A Marxist Reinterpretation of the Chronicles
Last night I watched the second movie in the Narnia chronicles, Prince Caspian. I have read the books, but it was so long ago that I had completely forgotten the story, so it was just like watching a fresh fantasy movie. Overall it was fun with serious flaws: the children were unlikable at best, the ending is essentially deus ex machina, Aslan is a really dicky lion, the centaurs looked really crappy, and the story has that underlying feeling that a group of dippy white kids can inherit the earth for no reason but that they were born lucky, which seems a common problem in British fantasy[1]. In its favour, the action scenes were fun, that Susan chick was cool, Prince Caspian was very handsome, and the bad guys were really bad. Not only was the bad king genuinely bad, but the manner of his demise was a perfect piece of comeuppance. So that was all good. However, the final final ending scene made my head explode with rage, and I think I have to elevate it to the pantheon alongside Titanic and the Breakfast Club for cynical endings. I’m now going to describe why, but be aware: this is spoiler central. If you have never read the books or seen the movie, you should probably stop here.
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[WARNING: Spoilers] So, the kids have won their war against the evil humans (let’s call them the Dicks, because I couldn’t catch their full name). The Dicks are all gathered in a town square, being addressed by the universe’s dweebiest god, Aslan, who tells them that they are welcome to live where they are, in peace with the good folk of Narnia, but they can also go back where they came from, which is apparently some tropical island on earth. He will transport them there with his magic powers that are sufficient to teleport whole populations across time and space but insufficient to bring peace to Narnia. At first they look askance on this offer, somewhat in the way that German soldiers might have looked askance at their Russian captors in 1944 when they were told “This train will take you to somewhere warm.” But at last the general from the army steps forward and says he’ll go, and then the dead evil king’s wife steps forward with her son. Aslan says “because you spoke up first, I will ensure your life is extra good on the other side.”
This really, really pissed me off for two reasons. First of all, it’s that classic christian needy-god rubbish, in which Aslan is so powerful that he can transport you across universes but so insecure that you if you don’t immediately jump at his bidding he will punish you for not trusting him. So the first people to show they trust a lunatic talking lion get special treatment, and all the completely rational and reasonable people who are standing in the crowd, recently traumatized by losing a fucking war, are going to be made second-class citizens in this new world because they didn’t show quite the trusting spirit that a deific lion might want them to. Why would you not trust a lion when it tells you it’s going to be nice to you? Can’t think of a single reason … Anyone who has read the bible knows that needy gods are also genocidal, capricious and wrathful gods. Best not to do what that god wants.
But the next pissy thing about this is the people who got the benefit: the general and the wife of the king. So they go from wielding maximum temporal power in Narnia, to being granted special boons in the next world they go to by the guy who defeated them. This is a classic example of the powerful looking after each other even when they do wrong to each other. Why reward the general for being trusting, after he just tried to exterminate your race? Why not instead offer him the dingiest farm in the hardest place? Because having once been in power, he will always be treated better by others in power, while his footsoldiers – who slogged through the mud for him just days earlier, being beaten by minotaurs and rained with arrows – get second place in the next world too. Oh, how the mechanisms of power reproduce themselves even in adversity …
The ending gets even worse at this point though, because now the crowd reveal they don’t trust Aslan, and demand proof that the gate he has created is safe. Rather than pointing out to them that a god who can open gates will always be able to fool them with tricks to reassure them, the eldest kid decides that the four kids should all go back through the gate to prove it is safe. Aslan agrees, and furthermore points out that two of them won’t ever be able to come back because they’re too old. He also basically tells his favourite, Lucy, to fuck off and not come back.
So basically Aslan is telling these kids that instead of being kings and queens in a world of magic and talking badgers, they are going to be kicked out and forced to go back to living as ordinary kids in London during the blitz. Your reward for helping god? Forced to return to live in a cramped hell-hole of a city that is on fire. And they agree, because of some weird power that Aslan has to convince people that they aren’t able to control his power or the workings of the world, even though he’s standing in front of them negotiating.
I’ve always been confused by the ending of these world-crossing books. It would take me precisely one second to decide that no, I am not going back to being a sales assistant in a bookshop after I just spent months wielding mighty magics in the Land of Phallusia. I think I’ll stay here, thank you, and you can line the vestal virgins up in the hallway outside my penthouse room. Oh, and bring me some of that elixir of youth while you’re at it, I’ll be bedding them until the dawn of the next age. Oh, how cute! A talking lion! There there little lion, why don’t you go and lick your balls over in the corner while I rule this kingdom wisely, and make myself very rich? Because I can tell from the abject state of its denizens, and the fact that a mere bookshop assistant from Croydon can sort all this shit out, that you are neither a wise nor a good god. Now, go and eat your din-dins like a good pet while the adults get on with sorting out the mess you made of your world.
