The Revenge of Conscience

The Revenge of Conscience is a wonderful article about natural law, conscience, and its effects on society, written by J. Budziszewski, a convert to Catholicism and professor of government and philosophy at our very own University of Texas!

The whole thing is really a great read, here's a snippet:

Why do things get worse so fast? Of course we have names for the process, like "collapse," "decay," and "slippery slope." By conjuring images-a stricken house, a gangrenous limb, a sliding talus-they make us feel we understand. Now, I am no enemy to word-pictures, but a civilization is not really a house, a limb, or a heap of rocks; it cannot literally fall in, rot, or skid out from underfoot. Images can only illustrate an explanation; they cannot substitute for one. So why do things get worse so fast? It would be well to know, in case the process can be arrested.

The usual explanation is that conscience is weakened by neglect. Once a wrong is done, the next wrong comes more easily. On this view conscience is mainly a restraint, a resistance, a passive barrier. It doesn’t so much drive us on as hold us back, and when persistently attacked, the restraining wall gets thinner and thinner and finally disappears. Often this explanation is combined with another: that conscience comes from culture, that it is built up in us from outside. In this view the heart is malleable. We don’t clearly know what is right and wrong, and when our teachers change the lessons, our consciences change their contents. What once we deemed wrong, we deem right; what once we deemed right, we deem wrong.

There is something to these explanations, but neither can account for the sheer dynamism of wickedness-for the fact that we aren’t gently wafted into the abyss but violently propel ourselves into it. Nor, as I will show, can either one account for the peculiar quality of our present moral confusion.

I suggest a different explanation. Conscience is not a passive barrier but an active force; though it can hold us back, it can also drive us on. Moreover, conscience comes not from without but from within: though culture can trim the fringes, the core cannot be changed. The reason things get worse so fast must somehow lie not in the weakness of conscience but in its strength, not in its shapelessness but in its shape.

Believe That You May Understand...

The past week or so, I've been engaged in a discussion with some fellow ex-ers who ended up losing faith in God. I have to admit that I have a hard time understanding what it's like not to have faith in God, because for some reason, despite my turbulent conversion, that never happened to me. That was the one thing that I clung to when I was confused and scared...my faith in God. It honestly never crossed my mind to doubt His existence. And so, sometimes it's hard for me to discuss with those who have lost faith, because I want to understand them and to be able to communicate with them effectively, but I think there are obstacles to effective communication on both sides.

On my side, it's because, as I mentioned, I can't really grasp what it's like not to believe in God, and I have a hard time relating to their disbelief, which in turn makes it hard for me to explain my own belief in a way they can understand or relate to. On their side, depending on who I'm discussing with, the fact that I never seriously doubted God's existence may cause them to consider anything I say to be tainted with ignorance or naïveté. (I have to say that I am very fortunate to know some very respectful atheists and agnostics who, even if they might think this about me, refrain from using it as an excuse or an attack, and at least seem to thoughtfully consider my remarks.) Obviously, I can't do anything about the latter obstacle, but I can at least try to understand where they are coming from a bit better. So, I decided to read what some former atheists have to say on the matter!

This led me to a couple blogs, namely Et-tu, Jen? and Chez Joel. After spending way too much time devouring the contents of blog posts related to atheism and God's existence and proving His existence (or not), I think I finally started to discover better ways to describe the differences between evidence and proof, what it is to have faith, to believe, and why such things are even necessary when discussing with my atheist friends. (At least, things are a little less muddled in my own head now, even if I haven't necessarily helped them!)

Evidence vs. Proof

I was first trying to find a way to explain the difference between evidence and proof. I hear a lot about wanting "proof" of something, but when I say that there will never be proof, I often get responses like, "Well then why shouldn't I believe that fairies are what make the world go round?" or the like. But when I say there won't be proof, I'm not saying there won't be evidence. It's just that, because of the nature (or "super" nature) of God, we can't always demand natural evidence, or scientific evidence, we need to be open to considering supernatural or anecdotal evidence. If someone rules out this kind of evidence to begin with, they're closing the case before giving it a chance. One of the blog posts that helped me on this point was from Jennifer's blog on proof.

