Structuralism, the Outside World, and Beyond
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Topic: Postmodernism

Structuralists looked for general patterns which govern human institutions, most famously, language, beginning with Ferdinand de Saussure's A Course In General Linguistics.  Saussure saw language as the most obvious example of the broader subject of human signification. That general subject is called semiology. Borrowing Wiki's summary of Saussure:

...he argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a signifier (the sound pattern of a word, either in mental projection - as when we silently recite lines from a poem to ourselves - or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act) and a signified (the concept or meaning of the word). This was quite different from previous approaches which focused on the relationship between words on the one hand and things in the world that they designate, on the other.

This way of thinking is sure to run into trouble with American science students. What of the relationship between the signified and the thing in the real world? (the details be damned, we just want to make sure no one is getting away with believing there isn't really anything 'out there') Apparently that question didn't interest Saussure, unlike Charles Sanders Pierce who constructed a semiology roughly similar to Saussure's with the exception that he added a third element which corresponds to the outside thing. From a class handout written by a friend of mine, a real live publishing Frankfurt School cultural theorist known on the web sometimes as et in Utah ego*,

The differences we readily experience as independent of language are in fact constructed by it. This does not mean that language creates "actuality" (that is, trees, rocks, buildings, people) but that language turns undifferentiated, meaningless nature into a differentiated, meaningful cultural reality. The most significant feature of Saussure's work is the argument that language precedes experience. We have no direct access to the world; our relationship to it is always mediated by, and dependent on, language.

Two important ideas from this excerpt, 1) No, structuralists aren't naive idealists who believe everything is somehow a construct of the mind, there is an external world 'out there'. 2) What we experience as reality is preceded by language.

I'd like to pause now and Reflect briefly on point three I made in my first post on postmodernism, that postmodernism isn't the same thing as existentialism. The two are often conflated with each other and with a naive idealism that to my knowledge no idealist ever believed, that postmodernists are out there making 'their own truth' whatever they want it to be, pace Sokal, jumping out of 21st floor apartment buildings without harm if that's how they personally wish to construct the world.

Descartes was the founder of modern philosophy, and he was French. He believed in a stable essence of the mind which allowed him to deduce certainty about some aspects of the world based on thought exercises. Jean-Paul Sartre (who chronologically came after Saussure), the famous French theorizer of existentialism is well known for his catch-phrase "existence precedes essence." Sartre then, thoroughly educated in Descartes' philosophy, denied any stable essence of the mind or consciousness, consciousness was a product of experience with the world. But the French structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure argues essentially, "language precedes existence." What constitutes a person's experiences is greatly determined by context, by reigning (power) structures such as language. Postmodernism is heavily influenced by this idea:

Much of what is usually referred to as "postmodern theory" derives from, or in response to, Ferdinand de Saussure's work in linguistics.  His theories have had enormous influence because of the way they challenge fundamental assumptions about the production of meaning and the relationship between language and the world. - et
 

In traditional modernism, the subject has an essential nature or an 'ego'. Existentialism rebels and now the subject is out making choices, hopefully authentic ones, "constructing himself" and so on. Postmodernism follows the existentialist rejection of essentiality, but takes up structuralism's discourse of the subject as determined by context. Rejoining where we left the discussion on Saussure's theory, what might be a simple, tangible example as to how language defines experience?

The most revolutionary element in Saussure's work is his insistence that languages don’t produce different versions of the same reality, they in effect produce different realities. That different languages conceptualize the world in significantly different ways is demonstrated by the fact that even such "physical" or "natural" phenomena as colours are not "the same" in different languages. Russian does not have a term for blue. The words poluboi and sinij which are usually translated as "light blue" and "dark blue" refer to what are in Russian distinct colours not different shades of the same colour. The English word brown has no equivalent in French. It is translated into brun, marron, or even jeune depending on the context. In Welsh the colour glas, though often translated as "blue," contains elements which English would identify as "green" or "grey." Because the boundaries are placed differently in the two languages the Welsh equivalent of the English "grey" might be glas or llwyd. - et

A clarification at this point is in order. It might be slightly confusing to read the above and work it into the definition of structuralism which I gave of looking for general patterns behind human institutions. How can that be, if human institutions are fragmented and constitute different realities? What is intended to be constant, however, are shall we say, the individual Legos, while the resulting project or structure, a Lego spaceship, or boat, or car are variable. The Legos in this case, are the signifiers and signifieds, and this is what all languages have in common.