That‘s how Prince Caspian should have ended, not with the plebs being deported to another world to be ruled over by exactly the people who got them into their situation in the first place, and Susan the mighty archer princess having to steal a kiss from a very very handsome Prince whose kingdom she could be ruling before a talking lion whisks her off to study O-level chemistry in a city being bombed by Nazis. That, my friends, is a cynical ending par excellence.
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fn1: I wonder why? Actually the Narnia chronicles strike me as potentially very colonialist. At one point a talking animal admits that Narnia has never been happy except when a son of Adam – i.e. a white man – is sitting on its throne. That’s right, Narnia’s swarthy and animalistic hordes will never be content until they are ruled by a member of the British elite.
Compromise and Conceit 
October 1, 2012 at 8:04 am
I strongly agree. The entire Narnia series faces the classic theodicy problem of why a god who rocks up at the end should be paid any attention to at all. And it totally flubs it.
On returning from a magical world, theres an XKCD that sums it up well: http://xkcd.com/693/
October 1, 2012 at 1:58 pm
As a child of the Enlightenment, I agree fully. As a student of medieval history (and therefore of various religious currents of thought), I can see how CS Lewis arrived here. God is to be trusted, not judged (see Book of Job); He is beneficent, but the manner of His good is unknowable to humans (see Augustine), and anyway is in the hereafter; free will is our problem, not His (see Aquinas). BTW, in the book, the first person through the portal is an ordinary soldier – I think putting the evil queen first reflects the political philosophy of the backer of the films which is, I understand, a libertarian Christianity, not CS Lewis’ more classic variety. And, yeah, the lion looked really phony
October 1, 2012 at 2:38 pm
While Peter T’s statements are totally reasonable, I just want to say (as I say every time it’s mentioned) that the Book of Job is the most horrible, noxious piece of crap ever. [1] It ends with a statement that boils down to “I was here first and I’m better than you, therefore suck it.”
[1] Here’s hoping the proposed UN blaspemy laws don’t go anywhere.
October 1, 2012 at 11:07 pm
I think there need to be more references to Augustine and the book of Job on my blog. Nice points, boys, and that’s an interesting aside about the director inserting a libertarian christian twist on Lewis’s original ending.
I must say, I read all these books and I don’t remember anything of them except that I loved them. I read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader in NZ, so I was 11 years old at the very oldest, so maybe I just didn’t pay attention to them. I could re-read them, but I think I tried a cs lewis as an adult (some sci-fi?) and my brain died. Also, I wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to do a post-colonialist take-down, and that would surely offend everyone.
July 26, 2016 at 11:26 am
you suck and are wrong you shouldn’t post on here. you are a stupid person is ruining the world like Donald trump!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
March 5, 2017 at 3:23 am
This made me crie at the ending because susan and peter are told they cant come back and tells Lucy(the youngest)to go and leave even though she dont want to.
June 3, 2019 at 6:43 am
You have completely missed the entire message of the movies and books. I will pray for your heart to softened and open to God’s Word.
June 3, 2019 at 12:14 pm
I appreciate your efforts, Praying For You (Me?), but it’s a well-established fact that prayer doesn’t convince people that they’re wrong on the internet as effectively as writing a comment explaining why they’re wrong. Could you do that? What part of my complaint is wrong, and what is this book actually trying to tell me that my hard heart missed?
June 19, 2019 at 11:40 am
I hope you aren’t really expecting a response from ‘Praying For You’, because my experience of how the Internet works suggests that’s extremely improbable, but I’m happy to give you my reading of the message of the Narnia books (and, indeed, other of Lewis’s writings, including _The Screwtape Letters_, _Till We Have Faces_, and the Space trilogy, the latter of which is the most likely suspect for the Lewis Sci-fi you mention having tried). It’s this: we are all God’s finger-puppets, and if you accept and embrace that role, everything will turn out according to God’s plan; whereas, if you reject and resist your role as God’s finger-puppet, everything will _still_ turn out according to God’s plan, but _you won’t like it_.
Lewis faces a problem faced by Christians in general (and, indeed, adherents of many other religions): is it possible for the actions of humans (or other created beings) to thwart the Almighty? Somebody who can be thwarted doesn’t really seem Almighty; but if nothing we do can thwart the Almighty, then how much real choice do we have? It’s like playing three-card Monte, or the shell game: no matter what choice you make, the result is _guaranteed_ the same. (Of course, if you don’t insist on the existence of an _Almighty_ God, this problem doesn’t arise, but generally speaking Christians, among others, do insist on just that, among other things.)