Atheists often accuse the religious of having different (specifically subpar) standards for evidence when it comes to belief in God. It seems to me, though, that it is the atheists who hold religion and the existence of God to an impossibly high standard, compared to many other things in everyday life, and then complain (or rejoice, depending) when the evidence fails to meet their standards. And yet these standards are not used on other equally unprovable things in life, such as love. Just as we can't prove scientifically the existence of love, we can't prove scientifically the existence of God. Yet because of evidence I have seen in my life, I believe both exist, and I simply don't find this unreasonable or irrational.

Belief

During the course of our discussion, the proposition was made that belief is a choice. Of course, again, the agnostics/atheists of the group say, "Well I'm sorry, but I can't choose to believe in God anymore than I can choose to believe that fairies make the world go round." It seemed to me that they often equate belief or faith with feelings...and this got me thinking about love.

Just as atheists say "I can't make myself believe," many people today say, "I can't make myself love." But what they mean by this is they can't conjure up fuzzy warm feelings. But I believe that real love is a choice...if it weren't, there's no way we could promise to love our spouse for the rest of our lives in our wedding vows. (In fact, I propose that this widespread understanding of love as merely an uncontrollable feeling is partly responsible for the current divorce rate.)

Then I started to wonder, what is belief anyway? If it's not just a feeling, what is it? I found a wonderful answer in a post called How to Find God in Three Arduous Steps on Chez Joel. He said:

To believe is not to change your mind, or your feelings. It's no good to trick yourself into thinking differently. To believe is simply to act on the assumption that something is true.

This!! THIS is what I had been looking for!

The quote from St. Augustine immediately jumped to mind, "Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand."

I know the atheist doesn't like to hear this, and often sees it as a cop out, or as a form of brainwashing, or something along those lines. But if we look at this quote as it applies to love, I think it holds true there as well. If we tweak the quote a bit, and change just one word, we can say, "Seek not to understand that you may love, but love that you may understand."

Do we expect people who have never experienced love to understand it? I mean, it often defies explanation...how can people be self sacrificing and self giving? Why would they do such things, what are they getting out of it? It doesn't really make sense, no one can study love enough to understand it, you have to believe in love, to act on the assumption that it is true, to experience it, before you really understand it. But I don't see people demanding "proof" that love exists before acting as if it does the way they demand proof that God exists, and yet it's not considered unreasonable to make that leap when it comes to love, presumably because most of us experience it from a very early age.


Miracles

Another commonly mentioned argument is the "God, I would believe in you if..." argument. (Once again, Jen's blog was extremely helpful!)There are some very good points made about how even a miracle wouldn't be proof enough, because doubts arise, and eventually we would just want more proof. Certainly God could hand deliver miracles on demand if He wanted, so the fact that He doesn't should push us to consider the possibility that there must be a reason. What does God get out of wanting us to make a leap of faith? What do we get out of having to make that leap of faith? Perhaps taking our example of love, once again, can help us understand.

So many people say, "I would only believe if I could just have one miracle," but what if we asked a potential spouse before we agreed to marriage, "I will believe your love for me exists, and act as if it's true, only if you prove it to me first." This would be virtually impossible, there would be no way to definitively prove such a thing. Part of the beauty of marriage vows is the mutual vulnerability, because this turns into a strength as trust is built and love grows, but the vulnerability must come first. As scary as it is, it is this vulnerability, this surrender that God wants to be able to help us grow...this humility, this is the fertile soil needed to be able to plant that seed of faith. It's only when we recognize our inability to do it ourselves, when we acknowledge the intellect alone isn't enough, it's only when we submit, when we ask God for the faith we need to believe that we can even begin to understand. We simply can't do it on our own, and if we expect or demand to understand before we believe, we'll only end up disappointed.

The Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century

I have finally finished reading this amazing book. I initially bought it for my husband, because he asked for it. After he read it, he said I needed to read it, and even though I wasn't very interested in it, I took his advice and I did. Now, I'm not much of a science person, I'm much more interested in the arts, which is why I wasn't attracted to reading it initially. But don't let the title of this book fool you...it is about philosophy, and how to use it and apply it in our modern age. Anthony Rizzi describes the problems of much modern thought, which refuses to put "first things first," that is, much of modern thought puts the empiriological as the final goal, and ignores the ontological in the process. He reminds us that, "In all of this, we must remember that being is primary. Knowledge is about reality, not about knowledge." Without proper philosophy to connect the findings of empiriological science back to reality, we end up making absurd conclusions. One such example Rizzi gives is "the nothingness of atoms."