Now we might be sly and ask, can Saussure, thinking within French, be sure that "signifier" and "signified" are articulated in other languages such that they are universally, the building blocks he claims they are? Questions like this seem to be what guide Jacques Derrida's critique of structuralism. Derrida shows (see especially Of Grammatology) that structuralism can't escape its own discourse, the articulation of structuralism doesn't happen from some privileged, stable space, it doesn't comment from "outside the text." There are preconditions, in fact, to language, the very language within which Saussure is writing. One might find this encapsulated in his invented term, "differ(a)nce." I'm going to try and get away with now saying, "differance precedes language" in Derrida's thought to keep with our allusion to Sartre. But Derrida fights tremendously the urge to just continue playing the game I'm calling here "this precedes that." On the one hand, Derrida recognizes he's helpless to escape this game, that's partly his point, but on the other, the game's underlying holism, can perhaps, be clarified. He says in his essay Differance,

..I wish to underline that the efficacy of the thematic of differance may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement, at least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed.

I realize this is getting pretty abstract as I'm making no attempt here to explain what differance is (and good luck to me if I ever try), but the key point for this entry is that Derrida is acknowledging an inherent impossibility in the project of structuralism, or any other kind of -ism which might displace structuralism, including his own 'deconstruction' - ism. So while to an American educated science student like myself, structuralism appears "anti-foundational" with the pluralistic world it creates, there is an anti-foundationalism beyond that, which if not overturning structuralism, severely attempts to deepen it. This might be called, poststructuralism.

So now if we've come this far, where does postmodernism fit in? From Steven Best and Douglas Kellner's book, Postmodern Theory,

Poststructuralism forms part of the matrix of postmodern theory, and while the theoretical breaks described as postmodern are directly related to poststructuralist critiques, we shall interpret poststructuralism as a subset of a broader range of theoretical, cultural, and social tendencies which constitute postmodern discourses....

The discourse of the postmodern also encompasses a socio-historical theory of postmodernity and analysis of new postmodern cultural forms and experiences...

More extreme advocates of the postmodern were calling for ruptures with modern discourses and the development of new theories, politics, modes of writing, and values...

It's hard to know what quotes to pick as the discussion goes on for pages. From what I can gather, the postmodernists (postmodern theorists) are almost always shall we say, philosophically poststructuralists and adopt the discourse common to structuralism and poststructuralism. But a key defining characteristic would be their theorizing of a "postmodern age" which breaks with the modern age, or new theories on especially politics and society that attempt to radically break with modern conceptions. So while Jacques Derrida for instance, is often perceived as a poststructuralist, he's not really a postmodernist because his essential concern is his deconstructive reading of philosophers and theorists, not theorizing about a postmodern condition of the world or any supposed break between a modern and postmodern era. Whereas readily identifiable postmodern theorists like Jean Baudrillard are concerned with contemporary issues such as the Gulf War, terrorism and the twin towers, and the role of technology in contemporary life right down to the topic of password protection.  And all of this of course, as symptomatic of a postmodern condition, where his theorizing is both radicalized poststructuralism and post-Marxism.

 

*I have implicit permission to quote et since she complained (jokingly, I think) I didn't cite her on another blog entry of mine. But I never clarified whether such a citation could include using a real name.

The Real World Part 2
Topic: Postmodernism
I wanted to continue the discussion on the relation between postmodernism and the external world, since that's where the hottest disputes with it in cyberspace at least seem to erupt. There is one point I can't emphasize enough that contributes to misconceptions of postmodernism as being inherently anti-science or anti-"reality". I have a couple of excerpts from wikipedia that might help us get a handle on this, why trying to abstract commentary on the results of emperical science from postmodernism is difficult to do. From their entry on "Continental Philosophy":

Continental philosophy includes phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism, deconstruction, French feminism, critical theory such as that of the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and S?ren Kierkegaard, and most branches of Marxism and Marxist philosophy (though there also exists a self-described Analytical Marxism).

