Transcript Intelligent Design in the Media

REALITY BITES
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Exploring Greek
influences on
Christian Thought
and Practice
Plato
(428 – 348
BC)
Teaching Plato to
Undergraduates
“We should think of the most
authoritative part of our soul as a
guardian spirit given by god, living in
the summit of the body, which can
properly be said to lift us from the earth
towards our home in heaven; for we are
creatures not of earth but of heaven,
where the soul was first born, and our
divine part attaches us by the head to
heaven, like a plant by its roots, and
keeps our body upright.”
Timaeus 90
“The men of the first generation
who lived cowardly or immoral
lives were, it is reasonable to
suppose, reborn in the second
generation as women.”
Timaeus 91
“But the most unintelligent and ignorant
of all turned into the fourth kind of
creature that lives in water. Their souls
were hopelessly steeped in every kind of
error, and so their makers thought them
unfit to breathe pure clean air, and made
them inhale water, into whose turbid
depths they plunged them. That is the
origin of fish, shell-fish and everything
else that lives in water; they live in the
depths as a punishment for the depth of
their stupidity.”
Timaeus 92
So where is
grandma’s soul?
The
Parable
of Fat
Tony
Plato’s Worldview
Where am I?
What is the universe
like?
There are two realms: the invisible and
the visible. The invisible realm is not in
time. It is unchanging, spiritual and
eternal. Perfect numbers and Forms
live here. The visible realm is temporal,
changing and fleshly. It is a gigantic
prison. The invisible realm is much
more real and more important than the
visible realm. The visible, changing
world is a mere shadow of the higher
realm. Don’t bother with visible things –
they are distractions!
Who am I?
What is a human
being?
I am an immortal soul who really
belongs to the unchanging
spiritual realm. I am really a
rational being and I adore thinking
about logic, maths and other
abstract things. ‘Reason’ is the
divine bit in me and I just love
contemplating the inhabitants of
the invisible realm. The Form of
the ferret is my personal favourite!
Frank says – “I
am wasting my
life putting
ferrets down my
trousers. I
should be
contemplating
the form of the
ferret in the
unseen realm”
What’s gone wrong?
What is evil?
I have for some mysterious reason
abandoned my true home in the
spiritual world of being and I now
find myself imprisoned in this
horrible body of rotting flesh. All my
best intentions to think about
philosophy and quadratic equations
are hindered by my bodily cravings. I
try to contemplate the forms but my
body urges me to bury my snout in
the trough.
What’s the solution?
What is redemption?
If only there were hard-working
slaves and practical political
people to take care of my bodily
needs! I need a caste system and
then I wouldn’t need to think about
food, clothing and shelter. Then I
could spend my entire life in
leisure and rational contemplation.
Quiz Question
What is the film in the
next slide?
Bonus Point if you
know when it was
made
What happens after
death?
What is my final
destination?
If I cultivate lust and drunkenness, I will
become a female fish in my next life.
On the other hand if I keep my immortal
soul pure and unsullied by bodily
cravings I will return home to my noble
and eternal home in heaven. Those
who have lived the life of reason on
earth will be freed and delivered from
this wretched, bodily existence.
Introducing
Plato’s
Epistemology
Da Vinci’s the
Mona Lisa can
help us to
explain the
Platonic
Epistemology
Noesis – The Form of the Triangle
Dianoia – The woman’s nose
reminds me of a triangle and I start
doing geometry. Hard graft!
Pistis – I focus upon the real
woman whom Leonardo painted.
Eikasia – Lost in the darkest parts
of the cave I focus on the painting.
It is crucial to understand
the difference between
dianoia and noesis.
Dianoia is plodding and it
takes time and effort. It is
inferior!
Noesis is effortless and is
timeless. It is superior!
So for Plato knowledge is
a form of recollection. We
strive to remember the
knowledge we used to
have prior to our bodily
existence.
Only an elite group of very
clever people have
knowledge. The masses
are too thick and
gormless. They will
probably end up in a
mackerel or a prawn.
