Quodlibeta

He Is

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:18:00 +0000

John's gospel was the last of the canonical gospels written, and has the clearest statements of Jesus' divinity. Some people use this to argue that the claim that Jesus was (and is) God Incarnate was not present in the early Church, but developed over time. Much is made of John's "I am" statements ("εγω ειμι" in Greek), where Jesus uses God's name to describe himself.

Of course I wouldn't deny that there was development in the early Church's understanding of Jesus, but as a simple matter of historical fact, the belief that Jesus was God originates very early in the Church, prior to any of the New Testament's composition. This is acknowledged by the vast majority of scholars.

At any rate, the fact that John's gospel has the most and clearest statements of Jesus' divinity simply does not mean that the synoptic gospels do not contain any such statements. For example, Jesus does say "I am" at some incredibly poignant places in the synoptic gospels. Below is Mark's account of Jesus walking on the water, with the Greek phrase "εγω ειμι" replacing the English. Bear in mind that Mark was probably the first gospel written.

When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.

Immediately he spoke to them and said, "Take courage! εγω ειμι. Don't be afraid." Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.

The NIV translates the Greek as "It is I" here, as well as in the parallel description in Matthew 14, which concludes with his disciples worshiping him.

This is just one example; there are other interesting cases. Here are all the occurrences of εγω ειμι in the New Testament for your perusal.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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Islamic Science and Wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:55:00 +0000

I had an article in last week's Spectator Magazine called Did Al-Farabi Really Invent Sociology? This is one of the great historical questions to which the answer is No.

The article is now available free online. In passing, let me mention that I think delayed posting on the internet is the best balance between free content and the need to sell a magazine. As a writer, I obviously want my work available to all, but I also want the Spectator and other publications to stay in business.

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Science Fiction

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:43:00 +0000

I linked to this on my other blog this morning, and then thought the folks over here would appreciate it as well. Michael Flynn, SF author, discovered a "free ~~association~~ thought" website and proceeded to rip apart one of their essays on Christianity, science, and the Dark Ages. Well done sir.

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Three books

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:42:00 +0000

Sand in the Gears has an interesting challenge:

So, here’s what I’m asking. If you are a leftist, what three books do you believe would best persuade thoughtful people who disagree with you that they are in error? And if you are a conservative or libertarian, what three books do you recommend to thoughtful leftists? In each case, assume the reader is intelligent and educated. Assume as well that he has a life, which means you probably shouldn’t roll up in here with Mises’s Human Action. Unless you really want to.

A few responses have been made here, here, here, and here. He's obviously talking about politics, but I'd like to redirect it to religion. What three books would you recommend to people who disagree with your religious beliefs, whatever they are, and why? They can be academic or popular-level, but exclude the Bible and other holy books (that includes God's Philosophers). Leave your answers in the comments, at the Quodlibeta forum, or write a post on your own blog linking back here. I tentatively offer this as my list of popular-level books:

Six Modern Myths about Christianity and Western Civilization by Philip J. Sampson. Most people have many misconceptions about Christianity that keeps them from being able to consider it as a viable worldview. In this excellent and heavily footnoted book, Sampson goes over Galileo, Darwin, the environment, missionaries, the repression of the human body, and witches to effectively remove these as potential stumbling blocks.

Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. There are plenty of good books on general apologetics, but I would choose this one because it has the most breadth of any other I've read, and because it is the most accessible.

The Son Rises by William Lane Craig. Again, there are plenty of books defending the resurrection, many of which are excellent. I would choose this one because Craig's argument is very simple and straightforward: there are several facts about Jesus' alleged resurrection that are accepted as demonstrably historical by the consensus of scholarship (his burial, the empty tomb, Jesus' post-mortem appearances, and the early belief in the resurrection) and the hypothesis that Jesus rose from the dead is the best explanation of them. By basing his arguments on facts that are acknowledged by the scholarly community, Craig is able to present a case based on premises that are not controversial. His conclusion, of course, is controversial, but he explains well why the resurrection is the best explanation of these four facts.

The reason for choosing these three is because the first one clears the way, the second one explains the reasons for accepting Christianity in broad strokes, and the third gives a detailed (but not difficult) defense of one of Christianity's central claims. Obviously, there are many other subjects that I would like to cover -- Christianity and science, Christianity and culture, catalogues of worldviews, common objections to Christianity, etc. (I posted a longer list here) -- but if I had to limit it to three books, I would probably choose the above.

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Family Guy

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:30:00 +0000

Family Guy often makes me laugh, but I usually feel the need to shower afterwards. Their season opener deals with a couple of subjects Quodlibeteers will be familiar with: the multiverse and the claim that Christianity ushered in "dark ages of scientific repression." You can watch it here, it's pretty funny, but be warned: the language is R-rated at best, there's a lot of poop jokes, and it has one of the most tasteless things I've ever seen (and it's not the Flintstones bit).

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The Alien's Science Project

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:00:00 +0000

The popular science author John Gribbin has a new book out called ‘In Search of the Multiverse’. The blurb for it reads:

We once had to abandon the idea of earth being at the centre of the universe. Now, we need to confront an even more profound possibility: the universe itself might just be one universe among many. In Search of the Multiverse takes us on an extraordinary journey, examining the most fundamental questions in science. What are the boundaries of our universe? Can there be different physical laws from the ones we know? Are there in fact other universes? Do we really live in a multiverse?

This book is a search - the ultimate search - exploring the frontiers of reality. Ideas that were once science fiction have now come to dominate modern physics. And, as John Gribbin shows, there is increasing evidence that there really is more to the universe than we can see. Gribbin guides us through the different competing theories (there is more than one multiverse!) revealing what they have in common and what we can come to expect. He gives a brilliant tour of the current state of cosmology.

Of course, as readers of this blog are often reminded, abandoning the idea the earth is the centre of the universe was a pretty good thing, but I digress. Peter Woit at ‘Not Even Wrong’ is not impressed, remarking that:

Gribbin expounds at length the usual string theory anthropic landscape/multiverse ideology, carefully avoiding introducing any mention of the fact that there might be quite a few scientists skeptical about it.

Having conflated the anthropic principle and the many worlds interpretation of Quantum Physics, Gribbin builds up to his most powerful insight, that we are in a baby universe produced by a race of alien beings:

The intelligence required to do the job may be superior to ours, but it is a finite intelligence reasonably similar to our own, not an infinite and incomprehensible God. The most likely reason for such an intelligence to make universes is the same as the reason why people do things like climbing mountains or studying the nature of subatomic particles using accelerators like the LHC – because they can. A civilization that has the technology to make baby universes might find the temptation irresistible, while at the higher levels of universe design, if the superior intelligences are anything at all like us there would be an overwhelming temptation to improve upon the design of their own universes. This provides the best resolution yet to the puzzle Albert Einstein used to raise, that ‘the most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it is comprehensible.’ The Universe is comprehensible to the human mind because it was designed, at least to some extent, by intelligent beings with minds similar to our own. Fred Hoyle put it slightly differently. ‘The Universe,’ he used to say, ‘is a put-up job.’ I believe that he was right. But in order for that ‘put-up job’ to be understood, we need all the elements of this book.

Woit easily refutes this:

Personally, I think there’s an air-tight argument against this: any race of superior beings that produced a universe in which science descended into this level of nonsense would immediately wipe out their creation and start over. Since we’re still here, there can’t be such a race operating out there.

Except if the race of aliens are screwing with us, like a six year old forcing insects to fight in a jar.
In other news Andrei Linde and Vitaly Vanchurin have been trying to calculate a number of possible universes in the multiverse based on quantum fluctuations in the early state of the universe. Their final number for this is that at least 10^10^10^7 universes out there. Unfortunately the human brain is ‘only capable of 10^10^16 configurations’ so calculating the probabilities is going to be a tad difficult.

In even more news theoretical physicists Holger Nielsen, from Denmark, and Masao Ninomiya, from Japan, have concluded that the discovery of the Higgs Boson could be so "abhorrent to nature" that it can "ripple backward through time" and stop the Large Hadron Collider before it could make one. He said that his theories may even provide a ‘model for God’ who ‘rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them’. Now there’s an example of science and religion working in tandem.

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Getting rid of the Dinos

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:07:00 +0000

Have a dinosaur infestation?, need the problem solved quickly. What is the answer?. Well one option is to drop an enormous rock on the little blighters from orbit. And in fact there is a star candidate for this in the Chicxulub impact event. This would have hit with the force of 100,000,000 megatons of TNT on impact, unleashing mega tsunamis and dousing the earth in acid rain. That should deal with them shouldn’t it?. Well no, not according to Gerta Keller of Princeton University in New Jersey, and Thierry Adatte of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. In a recent analysis they used evidence from Mexico to suggest that the Chicxulub impact predates the K-T boundary extension event by as much as 300,000 years and that it wasn’t a significant enough blow to species diversity.

Also at El Peñon, the researchers found 52 species present in sediments below the impact layer and counted all 52 still present in the layer above it, indicating that the impact has not had the devasting biotic effect on species diversity as has been suggested. "Not a single species went extinct as a result of the Chicxulub impact," Keller said. In contrast, she noted, at a nearby site known as La Sierrita where the K-T boundary, iridium anomaly and mass extinction are recorded, 31 out of 44 species disappeared from the fossil record at the K-T boundary.