Pop-quiz: Which philosophical subject at the root of the philosophy of science from the positivists to Kuhn is glaringly lacking in this definition?

***********

The answer is, epistemology. Critics with a standard American science education often seem to want one thing out of philosophy; a thorough justification of science which makes it the standard for human knowledge. Given that I have a standard American science education, I sympathize incredibly. I don't care for religion, I certainly don't want to leave the door open for any nutty idea out there God has supposidly communicated to be on equal ground with modern physics. But, how to assess the postmodernist's verdict on knowledge in any kind of a straightforward way if epistemology wasn't popular in Europe? When I began trying to read Derrida, having recently completed a modern philosophy class, I was thoroughly confused trying to make sense of it within the parameters of epistemology as had been laid out in my course, namely in studying Descartes, Hume, and Kant. That led me to assume the worst, initially, when I'd read pronounciations such as, "There is nothing outside the text." Instinctively, I wanted to apply everything I read to the problem of knowledge. But that doesn't quite work if the context has nothing to do with epistemology. Trying to figure out what Derrida's thought implies for emperical science or epistemology generally would be, in my opinion, tremendously difficult. To reiterate this point, one can't easily at all glean from the postmodernists commentary on the results of science experiments or the justification of knowledge generally, since they weren't studying those subjects. For the next quote:

Moreover, while analytic philosophy is generally carried on around certain perennial topics of dispute, as debates in which individual philosophers give their piecemeal contributions, continental philosophy has a tendency to center instead on key thinkers and to discuss their philosophies in relation to each other.

Context then, is ever more important when studying continental philosophy because the terminology will be tied the thinkers they are responding to. Obscure language aside, this alone will make covering ground more difficult since it means there will be more background to study before getting a handle on what's going on. This further underscores the point I've been trying to make that to understand the postmodernists, you have to understand what they're responding to. To sum up, the postmodern theorists aren't responding to the logical positivists, and those who they are responding to (i.e., their response to modernism) studied different subjects than the logical positivists. So to extract concise judgements by "postmodernism" which strike at the heart of science, as articulated by postivist philosophers of science, will be tough going.

Prophets, Drugs, and Spiritual Laboratories
Topic: Buskirk Review

Scientists, notably Sagan and Richard Feynman do have some strong rhetoric against authority. Though I think they probably aren't quite so naive about it as they might come across at times. Certainly, I can agree that science would come to a dead stand still if no one took any science on shall we say, "faith." There simply aren't enough hours in the day to confirm every experiment relevant to one's field prior to accepting them as true. And even if there were enough hours, it would be a terrible waste of time and resources. The important, and relatively straightforward point about authority is that in science, a patent clerk can revolutionize physics. And that in physics, revolutions are a good. In Mormonism, there is no concept of rejecting the revelations of a prophet. And if there is ever, the rejection of a revelation, that rejection must come from another prophet. At any point in Mormon history, the current prophet has always been irrefutably right. For those who think I exaggerate, please conjure up in your mind one doctrine, or matter of revelation, not opinion, that has ever been wrong. The problem isn't with authority, but supposed absolute and incontestable authority, the very kind the Mormon prophet claims.

Continuing on with how we might know religious truth, Dr. Buskirk cites Boyd K. Packer's salt as the sensus divinitatis in his well-known talk, The candle of the Lord.(304) To that I respond with Alice in Chain's, Junkhead,

You Can't Understand A User's Mind
But Try, With Your Books And Degrees
If You Let Yourself Go And Open Your Mind
I'll Bet You'd Be Doing Like Me
And It Ain't So Bad!

A Heroin addict might fail to articulate what his drug is like. But that doesn't mean we should take that leap of faith and find out for ourselves. If the religious experience is truly incommensurable, it's pointless to sell it as enlightenment. Equally likely, is that it's a trip into the "deranged and frenzied" as Korihor taught. You take a 50-50 chance. Maybe I'll try the red pill, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll try heroin, or perhaps Mormonism. If Anne Sulliven could figure out how to communicate with Helen Keller, then Packer is left without excuse.

Finally, Dr. Buskirk quotes Henry Eyring,

“I have often met this question: ‘Dr. Eyring, as a scientist, how can you accept revealed religion?’ The answer is simple. The Gospel commits us only to the truth. The same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion. Try it. Does it work?”

