I’ve been thinking about the method of scientific inquiry a lot lately, mostly due to my other post about scientists. I came to a conclusion that sums up why a postmodern is right in saying the idealism of modernism (or science specifically) is doomed to leave us holding the ball without really making life better for everyone (like moderns susposedly believe).
The problem is in asking the basic questions of science or journalism, which is WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and sometimes HOW (or always HOW in science’s case). In science, specifically, you are concerned with WHAT, WHY, and HOW as your primary problems, and then WHEN, WHERE, and WHO are used to determine the WHY and the HOW for your WHAT. The WHO is irrelevant, unless that person or thing has a trait that your are exploiting (same goes for the WHERE and the WHEN, but I’m interested in WHO today)….but that thing in the experiment which you are testing, or the hypothesis you are proving, is the WHAT, not the WHO. In fact, your goal is to describe WHAT with your WHY and HOW, so that you can apply it to any WHO-ever, WHEN-ever, and WHERE-ever, i.e. if you have a good WHY and HOW, you can always get the WHAT you desire.
Enter postmodernism, all this is important, but the emphasis goes back to WHO, WHEN, and WHERE. WHY, falls by the wayside, and WHAT is close behind (thats right, I’m criticising the lack of accountability and relativism inherent in postmodernism). HOW is still important sometimes.
This is good I think, especially in terms of Christianity. In Christianity, WHO is always more important than anything else. WHO is number one, Jesus was more concerned with WHO than anything else. Second he was concerned with WHEN and WHERE as a subset of HOW. As in “How much time are you spending, and how are you spending that time.” Finally it was WHAT he could do for them, while spending time with them.
All this came from the holidays, because it seems like the holidays force us to try to see family. All jammed packed into short periods of time. Really all we need is a large quanity of time, not a focused / forced memory time centered around presents. It is like each time you are with family you should treat it somewhat like it is a holiday. This is because to make memories, especially the most special memories, you don’t need to focus on a what (holiday or big ticket event like a wedding) you need every week small groups where you share yourself. You need super-bowl parties, drinking / eating after church, football games, food give-aways, etc. You get the point. WHERE should equal, as many places as possible. And WHEN should equal, as much as possible. This is how relationships really work, not just on holidays.
That is some of what I think modernism inherently loses. Now, postmodernism has it’s own failings, and that is usually the focus drifting away from WHO you are becoming in WHAT you are doing to something along the lines of WHO do feel you are, and subsequently less good stuff gets done and everyone loses sight of goals…but that is a generalization, and there is something else I want to talk about.
Finally the WHO that becomes important in our lives is WHO are we, and WHOse are we. WHO are we when we are by ourselves, HOW do we spend that time (WHEN and WHERE) doing WHAT? HOW do we spend time doing WHAT when we are with other people.
All this to say I’ve been thinking, in a round about way, about WHO I am. I sorta realized that is what I’ve been struggling with because of some things
Why bother pressing this point? Because I am spending a lot of time praying and thinking about you lately. And there seems to me to be one big skewed thing that is driving you crazy. You are trying with all your might to answer the question “Who am I?”
And you use two things to try to answer that question: your degree, and your experience in the church. And because you are a bold, thoughtful, extroverted person, I watch you try with all your might to be an expert on all things scientific and all things churchly. I am convinced that you will be a happier person, a more competent engineer, and a more satisfied church member if you just let yourself be defined by the fact that God loves you, and your wife loves you, and people around you love you. You don’t have to prove to me how smart you are. You don’t have to show how much you know about church. You don’t have to fix computers or know theology or grow a church or fix your in-laws or anything. Just chill out and be loved. It will make your life so much simpler.
When life flows form the core truth that we are loved and accepted by God, you can live freely and openly. You can stop clenching on to things, you can stop gritting your teeth, stop trying to do better and get other people to do better. You can just live. Ben, I want for you to simply be able to live openly and freely, instead of grasping so hard.
So, this ment a whole lot to me, and is something I’ll cherish for a long time. Here is why.
1. I didn’t know that was what I was doing (trying to figure out “who am I”) until the night before he sent me this, and even then I only had a vauge idea of that from Lauren’s and I’s conversation. This brought it more to a head, and phrased it in a more concrete way.
