This is the first, and last post about Aliens

So, I was talking with this dude the other day, and he played the familiar card of, 'The universe is so big, there has got to be life on other planets.'

Man, I hate this one!

and I think it can totally be taken down by placing it in a larger crypto-zoological discussion.

What i mean is: Aliens fall into the same category as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. and also their antecedants: abundant human-killing wolves, etc.

In this way: Whenever we humans encounter big, dark, abyssal spaces, they evoke a primal terror in us. In such spaces—forests, the ocean, mountain ranges—there is just an overwhelming quantity of opaque 'unknown-ness'. The foe that evokes this fear is too large and faceless to be wrestled with, and so we mythologize and create (often anthropomorphic) monsters that embody and represent the fear of the unknown. Giving it a face allows it to be a foe that can be faced down, and also then provides the fodder for folk tales. And so: Mountains::Yeti, Oceans::Sea-Monsters (except there actually are sea-monsters, so void that one), Forests::Wolves, Caves::trolls, etc.

In like manner, with the gargantuan blackness of space, we have constructed humanoid aliens. done! case-closed! there are no such thing as aliens! it's just modern man's version of the big-bad-wolf.

***

In thinking about this, I realized there is one other area where a similiar psychological 'face-making' takes place: Computers! And the myth is the Terminator! (as in - the films). Computers present us with a complexity and quantity of data that i think we register it in the same emotional category as a dark forest. I mean, think about why a film like 'Terminator' was made? what is it's source? I mean - self-aware, impossibly tough techno-monsters? not a feasible reality - it's mythic!

***

Lastly - regarding the form aliens so often 'have' - I just came across the most mind-blowing idea! that an 'alien face' is actually similiar to the way a mother's face looks when one is just an infant and cannot focus one's eyes properly, and is developing a visual memory. I.e. the most profound image we can imagine! for a proper explanation see this article (although, their take is that the mothers-face is an image 'pre-wired' into an infants brain, a la evolutionary psychology—also feasible):
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/close-encounters-of-the-facial-kind/


Insane! Blows my mind!

also - for the record - that alien image scares the shit out of me.

ok. never again will i post on such garbage.

This is the best blog on the Internet—

or at least, what grips him almost always grips me, and he draws from awesome wells.

http://crashinglybeautiful.tumblr.com/

A G.K. quote sent to me by Giles (a professed agnostic):

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

- G.K. Chesterton

"I don’t understand why they’re not greedy for what’s inside them. The heart has the ability to experience so much—and we don’t have much time."

Zac reminded me of this line the other day, one of many inspirations to be found in this interview with Jack Gilbert.

Also, this line summarizes some of the sadness and discontent I have sometimes felt at my chaplaincy internship - how few are those who have taken matters of the heart seriously.

'Tis a pity.

A note to our Readers—

So, the readership of this blog has expanded a little bit since we first began.

I have gathered that among our regulars here are the other members of Harcout-Brace-JovanaBitch: Rachel Thompson, & Zac; then there's also Tim Davis, my Dad and brother Tim, and Steph Lee (who ps. did I hear you became Orthodox?); and then a little while back upon request I opened the space up to Lisbeth, Tony, Brian, Decort, and Travis K. who may take a gander, and then Trent, Rachel Primrose and my Mom know of it, but i don't know if they ever peruse. Mark– I know that you have brought Dayna into the circle, and Kevin Walker, and Bondy, too? Feel free to share with others.

Anyways, just because Internet anonymity is no fun, I figured i'd put that out there, and also:

Dear readers! guests in this digital living-room of armchair philosophico-theologizing, Feel free to chime in! Either with comments on posts, or, if you have some ideas of your own that you'd love to share in just such a setting - email them to me and I would love to post them!
Some dialogue would be fun, no?
well, if 'no', no problem, Mark and I shall continue to blab unprompted :)

—Ben

ps. any regulars that I forgot?

Anecdote from the Radio—

Driving home from a wonderful weekend in the Chi/Wheaton, I was listening to RadioLab on the radio, and heard this story:

So, apparantly, Xenophon was set for battle against the Persians (who greatly outnumbered them), and the day before battle he was speaking with the Captain of the army about where they should fight—where would give them the greatest tactical advantage, etc. Xenophon said that they must take their stand on the very edge of the cliff. That is, the Greeks would have their backs to the cliff's drop-off, and fight forwards. The Captain objected: "But then there is no way for a retreat if we begin to lose!", "Exactly" replied Xenophon, who foresaw that if his fellow soldiers had no other option than to fight to the death, then it would charge them all the more to make sure it was their enemies' death and not their own. Furthermore, the Persians would see this situation, and the steeled resolve of the Greeks would no doubt be a source of intimidation. "Embrace the Cliff." was Xenophon's conclusion.

