MDDM Ch. 75 Job, Hume... Darwin

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
> on 13/9/02 12:43 PM, Terrance at lycidas2 at earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> >
> > Yup. It's that old battle of reason and faith again. I guess we could
> > talk about Thomistic Man too, but that would not be very useful. Silly
> > me.
> >
> > Wonder why P had Dixon drop the book and read it as it lies.
> 
> Thanks for the correction. Dixon indeed tells Mason: "I sought my Bible,
> which I let fall open, and read ... " I think it's yet another irony that
> Dixon resorts to this type of quasi-superstitious or pagan-derived
> "Christian" ritual (like a soothsayer or fortune-teller sticking a pin in
> the Bible as a method of divination, relying on chance rather than *either*
> reason or faith, searching after an omen or "divine guidance" from the Book
> etc) to seek consolation after the kidnapping. It's still an interesting and
> accurate point of characterisation in having these consummate men of science
> seeing no contradiction whatsoever between their Christian and empirical
> faith/s. (Same deal with Charles Darwin, of course.)

Accurate indeed!  And we can flip forward to Darwin, but I think we can
turn back to the others, including Calvin and the split with the RC
Church because this is when the arbitrary creative principle present in
the universe is attached to the necessary sequences of logic. So too in
Hobbes, Locke, Newton, and others in the 17th century. Sorry Doug, not a
useful tool for you, but NT man in the 17 century is a rational man,
created in the image of a rational god. Not so for OT man! Not so for
**any** of the OT characters, be they men or women. So, although no
monolithic god can be identified and  No OT man actually exists, your
point, and it's an obvious one, is not useful to the argument I'm
making. In the 17th century, the materialistic world view resurfaces. 
In politics it is there in Leviathan (1651). 



   NATURE, the art whereby God hath made and governs the world, is by
the ‘art,’ of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated,
that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion
of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why
may we not say, that all ‘automata’ (engines that move themselves by
springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is
the ‘heart’ but a ‘spring’; and the ‘nerves’ but so many ‘strings’; and
the
‘joints’ but so many ‘wheels,’ giving motion to the whole body, such as
was intended by the artificer?


http://www.bartleby.com/34/5/1002.html

Darwin is yet another "student" of Democritus. Although not a 17th
century man, he fits in with the the great galaxy of 17th century
logicists: Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke,  Leibniz, and Newton. But
before turning to Darwin I want to address the contradiction you mention
here and another philosopher, David Hume. 

[Hume] questioned common notions of personal identity, and argued that
there is no permanent "self" that continues over time. He dismissed
standard
accounts of causality and argued that our conceptions of cause/effect
relations are grounded in habits of thinking, rather than in the
perception of causal forces in the external world itself. He argued that
it is unreasonable to believe testimonies of alleged miraculous events,
and, accordingly, hints that we should reject religions that are founded
on miracle testimonies. Against the common belief of the time that God's
existence could be proven through a design or causal argument, Hume
offered compelling criticisms
of standard theistic proofs. Also, against the common view that God
plays an important role in the creation and reinforcement of moral
values, Hume offered one of the first purely secular moral theories,
which grounded morality in the pleasing and useful consequences that
result from our actions. 

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/h/humelife.htm



Hume followed Newton's method and sought the principles Determining the
Necessary connection of phenomena. However, his laws of necessary
connection are laws connecting impressions. 
So, with Hume we are dealing with a reality that is Existential. His
world is also a Democritean world, but atoms and the void have been
replaced by perceptions in our own minds. (note, The mind apart from
perception has a reality comparable to that of the void.) In Hume, there
is no intrinsic reason why impressions should follow a necessary
sequence of antecedent and consequent, but Hume shows that we EXPECT
them to do so as a result of past conjunctions of similar impressions,
and that they conform to our expectation. Even the voluntary actions of
men, and the reports of miracles, present no expectations to the
universal reign of necessary connection of antecedent and consequent.
There is, in fact, a skeptical conflict between the natural tendency to
believe in the casual connectedness of the world and our inability to
find justification for this belief, but this conflict and its outcome
are also determined by casual necessity. The logical predominates,
subsumes, this conflict in Hume. 

For here is the chief and most confounding objection to 
excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result 
from it; while it remains in its full force and vigor. We 
need only ask such a skeptic, What his meaning is? And 
what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is 
immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer. 
A Copernican or Ptolemaic, who supports each his different 
system of astronomy, may hope to produce a conviction, 
which will remain constant and durable, with his audience. 
A Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not 
be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and be- 
haviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philos- 
ophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if 
it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On 
the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge 
anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles 
universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action 
would immediately cease; and men remain in a total lethargy, 
till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their 
miserable existence. It is true; so fatal an event is very little 
to be dreaded. **Nature is always too strong for principle.** (my
emphasis) 
And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into 
a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound 
reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will 
put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the 
same, in every point of action and speculation, with the 
philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never 
concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. 
When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join 
in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his 
objections are mere amusement, and can have no other 
tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind, 
who must act and reason and believe; though they are not 
able, by their most diligent inquiry, to satisfy themselves 
concerning the foundation of these operations, or to remove 
the objections, which may be raised against them. 

see AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
by DAVID HUME








> 
> Dixon says the Bible fell open at that exact page and he read those lines.
> It raises any number of possibilities ... coincidence, fate, divine
> intervention, Dixon fabulating. I guess there is also the possibility that
> Jere is simply providing this moral to his tale out of consideration for
> Mason, who seems to be quite unnerved by the apparent refutation of Hell's
> existence (742.1), if not also the Hollow Earthers' critique of empiricism.
> 
> best
> 
> > What's also interesting is the fact that Wicks turns not so much to
> > scripture but to all sorts of other books. Like in Chapter 4 where he
> > turns another Greek--Epictetus.
> >
> > Very Apt and full of irony as well.