How would the same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion when religion, according to Dr. Buskirk, occupies the domain of a completely different category? How do you "try" moral obligations and come to the decision that they "work?"

Dragons and the Law of Consecration

Topic: Buskirk Review
Dr. Buskirk's commentary on Sagan's Dragon in the garage prefaces his Positivism-Popper-Kuhn tour of the philosophy of science.(20) It's an awkward beginning, however. He seems to realize falsification is Sagan's tool of choice(22), but somehow confuses Sagan's, “If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?” with a strict example of the positivist idea that only statements with empirical content have meaning,

In the absence of experimental, hard evidence, the claim is simply meaningless. This idea stems from a group of philosophers in the early part of the twentieth century in Europe who called themselves logical positivists.(20)

The invisibility of the dragon in this case is merely incidental. It's not so much that the invisible dragon is difficult to detect, but that the dragon hypothesis turned and twisted until it seemed to retain none of its original content, the dragon didn't necessarily begin as an invisible dragon in the mind of the person making the claim. The criticism of the dragon hones in on the ad hoc revisions of what we all understand a dragon to be such that any honest assessment of the claim seems pointless. Can Dr. Buskirk imagine a reasonable way in this scenario to meaningfully speak of the Dragon's existence?

Sagan's reasoning is sure to even find a place in religious commentary. How many times has Hugh Nibley, for instance, been critical of the early church fathers for "spiritualizing" key doctrines and even his own church for "spiritualizing" the law of consecration?  In Approaching Zion he writes,

A bishop told me this month that people coming to renew their recommends when they are asked whether they keep all their covenants frequently answer no, explaining that they do not keep the law of consecration. A General Authority recently told me that the important thing is to observe the law of consecration "spiritually." Yes indeed, say I, and the law of tithing also - how much better to observe it spiritually than in a gross, material way - a great comfort to the rich. And yet the express purpose of both those laws is to test the degree of our attachment to material things, not to provide an exercise in "spiritual" semantics. (AZ p. 280)

We might ask, from Nibley's perspective, what on earth does it mean to live a law that decrees all material things to be held in common, spiritually? What does it mean to talk about a being the rest of the planet identifies as an animal that roasts its enemies in flames as an invisible, incorporeal entity that breaths "heatless fire?" As a Chemistry professor, would Dr. Buskirk acknowledge the meaning of fire without heat?

Moving away from Sagan per se for a moment, Karl Popper didn't believe that absent falsifiability, ideas become worthless. They just cease to be matters of science. Karl Popper himself believed that by their very nature, philosophical and metaphysical theories - his own bread and butter - are irrefutable. (Popper Selections, p.214).  More will be said on this topic later as it is relevant to Dr. Buskirk's white space on the matter of philosophy.

 I don't want to spend too much time on the rest of his summary of the philosophy of science through Kuhn, I'd just like to raise a question that might easily be overlooked. If science and religion respectively access the proposed categorically different domains of the descriptive and the normative respectively, why the concern to blunt the edge of science? If his distinction correctly reflects reality, then science can work with 100% absolute certainty and imply nothing for religion. Questioning the objectivity of science buys religion nothing while rescuing Dr. Buskirk's and Sagan's common enemy, pseudoscience. On the grounds of Dr. Buskirk's distinction, the relativistic reading of Kuhn salvages invisible dragons and body thetans, not gospel doctrines. 

