Post No. 18

Today I’m at home, down with a feverish cold of all things. That Beecham Flu Plus works wonders, I tell you. But then again, it could just be the placebo effect.

I’m sure you couldn’t be bothered with my state of health, so I’ll skip to the juicy bits.

I’ve been reading miles of column inches of drivel (pro and con to be fair) about divorce and abortion (as unrelated as the topics are to each other!) . I will not tackle the issues per se here because

a) it is not my place

b) there are persons  far better suited than I for the job

Suffice it to say that I am (try to be, rather) a practising Catholic and I can see the logic behind the Church’s stance (as explained in the Catechism) on the issues.

What interests me here is the methods used by either side of the divide. In a nutshell, the “popular” debate (i.e. what is being written on the blogs and in the newspapers) has become a ramming match. It is easy to see why.

The pro-divorce’s (and pro-abortion’s) corner is utilitarian and, I dare say, based on poorly-disguised solipsism. Life is now, what came before is water under the bridge and what’s still to come doesn’t exist so it’s not there. No argument, however brilliant or convincing, can sway such a frame of mind.

Then there’s the other corner: the anti-divorce and anti-abortion people. These should be arguing from the premise of the sanctity of marriage and that life is a gift from God. I think that when they fling about statistics borrowed from other countries they’re doing themselves a disservice.

How can you scientifically quantify the magnitude of social ills directly caused by divorce? How sure can you be that you have managed to effectively isolate cause and effect? I remember reading once a study – scientific, mind – claiming that wine is a better stress reducer than beer. A few weeks later a party-pooper asked whether or not it could be possible that rather than the drink reducing the stress, it was a matter of life style, i.e. people with a low-stress life-style have a propensity for wine and people who plump for beer are on average more highly strung individuals. There was a bit of thumb-twiddling and “uhm-ah”-ing all round and that was that. Same goes for studies trying to show the ghastliness of divorce and abortion. The conclusions can be easily shot down with a few well-placed questions.

Sometimes you hear the argument that countries where divorce has been introduced are reviewing the situation and are looking into ways to turn back the clock. Fine. But what is their motivation for doing so? I don’t know, but probably it’s got something to do with expenditure on welfare. Can we directly relate this expenditure to the existence of divorce?

The above points of view are smashed against each other innumerable times with nobody emerging as the clear winner. Obviously.

If you’re going to argue against divorce and against abortion it’s probably because you believe in the sanctity of marriage and in life as a gift from God. You can’t support these arguments by data and statistics coming from social scientists. It’s illogical. All you can say is that God gave us clear guidelines on how to live our life and then left us free to follow them (or not). At the end of the day it’s a matter of faith. Of course this won’t wash with a non-believing crowd.

If I believed in divorce no amount of statistics would make me say “hmmm … perhaps divorce isn’t so great after all”. If I think that a woman has a right to kill her unborn child no study on earth would make me think otherwise.

On the other hand, if people who, out of religious and moral conviction militate against divorce and abortion lead exemplary lives all across the board then their behaviour might just make others sit up and listen …

Toodle-oo.

 

Post No. 17

Archbishop Paul Cremona’s contribution (in the Times of Malta) to the “divorce debate” is impressive. Let me explain. In his piece he gives some suggestions on how to strengthen the family and how the  family is perceived – outside looking in, sort of.

It is obvious that he is combatting divorce, but the beauty of the piece is that he wisely does not tackle the issue by trying to rubbish divorce. He does not even say that he’s tackling the issue, as it were. His ideas, if followed, could significantly strengthen families. And that is his strategy: strengthen marriages and families so that they will think less about looking for pastures greener. Think of it as “customer loyalty” if you wish. If we’re satisfied with a brand we don’t go round looking for something better. I think that he’s saying that the same goes for marriage. If you have a strong marriage and a fulfilling family life, you will do your utmost to keep them in the best of health.

Strangely, he doesn’t mention Christ or the Church anywhere in this piece, neither. What’s going on? How can a Catholic bishop go on about family and marriage without dropping any of the C-words? And this is precisely the impressive bit. If you go through the piece you’ll notice that it is jam-packed with practical day-to-day advice that anyone – irrespective of what they believe (or don’t) – can follow and obtain good results in so doing.

On the  other hand you cannot reasonably expect an Archbishop of the Catholic Church to say something with a whiff of godlessness. So what’s going on here?

The themes in the piece are love and education. Love is also the essence of being Catholic, but stated as such it is very easy to miss the wood for the trees. Astutely, Archbishop Cremona has built his suggestions around love without once alluding to it as the quintessential Catholic virtue. Not that he is ashamed to do so, mind you. But his strategy has shown the common-sense value of central Catholic principles.

It’s a pity that people associate the words “Catholic Church” with various unsavoury practices. It’s an illogical extrapolation, if you ask me. A bit like shooting the messenger before listening to the message. If we were to concentrate on what the Catholic Church teaches (and not allow our effort to be diverted by a few costly mistakes of some misguided members) we might all learn something.

Remember the elephant.

Toodle-oo.