Instead, Gerta Keller argues, the dinosaurs must have been taken out by killer volcanos. She speculates that massive volcanic eruptions at the Deccan Traps in India may be responsible for the extinction, releasing huge amounts of dust and gases that could have blocked out sunlight and brought about a significant greenhouse effect. The volcanos would have resulted in half a million cubic miles of lava flooding the western part of India in a short amount of time.

But there’s another solution. How about an even more enormous rock lobbed at the unsuspecting dinos,which would put paid to them once and for all. That is the theory of Paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University who argues that a basin called Shiva in India, is really an enormous impact crater. The rock in question would have been 40 kms wide (three times the size of KT) and hurtled towards Earth at 58,000 miles per hour. This would have had 10,000 times more force than the detonation of the world’s entire nuclear arsenal and placed the world into perpetual night for more than a year. Seems like a prime candidate, however the volcanoeists are not happy. Keller remarks:

"We have worked extensively throughout India and investigated a number of the localities where Sankar Chatterjee claims to have evidence of a large impact he calls Shiva crater," Keller wrote in an e-mail along with colleague Thierry Adatte of Switzerland's Universite de Neuchâtel. "Unfortunately, we have found no evidence to support his claims... Sorry to say, this is all nonsense."

What would have happened if the asteroid had missed. Well, contrary to popular belief, these mass extinction events tend to speed up evolution rather than alter its overall course. The first period of evolutionary expansion among the mammals was an event 100-85 million years ago when the extant orders first appeared. Modern placental lineages were therefore present at the time of the dinosaurs. Does that mean that even without dinosaur extinction they would have carried on evolving into the types of large mammals that we see around today?. At first sight seems unlikely but recent research – that of Paul Barrett in the Proceedings of the Royal Society – is showing:

‘for the first time that the number of different types of dinosaur was declining well before their final extinction, in spite of the fact the amount of rock available for preserving dinosaurs was at its peak.

'The impact may have been the coup de grace that helped to finish off a group that was already in trouble for another reason.'

The mammals were on their way up, the Dinos were on their way down. Giant rocks from the sky don’t help though.

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The Creationists

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 15:05:00 +0000

They say, 'We do not know how this is, but we know that God can do it.' You poor fools! God can make a cow out of a tree, but has he ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so.

William of Conches

The first bodily form (forma) which some call corporeity, I judge to be light. For light (lux) of itself diffuses itself in every direction, so that a sphere of lght , as great as you please is engendered instantaneously (subito) from a point of light

Robert Grosseteste

If we were to construct a historical account of the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages based purely on hearsay and modern prejudices (a not uncommon practice), we might well conclude that the intellectuals of the era simply sat around saying ‘God did it’. After all, people of the era were highly religious; the Bible says that God created the word, so that must have been the end of the discussion. Well, such an answer may well have satisfied a great number of medieval peasants. Medieval thinkers did not consider it to be an adequate response and they constantly sought better answers with the intellectual tools available to them.

One important focus for inquiry of the natural philosophy of creation were the opening chapters of Genesis. This describes God’s creation of the world and provides a logical place to ground the study of astronomy, physics, earth sciences, matter theory, botany, zoology and all other branches of natural philosophy. The Medieval method of study was by commentary, and one of the best places to begin a generalised natural philosophical discussion were the six days of creation. Many treatises on this period were written and the genre this was done in is known as Hexameral literature or Hexamera. In some cases, particularly later, it is clear that the authors were more interested in the natural philosophy elements than they were in the biblical exegesis. In these instances the biblical commentary format is playing the role of a coherent framework around which you can build a natural philosophical system.

The Hexameral tradition was born in the early days of Christianity. Two writers were highly important, one of them in the Greek world, the other in the Latin World. One was St Basil, who was born around 329 and died in 370. The other was St Augustine. Basil’s commentaries were given in the form of homilies. These were given largely to audiences of tradesmen and designed to relate the creative handiwork of God to the kind of crafts which were engaged in at the time. In fact, what Basil was trying to do was elevate the role of the craftsmen by comparing it to God working upon his creation and putting it together piece by piece. The homilies contain evidence that he knew the Greek philosophical tradition quite well, although his intentions are purely devotional.

St Augustine was to prove more influential and set the tone for much later Hexameral literature with his ‘Literal Interpretation of Genesis’. What Augustine does here is very interesting. The rules he sets down for biblical interpretation are firstly that they have to be logical. Secondly, they also have to explain the expressions used in the text. Most importantly, interpretations given must be in accordance with the currently received state of scientific (natural philosophical) knowledge. So, given Augustine’s criteria, a not particularly smart interpretation of Genesis in the 21st century would be that the earth is really 6,000 years old when it blatantly isn’t.

Augustine himself rejected the idea of six days of creation in favour of an instantaneous event, where God created everything in a moment. Over time (for time was created with creation) rational seeds (rationes seminales) which had been implanted in the world would develop into different shapes and forms under the influence of local conditions, or to fit with local conditions. What is created in an instant therefore becomes actualised over time.

In the medieval period Hexameral literature was heavily influenced by naturalism. What ‘naturalism’ means in a Medieval context is that arbitrarily miraculous actions of God are not acceptable explanations for natural philosophy. Medievals were very clear on this. Yes God could do anything, but just because he could do something did not mean that using his omnipotence was legitimate as an answer to questions. This notion was explained by referring to primary and secondary causes. In the Medieval view, God is the ultimate primary cause of everything. That fact has very little explanatory power, and Medieval theologians viewed an unnecessary recourse to the primary cause as ‘a cop out’. Secondary causation, the action of natural forces which were created by God, were adequate and proper explanations and this is where the focus of inquiry would be located. Hence God creates nature and then forces within nature would have their subsequent effects. Theologians held that God almost always works through secondary causes and within the framework of the world he created. His direct intervention causes miracles, and these are very rare. An example of this would be an eclipse. These happen when the moon passes between the earth and the sun, so we don’t need a recourse to God. However the eclipse at the crucifixion happened during a full moon, so it could not have happened naturally; hence it was a miraculous disputation in the usual running of nature.

By the end of the Middle Ages, theologians were already trying to explain miracles using natural causation, so the parting of the Red Sea was explained by a wind sent by God, a secondary cause. While man could not possibly comprehend the creation ex nihilo, everything after than moment should be explained using secondary causation, with the exception of those unusual contrary to nature occurrences. This approach represents a confidence in the power of human reason, to comprehend a rational and orderly world. It presumably stems from a Christianised Platonism which emphasised the power of the human intellect and the salvific nature of knowledge. Neo Platonists in the 12th century certainly had a lot to say about man’s ability to know things.

In the 12th Century the School of Chartes was home to both Thierry of Chartres and William of Conches who both showed a keen interest in the natural philosophy of Creation. Thierry wrote a treatise on the works of the Six days. This makes its way through Genesis 1 verse by verse, and each verse provides the structure for one chapter in his commentary. He makes it clear at the outset that he is going to expound the text ‘according to nature’. Thierry begins by positing the primary cause, God (Aristotle’s Philosophy posited four causes, this wasn’t available in the west yet but was known by digests). Thierry then posits the causes of the world in Aristotle's terms. God the father is the efficient cause, the creator. God the son is the formal cause and the final cause is God the Holy Spirit. The material cause is the four elements which are created by God in the beginning. Using the second person of the Trinity, the son (the word) as the formal cause shows the influence of Platonism. What he is doing is rewriting the Timaeus in Christian terms and combining it with Genesis. All these references to divine causation disappear after the first page and the rest of creation unfolds ‘naturally’. So where God separates the waters in Genesis, Tierrry uses natural causes to make this separation occur. The celestial fire heats the waters and causes them to evaporate. The vapours form clouds, thus forming the separation from the ocean to the clouds (this comes from St Basil). The land appears because the water is evaporating, so again, a natural explanation.

William of Conches goes much further in the Dragmaticon Philosophia (a dialogue between a Duke and a Philosopher) which is at first, not recognisable at all as a hexamoral treatise. There are no biblical quotations and no explicit exegesis. However the discussion extends over six days and each one is devoted to the natural philosophical issues which are raised by each part of Genesis. Again, he is heavily influenced by Platonism, explaining one point by saying that:

'It is not my intention to expound here the words of Plato, but to set down here the view of natural scientists concerning substances; but even if I have not expounded Plato’s words, I have said all that he said about elements and more’

At the beginning, God creates a chaos, a mixture of 4 elements mixed chaotically. They have a natural motion and begin to sort themselves out. The world then reaches its current form by natural forces. The separation of the waters is achieved by the fire of the stars and the sun. At this point the Duke stops him and says that the Venerable Bede wrote that the waters are above the actual heavens and frozen into ice and crystal. ‘Are you going to disagree with this Venerable father’? says the Duke. William reply is that yes, he is going to disagree with him actually, while respecting what he has to say about salvation, ‘we should be free to disagree in matters of natural philosophy’. He then explains that the waters cannot be frozen above the heavens since they would collapse back onto the earth. The Duke says in frustration:

‘You attribute everything to the quality of things and nothing to the creator. Surely the creator was able to keep the waters there, freeze then and keep them suspended contrary to nature’.

William replies:

‘What is more foolish than to assume that something exists simply because the creator can make it. Whoever says God makes anything contrary to nature should either see that it is so with his own eyes or show the reason for it being thus, or let him demonstrate the advantage of it being so’.

