Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Atheigulous

Published on 25 May 2009 ago in Current Events, General and Religion. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

I recently watched Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous. I had been interested in it for a while because I have a good deal of respect for Maher and both of his TV series (Politically Incorrect and Real Time). In one aspect, this show did a great analysis of the fundamentalist variety of religion. However, Maher also extends this analysis to all varieties of religion; and this argument follows the same reasoning that he criticises.

I take the main focus of the film to be that religious faith and objective science is incompatible. In fact, religious faith is now an absurdity in these modern times. Maher travels quite a bit throughout the US, Europe, and Israel interviewing people who would generally be classified as fundamentalists in their approaches to theology. At one point, he is interviewing Ken Ham (of Answers in Genesis and its Creation Museum fame). He takes Ham to task in resolving huge differences between scientific evidence and the “common sense” literal reading of creation espoused by young Earth creationism. From my perspective, Ham’s creationism here has already lost its sense of direction by adopting the language and system of scienctific observation that negates the teleological goal of creationism. In oversimplified terms, Ham’s creation science is much like trying to raise freshwater fish in salt water; the freshwater fish behave at the cellular/organic level differently than saltwater fish. The language and goals of the creation story in Genesis, much like the stories of Christ in the Gospels, are not meant to adhere to modern-day scientific (or biographical) literature. In this respect, Maher is spot on with his critique of faith. If one holds religious faith to be coterminal with empirical science, faith will always lose because it centers on phenomena that exceed the bounds empirical science has made for itself.

On the other hand, Maher’s critique is the the “atheist version” of the very thing he critiques. In one segment, he is asking a few Muslims (including an imam) about the Qur’an. His questions fall along the lines of “the Qur’an says to kill infidels, is this true?” Every Muslim asked answers the question along the lines of “that is not how we interpret that text because it was linked to a particular historical context that no longer exists.” Maher pushes his point by denying the possibility of interpretation, setting himself up as the more accurate interpreter than the believers who study the text! This is the same thing that he critiques people such as Ken Ham (and others). In other words, Maher wants religious/theological hermeneutics to be a closed event ripped from any context and made into an absolute ideological framework in order to reject religion. He then rationalises his work by claiming its standpoint of doubt is the best position.

Ironically, it is here that Maher again falls prey to the very thing he criticises. If doubt is the best place to stand, he hasn’t doubted enough! The “true” sceptic is the one that doubts everything, not just what one is prejudiced against. Maher emphasis empirical science as the strongest evidence for his position, yet he never doubts the framework of assumptions that undergird the empirical sciences. He never suggests that empirical evidence itself may be already tainted by a predisposition to certain beliefs (namely, that an external world exists and is discernable). Obviously, then, Maher should insist that some kind of belief is “acceptable” without entering into fundamentalism or scepticism. It seems, then, that the rational position is somewhere between the fundamentalism he decries while using and the scepticism he touts while evading.

One last thing of interesting note is that Maher suggests in his film that science has discovered a gene that is linked to belief in God. Ironically, the original researcher said that it was linked to spirituality and “feeling God’s presense” and not to simple belief in God. Further, these findings were never published in peer-reviewed literature. Even more striking is that this gene can also be associated with the feeling of beloning to a political party. In other words, it isn’t a very strong theory and it doesn’t suggest that belief in God is a genetic trait. Perhaps if Maher had utilised more of his “scepticism,” he would have noticed that.

Summer plans

Published on 20 May 2009 ago in General and Lists. Closed

I used to make lists for every term of the year as a point of focus for my activities. While I tend to fail miserably at achieving those goals, I felt that the list provided some clarity for my directions. Having noticed a few people around me making lists for their summer projects, I’ll throw my own up here. I guess time starts about last week and will run through September.