2. I can’t make myself WHO I want to be in the church, and in this life if it isn’t what God wants me to be. No struggling or grasping will do that. Grasping on to everything I have that I see as an asset is not exactly what I need to be doing. Instead I should be asking “What do I see God highlighting in my life, what is he saying about my life?” and “How do other people see God highlighting my life, and when they pray about me what does God tell them?” The odd part is that I never stopped doing this, but I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to answer me. Now I think maybe I just needed more patience, and still need more patience.
3. Sometimes I don’t feel like I fit in around here. I think it is because I’ve always had a tight-nit group of friends who are similar in some ways. Around here I have a good group of friends, we just don’t share the odd similarities of my old group. The more I think about the last guy to really come and join our group (Rob aka
Even though I feel like I don’t fit in right now, it is because God is changing me and the people around me to fit together. No group of people who set out to start a church can fit togther automatically, and the process of growing is part of growing together. And if they did fit together they would reach only a limited number of people, and would share flaws instead of covering eachothers flaws. I had an amazing group of friends that fit together in an amazing way, and the part of me that needed to grow with that comfort is grown, and that period is over. Only this new trial by fire can (being without the comfort of my like-minded group) can I truely move on to the next place God wishes me to grow in. It would seem in most peoples estimation, specifically Jeff’s as I referenced here and my wifes, that I am attempting to force myself through this change when I need to only endure and seek God in it, and by seeking God I need to relax more into the people around me and learn to accept the love he offers.
4. He is offering that love, even when I don’t feel like it, or know how to feel it. I know this because my friends do pray for me and think about me, at least as much as I pray for them (and most likely more). Sometimes that is easy to forget, especailly when I’m in a mood and causing conflict for no real reason other than to cause conflict. It is hard to see myself as lovable when I’m feeling / acting like that.
5. I don’t know how to stop grasping at thing, desperately I try to move this annoying process of growth along. I read, I watch, I listen, I inhale knowledge and data in the pursit of finding the next answer to my questions, to be elevated to the next horizon of understanding. Using the God-given gift of system analysis I hold to the idea that I am only to take in the entirety of the parameters around me, and I should arrive at a conclusion that fits my environment and situtation. When in fact I must relax some and reside only in the knowledge that God loves me.
6. I don’t know how to feel that, or let myself feel that, which is why I cling to number 5. It seems more solid even though it is not according to my understanding of the sacrifice of Christ and the nature of God. That is a limited understanding of course, but I fear I limit myself in experiencing it because I hold onto an idea that my feeling or experiencing is limited by my ability to understand.
So, WHO am I? I’m a church-planter, I’m a husband, brother, son, and in-law, I’m someone worth praying for, I’m a friend, I’m loved, I’m a Christian, I’m someone who God will use to bring his light to others. Is much else important? So understanding the WHO is somewhat more important to me right now than my other W’s, and I hope I don’t lose that again any time soon.
rockyrockstar says
“The problem is in asking the basic questions of science or journalism, which is WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and sometimes HOW (or always HOW in science’s case). In science, specifically, you are concerned with WHAT, WHY, and HOW as your primary problems, and then WHEN, WHERE, and WHO are used to determine the WHY and the HOW for your WHAT. The WHO is irrelevant, unless that person or thing has a trait that your are exploiting (same goes for the WHERE and the WHEN, but I’m interested in WHO today)….but that thing in the experiment which you are testing, or the hypothesis you are proving, is the WHAT, not the WHO. In fact, your goal is to describe WHAT with your WHY and HOW, so that you can apply it to any WHO-ever, WHEN-ever, and WHERE-ever, i.e. if you have a good WHY and HOW, you can always get the WHAT you desire.”
Uhhh, do you think you could diagram that? Or write it as an equation or something.
I’m glad I was able to say something that was helpful to you. See ya soon
j
bigcat2k says
K,
if you have a hypothesis, or an event you want to describe, that is your WHAT
how the hypothesis is tested, or how the event re-occurs / is reproduced is your HOW or WHY depending on how you look at it. I.E. the formula that describes / models the event or hypothesis.
The object of a hypothesis in the context of what I’m talking about (especially technology and medicine) is to arrive at a method that reproduces the same results no matter the test subject. So if you pass electrons through a silicon transistor you want a HOW or WHY to describe that process that works no matter which piece of silicon you use. Or for a medical patient, it would be a procedure or medication that always worked for patients with problem x. Here the WHO is only important because it contains the WHAT. I.E. The person (who) has to have the disease (what), but your still more interested in the procedure that fixes it (the HOW or WHY).
