Blue Poles and other things.

A few snippets from the media over the Christmas break and comments thereon:

1. 'Watch the Skies' by Richard Schickel 2005

This was a doco on 1950s sci-fi films with interviews of Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, Ridley Scott . . .

'our religion is impotent against the invaders' (just a line from one of the films quoted)

Clearly an evolutionary view of religion with 'god' within the cosmos, not its creator.

I was taken by Spielberg's discussing his War of the Worlds (2005):

"...because I was sort of stepping out of character to do War of the Worlds, these were not malevolent aliens which I identified with, I identified with ET and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind; as a director this was my first departure to looking up in the sky and not seeing hope and peace but seeing hate and war raining down on upon us that was a big departure for me to step out of character to go against my real beliefs that there is only hope and peace from above..."

I wonder what his 'hope and peace from above' is? Is it alien visitors: is earth the only place where there is evil and suffering . . .why would aliens not bring just more evil and suffering . . .does he think that 'advanced' races would have gotten past the evil and suffering we know? Whatever it is, his saviour is readable within an evolutionary conception as being part of the random material dance, and so without finality or any reference. Is God just an add on, as the materialists conceive, or is he the Creator, as he reveals in his 'Big History' (see below) that connects us and him.

2. From Ghost Dog, a film by Jim Jarmusch (I saw this years ago on the big screen, but SBS re-screened it recently)

Text from 'The Way of the Samurai' as presented on screen"

"Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase 'form is emptiness'. That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase 'emptiness is form'. One should not think that thse are two separate things"

The film is about a paid killer working for a petty mafia family and his final demise. The text is the conclusion of the movie, that the deaths either done by or done to are equal and empty. But in true Zen fashion, the emptiness is meaningful (means nothing, of course, also in the fashion of most Zen nonsense). Consistent with there being no creator, not consistent with there being an objective, loving creator. Now those who bring materialism together with biblical creation might answer along the lines of 'god used evolution', but the logic of materialism clearly doesn't drive Jarmusch to theism, the very opposite, in fact.

3. From Sydney Morning Herald 'Spectrum' section (5-6 Jan 08), a mini review of "Big History"

"Did you know that the term "Big History", which is now widely used to describe any study of history which moves from the beginning of the universe to the present day, was invented by Prof. David Christian at Macquarie University?

In 1989 Christian launched a course called Big History, "as a way to show colleagues what he thought an introductory course in history ought to look like" [presumably it was also for students to have an introductory course in history!]. This book is the latest interpretation of Chistian's idea. It is a history that bridges the gulf between scientific knowledge and human history by starting with the Big Bang and the expanding universe, moves on to the formation of planet Earth, continues through the emergence of human beings and then focuses on the past 10,000 years.

This sounds like an impossible task but Brown has read widely, has an elegant writing style and her central thesis is built around the impact of humanity on the natural world. It is very much a book for our global warming and environmental times."

Big History hits the nail on the head. These writers (Christian, Brown, and the reviewer) see it very clearly. Running history back to the origin defines our collective 'life-world': it tells us who we are and puts us in a moral and ontological setting; and of course, as a setting, it gives us clues as to how our story might play out. If the clues, if the 'big history', do not start with the personal in a loving God (and for materialism, why would it), then they will result in a final denial of the personal, or at least the inconveniently moral, replacing it with the amoral pragmatism of the powerful, and a type of nihilism in the everyday: converting upon application to practical epicurianism (if it feels good, do it).

Pauls starts his gospel proclamation to pagans with 'big history'; the true big history, revealed by the creator (see Acts 17, but refer to the broad contours of Paul's theology, such as sketched by NT Wright -- ducks for rain of hail); so to deny the importance of who we are, defined by our origin is simply silly and passess up many evangelical points of contact for want of a little biblical knowledge and critical participation in current debates: all passed by in Jensenism.

I think most Jensenites (my term for anglican theistic evolutionists/the Genesis creation account doesn't matter-ists) follow the reviewer and fail to distinguish scientific knowledge and the materialism in which it is so often embedded: of course, strip away the originating theism from modern science, and the seeds of its destruction are possibly sown, because the starting point of all enquiry is belief.

The uncriticality of accepting a materialist cosmology and scientific conclusions is astonishing: it is where theologians let materialists into the driving seat of the popular mind: without a struggle, let alone a fight, and so frustrate many opportunities to proclaim, discuss and debate the gospel, and its implications for us all. It says "oh yes, your 'big history' is right, and our's is wrong (that is the one with a recent and rapid creation); which of course, means that our theology is within their big history, and fails to stand against and overturn it for God's glory and the salvation of his people.

4. From a Sydney Morning Herald letter (December 27, 2007)

The writer raised the question of moral epistemology (rather a complex question for a letters page), ending with the following paragraphs:

"If there is no judgment, no consequences beyond this life, no eternity and no God to set us straight, then we don't have much more than "survival of the fittest".

To suggest that you can have Christian values without God is philosophically unsound and ultimately futile, because it is obvious that we don't and can't live up to those values anyway. Not only do we need God's laws, we also need his mercy and forgiveness."

Now, I wouldn't have quite put it as in the final paragraph, but the idea is heading in the right direcction (God's 'laws' . . .where does that fit in??).

The letter attracted the usual misunderstood half-baked responses, typically along the lines of 'I'm an atheist and a good guy", or "if God is so good, why are Christians so rotten?", only providing further evidence that questions of moral philosophy are poorly placed in a letters column, but the original author made a very salient observation: moral questions can be seen to fall down to (Christian) theism or 'survival of the fittest', as he puts it. Or the outworking of philosophical materialism, as I might put it.

But what catches my attention is that the letter makes its appeal by the separation between materialism and theism. The point the writer makes cannot be sensibly made, I think, if the theism is melded with the materialism: neither in its own terms, nor in any more rigorous moral epistemic fashion (how could it?). Yet, the Jensenist school would have us think that the two disparate origin frameworks co-exist, as in 'God used evolution'. Which is just like saying that we use atom bombs for infrastructure re-construction projects (I was going to say, "do paintings by splattering paint", but some wit would attempt a counter by referring to Blue Poles, which some consider to be splattered paint, but is in fact an astonishing work of art of great intellectual depth: go see in the National Gallery).

[Aside: It is an historical anomoly that people equate 'survival of the fittest' with (neo-Darwinian) evolution, when the concept was invented by a Christian 'creationist', Edward Blyth (see here for instance). In the popular mind 'survival of the fittest' drives evolution, but it doesn't, imagined mutational novelties drive evolution, survival simply weeds out what doesn't work, but itself is not a creative force.]