You posted this originally long before I started reading your blog, and I noticed it only because of the recent comments, but since I’m here, and since the comment signals some kind of interest, and just because you might still be interested, I’m mentioning that another blogger has (over a period of years) been combing through the Narnia books in detail (so you don’t have to, you can just read the blog posts, and, if you feel so moved, the comments, some of which are mine). A lot has been pointed out in the years this has been going on ‘It’s not clear how that’s supposed to work’ and ‘No, that is not how that works’ and ‘This does not make sense’. Here’s an index for you:
http://www.anamardoll.com/2011/02/narnia-narnia-deconstruction-index-post.html
It’s while I was participating in that discussion that I succeeded in articulating the explanation of Lewis’s message which I offer above.
Peter T’s comment suggest that the position taken in the book of Job (which I have read, but a long time ago) is that God is not to be judged, while the position taken by Augustine (whom I have not read) is that God is beneficent. These positions are incompatible: nobody can consistently hold both at once. Anybody who asserts that God is beneficent is making a judgement about God. If you genuinely and sincerely do not want to judge God, then you shouldn’t be affirming that God is beneficent. Christians (among others) do typically affirm that God is good: therefore, if they assert that God can’t be judged, I think it should be taken more as either a debating trick or evidence of muddled thinking than as a genuine position. (You said you wanted more references to Augustine and the book of Job; I hope this counts.)
June 21, 2019 at 9:35 pm
So I just re-read Job. Augustine is not making a judgement about God – God’s beneficence is axiomatic (like His omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence). Job is an argument for faith. Job’s comforters argue that variously Job must have sinned or that all will come right as God is just. Job replies that he is not conscious of any sin or affront to God, and that often the righteous perish and the unrighteous flourish. Yet still will he trust in God. For who is he beside God? Can he raise mountains or stop the sun in its course? Nope. Sits with Luther’s ‘sola fide’ and the apparently arbitrary judgements at the end of The Last Battle (the one Narnia book I did not read to the kids).
June 23, 2019 at 10:39 am
If Augustine asserts that God’s beneficence is axiomatic, then that’s a judgement Augustine made; how not?
June 23, 2019 at 10:48 am
If it’s axiomatic isn’t that a statement of fact, not a judgement?
June 24, 2019 at 8:37 am
If you state that something is a fact, then it’s your judgement that it is a fact. Of course, it may well be that your judgement is correct, but it’s still your judgement. Correct judgements and incorrect judgements are all judgements. If, for example, it is a fact that somebody is guilty of a crime, then a court’s judgement that the person is guilty is still a judgement.
June 24, 2019 at 9:45 am
The difference is that a judgement allows room for doubt. The court may be wrong. But that two and two make four (or that one is not a brain in a vat, or the world an illusion) is less a fact than an axiom – something that one takes to be true without serious question. No-one tests the illusion by stepping off a cliff, nor keeps adding two and two to see if they sometimes get five.
The existence of the divine was similarly axiomatic to Augustine – and pretty much everyone else. The attributes of the divine pre-date Augustine (see Antigone’s appeal to “Zeus the Law-Giver”, or Socrates’ argument for the existence of ‘the good” which Zeus decrees).
June 24, 2019 at 7:56 pm
I’m with Peter T on this, the omniscience and beneficence of God are axiomatic in the bible. The weird thing is why people don’t take God’s actual actions in the bible as a proof that the bible is not the word of god (proof by contradiction).
June 24, 2019 at 9:38 pm
‘… an axiom – something that one takes to be true without serious question … The existence of the divine was similarly axiomatic to Augustine …’
The statement ‘I take it to be true without serious question’ is synonymous with the statement ‘I judge it to be true without serious question’. I haven’t read Augustine, but if it is in fact the case that he unquestioningly took it to be true that God is beneficent, then that’s the same as saying that it was his unquestioning judgement that God is beneficent.
‘… the omniscience and beneficence of God are axiomatic in the bible …’
I’m not sure that position is stated in the Bible–I’m even more dubious about the idea that it is consistently maintained in the Bible–but even if it was, to say that the Bible writers assumed that position as axiomatic is synonymous with saying that they judged that position was axiomatic; what’s more, anybody who accepts that what’s written in the Bible is true is, synonomously, judging that the statements in the Bible are true.
June 24, 2019 at 10:12 pm
Yes but if they didn’t, the entire point of the bible and the religion they’re following would be moot, and then they wouldn’t give a fig what Augustine thought. Accepting the axioms of god as beneficent is necessary to care what Augustine thinks, or indeed to bother engaging with the paradox you originally set out.
June 25, 2019 at 10:50 am
Christianity is of some interest to people who are not themselves Christians, partly out of simple curiosity, partly because their lives may be influenced by people who are Christians, partly because Christianity has been an important influence in the world and in history generally. To the extent that Christianity is of interest to people who are not themselves Christians, it is of interest that the position taken by many Christians that God is good conflicts with the position taken by many Christians that God is not to be judged by human beings. If the point of no interest to you, there’s no reason I know of why you should discuss it. You wrote earlier that you’d like to have more references to Augustine, which seemed to indicate that you cared what Augustine thought, but perhaps I misunderstood.
