Saint Catherine of the Wheel

In the liturgical calendar, today is one of my favorite feast days of the year, the Feast of Queen St. Catherine, Virgin and Great Martyr of Alexandria, patron saint of philosophers (and students and young women). As the Orthodox might say,

Let us praise the most auspicious bride of Christ, the divine Katherine, protectress of Sinai, our aid and our help. For, she brilliantly silenced the eloquence of the impious by the sword of the spirit, and now, crowned as a martyr, she asks great mercy for all.

My first year of blogging I celebrated with a St. Catherine's Day Pageant. And here's a version of the poem I wrote to celebrate the occasion:

The Triumph of St. Catherine

Behold the worldy-wise bent down,
the brilliance of the earthly minds,
the best of all the men who know,
all brought to shame, refuted all,
all answered with the purest truth
and conquered by a woman's word!

The vestige of the Spirit's power,
its print upon the sands of time,
is here, the maid, the queen who knows,
who overcomes the present age,
the darkness in high places!

They seek to break, the rack they bring,
to torture truth to fit their whims;
the rack she breaks. She overcomes!
God bless Queen Catherine, Spirit-wise!

They seek to burn, to turn to ash,
to make as nothing Gospel truth;
they set the virgin on the wood
and light the flame - she does not burn.
The flames can only purify,
but in God's love she is most pure.
God bless Maid Catherine, Spirit-wise!

Behold the godless Caesar's host
of answer-men and scholars wise,
all wordly men who serve the gods
of lucre, politics, and death,
bent down and puzzled by this truth:
The maiden, Church-like in her faith,
cannot be broken, cannot burn!

They bring the sword to pierce her soul,
it enters in her tender side
and blood flows out as with Christ -
she is a witness in her death,
she mimics Him in sacrifice,
a martyr true attesting truth.
The blood by which she lives flows out,
and she is born amid the pangs
of Christ who births us on the Cross
into His everlasting life!

All are silent, overcome,
uncertain what they saw that day:
the truth could not be made to break,
the truth could not be made to burn,
and blood itself, from stigma pierced,
seemed to witness to God's truth.

The vestige of the Spirit's power,
its print upon these changing sands,
is here, the maid, the queen who knows,
who overcomes the present age,
the darkness in the highest places!
She has the martyr's palm in hand -
God bless Saint Catherine, Spirit-wise!

Faith

There has been some discussion in the blogosphere of Pinker's recent essay on faith and reason in the Harvard Crimson. In the course of the discussion he says:

Second, the juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like “faith” and “reason” are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith—believing something without good reasons to do so—has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these. Imagine if we had a requirement for "Astronomy and Astrology" or "Psychology and Parapsychology." It may be true that more people are knowledgeable about astrology than about astronomy, and it may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose it with astronomy, if only for the false appearance of symmetry.

I find the attempt to claim that 'faith' means 'believing something without good reasons to do so' very peculiar. As Alan Rhoda notes, it's not our colloquial sense of the term; it's not the way the term is used as a technical or quasi-technical term in theology. Aquinas considers faith to be the disposition to believe, understand as thinking with assent that is firm but not certain; e.g., we don't know what some good authority tells us is true, but we believe it because they are a good authority. Indeed, Aquinas explicitly insists that there are reasons for belief; they are the reasons inducing us to believe rather than merely suspect or opine. Many people, like Martin Luther, consider faith to be a sort of trust; and they would deny that it is baseless trust. Luther, for instance, explicitly tells us that we must first know of the mercy of God on good report, and that it is based on good reasons, namely, divine promises. Calvin says that having faith is having a constant assurance or complete confidence; in his metaphors, it is 'planting one's foot' or resting on a sure foundation. Nothing in any of this about believing without good reason. From what I understand of Islam, faith (iman) is usually taken to mean something like 'internal affirmation or acceptance of the claims of a good authority'; perfect iman is unreserved affirmation or acceptance of divine authority. And none of this seems particularly surprising or difficult to find out. So this whole trope -- faith is believing without good reasons -- seems odd. But I've come across it many times recently. What are the reasons for it? Or is this just another form of thinking by way of unexamined cliché?

(Incidentally, even setting this aside, Pinker slips up in the above argument by eliding the distinction between "ways of knowing" and things we are "knowledgeable about". Are we talking about ways of knowing, or are we talking about the objects of knowledge? The two can't be treated the same. Much better than this, his second argument, are his first and third arguments, which don't fall into this confusion. Since I don't have access to the report itself, which doesn't seem to be online yet, I don't know if the report has the same confusion.)

The Rigid Wise and Pyles o' Caff

I have been greatly amused by a recent dust-up at ScienceBlogs, and some of satellite weblogs, over the proper way to approach public education over evolution; Mike Dunford gives a summary of it with reasonable commentary, and John Lynch tries to remind people of common ground. As some have noted, this sort of argument really doesn't get anyone anywhere. It seems to me that some people on both sides would really do well to remember that, as it is with the Rigid Righteous, so it is with the Rigid Wise; and those congratulating themselves on their own superior rationality might be benefitted by reflecting a bit on Burns's "Address to the Unco Guid":

My Son, these maxims make a rule,
An' lump them aye thegither;
The Rigid Righteous is a fool,
The Rigid Wise anither:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight
May hae some pyles o' caff in;
So ne'er a fellow creature slight
For random fits o' daffin.
Solomon.--Eccles. ch. vii. verse 16


O ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours' fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water;
The heapèd happer's ebbing still,
An' still the clap plays clatter.

Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals
That frequent pass douce Wisdom's door
For glaikit Folly's portals:
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes,
Would here propone defences--
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
Their failings and mischances.

Ye see your state wi' theirs compared,
And shudder at the niffer;
But cast a moment's fair regard,
What makes the mighty differ?
Discount what scant occassion gave,
That purity ye pride in;
And (what's aft mair than a' the lave)
Your better art o' hidin.

Think, when your castigated pulse
Gies now and then a wallop,
What ragings must his veins convulse,
That still eternal gallop!
Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail,
Right on ye scud your sea-way;
But in the teeth o' baith to sail,
It maks a unco lee-way.

See Social Life and Glee sit down,
All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmugrified, they're grown
Debauchery and Drinking:
O would they stay to calculate
Th' external consequences;
Or your more dreaded hell to state
Damnation of expenses!

Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames,
Tied up in godly laces,
Before ye gie poor Frailty names,
Suppose a change o' cases;
A dear-lov'd lad, convenience snug,
A treach'rous inclination--
But let me whisper i' your lug,
Ye're aiblins nae temptation.

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human;
One point must still be greatly dark,--
The moving Why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark,
How far perhaps they rue it.

Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord, its various tone,
Each spring, its various bias:
Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.

I know by experience that the poetic rendition of the Preacher's sage saying is always worth repeating a few times whenever a quarrel arises; we always need to be reminded not to slight our fellow creatures for things that we consider to be "pyles o' caff" and "fits o' daffin'".

An Ecosystem Game

A little game I came across, to play with the TTLB Ecosystem:

Date Game Was Played: 23 November 2006

Ecosystem Rank (at that time): 4406 (Flappy Bird)

Blogs in the Top Fifty Places of My Category that I Have Read (at least occasionally):
scriptygoddess
scribblingwoman
Cronaca

The Blog Ten Places Higher: 4396 - Photon Courier

The Blog Ten Places Lower: 4416 - One Child Left Behind

Blogs Within Twenty Places (Higher or Lower) that I Have Read (at least occasionally):
Geeky Mom
Triablogue

The Blog One Hundred Places Higher (if any): 4306 - No Oil for Pacifists

The Blog One Hundred Places Lower: 4506 - TKS on National Review Online

The Blog One Thousand Places Higher (if any): 3406 - Patriot's Corner

The Blog One Thousand Places Lower: 5406 - Ian's Messy Desk

Slifkin on ID

Rabbi Natan Slifkin recently had a good op-ed on the Intelligent Design Movement in the Jersualem Post. The article is behind a subscription wall, although you can read the abstract for free. The final paragraph of the essay encapsulates nicely a problem I had with the theistic enthusiasm for the movement from the very beginning:

Either God is everywhere or He is nowhere. But He is certainly not limiting His appearance in the universe to the bacterial flagellum and the blood-clotting system.

Slifkin, an Orthodox rabbi, is the director of Zoo Torah, which is devoted to educating people both about the animal kingdom and the Jewish attitude toward it. I regularly get emails about Slifkin's essays, and I've always enjoyed reading them; there are several available on the site.

'We ought in all things to give thanks....'

Since November 23rd this year is both American Thanksgiving and the feast of Clement of Rome, this passage from First Clement (ch. 38) seems very fitting:

So in our case let the whole body be saved in Christ Jesus, and let each man be subject unto his neighbour, according as also he was appointed with his special grace. Let not the strong neglect the weak; and let the weak respect the strong. Let the rich minister aid to the poor; and let the poor give thanks to God, because He hath given him one through whom his wants may be supplied. Let the wise display his wisdom, not in words, but in good works. He that is lowly in mind, let him not bear testimony to himself, but leave testimony to be borne to him by his neighbour. He that is pure in the flesh, let him be so, and not boast, knowing that it is Another who bestoweth his continence upon him. Let us consider, brethren, of what matter we were made ; who and what manner of beings we were, when we came into the world; from what a sepulchre and what darkness He that moulded and created us brought us into His world, having prepared His benefits aforehand ere ever we were born.

Seeing therefore that we have all these things from Him, we ought in all things to give thanks to Him, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Bulverism

Today Anglicans have a sort of feast-day for C.S. Lewis, who died on this day in 1963. So it seems fitting to post a passage from him. This is from one of his classic essays, "Bulverism" (of which, alas, we only have part in full, and the rest in notes taken down at a meeting of the Socratic Club where the paper was read), which can be found in God in the Dock.

In other words, you must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became to be so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it "Bulverism." Some day I am going the write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father - who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third - "Oh, you say that because you are a man." "At that moment," E. Bulver assures us, "there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall." That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.