Is it true that UFO research is a cult?
Topic: Buskirk Review
There is an interesting question about the science, or pseudoscience status of the portion of UFO investigation which feigns no interest in meaning but simply demonstrating the reality of an alien presence as a matter of fact. Dr. Buskirk is right with Sagan on this one and dismisses all of it out of hand as pseudoscience.  Now,  I would invite those FARMS buffs who agree whole heartedly with Buskirk's assessment to reconsider their position.  Those of us who follow FAIR are accustomed to Dr. Daniel Peterson starting a thread where he introduces the latest FROB, noting one or two of his favorite pieces and sarcastically referring to the authors as "merciless hacks," while then going on to enumerate their degrees and scholarly attainments. The problem it would seem, there is no shortage of critics who dismiss Book of Mormon research as pseudoscience the same way Dr. Buskirk dismisses UFO research. The point we're suppose to take I suppose, is the critics typically don't have the perceived educational background relevant to make an assessment on the quality of the research involved. John Gee is a real Egyptologist, Brant Gardner is a real Mesoamerican researcher, while credential wise, their critics are mere hobbyists. So I'd like to point out, one of the most well known UFOologists, Dr. Stanton Friedman, is a real physicist and was a classmate of Carl Sagan's at MIT. And infamously, the (late) John Mack, a Harvard psychiatrist on the topic of abduction. There are in fact many with advanced degrees within the UFO community. I just ask those who demand the LDS critics to see Book of Mormon studies as real, scholarly research, to be consistent and at least grant some UFO research the status of fringe science, rather than outright pseudoscience and fantasy of no worth like Dr. Buskirk does.

The Alien Landscape
Topic: Buskirk Review

A critic of Stephen Greer observes,

The CSETI difference is Greer's impatience with the traditional notion that we have to wait passively for them to show up. He believes we can prime the pump. Armed with a hardware cornucopia (high-power halogen lights, radar detectors, walkie-talkies, still and video cameras),

BUT,

Greer for years has studied both Transcendental Meditation and the Baha'i religion. TM emphasizes that civilization advances through quantum leaps in consciousness, while Bahaism stresses the spiritual oneness of mankind....

"The craft is round," Lisa says. "A ball. With many different lights around it. They communicate telepathically. If you say, 'Come in peace,' they'll come. If you think negatively, they won't come." "Right, right," says Greer. "That's very true."

http://www.mufon-ces.org/docs/outsidemagazine.pdf

The technology has a context, ultimately a spiritual, faith demanding one. 

To read about Billy Meier's photographs, see here http://www.billymeier.com/photos.htm. These photographs have been the subject of intense debate between believers and debunkers.  Though Meier's apologists are passionate, according Meier's website, "the decision as to their authenticity [the photos] ultimately lies with each and every individual." And the context of the technology is spiritual and social enlightenment:

Semjase had met Billy Meier face to face more than 135 times. She had brought other ETs with her - Ptah, Asket, and Quetzel. They all looked human. They had been coming to Earth for a long time. They gave Billy Meier amazing information about everything from science to philosophy. They were concerned about us - humans - their little brothers. We were, and still are, destroying ourselves and our planet. Nuclear-weapons proliferation, famine, disease, and pointless religions that miss the goals of spiritual evolution were the key topics of their message. http://www.tjresearch.info/Dilettoso.htm

There is the interplay between technology, proof, and spiritual enlightenment, and of course the existential journey of the discovery process. In Billy's words,

By the mid-1970s, I was prepared for the spiritual philosophy to which the Pleiadians educated me. It is a philosophy emphasizing the immortality of the individual spirit or soul, and its purpose in life is to learn, even when it means making mistakes and learning from the mistakes. The learning goes on in successive lifetimes, or reincarnations, over which time the soul gradually evolves and accumulates memories and knowledge normally unavailable to us except as feelings of conscience. http://raphael-labro.org/billy_meier2.html

I'm just curious what exactly, makes Joseph Smith's life and message so much different than Meier's? What makes Joseph Smith a prophet, and Meier a pseudo-scientist? How does Meier's "scientism" fail to wholesale miss the domain religion gives us access to? Or has Buskirk simply lumped the entire UFO community together as one entity and is not aware that there is in fact, irrespective of Sagan's more narrow case, a strong religious streak within the alien community? In fact, in these cases it would appear the "science" is a mere supplement to a greater goal. Take a look at the names of some Pleiadian books: "Family of Light," "Bringers of Dawn," "Comes the Awakening." Where are the warp drive schematics?