June 25, 2019 at 12:39 pm
“The statement ‘I take it to be true without serious question’ is synonymous with the statement ‘I judge it to be true without serious question’.”
Have to disagree. An axiom is something you take to be true as foundational, without the possibility of question. As in “I am alive”, or “two plus two equals four”” or “the world is real”. The other position is the stuff of fiction, jokes, bullshit, bad philosophy…
That the divine existed and was imminent in the world was axiomatic to pretty much all humans until recently. The disagreements were over what form(s) it took and what the proper attitude to it was. Denial of God/the gods was a form of insanity at best, or a form of social trolling to be punished.
God’s goodness was to be taken on faith, not as a matter of judgement (judgement here being human decision, with the attendant possibility of alternative choices).
Of course, having now taken atheism seriously, we find these positions hard to credit. But there they were (and are).
June 25, 2019 at 5:52 pm
‘An axiom is something you take to be true as foundational, without the possibility of question.’
I agree. But a person’s judgements are, by definition, things that person takes to be true, so an axiom is something you _judge_ to be a foundational truth, without the possibility of question.
‘That the divine existed and was imminent in the world was axiomatic to pretty much all humans until recently.’
Even if that were true (I think you’re underestimating the history of atheism, but let’s put that issue to one side), it would mean people _judged_ the existence of the divine to be true beyond possibility of question.
June 25, 2019 at 9:12 pm
OK. Either we are playing with words here, or you’re taking individualistic rationalism too far. No-one, in my experience, “judges” that the world is real, or that gravity is an illusion generated by computer simulation, or that other people are figments of their imagination, or similar hypotheses. They may play with these as ideas, but they do not entertain them as serious possibilities, as evidenced in their actions. Quite simply, we do come come into the world as tabulae rasae, but with some foundational propositions hard-wired – for very good reasons. Survival demands that we take mother, gravity and a few other things for granted. Socialisation (which is also, for humans, survival) demands that we take foundational social notions for granted. We do not judge them, we accept them.
This is not to say social notions are immutable. But they are not the same stuff as judging innocence or guilt, or the adequacy of a beam to bear a load.
June 26, 2019 at 7:29 am
Well, in my experience _everybody_ judges that the world is real, but perhaps that depends on what you think ‘judge’ means. So I’ll put it this way instead.
Consider the two statements ‘God’s actions are good’ and ‘God’s actions are evil’. Either those two statements are _both_ judgements or else _neither_ one of them is a judgement, on _any_ possible sensible definition of ‘judge’ and ‘judgement’. Therefore, anybody who both asserts the goodness of God and also rejects any criticism of the view on the grounds that it is not for humans to judge God is taking incompatible positions.
If you, for example, hold that Christians who say that God is good are not judging God, can you also say that when people point to suffering in the world as evidence against the existence of a good God are judging God? _I_ point to the suffering in the world as evidence against the existence of a good God: am _I_ judging God?
June 26, 2019 at 1:40 pm
Conflicting senses of the word “judge”. No-one “judges” the world is real – we KNOW it’s real, literally in our bones, in the same way an oyster knows the tides. Gravity, inertia, pain – these we are born knowing. As social primates, we are also born with the notions of status, connection and probably more (anything else would be very non-Darwinian) – some of these are part of the language instinct.
To the religious, the divine is known in the same way (I’m not religious, but I think this is the only way to make sense of religious feeling and thought). The instantiation and elaboration of this sense is social, and hence contingent (in much the same way language is). Some religions posit evil divine forces (Yezidis, I think, do this), but the highest power is always felt as good.
So a Christian is saying “I know God to be good”. The existence of suffering is not a disproof but a challenge: you cannot know what God knows, nor do what God does, so how suffering manifests as good is beyond your comprehension. You know God to be good; you cannot know how, so it is impious to demand an answer.
June 26, 2019 at 7:14 pm
‘So a Christian is saying “I know God to be good”. The existence of suffering is not a disproof but a challenge: you cannot know what God knows, nor do what God does, so how suffering manifests as good is beyond your comprehension.’
There is no knowledge without comprehension. Nobody can know a statement to be true without comprehending it.
June 26, 2019 at 8:10 pm
“Nobody can know a statement to be true without comprehending it.”
Gravity causes things to fall. Did people not know this to be true before Newton?
June 27, 2019 at 7:35 am
I don’t know. Did they?
Obviously it was known before the time of Newton that things fall, but ‘Things fall’ and ‘Gravity causes things to fall’ are not synonymous. Would anybody before the time of Newton have said ‘Gravity causes things to fall’? Did anybody actually say that before the time of Newton? Maybe; I don’t know. Can you help me find out?