I think they won the fight.

Man does this story stir my courage! and the RadioLab producers didn't overlook its potency. Indeed, it introduced the episode's topic:

Commitment. Arranging it so that you cannot compromise.

mmmMMMmm!

I dub this guy the patron saint of this blog and our collective interests

Sabine Baring-Gould. What a man!
A priest who:
-Collected one of the most impressive anthologies of English folk music
-Wrote a 16-volume 'Lives of the Saints'
AND -Has a book titled 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'!

What work! What a man!

addenda:

- nothing more fun than victorian 'scholarship'

- I just ordered a copy of 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'

Some Influential Lines —

Whenever anyone comments on Nature, these lines of Henry Sutton always come to mind:

'Man'

Man doth usurp all space,
Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in the face,
Never yet thine eyes behold a tree;
‘Tis no sea thou seést in the sea,
‘Tis but a disguised humanity.
To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
All that interests a man, is man.

Wheaton never mentioned this about C.S. Lewis!!

apparantly he smoked 60 cigarettes a day! between pipes! hahahahhaa. This tops even the Bonhoeffer habit we have harped on on this here blog.
from the ever-interesting Writer's Alamanac, Mar 29th:
On this day in 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country to completely ban cigarette smoking from the workplace. Great Britain soon followed, instituting a ban to be phased in gradually over the next four years, which prompted author and columnist A.N. Wilson to remark in the Telegraph: "Sitting with my drink in such now-empty bars, my mind has turned to the great smokers of the past — to C.S. Lewis, who smoked 60 cigarettes a day between pipes with his friends Charles Williams (cigarette smoker) and Tolkien (pipe-smoker); to Thomas Carlyle, whose wife made him smoke in the kitchen of their house in Cheyne Row, but who is unimaginable without tobacco, to Robert Browning, who quickly adapted to the new cigarette craze, to the great John Cowper Powys, who continued to smoke cigarettes, and to produce fascinating novels, into his nineties ... This attack on basic liberty, which was allowed through without any significant protest, might mark the end not merely of smoking, but of literature."
Although I think A.N. Wilson might be slightly over-stating the case, and the public health-benefits to smoking bans are unquestionable, there is a little something that has been lost...

Magic?

In 2011 I wrote a post about being anti-sacraments. How ashamed I am of those words now. To speak so callously of my Lord and His Church, and his sacred body and blood.

I have erased the post as a formal revocare, just in case at some time in the future anyone dug this up.

For the record:

it IS his body -- because HE said so.

Ben+

7.18.19

2 more of my cents on Classic Controversies, pt II

Homosexuality!

Aaagghh!

Ok. So, far too much has been said by christians on this 'topic' (What?! it's PEOPLE!), but I do have one thought that I want to share.

First off - the reason i have been thinking a little bit about it is because, as some of you may know - I am likely headed off to seminary next year. Specifically, an episcopal seminary. But not an ordinairy episcopal seminary, but one where the rift of TEC (The Episcopal Church USA) and ACNA (the counter-TEC, re-aligned polity) is quite present-in-dialogue, AND where, if I am to attend (and maybe even one-day be ordained?!) I need to first get confirmed, which means I need to make a choice as to which 'denomination' to be confirmed in.

And this is where the 'issue' of homosexuality has arisen - since it is one of the prominent points of division between TEC and ACNA, and I have been investigating in my mind whose declarations on the 'issue' I think are more truthful. On the one hand I do feel like many priests and bishops in TEC patently ignore the fact that the Bible does seem to do the opposite of affirm homosexual practice qua homosexual practice (rather than as 'loving relationship' as the dialogue is often re-framed as within TEC). On the otherhand - the fact that ACNA is intentionally in communion with many provinces in the global south who are at least tacitly complicit with the very hateful, homophobic statements of the govenments alongside which they preside (I.e. Uganda, Nigeria, etc.)

What to do?!