This is an argument we will see between science and religion down to our own time. What (if anything) do we attribute to God’s power and what do we attribute to secondary causation?

William now takes it even further. He claims that life itself arose from the natural action of heat on mud and even that man arose from the primordial mud (God does emerge at one point to give him a rational and immortal soul). In fact, William says that since mans body came about by the natural action of elements working on one another within the course of nature, several species of man could have developed and the natural actions are still at work today. A new species of man could arise by natural forces. But William says that though this seems possible we have never seen it happen, so perhaps God wills against this. William then says that natural causation is constantly acting, but it requires Gods will to continue. God therefore underwrites and maintains the laws of nature. This would eventually become a difficult theological point.

What is important to take from these two figures is their insistence on naturalism; that explanations in natural philosophy have to come about in a natural way from natural forces. Furthermore we see these Hexamoral treatises as places where speculative natural philosophy can be advanced.

Two later figures were Robert Grosseteste and Henry of Langenstein. Robert Grosseteste (the last name means ‘big head) was the Bishop of Lincoln. He was born in 1168 and died in 1253. He also promoted Platonic readings of Genesis, but he had a particular interest in one thing; light. In the first passages of Genesis, this is the first creation. Light is also a key aspect of neo-platonic thought where the world is created by a single emanation from a self sustaining, self sufficient God. He radiates his goodness like light, and this creates the world. This idea was Christianised and we even see the emphasis on light in the building of Gothic cathedrals.

For Grosseteste, light is a vehicle of creation and knowledge. He favours an instant of creation and believed that the six days are metaphorical. The way God creates the world is this. He creates a dimensionless point of matter and a dimensionless point of light imposed upon it. These are dimensionless because Augustine had speculated that time was ‘created by God’ (so on Augustine’s reading, people who ask what God was doing before creation are being silly as there was no time). Grosseteste takes this further and says that the dimensions do not exist before God creates them. Essentially all God does is to create these points since light naturally radiates from it’s source in a spherical way carrying the matter with it. This happens until it becomes so diffused it stops radiating and the spherical cosmos is created. He then elaborates how the celestial spheres are created. In the next century, Henry of Langenstein wrote a piece of hexamenal literature which proved to be a veritable compendium of 14th century natural philosophy. He is predominantly Aristotelian in outlook rather than Platonic but he does draw on a wide range of sources.

To sum up, what we see here is that theology provided a framework and a context in which natural philosophy could be done. Experimental knowledge in the case of Grossteste, arguments from common experience in the case of William of Conches, were used to further the study of the natural world. Theological and scientific speculation went hand in hand and, in this way, myths provided a sort of scaffolding for the human imagination. Scripture did not restrict scientific enquiry, but instead provided an impetus and a locus for natural philosophical speculation. Plenty of lessons there for today.

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The Holy Parrot of Antioch

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 20:13:00 +0000

Diarmaid MacCulloch, author of the much acclaimed ‘Reformation – Europe’s House Divided’ has recently completed his ‘A History of Christianity – The first three thousand years’. The book was praised by Archbishop Rowan Williams but panned by Paul Johnson in the Spectator, who writes ‘I can’t imagine anyone reading it for pleasure’ and takes it to task for being too politically correct.

Of particular interest to me in MacCulloch’s book is the tale of the ‘Holy Parrot’ of Antioch whose owner taught it to recite controversial theological formulas, and whose fame became so great that an epic poem was written in praise of it. One of the highlights of Reformation was the tale of the puritan mice of Massachusetts. MacCulloch writes:

[Winthrop’s associates] ignored the other component of English Worship, the Prayer Book: Laud had tainted that irredeemably. With great satisfaction John Winthrop recorded in his journal for 15th of October 1640 the miracle of the Puritan mice. One volume in his son’s library was a Greek New Testament, a book of psalms and the Book of Common Prayer all bound up together. Mice gnawed at every leaf of the prayer book, but left the New Testament and the Psalter intact. Thus Mr Winthrop’s library, like Massachusetts itself, put it’s mark of scorn on the popish Church of England liturgy.

Perhaps we might add one more contender to the pantheon of theistic arguments; the argument from devout rodents and parrots with doctorates in Theology; or perhaps they could be more usefully employed in the resolution of religious disputes.

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What has theology ever done for science?

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:03:00 +0000

What has theology ever done for science? asks Dan Dennett. ‘Quite a lot’ replies Denis Alexander in a recent article posted on the Faraday Institute website, and proceeds to reel off four main themes.

1. The concept of Scientific Laws

Alexander writes:

‘there seems little doubt that the concept of scientific laws was nurtured by the Christian belief that God has established moral laws for the universe and therefore, ipso facto, God must maintain similar laws that govern the physical world. The rational God of Christian theology provided a rationale for seeking intelligibility in the world, as expressed through laws. This is made explicit in the writings of early natural philosophers such as Descartes, Boyle and Newton.’

I wrote something similar a while back, based on the Faraday Lecture series (which are a fantastic resource).

2. The Contingency of God’s Actions

A second theme that we often find in the early natural philosophers is the idea that the contingency of God’s actions encourages an empirical attitude towards the natural world. The God of the Bible can do what he likes, and it is up to natural philosophers to determine this empirically, it cannot be worked out from first principles as the Greek rationalists mistakenly thought. Contingency stems from the free will of the omnipotent Creator.

This is one of the key developments of the Middle Ages, which is documented in God’s Philosophers.

And now, my personal favourite…

3. The Fall of Man

‘The third way in which theology contributed to the emergence of modern science is perhaps counter-intuitive and unexpected, and it relates to the Christian doctrine of the Fall and its perceived impact on the ability of natural philosophers to gain access to truth. This is a good example where it’s quite hard to try and think our way back into the world-view of these early natural philosophers. The thesis is well expounded in ‘The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science’ written by the Oxford historian of science Peter Harrison. What Peter has done in this book is to amass a huge amount of historical data to show that the idea that the mind is fallen, a conviction shared by virtually all the natural philosophers of the early modern period (16th-17th centuries), led them to be suspicious of unaided reason as a way of arriving at truths about nature, using the kind of deductive processes familiar in Greek philosophy. This in turn stimulated the emergence of the empirical method because clearly the only way to establish reliable truths was to do experiments to find out how nature actually worked - this wasn't something that could be worked out from first principles by fallen minds. So in Harrison’s view, at its inception, modern science was conceptualized as a means of recapturing the knowledge of nature that Adam had once possessed, so reversing the effects of the Fall.’

I attempted to summarise Harrison’s intriguing thesis, here. The one thing that sticks out at you from early modern treatises of Natural Philosophy is their tendency to stress the fallen nature of humanity and to recommend experiment as a way of overcoming it’s effects.

4. The Mechanical Philosophy

A fourth theme in the scientific revolution that has strongly theological overtones is the enthusiasm of many of the natural philosophers for what came to be known as the new mechanical philosophy, a term virtually synonymous with the new experimental philosophy itself. From our perspective it might seem surprising that machine analogies to describe the properties of the world would be introduced within the context of Christian theology, but the machine for these natural philosophers was always God’s machine – they saw no tension between mechanism and meaning. The astronomer Kepler, who initially trained to be a Lutheran pastor, wrote that 'My aim is to show that the heavenly machine is not a kind of divine, live being, but a kind of clockwork....'

I wrote something on this back here. I should add that James’s book shows that this attitude emerges in the Middle Ages. We find the clockwork universe trope in the writings of John Buridan for example.

Denis Alexander’s conclusion is that:

Because science is an intellectually difficult enterprise, there is value in an under-pinning metaphysics which guarantees that scientific knowledge has real value. This under-pinning was provided during the emergence of modern science by the belief that God had made rational human minds with the ability to gain true insights into a rational universe with properties governed by God’s rational laws. True, as noted above, these minds were fallen, so their deficits needed to be supplemented by experimental data. But the data could be trusted because it was God’s universe that was being investigated. This optimism in the trustworthiness of human knowledge helped carry science along on its crest for centuries, sometimes pushing scientists over the top of the wave into straight hubris.

Today that optimism in the reliability of knowledge is gone, and the post-modern suspicion of meta-narratives sits uneasily with a scientific enterprise that seeks to maintain the reliability of its knowledge, conveying science to a public that hardly knows what truth is any more.

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Christianity, Islam, and Science

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:39:00 +0000

Here are a couple of important books available online that contrast the Bible and the Qur'an. The first is The Bible, the Qur'an and Science by Maurice Bucaille, a medical doctor, who argues that while the Bible has numerous scientific and historical mistakes, the Qur'an is free of such errors. Originally written in French, it has been translated into many languages.

In response to Bucaille's book, William Campbell, also a medical doctor, wrote The Qur'an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science where he argues that precisely the opposite is the case: the Bible not only contains no scientific errors, it actually predicts scientific discoveries. He references Hugh Ross a few times in defense of this. The Qur'an, however, makes many claims that have been disproved by contemporary science. It can be read online in several languages, including Arabic, French, Indonesian, and (fortunately) English.

