Faith and a Little Spider

What is faith? What does it mean to have faith? How does it affect what we do, as Quakers, members of the Religious Society of Friends, a group founded on the idea that God can and will lead us directly, if we let go and let him? I wonder about this a lot, because I have many years of training in hard-core reductionist empiricism, and I am continually faced with situations where empiricism doesn’t provide me with satisfactory answers. What exactly is faith? How do I live by it?

An old book I have summarizes it like this:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen . . . . Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

This seems to be a description of a worldview, almost the Buddhist idea that the world is actually an illusion, one in which we should pay attention to a separate reality which is actually the true one. The Hindus have a little different take, because while they believe that the world is real, and physically present, it is actually an obscuring surface that distracts people from the truly significant underlying cosmos. Both views recommend detachment, a separation from the world as an ultimately unimportant distraction. They have a faith that there is something more important going on.

Now, Christianity also sees this world as less important than another, but doesn’t regard it as illusory, and doesn’t regard it as a distraction. This world is something of an overture, an opening piece of music designed to introduce the main performance, to prepare for a life that is very different, but not any more real. And what we do here is quite important, because it’s also a training ground, a place where we are conditioned in preparation for the next step. And we are directed to live here in faith, trusting in the substance of things we hope for, trusting in the truth of things we can’t prove, and in an underlying plan of which this world is the first part. Faith means to live as if you understood what was going on, whether you do or not, and to step forward in trust.

This is how I try to live my life. It can be a hard way to live, in some respects, because it means that I don't always know where the money for the next trip to the grocery store is going to come from. Right now the car is in the shop. I don't know where the money to get it out is, just yet. I try to live on the assumption that it will happen as it is supposed to happen, but it can be a stressful existence, in many ways. Just ask my lovely wife and five children

I had a lesson on this the other day. I was taking a break from picking Golden Delicious apples in the orchard of another member of my meeting. I can pick about 3200 pounds of apples a day if the trees are pruned right, and I had just taken a bin of apples and moved it over to where we would load it on the old F600 at the end of the day. This was almost the last block of apples, and when the Delicious and Romes were picked, I would be out of a job and out of money again.

I was still sitting in the decrepit seat of the John Deere, feet up and gazing off at nothing in particular. And then I noticed a small spider on the running board down beside the brake pedals. It was a jumping spider, one of those delightful little black furry creatures that live in the apple trees and jump from twig to twig in pursuit of lacewings, and caterpillars, and whatever else they can catch. As I watched, it climbed up the fender until it sat in the sunlight, in all its half-inch self-assurance of its rightful place in the universe.

I reached out and stuck my finger under its nose, and instantly it jumped up and onto my hand. It looked up at me with its little old-man spider face, bright green eyes, and a little red spot, staring directly into my eyes. A small, very self-confident piece of animated chemicals, secure in its world, and untroubled by the questions that always seemed to trouble me.

I transferred the spider from hand to hand several times as it walked calmly up and down my wrist, leaving an almost imperceptible stringer of silk behind it like some tiny furry Theseus searching for a Minotaur. If it chose not to leap up onto my other fingers, it would jump into empty space instead, and dangle there for a bit on the silk, then either lower itself down or climb back up, seemingly without a care in the world as to which way it went. Eventually it dropped down to the left-hand running board and when I looked again, it had disappeared. I went back to my own thoughts and forgot about it for a while, sitting in the sunshine on the tractor seat.

And then I looked up, and there it was again. It had climbed up the engine, onto the exhaust manifold, through the cowling and was resolutely ascending the exhaust pipe into a dead-end against the blue sky. The pipe was cool by this time, and I continued to watch as it passed the muffler, climbed up the tail pipe, and finally reached the iron flapper that keeps the rain out of the engine. At that point, it could go no higher—it had reached the limit of its world.