June 27, 2019 at 3:35 pm
Perhaps a bad example. The distinction is between things apprehended (gravity, the flight of a ball, the colour of the sky…) and things comprehended, as in consciously understood. Divinity – the numinous generally – is apprehended, and often incomprehensible.
June 29, 2019 at 6:19 pm
Here are some statements:
Things fall
Gravity causes things to fall
Balls can fly
The sky is blue
There is a God
God is Three and God is One
I place a high value on precision
What I am telling you is true
Prince Caspian has the most cynical ending in movie history
Here are some noun phrases:
Gravity
The flight of a ball
The colour of the sky
God
The Trinity
Divinity
The numinous
Precision in the use of words
Truth
Statements are the kind of thing to which it is possible for the descriptions ‘true and ‘false’ to apply. Noun phrases are not the kind of thing to which it is possible for the descriptions ‘true’ and ‘false’ to apply.
What I was telling you, therefore, was that nobody can know a statement to be true without comprehending it. It is also true, and for the same reason, that nobody can know a statement to be false without comprehending it. However, I was not telling you that nobody can know a noun phrase to be true without comprehending it: that wouldn’t make sense.
June 29, 2019 at 9:05 pm
Fine. Then w can close this by agreeing that, to the religious, “God is good” is a noun phrase.
June 30, 2019 at 9:17 am
Well, if you want to close with an obvious falsehood, we can. You can call a tail a leg if you want to–I mean, I can’t stop you–but no matter whether you do, it’s still a tail and not a leg. You don’t change what it is by calling it something else. Likewise, you don’t change a statement into a noun phrase by calling it a noun phrase.
Besides which, you can’t find any examples of religious people saying ‘”God is good” is a noun phrase and not a statement’ (or anything equivalent). It wouldn’t be true if they did say it, but as a matter of fact they don’t. You just made that up, for reasons obscure to me. Religious people treat ‘God is good’ as a plain statement of fact.
And besides all of _that_, my point was that if one person affirms the goodness of God and another denies it, they have a disagreement which isn’t resolved by the first person saying, ‘I can do this but you can’t do that’. I suppose if you want to you can continue the word games by making up stories about what an affirmation is and what a denial is, although I still don’t understand why you’d want to.
June 30, 2019 at 9:42 am
Chill. I’m trying to understand the religious, not join them.
June 30, 2019 at 7:56 pm
‘I’m trying to understand the religious’
What is it about them that you’re finding difficult to understand?
July 3, 2019 at 9:52 am
Understand sincere religiosity as an attitude, a mental platform, held and used by most people for most of the time, most of them intelligent, reasonable and inspired very often by it to action..
July 4, 2019 at 9:41 am
As a general proposition, I suggest that the experience of sincere religiosity is not uniform: different religious people experience it differently; and as a general proposition, I can only suggest that if you want to understand it more deeply your options include: spending more time with sincerely religious people and getting to know them better; studying it through non-fiction, as I expect there are many books on the subject, as well as published essays and articles and probably also documentary films and radio and television programs, as well as material in various formats available online; and studying it through fiction, as I expect there are also novels, short stories, plays, poems, films, radio and television productions, and online material exploring the topic fictionally. If there are any specific questions giving you difficulty, I may be able to offer you some insight, but then again maybe I can’t: it’s hard to guess without knowing what the specific questions are.
One thing I can tell you specifically, and I can back this up from personal experience (from when I was a believer) as well as from other observations: religious people _are_ commonly inconsistent in their thinking about goodness: the concept of ‘goodness’ they deploy when discussing God is different from the concept of ‘goodness’ they deploy in other contexts, and they systematically avoid recognising that they are using the same word in incompatible ways and blur or gloss over the distinction. Acknowledging this inconsistency is one of the reasons people abandon religious belief.
July 5, 2019 at 10:45 am
“Consider the two statements ‘God’s actions are good’ and ‘God’s actions are evil’. Either those two statements are _both_ judgements or else _neither_ one of them is a judgement, on _any_ possible sensible definition of ‘judge’ and ‘judgement’. Therefore, anybody who both asserts the goodness of God and also rejects any criticism of the view on the grounds that it is not for humans to judge God is taking incompatible positions.”
You and I can made a judgement for Gob being good or evil, but if we look at the Book of Job we see that for the vast majority of the book, Job literally doesn’t countenance the possibility that God is evil. I’d argue that the difference is that if the statement “God’s actions are evil”, just gets you the same blank look as “Blue laughter drinks” then it demonstrates that they haven’t made a judgment – they don’t even consider the possibility of a judgment, like a 3 year old wondering what they’ve done that makes daddy hurt them – the possibility of “Daddy is an a**hole” doesn’t occur.
