Tough-talking thoughts on "The Ground of Being"

Or, to riff on a professor at my old conservative Lutheran seminary, "The Ground of Bullshit." (He claimed historical-critical theology was a bucket of warm shit.)

My thoughts, and ire, are piqued by three recent Christmas-faith columns in the New York Times, two of them previously blogged about in these pages.

In the first, Simon Critchley gives the usual crappy reading of Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor that Dostoyevsky himself gave us. No surprise that Critchley works with continental philosophy, since it gave us the dreck behind "Ground of Being" in the first place; Critchley explicitly embraces the "death of god" idea. Anyway, I show how both he and Dostoyevsky are wrong here.

In the second, Britain's chief rabbi says, in essence, cognitive science and evolutionary psychology show the need for religion not only in past and present but in the future. I've already shown how wet he is.

The third, about which I had not blogged before, is here, as MoJo Dowd at the New York Times lets her column get hijacked by a liberal priest.

Here's the nut graf of that one:

I believe differently now than 30 years ago. First, I do not expect to have all the answers, nor do I believe that people are really looking for them. Second, I don’t look for the hand of God to stop evil. I don’t expect comfort to come from afar. I really do believe that God enters the world through us. And even though I still have the “Why?” questions, they are not so much “Why, God?” questions. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.

Really? I can flip that on its head, and say that how we are with one another in suffering and dying reaffirms the brotherhood of mankind while, quite possibly, once again showing that Christian attempts to explain God's theodicy flop on the floor like an 86-year-old newlywed Hugh Hefner not taking Viagra.

A bit more seriously, saying "I don't know why" ultimately leads to Yahweh's answer to Job: "I'm god; you're not. Therefore, I don't have to explain myself to you, so STFU."

Now, none of these used the phrase "The Ground of Being," made popular in mid-20th century US liberal Christian theology by Paul Tillich, but its vein of thought ran behind all three in some way.

As part of "process theology," if you will, it's an attempt to get an Eastern-type immanence imparted to the monotheistic god while yet avoiding pantheism, panentheism or similar.

But, it's still bullshit.

It's bullshit in two ways.

First, per physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the phrase is "not even wrong."

Second, per philosopher (including philosopher of language) Ludwig Wittgenstein, any discussion of any "Ground of Being" is nonsensical.

And, it's upon that angle that I shall concentrate.

First, capitalize Being all you want, process theologians, it's still not a personal noun. As an editor and writer, I can tell you it's a gerund. Yes, it's a noun, but a verbal noun of a status. It's not a concrete noun. Capitalize it all you want, you can't change that fact.

Look! Here's the ...

"Ground of Dying." (Process theology meets Kali in India.)
"Ground of Football-Loving." (Process theology comes to Texas.)
"Ground of Digesting." (Process theology meets food addict.)

Etc. ad nauseum.

Anyway, for anybody not a process theologian in denial, you get the drift. "Being" ain't a person, ergo ain't a personal divinity.

Well, a diehard process theologian might say, "What about 'Ground'?"

Nice try.

Yes, "ground," when lowercase, is a concrete noun. But, anybody advanced into Piaget's abstract thinking phrase knows that it, when capitalized and used like this, is metaphorical. (As is true in general with capitalized nouns from process theologians and New Agers.)

Beyond that, if you want to worship "Ground," process theologians, it's called "Gaia"; join the New Agers.

As for phrases that "transcend boundaries," per the Wikipedia entry on "Ground of Being" linked above ... so does "eternal male orgasm," or, to properly capitalize it, "Eternal Male Orgasm." But, even a triple-Hefner dose of Viagra doesn't make that one any more real than "Ground of Being."

Basically, religious existentialism too often jumps off the verbiage cliff, and here is a clear example. And, it's more than that. Just as more conservative Christians basically postulate a "god of the gaps," well, "Ground of Being" has the same function for liberal-critical Christian theologians.

Again, nice try. It sounds more intellectual. But, it's no more real, and it's no more intellectually substantive, than the ideas of your conservative brethren.

Besides changing the third-word gerund, I could also change the first-word metaphorical noun.

We would have "Sky of Being," or "Ocean of Being," or "Bayou of Being," or "Iceberg of Being," etc. Again, silly. Or, if you want me to hew more closely to "Ground," we could have "Soccer Pitch of Being," from sports, or "Peat Moss of Being," or "Quicksand of Being."

Actually, in expressing how I feel about process theology in particular, and modern liberal-critical systematic Christian theology in general, "Quicksand of Being" sounds about right.

Your mileage may vary.

Update: Some Facebook dialogue helped me to see more of where I was really heading with this post, especially vis-a-vis Dowd's priest, who was writing in light of the Newtown mass shooting.

And, beyond criticizing the Ground of Faith, it's a warning shot related to that old Gnu Atheist word "accomodationism."

Sometimes, that's not a four-letter word, but potentially an actual problem for some secular humanists.

Let's take Dowd's priest or Chritchley. I could do interfaith fundraising for Newtown victims' families with them, or whatever. However, if I were asked to speak at a memorial service for Newtown victims with them, even if the service had no fundamentalists or conservative evangelicals, if they made comments like here, I would have to publicly respond.

No, I wouldn't use the word "bullshit" at an event like that. But I would "call them out," politely but firmly.

And the one person with whom I was in dialogue? I have the feeling he would not.

And so, "accomodationism" is not always a four-letter word.

And so, too, while I'm not a Gnu Atheist evangelical, and can readily mock their stupidities, Gnus aren't always wrong, either.

The theodicy of liberal Christians is, in its own way, just as anti-humanistic as that of conservative Christians. As is the reincarnationist theodicy of Hindus and the reincarnationist atheistic "theodicy" of Buddhists.