The various kinds of alien reports over the years yield a cosmic narrative. While Mormons have the aristocratic falling out in heaven, the creation, and Noah and the ark, alien mystics have their own backdrops to stage mankind and its problems:

http://ufo.whipnet.org/alien.races/exopolitics.org/index4.html

http://galactic.to/kjole/nordic/human-et-history.html

http://www.thewatcherfiles.com/alien_races.html

The accounts vary. But typically you have all alien races stemming from the Lyrians. Dr. Buskirk should be tickled to learn of the Grays, a race of technology crazed control freaks devoid of any humanity who blew up their home world in nuclear war and fled underground where they've mutated from normal human form into the little gray guys with big eyes (it's dark down there). They are all, I suspect unequivocally, logical positivists. And they are the ones responsible for abductions and cattle mutilations. The kind of weekend activity we of course, expect out of men of the enlightenment who don't have a church where they can "surround themselves with symbols and objects linked with the divine." (10) The Pleiadians, on the other hand, having already overcome many of their own social problems are religious sages. They stand with Buskirk against the totalizing of narrow thinking modernism and call man back to his spiritual roots. But they, like the angels in Mormonism, weave a fabric of nuanced spiritual experience along with impressive real-life encounters and photographic evidence. Not everyone gets to see Moroni or heft the plates, but all are welcome to meditate and receive "sudden strokes of ideas" (31) from the Pleiadian.

And let's not forget the grand-daddy of all alien cults, Heaven's gate. Where is their obsession with technology and scientific explanations? Hard Sci-Fi just doesn't sell universally to all those who reject traditional religion. It would seem there is a strong religious appeal, religious by Dr. Buskirk's criteria, not Sagan's, within the UFO world.

It's ok to Laugh at People who Believe in Aliens rather than Angels
Topic: Buskirk Review

Because that's just pseudoscience. Dr. Buskirk agrees with Sagan on the absurdity of UFO research and also includes "fundamentalists" in his grouping of those who provide neither scientific nor religious value,

This craving for certainty is manifest in the searching for signs of UFO visitations; proponents claim that there is hard evidence, including photographs, movies, physical marks on abductees, and a crashed flying saucer stored in Area 51. These physical data relieve the UFO believer of the difficulty of developing faith in an unseen God, offering instead a cheap certainty. Rather than cultivating personal experiences of the sacred, UFO cults replace faith with credulity and blind trust in supposed scientific evidence. Not only can science supposedly prove the existence of these alien or higher beings, but it can to some extent explain their powers.

Of course, the foundational story of Mormonism begins with three literal witnesses to a set of Golden Plates, and then eight more witness who don't get to see, but can touch and heft the plates. And does Buskirk follow FARMS at all? It seems there is plenty of interest in establishing through the historico-critical method, the credibility of the Book of Mormon witnesses, archeological evidence for the Book of Mormon, and Parallels to the ancient world.  Granted, the FARMS associates I've interacted with don't see their attempts as aiming for "absolute certainty" but plausibility, and following Dr. Peterson, possibly the upper hand in the evidential debate.  But I don't think Dr. Buskirk really understands the diversity of UFO communities. For instance, Acolytes of Billy Meier, famous for his photographs of spacecraft, like FARMS, will boast the credibility of their evidence, but they don't believe the matter as settled with the absolute certainty Dr. Buskirk talks about. In fact, they emphasize the "personal responsibility" of those who undertake UFO studies to "decide for themselves." For a great many of these people, a personal, spiritual journey is involved. The aliens reveal themselves to those who are ready. Consider the well-known Dr. Stephen Greer, founder of CSETI, who takes tour groups into the mountains to communicate with alien crafts.  Sometimes those experiences entail a literal close encounter, but the usual it would seem to be is "telepathic" communication, the efficacy of that communication mitigated by personal desire for enlightenment.  Which bring us to the next point,

Alien cults display faith in science—a kind of scientism—to the point of a near worship of technology. Humans now love new toys: shiny new cars, MP3 players, flat-screen televisions... Men and women thoroughly indoctrinated in the modern worldview can satisfy their religious needs without the supposed mystic mumbo-jumbo of traditional religion. Better yet, it’s rather easy. No faith is required, and the aliens don’t ask much in return...far more appealing than a Galilean Jewish peasant who lived two millennia ago.

