DAWKINS AND PELL + Q&A + ABC TV

At no point in the Q &A (ABC TV) session last night between evolutionary biologist, author and militant atheist Richard Dawkins and Cardinal George Pell did I hear the word faith and yet it seemed to me that an individual either has faith in God or one doesn't. Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen and it appeared to me that in one way or another both Dawkins in his attempt to come to terms with the notion of the Big Bang theory and anti-matter - in other words matter arising from unseen negative matter to explain the creation of the world, and Pell's perhaps inarticulate explanation of an unseen God as the clockmaker of a mechanistic universe, that they were both grappling with this notion of faith or trust, both trying to use reason to explain their belief in a system of thought that guides their lives. Minor points perhaps, but Pell dumbed down whilst discussing the concept of Holy Communion and the fact that Catholics believe that when they ingest the Eucharist,  it is transubstantiation - a process in which the host changes into Christ's body and blood (not physically) but substantively that occurs when they receive and swallow a small round of bread at Mass. Why does the Archbishop of Sydney seem incapable of effectively articulating doctrine? It seems to me that the primary differences between Dawkins and Pell is that the former is an empiricist and the latter not - one only believes in what can be witnessed and proved, the other happy to be involved in speculation, faith and hope.  However, it also occurred to me that Dawkins, unlike Pell, was keeping an open mind when it came to his investigation of things unseen and as yet unknown, such as the particle physics theory of anti-matter, whereas Pell was fixed and rather dogmatic in his viewpoint. No one in the audience asked why we had two men discussing the issue of God and why God is always referred to as masculine. Yes, yes, I know that it is because God the Father and his son Jesus Christ were male (as told in the Bible), but what of the Holy Ghost - a non-gendered spirit? I'd like to see two female members of our community discuss God - one who emanates from the sciences and one from religion and not necessarily from the Catholic persuasion, maybe then we would have a different outcome and a more interesting discussion?

Nietzsche, the Cardinal, and a leap of faith

It was interesting to read a Thomist argument in a daily paper this week. The Australian published an address to the Global Warming Policy Foundation by leading Australian Catholic, Cardinal George Pell. Cardinal Pell invoked the spirit of Thomas Aquinas in a vigorous prosecution of the case against global warming. I don't care one way or another about the polemic but I'm always intrigued by Thomism. The speech is here (pdf)

Thomas Aquinas was a thirteenth century friar whose life's work was the partial reconciliation of fragments of Platonic and Aristolian thought. In the (somewhat unkind) words of contemporaries, Aquinas and his followers laboured mightily to reconcile in death those who never agreed in life. Drawing from Platonic and Socratic traditions, Thomist philosophy in part underpins modern, secular ideas about universal freedoms and rights. Following Aristotle, Thomist doctrine asserts the necessity for accurate observation that underpins the scientific method.

Thomism teaches that a thing is not necessarily so just because a majority says it is. It is up to individuals to see for themselves, and to work out what is true and what is not. And Thomism teaches that not everything is knowable. Where things are not knowable through observation, Thomism teaches an intellect is sustained by faith, because faith does not end in a true or false proposition, but rather in a reality beyond knowing.

Thomism offers a model of mind as a continuum of knowing and believing, a model rejected by both modern positivism and its postmodern adversary, post structuralism. The modern positivist model of mind is a discontinuum of knowledge and ignorance in which believing depends upon knowing, and ignorance is a kind of poverty of mind, to be pitied and where possible cured. The postmodern, post structuralist position abolishes both objectivity and belief, substituting a continuum of subjective uncertainty, a phenomenological shell game of deceived and deceiving minds. Thomist thought is a handy antidote to both.

I don't care one way or another about the dispute over weather forecasts that preoccupied the Cardinal . The intrigue in the Thomist world view is, for me, the model of the individual human mind as a continuum of knowledge and belief. Classical skepticism, after Pyrrho of Elis (c360-270BCE) tried to develop methods of continually testing knowledge and belief. Old school skeptics were comfortable with what they comprehended as the limits of their knowledge, although those boundaries continuously changed, and promoted methods of suspending, rather than passing, judgement. An age later, Descartes introduced the idea of absolute certainty only after declaring he believed that God would not allow his eyes to be deceived, a leap of faith any Thomist might have taken.

The model of human mind as a continuum of knowing and believing is evident in the self-belief of Nietchze's ubermensch, in Thomist metaphysics, in the origins of the scientific method itself. There is always some tension between knowledge and belief. I believe in freedom. I believe in free speech. I can't objectively prove those exist, somewhere, as universal archetypes. But neither could Plato. Or Descartes, for whom the leap of faith - that God would not give him eyes only to cruelly deceive them - preceded rather than followed any evidential trail.

In Thomism I can see an answer to Nietzsche's call to grow long legs, to see further and to leap from peak to peak. Before I know anything else I need faith in at least myself. Faith I can survive the ordeal, belief I won't fall into the chasm between what is spoken and what is done.