What We Are 1.0

I dedicate this (overlong) post to my near-brother Michael, his gracious wife and beautiful baby girl.

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One of my great pleasures in life is eating and drinking with friends. Dinner parties, especially, are warm and memorable times, and something I've only learned to appreciate in the last six or seven years. A good friend, a man who is nearly family (and whose family is a large reason I learned to love dinner parties) invited my wife and me over to his house a little while ago to eat and to hold his tiny baby girl! His parents, whom I love, were coming. How could we not go?

The pork ribs were excellent. My friend Michael makes his own marinades, as his father did and does, and some ingredients were easy to taste: molasses, for one, and fresh rosemary. The spontaneous genius-touch, though, which I give away on the web itself (without asking) was coffee grounds. A few coffee grounds in the marinade added a smoke-pleasure to the meat that's hard to describe.

Ah. And I brought an Australian Shiraz and a very fine Tokay desert wine also from down under; (both from Costco, less than 25 bucks for the pair; this is for for any who read from and pay teacher-taxes in California).

At the end of the evening, after his parents left and his infant girl was dozing in her baby swing-chair, the talk turned to Youtube.com, the free website where anyone can post a video clip. I first heard about youtube on NPR, and I went there just a few times; after the initial novelty (this is all kinds of video, much self-made, and most happily no porn), after I rewatched the classic SNL skit with Christopher Walken..."more cowbell"...I lost interest. I did see a very sweet and funny video with two teenage girls called "Pump It." They sing along, sped-up chipmunk style, to the song of that name (and I assure all, it's quite innocent and sweet; it makes me think of my son's life as it is developing apart from me). I recommended it to Michael, and he recommended another video called "What We Are." Mixed in among some fairly funny Star Wars parodies ("Chad Vader, Day-Shift Manager") we watched "What We Are" together. (Incidentally, I was unable to import any of these into my blog and gave up trying; the videos, however, are easy to find in youtube's search engine).

This post is my meagre response to the world-view of "What We Are."

A little background: my good friend is an English professor at another school, sometimes reads this blog, and left a childhood faith at about 16, probably because, just as I discovered later in my own life, he realized he didn't personally believe. This event was long before I knew him, and I know few details. The fact that, now, he refuses any middle ground lifestyle, will not go through the motions of Christianity (communion, prayer) when he does not believe in Jesus, is actually something I admire. Whether he still considers religious questions or looks for spiritual answers I actually don't know.

I do know, when religion is tossed out, the western material zeitgheist, empirical naturalism, is a common replacement. In my own mind, it remains a powerful dialectic partner with my faith.

Enter (again) the video "What We Are." If you have time, watch it before reading the rest of this. It's witty, funny, cute, though clearly has actual purpose. Since it represents materialism at the powerful popular level, I find it is worth a response. (I note now, in my final edit, someone has posted a decent, warm-hug but very sane response titled "What We Really Are.") Is "What We Are" a straw man of secular materialism? Perhaps. It seems to me materlialism, when it indrafts humanism, may depend on some straw man points of view (chiefly, why must any strong individual subscribe to the social contract?). But I think many people I know would take this video quite seriously; my guess is my friend, who is brilliant, did not recommend it out of hand. Of course, as I've worked on my respone, I have had to admit more and more that my response will be incomplete. An entire counter would involve every apologetic notion in my head, every reason I myself believe, and this post will not be that. A complete counter along those same lines would also involve plenty of thinking I have yet to do. I'm still building the intellectual framework for my faith.

Still, some things can be said.