Ultimately - a combination of factors (other theological problems with TEC, like, the de-emphasizing of a historical Resurrection, etc; the fact that if I chose my local TEC diocese, the bishop wouldn't let me attend Nashotah House (the seminary I hope to attend)) pushed me into ACNA, but along the way I had this thought, following the scattered fragments I have learned along the way (Foucault?) about the development of 'homosexuality' as an identity, as opposed to just a practice which one could partake in, even if one had a wife, family, etc (like it was in Rome):

If you take away from an understanding of the humans, of the self, the notion that we are created beings, that we are caused beings, and that - and now we move into the realm of the Christian - we bear the image of God, and are of such worth that God willingly died to re-unite with us (all of which were indeed stripped from the what-we-now-call anthropology held by the average western man during the great secularization that began in the mid 19th century.), what is the next-deepest level of experience? That is, if a meta-physical understanding is pulled, what then remains as the most powerful, primal thing we experience? why - our desires of course?! All humans experience the overwhelming power of our primal desires: to eat, to reproduce, etc, and these forces do verily shape a large portion of the societies that we observe and construct. Here then is a foundation. And so it makes sense that when variations of desire are present - that is, the fact that around 1 in 10 people feel sexual attraction to the same sex - the desires are already in the realm of 'Identity', and so it add's up, quite logically, that in today's world we don't conceive of humans with homosexual desires, but rather - homosexuals, as a noun, since Identity is grounded and explained by our desires.

Right? I guess I just mean - the math of it makes sense.

As far as right/wrong, can-you-be-gay-and-a-bishop-as-well, etc. I am very reticent to weigh in since any public words cannot be used for good, i don't reckon. That said, this is a 'living room', and not a forum, and so I shall say just this: When I imagine living on the New Earth, with a resurrected body, I don't imagine my friends that in this life 'are' gay (quotation marks - not because it is a choice or any of those other foolish evangelical postulations, merely that 'are' is a form of 'is' which is an ontological statement, which, considering my previous argument's is only how we talk about homosexuality (as Identity) in the last 150 years, and I want to leave that part of it open to debate) will still be so in the next life. Now, obviously it is very dangerous to make declarative statements about today based on speculations of a supra-physical future (!), indeed, sexual desire may be entirely absorbed into other forms of love in the New Jerusalem, but since it is the case that our pre-lapsarian bodies had genitals and sexual differentiation, it may be the case that it still exists somehow (although - maybe not? since we will neither 'marry nor be given in marriage', which would definitely have conjugal consequences) in the hereafter. Oh man. I realize that my intial idea here (gay people won't be gay in heaven) might be a bit more problematic than i realized. shoot.

Ok, but my first point still stands - that homosexuality as identity is both new and understandable.

Ok, I don't know if i have actually contributed anything at all? Have I already mis-spoken so quickly and in so doing injured the hearts of my gay brothers and sisters? Lord have mercy, I hope not.

05/16/11 UPDATE: apparantly some other people are musing along similiar lines: http://tgcreviews.com/reviews/the-end-of-sexual-identity/

2 more of my cents on Classic Controversies, pt I

Evolution!

AAgghh!

But seriously - Here are 2 beefs that I have been chewing on re a scientific understanding of the universe (i.e. Big Bang, planet formation, origin of life, species evolution, etc):

I am struck by an apparant glaring problem of scale. What i mean is: serious study (because come on: this does NOT count) of the natural world has been taking place for what, 400 years? at best? and the pretty-much-agreed-upon age of the universe is, what, 13.75 billion years? Now, I'm not saying the Universe isn't that old, indeed it jolly well might be, but what I am saying is how on earth can we speak even close to definitively about what has happened in this gargantuan time-period when we've only been even looking at it for 400 years! By comparison (I did the math), it would be like watching Einstein in action for the last 1 min and 13 seconds of his life (and having never heard of him or met him before), and deducing from it that he was a Nobel Physicist, a patent clerk, an agnostic Jew, the discoverer of General Relativity, and wore a blue checkered shirt on the day before his 7th birthday.

There's no way you could hazard anything more than a guess at such things! when you have only observed for 1/10^-8 of the time-frame!

Rather - with a tad more humility about the observational prowess of homo sapiens, I side with a Wendell Berry Poem I just read:

“On the Theory of the Big Bang as the Origin of the Universe” **

I.

What banged?

II.

Before banging

how did it get there?

III.

When it got there

where was it?