Writing

  • Finish up the 5000 word excerpt of my thesis for my annual review.
  • A conference paper on Deleuze’s Logic of Sense as it relates to theological hermeneutics (which overlaps a bit with the previous item)
  • A review of Adam Kotsko’s Zizek and Theology
  • An additional 15k-ish words of my thesis working on ontology and metaphysics and their relationship to hermeneutics and symbolism

Reading

  • Badiou’s Being and Event
  • Badiou’s Logics of Worlds
  • Zizek’s Parallax View
  • Milbank and Zizek’s Monstrosity of Christ
  • Levi Bryant’s Difference and Givenness
  • Graham Harman’s Prince of Networks

Errata

  • Update a few PHP scripts that I’ve been meaning to do for nearly a year
  • Step down from my PHP scripting roles as I don’t have the time anymore (sorry guys!)
  • Spend a month inundating myself with every tourist spot in Great Britain (and many in Ireland)
  • ConnectDeleuze conference in Cologne
  • “Brush up” on my French and German
  • Added late: switch server hosting to a simpler plan

Torture

Published on 14 May 2009 ago in Asides. Closed

On torture over at Larval Subjects.

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Which way? Which way?

Published on 11 May 2009 ago in Philosophy. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .
This is part 4 of 4 in the Logic of Sense series

Deleuze immediately makes clear the infinite regress of sense. Carroll’s work is insightful because it makes us confront “a synthesis of the heterogeneous; the serial form is necessarily realized in the simultaneity of at least two series” (36). the infinite regress of sense is itself a series, a series of multiple series that each inhere on each other–a synthesis of series. The two series operate different: one as signifier and the other as signified. The direct result of these two inhering on each other is a disequilibrium created by the excess of one in the other. The signifier series manifests as an occupant without a place, a supernumerary object in the signified series. This signified creates an empty place within the signifier. The excess of each series manifests as both esoteric and exoteric words in paradoxical forms in which each exists “only through the relations they maintain with one another” (50).

magnetThese relations, then, create singularities–that is, points of turning, inflections, tears, fusion, etc. Each of these “correspond to each one of the series of a structure” and is “the source of a series extending in a determined direction right up to the vicinity of another singularity” (52-3). Visually, these singularities create sets of divergent and convergent lines like that of a magnet.  Singularities form ideal events. With regards to time, events in their purest forms are never actualities. They are only tales and stories, events which are about to happen and those which have just happened. They are never in the present, never happening.

The disequilibrium of sense, which Deleuze points to through the various dualities (e.g. empty square and supernumerary object), is always in relation to itself as the paradox of nonsense (66). Nonsense, however, is not the lack of sense. The relation between sense and nonsense is not simply a copy of that between true and false. Instead, there is an original relation between the two. Sense is always produced, an effect of the relation between the signifier and signified. The paradox of sense is that nonsense is also present within sense and within the event of signification. Nonsense must be understood as being opposed to the abscense of sense because it produces sense in excess.

Sense should not be confused with “good sense.” “Good sense” always come second to sense as it presupposes a distrubution of sense. It, like the arrow of time, determines the direction which sense runs. The paradox of sense, though, is that it goes both directions simultaneously. Common sense identifies the objects within a language. Yet in Alice, identity is completely lost. The paradox is this reversal of both good sense and common sense. Alice discovers through the looking glass that common sense has long disappeared. Yet, at this very point where language itself seems impossible, “having no subject which expresses or manifests itself in it, no object to denote, no classes and no properties to signify according to a fixed order,” that the gift of meaning occurs before all good and common sense (79). With the passion of this paradox, language reaches the height of its power. The two directions of sense, of becoming-mad, are represented in by Carroll’s doubles. The pair of the Mad Hatter and the March Hare each live in one direction, the two inseparable from one another. Each direction segments itself to “the point that both are found in either” (79). The Hatter and Hare killed the present which survives only in the Dormouse. The present subsists only as the abstract moment, infinitely subdivisible into past and future. The maifestation of sense is always a fragile one within and without the abstract moment of the present.

Fundamentalisms

Published on 7 May 2009 ago in Philosophy and Religion. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , .

In an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the doctor (Bashir) is speaking with Garak, an acquaintance/”friend” about whom he knows little.  Through a medical problem, Garak began to reveal his past to Bashir, but in multiple versions and stories.  As the episode progresses, Bashir learns that none of them were completely true.  In the final scene, however, Garak, healthy again, resumes his weekly lunch with Bashir as if nothing has happened.  Bashir is confounded and tells Garak that he wants the truth as to which stories Garak told him were true.  Garak’s response was that “they all are true.”  Bashir pushes his question further and asks “even the lies?”  In a very twisted answer, Garak agrees, “my dear doctor, especially the lies.”  The importance of this story to this investigation will become more noticeable in future posts, but it marks the most important facet of dealing with fundamentalism: even the lies are true and they may, in fact, be more telling than the “truth.”