I have both books on my shelf, and find Bucaille to be reading things into the Bible and the Qur'an that aren't there; and the things he reads into the Bible just happen to be falsehoods while the things he reads into the Qur'an just happen to be truths. If he applied the same standards to the Bible that he does to the Qur'an it would pass with flying colors; conversely if he applied the same standards to the Qur'an that he does to the Bible he would dismiss it as riddled with error. Campbell eviscerates Bucaille. Even though his book has a very particular target -- not only is it focused on contrasting the two holy books and religions, but it is a point-by-point response to another book -- I think it's one of the best books on Christian apologetics that I've ever read. Anyway, I recommend reading both books before drawing your own conclusions.

Let me make two caveats: first, both Bucaille and Campbell are skeptical of biological evolution, however I don't think this affects their respective cases. Campbell only mentions it briefly in a "short chapter without a number" and Bucaille discusses it in another book L'Homme D'Ou Vient-il? Les Reponses de la Science et des Écritures Saintes. Other than this, they both accept the findings of contemporary science.

Second, it should be noted that in comparing these two religions both books tend to take the easy route by applying a sort of one-to-one correspondence between their respective elements. So the Qur'an is contrasted with the Bible, and Muhammad is contrasted with Jesus. This is certainly understandable; it's just easier to compare their holy books with each other and ditto for their founders. But this inevitably applies categories of one of them to the other that do not hold, resulting in inappropriate comparisons.

For example, Christianity believes that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God. But no Muslim would say this of Muhammad; rather, they would say this of the Qur'an itself. So in contrasting these two religions, we should be comparing Jesus with the Qur'an, not Jesus with Muhammad. Obviously this creates even worse problems, because now we have to compare two unlike things (a person and a book).

So if Muhammad is not to Islam what Christ is to Christianity, how does Islam depict Muhammad? In Islamic theology, Muhammad is the means through which God's ultimate revelation comes. So any comparison of these two religions should look for something in Christianity to which such a description could apply. I've seen two possibilities suggested.

The first is the Bible, since it is, in a sense, the "messenger" through which we hear about Jesus. However, it should also be noted that the Bible is often called God's Word, although in a different sense than Jesus is (we shouldn't worship the Bible, for example). This has some interesting consequences. My wife and I know a young lady from Turkey who was raised a Muslim but rejected it after reading the Qur'an. Once, when the three of us were discussing the nature of Islam and Christianity, I pointed out to her that there are plenty of Christians who do not accept the inerrancy of the Bible (that is, that the Bible's original manuscripts were completely true in everything that they actually affirmed). In fact, I told her that C. S. Lewis, one of the 20th century's most-read Christian authors, rejected biblical inerrancy, and not only was he still a Christian, he was a fairly traditional Christian. And not only was he a traditional Christian, he was a champion for Christianity. I told her that I didn't think a Muslim could believe that the Qur'an may have errors and still be a traditional Muslim. She responded that such a person couldn't be a Muslim in any sense (although some people, like Irshad Manji, might disagree).

The other Christian parallel to Islam's Muhammad that I've seen suggested is Jesus' mother Mary. Christianity has always had a very high view of Mary, since she was considered worthy of such an incredible blessing (and curse) of being the mother of the Messiah. Sometimes respect for Mary has led to her being venerated. This is similar (to some extent) to the Islamic veneration of Muhammad.

I don't think it's inappropriate to try to understand other religions in light of one's own religion. But we have to first understand other religions on their own terms before we can compare them to our own. Otherwise, we will inevitably end up critiquing a straw man.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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The Irish Referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:14:00 +0000

UK politics is probably of greater interest to me than most of the readers of this blog, so I hope I will be forgiven for a brief foray, perhaps because one of the principle players this weekend was very nice about God’s Philosophers.

As you may know, today the Irish voted for the second time on the Lisbon Treaty which stands as a constitution for the European Union (a federal super-state into which the British have been sucked unwillingly by the duplicity of their leaders). The Irish are voting again because during the first referendum they failed to produce the answer that their masters required.

David Cameron, the prospective Prime Minister of the UK, has also promised a referendum after the next election (if he wins it, which he almost certainly will). But if the Lisbon Treaty is ratified before the election, unpicking it becomes very much harder. Many are expecting that the Irish will vote ‘Yes’ and Cameron will then withdraw his own referendum promise. If this happens, it will become known in Conservative Party annals as ‘the Great Betrayal’. Cameron probably knows this which is why there remains hope that he will honour his commitments. But suspicions remain.

This is where the guy who reviewed God’s Philosophers comes in. Daniel Hannan (no relation) is the conscience of David Cameron’s Conservative Party. Whatever compromises Cameron must make to win and keep power, he knows he will maintain the approval of the party base as long as he keeps Hannan onside. Presently, Cameron has Hannan’s unequivocal support. And as long as Hannan says he trusts Cameron to deliver a referendum on Europe, the base will trust him too.

Which is why the most important political blog this weekend is Hannan’s. If Cameron appears to waver on a referendum, watch which way Hannan goes. It will tell you, several years in advance, whether Cameron will ultimately be a successful Prime Minister or spend his entire career fighting with his own party.

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Religion and self-defense

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:29:00 +0000

Here's an interesting situation in the States. Many states allow concealed handgun licenses (CHL) but some prohibit concealed carry in places of worship. This raises the issue of the role of self-defense and pacifism in religion, as well as whether the State should be saying anything about it at all.

Obviously not all churches have the same beliefs about the legitimacy of self-defense and defense of others as does the New Life Church. This brings use to the second violation of the First Amendment. The morality of using deadly force when necessary to protect innocent lives is a strongly debated topic among various denominations. The early Christians disagreed on the topic. Historically, the standard Jewish and Catholic view was that self-defense was a right and defense of others was often a duty. Some Christians, particularly since the 20th century, take an opposite view. Likewise, many adherents of the major religions of Asia also support self-defense, while some (especially some Therevada Buddhists) do not. These doctrinal differences about self-defense represent very important, sincerely-held differences in religious beliefs. A religion is, after all, not just about the forms of ritual; religion is especially concerned about providing guidance for moral conduct at moments when a person may face decisions involving the end of life.

The state, of course, must be neutral between the various religious beliefs. The state should not compel a Quaker to shoot someone who is trying to kill her, nor should the state forbid a Baptist from saving her own life. The CHL prohibition in churches violates the Free Exercise clause because it prevents self-defense by members of a religious community, when they are gathered as a community, even if key tenet of the religion is the communal duty of the adherents to protect their fellow adherents.

Moreover, the CHL ban also violates the Establishment clause because it favors some denominations over others. In effect, the statute privileges pacifist denominations over non-pacifist ones, by forcing the non-pacifist religions to obey pacifist standards of conduct in their own houses of worship. This is not only a Free Exercise violation, it is an Establishment clause violation, because it plainly creates the message that the pacifist way of being is the only way of being which the state will allow in any church, anywhere in the boundaries of the state.

This is from the Volokh Conspiracy. As with everything over there, the comments are worth reading too.

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Cthulu calay

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:51:00 +0000

This has nothing to do with philosophy, science, or history, I just think it's absolutely hilarious (it helps if you have some knowledge of the works of H. P. Lovecraft).

Update (2 Nov): If that's not enough for you, behold the very depths of insanity.

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The Meaning of Life

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:24:00 +0000

There has been much discussion in the last several years about the possibility of extending the human life span. As futuristic as it sounds, medical research is uncovering possible methods by which the maximum age could increase from about 120 years to 160, 180, 200, and just keep on going. Some argue against extending lives because they believe it to be unnatural. I have no sympathy for this view. I don't see how this objection wouldn't also apply to any and every kind of medical treatment.

That's a post for another day though. For now, I just want to emphasize what the possibility of extending life spans does not do. Avoiding death is a good goal to have, but the mere extension of our lives can never satisfy. Immortality is not enough: we need meaning. We need a meaningful life. The atheist existentialists tried to address this, but never really went beyond the suggestion that we should pretend our lives have meaning even though they really don't. Others may say that making other people happy or making a difference in society would do it. But that doesn't give any real meaning, only a relative meaning. That is, if the happiness of others or the betterment of society has no meaning, then working towards one of them is simply arbitrary. If changing the world for the better is pointless and meaningless, then why bother? Why not work towards making other people suicidal, or for the downfall of civilization instead? If our existence doesn't have any significance, any purpose, any meaning, then what motivation is there to do or say anything?

It seems to me that the only serious answer one could give would be pleasure. But this has several problems:

First, when we pursue pleasure, we tend to become sickened. If we seek pleasure with food and gorge ourselves, or with alcohol and drunkeness, it stops being fun. This doesn't just mean that if you eat or drink too much you'll get sick. It also means that if we regularly gorge ourselves, or regularly get drunk, it tends to become less and less pleasurable.

Second, if someone gets pleasure from something that is harmful to others, like child-abuse, what could motivate them to not pursue such pleasure? Well, the danger of being caught perhaps. But this only means that such a person would only abuse children when he's confident that he can get away with it. A sophisticated murderer would only kill people whose lives have less impact on society, and therefore their deaths would also have less impact; and so he would be able to get away with it. This is simply unacceptable.