But ultimately this is an angels dancing on the head of a pin question. Either we apply absolute rules to Christians and they violate their own statements or we apply their own mindset and accept they don’t. And when assessing their mindset we need to remember that 1 = 3 is a required part of their catechism…
On an absolute logical level, I agree you’re right – calling something good requires a judgement. But my memory of my personal religious experience was that considering the possibility of a judgment is what eventually led me to atheism, prior to that the possibility of judgment wasn’t on the table…
July 7, 2019 at 3:05 pm
I was raised agnostic – religion was interesting but belief not required. Now I’m just writing (another) book, here the main characters are devout. Since I like most of them (the characters), I’m trying to feel my way into the believer mind-set. I don’t think it’s one where logical tests apply.
July 7, 2019 at 9:43 pm
I’m with Paul and Peter T on this. It is very clear to me that religious people have axioms, and we are raised on those axioms and it is the contradiction between the consequences of beliefs built on those axioms and reality that leads us astray from religious belief. It’s axiomatic that the bible is truly about god, that god is good and all powerful. Reading something like the Parable of the Old Man and the Young, then, leads one to a contradiction, and then to rejection of the axioms. But the fundamental belief that god is good is not a judgment. We form a judgment about god once we see that his documented actions don’t fit with the axioms we had been led to believe were true.
I don’t know what Augustine thinks about judging god, but the entire history of theology as far as I can tell is a bunch of skeezy dudes trying to come to terms with the fact that their god is supposed to be good but he’s obviously actually a flaming arsehole. If his goodness were not axiomatic, none of these skeezy dudes would have written a line of their skeezy prose. They’d have just shrugged and said “well, everyone knows god’s an arsehole, deal with it.” The fact that none of them wrote exactly those words should show you how seriously they take it as fact that god is good.
July 8, 2019 at 9:41 am
As far as I can tell, I think that religious believers hold positions which can’t withstand systematic critical scrutiny, and you (Paul, Peter Thomson, faustusnotes) also think that religious believers hold positions which can’t withstand systematic critical scrutiny, so I’m not clear on what (if anything) you think we’re disagreeing about.
July 9, 2019 at 10:21 am
Fair enough. But I think religious people think – vide Paul – that it is inappropriate to apply systematic critical scrutiny to religion, or at least to the underpinning convictions. Epistemologically, they have a point (as Descartes found, NOTHING withstands systematic critical scrutiny, leaving one with nowhere to stand). How far one should take this is a matter of choice – all the way with Tertullian’s “absurdam, quia credo” or only as far as the current vogue for a vague spiritualism?
July 9, 2019 at 3:12 pm
My position is that the same standards should be applied both to the irreligious beliefs of myself (and others) and to the religious beliefs of the devout. If somebody can show me that I have failed to do so, I will attempt to amend accordingly. In a sense, that’s how I stopped being religious: David Hume showed me that if I applied the same standards, my religious position could not be defended, so I abandoned it.
As far as my experience and observations go, some religious people avow a similar position, but when put to the test they fall short, resorting to double standards instead. Religious people don’t always _say_ that different standards apply to religion, but in practice, when put to the test, what they do is often different from what they say.
It’s pertinent to notice that one of the approaches deployed by atheists in discussions with religious people is to argue that the atheists’ reasons for rejecting all gods are shared by religious people in relation to all gods except their own (‘we just believe in one less god than you’).
I don’t dispute that there may be some religious people who are comfortable acknowledging that the standards they apply to religious beliefs are different from the standards they apply otherwise, but that’s not typically the approach taken by those religious people who contend with unbelievers. They typically want to seem as if they are applying the same standards, which makes it relevant to point out when they aren’t doing so.
I don’t mean to suggest that this kind of unavowed application of double standards is unique to discussions of religion, because I’m sure it isn’t, and, as I said, I hope that if I am treating religion according a double standard that somebody will point that out to me.
July 20, 2019 at 5:45 am
“I don’t dispute that there may be some religious people who are comfortable acknowledging that the standards they apply to religious beliefs are different from the standards they apply otherwise”
In my experience, they don’t tend to to acknowledge that they are using different standards. Instead they shift the goal posts. The line I’ve observed tends to be:
Q: “Why does God allow evil?”
A: “Because there is an afterlife and you get your just reward/punishment there.”
Q: “But isn’t infinite punishment for finite evils (e.g. Hell) just completely evil?”
A: “Maybe Hell is finite, or God works in mysterious ways.”
Q: “But can’t he see what is going to happen, and have the power to influence it?”
A: “We have free will and make choices with it. But he still sees it all coming. And remember that he works in mysterious ways, because saying that can get me out of any corner.”
And as you say they then claim “they are applying the same standards”.
I think the disagreement we have is you seem to be saying they’re consciously applying a double standard, while we other three are saying they have a cognitive blind spot that prevents them being aware they are doing so.