Hope that helps.
dreum says
I’m glad you have to come to such a conclusion.
ca_chick says
Perhaps you and i are more alike than i ever before thought. #5=me. You’re a good man, Ben. It’s encouraging to hear you struggle and desire growth. Not from a Lauren’s-one-of-my-greatest-friends-and-you’d-better-not-hurt-her stance, but from a bloody-wow-he-LOVES-God-and-Lauren-more-than-i-can-imagine-and-God’s-gonna-do-incredible-works-through-him perspective. Thanks for honesty. Kinda proves you’re used by being WHO…
bigcat2k says
Well, Lauren wouldn’t fall in love with someone drastically different from her best friend I figure. And number 5 is the one that gets me the most I think…definitely a toughie, and the heart of what Jeff was getting at.
Thanks for all the nice compliments, I feel a lot the same about you. Your a super-cool person who is great fun to be around. It is cool to talk to you whenever you come to visit or when we are out there, and it is great to see Lauren enjoy her friends, especially the ones that you can tell care back.
We need to get in-n-out with you sometime next weekend when we are there for the wedding.
harambee78 says
Well, I’m a scientist, so of course I disagree that the questions science asks aren’t incredibly important for Christianity – especially the central question of science, which is WHY (HOW and WHAT are often a means to WHY, but the ultimate goal of science is always WHY). WHY is incredibly important. Without WHY, we have no sense of purpose. We may have the WHO, WHERE, and WHEN, but without WHY, there is no reason these three should concern us in the least.
In my view, it is the job of theology to clearly articulate the WHY. The process of arriving at it should be, I think, pretty close to the scientific method. Theological hypotheses about God and creation must be justified both theory-internally (so they do not conflict with other parts of the theology at hand) and externally by empirical evidence (which I limit to canonical scripture). Thus, I think it’s entirely appropriate to talk of points of theology as being “unnecessary” or “unsupported” (check out my discussion with divisionbyzero1 on his journal recently about the “need” for the doctrine of Immaculate Conception).
Anyway, I got off topic. As far as needing the WHY for loving people, we could simply say, “Jesus told us to” as many Christians do, but that’s not really an answer to the WHY, for it begs another question: “Why would Jesus tell us to?” You could answer that one similarly with “Because he was God and God is Love,” but then we could also ask “Why is God so concerned about love?” Keep asking WHY and eventually we get to more and more thoughtful questions with more and more interesting possible answers that require lots of prayer and study of scripture. Ultimately, I believe, this can lead one to a better understanding of the basic principles of how life was meant to be lived. Understanding them of course should translate to motivation to live them out and hopefully gives good reason to care deeply about the WHO, WHEN, and WHERE.
In short, I believe in the methodology of science. I actually think its the best way humans have of learning anything and being relatively sure they have learned it. Applying this method to our theories about God is entirely appropriate. It gives us ways to think about him and about life. Without such theories of God, we’re adrift in the sea of “what makes sense to us” and we have nothing to measure perceived revelation against.
bigcat2k says
As a man who believes in the methodolgy of science as well I don’t entirely disagree with you, but I have some points to raise.
1. While asking WHY can be important, or seemingly necessary for people who feel called down that mental path (like you or me for example), it is not necessary for everyone, and not often necessary for people of science. I believe that in some ways it is more difficult for a scientist to sometimes accept things of faith because of a strong desire for WHY (or HOW if modeling is more your thing, and faith doesn’t require a WHY or a HOW. Faith to me seems like the opposite of science, because it is a belief in an unseen element without facts to validate it or back it up that can be observed, tested, and retested. So while I love science it isn’t a necessity for Christianity (at least the way I see it now), it is more like a bonus.
2. Dumb people are Christians too. Dumb people don’t get the scientific method, they can’t apply it, they can’t use it, etc. God loves them, they love other people (the ones that are Christians), and because “Jesus told us to” is as good as a reason as they need. We love them despite their lack of scientific ability because they are important in WHO they are, and WHO God made them to be. No amount of WHY’s is going to validate some peoples being to me without just believing blindly that God made them as a person in this world that he loves and sees as important.
3. Empirical evidence for God around us has to include our experiences as long as our interpretation of them does not go against scripture. I love Wesleys way of saying that, but I don’t feel like looking it up right now (it is on the UMC’s website in their statement of faith). So God placing people around us, to teach us how to love and be loved is just as important as “knowing” that he loves us from reading it in scripture. Scripture, especially in Jesus ministry, focuses on what loving God looks like, and how to love eachother. The emphasis is on WHO, with loving our neighbors, loving God, and letting GOd love us.