Unfortunately many
of the Church
Fathers were
steeped in
Platonism.
There is a good side
to Augustine.
“The thought of you stirs him so
deeply that he cannot be
content unless he praises you,
because you made us for
yourself and our hearts find no
peace until they rest in you.”
Confessions Book 1 Chapter 1
“I desire God and the
soul.
Nothing more?
Nothing
whatsoever.”
St Augustine (354 - 430)
Group Work
Are there any problems with
Augustine’s comments about
God and the soul?
Worldview Awareness!
“And yet there is still the spark,
as it were, of that reason in
virtue of which he was made in
the image of God; that spark
has not been utterly put out.”
City of God Book 22, Chapter 24
“It is God who effects that
miraculous combination of an
immaterial with a material
substance, with the former in
command, the latter in
subjection; God unites them to
make a living creature.”
City of God Book 22, Chapter 24
“This is a work of such wonder and
grandeur as to astound the mind that
seriously considers it, and to evoke
praise to the Creator, and this is true
not only as that work is observed in
man, a rational being and on that
account of more excellence and greater
worth than all other creatures, but even
in the case of the tiniest fly.”
City of God Book 22, Chapter 24
“It is God who has given man his mind.
In the infant the reason and intelligence
in the mind is, in a way, dormant,
apparently non-existent; but, of course,
it has to be aroused and developed with
increasing years. And thus the mind
becomes capable of knowledge and
learning, ready for the perception of
truth, and able to love the good.”
City of God Book 22, Chapter 24
Consider Augustine’s
commentary on Psalm 137.
“By the rivers of Babylon we
sat down and wept when we
remembered Zion.”
‘Observe the waters of Babylon. The
waters of Babylon are all things which
here are loved, and pass away. One man,
for example, loves to practise
husbandry, to grow rich thereby, to
employ his mind therein, thence to gain
pleasure: let him observe the issue, and
see that what he has loved is not a
foundation of Jerusalem, but a stream
of Babylon. Another says, It is a grand
thing to be a soldier………’
‘Those then who have led us
captive, the devil and his angels, when
have they spoken unto us: Sing us one
of the songs of Sion? What answer
we? Babylon bears you, Babylon
contains you, Babylon nourishes
you, Babylon speaks by your mouth, you
know not to take in save what glitters for
the present, you know not how
to meditate on things of eternity, you
take not in what you ask’.
Church
Trade
Husbandry
Sailing
Comedy
Banking
Commerce
Travel
Soldiery
Farming
Augustine follows Plato in
contending that the lowest level
of knowledge is sensation,
which is common to humans
and animals.
Plato would call this pistis.
The next level of knowledge is a
kind of half-way house, in which
the mind judges of corporeal
objects according to eternal
and incorporeal standards. This
kind of reason is inferior to the
best kind of rational activity.
Plato would call this dianoia
The highest and best kind of
knowledge is a form of
contemplation. Like many
Neoplatonists Augustine places
the forms in God’s mind.
Plato would call this noesis
For Augustine pretty much all
the kinds of knowing that we
noticed in Scripture are
intrinsically profane and
worldly.
They are temporal activities as
opposed to eternal activities.
What happens in time is
temporal, physical and
unimportant!
What happens in eternity
(no time) is spiritual and
very important!
So what?
This famous
novel has
sold
50 million
copies!
“A monk should not laugh for
only the fool lifts up his voice in
laughter (said by Jorge in Latin)
I trust my words did not offend
you Brother William but I heard
persons laughing at laughable
things. You Franciscans,
however, belong to an order
where merriment is viewed with
indulgence.”
Jorge hates
humour
because it
isn’t rational
like God!
Would you like
him to educate
your children?
When humans divinise or
absolutise ‘reason’ they always
vilify non-rational aspects of our
humanity. Ergo humour,
emotion, imagination, bodily
activity become problematic.
This leads to huge problems.
God becomes ugly! (Just a
mind)
Humans become onedimensional (only the mind
matters)
All the enjoyable ‘fun’ bits are
thrown away!
