Myths and Illusions.

In Plato's 'Republic' there is this fascinating little section in which Plato (sorry, Socrates!) tells us a little 'myth' (μῦθος). The purpose of the myth is to give his ideal community an identity. Especially since he has just spent a decent amount of time correcting Homer and Hesiod's theology, because they tell lies about the gods. 


Now, the myth looks like this:

"You are, all of you in this community, brothers. but when god fashioned you, he added gold in the composition of those of you who are qualified to be rulers (which is why their prestige is greatest); he put silver in the Auxiliaries, and Iron and Bronze in the farmers and other workers. Now since you are all of the same stock, though your children will commonly resemble heir parents, occasionally a silver child will be born of gold parents, or a gold of silver and so on. Therefore the first and most important of the god's commandments to the Rulers is..." - Plato, Republic 415a - c (trans. Desmond Lee)

Anyway, you get the picture, he goes on to talk about how we must make sure everyone is doing what their identity demands. After telling this story he turns to his conversation partner and he says "That is the story (μῦθος). Do you know of any way of making them believe it?"

This is weird for Plato/Socrates to say this, he wants to replace the peoples theology with another one which is obviously contrived. It's kind of a civic myth, but how can this be allowed? Has Plato not just given us an illusion and asked us to accept it? How can this be acceptable, especially for Plato who believes in a reality which must be known (if you know the allegory of the cave, think that about that).

Furthermore, the word 'μῦθος' is actually quite layered. In Euripides play 'Medeia' the teacher talks about overhearing a conversation about Medeia's future in a bar and at the end he refers to that conversation by saying: "However if this tale (μῦθος) is true, I don't know."

So, a number of related questions to think about:
What is an accurate way to think about Plato's story, would it be permissible to do something similar today? and why or why not?

What is an adequate english word to translate the word 'μῦθος' one that does away with the connotations that are normally conjured up by our word 'myth'

Discuss.

And to give you some modern food for thought:

"And fact is only what you believe. And fact and fiction work as a team.

Its almost always fiction in the end.

The content begins to bend.

When context is never the same.

And its all relative

even if we don't understand.

And its all understood,

especially when we don't understand.

And its all just because,

even if we don't understand.

Then let's all just believe-I was reading a book." -Jack Johnson, It's all understood.

Primary Reality & Everyday Reality.

In this short series I am going to look at Ancient Philosophy in a quick and brief summary that is facilitated by a certain book. This is book is by Mark Strom and is called 'Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace & Community.'


A couple of preliminaries.

First, who us Mark Strom? Well he was the principle of Laidlaw college (formerly Bible College of New Zealand). He did his PhD in Sydney, and this book is a result of his studies there. He has also written two other books, one called the 'The Symphony of Scripture' and another one called 'Arts of the Wise Leader'. So, a well learned man who has cared enough to impart his wisdom to the next generation. Random students like me.


Another thing is that some of the conclusions that Strom reaches at the end of this book could cause some controversy. I hope it does. That way people will say something and then I don't feel like I am carrying on an extended conversation with my self in print. So, I may blog out some of his conclusions and the arguments he uses to reach those conclusions. But for now I am focused on just the first section of his book.


Also, this little series will be of value to those at Campus Church since we are finishing off our series on 1 Corinthians. This mini look at some of the ideas floating around that some of the Corinthians would have been flirting with or had been recently converted from will help you to see what Paul was writing against in his letter. 


Here is an Index for this:


Primary Reality & Everyday Reality.
1) From Homer to Plato
2) From Aristotle to Seneca
3) The Inadequacy of Ideals
4) Rank, Status and Convention

C.S. Lewis provides a laugh, as always.

Here is C.S. Lewis on the historical critiques of some of the more liberal theologians of the last century (a la, Bultmann) You can find it in his essay"Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism".