On top of the flapper, the little furry spider walked from one side to the other, peering over the edge at each side to see if there were other options. It circled the flapper several times, while I watched, curious to see what this little animal would do. I, of course, was observing from a higher vantage point, a position in which I could perceive a larger and more complex reality than this little spider could ever have conceived of. My extensively larger perspective made me its superior, but I was still curious as to how it would deal with this sudden imposition, to its discovery that its universe had a boundary, right here.

The spider ceased its circling, and crawled several inches down the flapper to the lowest point on the iron weight. Then head-down, it elevated its abdomen and stood completely still. It didn’t move at all, and after a minute I became puzzled as to what it was doing. And then, in a momentary shift of light, I saw that a tiny, almost invisible strand of silk was floating in the air from its tiny abdomen, trailing straight up into the almost undetectable breeze.

Holy moly, I thought, it’s going to balloon. And after a minute or two more, it did. Without an instant’s preparation that I could see, the little jumping spider let go of the tractor, tucked its eight furry legs under its body, and sailed straight up into the air. As it rose above the apple trees, I saw that the glinting thread of silk seemed about ten or twenty feet long. It was hard to see, almost invisible to my superior eyes, my superior brain, and my superior viewpoint. But it was substantial enough to lift the spider off the tractor and take it away without an instant’s pause or hesitation, once the spider let go.

As I watched, the spider rose steadily into the blue sky, legs tucked tightly in. It sailed under the wires on the power pole, and then sailed back over them in the other direction. I watched it rise almost straight up until I couldn’t see the little black body any more against the scattered light of the clear blue sky. And then it winked out of my vision entirely.

Where did it go? I have no idea whether it came down elsewhere in the orchard, in the township, or even in the same county. All that I knew was that I had been given a lesson in faith, by a little wizened face with green glinting eyes. The spider hadn’t a clue where it was going, but took off nonetheless, secure in the faith that letting go and leaping off in trust would be the correct course of action. Where the spider went was not the spider’s concern—the spider knew that the leap of faith was the important task.

So what do I do? Do I spend my life trusting that I am to follow the leadings, and that my task is to be faithful, rather than worrying about the destinations? Do I respond to the end of a particular journey by stepping off into space, trusting that I will be handed my new assignments at the appropriate time and place? I'm a Quaker, concerned about immediate revelation, about trusting God to tell me what to do, when it's time for me to do it. That’s what I try to do, anyway, but I always seem to be second-guessing my decisions, as if I was really the one in charge. And my own arrogance that I knew so much more about the universe than this little furry bundle of spider had been given a clear correction. In the end, the spider knew more than I did, and had faith in it.

Just a small story, Friends. One of the little lessons that God gives us all in paying attention and in being faithful.

Scripture: Essential, or Not Essential?

I am often told by Christians of various sorts that the Bible is "essential" to the following of Christianity; that without the written Scriptures, you cannot be a Christian. This is certainly the explicit position of most Protestants, especially those who believe that the mouth of God is stopped shut, and that the written Scriptures are the only way in which he communicates with us today. This is an interesting belief, but one which was explicitly rejected by the founders of the Religious Society of Friends, who looked to a different Teacher for their primary guidance. Like those earlier Friends, I value the Scriptures highly, and I read something out of them most every day. I believe that the inspired Holy Scriptures are one of the ways that God communicates with His church, and are absolutely the best outward guide for obtaining right knowledge of God. But helpful as the Scriptures have always been, the foundational, original, and traditional Friends' faith and practice has never regarded having them as obligatory for maintaining right relationship with God, for Quakers or anyone else. The "sure foundation" of our Christian faith is not and has never been the Scriptures, but was and remains the Inward Light of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the One who has come to teach His people Himself.

This is an important point because lots of Friends are muddle-headed about this. Sometimes they tell me that we shouldn't point this out, because other people will misunderstand the fine and subtle distinction we make, and be led astray. To which I start muttering under my breath, "So when did we become the smartest people in the world?"

Sometimes they tell me that we should be careful not to think about it much, because we might confuse ourselves and end up devaluing the Scriptures entirely in our efforts not to overemphasize them, and be led astray. Then I start muttering again: "So now we've become the dumbest people in the world, too?"

