St. Nietzsche V: Parting Company with St. Paul

In the last Nietzsche post (numeral IV) I agreed with the third argument, that "it is the will to power, and not the moral law, that is fundamental to human motivation." And, "Accordingly, seeking to follow the moral law does not change human nature, fundamentally." Of course, the whole idea behind morals is that they really improve us and the world. So if they are but window dressing on a perspective which, if it is looked into deeply enough, shows us that we aren't really moral, we ought to be honest enough to face the fact. I agree with Nietzsche on that, completely. It happens that Paul agrees that, if we look deeply at ourselves, we aren't really moral: To quote Paul, "...sin has made its home in my nature." (Rom. 7:17, Phillips)

In addition to that, Nietzsche has the following complaint against Christianity and the Apostle Paul, whom he called "The First Christian" (an essay from "The Dawn" with that title explains Nietzsche's view): "The Christian conception of God [is of] God as god of the sick..." (The AntiChrist, tr. Kaufmann, section 18.) By teaching us to value compassion and humility and mercy and charity, etc., Christianity betrays our natural devotion to greatness and strength. My rejoinder to Nietzsche's view is that there is no human greatness or strength without long, loving, nurturing patience with human weakness and incompetence. Nietzsche's hyperbolic disparagement of Christian values is at least as naive and misguided as he takes the object of his scorn to be. But this impasse is hardly worth arriving at.

Fortunately, the disagreement can be followed to a deeper point. Both the Apostle Paul and the Great Atheist agree on the need to transcend the moral law: Nietzsche announces the "uber-mensch" and Paul "a new creature." (Gal. 6:15 KJV) The status quo is, to be sure, an impasse that is hardly worth arriving at.

But for Nietzsche,

"When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something which separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation..." (from "Homer's Contest" in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Kaufmann.)

The Apostle Paul agrees that,

"we [live] on the level of our lower nature." (Rom. 7:5, NEB)

The point of absolute departure for the two is precisely where it should be: grace, as understood in its primary, theological sense: divine assistance given to humanity in its state of helplessness apart for it. "For by grace you have been saved through faith..."

Before tracing the separation, let's note the astounding unity of the Apostle Paul and the Great Atheist on this point: we are estranged from the moral law by our very human nature. We are helpless in the face of the law, and here Nietzsche's view informs faith, precisely because it is unnatural; it is not in accord with who we fundamentally are. The "third argument" makes that case persuasively, and so we should be grateful to Nietzsche.

And since we are using the Great Atheist to make the point, why not bring in another to second it. ""There is really only one entity whose point of view matters in evolution, and that entity is the selfish gene." (Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) p. 137.) And, "Genes are selected for their ability to make the best use of the levers of power at their disposal..." (Ibid.) A better "fundamental" explanation of human nature in accord with Nietzsche's will to power would be impossible to find. Since Dawkins does not think that his view from 1976 is outmoded--see his "Introduction to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition"--it seems that Paul's point of view prior to grace accords with Nietzsche and Dawkins. And as a matter of fact, it is not a stretch to say that it is because his view accords with Dawkins and Nietzsche that he sees the need for grace. Paul was thoroughly up to date 2,000 years ago.

Of course, at that very point their views diverge in irreconcilable ways. But all this is to set up the following point: the way to transcend the impasse is encoded in the first biblical metaphors describing the relationship of divinity to humanity. And, I will contend, the view that Christianity set up--when understood at the necessary depth--offers a view of a truth that to too big for nature of science; a truth only faith can accept; but a truth none-the-less.

Peirce's "Suggestion" of God

Peirce's "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God" has two very interesting features:

1. It overturns the usual view that science and belief in God are at odds.

And 2. It has a one-way valence with respect to logical entailment. It will be helpful to review the latter before moving on. Peirce claimed that an analogue of mind is "suggested" by the universal feature of a scientific understanding of the universe, that it provides for "later stages in earlier ones." (Peirce, "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.") Presumably he meant to call attention to the fact that both human understanding and the universe proceed by "working towards" their "conclusions." And to use Chomsky's words, quoted in the comment to the previous post, "...our mental constitution permits us to arrive at knowledge of the world insofar as our innate capacity to create theories happens to match some aspect of the structure of the world." ("On Interpreting the World" in Problems of Knowledge and Freedom, p. 20.) Presumably, then, the human mind's unfolding understanding of the world and the world's unfolding that the human mind studies share common features. Peirce's God hypothesis simply notes this.