For one, the video does not distinguish between what can be accounted near-certain truths and assertions which it merely presents as true. It begins with a slide show stressing something humans almost surely know: the discovered Universe is utterly vast compared to human beings, compared to all of Earth. Unimaginably big. This fact should inspire humility in our often arrogant race, a fact the video stresses to its advantage. (In fact, human limitation is a key theme of the video clip, though all limitations it places on human knowledge...'we are all just monkeys'...must of course be applied to its own statements as well). But just because we know the universe is extravagantly gigantic, does this mean humans are not significant? This is the opening salvo-joke of the film. Surely the video is attempting to undermine ancient assumptions, many of them religious or quasi-religious, about the placement of the earth at the (obvious) center of the cosmos, assumptions based partly on weak empirical observation and partly on ethno-pride. My own faith, without its founder recorded as saying anything at all regarding cosmological placement, says the Creator of the universe came to this puny planet in human form. The question should be raised, and is implicitly raised in my view in "What We Are": why would the Creator God ever trouble with something, or someone, of such insignificant size and so remote?

The universe is radically vast, more vast than I can begin to fathom. But there is also something quite radical and vast about a single human mind. What should stagger me more, a preoposterously huge cosmos, or the fact that I have an emotional sensation when I read a single poem? I cannot understress: size matters, but mind matters more. The human moral conscience alone, its existence testified to by theists and non-theists throughout history, is more astounding, even curious, than the largest galaxy without mental life. Man's moral reflectivity, his passion for beauty, his art, his mathematics, his ability to choose between destruction and mercy...these are impressive ethical, phenomonenlogical and empirical realities. And if, just if, spirit exists, some undying individual transcendence, it would matter more than a billion stars on their way to burn-out or implosion. Man surely is a vapor; St. James is right. But by extension, though it takes longer to die, so is my galaxy. A swirl of burning chemical gas a billion light years across is impressive (as long as there is a mind to feel impressed). One human being marvelling at said galaxy, feeling dwarfed in comparison to its material properties, strikes me as much more. Galaxies neither think nor feel. They do not write poetry or cry. They are not self-conscious. They surely cannot pray.

Perhaps such a chain of being, with mind higher than mass, is artificial. The more I reflect, the more I refuse to think so, however. If we are the only self-aware minds in the universe, I believe our ability to consciously reflect on the cosmos is the greatest achievement among all stars.

The video doesn't mention this fact and I may be drifting in this paragraph, but plenty of materialists believe there is likely other life, smart life, even some smarter life, on other congenial planets somewhere in the universe. They could well be correct. Yet when they ponder this, Sagan-like, there is nearly always the accompanying but unspoken (perhaps unthought) assertion that intelligent extraterrestial beings, if they ever show up, will be materialist-Darwinists who will explain evoulution to us in more precise terms from their advanced point along the evolutionary schedule. On the other hand, these beings could, quite frankly, be theists who impress us with their theological development. What a shock it would be if we found another race of beings who were scientifically superior to humanity and yet worshipped a deity, perhaps with greater clarity and committment than our own muddled race. This is of course speculation on my part, but it seems that we should not consider the reality of ET life in any form proof against belief in God or even Christianity until we find meet these beings and swap creation myths.

After the brief slide-show intro on how dorkily tiny Earth is, "What We Are" proceeds to answer the question implied in its title: What Are We? What we are, it turns out, are monkeys, developed primates, who, almost unluckily, got stuck with the complex mental pain of self-awareness. The great irony, for the film, is that most of us are in denial about this fact. We think we're something more, or better, but in reality we're just monkeys.

I have two concerns with this.

For one, there are many things which make us different from monkeys. The video would be just as logically accurate to say we are all just molecules or single-celled organisms or amphibious transitional forms because we evolved from these. My wife and I would be enlightened to admit we are, at essence, iguanas. While the similarities between humans and primates are obvious (and the video points some of these out, humorously) there are fundamental qualitative differences. For me, as I've said, self-conscious moral reflectivity is high on this list. Almost all humans have a personal standard of behavior, more or less. Some of my values may be erroneous, but generally I know if I back into someone's car in the parking lot I should leave a note. Perhaps my culture tells me this, but it seems I can step back and compare two cultures, my own, which tells me to leave a note and cover the costs of my damage, and another deficient culture, which (hypothetically) tells me the whole thing is funny and I should tear out of there before I'm caught. Let the other, unlucky, man or woman pay for the damage. Why do I have such a moral sense?