Mostly they just fret and chew their lips, because lots of times the truth is that they just don't much like the idea that such a convenient and commonly-accepted outward tool as Scripture might not be the central pillar of the Christian church. They've already been led astray, for crying out loud.

Mutter, mutter, mutter.

Phooey.

With respect to Holy Scripture, I suggest that the traditional words of the earliest Friends be kept in mind: Scripture is "not absolutely necessary." An excellent suggestion I read once was to describe Holy Scripture as "not of the essence." Another excellent summary was to simply state that they were "insufficient."


Robert Barclay was a 17th century Scottish Friend who wrote foundational works on doctrinal Quakerism that have never been equaled. He's often quoted for his statements about Scripture in his famous 1678 book, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity. After describing the value of the Scriptures for history, prophecy, and Christian doctrine, Barclay's Third Proposition "Concerning the Scriptures" reads:

Nevertheless, because they are only a declaration of the fountain, and not the fountain itself, therefore they are not to be esteemed the principal ground of all Truth and knowledge, nor yet the adequate primary rule of faith and manners. Yet because they give a true and faithful testimony of the first foundation, they are and may be esteemed a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit, from which they have all their excellency and certainty . . . therefore, according to the Scriptures, the Spirit is the first and principal leader.

So far, so good: very clear, and often quoted. Most all non-FUM/Evangelical Friends will agree with this foundational document of the Society that Scripture is useful and valuable and secondary to the Inward Light. (Conservative Friends will further specify it as the Inward Light of Jesus Christ.) But the devil is in the details, as the Frenchman said, and the biggest detail here is called "inessential." Because while our earliest generation of Christian Friends held that Scripture was valuable, and important, and contained highly useful truths, they were united in the idea that it was not essential to have it, read it, or understand it to be acceptable to the God who it was written about.

Don't misunderstand me here—I and those earliest Friends are in agreement that if the Scriptures have genuinely been made available by God to a person, then upon going through them the followers of Jesus Christ should recognize him there, no matter what they call him or what sort of strange rococo accompanies their worship. But many people have been exposed to interpretations of Scripture that talk about a Jesus Christ that I've never met—one who is completely unrecognizable to me. I know people who consider themselves doctrinal Christians who have very little of Christ in their beliefs. So please understand me when I say I'm not talking about that stuff. If you want to be a Christian, and the Scriptures are made available to you in a true and intelligible way, then you should certainly take full advantage of them in their supporting role.

But back to Barclay and whether Scripture is or is not "essential," please. The Scotsman had a lot to say about Scripture in his propositions on "Immediate Revelation" and "Universal Redemption by Christ" that wasn't contained in the one entitled "Concerning the Scriptures." More people quote Barclay briefly than read him carefully, but he had great insight on the subject. Please bear with me and slog through this hoary passage:

But if we shall make a right definition of a Christian, according to the Scripture, videlicit, That he is one that hath the spirit of Christ, and is led by it, how many Christians, yea, and of these great masters and doctors of Christianity, so accounted, shall we justly divest of that noble title? If then such as have all the other means of knowledge, and are sufficiently learned therein, whether it be the letter of the Scripture, the traditions of churches, or the works of creation and providence, whence they are able to deduce strong and undeniable arguments (which may be true in themselves), are yet not to be esteemed Christians, according to the certain and infalliable definition above mentioned; and if the inward and immediate revelation of God's Spirit in the heart, in such as have been altogether ignorant of some, and but very little skilled in others, of these means of attaining knowledge, hath brought them to salvation; then it will necessarily and evidently follow, that inward and immediate revelation is the only sure and certain way to attain the true and saving knowledge of God.

May I translate?

1) Scripture itself defines a true Christian to be a person who has the spirit of Christ, and is led by it.

2) Possession of the letter of Scripture and of tradition will not make a person a Christian, as many "great masters and doctors of Christianity" don't qualify for the honor.

