguistic mistakes about almost nothing. By and large, this is the only thing that has ever happened. ("The Empty Universe")

I won’t deny that we might try to contrive, even as materialists, to enjoy the illusions of personhood and dignity as if they were real, at least for a while. Maybe. But give it time. Odds are, eventually that ex-Fundamentalist will get over his hangup about the evils of cards and see them for what they are: little rectangular bits of heavily coated, colored paper, no more and no less.

Likewise, live long enough with the belief that other persons are merely bio-electrical-chemical processes, let it sink into the depths of what men of another age would have called your soul, and see whether in the long run you consistently treat them as if the concept of personal dignity really meant anything, or how worked up you are able to get about such bio-electrical-chemical processes as murder or rape.

For the time being, Archie, I think you’re living in the shadow of a transcendent worldview you’ve abandoned without fully walking away from it. In the end, on your accounting, "boo-hurrah" is all there is to it. If you say you see things differently, at this point I can only shrug and agree that we see things differently.

As it happens, shrugging and disagreeing may be all we can do regarding a whole host of varying perceptions, values, choices, motivations and behaviors. 

Many of us would agree that an adult whose sexual preferences include or focus on young children is a danger to the children and to society. The molester might (or might not) have a different point of view; society’s point of view is widely but not universally accepted. Kinsey argued for the normalization of adult-child sexual interactions, and others since him have followed suit. Most of society would brush this aside without a second thought; I would agree (from my supernaturalist perspective) that this is basic moral sanity, but is is at least questionable forensics.

Recently in New York hooligans set a homeless man on fire. Ten days later, he died in a hospital.

When you hear that, Archie, as a materialist, do you feel outrage? If so, which of the following do you feel is more outrageous? That

1. a lost soul (speaking of course strictly poetically) who was in all likelihood a drag on society rather than an asset was subjected to a harsh exercise in survival of the fittest? Or that

2. millions of dollars of shared social assets that could have gone to productive uses were spent in a futile effort to care for this useless man, rather than simply finishing the job and using the money in some socially beneficial fashion?

I know, caring for the man makes us all feel better about ourselves, right? But couldn’t we just as easily have gotten our warm fuzzies using the money to help other people who weren’t going to die anyway? How greatly were the herd-interests of the human race, or even of one particular borough, ever invested in this particular situation?

Christopher Hitchens, debating Doug Wilson, described sociopaths and psychopaths as "part of our haphazard evolution and our kinship with a nature that often favors the predator." Yet he also said "I find I have no alternative" to calling them "evil."

Wilson’s reply: "But you surely do have an alternative. Why not just call them ‘different’?"

To that, I would add a second question: Evil. Different. In a materialist universe, aren’t those just two different ways of saying the same thing?

Hitchens’ humanism outstrips his philosophy here. He knows deep down that right and wrong are not simply a matter of individual taste or perception, yet his philosophy will not allow him to formulate an understanding of right and wrong that is truly normative for all persons.

Here is a thought-experiment reportedly posed by Richard Dawkins to a theist:

You are on a deserted beach with a rifle, an elephant and a baby. This is the last elephant on earth and it is charging the baby. Do you shoot the elephant, knowing the species would become extinct?

Bracket the obvious difficulties inherent in the situation as posed (which for all I know might not have been reported exactly as originally framed), such as the vanishingly small chances of a species with only a single surviving specimen ever making a comeback.

Bracket, too, the case for or against the answer given by the theist, who felt that the question was "a no-brainer" and hoped only that she "would shoot straight enough to kill the beast." (A theist myself, and thoroughly committed to human exceptionalism, I think a case can be made that the question is more interesting than its original hearer felt.)

The point here is Dawkins’ reported response. Apparently, Dawkins was outraged that anyone would dissent from the priority he placed on preserving the endangered species. Presumably he would not have been outraged to learn that the theist differed from him regarding the palatability of haggis, but I’ve already made that point. Here I have a different question.

The point of Dawkins’ thought experiment was to assert the fundamental equivalence of one species with another. There is nothing fundamentally different about man that sets him qualitatively apart from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Very well, then. Under what circumstances might Dawkins be moved to outrage at the elephant?

