I've been reading through "The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking" Fr James V. Schall S.J., and I have found it to be nearly as delightful as his "On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs." One thing which I drew from The Life of the Mind is a sense of paradox in the process of education. It is good to have good teachers--but then the purpose of a teacher is to make the student not need the teacher. The purpose of the mind is to come to know and contemplate truth--but by its natural powers of reason it cannot discover the highest truths without the aide of revelation. Learning truth is good--but some truths can be learned too early. Such are among the paradoxes which Prof. Schall presents throughout this book.

Note: This is the third installment on a long-dormant series of posts in which I reflect upon various heresies. Today's subject is cynicism; the modern cynic often tends to combine one or more formal heresies, or more broadly to reject three important ideas: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. I should add as a final note that I am here reflecting upon modern cynics, which are loosely based on the cynics described by Fr George Rutler in his essay for Disorientation: How to Go to College without Losing Your Mind, and not necessarily as the Greek philosophers such as Diogenes and Antisthenes (though these do have some things in common).
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"Jesus answered: My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would certainly strive that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now my kingdom is not from hence. Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. Pilate saith to him: What is truth? And when he said this, he went out again to the Jews, and saith to them: I find no cause in him" (John 18:36-38).

As a general rule, heresy involves taken a single true doctrine or set of true doctrines and either rejecting them or overemphasizing them to the detriment of all other doctrines. Today's heresy, however, is not a heresy in the proper and particular sense, but rather is a type of attitude which lends itself to heresy, and indeed is a more vague kind of heresy. In fact, in a certain sense, it is an attitude adopted along with certain other attitudes or heresies, upon whose shoulders it stands. Cynicism might be described as the combinations of modernity (and post-modernity), moral relativism, and iconoclasm with a decided--indeed even and intentional--lack of charity.

I've started reading through Mortimer J Adler's How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization (edited by Mr Max Weismann), and I am struck by his insights into ideas which ought to be almost common-sense, and yet which are largely overlooked, ignored, or forgotten today. The book itself is not necessarily meant to be read in any broad order*--there are some chapters which are clearly sequels to each other--but Mr Weismann did a good job in arranging it so that the first topic addressed is Truth and the Second is Opinion.

I really don't have a lot to say about Intelligent Design. They've brought up some interesting critiques of evolution as a purely natural phenomenon, but I don't think that theirs conclusions necessarily follow. That is to say, I do not think that just because a theory has some holes in it now does not mean those holes will never be filled, even filled with purely natural evidence and theory. In any case, I basically agree with Professor Stephen Barr when he says (with my emphases):
The self-styled Intelligent Design (or "ID") movement says that while evolution may have happened the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random genetic mutations is not adequate to explain it. In particular, the ID people point to the great complexity of life, especially at the cellular level. If they are right, that would be very interesting, as it would almost force one to invoke miraculous intervention by God to explain many of the facts of biology. It would give us a slam-dunk proof for the existence of God. I, for one, would be very happy about that.

But are they right in saying that the Darwinian mechanism is inadequate to explain biological complexity? Most biologists, including most of those who are devout Christian believers, doubt it very strongly. And even if the ID people are right, it will be virtually impossible to prove that they are right because they are asserting a negative. They are saying that no Darwinian explanation of certain complex structures will ever be forthcoming. Well, there may not exist such an explanation now, but there might exist one later. So, in practice, I don't see a slam-dunk proof for miraculous intervention in evolution as coming out of this movement.

A topic of discussion which has come up a few times between my friends and I is the idea of "cultural literacy." Loosely defined, cultural literacy means that the culture has a broad enough familiarity with the "great" works of the past that the average (or average educated) member of the culture can recognize these works. This means a familiarity with the Great Ideas as conveyed by media such as books, art, or even music. Most people are still at least somewhat familiar with the Bible, though few know much about Dante and Milton and Chaucer, or Homer and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, or Saints Athanasias, Augustine, or Thomas Aquinas, or Plato and Aristotle and Boethius (to pick a few examples); we may recognize the Mona Lisa or the David, but not the Dispute over the Eucharist or the Pieta. About this latter work of art, Fr George Rutler had this to say in his essay about Cynicism, written for Disorientation:

The Catholic scholars who formed the first great universities of Europe did so in the same age that popularized the image of the "Pieta" showing the Lady with Divine Wisdom on her lap. She reverences her own Son, whose divine Person existed before her. There is not much for students to sing about if they do not understand that.

