Interiority is it G-d?

Ken wilber being interviewed by Salon here quoted on the scientific outlook and the presence of what he calls "interiority"?

But is that scientific view wrong?

At this point, you enter the philosophy of science, and the argument is endless. Is there nothing but physical stuff in the universe? Or is there some sort of interiority? We're not talking about ghosts and goblins and souls and all that kind of stuff. Just: Is there interiority? Is there an inside to the universe? And if there is interiority, then that is where consciousness resides. You can't see it, but it's real. This is the claim that phenomenology makes.

For example, you and I are attempting to reach mutual understanding right now. And we say, aha, I understand what you're saying. But you can't point to that understanding. Where does it exist? But if you take a phenomenology of our interior states, then you look at them as being real in themselves. And that's where values lie and meaning lies. If you try to reduce those to matter, you not only lose all those distinctions, but you can't even make the claim that some are right and some are wrong.

Wisdom - Philosophy and Life

Mark Vernon and a quote from J.B.S. Haldan ("Science and Theology as Art Forms," Possible Worlds and Other Papers (1927))

"Religion is a way of life and an attitude to the universe. It brings men into closer touch with the inner nature of reality. Statements of fact made in its name are untrue in detail, but often contain some truth at their core.

Science is also a way of life and an attitude to the universe. It is concerned with everything but the nature of reality. Statements of fact made in its name are generally right in detail, but can only reveal the form, and not the real nature, of existence.

The wise man regulates his conduct by the theories both of religion and science, but he regards these theories not as statements of ultimate fact but as art forms."

Art forms .... So is Christianity the Mona Lisa. What about Buddhism, Islam ...

Explaining things away

In his book “The Abolition of Man”, CS Lewis says
:

But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ forever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see."

Freedom and the nature of technology

Wedell Berry puts it so:

Our present idea of freedom in science is too often reducible to thoughtlessness of consequence…In both science and art there is a principled resistance to any suggestion that the specialist, within his or her work, might be subject or subordinate to anything. And so the freedom of the originators and exploiters has become, in effect, the abduction and imprisonment of all the rest of us. Adam was the first, but not the last, to choose for the whole human race."

No easy response to Catastrophe

David Bentley Hart, an eastern orthodox theologian has an article where he talks of the tsunami and its aftermath and suffering.

" The Christian understanding of evil has always been more radical and fantastic than that of any theodicist; for it denies from the outset that suffering, death and evil have any ultimate meaning at all. Perhaps no doctrine is more insufferably fabulous to non-Christians than the claim that we exist in the long melancholy aftermath of a primordial catastrophe, that this is a broken and wounded world, that cosmic time is the shadow of true time, and that the universe languishes in bondage to "powers" and "principalities"--spiritual and terrestrial--alien to God. In the Gospel of John, especially, the incarnate God enters a world at once his own and yet hostile to him--"He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not"--and his appearance within "this cosmos" is both an act of judgment and a rescue of the beauties of creation from the torments of fallen nature."

and

"When confronted by the sheer savage immensity of worldly suffering--when we see the entire littoral rim of the Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children's--no Christian is licensed to utter odious banalities about God's inscrutable counsels or blasphemous suggestions that all this mysteriously serves God's good ends. We are permitted only to hate death and waste and the imbecile forces of chance that shatter living souls, to believe that creation is in agony in its bonds, to see this world as divided between two kingdoms--knowing all the while that it is only charity that can sustain us against 'fate,' and that must do so until the end of days."

Suffering?

A few days ago, a friend of mine from school told me of his loss of faith because of what he had seen in the world. I did not have any kind of answer or consolation because whatever I thought sounded too intellectual, self-righteous and smug. In this post Dan of poserprophet reflects on the debate between Bart Ehrman and the Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham and gives what I think is a good description of how a Christian could talk about suffering. Read the whole article for a good summary and his reflection. A small quote below :

"Thus, in response to Ehrman's question, "Why do we suffer?", I wish Wright had responded, "I don't know. But I continue to believe in God, and here's why...". Of course, I don't believe that others will find the "here's why..." to be compelling, because I think that the only reason why we continue to believe in God, when confronted with the magnitude of suffering, is because we have met God. The reason why I find faith to be compelling is because God has chosen to come out to meet me, and I suspect that the only reason why a person like Ehrman would believe in God would be because God comes out to meet him as well. Now I can't help but wonder if Wright, in his efforts to engage in a substantial and reasonable dialogue, deliberately avoids this track, and where it leads, because it seems entirely too subjective and experiential."

Monasticism

Another fascinating word for me from Britannica:

"The word monasticism is derived from the Greek monachos (“living alone”), but this etymology highlights only one of the elements of monasticism and is somewhat misleading, because a large proportion of the world’s monastics live in cenobitic (common life) communities. The term monasticism implies celibacy, or living alone in the sense of lacking a spouse, which became a socially and historically crucial feature of the monastic life."