But in noting "this," how could anyone reach a deeper understanding of the "suggestion," or "hypothesis" in order to critique it? The clear problem is that the needed commonality that supports the suggestion underlies any ability to critique itself. Stated metaphorically, we can't get "behind" the point of view that Peirce uses to suggest his God hypothesis, and yet every explanation that science does succeed in making furthers the suggestion. The valence is, therefore, one-way.

But the argument is a form of the teleological argument, only brought to the level of the core assumption of any ability of ours to understand the world. As such it bears some similarity to the critique of the fine tuning argument by way of the anthropic principle.

My aim in this (last) post on Peirce's argument is to eliminate a reason why a scholar looking at it might discount its worth prior to examining it carefully. (And my hope in posting on it here is to do my small part in drawing attention to it as possibly an important--but "Neglected," as Peirce claimed--argument.

But those who critique the fine tuning argument by way of the anthropic principle do so by suggesting that we shouldn't be surprised to live in a universe finely adapted to supporting human life: Otherwise we wouldn't be here! Therefore the apparent improbability of such fine tuning has no implicative force (and I am being simplistic with the purpose of just "suggesting" the argument here). See here.

But that move will not work to critique Peirce's argument. For to claim that any universe that we can understand will have to share basic features with the human mind is exactly Peirce's point: the universe suggests an analogue of mind--in fact human understanding of the universe implies it.

That the universe works like a mind cannot be doubted by a mind that claims to understand the universe. And a mind that doesn't claim to understand the universe cannot comment. One-way valence.

How strong is the suggestion? That question implies the ability to critique the "suggestion," which is precisely what cannot be done by a mind that assumes it.

That's why the suggestion of God cannot be eliminated...

A Prayer?

My step-sister has end-stage cancer. She still hopes for a miracle cure, as do I. But that hope has been in the abstract, as an expression of an open minded attitude toward the possibility of a cure. When my mother, this morning, asked me to see to it that family gathering to visit her this weekend surround her in prayer, I faced the prospect of turning hope based on an abstraction into a concrete act and statement of faith. And so I am asking myself, in what sense does the abstraction survive the descent into the hard facts that I know?

Is my faith to be a hope that somehow the doctors got the diagnosis wrong? Clearly that would be a perversion of faith. To me it seems essential to faith that it be an expression, at least of the possibility, of there being more to human existence than we can see or know. My faith does not take the givens of what we can know and contradict them, on this view. It places them in a larger context.

The question then confronts me, if faith expresses a conviction that there is more to life than I can see or know, where does it come from? I think that it comes from the conviction of good people in trying times that it is the good that they can see and know that connects them to what they cannot see and know. The imperative of a good will dictates the content of one’s ontology. Whatever one thinks of Luther and Lutheranism, one sees that view of faith clearly in his—some think apocryphal—“Here I stand, I can do no other.” No matter what the actual words were, clearly the existential “ought” in Luther's life became more real to him than any visible existential “is.” To me that is what faith means, or at least what it ought to mean. And that is why it can and does exist in the midst of great countervailing facts: Quite simply, it transcends them.

The wager of faith, to speak crudely, is that not only is there more to human existence than we can know, but that that “more” can be understood by faith as an expression of what life requires of a good person. If life has a larger meaning than we can understand—at least if it has one worth knowing—that is it. And just so, if we are invited to live as members of the kingdom of heaven, we must be guided by our best motives as we remain open to a reality greater than our understanding.

But why would anyone choose to believe in something beyond their understanding? The question implies a misunderstanding. One does not choose to act on insufficient evidence. Rather, one chooses to interpret insufficient evidence in light of one’s best motives and hopes. What else is one to do? It is when we encounter an existential crisis, then, that faith comes to light. And the reality of the existential crisis speaks louder than any proof or evidence, because it speaks for the human heart. I believe that William James nailed the idea when he wrote, “…to refuse to cultivate a feeling of security would be to do violence to a tendency in one’s emotional life which might well be respected a prophetic.” (Preface to The Meaning of Truth)

I, for one, can do no other tomorrow. I will express my fondest hope to my step-sister that our family’s love for her—with all the hope that that entails—can and should inform our belief. Is that intellectual courage, or cowardice? I say neither, for once again the question implies a misunderstanding. Faith transcends that question, and for those who have it, its possibility entails its necessity.