Re: OP-ED (our columns in the HUB)

[Willis E. Elliott]

Dr. Ericson, thanks for your post.

1

YES to your "Science and Religion" Mar.8 project.  I've calendared it.

2

The extent of my participation is in doubt.  I'd love to be on the panel - but at 92, feeble, with only 20% sight & facing the possibility of a soon operation - that's in doubt.

3

In my opinion, the panel should be largely interdisciplinary intra-UNK, getting you guys outa yer boxes.  I don't know your scene well, but my impression is that Tom should manage the religion side.

4

I'm a New Yorker (in NE only three years), long a religion-graduate-school dean on Manhattan.  I was shocked to discover that - in contrast to many state-universities - UNK has no religion department.  Ironic: a liberal-arts imbalance, with (Kearney) a very religious surround.

5

As I said in the HUB, I sympathize with your sufferings from engaging the antiscientific mind, but not with your identifying that mind with belief in "revelation."  The fact that you're unexperienced with learned believers in revelation correlates with UNK's absence of a religion department.  Reading could help: I suggest you read David Bentley Hart's "Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies" (2009).  His title's a take-off on Dawkins' "The God Delusion," which Hart treats as an instance of many scientists' profound ignorance of anything but science, an ignorance resulting in the narrow-mindedness of scientism.

6

I agree with you on Sam Harris, who is an expert in nothing but a clear thinker who expresses himself simply, in a Tom Paine fashion.

7

In your first paragraph, you claim that "any person of reason" would subscribe to your list of thinkers.  Your meaning is true (viz., that any rationalist...) but your wording is false (most "persons of reason" not being rationalists).  I have been with Hart, & have studied in group his masterwork, "The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth," which many philosophers as well as theologians consider awesomely rational.  Most "persons of reason," Brad, are not rationalists.  Rationalism excludes faith, reason does not.  The current confrontation is not faith/reason but faith/rationalism (though the pre-modernist "faith/reason" phrase did not have torque, was not loaded).  /  Brad, I do hope you read Hart's latest.  From several sources I've heard of your arrogance (an arrogance my HUB response to you mentioned); Hart might help deliver you from it.

8

My POV I expressed in my 2 Dec 09 response ("Why not give revelation a chance?" - especially the last paragraph) to your column.  Some of the human consequences of rationalism I detail in "Godless humanism...." (See "Attach,"  which is my 23 Nov 09 online "OnFaith" column).  But daily I'm email communicating with thinkers in religion/culture, religion/science, etc.  Below are two instances earlier today (both, pertinent to my post to you today):

8.1

"Jim" is a pastor whom I'm trying to help get beyond what I call revelationism (an opposite of rationalism).

8.2

"Al" is a world-class authority in Buddhism (whom I taught Hebrew & Greek in the late '40s).

 

Again, congratulations for encouraging science/religion interdisciplinary conversation.

 

Grace and peace--

Willis Elliott

 

From: Brad L Ericson

To: elli...@charter.net

Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2009 8:14 PM

Subject: OP-ED

Dear Mr. Elliot:

As a panelist for Newsweek, you surely have followed the arguments of Sam Harris.  Mr. Harris's arguments are the most logical and well thought out that I have ever read, as are the arguments of Dawkins, Hitchens and Dennet.  These are the philosophies to which I subscribe (along with Bertrand Russell) as does any person of reason.

Having said that, I hereby invite you to attend a public forum on the issue of Science and Religion, to be held on March 8th, at a time and location yet to be determined.  If you are familiar with the intelligence squared debates, this will be the format for the evening.  I of course will be on the pro-science side of the debate.  The other 3 panelists are yet to be named.  Perhaps you would be interested in being one of the pro-religion panelists.  If so, please let me know at your earliest convenience.

Reason's greetings and Happy New Year.