3) People today and in the past who have experienced inward and immediate revelation of God's Spirit in the heart have been saved, even though they have been ignorant of or unlearned in Scripture and tradition.

In other words, Barclay's position is that first, merely possessing, studying, and learning the Bible and its doctrines does not ensure right relationship with God. Second, that people without Scripture but with inward revelation of God's spirit can and have achieved that relationship. And therefore, that inward and immediate revelation is "the only sure and certain way" of salvation. Scripture, according to Barclay, can't do it without inward revelation, but inward revelation can and does do it without Scripture.

Barclay goes on:

“NOT A QUESTION OF WHAT IS BENEFICIAL, BUT OF WHAT IS ESSENTIAL

IV. However, this should not be understood as a claim that the other means of knowledge of God are useless and of no service to man. This will be clear from what is said of the scriptures in the next proposition. The question is not what may be profitable or helpful, but what is absolutely necessary. [The bolding is mine, folks.] Many things may contribute to the furtherance of a work without being the essential thing that makes the work go on. In summary, what has been said amounts to stating that where true inward knowledge of God exists through the revelation of his Spirit, everything essential is there, and there is no absolute necessity for anything else. But where the best, highest, and most profound knowledge exists without the revelation of his Spirit, there is nothing, so far as the great object of salvation is concerned.

Barclay here says first, that Scripture is useful, and helpful (I agree), but "not absolutely necessary" to provide revelatory knowledge of God, which he has already said in the first passage is what brings people to salvation. He next says the revelation of the Spirit is sufficient, and nothing else is "absolutely necessary." Lastly he says that even where the best and highest knowledge exists (which will be Scripture) without the revelation of his Spirit, there is no salvation. Scripture, according to Robert Barclay, is "not absolutely necessary," but inward revelation alone, even without it, is absolutely certain. These are the Scotsman's words, not mine.

Early Friends were very concerned not to fall into a mistaken reliance only on Holy Scripture, which all their enemies were quoting against them, daily. They pointed out repeatedly that it was not “absolutely necessary,” and that “Christ was sufficient” without it. Read these short quotes from our human founders:

You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of light and hast thou walked in the light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God? Margaret Fell, on George Fox

For though I read the Scriptures that spoke of Christ and of God, yet I knew him not but by revelation, as he who hath the key did open, and as the Father of life drew me to his Son by his spirit. George Fox

And if there was no scripture for our men's and women's meetings, Christ is sufficient...he is our rock and our foundation to build upon. George Fox

I can declare unto you...that this gospel order...I neither received it of man neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. George Fox

But I looked upon the Scriptures to be my rule, and so would weigh the inward appearances of God to me by what was outwardly written; and durst not receive anything from God immediately, as it sprang from the fountain, but only in that mediate way. Herein did I limit the Holy One of Israel, and exceedingly hurt my own soul, as I afterwards felt, and came to understand. Isaac Penington

Christ has tasted death for every man, which knowledge we willingly confess to be very profitable and comfortable, but not absolutely needful unto such, from whom God himself hath withheld it. Robert Barclay

And although Scripture is extremely valuable to the daily functioning of our Christian body, here also we should not confuse what is absolutely helpful with what is absolutely necessary. With respect to Conservative Friends tradition, John Wilbur very early cautioned us not to rely on Holy Scripture for important details of our daily walk with God that the Holy Spirit expected us to receive from Him directly:

1st. Can the Scriptures, or did they ever, save anyone without the spirit?

2nd. Is a person called to do the work of the ministry by the Scriptures, or by the spirit of Jesus Christ?

3rd. Is a man brought under a concern to go from one place to another to preach the gospel, by the Scriptures, or by the constraining power of the spirit and love of Jesus Christ?

4th. And when he is arrived at the place assigned, and is assembled with the people, is it not the spirit of Christ that truly unfolds the Scriptures, and brings to view the state of men, either in the words of Scripture, or in some other suitable language?

5th. And when a professed minister preaches in any of our meetings, his doctrines not being repugnant to the letter of the Scriptures, are the elders or others to judge by the Scriptures, or by the Spirit of Truth, whether his ministry is from the right spring or not?