"...if we reduce everything to the arrangement of inert atoms and say atoms are mostly empty space, then we must conclude that we are mostly nothing. As we saw in Chapter 2, there are severe problems with this line of argument. The most manifest problem with the argument is that it implicitly assumes that we know atoms before we know ourselves. This is clearly not true. As we've emphasized, in trying to understand things, we must start with what is more known and proceed to what is less known. However, it is an occupational hazard of physicists, chemists, and scientists and engineers of all types to think of atoms as known first, for in their work, they often think in terms of atoms and not at all about those things that allow them to access and deduce the existence of atoms. These things include the scientists themselves, many other macroscopic things, as well as many significant ideas passed on to them by others.

We see many examples of scientists and philosophers who claim we cannot know that we exist, who claim we cannot trust our senses...and yet, they are happy to accept scientific studies of the physical world, which were done using those very senses they claim we can't trust. In the above example, we see how absurd it is to say that because atoms are composed of mostly nothing, we, therefore, must be mostly nothing...but this conclusion is a very plausible one to make when one doesn't take into consideration the ontological. Rizzi does an excellent job of pointing out such logical fallacies among modern thought, especially when talking about moral relativism, ethics within science, etc.

This is not exactly an easy read, it took me several months to get through it because it is so incredibly dense, I often had to take breaks just to grasp an idea before reading on. However, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in science, in philosophy, in religion, or to anyone who is interested in human thought and learning. This book helps to make clear the purpose of all sciences, to find truth, to conform our minds with reality. To do this, we must first believe that there is a reality that exists, and this is not something that can be tested in a lab, it belongs in the realm of philosophy. An interesting point made in the book is that we all use philosophy, whether we know it or not, but when we do it without proper formation, it's easy to come to mistaken conclusions...even highly educated scientists can go astray because they are lacking proper knowledge of the science that must come before science, philosophy.

Now go out and buy this book!

Beauty is Truth

When I was a little girl, I always used to love dressing up in pretty dresses with lots of fabric and flowing skirts. I used to see pictures of times past, when women wore flowing dresses, and wish we could wear them today! My sisters used to joke that I was born in the wrong century. Even today, my tastes tend to lean toward the traditional, toward the classic. I used to wonder why I was so drawn to beautiful things...perhaps I was being too superficial? But I think there's more to it. I can't adequately express the difference I feel when listening to a beautiful piece of music written in the 1600s, and listening to a popular modern tune. Nor can I express the difference I feel when looking at a piece of modern art, and feasting on a classical masterpiece. It just seems there is something more there, in those pieces of visual, musical, and literary art created in times past...it seems deeper, more complex, more beautiful, and, I think most importantly, more true to life, more real. And so I think my attraction to beauty, is really at its deepest level an attraction to truth. It's also partly to blame for my conversion, lol. I once read this article, I Was Converted by Mozart, and could completely relate!

A while back, I discovered an artist that moved me in such a profound way, I couldn't stop looking at his works of art! The painting in my title is from him, the painting above is from him as well. His name is William Bouguereau, and he's my favorite artist. I'd never heard of him in any art classes (not that I took many), and yet I find his work so moving, and so REAL. The largest online gallery of his work is here, and I also came to love this site itself for its philosophy and stance on modern art, etc. If you want great prints of beautiful art, check it out!

It seems today we're surrounded by superficiality, and it drives me crazy. I crave truth...deep, complex truth. So much of what is created in our modern world seems to be trying to escape reality, and to turn a blind eye to truth. It's shallow and superficial, it cheaply aims to shock, disgust, or sometimes to please, but with an only temporary saccharine sweetness, since it fails to truly move and inspire. But real and lasting beauty can only be found in reality, in truth. These are the pieces of art, of literature, of music that transcend time and touch everyone, regardless of time or place, art that is true, and grounded in reality. To quote Keats, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know."