How I wish I had a chance as a kid to try this life out. Boarding schools are very poor imitations of this kind of life. The article from which the quote is taken gives a brief overview of monasticism in different religions.

Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes: Studies from India, China, and the United States

I just can't resist gloom and doom. Here is another quote from, Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes: Studies from India, China, and the United States:

"Kerala has witnessed major changes in its land use pattern. The most important are the shrinking area devoted to cultivating food crops and an increase in the rate of deforestation. The land area used for rice cultivation declined from 876,000 hectares in 1975 to 431,000 hectares in 1996, with the result that local rice production barely meets one-third of the total consumption requirements of the state."

Most of the paddy land is filled in and now has houses, at least as far as I can see while travelling between Punnakadu and Mullaringadu.

Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes: Studies from India, China, and the United States

Growing Populations, Changing Landscapes: Studies from India, China, and the United States:

"Kerala suffers from very high unemployment. Indeed, approximately 10 percent of the India's total unemployed population is from Kerala. Unemployment, then, has led to large-scale migration both within and outside the country. Over half the migration from Kerala is to foreign countries. Based on a 1992–1993 survey, the state Department of Economics and Statistics estimated that of the almost 1.2 million migrants from Kerala, some 56 percent migrated to the Middle East and other foreign countries and 44 percent to other parts of India (Government of Kerala, 1997)."

Now you know why I am here in Kuwait.

Faith and Theology: The A-Z of faith: a sermon for after Easter

The wonderful Kim Fabricus, on The A-Z of faith: a sermon for after Easter

"As a matter of fact, I reckon many people do. The Yellow Brick Road is the way of many a faith journey. We want a God who provides and protects, a celestial insurance agent who guarantees rewards as long as we pay the premium of keeping the commandments, going to church, saying our prayers. Isn’t that the case? How else could we angrily ask, “Why me?” when bad things happen to the pretty good person I am. That the righteous should suffer is not in the contract. In extreme situations people even “lose their faith”. But what sort of faith in what kind of God have they lost? Isn’t it precisely the sort of faith in the kind of God that Freud critiqued."

There is no food shortage

There is no food shortage: "It's that the ability to fill up a gas tank with gasoline is, in the 'wisdom' of the marketplace, the highest value use of the food crop."

An article you have to read by Michael Tobis about how the growing gap between the rich and the poor means the rich can buy food related resources and convert them to biofuel or anything they want because their money does the talking for them.

In other words the price mechanism of the market is not capable of allocating resources most efficiently because higher prices means a kilo of meat for one rich person is more valuable than 10 kilos of grain for 10 poor people, since the seller can get more selling 1 kilo of meat than 10 kilos of grain. Of course this probably would not work if every farmer / farm corp. only sold meat. But the general principle is that the "invisible hand" on its own does not satisfy.

The faithfulness of God

Thanks for this wonderful example of faithfulness to euangelizomai.

Clarence Jordan was a man of unusual abilities and commitment. He had two Ph.D.s, one in agriculture and one in Greek and Hebrew. So gifted was he, he could have chosen to do anything he wanted. He chose to serve the poor. In the 1940’s, he founded a farm in Americus Georgia, and called it Koinonia Farm. It was a community for poor whites and poor blacks. As you might guess, such an idea did not go over well in the Deep South of the ’40’s. Ironically, much of the resistance came from good church people who followed the laws of segregation as much as the other folks in town. The town people tried everything to stop Clarence. They tried boycotting him, and slashing worker’s tires when they came to town. Over and over, for fourteen years, they tried to stop him. Finally, in 1954, the Ku Klux Klan had had enough of Clarence Jordan, so they decided to get rid of him once and for all. They came one night with guns and torches and set fire to every building on Koinonia farm, except Clarence’s house, which they riddled with bullets. And they chased off all the families except one black family, which refused to leave. Clarence recognized the voices of many of the Klansmen, and, as you might guess, some of them were church people. Another was the local newspaper’s reporter. The next day the reporter came out to see what remained of the farm. The rubble still smoldered and the land was scorched, but he found Clarence in the field, hoeing and planting. "I heard the awful news," he called to Clarence, "and I came out to do a story on the tragedy of your farm closing." Clarence just kept hoeing and planting. The reporter kept prodding, kept poking, trying to get a rise from this quietly determined man who seemed to be planting instead of packing his bags. So, finally, the reporter said in a haughty voice, "Well, Dr. Jordan, you got two of them Ph.D.s and you’ve put fourteen years into this farm, and there’s nothing left of it at all. Just how successful do you think you’ve been?" Clarence stopped hoeing, turning toward the reporter with his penetrating blue eyes, and said quietly but firmly, "About as successful as the cross. Sir, I don’t think you understand us. What we’re about is not success, but faithfulness. We’re staying. Good day." Beginning that day, Clarence and his companions rebuilt Koinonia and the farm is still going strong today.
- Tim Hansel, Holy Sweat, pp. 188-189.