Third, seeking pleasure is something everybody does. If it really led to the highest satisfaction one could achieve in life, why would anyone think otherwise? It's like that Calvin and Hobbes comic where Calvin taped paper wings to his arms so he could fly. Hobbes asks him "If paper wings is all it takes to fly, don't you think we'd have heard about it by now?" If pleasure is all there is to life, don't you think everyone would have realized it by now? But we don't: we realize that there is more to life, although we often can't put our finger on it. Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, two Catholic philosophers from Boston College, wrote that to live solely for pleasure "is the stupidest gamble in the world, for it is the only one that has consistently never paid off ... every batter who has ever approached that plate has struck out. ... After trillions of failures and a one hundred percent failure rate, this is one experiment no one should keep trying." An essay by William Lane Craig, published as chapter 2 of his book Reasonable Faith, discusses this and similar themes; it's called "The Absurdity of Life Without God". Read it at your own risk.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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Warrant

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 13:05:00 +0000

In the comments of an earlier post, Matko mentioned he wants to get into Alvin Plantinga's trilogy on warrant. I was going to leave this in the comments too, but decided it deserves a post of its own. The first two books of that trilogy can be read online: here are links to Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function. They were both series of Gifford Lectures, and I don't know if these are as they were originally presented or as they were published. The third book is Warranted Christian Belief, and you'll just have to buy that one.

Update: Most excellent! In the comments Matko gives a link to an online version of Warranted Christian Belief. Now you can read the whole set without having to leave the house or even standing up.

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God's Philosophers - A Review

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:03:00 +0000

You have put a builder [Archimedes] before Aristotle who was no less knowledgable in these arts!...After Archimedes, you have put Euclid as if the light after the lantern!'

Julius Caeser Scalinger

In the 16th century, the humanist writer Julius Caesar Scaliger published what would later be described as ‘the most vitriolic book review in the annals of literature’, a tirade against Jerome Cardan’s ‘On Subtlety’. It was over 900 pages in total - twice the length of the book it was reviewing - and it attacked Cardan vehemently for almost every aspect of the book. When Scaliger received no reply from Cardin he managed to convince himself that his efforts had caused his literary opponent to die of shame and decided to write him a glowing epitaph. According to the obituary, the late Cardan had been ‘a consummate master of the humane letter’, ‘a great man indeed’ gushed Scalinger. One can only imagine his horror when he found out Cardan was still alive and well and doubtless wondering why his opponant had so quickly changed his tune. This is just one of many entertaining anecdotes in the pages of James Hannam’s God’s Philosophers which I chuckled over as I read through it. Hence I will not be giving the author the Scaliger treatment, not least because it’s also one of the best narrative histories I have read in a long time.

God’s Philosophers begins with the famous quote by Issac Newton, that his achievements had only been possible because he was ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ (in keeping with the tone of the book, we learn that it was actually Bernard of Chartres who said this first in the 12th century). In contrast the Humanists of the ‘Renaissance’ era felt they were squatting on the shoulders of intellectual midgets; a menagerie of long winded medieval ‘logic choppers’ and ‘wordmongers’ who wrote in ‘barbaric’ Latin and had failed to properly understand the writings of the ancients. This scorn of their forebears began the longstanding myth that the Medieval period constituted an age of darkness and ignorance, a narrative which was adopted wholeheartedly in Enlightenment France and disseminated in the late 19th Century by the infamous Andrew Dickson White. This impression of the Middle Ages remains alive and well today despite having been almost overwhelmingly discredited in the academic community. For example, leading historian of science Edward Grant laments that ‘the medieval period in Western Europe has been much underestimated and maligned, almost as if fate had chosen it as history’s scapegoat’. Another historian, David Lindberg bemoans the fact that ‘the ignorance and degradation of the Middle Ages has become a kind of article of faith among the general public, achieving the status of invulnerability merely by virtue of endless repetition’. Hannam’s objective has been to reverse this trend by bringing the fruits of modern scholarship in the history of science to a wider audience and demonstrating that the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages contributed directly to the achievements of modern science.

In the popular imagination, the period from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 500 to the arrival of the millennium in the year 1000 is a superb candidate for a Dark Age. Yet Hannam shows – by reference to the changes which took place in his home village of Otham - that significant technological progress took place. Much of the classical heritage of Greece and Rome was cut off from Western Europe, but from the ruin of the Empire there gradually arose a society sustained by improved agricultural techniques and powered by advances in machinery; the horse collar, three field crop rotation and the widespread use of water and tidal mills would ensure that Europe could support more people than ever before.

As intellectual culture was rekindled in the West on the wave of a population explosion and increased stability, a great translation movement emerged which would bring the fruits of Classical learning to Europe through the works of Arab natural philosophers. Before this Medieval intellectuals, such as William of Conches, Adelard of Bath and ‘the mathematical Pope’, Gerbert of Aurilliac, had to make do on scraps from the ill fated Boethius and a few other authors. As the translated texts arrived from Spain and the Mediterranean, they were greedily absorbed into the medieval university; a type of legally autonomous corporation which could foster higher learning and carve out privileges from both secular rulers and the Church. The volatile and pugnacious Peter Abelard had championed logic in his teaching; and, due to a series of calamities and quarrels, he ended up being nocturnally castrated, sentenced to perpetual silence and confined to a monastery. Upon his death, his ideas quickly dominated Christian scholarship. Natural philosophy would also gain an exalted status in the curriculum as the ‘handmaiden’ of theology; a guide to better preaching and a tool to combat the growing problem of heresy.

Yet the philosophy of the ancients was not straightforwardly compatible with the teachings of Christianity. Hannam is strong at outlining these issues and the subsequent efforts of Albert the Great and the more famous Thomas Aquinas to assimilate the new learning into a suitable framework. This came with the publication of the Summa Theologiae which was ‘such a successful amalgamation of Aristotle’s philosophy with Christian doctrine that some Catholics have since failed to distinguish between the two’. Yet it was the conservative backlash represented by the condemnations of 1277 which would delineate the boundaries between natural philosophy and theology and explore non Aristotelian physical and cosmological alternatives.

By this time, an international intelligentsia of scholars had emerged using the common language of Latin. They were able to enjoy considerable freedom under the cultural unity and political fragmentation of the period. This section of God’s Philosophers was perhaps the most enlightening, not least because so many of these figures remain undeservedly unknown or misunderstood. A chapter is devoted to demonstrating the syllabus of the medieval university through the life of Richard of Wallingford, a figure who perfected the mechanical clock and ‘left a mechanical legacy without equal’. Peter the Pilgrim became the first to realise that magnets have polarity (a critical insight for medieval navigation). Following in the footsteps of Robert Grosseteste, Friar Roger Bacon promulgated a strong rhetoric of experiment and provided a powerful synthesis of optical theory. However, as Hannam shows, he has been mis-portrayed as a modern thinker. The principle motivation for his promotion of the sciences appears to have been his belief that the apocalypse was imminent and that the Jews and Arabs would have to be quickly converted to the true faith before the anti-Christ and his minions showed up (one can compare this to the present day belief of Richard Dawkins that the natural sciences must be used to convert everyone to atheism before the Christian fundamentalists and the Islamists bring on the apocalypse).

In the Fourteenth Century, a series of remarkable individuals emerged who would propel Medieval natural philosophy beyond the achievements of the ancients, combining mathematics and physics in ways that had not been achieved before. The setting for these scholars were the quadrangles of Merton College. Thomas Bradwardine, later Archbishop of Canterbury, tried to establish a formula to properly describe Aristotle’s laws of motion with the first use of a logarithm. Ultimately Aristotle’s laws of motion were completely wrong, but Bradwardine had made an important step forward. Both he and the talented mathematician Richard Swineshead adopted thought experiments and tried to think through the mathematics. William Heytesbury is credited with the first use of the mean speed theorem (though neither he nor his contemporaries had any idea of its immense significance).

Yet it would be Paris, not Oxford which would see ‘the apogee of Medieval Science’ as the ideas of the Merton calculators crossed the channel. It was the rector of the University of Paris, John Buridan, who rejected Aristotelian ideas concerning violent motion. In its place he formulated the concept of impetus and used it to describe how the planets keep moving in their orbits. He also came close to the modern principle of inertia. Perhaps inspired by Bradwardine, Buridan also compared the universe to a giant clock or ‘world machine’ which the creator had wound up, a forerunner of the later mechanical philosophy. One of the issues considered by Buridan was the possible rotation of the earth. This was an idea taken further by his pupil, the brilliant Nicole Oresme who refuted most of the objections to a moving earth, but in the end went with the common sense approach contained in Aristotle and the Bible. His other major achievement was to prove the mean speed theorem in graphical form. This work would spread throughout Europe before the Black Death swept in and decimated the intellectual culture of Europe.

The fifteenth century saw Europe begin to regain it’s poise and the arrival of Nicholas of Cusa, a Cardinal who saw clearly the need for effective measurement in natural philosophy and whose cosmological speculations seem remarkably pertinent. It also saw the emergence of the humanist movement and their efforts to reintroduce ancient Greek into Europe; although as Hannam shows, they were also ‘incorrigible reactionaries’ seeking to ‘recapture an imaginary past’ who destroyed vast numbers of manuscripts and discarded many of the advances made in the Medieval period. Luckily the onset of printing ensured that the natural philosophy would reach the next generation of scholars, even as it was being systematically eliminated from the universities.