Many behaviors that in the human world are subject to the harshest moral censure exist in the animal kingdom as mere behaviors, nothing more. Animals haven’t developed the capacity for large-scale atrocities that humans have, but certainly behaviors that in humans we would call rape and cannibalism and murder and bullying occur in the animal kingdom.

If we happen to witness such an event, we might feel pangs of pity for those on the receiving end of such behavior, but we don’t feel outrage at the aggressors.

Even Dawkins doesn’t, I suspect.

Yet, like Hitchens having "no alternative" but to call evil evil, Dawkins does feel outrage at human beings who deviate from what he obviously feels is a standard that somehow has some bearing on other human beings, a standard that is not solely a function of his own bio-electrical-chemical processes.

Coming soon: Round-up of responses to reader comments to date.

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with more on materialism and the moral argument (continued from Part 2).

Back again to "like a louse" feelings. In my comments so far I’ve taken for granted that you, Archie, find bullying to be an activity that not only correlates with "like a louse" feelings, but also holds no positive appeal or attraction for you, as it does hold for some (who may or may not also experience conflicting "like a louse" feelings in connection with it).

On that assumption, for you there is no conflict, and we may say no particular virtue (if you want to call it that), in avoiding this particular form of lousy behavior. (Similarly, it’s no credit to me that I’ve never stoned anyone to death; I’ve never wanted to, though I hope that even if I did want to I would avoid doing so, in part for reasons that I bet you could exegete from the scriptures if you felt like it.)

However, it’s entirely possible, indeed virtually certain, that in some context or other you have experienced or anticipated "like a louse" feelings in connection with other behaviors that do hold some appeal for you — in other words, that you have considered possible courses of action that for you would correlate with "like a louse" feelings, but which on some level you would want to do or enjoy doing anyway.

Now, it goes without saying that few people will choose to incur "like a louse" feelings over something they didn’t want to do anyway. It’s also to be expected, as noted above, that the aversive effect of "like a louse" feelings may even discourage people from doing things they might otherwise want to do. This is only natural.

But also as noted above, aversive responses to unpleasant bio-electrical-chemical reactions are not always enough to put us off a given course of action, and this too can be reasonable and healthy (going to the dentist, sacrificing for the sake of some goal, etc.).

What happens if/when the appeal of the potential rewards of an activity correlating with "like a louse" feelings seems to outweigh the disincentive of those feelings (and any other negative incentives that may correlate with the behavior)? When one begins to feel, "Yes, this may make me feel like a louse, but I’m going to do it anyway"?

Is there any meaningful sense in which such actions can be judged "right" or "wrong"? Do such judgments matter? Or is it just a matter of one set of positive/negative incentives versus another set? If so, it is hard to see that anything more is at stake than which course of action ultimately carries the most attractive cost/benefit ratio.

For example, consider the situation of a man who might or might not choose to pursue the possibility of an affair with a married coworker. He realizes, let us say, that if he does pursue the possible affair, and if he is successful, this course of action may eventually cause pain to the coworker’s spouse (and possibly eventually the coworker), if the affair were to be discovered — which might never happen.

Even so, these considerations (along with various attendant socio-psychological pressures) may well make the man in question feel like a louse even for considering the affair (apart from any actual discovery or actual pain). And he doesn’t like feeling like a louse. For many people, that may be powerful disincentive.

On the other hand, the potential incentives and benefits are greatly appealing. The pleasure of intimacy with an attractive partner; the emotional pleasure of feeling good about his own attractiveness and his ability to score with such an attractive person (even one who is in principle "taken"); the coworker’s pleasure in feeling good about her own attractiveness to others (in spite of being herself "taken"); his pleasure in giving her that pleasure; etc.

Shall he forgo all these incentives solely to avoid the "louse" feelings that will follow, and console himself with the reassurances of the "good person" feelings for respecting the other person’s marital commitments? Or shall he take the pleasure that is offered and accept the consequences when they come, regrettable though they may be?

Let’s suppose that the man makes a principled decision: He will not pursue the affair. He is tempted, but he will not be a louse. He will do the right thing.

Well. From a materialist perspective, we may say that he has privileged his aversive response to the unpleasant bio-electrical-chemical "like a louse" feelings over the attractions and incentives of the action in question. Evidently, if the aversive response has won out, then it was a very strong disincentive indeed, and only he can judge the rewards and consequences for him of either choice.