 

Post no.16 (Divorced from Reality)

I bet you thought this was going to be about the Great Divorce Debate (Malta) … Actually, no.

I went to Mass last Friday (15th August, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven). During the sermon the priest said something that stuck to my mind like chewing gum to a shoe . I forgot the exact words he used, but the gist was that Mary, Our Lady, accepted to do what God asked of her without quibbling.

Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to do whatever he wants. May everything you said come true.” And then the angel disappeared. Luke 1:38

I will not go into the religious implications of the event here; it is not my place. I will point out the underpinning concept, however: blind faith.

Blind faith, these days, is considered the domain of optimists and simpletons. The identifying factor of these two groups is: Divorced from Reality.

We are living in the second enlightenment. Don’t believe what you’re told. Do what suits you. See for yourself. If it’s not measurable it probably doesn’t ( or shouldn’t ) exist. Of course that doesn’t stop us from devouring every episode of Most Haunted, but that’s beside the point.

Faith – removed from its usual religious context – is a belief that is not based on fact; trust, if you will, but a bit broader. “I’ll believe it when I see it” is the opposite of faith – and trust.

Faith, you’ll be forgiven for thinking, is the enemy of science. God forbid scientists just had blind faith in their hypotheses and left it at that, without testing them. And it’s a good thing, too. Just look at the huge difference (to the better, of course) science has made to our lives. We have mobile phones, laptops, better medicine … you name it, science has given it to us. All this without us having to resort to faith. Science doesn’t make untestable claims, does it? If it did surely someone would point it out …Well, we can’t actually confirm every claim, can we? But if science has proven dependable in some of its “utterances”, we have no reason to doubt the others we can’t test…

Our assumption is based on taking someone else’s word. We have to trust them – believe what they say, in other words. But doesn’t that constitute a leap of faith too? We have made science our new belief system. As far as we are concerned, the contents of conventional faith-based systems (i.e. religions) and science are equally verifiable – or not. We dismiss belief in “unknowable” quantities as inadequate yet we substitute that with belief in another set of unknowable quantities.

The nature of the contents differs, of course, but that would be the subject of another post

Toodle-oo

 

Post no. 13

I remember reading a thought experiment called The Invisible Gardener from a book called The Pig that wants to be eaten while clearing the sofa to make the room look nice-ish. (It’s amazing how interesting newspapers and magazines become when you’re throwing them away or clearing out). The “experiment” goes something like this:

Livingstone and Stanley were sitting behind a bush in a clearing in a forest. The clearing looked like a well-kept garden. They had been observing it for two weeks but they hadn’t seen anyone tend to it. Livingstone was maintaining that the clearing was tended by an invisible and intangible gardener who works without anyone knowing. Stanley wanted to know what was the difference between an invisible and intangible gardener and no gardener at all.

Baggini (the author of The Pig) remarks that Stanley’s and Livingstone’s argument can be applied to the existence – or not – of God.

That the existence of God – even of a god at all – be debated is interesting. “Some say tom-ah-toes, some say tom-ay-toes” sort of thing. This dichotomy has reared its head quite often in the past and in its present guise the fork in the road is represented by scientism and religionism (no surprises there).

“Scientism” is generally used pejoratively to mean that all of reality is composed of empirically verifiable physical effects with physical causes- also presumably empirically verifiable. “Religionism” tells us that God exists and consequently all progress – in every field – must be interpreted in the light of this reality.

Who’s right and who’s wrong?

The issue reminds me a bit of Descartes. (Descartes believed in the existence of God so I know I’m not talking about the exact same problem here). The way I see it, his tussle with the dualism of mind and matter runs parallel to the religionism vs scientism match. At the end of the day he came up with a compromise between the two (i.e. mind and matter). He said that mind and matter inhabit two parallel but independent worlds that can be studied without reference to each other… neat sidestep.
Fast forward to more recent times. Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss half-jokingly told a conference, that included theologians, that he didn’t have to listen to them (theologians) because for theology to make any sense it must take into account what cosmologists have found to be true about the universe. Cosmologists, on the other hand, don’t need theologians.

What’s all this got to do with anything?

I think that I can compare Krauss’s cosmology and Descartes matter with a picture. You can study the picture or admire it or even buy it. You don’t need to know anything about how the picture came to be. For all we care the picture made itself. And this is where I see a second comparison. Krauss’s theology, Descartes’s mind and how the picture came to be.

There is a clear demarcation between the picture and the creativity behind it, mind and matter, cosmology and theology. You can touch matter, cosmology is an empirical science, the picture is there for everybody to see. The defining property of these three objects is that they can be somehow measured. The other three – mind, theology and the creativity behind the picture are a bit like Livingstone’s invisible gardener.

I cannot fathom why some people have to talk about the incompatibility of science and religion. If anything I dare say that they are highly compatible as they both claim to be chasing reality – or the truth. In science a set of techniques is used. In religion another set of techniques is used. You use a trawling net to catch tuna and you use a harpoon to catch a whale.

Remember the elephant.

Toodle-oo.