4. Did I say that sciences quesions were incredibly unimportant? I don’t feel like re-reading my post, but if I did that isn’t exactly what I ment. I mean that science is important, and how it tackles things is important, but not as important as focusing on the people around us. To often in my life and the peoples around me I’ve seen people turn into variables in an equation. And that is no good at all, the focus has to be on the people, the church isn’t made up of a large volume of theology books, it’s made of people. So, that is what I was getting at. Not that science wasn’t important, just not as important as the people.
harambee78 says
Responding point by point:
1. Science isn’t just a calling or profession. It is a very general way of gaining knowledge. It is so ingrained in our culture now, that most people use it in some way every day. God does call us to faith, but I do not believe he calls us to blind faith. God wants us to understand why we should have faith – why we should live as he says and not some other way. That requires something like the scientific method – it requires a WHY.
2. The great thing about deduction, as Plato showed, is that anyone can do it. Absolutely anyone can do complex geometry if they are led through it step by step. Everyone can understand logic. You don’t have to be smart to use the scientific method, or to understand cause and effect, or necessity or lack thereof. Similarly, I believe everyone can understand the deepest, most complex truths of scripture if they come to it one step at a time.
3. If you are suggesting that our experience of God ADDS to the empirical evidence we can use for our theories of God, then you are saying that scripture is an incomplete picture of God. That’s a very very controversial statement – one that should not be lightly accepted. I would tend to adopt the more conservative theory that our experience of God only makes real truths that scripture already contains. This doesn’t dispense with experience, but, for purposes of theology, does make it somewhat redundant. One very useful aspect of experience, however, is that it may guide and confirm our interpretation of scriptural truth. That is also (though less) controversial.
4. I would simply note that scientists (especially physicists, I’ve noticed) are among some of the most compassionate people I’ve met. I think this is due to the centrality of WHYs in the way they see the world. When they see a bum on the street, they don’t see a failure who needs to get his act together, but they see the factors of causation that likely led to his situation. Ergo, compassion.
bigcat2k says
cool stuff
1. There are places in the Bible where we are called to a blind faith, but in other places not so much, so I imagine it depends on where you are at any given time.
2. Plato showed some very basic geometery in comparison to how complex advanced deduction and reasoning involved in make a lot of scientific inquiry. Jesus didn’t require people to understand the most advanced concepts and depths of who God was, he showed us how to be kind to eachother, and did other cool suff. I think God doesn’t need to put stock in science to make himself and his love apparent to people, and I know people who don’t understand the deepest truths, who are still amazing Christians who live very Godly lives. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t do things through science, it just means he doesn’t have to.
3. That is basically what I’m saying. To deny our experiences in life and God presence in them is not taking a look at the whole picture, not taking all evidence present into account…in more scientific terms. Controversial, yes. But mostly when taken to the point of liberalism which uses experience to deny scripture, which I don’t do, or recommend. My method is straight from Wesley.
But, even as they were fully committed to the principles of religious toleration and theological diversity, they were equally confident that there is a “marrow” of Christian truth that can be identified and that must be conserved. This living core, as they believed, stands revealed in Scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal and corporate experience, and confirmed by reason. They were very much aware, of course, that God’s eternal Word never has been, nor can be, exhaustively expressed in any single form of words. Emphasis added by me.
So what I think and understand about scripture is enriched by experience. A kind of enrichment that can not easily be ignored, and I would say acknowledging those experiences as important to spiritual enrichment would be a necessary factor in true Christian growth. Not the only factor albeit, but an important one none the less.
4. You say you observe X more often, I say I observe !X (not X) more often. All very relative of course, but very valid. You can’t say one or the other for sure, but I feel like I see more systememic problems arising from the science-minded types. That might have a lot more to do with attitudes and personality types that are attracted to those kinds of fields. I know I’m more minded naturally to see the bottom problem as being a choice and not feel sorry for people. I, of course, work hard to fight that feeling, so it might be me placing my motivations onto the people-group I associate myself with, since I still struggle with that myself.
I guess the question I’m asking is, is the process of arriving at or gaining knowledge more imoprtant that the person where they are right now in knowledge of Christianity. That is my reasoning behing WHO being more important that WHAT WHY or HOW.
I’m glad your posting more, it is nice to discuss such things with you again.
harambee78 says
Just so my overall point is clear, I’ll make it more personal.