At the same time, his position might be felt to be not entirely unlike that of the young man raised in Fundamentalism who chooses not to play cards even though he enjoys playing cards, because it makes him feel bad afterward. Viewed in strictly empirical terms, such strong principles could be thought to bespeak an overly sensitive aversive response to "like a louse" feelings. Is the aversive response really proportionate to the measurable and quantifiable downsides?

Granted, the feelings of pain that might result for the "wronged" spouse might be severe. However, even granting that our man should put the other man’s happiness ahead of his own — a principle for which there is admittedly a sound evolutionary basis, though there are also sound principles going the other way, but let’s bracket all that for now — suppose we ask to what extent would such feelings really be our man’s fault, and to what extent would they be rooted in a superstitious, illusory, delusional worldview in which categories of fidelity, commitment, love, jealousy and betrayal are believed to have a dimension, reality or significance exceeding or transcending bio-electrical-chemical phenomena in our brains?

I’m far from debunking pleasure and pain as empirical phenomena. Bio-electrical-chemical responses, however irrational, can be very painful or very pleasurable. However, in our experience it seems that some pleasures and pains result from a particular way of looking at things, and if the way you look at things happens to be wrong, and if it causes you pain, that’s your business, not mine. (There are important counterpoints here, but one thing at a time.)

For example, for a materialist, there are surely few more useless and unnecessary pains than that caused by fear for one’s immortal soul, fear of punishment after death. Supernaturalists who suffer such fear (not all do) could perhaps largely (perhaps not necessarily entirely) avoid them by abandoning a superstitious worldview. (I say "not necessarily entirely" because I doubt whether human beings can always, if ever, commit so entirely to a worldview as to exclude all possible remainder of doubt or suspicion about the opposite being true. Many if not all supernaturalists struggle with nihilistic doubt at one time or another; many if not all materialists at one time or another feel the pull of the unseen and transcendent.)

In the same way, on a materialistic worldview, it would seem that the pained feelings of betrayal that the coworker’s spouse feels may quite possibly be largely avoidable and rooted in superstitious beliefs. This is not to deny that a sound evolutionary rationale exists for the feelings we call love and jealousy and betrayal. On the other hand, a similar justification may certainly be mounted for infidelity. If it is only natural and understandable for a wronged spouse to feel pain, that doesn’t mean it isn’t equally natural and understandable to cheat.

Feelings of betrayal and outrage may reflect real danger to one’s real and practical interests. A woman who has paired with a man and borne him children has real and practical interests, above and beyond the emotional attachment between them, in the man’s commitment to staying with her and the children. Indeed, from an naturalist perspective it might be maintained that the real and practical interest of all parties concerned in a successful and stable domestic environment for the rearing of the children is the evolutionary basis for the feelings of emotional attachment between the spouses.

A man who has an affair with a home-wrecker that results in his leaving his wife and family is obviously acting in a way contrary to the real and practical interests of his wife, the children and society at large. On the other hand, a man who has a fling with a stranger on a business trip, say, as long as he is reasonably careful not to bring home any diseases or engender a child that could become a financial liability to the family, may still maintain his basic commitment to the real and practical interests of his wife, the children and society at large.

In the latter case, exactly how, if at all, his wife or anyone else has been truly harmed may not be as easy to say. Emotionally, she may well hold beliefs about fidelity and commitment that could cause her to suffer pain if she were to learn of his betrayal. From a materialist perspective, though, to the extent that these beliefs are rooted in a superstitious worldview, this is a pain she could largely spare herself. Feelings of jealousy have an evolutionary basis and are unavoidable, but where it is perceived that there is no real threat to one’s actual interests, jealousy need not be a debilitating or extremely painful condition.

For instance, a man who knows that his wife harbors an idle attraction for the water man (as in the current film Things We Lost in the Fire) may experience some jealousy even if he is confident that she would never actually act on such feelings. If he is secure enough in her fidelity, however, he may well not be greatly troubled by this; they may even joke about it.

In the same way, it could be argued from a materialist perspective that a woman who recognizes that her real and practical interests are not threatened by her husband’s business-trip fling need not be greatly concerned about it, even if she finds out.