Beef #2:

I just realized the other day just to what degree 'science' (and by this i mean the body of knowledge thus far 'discovered' via the scientific method: empirical observation, hypotheses testing, etc) fit's the bill of being a religion. That is, when we look, sociologically, at the role a religion has in a given society, we see, among other things, that it is a body of knowledge and/or narratives that the adherent relies upon to explain the so-called 'big questions' of life. Namely, Where did the world come from, why does it exist, what is my role in it, etc. Science is happy to offer an answer to these questions, and like many religions offers itself as a foundation in which to ground all understanding and experience. Now, whereas a strict evolutionary stance does - as many christian apologists from Lewis on have noted - restrict consciousness to only being a tool to aid species survival, and not - as many scientific philosophers seem to negelct - an ability to truly apprehend the fundamental nature of the universe (itself an onto-theological claim), would seemingly lead all those who adhere to science qua a religion into a sisyphean worldview at best, the advancement of the medical sciences and tele-communication have allowed most scientific believers to re-adopt ('re' because this belief crashed and burned the first time around. cf. WWI) a science-is-making-the-world-better as their existential telos.

sorry, that sentence is impossibly multi-clausal. what can I do.

Anyway - what i am getting at, is NOT that science is just one religion among others. Because, of course, the claims it makes are indeed a wee bit more helpful than some of the claims of other religions. BUT I just think it would be helpful to realize the similarities between how our culture treats science, and how other cultures treat religion. Simply so that we don't swallow it all hook-line and sinker.

'cause, following that metaphor - you get caught and die.

**Hat tip to Zac Chastain for the Berry poem.

A description I aspire to:

T.S. Eliot on Blaise Pascal -

"A man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world."

words, words, words.

It's 1 am and i'm a little dreary. But here's a thought -

Well, to get to the point quickest, how about a little stage setting:

In a 2005 interview, Eugene Peterson says this:

"It's very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We've got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we'd better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good."

In that vein - I was thinking about the word 'saved', as in 'salvation', and the array of other meanings this word has elsewhere in our western culture. Following the idea that the meaning we attach to any word as we hear or read it comes directly from our amalgamation of all the previous times we have heard that word used, I think we might need to re-think the use of this word as it pertains to God's actions towards us, his children, because I reckon his works have very little in common with the way we 'save' a document on a computer, save something by keeping it in the fridge, a goal-keeper saving a shot, or my savings account at my bank. I fear the polysemous nature of the word might detract from the meaning it is supposed to have when used in evangelism. Especially if the audience is unfamiliar with 'church language'.

So, for clarity's sake, i reckon we should probably replace it with something closer to the target. Like 'rescued' or 'restored', or better yet - a good, long story about what God has done and is doing through his son and through his people in the world.

I am certain dozens of theologians have already banged a very similiar drum, but this specific instance of how different the meanings of 'saved' are struck me the other day.

Ok, off to bed.

some thoughts on empathies/theodicy

So, I have been (once again) intellectually crushing on NT Wright. Found a great collection of his lectures online (here), and was listening to this one the other day, in which Tom's debate partner, Bart Ehrman (a Wheaton grad, interestingly) takes the familiar stance of 'look at all the suffering in the world: all the starving children, all the people killed by natural disasters, &c. There simply cannot be a God who is both all-loving and all-powerful, and so - since these qualities are essential to God qua God - it is doubtful that there is a God in any real sense at all.'

This problem of suffering - a derivative of the problem of evil (aka -theodicy) - is almost always posed by mentioning the large-scale sufferings around the world (hunger, disease, the holocaust &c.) - these are what cause so much upset to Dr. Ehrman, and I reckon have likewise pushed many people into agnosticism.

The trouble is - I don't buy it.

Their empathy I mean. Their sense of despair regarding all of the 'horrifying' 'tragedies' that befall so many others around the world. That is the reason they can't believe in God? No way.

I am dubious for two reasons:

1) No one cares that much about the suffering of others. I personally take pains to maintain a sensitivity to others around me. I don't watch violent or extreme movies, I read the news, I study history and I try and keep a tender heart towards the world. I have never received feedback from others that I am unusually callous toward my fellow human, In fact - the opposite. And yet when I hear about all these large-scale tragedies (and I have heard about them - I would be surprised if there exists a large-scale suffering in the world that I haven't heard of), I barely bat an eye-lid. On the contrary, when tragedy (which so far in life has primarily taken the form of untimely deaths) hits close to home, I am devastated emotionally. Crying and upset for weeks on end - often very angry and confused with God - but for some reason they have never pushed me to doubt God's presence, character and workings, and the agnostics in question likewise seem to use personal examples very seldomly. Now, with regards to empathy for global-scale pain, it very well may be the case that there is a degree of maturity that I have not yet reached, wherein a sense of the existence (and subsequently - the suffering) of others is deeper and more visceral. If this is so, then this post here is moot, but if not (and I am banking on it being 'not'), then i proffer the following explanation:

2) People who are fixated on the world's problems are projecting the anxiety they feel about their own inner-state onto the world at-large. Thus, their empathy is not genuine, and cannot be the ground for a real theodicy problem. Two objections to this idea raise themselves in my mind off the bat, but I think both can be fairly dismissed:

objection one: This is just pop-Freudian nonsense.

retort: I have seen this in several patients who admit to having mental health issues at the hospital i work at. They will identify that they have a lot of emotional tumult, and will also admit that they think about the atrocities of the world frequently throughout the day. I myself did this very thing when I was in an emotionally 'tough season' in college. In as much as 'logic' can be used when speaking of an unconscious mind, there is some 'logic' to such a projection: Like any defense mechanism, it allows the will to focus on something other than the pain at hand, while at the same time, since the issues relate by analogy, one can address one's own suffering indirectly by examining the suffering of others. Furthermore, unlike interior suffering, which is often very inarticulateable and shifting - the suffering of the world bears a more concrete and statistical character - rendering it more open to concrete helping-actions, unlike the hard-to-help crisis going on inside.

objection two: Even if it is the case that those who speak of global suffering are merely engaging in an act of psychological projection, so what? attention is still being brought to issues in the world that genuinely need help, and moreover - what external claim doesn't have it's roots in some internal pre-occupation?

retort: this objection is entirely valid. In and of itself the issue of presenting the World's suffering needs no psychological explanation, but in this argument I am examining the issue of the World's suffering as it serves in the role of a stumbling block to those who would have otherwise believed in a God. To the one who points it out as such, I think it is more worthwhile to dismiss the problem of Evil as not the person's real beef with God, but as an intellectual distraction, and instead look to more personal reasons for their reticence.

This idea of a more 'personal' hesitation as the real source for unbelief is grounded by the fact that the people who actually suffer in the great tragedies (who were around for the Rwandan genocide, who were there when the earthquake killed half the town, etc) seem to turn to religion in droves, not away from it. The developing world (which is structurally less immune to disease, disaster and tyrants) has the highest percentage of Christians and christian conversion on the planet.

Furthermore, the problem of Evil is so often presented by wealthy, white intellectuals, and I think part of the 'more personal' reasons that this is the case is the latent guilt we have inherited along with all of our money. Deep down, we realize that the nightmares that happen on an annual basis somewhere in the developing world are caused in part by the legacy of colonialism, from which our wallets are padded. When i imagine a professor like Bart Ehrman 'selling all he has and giving to the poor', for some reason I imagine his personal theodicy problems disappearing along with his Franklins. No?

Now - after having said all this about why I am dubious of the empathy of others (as I remember the Chesterton quote - 'it is one of the meanest things for a human to doubt the sentiment of another human', and this, in the Victorian era of puffery!) - two final thoughts on the still-very-real problem of Evil/Suffering:

Firstly - I think a helpful division can be made between suffering brought about by more natural causes (earthquakes, storms, etc) and suffering caused by more human institutions. By making this split I reckon a fair amount of suffering can be accounted for without having to blame God:

In the first - natural disasters - i think it is helpful to re-frame ourselves as fellow animals on this Earth. If a cow was caught in an unforeseen mud-slide and was killed, would there be a moral problem? no - it would merely be a part of how nature has always done it's thing. Likewise if we humans happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - why is God to blame? In the second - malicious rulers and oppressive societal structures - we can see the clear connection between one person's suffering and the oppressor who caused it. Thus, a bad human, or bad society is directly responsible, not God.

Of course there is and will always be a (larger or smaller) remainder of suffering yet unaccounted for, and like any honest human/Christian, in the face of such suffering I would not propound an explanation as a source of meaning, but would rather seek comfort and healing for the wounded. But this is a pastoral thought, separate from the intellectual contention I have maintained thus far.

Thoughts?

Endnote -

My favorite anecdote vis-a-vis the theodicy problem:

My friend Zac was riding in a car with some friends of his, late at night, and they were mockingly posing 'deep' questions to each other: "what is happiness?" etc. Zac threw into the mix "Why do bad things happen to good people?" with an air of faux-self-seriousness, and his friend Jesse, who had been driving and looking straight ahead looked right at him with a face flat and serious, obviously dropping all of the pretensions of the game and said sincerely: "what good people?" ...