Dr. Buskirk is way off here. Alien buffs are often openly New Agey and mystical. If it makes sense to speak of a post-modern world, without question, "Alien cults" are are a good fit for that landscape. The techno-geek private investigators exist, but that clinical world doesn't appeal to many of those who are religiously obsessed with aliens. And to the extent that technology does impress the faithful, consider, as Buskirk does later in his essay, that Jesus Christ built his following in part by turning water into wine and raising the dead.  Like Meier or Joseph Smith, Jesus launched his religious campaign with material feats.  The next segment will document a little bit of Meier and Greer and some of the variable terrain within the alien landscape Dr. Buskirk I don't believe has encountered.  And that terrain, it seems to me, can be an awful  lot like Mormonism at times.

Why hasn't Carl Sagan experienced the Sacred?
Topic: Buskirk Review

Dr. Buskirk believes in maintaining a categorical purity between the domain of science and the domain of religion, religion is the realm of the normative and science, the descriptive.(8) But "meaning, purpose, and ethics"(31) somehow derive from spiritual and mystical experiences which I gather, are the results of "encountering the sacred." Yet he isn't clear on how those experiences expressly relate to meaning, purpose or ethics. He observes,

"In an infinitely old universe with an infinite number of appearances of galaxies,..(wonders go here)" Sagan admits, “Whenever I think about any of these discoveries, I feel a tingle of exhilaration. My heart races.” This sense of wonder makes him an excellent science writer and teacher, but ultimately such wonder does not satisfy the same purpose or meet the same needs as religion. No sense of purpose or meaning, no ethical demands, can be founded solely on the findings of science.(12)

But strangely, he later recounts this story of Moses as an authentic "spiritual" experience,

These experiences have a transcendent character to them, seeming otherworldly, contrasting the reality and majesty of the sacred with the nothingness of man. As Moses remarked following his vision of all of creation: “Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:10). The emotions that accompany religious experiences vary from person to person: some people feel an emotional warmth associated with spiritual experiences..(31)

It's not clear that the experience of Moses meets Dr. Buskirk's definition of religion, and if it does, why Sagan's doesn't. His argument; "you can't get an ought from an is," but that seems to say nothing of Sagan being overcome by what in fact, is. Moses in a similar way is overcome by what is. As was Abraham when beholding the inner workings of stars, according to Nibley's commentary on The Apocolypse of Abraham.  Did Moses or Abraham behold ethical demands? Did they behold purpose? Did they behold nothing of what is when they viewed everything God had created? One might try and rescue Dr. Buskirk's position by claiming that ethical demands are part of what God created, but that would be no more ingenious than saying Carl Sagan beheld the United States Constitution and would complicate his categories. While the experience of Moses may differ here in degree, it's not clear at all that it differs in kind from Sagan's. Naturalists may be overcome with how small man is when looking through a telescope as a religious person is when beholding creation in a vision. A lot, however, turns on what Dr. Buskirk means by "meaning, purpose, and ethics," which isn't clear. By ethics, does he mean personal, moral inclinations, or does he really mean ethics, the reasoned understanding of moral inclination and obligation in the abstract?¹ Having a vision and looking through a telescope may both be morally inspiring, but neither tells us what we ought to do or why we ought to do it.

But Dr. Buskirk isn't consistent in his articulation of science. Science it appears, can give us purposes and obligations, but only if those purposes and obligations are bad,

I argue that although technology may be neutral, science comes with some unchallenged philosophical baggage that has been damaging at several levels(18).²

This "philosophical baggage" whereby men become "cogs in a machine"(16) is nothing other than the notion of final cause or teleology at work - which is the explicit domain of religion according to Dr. Buskirk.  It is after all,  the "religious" articulation of  purpose that predestines some men to eternal damnation, if for no other reason, than for the righteous to appreciate their own state of joy.³  Mankind as mere cogs goes hand in hand with the presupposition that an external purpose of life must exist.

These "religious" assumptions about the world were a real challenge for Darwinian evolution to overcome in its uphill social battle as described by Edward J. Larson in his wonderful book, Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory. And that's not just because of Darwinism's challenges to religion, but its challenge to western presuppositions generally. Rejecting both special creation and the privileged heredity of Lamarckism, not to mention tracing the origins of humans back to Africa, Darwinism failed to be a welcome discovery for those encumbered by the baggage of Aryan mythology(147). One might say that if purpose is the domain of religion, some of the failures of secularism might be attributed to men of science only succeeding to divorce themselves of God half way.