Someone might contend that she has been "harmed" inasmuch as her husband has brought home memories of being with another woman that she will have to compete with in bed; on the other hand it might be countered that the experience of being with other women could conceivably improve his skill as a lover, and his wife could be the beneficiary of his improved technique. Anyway, it doesn’t need to be all about him. As long as he’s away on that business trip, there’s always the water man (or whomever).

The point is, if the deterrent effect of "like a louse" feelings has an evident evolutionary rationale, so does our willingness sometimes to ignore louse-feelings deterrence and do the thing that we want to anyway. Thus far natural selection has weeded out from human behavior neither monogamous commitment nor infidelity; and "like a louse" feelings, while they may be too strong to ignore entirely, are not necessarily strong enough to restrain us all the time, or even to make us wish they would.

The cad is simply following certain biological directives; the community that ostracizes and punishes him (if and when this happens) is following another. It all goes round and round, with no obvious basis for saying that acting in a way that correlates with "like a louse" feelings is never worth it.

Once again, as with bullying, I am far from suggesting that adultery is not a very great evil (though unlike in the case of bullying I have no experience of any kind to refer to here). But, again, I don’t think the evil of adultery can be fully understood only with reference to objectively measurable harm to the practical interests of any party or of the community, or to the aversive effects of lousy feelings. It is fully understood only in the light of a trans-material understanding of love, commitment and the dignity of the human person.

Continued in Part 4

SDG AGAIN! STILL NOT JIMMY!

From my review of Elizabeth: The Golden Years (opening this weekend):

How is it possible that this orgy of anti-Catholicism has been all but ignored by most critics? As with The Da Vinci Code, early reviews of The Golden Age seem to be roundly dismissive, while sticking to safe, noncommittal charges of general lameness.

That said, I do note the MSM critical community is not uniformly blind to anti-Catholicism:

Note: One of the few reviews in a major outlet that doesn’t ignore the film’s anti-Catholicism ran in my local New York area paper, the Newark Star-Ledger. Critic Stephen Whitty writes that the film "equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monks and glinting crucifixes. There’s even a murderous Jesuit, played by Rhys Ifans like a Hammer-movie bad guy, or a second cousin to poor pale Silas from The Da Vinci Code."

GET THE STORY.

P.S. Tune in to Catholic Answers Live today at 6:00pm EST to hear my radio reviews of Elizabeth, Bella, Lars and the Real Girl, and more!

Bonus! For those of you wondering about Jimmy’s whereabouts or even if he and I are one and the same, he’ll be hosting the show!

SDG here (not Jimmy) with some musings on the trend of falling church attendance, especially among Catholics..

In a combox discussion below about post-Vatican II liturgical changes, a reader suggested that post-Vatican II liturgical changes were responsible for a massive decline in Catholic church attendance. Of course church attendance has fallen everywhere, not just among Catholics — but another reader argued that Catholics have fallen away at much greater rates than their non-Catholic neighbors, implying that the fault must lie with changes in the Church:

The Church was in ascendancy until all of these shenanigans started up around Vatican II. Now? Decline in many fronts…

So what is the cause? Protestant church attendance went down by about 5-10% in the last 40 years, Catholics are down by over 60%.

Now, I’m not a sociologist. I suspect the second reader’s statistical factoid is misleading, for reasons that I may or may not touch on in a follow-up post or in the combox. Granted the statistic, though, or at least the general point behind it, I can think of a few possible factors that could contribute to such a disparity, though I don’t pretend to know what "the cause" is.

What I can say is this: Granted that the decline in church attendance has hit the Catholic Church harder than Protestant churches, it doesn’t follow that the basis for this disparity must be rooted solely in harmful changes within the Catholic Church. On the contrary, I think it is very likely that two very important factors involve ways in which the Catholic Church has not changed while the culture — including Protestant culture — has drifted further into error.

Let’s review a little history. Other than Vatican II and the 1969 missal, what other cultural changes have taken place from the 1960s onward?

Here are a few: The sexual revolution. The Pill. No-fault divorce. The Playboy Philosophy. The Me Generation. The evolution of serial monogamy. The DINK culture. The rise of what is only half facetiously called the "starter marriage."