The difference manifests in word like “judgment”, because I don’t think they can made judgments on God any more than blind people judge colours. But they can and do apply double standards, shift goal posts and rely on circular reasoning. Their inability to even conceive they are doing so is what makes debating them infuriating, they’re incapable even of recognizing they’re getting their ass kicked in a debate – and then will say stuff like “That just proves I’m making a good point” like a failure to convince a flat earther means that heliocentrism is just “like your point of view man.”
Ultimately the study of why they make mistakes is interesting a) so we can attempt to avoid similar process mistakes; and b) because understanding their thinking makes it easier to change.
July 20, 2019 at 8:57 pm
‘I think the disagreement we have is you seem to be saying they’re consciously applying a double standard …’
If I gave the impression that I thought they were always or usually conscious that they were applying a double standard, then I didn’t express myself clearly enough. That’s not what I think. I think it’s possible that in some cases they’re conscious of doing so, but it seems more likely that in most case they’re not, or anyway not fully conscious of it. When I was religious myself I didn’t consciously think that I was applying a double standard; as I mentioned before, in a sense the way I stopped being religious was (at any rate partly) by realising that I was applying a double standard. It is like a cognitive blind spot.
July 24, 2019 at 1:44 pm
I think this is less a double standard than a confusion of categories. Religious feeling is not suited to analysis, but “religion” covers a lot of mental territory, from membership of institutions through affiliation, territory, explanation, avenue of understanding, apprehension…In an analytic society, people try to fit religion into analytic categories, and fail. But it’s too important in a lot of senses, and too personally real, to abandon, and often there’s not available social alternative (less so now, so “vaguely pantheistic” is an increasingly common position).
Indicative fact – all known state origins had their beginnings at religious centres. It weaves through most aspects of social life, which does not mean it can be pinned to one.
Anyway, that’s me feeling charitable about religion.
July 26, 2019 at 10:38 am
‘I think this is less a double standard than a confusion of categories.’
It’s not clear which are the categories you think are being confused.
‘Religious feeling is not suited to analysis …’
It’s not clear how this assertion could be justified.
July 29, 2019 at 1:59 pm
Typically religious arguments confuse theology (formal analytic statements about the divine) with religious feeling (a sense of the numinous) and, to further muddy the waters, appeal to essentially secular or empirical observations to justify theological positions.
A feeling cannot be analysed – only, well, felt (talking here of direct apprehensions). How does one ‘justify’ a perception?
July 30, 2019 at 9:49 am
‘Typically religious arguments confuse theology (formal analytic statements about the divine) with religious feeling (a sense of the numinous) and, to further muddy the waters, appeal to essentially secular or empirical observations to justify theological positions.’
This is difficult for me to understand without the benefit of examples.
‘A feeling cannot be analysed – only, well, felt (talking here of direct apprehensions). How does one ‘justify’ a perception?’
I thought perception was one of the functions that physiologists and psychologists analyse. Is that not right?
July 31, 2019 at 2:26 pm
J-D
It’s easiest to illustrate with non-monotheist examples. Here’s two: one in detail.
The earliest temples are in places that have special meaning according to the local cosmology. Two are Eridu, which Sumerians regarded as the birthplace of civilisation and Egyptian Thebes. Eridu was an island in a lake of sweet water in a brackish marsh – land risen between the “waters above the firmament” and the “waters below” – as echoed in Genesis. At Thebes the Nile runs east-west, aligning with the sun’s course from its rising to its setting in the land of the afterlife.
So both these places inspired feelings of awe, a sense that they validated conceptions of the cosmos [if you wish to object that these meanings are purely subjective, sure. All meanings are purely subjective – meaning is what things with purpose bring to the world].
So at Thebes from the earliest days people built shrines aligned with the sun at solstice – something done everywhere around the world by people for whom solstice was immensely significant – a promise of renewal, the continuance of the world.
Egyptians had a close relationship with the dead – they wrote them letters, asked for their help, picnicked in the cemetery, spent a lot of effort on building and adorning their burial places, however humble. They were part of the community. At Thebes, this sense of a special place came together with the inclusion of the dead. The feeling was the foundation of a theology – the promotion of the god Amen-Ra, and a social effort – the construction of elaborate mortuary temple complexes (see Medinet Habu), which celebrated/solidified the position of the pharoah as the leading household and guarantor of social stability.
The arguments that elevated Amen-Ra are the usual theological mish-mash. Egyptians mostly had no need to appeal to empirical arguments in support of their religion, as it was one of process rather than outcome (there was a brief excursion into near-monotheism, but it did not last).
My point is that the experience of connection with some larger world is common, and at the core of religion. One could of course map various neurological states or processes, but these are not explanations any more than a measurement of your serotonin levels is an explanation for your feeling happy or sad (but see SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/love-4).
July 31, 2019 at 6:56 pm
J-D
I wrote a longish reply but WordPress swallowed it. Maybe faustus can retrieve?