God’s Philosophers concludes with a broader sweep through the 16th century to show how Copernicus, Galileo and others used the achievements of the Middle Ages in their work. The term Renaissance after all, was coined partly to contrast the ‘rebirth’ of culture with medieval ‘stagnation’; although as Hannam points out, the Renaissance was ‘as much an age of faith as the Middle Ages and, if anything, more superstitious and violent’. Magical thinking became widespread and astrology and alchemy loomed large in the thought of figures like Jerome Cardan, John Dee and Paracelsus, or to give his full name, Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim. In the case of Cardan, this led to an ill-advised attempt to draw up a horoscope of Christ. Their efforts led to advances in algeba, astronomy and new ideas of medicine which challenged the Galenic tradition. Human dissection emerged in the Medieval period (Hannam shows the Church never banned it, in stark contrast to the taboos in effect in much of classical antiquity). Vesalius attempted to perfect the work of Galen with his ‘On the Fabric of the Human Body’ but laid the groundwork for his overthrow. It would be William Harvey who would demonstrate the circulation of the blood and seriously weaken the Galenic edifice. The reader of God’s philosophers may well, as I did, breathe a sigh of relief that things in medicine have moved on. Medical instruction manuals of the period advice doctors to always say that the patient is sick, since if he recovers ‘you will be praised more for your skill’ and if he dies ‘his friends will testify that you had given him up’ (although with NHS cut backs on the way, perhaps this might be revived).

Elsewhere the towering figures of Ptolemy and Aristotle were being severely questioned. Both Peurbach and Regiomontanus had realised that Ptolomy’s astronomical system, with its complex geometry and clumsy equant had serious problems, yet it gave undeniably precise predictions. It would be the Polish clergyman Nicholas Copernicus who would defy expert opinion and propose a heliocentric universe. His motivation for placing the sun at the centre of the universe may have sprung from occult theories about the sun, but his arguments for the rotation of the earth come straight from John Buridan and find their echoes in Nicholas of Cusa. Unsurprisingly, Copernicus was a product of the intellectual culture of the time, although he has so often been portrayed as a lone genius defying all that had gone before.

Another figure often depicted as marking a break from the past is Galileo Galilei, yet as Hannam points out ‘Discourses on the New Sciences’ represents ‘the culmination of four centuries of work by medieval mathematicians and natural philosophers’. In his discussion of free fall, Galileo seems to be familiar with the work of the Merton Calculators and reproduces the conclusions of Oresme and William of Heytesbury. His discussion of Projectile Motion builds on the conclusions of Buridan, Tartaglia and Cardan. His observations on falling objects repeat those made a thousand years earlier by the Byzantine scholar John Philoponus and more recently by Simon Stevin. Galileo’s triumph was to produce an erudite synthesis of what had gone before and provide powerful experimental demonstrations. Similarly his contemporary Johannes Kepler was able to build upon the European Medieval tradition and solve two of the greatest problems of the Middle Ages, the movement of the planets and the explanation of vision.

Modern science emerged as the triumph of three civilizations; Greek, Arab and Latin Christian, yet the last of these is so often left out of the narrative. God’s Philosophers restores the credit the medieval period deserves and has forced me to revise my belief that there was something which could justly be called a ‘scientific revolution’ in the Early Modern period. Hannam’s book persuasively argues for continuities and shows how the achievements of Keplar, Copernicus, Galileo and others were deeply rooted in the intellectual culture which had preceded them. The Middle Ages displayed none of the ‘general decay and degeneracy’ and ‘complete decadence of philosophy and the sciences' which Condorcet and Voltaire unjustly derided it for, rather it prepared the ground for the intellectual successes which would follow.

Yet despite the stirring narrative outlined in God’s Philosophers some will doubtless maintain there was a dark age in Western Europe from 500AD to around 1250 when not very much happened in the intellectual culture of the West. The best course of action in response to this would be to cast the blighters adrift in the ruins of a collapsed civilisation with bloodthirsty barbarian raiders all around them and only a copy of Bill Brysons 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' with which to rebuild society. Then perhaps we will hear no more loose talk about ‘poor benighted Medievals’.

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Quote of the Day

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 07:08:00 +0000

"What inclines even me to believe in Christ’s resurrection? It is as though I play with the thought. -- If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is dead and decomposed. In that case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer help; and once more we are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were, and cut off from heaven."

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Culture and Value

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Atheism and Conspiracy Theories

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 05:28:00 +0000

On this eighth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks there are still plenty of people who would rather believe that it was an enormous conspiracy carried out by the US government or Jews or whatever. Such claims are, of course, completely ridiculous, not to mention deeply offensive. The best one-stop shop debunking them is Screw Loose Change and the best essay doing the same is the one published by Popular Mechanics. Other refutations, more in line with the seriousness these theories deserve, have been done by Cracked and South Park. I place 9/11 conspiracy theories on the same intellectual level as theories that the Moon landings were fake or that the Holocaust didn't really happen.

In a recent debate with Alvin Plantinga, Daniel Dennett claimed that belief in God is also this absurd. I would argue that it actually goes the other way: atheism is, in a sense, a conspiracy theory. I'm not referring here to the ridiculous claim that Jesus never existed. Of course, that is a conspiracy theory, but I'm thinking of the more basic claim of atheism: that God does not exist, that there is no supernatural, that the natural world is all that exists.

I say atheism is a conspiracy theory in a sense because there are important senses in which it is not. Thinking that all the theistic arguments fail or that the problems of theism outweigh those of atheism does not make one a conspiracy theorist. God's existence is not blindingly obvious, so to compare those who disbelieve in Him to those who think there is a secret cabal of evil Jews running the world is, in many ways, inappropriate. So I don't mean to imply that atheism is on a par with conspiracy theories in general; only when looked at in a particular way.

The sense in which atheism is a conspiracy theory is with regards to religious experience. Throughout human history people have had experiences of "something" beyond the physical world. In fact, this is one of the most common experiences that human beings have. The atheist thesis would require us to believe that virtually all of these experiences are completely illusory. I find this about as plausible as claiming that our experiences of the physical world are illusory. Of course there are differences: everyone experiences the physical world while not everyone has religious experiences; the physical world imposes itself on us constantly, while religious experiences are usually temporary; etc. Nevertheless, the sense of the supernatural, of a "beyond," can impose itself upon us to a much greater degree than the physical world.

Some might object that atheists are not positing any actual conspirators, so to call it a conspiracy theory is misleading. However 1) atheists claim our experiences of the supernatural are simply by-products of how our brains evolved. Evolution is responsible for our having these experiences and thinking they're veracious when they're actually not. So evolution is functioning, at least metaphorically, as a conspirator, even though it lacks something that most other conspiracy theories lack -- mindful intent. 2) My focus is not on the cause of the conspiracy theory but on the effect. Atheists, by claiming that religious experiences are a widespread illusion, are making the same claim as other conspiracy theories: 9/11 wasn't what it seemed to be; the Moon landings weren't what they seemed to be, President Kennedy's assassination wasn't what it seemed to be, etc. Of course, many things aren't what they seem, but to simply dismiss the experiences of billions of people as illusory seems no more reasonable than to dismiss all the eyewitness reports that the Pentagon was struck by a large airplane and assert it was a guided missile instead.

Another possible objection is that religious experiences are radically divergent and contradictory, and this should make us skeptical of their veracity. I would argue that 1) the disagreements have been exaggerated. There are, of course, differing aspects of them and even contradictions, but there is also much more agreement than atheists are often willing to admit. 2) The fact that everyone tells the same story (that there is something beyond the physical world) is more significant than the disagreement of the details. It's therefore strange to claim that the answer must lie in precisely the opposite direction. When eyewitnesses give contradictory accounts of a car accident, we are not justified in believing that no car accident took place. 3) So at most the differences between these experiences would justify skepticism toward a particular account, but not to the phenomenon as a whole. 4) Again, this objection would apply equally to our experiences of the physical world. There are accounts of physical phenomena that neither I nor anyone I know has personally experienced. Such accounts can even seem to contradict the phenomena I have experienced. It would not be rational for me to conclude that all accounts of the physical world are therefore bogus, and all the experiences of it illusory.

Because I can, I'll end with a quote by C. S. Lewis.

If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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Nagel on Evolution

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:30:00 +0000

Thomas Nagel is one of my favorite philosophers. He's been famous in philosophy circles since he published his essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" in 1974. He recently wrote an essay in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs entitled "Public Education and Intelligent Design". In it he argues (among other things) that evolutionary biologists are over-confident when they compare the certainty of evolution with that of a spherical earth. Nagel thinks this is "a vast underestimation of how much we do not know, and how much about the evolutionary process remains speculative and sketchy." I find this interesting because in The View from Nowhere he argued that proponents of evolution are over-reaching in their application of it.

Evolutionary hand waving is an example of the tendency to take a theory which has been successful in one domain and apply it to anything else you can't understand -- not even to apply it, but vaguely to imagine such an application. It is also an example of the pervasive and reductive naturalism of our culture. 'Survival value' is now invoked to account for everything from ethics to language.
...
Even if randomness is a factor in determining which mutation will appear when (and the extent of the randomness is apparently in dispute), the range of genetic possibilities is not itself a random occurrence but a necessary consequence of the natural order. The possibility of minds capable of forming progressively more objective conceptions of reality is not something the theory of natural selection can attempt to explain, since it doesn't explain possibilities at all, but only selection among them.