Without a WHY, my WHO has no meaning. And vice versa, I suppose.
Two questions of human existence: WHO am I? and WHY am I here?
The first has many answers. A few would be: I am a complex robot with a mind and body with desires and wants; I am a member of a species that is the most intelligent animal on the planet I live on and the only one capable of abstract thought; I am a creation of God, made in his image.
Of those choices, only the last one offers us any real answer to the second question of WHY am I here? WHY do I exist?, the answer being why-ever it is that God made us (that being a separate question).
Without this WHY, it is difficult to see how to choose among the possible WHOs listed above. Indeed, it is the idea that life must exist for a reason (the WHY) that leads many (most?) people to the intuition that there is a God who created them (the WHO). So, WHO and WHY are intimately connected. Now, the HOW you mentioned as another question of science, is not so central. The relevant question for this example would be HOW did God create us? (via spoken word or via evolution, e.g.?) That is not so important, just as HOWs are not so important in science (at least “pure” science, whose goal is always to understand WHY).
harambee78 says
BTW, this has been very interesting discussion, but it has very little relevance with regard to the original point of the post.
Jeff is right about learning to let God love you and just letting yourself be defined by that. Definitely. Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly. Therefore, our main WHY is to do just that – live life abundantly!
But don’t deny that the logic-oriented mind God’s given you is a gift. Let God’s love be your unshakable foundation, but once it is in place don’t be afraid to explore new ideas about who you are, who God is, etc. Contemplate theology, church planting theory, etc. As long as you stand firm on the belief that none of it matters nearly as much as worshiping God or helping your neighbor.
bigcat2k says
Hey, thanks. I’m trying to learn to do that. It is hard for me though, I see myself so wrapped up in what I can accomplish for other people that I forget that sometimes it is OK to relax and not do anything but get loved on.
I figure I have ups and downs. Some stuff has to be more personally focused, some less, with logic and reason guiding me. Right now I’m content with my reasoning abilities, but discontent with my inter-personal skills. Probably due to the city transisition and the move from school to the work place.
Your above post is good too, but I kinda think of it as you see the world as X because you are Y and some other people see it as Z because they are A or something. Different times in life the WHY questions become fore-front, and central, other times it is the who. So the question I’m stuck with still is WHO am I (or WHO has God made me), because without that I don’t feel like I’m in a position to ask WHY am I here, cuz that questions has lead me down a lot of empty paths lately, and only got me frustrated.
So, there is your context, and this was fun, but I think I’m done debating the merits of the different approaches for now. Maybe later after I feel more confident about my WHO I’ll talk more about WHY, and why it is important as well.
divisionbyzero1 says
Some of the coolest threads get going when I’m gone…
I just thought I’d add a point or two from my own thoughts after reading your discussion with Brent.
As per the faith and understanding stuff:
I don’t know who said it (though I wish I did) but, “Faith without understanding is superstition.” I suppose this would deal with a whole lot of WHY’s that go in with stuff like, prayer, worship, alms, pretty much anything. The why of anything we do should be ordered to achieving our purpose here on earth: to know, love, and serve God. If what we’re doing is easily enough answered by, “God told me to.” then there you have it. Other questions are not so easily answered.
As per the entirety of what we need to know God being contained in scripture….
As you may have gathered, I don’t consider Scripture to be the end-all of revelation to humanity. In practice, I have serious doubts that anyone really does (someone needed to tell you that scripture was complete did they?). But, beyond the debate between Scripture and Tradition, since we are all created “in the image of God”, don’t we all present some aspects or have some qualities that are a reflection of the Divine? Before anyone jumps on that, though, there is a difference between public revelation and private revelation that I typically make without stating explicitly. Just some thoughts on that line.
An important question for scientific research, as it relates to Christians, is more WHOM in my mind. For WHOM do I do this work. This bit of technology or widget will benefit WHOM? For WHOSE glory am I doing this work? If I am performing research for the sake of research, there is a problem there. If I am performing research for the sake of someone’s profit, there is a problem there.
On the other hand, if I am doing research to benefit man (as opposed to, I suppose, men) then there is something to think about there. If I am doing research to illuminate God’s glorious Creation, then there’s something for that.
That’s the question I see that is missing from science and technological progress that leads to more and more development without any actual benefit to mankind. I would consider most of the rest of the questions the details of the process, though, I agree with Brent that WHY is inseparably intertwined with everything.
My 2 cents.
The thread Brent mentioned is here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/divisionbyzero1/47119.html