Now, what are the most widely criticized and resisted teachings of the Catholic Church today? Here are two:

1. Divorce and remarriage.

2. Contraception.

To these two we could also add an obvious third, abortion, although there the Protestant culture is more divided, with strong areas of ongoing resistance to abortion within the Evangelical community. On the subjects of divorce and remarriage and contraception, on the other hand, the Catholic Church stands essentially alone against the culture.

Say what you like about the liberality of American marriage tribunals. The fact remains that in the Catholic Church it is still a whole heck of a lot harder to get divorced and remarried and keep on receiving communion as a Catholic in good standing than it is in any other church or ecclesial community. On this subject, what has changed over the last four decades is not the Church’s essential teaching, but the culture at large.

In an age in which skyrocketing divorce rates and multiple marriages are increasingly the norm, the Church’s ongoing fidelity to her essential teaching seems increasingly onerous and unrealistic. No other church or ecclesial community imposes the array of time-consuming, bureaucratic and potentially costly obstacles upon divorced members seeking to enter or having already entered into new unions. The Church does this out of fidelity to Jesus Christ, who declared that he who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, but the world grows ever deafer to this declaration.

As for contraception, if anything it is probably an even bigger issue. As prevalent as divorce and remarriage have become, contraception is ubiquitous, literally taken for granted. The question in our contraceptive culture is not whether to contracept, but only which type(s) of contraception to use. (The mere fact that one particular type of oral pharmaceutical has an undisputed and unambiguous claim to the definite term "The Pill" itself speaks volumes.)

Although surveys suggest that many Catholics are willing to keep coming to Mass in spite of dissenting from the Church’s teaching in both theory and practice, it remains a major impediment to fully appropriating and embracing one’s Catholic identity. It is a wedge driving untold Catholics to qualify their acceptance of the Church’s teaching and pastoral authority, making it easier to dissent and distance themselves on other issues and finally to abandon the Church altogether.

On a fundamental level, whatever mistakes and questionable decisions may have been made within the Church in the 1960s and beyond, on these two issues it is what the Church has done right that has pushed away some who might not have been pushed away in Protestant churches.

This isn’t to say that mistakes and questionable decisions haven’t made both issues a bigger stumbling-block when they need to be. For instance, I know a couple seeking full membership in the Church who have been trying to get an anullment hearing in another country for several years. Not just the Church’s teaching, but the imperfections of the Church’s leadership obstruct their way.

Nor am I claiming that liturgical changes in the 1960s and beyond — both authorized and otherwise — haven’t been factors at all.

I’m simply noting that the factors are complex, the social changes over the last few decades are complex, the issues are complex. We can’t simply conclude that if more people are falling away from the Church, the only possible explanation is limited to what the Church is doing wrong. At least in some cases, it may be what the Church is doing right.

Many disciples stopped following Jesus after his "hard sayings" in John 6, saying, "Who can accept this?" The same dynamic is at work today.

SDG here (still not Jimmy) with a follow-up thought on fasting (one that could have gone at the end of my "Short Primer on Fasting," but I didn’t want it to get lost).

It is this: Current Church discipline calls for Latin Catholics to fast on exactly two days out of the year, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday — and even on those two days, we are allowed to eat three times a day: one meal and two servings of "some food." Which, really, is not all that much of a fast at all. Those two days are also, of course days of abstinence from meat, along with the Fridays in Lent.

Actually, the law of abstention on all the Fridays of the year still holds for Latin Catholics around the world — but not in the US, where any Friday penance is voluntary. Outside of Lent and Triduum, Latin Catholics are not called to fast, or even, so far as I can tell, particularly encouraged to do so, even on their own. Oh, wait, there’s also the one-hour fast before receiving communion.

It would be one thing if this program of fasting and abstinence were regarded as a bare minimum beyond which Catholics were strongly encouraged to go with voluntary fasting and other regular forms of penance. Unfortunately, such encouragement is sporadic at best if not nonexistent.

This strikes me as — how shall I say it? — lame. Take the rigor of the fasting we actually do: one meal a day, plus two smaller servings of some food, two days out of the year. And a measly hour before receiving communion — even at a fifty-minute Mass, with communion distributed around the 40-minute mark, it would almost be hard to break that fast without actually eating in church.

I don’t think it’s too much to say that for most healthy adults below, say, retirement age, the current law on fasting amounts to a very mild hardship, if that — I would say almost a token act of ascesis rather than any kind of real sacrifice.