This sounds very similar to the Argument from Reason, that some of the properties of mind are inconsistent with naturalism. Victor Reppert has referred to Nagel a few times at Dangerous Idea 2.

Yet while Nagel appears to be anti-naturalist, he is also an atheist. In The Last Word he writes:

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper -- namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is not a God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. ...My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.

A critique of Nagel's recent essay is at Pure Pedantry. The main point of contention is that Nagel is unaware that science is intrinsically naturalistic. The comments over there are interesting as a lot of them seem to disagree with this pronouncement. Via Keith Burgess-Jackson, another atheist who sides with Nagel.

(cross-posted at Agent Intellect)

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Reviews of God’s Philosophers in the Sunday Telegraph and the Scotsman

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:05:00 +0000

Unfortunately, two reviews of God’s Philosophers which have appeared in the UK press are not online. The Scotsman's review was short and positive, so much so that my usual policy of taking the rough with the smooth proved unnecessary. They wrote “The polemical note is as justified here as the fresh and easy approach is welcome. Hannam, the liveliest of guides, makes enjoyable reading out of some seriously dusty history and difficult ideas.”

At the Sunday Telegraph, they handed the book over to the tender mercies of Noel Malcolm, a reviewer widely believed to be the wrath of the heavens incarnate by writers of popular history. He took to task Tom Holland’s Millenium, a perfectly good example of fast-paced narrative history, for not being on the same scholarly level as Robert Bartlett's The Making of Europe. This is about as fair as complaining that the art of the comic 2000AD wouldn't pass muster in the National Gallery.

On God's Philosophers, Malcolm said some nice things: "This book contains much valuable material summarised with commendable no-nonsense clarity… James Hannam has done a fine job of knocking down an old caricature." But he also complains that no one still believes the old story that the Middle Ages when a benighted age of faith when the Church held back progress until the Renaissance. As a result, he sometimes found my pedagogical style 'grating'. No one likes to grate, but perhaps someone should send him a copy of the The Evolving World which Humphrey noted yesterday....

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Lack of Progress

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:49:00 +0000

I was much entertained this week to see that the spirit of Andrew Dickson White is truly alive and well in the writings of one David P Mindell, an expert on the evolution of birds and author of ‘The Evolving World’, a book written with the laudable aim of showing how the findings of evolutionary biology are deeply integrated into our culture. Sadly he also attempts to construct a thumping anti-clerical historical build-up in the opening chapter and, despite the works of Lindburg and Grant appearing in one of his footnotes, the result is a total train wreck. This next passage is somewhat typical and reminiscent of a late 19th century positivist.

Despite our ancestors’ demonstration of the human capability for observation and logic, cultural and religious forces superseded a scientific approach following dissolution of the Roman Empire in the fifth century. Instead of reliance upon observation, experience, and experiment, attention focused on sacred documents and supernatural agencies during the Middle Ages.

Mindell continues:

Lack of progress in the sciences following the decline of Greek and Roman culture around 500 ce until the beginning of the Renaissance about 1450 is often attributed to capitulation of the Roman Empire to Christianity.

Often attributed!?!, by who?; P Z Myers?, the internet infidels discussion board?, Edward Gibbon?, Jesusneverexisted.com?. Doesn’t he wonder why one of the books in his bibliography is entitled ‘The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages’ and not ‘Ignorance, woo, superstition and woeful lack of progress in the Middle Ages’. Lets see which sources he is using to support this view?

Church censorship certainly played an important role. In his New Organon, published in 1620, Francis Bacon describes the times between antiquity and his own era as “unprosperous” for the sciences: “For neither the Arabians nor the Schoolmen need be mentioned, who in the intermediate times rather crushed the sciences with a multitude of treatises, than increased their weight.” In the eighteenth century Voltaire decried the “general decay and degeneracy” that characterized the Middle Ages, as did the Marquis de Condorcet, who remarked, “The triumph of Christianity was the signal for the complete decadence of philosophy and the sciences.

Francis Bacon, Voltaire and Condorcet!. Well that certainly trumps the last 50 years of research into medieval intellectual discourse. Next time I write something on Evolutionary Biology I’ll base it on the views of Galen, William Paley and Bishop Wilberforce.

He does at least seem to know about events such as the 1277 condemnations but thinks that they:

illustrate the inevitable conflict of that era between theologians, who claim authority on matters of revelation, and natural philosophers, who promote the explanatory powers of reason.

Notably absent is the much debated view of Pierre Duhem that ‘if we must assign a date for the birth of modern science, we would, without doubt, choose the year 1277 when the bishop of Paris solemnly proclaimed that several worlds could exist, and that the whole of heavens could, without contradiction, be moved with a rectilinear motion’, nor that of the historian of science Richard Dales, that the condemnations 'seem definitely to have promoted a freer and more imaginative way of doing science’. Nor Lindberg's more cautious view of the condemnations as a 'conservative backlash' but one which nonetheless 'encouraged scholars to explore non Aristotelian physical and cosmological alternatives'.

Towards the end of the chapter, an old favourite appears:

As recently as 1847, James Young Simpson, a Scotch physician, was denounced from the pulpit for pioneering the use of chloroform as an anesthetic in difficult cases of childbirth. HolyWrit was cited to support the argument that use of chloroform was an attempt to “avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman.” In a clever turnabout, Simpson used the Old Testament in defense of anesthetics, invoking the story of Genesis as a record of the first surgery ever performed, in which God “caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam” prior to extracting a rib for the creation of Eve.

A dastardly tale to be sure; and also complete and utter hogwas h. Would it hurt to do some actual research before writing your book?.

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I find your lack of belief disturbing

agentintellect2@gmail.com (Jim S.) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 05:56:00 +0000

In a couple of recent posts, James pointed out that the logical positivist position that statements about God are meaningless applies equally to statements that God does not exist. Some commenters suggested that this only applies to hard atheism, the assertion that God does not exist. It does not, however, apply to soft atheism, which simply means that one lacks any belief in God. See here and here including the comments.

I don't understand exactly what is meant by lacking a belief. For myself, I find my belief or disbelief isn't a simple matter, but works on a scale or field so that I believe some things more strongly or weakly than others and the same holds for things I disbelieve. In the middle area is indecision or agnosticism, where I neither believe nor disbelieve, although even here there is often a leaning towards belief or disbelief. Presumably it would be incumbent upon me to explain why I place a particular claim where it is in the scale. This is obviously a simplification, as the border areas are fuzzy, and a weakly-held belief can have some positive characteristics that a strongly-held belief lacks. Yet nowhere in this spectrum do I find anything I could accurately call "lacking a belief."

However, outside of the spectrum I do find something like this. Were someone to ask me if I believe some random concept I hadn't heard or thought of before -- like whether there is an advanced civilization of penguins on the fourth planet orbiting Sirius -- I would place my belief in this somewhere in the spectrum. But prior to having this concept presented to me, it wouldn't be true to say I disbelieved it or was agnostic about it, much less that I believed it. Here I could accurately say I lacked a belief in this concept. But to make the point clearer, once I heard the idea I could no longer claim to lack a belief in it. I either believe it, disbelieve it, or am agnostic about it.

So this is why I'm confused by people who say they lack a belief in God. They have clearly heard of the idea; they're actively discussing it. Yet they specifically distinguish themselves from agnostics who say that they neither believe nor disbelieve in God, as well as from hard atheists who simply disbelieve. So, again, I don't understand exactly what they mean by this. I find no room in myself to say I lack a belief in something I have heard of. I have to agree with James: soft atheism looks like an attempt to disbelieve in God without having to go through all the rigamarole of having any reasons for it. It looks like an insistence to believe and disbelieve whatever you want regardless of the way things actually are.

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The Family in the Early Middle Ages – Part Two

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:35:00 +0000

In part one we looked at the differences between Roman family practices and Germanic family practices. Over the course of the early middle ages, some Roman practices would come to dominate over the Germanic practices while some Germanic practices would displace those of the Romans. When trying to determine whether it was going to be a Germanic practice or a Roman practice that would be absorbed into Medieval Europe, the force which was most responsible was the Christian Church, which became the single most powerful influence shaping the family.

A good example of this is marital theory. By the year 1000, the Germanic theory of marriage, which had stated that you don’t need the free consent of both people, had been rejected. In its place, the Roman principle that you must have the free consent of both parties was accepted. The reason for this was that the Christian theologians of late antiquity such as Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine had decided that the Roman principle was morally superior and included it in their Theology. To a surprising degree, Church leaders and theologians took on and challenged practices which had been perfectly acceptable to both Romans and Barbarians, condemning these and trying to have them expelled from Europe. Their reasons for doing so are still controversial.

Endogamy and Exogamy were two major issues. Endogamy refers to marriage within the kingroup. Exogamy refers to marriage outside the kingroup. For Romans and Barbarians endogamy was preferable to exogamy. In general you wanted to marry your relatives and you only married outside the kin group if you really had to. This is not to say that Romans and Barbarians didn’t have incest taboos. Certain relatives were off limits; brothers, sisters and direct relatives. Anyone beyond those immediate relatives were fair game, in particular first cousins if you could arrange it. As early as the 4th century, Christian Emperors began to condemn endogamy and instead required people to marry those who were not close relatives (for an (ill-advised) modern day condemnation of endogamy see here). During the course of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the prohibited degrees of kinship - the list of relatives you could not marry- grew wider and wider. By the year 1000, this list included not just first cousins but second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth cousins. They included not just blood relatives, but spiritual relatives (godparents) and those you are related to by marriage. This would be enforced by the Church through ecclesiastical discipline, excommunication and penance.