 All theology of the liberal type involves at some point - and often involves throughout - the claim that the real behavior and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by his followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only by modern scholars. Now long before I became interested in theology I had met this kind of theory elsewhere. The tradition of Jowett still dominated the study of ancient philosophy when I was reading Greats. One was brought up to believer that the real meaning of Plato had been misunderstood by Aristotle and wildly travestied by the neo-Platonists, only to be recovered by the moderns. When recovered, it turned out (most fortunately) that Plato had really all along been an English Hegelian, rather like T.H. Green.

I will write more one day. When I am less busy analyzing Calvinism after Calvin.

The Ontological argument.

The Ontological argument, the ultimate argument if you want to fry your friends noodle. A couple of disclaimers before we go any further... I do not think this argument *works* (whatever that means) I do however quite enjoy it and wish I could understand it even better. So, fly with me into this elaborate, wordy and complicated argument that relies entirely on logic.

So, without further ado lets see what this argument actually is.

Anslem discusses psalm 14:1: 'The fool says in his heart there is no God..." and then he proceeds to give a reason as to why the person who says there is no God is a fool...

Basically it goes like this: Anselm first defines God as 'the being than which no greater being can be conceived.' So the fool says 'yes'. Now Anselm says that he is a fool because Anselm seems to think that the very idea of God entails existence. Because, after all, it's better to exist than to not exist. Therefore if God exists in the fools mind than any God which exists in reality is greater than the being conceived in the fool's mind.  This is why the fool is a fool, because he is contradicting himself by saying God does not exist while at the same time affirming his existence by conceiving of him in order to make that sentence.

So, imagine talking to your friend at a party and doing this! It would be great to see their reaction, but most people think it is a word trick. And we will get to that some time in a future post.

For now, enjoy this cartoon:

Logical Positivism and its ugly past.

Today I want to share with you something that is fairly interesting, fairly funny and also kinda sad (in an amusing way).

First, lets start off with this ripper from prominent Atheist author and spokesperson, Christopher Hitchens:

"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

Thats from his article on Mother Theresa which can be found here.

Now, lets turn to the topic at hand. With the success of the scientific method and humanities new found ability to discover the truth apart from God, we decided, heck, lets just do away with God entirely. Enter: Logical Positivism. Logical Positivism was a movement in the first half of the 20th Century that was lead by philosophers such as A.J. Ayer. Basically it was the idea that no hypothesis can be treated seriously if it does not have some empirical evidence entered into the equation somewhere, and also, more importantly it has to be directly related to the object of the hypothesis. (I hope that makes sense).

The effect of this was to be devastating for theistic belief among philosophers. It was not that God had been disproved, but that the statement "God exists" became completely meaningless. It was unverifiable, therefore one could not say anything about it. It was a bit like making this statement "aglup mart unadapop". Thats basically what it amounts to.

However, by the 1960's it was undermined by the realization that the statement 'everything must be verified by empirical evidence' is itself a meaningless statement. So the whole world view became horribly self refuting. So, if we return to Christopher's aforementioned quote, well I would like to deny it because I have no evidence to suggest that its true, thank you very much.

But, I have noticed that among many of my peers this idea lives on... most frequently repackaged as the so-called 'law of falsification' the idea that if a hypothesis is non falsifiable then we can dismiss it. (In this case the falsifiability has to come in the form  of empirical evidence usually), and also, if one were to take this as an axiom of their world view, then they could hold no other axioms and technically their only axiom would be self refuting. (We cant falsify the 'law of falsifiability'). This leaves me in the humorous position of discovering an argument that was refuted 40 years before I was born being told to me by someone who considers me illogical and stupid, and himself to be the very paradigm of rationality and critical thinking!

So, before I go, I want to leave you with this little video of Bill Craig humiliating Peter Atkins.

                                                        

So, next time you come across this argument, don't make a pithy argument based on the fact that we cannot see the wind, instead expose the foolishness of the unbelieving worldview!

(Gosh, that sounded a lot more cavalier than "So put that in your pipe and smoke it.")