Slavof Zizek: God In Pain

[Amppax]

How did I misrepresent Christianity. Is this not the basic story: God has a son, mankind is sinful, God sends his son to die on the cross to make some kind of violent redemption (the details of the redemption have been debated over the centuries, atonement, etc. but the basic idea is that cosmic satisfaction had to be made), and the world is part of an unseen cosmic reality which involves angels intervening in human affairs, saints having special miraculous powers, etc. I think that's a pretty matter-of-fact account of Christianity at its most basic.

 

It was the last line of the paragraph, really, the idea that to believe Christianity necessarily involves a fideistic leap of faith, or suspension of the rational faculties. I also think that your account is overly simplistic, because atonement is more complex than what you have written (which, to be fair, you somewhat acknowledge). But my main point is, Catholicism 101, faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. 

[Era Might]

I think that having left orthodox Catholicism behind, you are now trying to create a community for yourself by persuading yourself that all Catholics really think like you do deep down - that like you, no one really believes, no one really takes this seriously. I have a lot of time for Zizek's work, but it's frustrating to see people trying so hard to cram others into boxes like this. Basically you are just trying to make other people illustrate your own worldview.

 

Well, regardless of anyone's particular beliefs/opinions, we all still share in a common humanity, so to that extent I would say, yes, of course, I want to understand what it means to be human and how humans create meaning and exist in the world. And, yes, I think as long as anyone has a "worldview" they are going to see the world around its assumptions...which, IMO, is not a bad thing, it's what makes individual thinkers interesting. For Zizek, ideology is a large part of his method of "seeing" the world. It's not the only way. I'm reading a history of the council of Trent at the moment, and I find the council's discussion of salvation and predestination fascinating, but not for theological reasons. Behind the theology, what the council is really looking at is human questions. To say that one is saved "by faith alone" or "by faith and works" is just another language, another way of speaking, about how a person attains and creates meaning and a life. One does not have to believe in theology to take it seriously, because theology is just another way of speaking about human questions.

[Era Might]

I also think you have a very romanticized view of the Muslim world if you imagine Muslim-majority countries to be any more faith-filled than anywhere else. They aren't. I've lived in enough of them to know. Deciding that prejudice against Muslims is rooted in people's fear of others 'taking God seriously' also means sweeping a long history of racism and colonialism under the rug, because anti-Muslim bigotry is very closely braided together with those things.

 

 

No, my point was not about the sociology of the "Muslim world" (a phrase I don't like anyway, though a useful shorthand), but about Western perceptions of the "Muslim world." The West has long had a fascination with the exotic "East," from grotesque horror to quixotic romance, and as you say, that's been bound up with racism and colonialism. And I think that continues today in different forms, which was what I was getting at, the West's continuing sense of its own "civility" and, especially, "modernity" which has turned the "Muslim world" into a barbaric horror in the Western mind, because in the West we are ignorant of our own past, let alone that of the "Muslim world."

[Era Might]

It was the last line of the paragraph, really, the idea that to believe Christianity necessarily involves a fideistic leap of faith, or suspension of the rational faculties. I also think that your account is overly simplistic, because atonement is more complex than what you have written (which, to be fair, you somewhat acknowledge). But my main point is, Catholicism 101, faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. 

 

Yes, of course, in the "Catholic" tradition faith and reason are partners, though you have to define "reason" in Catholic terms in order for it to make sense. But that scholastic marriage of faith and reason is NOT essential to Christianity, or even Catholicism, and there are other ways of understanding it.

 

I think "reason" in Catholicism is most rich as a way of sensing the world. I think of "discernment" in the Ignatian tradition. "Reason" in a philosophical sense is less useful, and from a scientific perspective "reason" has no meaning in a Catholic sense, because science is purely technique, evidence, testing, etc. Catholic "reason" ceases to exist if it becomes scientific. Catholicism is "open" to scientific research, but ultimately, must be able to fit the pieces together in Catholicism's belief system. But definitely, that openness to reason, however imperfect, was a big and positive element in the Catholic tradition and history.

[Era Might]

What Zizek is saying in his delightful Slovenian accent concerning the disenchantment of the world with religion is very old, of course. He's just following the general trend in diagnosing modernity as I'm sure he'd tell anyone.

 

However, I am not sure I believe him or them when they say that the world is disenchanted: that we do not believe in our religions like the people in the Middle Ages believed in theirs. How could we know? The idea that God as our anchor has been cut loose and we are adrift, that sounds like the sort of thing that could be true, but is it really true and how could we determine if it was true? 

 

Great question, and I absolutely agree with your skepticism about our claims to "understand" the past, which is always difficult and we inevitably project ourselves onto the past. But I think one way to go about understanding how belief today differs from the past is to look at how we express and relate to symbols, how we organize around these symbols, etc. Our modern life is just as ritualized as the Middle Ages (schools, TV programs, etc.), so what has changed is not those broad habits of human nature, but how we organize them, what meaning we give them, etc. 

[Era Might]

I wouldn't call it a "broader perspective," more like he's reading it on a very superficial level. Each Gospel has a different approach to the crucifixion. Matthew specifically wanted Jewish readers to see the connections between Jesus and the Old Testament. Ergo, Psalm 22. It's just as much a historical interpretation as it is a theological.