The other fact, noted by many writers in history, is that we don't live up to our own moral code. The fact we have a regular sense of self-defiency is quite curious. Even those of use who are the best at not self-blaming must say that we are all just human. Generally I will leave a note when I back into a stranger's car, but surely I do and say things, often, which hurt those nearest me, a greater wrong than property damage. And I've done worse things still. Sometimes I feel guilt soon after, sometimes I don't until later reflection. But the fact remains: humans ponder the impact their behavior has on others in a way I do not believe exists in the rest of the animal kingdom. If I'm wrong, I'd like some anthropologist to steer me to the right books. When my dog digs into the trash and then shies away when I come home, this seems a long distance from the complexity of human ethical preoccupations. It may be that our moral sense evolved and that lower forms of conscience are evident in the animal world, but moral concerns exist in humans to a self-reflective and complex, even contradictory degree.

But there is more. We use symbols and no animal (naturally) does. We have entire nuanced languages. And oddly enough, we are capable of evil on a scale no animal could imagine. We don't kill just for food or territory; we sometimes kill for power or hate, even inconvenience. And yet, astoundingly, humans also choose self-sacrifice in remarkable circumstances, at times for individuals outside the family or clan. Some of us have devoted our entire lives to the service of other humans, many prompted by their religion. We are just as capable of mercy as we are of massacre.

It may be that I need to go back and read Jane Goodall, but the reality that human beings are not monkeys at all in their essential and foundational selves seems blindingly obvious. If we are just monkeys in a self-made industrial jungle, what is to stop me, ethically, from taking your car, your money and your mate if I am stronger, bigger, and quicker? Oh, my humanness? Yes. I would agree. But surely not my monkeyness.

My second issue involves evolution itself. I have no abiding religious issue with evolution. I do feel many processes, in fact the most fundamental processes on which evolution depends, have not been fully observed. However, as I understand it (which is not very well, nods to my friends Krav Mom and Herr Schnickelfritz) the evidence for shared ancestry is very strong at the genetic level. Perhaps I did descend from monkeys (and I know this is not actually what biologists say, but the point is taken) without any Divine special creation of man as described in the Jewish scriptures. This opens up genuine (though far from dismissive) theological questions for Christians regarding these Jewish scriptures, even some of Jesus' own comments on those scriptures, but if the evidence points towards evolution, I must go with the evidence at hand. If nothing else, such a concept, if true, provides reason for humans to feel profound (though hardly self-denigrating) epistemic humility.

If there was ever a time I wish I could cite a quote from somewhere in my reading it would be now, but Darwin himself is reputed to have felt epistemological anxiety over the fact that he came to view man as no more than a developed ape. How can we be certain regarding our thoughts about the world around us if our mental processes are merely those of advanced primates? What does advanced mean in this context? This is a complicated question, and there are no easy answers. Still, though I have argued at length we are not "just monkeys," if we descended from something like them, this fact should keep intellectual arrogance in check. It should cause us to all be on guard as we make proclamations regarding the universe and what may lie beyond it. Science might prove some of its premises to wide-scale scientific satisfaction, but then it has only proved them amongst its collective monkey-brains. The same is true with philosophy and theology. Here, I agree with the video: we must be humble before a cosmos we hardly know our own place in; epistemic caution is in order.

If we did 'just' evolve does that mean we are still not special, perhaps even special to God? Does this mean we are, in an almost Platonic sense, at our essential core, just monkeys (and iguanas)? Perhaps our existence is only the product of, to paraphrase S. J. Gould, amazing laws in this amazing universe, extraordinary organizing forces without known origin. Then human beings could be compared to extremely complex, living and self-aware biological snowflakes formed purely as the product of natural mechanisms which work, at least, in our very little corner of space. It is also true, of course, that if there was Divine intervention beyond natural law at some point in the process, if God really did step into his evolving material universe to make Life or to make Humans for his own purpose, this intervention is clearly impossible to prove or disprove with what we know. To argue that he may have intervened directly in the unfolding of natural law is not really 'God of the gaps,' arguing God must have stepped in to complete an evolutionary process we haven't yet observed; I didn't say he did or had to, I said he might have. Why I think he might have comes later. And on the 'God of the Gaps' concept, critiqued everywhere from Paul Davies to Michael Shermer: there are plenty of things evolutionists can't explain yet either, but I've never heard an evolutionist tell me the means by which non-living matter produces living matter is 'evolution of the gaps.' Materialists assume human development occured only by natural processes. Maybe so. But that makes the existence of those processes no less remarkable, nor their human product on earth any less valuable or remarkable (or for that matter, curious).