Secular humanists should never forget that.

John Haught straw-mans atheism in the name of progressive theology

I appreciate that Haught, the only theologian to testify at the Dover Intelligent Design school education trial, believes Darwin is good for theology to counter a literalist understanding of God, scriptures, etc.

I can halfway accept that Christopher Hitchens, et al, “cheat” in their “New Atheism” books by just talking about the worst of major religions.

But, Haught sets up a straw man by claiming, in essence that atheism is psychologically impossible or nearly so, per “old atheist” literati like Sartre and Camus.

First, he is right that the “old atheists,” Camus above all, did give a hat tip to the social justice of traditional religion. Nonetheless, in the same speech where Camus most directly did that, he told his Catholic religious audience that he wouldn’t be critiquing them on social justice issues if more people actually followed Christian social justice teachings.

On the social justice angle of Christianity, if literalist metaphysical verities are thrown out, that's all that's left. And Christian social justice improved in the modern world, post-Renaissance, precisely as the metaphysical verities faded away.

Second, in claiming atheism can’t justify any hope it does have in this world, he argues from an a priori, a logical equivalent of Aristotle’s Prime Mover. That is, after saying too many fundamentalists and new atheists alike have too much faith in science as being able to provide ultimate answers, he insists the world does have ultimate answers. That is the backdrop for his unspoken assumption that most, if not all psychological stances in this world, can be justified.

Third, Haught basically ignores evolutionary psychology, and the degree to which things like altruism are in our genetic make-up, by indicating one must be religious to hve a sense of social justice.

Fourth, after rejecting Stephen Jay Gould’s idea that science and religion are “separate magisterial,” he criticizes scientists for ever making comments about “purpose” in life, trying to reserve that for a religion-philosophy magisterial.

Here’s an example:

What intelligent design tries to do — and the great theologians have always resisted this idea — is to place the divine, the Creator, within the continuum of natural causes. And this amounts to an extreme demotion of the transcendence of God, by making God just one cause in a series of natural causes.

But, per Christian theology, historical errors of the Bible aside, the Christian God is one who intervenes in history, who makes plans for history, and who ultimately becomes immanent in Jesus.

Ttherefore, claims about God’s actions in this world have to be considered empirically reviewable, unless …

Fifth, and most importantly, after his high-faluting language, he pulls out one of the theologian’s oldest dodges in the book: Finitum non capax est infinitum, or, “The finite cannot comprehend the infinite”:

We have to refer to (transcendent reality) in the oblique and fuzzy but also the luxuriant and rich language of symbol and metaphor.

That didn’t fly when the author of Job put that on the lip of Yahweh, nor when Paul quoted that. And it doesn’t fly today. And, in fact, he gets called on it a bit later in the interview.

Haught does that again with resurrection stories:

If you had a camera in the upper room when the disciples came together after the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we would not see it. I'm not the only one to say this. Even conservative Catholic theologians say that.

I guess he is OK with ignoring what Paul said in 1 Corinthians about bodily resurrections, even if Paul hedges his bet by talking about “spiritual bodies.”

Sixth, Haught simply covers his eyes when scientific explanations run over his stances like a Mack truck. Haught can’t accept that modern neuroscience and related disciplines show “the mind is the brain,” no matter how that’s understood in terms of mind being an emergent property?

Dismiss it away. Say that cognitive science and neuroscience not only haven’t explained consciousness, but can’t.

Don't get me wrong. I want to push physical explanations as far as possible. I'm a man who loves science. I'm in awe of science. I don't ever want theology to put restraints upon science. I believe every thought we have has a physical correlate. But at the same time, I believe there's something about mind that does transcend, while at the same time fully dwelling incarnately in the physical universe. I see that as a microcosmic example of what's going on in the universe as a whole.

In other words, practice intellectual dishonesty.

Beyond that that, his claims to embrace science aside, he’s actually being antiscientific, not just nonscientific, with his a priori rejection of what cognitive science and neuroscience may well continue to discover about the nature of consciousness.

Finally, we have this howler:

That means we have to overcome literalism not just in the Christian or Jewish or Islamic interpretations of scripture but also in the scientific exploration of the universe.

Science admits its knowledge is provisional, but non-literal? This sounds like the intellectual relativists found in places like Stanley Fish lectures and the pages of New Social Review.

In other words beyond that, justify the Hitchenses and Dawkinses of the world for pointing out that people like you don’t necessarily have much more clothes than ayatollahs or hellfire preachers, or even than popes and dalai lamas.

That said, Haught’s theological mentor is the late Belgian Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin. Chardin’s “Omega Point” is certainly out of the scientific realm of empirical study, and, in terms of religion, it’s essentially a Catholicized version of Whitehead’s process theology.

But, all of this skirts an even deeper point.

Haught refuses to look squarely at the fact that Darwinian evolution guts Christian ideas of divine perfection. In other words while Haught has read plenty of Camus, Sartre, Paul Tillich and de Chardin, he hasn’t read enough David Hume. In other words, Haught doesn't consider this world might be the product, even as a process, not literal creation, of a divinity immature, incompetant, immoral or all of the above.

The only way Darwinianism can be squared with theology is if one accepts a God who is “less than all,” unless Haught trots out the “incomprehensible” chestnut again. That’s true in spades of quantum theory.

But, Haught sure doesn’t seem willing to do that.

That said, I find it interesting that many theologians will talk readily about “dialoging” with Darwin or Einstein, with evolution and relativity, and their effects on religion, but you’ll never hear one talking about dialoging with Heisenberg and quantum indeterminancy.