Historically

Fundamentalism’s roots were perceived to be “good grounds.”  What are these grounds?  Fundamentalism began in the mid-19th century American. Historically, it has been associated strictly with American evangelicalism as a reaction to contemporary ideological changes. Its main concerns were the “higher criticism” of European Biblical scholars and the “discovery” of evolutionary science. In many ways, fundamentalism wanted to protect the theology and tradition from these new, radical ideas. The first concern was seen (and is still seen by the theological descendants today) as an attack on the integrity of the Biblical text, largely because the fundamentalist understanding was based on a literal, common sense reading.  What Biblical scholars now call the grammatico-historical method (other names include textual criticism, historical-grammatical method, etc) and practice regularly was a new thing in the 19th century and some proponents of it had radical (revisionist) readings of the Bible.  The emergence of fundamentalism (what I will call historical fundamentalism) was a reaction against such readings.  The reasoning used by these fundamentalists was that the meaning of the Bible is very clear and in plain English; further study was not needed because one only needs common sense to clearly understand the Biblical text (WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get).

The second reaction historic fundamentalism had was against recent scientific developments, namely Darwin’s evolution. This was perceived as an attack on the literal interpretation of the creation account which narrates God’s carefully guided sculpting of things. We can see the effects of this reaction in documentaries like Jesus Camp where children are taught that “science proves nothing” (which would also include the Copernicus’s heliocentrism, modern immunology, and modern technology).

The Fundamentals

Here is the very true “lie” behind historical fundamentalism: their reading is the closest reading to that of the earliest Church. They believe they have recovered the lost truth hidden behind traditional readings. It is this concept of having recovered the “real interpretation” that marks fundamentalism across religious boundaries.  In order to differentiate it from the historical variety above, I will refer to it as generic fundamentalism.  We see this aspect in modern fundamentalist groups whether they be Christian (e.g., Army of God, Moral Majority), Muslim (e.g. al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood), Hindu, or Buddhist. This type of thinking is common to both Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell, even though their practices (terrorism vs. political campaigning) were very different. The methodology focuses on a highly literal reading of texts. As a result of this methodology, newer theologies (e.g., premillenialism) were advocated over older ones on the basis of simple, literal interpretation divorced from any kind of contextual understanding of the text (whether it be linguistic, historical, or even textual).

The second true “lie” that permeates fundamentalism is that the fundamentalist interpretation/reaction is recast as being the most reasoned, logical possibility. Earlier, I mentioned Jesus Camp where children are taught “science proves nothing.” This is followed by an argument that all of science is merely faith belief (which I think is a poor view of faith as well, but that’s another story!). Therefore, the fundamentalist opinion must be the best option because it rests on the stable absolute, unchanging interpretation of things that can be traced all the way back to God’s thoughts and actions. In other words, fundamentalists have God on their side and must be correct because of that fact. The irony, however, is watching the fundamentalist use things that are direct results of scientific exploration (which apparently gets lucky every now and then even if it proves nothing), such as celleular phones (radio waves discovered by science as well as the technology to use those waves as a medium for communication), electricity, modern farming (which uses chemicals developed by science), etc.

The two “lies” that form the foundation for fundamentalist ideology are as important to understanding fundamentalism as are the truths. This is because these “lies” fabricate the illusioned reality that fundamentalism has reached its ultimate point of interpretation: the Truth. As such, no alternative can be entertained without entering the danger of total collapse. By setting up camp in a particular conflux of history and ideologies, there is no possibility of change or growth within an iteration of fundamentalism.  There can only be a whole new fundamentalism, more extreme than the last and yet exactly the same. Fundamentalism, as an ideology, is a perfect example of Nietzsche’s eternal return as it is a repetition of the Same. The difference itself is as much of an illusion as the foundation beneath fundamentalism. It is the potential of change that creates the violence which always surfaces through militant groups battling the evil that is contemporary society, whether it be seen in spiritual asceticism or physical attacks. These two images are one and the same coin, always occuring simultaneously that form the central element of a living religious tradition, especially when the two are at odds with one another.