Starting at Go

For a world dominated by movements related to education, progress, pluralism, technology, economics, work and science as is our current world, I was arrested by the statement of Clancy Martin in The Atlantic magazine: Philosophers eager to write for popular audiences are finding readers who want answers science can’t offer.  How many times have I heard/read a similar statement, and made it myself?  It is an old concern for mankind – that knowledge and understanding of nature do not meet all our needs for meaning and truth.  Those concerned with ideas from beyond nature are often presumed to be superstitious, death-fearing, weak thinkers, perhaps exotic/mthical about this or that.  Admittedly there are some Christians beyond their depth in the controversies of their times – beginnings and endings, life and death, known and unknown, natural and supernatural, and the like.  Who isn’t drowning intellectually beyond their depth in some issues?  Sincere authors in every field present both good and faulty narratives.

Martin caught an important point, wisely I believe, in quoting Soren Kierkegaard who wrote: Whatever the one generation may learn from the other, that which is genuinely human no generation learns from the foregoing . . . thus. . . No generation has learned to love, no generation begins at any other point than at the beginning, no generation has a shorter task assigned to it than had the previous generation.  I believe the statement needs embellishment.  Each person (life climber) must take the same steps from his/her beginning to intellectual awareness, shift and move forward from context to context at the speed he or she can bear – and the speeds change in shifting motivations for persons.  Some are sprightly and some lag.  There are other factors to be considered such as opportunity, culture, conditions, and the list lengthens. My children had to begin at ground zero, and somewhere along the line of years (within or beyond my own span) catch up to me or even pass me on the track that for each had the same starting point – even though at different time-period points.  They may take (learn) from my life race delays I had, so to improve their own race, or miss them and include more lengthy delays.  They choose or refuse the affirmatives and negatives in their context.  But the contexts are theirs.  I may exult or despair in their choices, but the relationship of love, duty, respect, relationship remains.  Each is to God as no other, but with the same objectives to God.

I work at trying to find truth both in daily life (natural) and divine (spiritual).  I am firm in my belief in both the natural and supernatural life in the experience of the Christian.  Although there is much overlap between the two dimensions there are also differences.  Animals live in the same nature context as human beings.  Mice and rats serve as specimens for research in solving human health problems.  Scientists and philosophers sometimes say we human beings are simply elevated animals because of our ability to reflect intellectually (sophisticated brain) and are self-conscious which is also brain centered.  The Christian finds the image of God in that which is significantly above animal status in the progressive human being.  In this mankind is more than the sophisticated animal, so dominating virtually all other biology contexts.

Clancy Martin, author of the article, Playing With Plato, writes about the issues between biology and philosophy.  He is eager to defend philosophy.  A problem relates to modern belief in progress.  Change has been so great we should not be held prisoners of ancient sources – including the Bible.  A progressive society want to live by modern codes.  Martin is taken by Rebecca Goldstein’s book: Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away.  She believes that our themes were introduced in the ancients: Democritus (atom), Aristotle (biology), Ionian philosophers (scientific method), and the list lengthens, especially for theology.  Intellectual elders remain with us.  As Martin casts it: . . . the most difficult and most human problems don’t change that much.  It is an orientation of those who believe that every person must start at similar starting points, and take similar strides.  I am currently reading a book that summarizes biographies of twenty philosophers – spanning 2500 years. The authors claim that each started at similar points searching ideas, wrestling with similar problems.