This is not to deny that for many people health considerations would reasonably prevent them from attempting even this much self-denial. Those with such conditions should be (and are) excused from any mortification at all. Others whose occupation entails physically demanding labor could find it excessively burdensome to do without regular doses of calories around the clock. Other cases would include pregnant or nursing mothers, Type 1 diabetics and of course children.

Even so, for countless hosts of ordinary, healthy adults, there is no reason why many of us shouldn’t be at least encouraged or even expected to try, say, abstaining from all food on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday — and on other days as well. I don’t necessarily mind putting the bar low for the sake of those unable to try more, but those who can try more should be urged to do so. Concupiscence is real — and tenacious. Our ascesis must also be real, not just a token diminution of four meals a year.

I think it would be wholly salutary if US Catholics were strongly and frequently encouraged to embrace year-round Friday abstinence — if not true fasting — as a voluntary practice. If fasting every Friday is too rigorous, perhaps we might consider a first Friday fast.

For many, fasting can and should mean abstaining from all food and drink except water only, or possibly water and other liquids. A partial fast — eating breakfast but skipping lunch and dinner, or perhaps skipping breakfast and lunch but eating dinner — might be another approach. (Most of us won’t curl up and die if we don’t get our two snacks.) Skipping breakfast entirely on Sunday morning, like Catholics did a few decades ago, seems like a very worthwhile proposal.

There is also the extraordinary discipline of extended fasting, of doing without food for a number of days at a stretch, ideally drinking only water. This is obviously an extraordinary undertaking that it could not be programmatically prescribed to people at large and is not something that nearly anyone would want to do with any frequency — but it’s not out of the reach of many ordinary healthy adults to try it at some point in their lives, or perhaps even to make a regular part of their Lenten practice. (You would want to talk to your doctor before trying this, as well as a good priest or spiritual director.)

Don’t think you could do a total fast for a day, let alone regularly? Don’t think you could do without breakfast on Sunday morning? Give it a try. Risk a little sustained suffering. Think about how Jesus suffered for you. Find out something about yourself — perhaps how weak you are (and therefore how in need of training); perhaps how strong you are (and therefore capable of doing more than the minimum).

Afraid it might give you a headache? Take some ibuprofin or aspirin (the emptiness and boredom of doing without food is enough). Afraid it might make you grumpy? Ah, there’s your chance for spiritual battle. Wash your face and wear a smile when you fast, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Give it a try. Do some penance — extra penance that your confessor didn’t give you and the Church doesn’t require of you. The soul you benefit may be your own — or it may even be someone else’s, to the greater glory of God and your greater heavenly reward.

SDG here (not Jimmy) with some brief thoughts on fasting.

In recent decades, many American Evangelicals have rediscovered the practice of fasting long practiced in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. In 1978 Richard J. Foster, a Protestant writer in the Quaker tradition, published Celebration of Discipline, a book on spiritual practices that introduced many Protestants to the ascetical and devotional heritage of the early monastic tradition, the mystical writings of John of the Cross, and other writers ranging from Brother Lawrence to Dostoyevski to Thomas Merton.

It was reading Foster as a young Evangelical that I first encountered the claim that fasting is a normative part of the Christian life: After all, Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount said to his followers "When you fast," not "if"; and in Mark 2 Jesus declared that while His disciples could not fast while He, the Bridegroom, was among them, in the days when the Bridegroom would be taken away, "then they will fast."

Later, as I learned more about the early Fathers, I discovered the Didache, one of the earliest extrabiblical Christian texts (possibly as early as 70 AD), which records that Christians in the apostolic Church fasted twice a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays (in contradistinction to the practice of the "hypocrites," which was to fast Mondays and Thursdays).

Even so, for many Christians, fasting continues to be a somewhat exotic or unfamiliar practice, perhaps carrying a suspicious whiff of works-righteousness or something of the sort. Why do we fast? How can we explain it to others?

What follows below the fold is my attempt, originally written for and posted in a non-Catholic Christian forum, to brief sum up what I understand to be the basics regarding the place of fasting in Christian spirituality as a form of penance and asceticism. Additional thoughts, insights, corrections and comments are welcome.

Continue reading “A Short Primer on Fasting”