Best,

Brad Ericson, Professor of Biology
Biology Department, BHS 201E
University of Nebraska at Kearney
Kearney, NE  68847
(308)865-8912
eric...@unk.edu

 

On Dec 23, 9:28 am, "Willis E. Elliott" <elliot...@charter.net> wrote:
> Jim
>
> I note that you did not respond to "the two [God-given] powers we are to use."  That is where our difference lies, not in religious language.
>
> Francis Bacon (father of natural science through his development of the inductive method for gaining knowledge - Novum Organum, 1620) taught the TWO ways of knowing, viz. by "God's word" & by "God's works" (in the quotation Darwin used to face his title-page of "...Origin....").  Bacon, Darwin, & I appeal that (to use my metaphor) we human beings use both our eyes (ways of knowing).  You seem to me to persist in being one-eyed, as the scribes.
>
> In 1900, the Biblical Theological Seminary of New York was founded with its distinctive purpose being the applying of Francis Bacon to the Bible ("inductive Bible study").  In another seminary in 1937, I became convinced of the method (in a course by H.T.Kuist of BSNY - the greatest course I ever had).  And during the decade of the '70s I taught at the Francis Bacon seminary (called, then & now, NYTheological Seminary).
>
> The difference between us is deep, though not irreconcilable.  But your mouthing of religious platitudes cannot bridge it.
>
> Grace and peace--
> Willis

 

Dear Willis:

 

I hope that you and your family will have a joyous Christmas and New Year.
Thanks for sending me your posts. They are enormously interesting and
instructive. It is also interesting that  you may have been the catalyst for
Ben Nelson's change. It is wonderful to participate in the making of
history. 

 

 I have not been able to write since I had some medical problems which are
the functions of age and so we just live with them. However,  I am
interested in the discussion you had with  "George"    (12/21, 5:18)
and the idea binocularity.  You made this statement:

 

I've long distinguished between a philosophy & a religion thus: the former
is a way of seeing the world, & the latter is that + a way of living in the
world.  We should turn on all the wisdom-lights available to us (for which
the Bible's wisdom literature is itself a model): we should be
philosophically PLURALIST.  But a religious commitment is SINGULAR: "Thy
Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."  Neither plural nor
singular is superior, though "multiculturalism" & "egalitarianism" are
committed to the superiority of the plural (with singular intensity!).  The
dilettante commit themselves to noncommitment: everybody else lives for
something, somebody.  And the thoughtful come to a singularity of commitment
- as Kierkegaard put it in my favorite of his titles, "Purity of Heart is to
Will One Thing."

 

I am wondering whether this is another way of stating the issue of faith and
reason. Though the statement is attractive and appears meaningful, I have
just finished read a book on issues surrounding Aristotle's thought as it
penetrated Western culture. If I am correct in my observation, your
statement seems Aristotelian. You might want to look into the recent book
Aristotle's Children by Richard E. Rubenstein. Though the distinction seems
clear and perhaps natural, there were many implications in the dualistic
relationship of faith and reason. This relationship has never been resolved
either in the church or the culture. Depending on which side is emphasized,
there are differing problems for religion. Any form of  religious
commitment/non-commitment also has noetic content which must be explored by

 reason. Singularity of commitment does not necessarily solve a problem but
may create problems if  not subject to rational investigation. It can turn
to fanaticism. 

 

In any case, thanks for your efforts and keeping in touch.

 

Aloha

 

Al

 

Thanks, Al; I heartily agree.
Let's pray for each other's "medical problems."  Jan.7, I face a eye-operation decision that could result (ca.15% chance) in total blindness - but without it, I face the possibility of total blindness every day.

 

I'm honored that you would bother to read my ramblings.  /  Long ago I talked with Rubenstein on his "Auschwitz" seizure of atheism, to which his Aristotle study is a sequel.  /  My "binocularity" is binary (the two eyes working together) but not dualistic: faith/reason are twin gifts of God, not opposites to be "resolved."  Indeed, resolutions result in monocular fanaticisms on the right (religious fundamentalisms) or left (e.g., scientism & radical postmodernism).

 

A blessed New Year to you & yours!

 

Grace and peace--
Willis