 

Ok, but that requires a pious reverence for St. Matthew as an historian, which he was not (and even if he was, historians have to criticize the work of past historians). His intention with his Gospel may be very interesting for a lot of reasons, just as the president's intentions with a Station of the Union address would be interesting to historians, but the author's intentions are rarely relevant to understanding what they have produced. I'm an author of this post right now, and if someone were to look at it 100 years from now, my intentions at this moment would hardly explain me, or how I reached this point of writing this post, or how correct or valuable the post is.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Era Might

[Oremus Pro Invicem]

I think "reason" in Catholicism is most rich as a way of sensing the world. I think of "discernment" in the Ignatian tradition. "Reason" in a philosophical sense is less useful, and from a scientific perspective "reason" has no meaning in a Catholic sense, because science is purely technique, evidence, testing, etc. Catholic "reason" ceases to exist if it becomes scientific. Catholicism is "open" to scientific research, but ultimately, must be able to fit the pieces together in Catholicism's belief system. But definitely, that openness to reason, however imperfect, was a big and positive element in the Catholic tradition and history.

Reason is the same whether you're studying the sciences of philosophy, theology, or the material universe. With that said if you want the definition of reason as how the Catholic Church views it then by all means grab a dictionary. The only difference between the dictionary and the Catholic view is that we believe God gave us the ability to reason.

[Oremus Pro Invicem]

Edit: this is a continuation of my post. Stupid phone.

Definition of reason:the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.

Within Logical reasoning there is, deductive, inductive, and abductive. Are you asking which one of these is Catholicism primarily used/concerned with? Edited January 24, 2015 by Oremus Pro Invicem

[Era Might]

Reason is the same whether you're studying the sciences of philosophy, theology, or the material universe. With that said if you want the definition of reason as how the Catholic Church views it then by all means grab a dictionary. The only difference between the dictionary and the Catholic view is that we believe God gave us the ability to reason.

 

We aren't born with a generic ability to "reason"...reason is built, defined, etc. One can reason without, say, scientific reasoning, but scientific reasoning is a different kind of reasoning that leads to specific kinds of results.

[Oremus Pro Invicem]

We aren't born with a generic ability to "reason"...reason is built, defined, etc. One can reason without, say, scientific reasoning, but scientific reasoning is a different kind of reasoning that leads to specific kinds of results.

 

I agree that we are not born with reason and that this ability has to be nourished and built over time.  This is why children usually make their first confession at age 7, sometime sooner.  Yet I'm not following what you mean by "scientific" reasoning.   As stated above there are three types of logical reasoning, one of them being inductive which is usually what those in the field of natural science would use.    

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_reasoning

Edited January 24, 2015 by Oremus Pro Invicem

[Era Might]

I agree that we are not born with reason and that this ability has to be nourished and built over time.  This is why children usually make their first confession at age 7, sometime sooner.  Yet I'm not following what you mean by "scientific" reasoning.   As stated above there are three types of logical reasoning, one of them being inductive which is usually what those in the field of natural science would use.    

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_reasoning

 

No, I don't mean that "reason" is like a palm tree that has to grow to become the palm tree, but that "reason" is social and cultural. Our intellectual capacities are shaped to accomplish what we want to accomplish, which means that "reason" is not an objective "thing" which we enter into, but something we create. Scientific reasoning is objective, in the sense that it turns what it studies into an object, nothing more. This is only one way of reasoning, a technical way, which produces technical results, but scientific reasoning is not the only way mankind organizes and expresses his intellectual capacities. Catholic reasoning is reasoning in order to explore a pre-existing belief system. I used Ignatian discernment as an example, because that kind of reasoning is very much about subjective experience; its goal is not to reason to a scientific end, but to feel your way toward wholeness. A Catholic reasons in order to strengthen the whole (a very human and valuable way of reasoning), but it's not the kind of reasoning that leads to a scientific culture, where reason is pure technique or method, and where you reason in order to get a factual answer.

[Oremus Pro Invicem]

 A Catholic reasons in order to strengthen the whole (a very human and valuable way of reasoning), but it's not the kind of reasoning that leads to a scientific culture, where reason is pure technique or method, and where you reason in order to get a factual answer.

 

Catholic reasoning encompasses the entire picture not just a layer of it.  An example would be, why does water boil on the stove?  Natural science will give us the reason regarding H2O molecules, heat, and friction etc.  Other forms of reasoning however will answer: because someone turned the stove on.  Another one will say: someone wanted to cook something.  Regardless none of these are less factual answers to the question "why does water boil on the stove."   Catholicism therefore does not view natural science as the only tool which can give us factual answers to the questions we have.  Natural science is a layer to the question and with it we have a more complete answer, but it is not in opposition with the other sciences.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Oremus Pro Invicem

[Era Might]

Catholic reasoning encompasses the entire picture not just a layer of it.  An example would be, why does water boil on the stove?  Natural science will give us the reason regarding H2O molecules, heat, and friction etc.  Other forms of reasoning however will answer: because someone turned the stove on.  Another one will say: someone wanted to cook something.  Regardless none of these are less factual answers to the question "why does water boil on the stove."   Catholicism therefore does not view natural science as the only tool which can give us factual answers to the questions we have.  Natural science is a layer to the question and with it we have a more complete answer, but it is not in opposition with the other sciences.

 

What is the question?

[Oremus Pro Invicem]

The question was, why does water boil on the stove. This was used to illustrate a point that there is more than one factual answer to that question and that natural science is not the only means to gain a factual answer to the question. You claimed that Catholic reasoning does not lead to a scientific culture when that's not true. Rather Catholic reasoning works toward an authentic scientific culture where scientific reasoning is not viewed as being the sole method of gaining facts.

[Amppax]

Yes, of course, in the "Catholic" tradition faith and reason are partners, though you have to define "reason" in Catholic terms in order for it to make sense. But that scholastic marriage of faith and reason is NOT essential to Christianity, or even Catholicism, and there are other ways of understanding it.

You call it a scholastic formulation, but it goes back so much further. Justin Martyr, Origen... I could keep listing Church Father's. How about St. Paul? Roman's 1-2, Acts 15 both illustrate the idea that belief isn't some fideistic keep of faith.