Which brings me closer (but not quite closer to) my final point, and the spot where will I park this entire essay.

In the video, all religions are human wish-fulfillment invention and, not surprisingly, the source of violent contention. Religion has produced violence, no doubt. So has thirst for technology, comfort, power, sex, dominance, and land. So has political ideology. So has sports fanaticism. (I suppose, in its own way, religion has mixed with most of these). But religion has done so much more for our race, my religion I will say, than merely produce holy warriors, pedophile priests, and inquisitors. Belief in Christ has enhanced the lives of many millions, and I am not willing to say these life enhancing experiences are only the result of telling onself a happy fairy tale, as the life-change often occurs in the absence of classical or obvious wish-fulfillment paradigms. Meaning some of us have felt moved or changed by God, vitally, when we have only the murkiest idea of who God is or what he wants or has to offer. I have seen this and I have read this and I believe I have experienced this. Nor am I willing to say at this time that all religions are essentially and experientially the same, that all religious experience is identical to the Christian one, or that all religious claims, across cultures and times, are identical. This is an enormous issue and one I don't have the time (nor I admit the expertise) to engage here, and I say this only in passing. It is also worth note in passing that God may not only speak to Christians or through Christianity. It is my very dear hope he does not limit his love and grace solely to those who have heard of his son. Frankly, I don't know. The missional nature of the early Christians clearly must be the continuing model; beyond that only God can see.

And now here I arrive where I have been headed all along. I could have marked an asterisk at the top of this essay and said that anyone too busy (or bored) to continue with the whole thing might as well scroll down to this spot. For here it is:

Whatever we are, whatever we come from and however we got here, Jesus lived and died, spoke and acted within our race. The historical fact of Jesus, the literary fact of the gospels, these must be reckoned with. These questions cannot be denied a thorough hearing. They cannot be written off as just another set of erroneous religious questions to be laughed off in the glorious light of empirical science. The gospels, despite repeated and even brilliant attempts, do not appear to have been cleanly dismissed into the same category as Homer and Hesiod.

And here, continued reading of the gospels and N.T. Wright's persistent scholarship are slowly nudging me away from my own skepticism.

I have been willing to consider on the Jesus question, at times at least, along with many before and beside me, that we don't really know if Jesus said much of anything we find in the gospels. The resurrection probably happened, the disciples certainly must have believed it, but the work required to evaluate ancient history, and from biased sources no less, is beyond the tools of historians. I question this more and more. I have also considered, with others before me and beside me, that the disciples fantasized, in some form, the resurrection appearances and then, eventually, by some means or other, produced fictionalized gospel traditions within their communities, including the resurrection and empty tomb stories and the miraculous accounts. I believe this less and less. (Faith, I think, can co-exist along with such hypotheses).

What, in briefest terms, grabs me in the gospels and in Wright's work on the synoptics?

Here I must end part one; I already have much written below this which will become 'part two'. When I have more time, I will throw up what are my honest reactions and assessments. They won't be thorough. I have as many significant questions right now as I do signficant answers. I can only scratch the barest surface of Wright's work. But it will be a start. For no matter what I hear about evolution or the monkey nature of human beings, about the bio-chemical nature of human consciousness, or more difficult, about the problem of human death and disease, the aparently random nature of life and death on this planet, the gospels and their Christ must still be engaged at the literary and historic level, at the human level, and engaged closely.