In addition to opposing marriage within the kin group, Christian leaders also opposed other practices that were acceptable and common among Romans and Barbarians. Beforehand, divorce was not overly difficult for men and women to obtain. Church leaders opposed the practice in all but a few prescribed cases. Christians also condemned infanticide and the right of the head of household to reject a newborn child. Christianity was also hostile to adoption, which in Antiquity was a legal tool that strengthened political ties between wealthy families and created male heirs to manage estates (infant adoption was rare). Roman law was pro remarriage and encouraged people to remarry within a certain amount of time. Christian theologians took the opposite viewpoint. Concubinage was condemned and it was seen as only slightly better than prostitution.

It was one thing to condemn all these practices and declare them to be sins for which one had to do penance. It was another thing entirely to get people to accept that they should abandon them. In some cases the Church's attempts failed. By the year 1000, concubinage was still widespread in Europe. However most of the practices condemned by the Church were waning and beginning to gain a social stigma. Adoption became much rarer than it had been in the Roman Empire. Polygamy had vanished but it had taken a while to stamp this out.

Merovingian kings were quite open in their polygamous practices. One king called Chlothar I was asked by his wife to find a good husband for her sister. Chlothar said that he would be willing to do so, but added that it would be helpful if he could meet the sister and get to know her so that he would be able to find a suitable mate. After meeting her and speaking with her, he informed his wife that yes, he had someone in mind…..himself!. History does not record what his wife thought of all this. Another Merovingian ruler called Dagobert I hedged his bets by marrying three women simultaneously. By contrast, Carolingian rulers never married more than one woman at one time. Charlemagne divorced a lot of women and had quite a few girlfriends on the side, but he didn’t go as far as to resort to polygamy. Carolingian rulers who lacked the personality of Charlemagne sometimes found themselves brought to heel by the popes. For example Lothair II, tried to divorce his wife in order to ditch her and marry his mistress Waldrada, but found that the papacy thwarted his efforts, something they never would have dared to do 100 years earlier.

As regards naming practices, it was the Germanic principle of only having one name which would become the norm in Europe by the year 1000. In the case of marital property transfers, the Germanic practices won out and the dowry disappeared from Europe. Instead, the ‘bride price’ and ‘morning gift’ became standard. Both the multiple names and dowry system of the Romans would return with a vengeance in the High Middle Ages as these were revived.

Why were the Christian Churches opposed to the practices I mentioned and what motivated their drive to reshape European society?. There are a number of theories as to why they were doing this and two in particular have gained notoriety. The first has been advanced by an English anthropologist by the name of Jack Goody. Goody argues that one must not take the explanations given by contemporaries at face value, mainly because these explanations often made no sense. When marriage to your sixth cousin was forbidden (seven degrees of kinship), for example, the explanation given was that ‘we have to extend the probation to seven degrees because the world was created in seven days’. According to Goody, this is such a ridiculous explanation that you cannot buy it. Even when there is a biblical precedent (e.g Leviticus) the Christian prohibition goes way beyond it.

For Goody, there is a fairly obvious pattern. Many of the practices stamped out were ‘strategies of heirship’, a means by which families could guarantee there was a male heir around and keep the family property intact. Cousin marriage would ensure that the property would stay with relatives. Another example was the Roman practice of adoption which was often used to establish male heirship. Polygamy would increase the odds of increasing male heirs. Divorce would get rid of wives that could not produce heirs. Goody maintains that the Church were involved in an unconscious strategy to weaken family structures and increase the odds of property being left to the church.

The leading critic of Jack Goody was a medieval historian called David Herlihy. Herlihy rejected Goody’s rejection of contemporary explanations and pointed to some which were not at all nonsensical. For example, the prohibition against divorce comes straight out of the New Testament. St Augustine condemned Endogamy, because marriage served the purpose of bringing people together who would not otherwise be united in bonds of love. When you married a relative you were thwarting that purpose because you were not bringing two different families together, you were all related. Therefore as an instrument of social utility, endogamy would have to be rejected allowing the tendrils of love to spread as far though society as possible.

Herlihy extended the argument to say that social engineering and morality were central to the church's prohibitions. Infanticide was rejected along with other Roman bloodshed such as animal sacrifice and gladiator shows. Polygamy was rejected because when a few men hogged all the women it would create a large body of restless men who would be prone to violence. There is a remarkable letter from Pope Gregory the Great which explains the churches opposition to marriage within the kin group as follows:

We have learned from experience that the offspring of such unions cannot thrive.

This suggests that there was at least some awareness among contemporaries that the children of closely related individuals would suffer problems.

Neither Goody nor Herlihy gained enough evidence to support their conclusions so the redevelopment of the family in the middle ages remains an open question. Personally I like the idea of a giant church conspiracy to grab everyone's money, but if pushed I would have to plump for Herlihy.

Family Life in the Early Middle Ages - Part Two

James Hannam's 'God's Philosophers' is now available from Amazon

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The Saxon Saviour

humphrey.clarke@gmail.com (Humphrey) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:59:00 +0000

It was not until Charlemagne’s conquests that Christianity really made any headway with the Saxons. Charlemagne’s policy was to make sure that the conquered were forced into mass baptisms at the end of a campaign, and then later to send the missionaries among the Saxons in order to explain the religion to which they had just joined. Not surprisingly the Christianity of the Saxons was somewhat on the superficial side, since they didn’t really know what they were getting into. Nethertheless Charlemagne’s and the missionaries he supported did succeed in moving the eastern boundary between paganism and Christianity from the Rhine river to the Elbe river where it would remain until the time of the crusades.

One text in particular tells us a great deal about what the conversion of the Saxons entailed and some of the ways in which the Carolingians made concessions. In the first half of the 9th century, a version of the Christian gospel was translated into old Saxon, apparently so that the Saxons had a better understanding of Christianity and could read it for themselves. This version of the gospel is called the Heliand and it presents a retelling of the Gospel story as a Germanic heroic epic.

Having been thoroughly ‘Saxonised’, Christ becomes a warrior, the towns of ancient Israel become ‘hill forts’ and the three wise men become warriors and thanes. John the Baptist is called a ‘soothsayer’ and the Lord’s Payer apparently contains ‘secret runes’. When Christ leaves the wedding at Cana, the Heliand says that

‘Christ, the most powerful of kings decided to go to Capharnaum, the great hill fort, with his followers. His forces of good men, his happy warrior company assembled in front of him’

In the passage of the Gospel of Luke regarding the arrest of Jesus of Nazareth in the garden of Gethsemane the differences between the original and the Germanic version are interesting. In the original revised edition version:

Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”

While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”. When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.

But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

The same scene in the Saxon Version appears under the titles ‘Christ’s deep fear before battle, his last salute in the garden’ and ‘Christ the chieftain is captured, Peter the mighty soldier defends him boldly’. The passage reads:

‘Christ’s warrior companions saw warriors coming up the mountain making a great din
Angry armed men. Judas the hate filled man was showing them the way.
The enemy clan, the Jews, were marching behind.
The warriors marched forward, the grim Jewish army, until they had come to the Christ.
There he stood, the famous chieftain.
Christ’s followers, wise men deeply distressed by this hostile action
Held their position in front.
They spoke to their chieftain, ‘My Lord chieftain’, they said, ‘if it should now
Be your will that we be impaled here under spear points
Wounded by their weapons then nothing would be so good to us as to die here
Pale from mortal wounds for our chieftain’.

Then he got really angry
Simon Peter, the mighty, noble swordman flew into a rage.
His mind was in such turmoil he could not speak a single word.
His heart became intensely bitter because they wanted to tie up his Lord there.
So he strode over angrily, that very daring Thane, to stand in front of his commander
Right in front of his Lord.

No doubting in his mind, no fearful hesitation in his chest he drew his blade
And struck straight ahead at the first man of the enemy with all the strength in his hands
So that Malchus was cut and wounded on the right side by the sword.
His ear was chopped off.
He was so badly wounded in the head that his cheek and ear burst open with the mortal wound
Blood gushed out, pouring from the wound.
The men stood back; they were afraid of the slash of the sword.

The author took a few liberties here. For a start, Simon Peter is supposed to be a fisherman, not a swordsman, and the gospel account doesn’t elaborate on the High Priest’s injury, or glorify it as the greatest head wound ever suffered as if it were appearing in a Rocky movie. Yet to gain Saxon acceptance of Christianity compromises would have to be made, after all what kind of God would not resist his arrest?.

The point of this passage is that Christ tells his followers to not resist, but in the Saxon version it is because he must undergo ‘the workings of fate’, the ultimate determinant of reality to the pagan Germanic peoples. When he is crucified, the cross is interpreted as a tree or gallows, which would have seemed similar to the hanging of Woden in the cosmic tree when he tried to learn the riddle of death and discovered the mysterious runes:

There on the sandy gravel they erected the gallows
Up on the field, the Jewish people set it up
A tree on the mountain

Once resurrected, the warrior Christ becomes greater than Woden having escaped his own fated death with his own power and ascending to the right hand of God; the old Gods have been replaced by the Saxon saviour.

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