Books of the Bible and their Genres

From Steve McKenzies book "How to Read the Bible: History, Prophecy, Literature – Why Modern Readers Need to Know the Difference and What it Means for Faith Today"

Historiography
Biblical historians relate what happened in the past

Biblical prophecy
Biblical prophets foretell the future

Wisdom literature
Wisdom literature is a divine guide for daily living in such matters as disciplining children and getting along with one’s spouse; it also supplies the answer to such “mega” issues as the meaning of life and why bad things happen to good people.

Apocalyptic literature
Apocalyptic literature in the Bible details future events leading to the end of the world.
Letters of the NTThe letters of Paul and the other writers in the New Testament provide a kind of rule book for Christian doctrine and practice."

from Aaron Ghiloni's blog

The Boar’s Head Tavern

At Boar Head Tavern Mark Nikirk here: asys

"As stopped relying on Him to fix my problems, keep my family safe, and make all my infertile friends have babies, I had a frightening realization: I had always relied on God to produce results, now I was going to have to trust not in His results, but in the process of Him working in me. That’s harder, much harder. Instead of my friends becoming fertile, I was going to have to learn to be a comforting friend. Instead of my family having a ‘hedge of protection’ around them, I was going to have to grapple with death and violence. I was going to have to learn to let Him be strong in my weakness…argh."

"Argh.. indeed!" I have to loose control and let the flowering of his sanctification (not sure if this is the right word) which may not always look, feel or be beautiful for me.

internetmonk.com » Blog Archive » The Best Wreck I Ever Had: Spiritual Rebirth At The Wall And Beyond

Here is internet monk, Michael Spenser learning about the wall we all create for ourselves in our journey with God. For me this wall although I was vaguely aware of it before my illness and generally used to ridicule it, was never really something I had the intellectual / spiritual honesty to look at directly.

But now thanks to some very generous bloggers in the "faithblogosphere" I am walking more honestly I hope.

The Gospel of Consumption | Orion magazine

Below is a short quote from and article called "The Gospel of Consumption" where Jeffrey Kaplan talks about how the 8 hour working day was defined. Read the full article although the ending is sad.

"If we want to save the Earth, we must also save ourselves from ourselves. We can start by sharing the work and the wealth. We may just find that there is plenty of both to go around."

Scholasticism -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

"Scholasticism: can only be defined denotatively as that kind of philosophy that during the European Middle Ages was taught in the Christian schools"

A philosophy that carried forward the Greek tradition towards modern times. Got to read up on it.

Random Words and sentences - Sustainable

Hurray, I got the subscription - thank you Britannica. Since my blog posts are rarely very analytical and since I mostly write "me too" postscripts to other people's thinking.

Anyway I hope this is the start of a series on words that interest me and what Britannica's dictionary gives as definition.

So my first word is sustainable. Britannica says that a resource used without depleting or damaging it permanently is sustainable.

I sure wish I could live sustainable. My life is backed by the ICD implanted in me that uses raw materials and methods of production that are most probably non-sustainable. Leave alone the fact the device cannot be recharged and therefore has to be discarded and replaced every 4 to 7 years depending on how intensly it has been used.

Most of what I do and use requires unfairly huge amounts of energy.

Personal Knowledge

"Comprehension is neither an arbitrary act nor a passive experience, but a responsible act claiming universal validity. Such knowing is indeed objective in the sense of establishing contact with a hidden reality; a contact that is defined as the condition for anticipating an indeterminate range of yet unknown (and perhaps yet inconceivable) true implications. It seems reasonable to describe this fusion of the personal and the objective as Personal Knowledge. Personal knowledge is an intellectual commitment, and as such inherently hazardous. Only affirmations that could be false can be said to convey objective knowledge of this kind...I have shown that into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and that this coefficient is no mere imperfection but a vital component of his knowledge."

(Robert John Russell quoting Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge Preface vii-viii)

Rationality

God’s self-disclosure in the Word of God, the Logos, is parallel to our scientific knowledge of nature. This is so because, while the facts of nature are known through our rational experience, these facts do not derive their rationality from our experience, for that would be the end of science. Instead, science presupposes that the rationality of nature “transcends our experience of it” and we therefore let it “subject our formulations and apprehensions to its criticisms and guidance.” Torrance cites Polanyi who writes that “this reality beyond sense-experience” gives to science its sense of objectivity. Its reality is warranted by the fact that its scientific implications extend beyond their originating event/experience. (PK p. 37) Torrance then argues for the formal equivalence of scientific and theological knowledge. “Theological thinking is more like a listening than any other knowledge, a listening for and to a rational Word from beyond anything that we can tell to ourselves and distinct from our rational elaborations of it.”

Robert John Russell quoting Thomas F. Torrance, Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).