Group Work
Can you think
of any other
illustrations as
to how Greek
thinking can
distort the
Christian faith.
Aristotle
384 – 322 BC
“Now he who exercises his
reason and cultivates it seems to
be both in the best state of mind
and most dear to the gods. For if
the gods have any care for
human affairs, as they are
thought to have, it would be
reasonable
both that they should delight in
that which was best and most
akin to them (i.e. reason) and
that they should reward those
who love and honour this most ,
as caring for the things that are
dear to them and acting both
rightly and nobly. And that all
these attributes belong most of
all to the philosopher is manifest.
He, therefore, is the dearest to
the gods. And he who is that will
presumably be also the happiest;
so that in this way too the
philosopher will more than any
other be happy.”
Nichomachean Ethics Book X. 9
For Aristotle “reason is the
divine in us.”
And if you lack this vital
ingredient you are a ‘living tool’,
‘a piece of property’. In short you
have no value and you can be
conquered and enslaved.
Slaves and barbarians are
disposable because they lack
rationality.
“So any piece of property can be
regarded as a tool enabling a
man to live; and his property is
an assemblage of such tools,
including his slaves; and a slave,
being a living creature like any
other servant, is a tool worth
many tools.”
The Politics Book 1 Chapter 4
“The ‘slave by nature’ then is he that
can and therefore does belong to
another, and he that participates in
the reasoning faculty so far as to
understand but not so as to possess
it……. It is clear then that by nature
some are free, others slaves, and
that for these it is both right and
expedient that they should serve as
slaves.”
The Politics Book 1 Chapter 5
“This means that it is part of nature’s
plan that the art of war, of which
hunting is a part, should be a way of
acquiring property; and that it must
be used both against wild beasts
and against such men as are by
nature intended to be ruled over but
refuse; for that is the kind of warfare
which is by nature right.”
Politics Book 1 Chapter 8
Juan Gines de
Sepulvida
(1489 – 1573)
Sepulvida was a Spanish humanist,
philosopher and theologian. During
the Valladolid Contoversy in 1550,
he argued on the authority of
Aristotle that Native Indians were
‘natural slaves’ and violence was
needed to make them amenable to
conversion. He was opposed by
Bartholomew de Las Casas who
argued that Native Americans were
‘people’ and not ‘slaves by nature’.
Sepulvida argued, ‘The natural
rudeness and inferiority of the Indians
… accorded with the doctrine of the
philosophers that some men are born
to be natural slaves’. Indians in
America, he held, ‘being without
exception rude persons born with a
limited understanding and therefore to
be classed as servie a natura, ought to
serve their superiors and their natural
lords, the Spaniards’.
Sepulvida and Las
Casas?
A great shame!
Both men had
swallowed
Aristotle’s worship
of reason.
REALITY BITES
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Louis the
14th
(1638-1715)
Marquise de
Montespan
(1641-1707)
The Marquise was very
extravagant. Her apartments were
filled with pet animals and
thousands of flowers. She had a
private gallery, and costly jewels
were showered upon her by Louis.
She was highly discriminating as
regards to the quality of the gems;
returning them if they did not meet
her exacting standards.
She was given the
nickname Quanto
("How much", in
Italian).
Madame de Montespan was
desperate to gain Louis’ love
and devotion. She was willing to
do anything to get her way.
This included participating in a
Black Mass.
Catherine
Monvoisin
Sorceress
(1640-1680)
In 1666, Madame de Montespan
went so far as to allow a
priest, Etienne Guiberg, to perform
a black mass over her nude body.
Catherine Monvoisin assisted
proceedings.
These black masses were also
said to have included infant
sacrifice. Whatever the truth in
these allegations, in July 1667,
Madame de Montespan became
the king's new mistress.
Both women had a perverted view
of the Roman Catholic
sacraments. They believed that so
long as the child had been
baptised, it was a sinless creature
which, when killed, would go
straight to heaven. La Voisin once
said – “How fortunate! The child
was able to be baptised!”
“How fortunate! The
child was able to be
baptised!”
Oh dear! Platonic thinking creates
problems.
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