1. See the definition of morality in the Catholic Encyclopedia
2. Another way of arguing would be to say that the "philosophical baggage" which comes along with science could create meaning and purpose for Carl Sagan.
3. The End of the Wicked Contemplated by the Righteous - Jonathon Edwards

My Commentary On Buskirk's Review of Sagan
Topic: Buskirk Review

This is my commentary on Allen R. Buskirk's, Science, Pseudoscience, and Religious Belief from FARMS' review of books, which is a review of Carl Sagan's, The Demon Haunted World. Note that, whenever a number appears in parentheses by itself, it refers to the Adobe Reader page number of Dr. Buskirk's essay.
 

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First I want to comment on Buskirk's introduction and conclusion. He cites a Wall Street Journal review in the beginning,

"Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World” [is] a repetitious, cloying, sanctimonious, self-regarding—yet oddly entertaining—sermon on the evils of superstition."

And Dr. Buskirk himself concludes, "Although I appreciate the reminders of the need for clear thinking and evidence, ultimately Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World offers little positive contribution to current dialogue concerning religion and science."

I agree with both statements. I've never seen Sagan cited in any book or paper on the philosophy of science and I'd be surprised if the case ever were otherwise. But books that shelve with dignity in a university do very little to educate the masses. Sagan's work was an ambitious and much needed introduction to thinking critically. Its controversial and entertaining style only ensured that it would strike enough emotion within the reader, whether anger, awe, or amusement, to be read cover to cover. If a better book than his should have been written, then someone should have written it.

I wasn't, however, surprised to find agreement with Buskirk on a number of his criticisms of Sagan. In fact, I'm glad FARMS did this review because frankly, Sagan was a bit narrow minded and pretentious - as are some, or many, of his followers who decided they could stop learning altogether after finishing his book. Religiously minded folks who have been around the block a bit should have little problem finding flaws in Sagan's philosophy. I hope that upsets some critics, but in a way that they become even better critics, and not just apologists.

I wouldn't say though, that my agreement with Dr. Buskirk runs very deep. I found his categorization of science and religion too rigid and the place of philosophy in his world especially problematic, and I don't think he succeeded in articulating examples of religion or religious knowledge in a way that fits his own definition religion's domain. I also think he doesn't appreciate the diversity within what he considers pseudoscience, he seems to fail to realize that if Sagan can only see science at work in the world, then the misrepresentations likely aren't unique to "traditional religion." I address this and more. Actually, I already have done the addressing, I just need to do the posting.

Meat, Potatoes, and Beer
Topic: The Miracle Of Sin
It's been a rough week at work and consequently, my schedule has been thrown off quite badly. This meant last night, because I worked very late, I came home and only had the motivation to make some macoroni and cheese, play on the comp a bit, and go to bed. The problem here is, the night before I had worked out very hard and I even managed to get some exercise in at work last night. So I just wasn't eating the right food, or enough of it. Therefore, I woke up this morning fatiqued and sickly and work today was a struggle. But I knew there was cure for my condition, left a little early, and got started.

First thing was to hack off a couple of slabs of beef and get them in a lemon juice and soy sauce marinade. A half hour later, with what strength I had left I managed to put them on the grill. I use a high flame as my goal is to sear the outside while leaving the inside a little rare. With the proper marinade, searing, a little Montreal Steak Seasoning and some garlic, even a cheaper cut will taste incredible.

Along with the steak I had mashed potatoes with just a little salt and butter and mixed vegetables I cook with a few drops of olive oil and lemon juice. But the key factor that tied it all together was a cold bottle of Lawson Creek Red Ale. What a meal. Solid but not too heavy, and just enough alcohol to get that slightly warm feeling. I could feel my former strength being restored. With a good night's sleep, I'll be back to normal by tommorow.

Something a Mormon will never know is the enhancement the right alcoholic beverage can bring to a good dinner. They'll take a Tylenol with codine or any other number of drugs which bring about a far more pronounced altered state than what Satan has provided for us in the natural remedy of beer. But moderation be damned, there will not be a drop of alcohol ingested (unless it's Robotussin and they don't bother to think about it then).

I urge all my Mormon brothers and sisters to go to the store and buy a six pack of beer. In the name of the vain images of the world, Amen.