Note: To participate in the "study" pillar of Dominican life, the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (North Austin/Round Rock) chapter of Lay Dominicans in the Southern (US) Province is currently reading The Dominican Tradition: Spirituality in History one chapter at a time, with one member presenting a reflection of the chapter during the meeting. This last meeting was my turn to present, and the chapter was on Saint Thomas Aquinas. Here then is my reflection.

Saint Thomas Aquinas was quite possibly the greatest thinker who ever lived. There are few philosophers either inside of Christianity or outside of it who can claim to rival the breadth or depth of his intellect. He came into the world during one of the more perilous and more tumultuous times of the Church--though I supposed that it could be argued that there have been few if any ages which were not perilous, tumultuous, or in general fraught with challenges to the Faith.

I was reading one of Plato Socratic Dialogues—Phaedo--when I had a sort of epiphany. The section I was reading was the dialogue between Socrates and those present at his death, most notably Cebes, regarding the immortality of the soul. Socrates, incidentally, is portrayed as having a very dualistic (or even Manichaean) view of the body and the soul: a philosophy which he shared with his student Plato.

In the course of this discussion, Socrates argues that death is a good thing because it frees the soul from the body in which it was effectively imprisoned. An effect of that imprisonment is that the soul is hindered in the pursuit of wisdom and of truth:

Doctor Stephen Hawking's latest book is set to be released soon, and with much fanfare. There's no surprise here, given how well-received was his last major work, A Brief History of Time, written nearly a quarter of a century ago. Although I have heard relatively little about the book--beyond that it was in the process of being written--there is one detail which has been widely disseminated, perhaps even by Dr Hawking himself.

The Setting

There are lies, there are damned lies, and then there’s the kind of thing reported by the mainstream media. I am referring here to three cases of sexual abuse, in neither of which is implicated the Holy Father, but both of which are constantly mentioning said Supreme Pontiff. The first is the case of the priest—Fr Peter Hullerman, sometimes referred to as “priest H.”—who sexually abused minors while serving in the Archdiocese of Munich. At the time, the archbishop of that diocese was Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). The second is the so-called Murphy Case, involving s priest in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, involving Fr Lawrence Murphy, who was accused (though never formally convicted) of molesting up to 200 children. The third and final case is a lawsuit one launched in Kentucky which “seeks to have the pope deposed over claims that the Holy See was negligent in failing to report abuse claims.”

It is of the utmost interest that justice be done in regards to all of the child abuse cases. People of good conscience can agree on that point in good faith, and can agree that the people who are directly involved can and should be prosecuted. The scandals themselves are widespread geographically (though everywhere involved only a very small number of the clergy—about 4% in the US by one account, and as small as 0.3% by another), and some occurred as recently as 20 years ago. Because of the sensitive nature of these cases, they ought to be dealt with both fairly and justly, being careful to separate those guilty of abuse from those not guilty, and those who actually harbored these molesters from those members of the hierarchy who were not involved in any cover-ups.

Unfortunately, this is not the approach taken by the mainstream media. These are much more interested in forming a witch-hunt, both against the Church writ large and against the Pope himself. Unfortunately, the negative effects of this media frenzy are already being felt here in the states, as people’s favorability of the Holy Father is dropping. The Holy Father, for his part, is scarcely implicated in these despicable deeds.

I just got out of this weeks Atomic, Molecular, and Optical physic seminar; often the seminar deals with topics directly related to AMO physics (obviously), though we do usually have one or more out-of-department, out-of-field speakers each semester. Today was such a day, and we welcomed Professor Michael Webber of the Mechanical Engineering department. Professor Webber came to speak to us a bit about alternative energies technologies, a fascinating topic to be sure. He certainly gave a good talk--focusing largely on the technological hurdles which must be overcome for a number of potential energy sources. The talk itself was somewhat controversial--there was plenty of lively discussion and argument during the seminar and its question and answer session. Much of the argument centered on the use of wind energy (we've had another talk here recently in which the professor argued that wind is not the final answer, and that it is not a very effective solution for much of Texas in general).