August 1, 2019 at 12:07 pm
I feel your pain.
August 1, 2019 at 2:21 pm
Hi J-D and Peter T, thanks for keeping up this debate so assiduously. I was in China on holiday (reviews to come) and for the first three days I was there I assumed that I couldn’t view my wordpress dashboard due to the firewall, but it turns out I could and so I could have responded tot his sooner I think. Anyway I was busy. I found Peter T’s comment in the spam, for reasons I can’t understand. I have liberated it here, so have at it!
August 2, 2019 at 7:30 am
‘My point is that the experience of connection with some larger world is common …’
That could be a description of gravity.
‘One could of course map various neurological states or processes, but these are not explanations any more than a measurement of your serotonin levels is an explanation for your feeling happy or sad …’
I don’t know about that. Maybe a measurement of my serotonin levels could be an explanation for my feeling happy or sad. I don’t know how you can be sure they’re not.
August 2, 2019 at 12:18 pm
Gravity is a property of the universe. A mental experience is a process of the mind. Slugs experience gravity but do not think.
Positivist categories are excellent for sorting rocks or electromagnetic radiation. Not so good for sorting thoughts.
August 3, 2019 at 8:04 am
It’s not clear to me what you mean by ‘positivist categories’.
August 3, 2019 at 11:13 am
J-D
see https://existentialcomics.com/comic/275
August 3, 2019 at 11:57 am
I like the comic, but it’s still not clear to me what you mean by ‘positivist categories’.
Also, it’s not true that being kicked in the balls is always funny.
August 3, 2019 at 11:08 pm
Positivism is the doctrine that everything [that matters] can be sorted into clear measurable categories – by use of appropriate definitions and measurements. This works pretty well in the physical sciences, less well in biology and hardly at all in psychology, history, politics, religion – areas where one is dealing with mentalities and culture.
That being kicked in the balls is funny even some minor part of the time is part of the puzzle (and not deducible from experiment).
August 4, 2019 at 8:09 am
That being kicked in the balls is sometimes funny is directly observable: sometimes people laugh and say it’s funny when somebody is kicked in the balls. If you want to know whether being kicked in the balls is funny, kick somebody in the balls and observe whether anybody laughs and whether they say it’s funny when you ask them. If it isn’t funny the first time you do it, try it again and see whether it’s funny the second time. (Then get arrested, tried, and imprisoned for assault, and receive no sympathy from me.)
I don’t know what makes you think that the doctrine of positivism (as you describe it) works pretty well in the physical sciences. What I am inclined to guess is that for any sense of ‘works pretty well’ where it is true that the doctrine you have described ‘works pretty well’ in the physical sciences, it also ‘works pretty well’ in the other areas you have mentioned, and that for any sense where it is not true that it ‘works pretty well’ for the other areas you have mentioned, it is also not true that it ‘works pretty well’ for the physical sciences.
Also, there’s a big problem with the definition you have given of positivism, because which categories are measurable and which are not is not a fixed properties of the categories but depends on what equipment is available and can be used for conducting the measurements. There are many properties which a modern scientist can measure but which were not measurable properties for Aristotle.
August 4, 2019 at 10:02 am
Leaving aside the whole “kicked in the balls” nonsense, and also leaving aside quantum weirdness, “works pretty well” is intended to convey the dance between measurement and understanding that advances the physical sciences. While measurement is essential in the humanities, there’s an interplay at all levels that defies reduction. A rock is chemistry, which is physics. A conversation is sentences, which define/are defined by words which are defined by the conversation….
August 4, 2019 at 6:43 pm
It is equally true in physics and in linguistics that the properties of a complex structure depend on the elements of which it is composed and that the behaviour of those elements varies with context, so I still don’t get your point.
August 4, 2019 at 9:26 pm
J-D
Sorry. Can’t help further.
August 5, 2019 at 11:25 am
Is there anything in my most recent comment that you disagree with?
August 5, 2019 at 4:33 pm
Too abstract to grapple with the difference between a poem and a rock.
August 7, 2019 at 7:00 am
If you can’t explain the difference between a poem and a rock, I’m not putting you in charge of the literary prize competition; or the ship’s ballast, either.
August 7, 2019 at 4:49 pm
But “It is equally true in physics and in linguistics that the properties of a complex structure depend on the elements of which it is composed and that the behaviour of those elements varies with context…” so clearly they are the same
August 8, 2019 at 10:17 am
Given any two things (or any two categories), it is possible, if you search hard enough, to find both points of resemblance and points of difference. In the case of poems and rocks it should be much easier to find the points of difference than the points of resemblance, but that doesn’t mean points of resemblance are completely absent. If the test was ability to find points of difference between a poem and a rock, I feel reasonably confident I could pass it; I’m not sure why you might think you couldn’t.