6th. Did not the Jews think they had eternal life in the Scriptures, and yet would not come unto Christ that they might have life?”

And our True Founder and True Guide, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, was quite emphatic about whether Scripture was of the essence, sufficient, or absolutely necessary:

And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life: and it is they that bear witness to me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40.)

All these selections from the actual words of early Friends, John Wilbur, and that Jesus guy himself, indicate to me the nature of what early and traditional Friends have always believed. Christian Friends have always acknowledged that Scripture is helpful and important, and should never be ignored by those who have access to it and are willing to read it in the Spirit. But our Christian Society has understood and publicly held from the very beginning, not just that Scripture is secondary to the revelations of the Holy Spirit, but that first, Scripture alone is an insufficient guide to important--and essential--aspects of the daily life of a Christian, and second, that the Holy Spirit can choose to provide sufficient guidance to Christian living and ultimately to salvation, without Scripture. The possession, reading, study, and understanding of the Bible is recommended, but is not required by Jesus Christ as a precondition for turning to Him, being accepted, living as a Christian, growing towards perfection, and achieving salvation in His Light.

Mutter, mutter, mutter.

Equinox

Today was a special day for me, one that comes only twice a year, and always serves as a time for me to reflect on milestones, and accomplishments, and to put my day-to-day scheduling into a larger context of the handiwork of God. Today was the Equinox.

All summer the days have been growing shorter, a little bit shorter each day, but at a faster and faster rate. From my sophisticated astronomical observatory on the front porch, I can step out and watch the sunset two miles away on the ridge to the west. During the summer the sun goes down behind the maples on the northwest hilltop, way up towards the progressive metropolis of Bethesda about eight miles off. Each day the sun sets a bit more to the south, as the Equinox approaches. And finally, today, 21 September—the Autumnal Equinox—it sets just behind a little barn owned by our neighbor up on the ridge. Tomorrow, the sun will miss the barn entirely, and set just behind his house instead, a little more to the south. And as the autumn progresses, the sun will keep setting farther and farther south all the way until the Solstice—the first day of winter—when it will begin to swing back like some sort of cosmic pendulum, until it finally passes the house and the little barn again on the first day of spring next year, but going the other way. In six more months.

I’ve always used the Equinoxes to mark time, to keep track of my life on the somewhat slower ticking clock that is available to me out here in the sticks. To me, the Equinoxes represent tipping points, momentary pauses in a slow cycle of change, resting points that come twice each year where I can stop and ask myself why I’m where I am. To make my life easier, I tend to organize decisions and events around the equinoxes and solstices, to make them easier to remember. I married my lovely wife on the vernal equinox, many years ago. When somebody asks me what our anniversary is, all I have to say is “The Vernal Equinox.” Then when they say, “When is that?” I just point to the little barn on the ridge and say, “See the sun going down over there? When it goes down behind that little barn, then I know it’s our anniversary …” This seems to satisfy most people, because they don’t seem to ask me any more questions about it.

But the slow ticking of this cosmic clock is what is important to me—the chance to step back and take stock of things myself at regular but distant intervals. I kept bees commercially for ten or twelve years—about 900 beehives—and working with nature teaches you that the Big Cycles are slow, and come around once a year, or even longer. I once knew a country boy who said to me that it was easier for country people to adapt to city life and living than it was for city people to adapt to country life. I asked him why, and he explained that it was all a matter of timing. You see, in a city job, if you mess something up, you just wait until next Monday and start over. If you mess up a contract, just do better on the next one coming up. You can learn to do something pretty quick, because over a month or two you get a dozen chances to try again. In the country, though, in agriculture, your opportunity to learn comes one time, each twelve months. Mess up on the timing when you plant your wheat, and you lose—your second try is twelve months away. Don’t split your bees in time in March, and they hit the trees in April. You lose your replacement colonies and your chance at making honey until next year.

What this means is that a country person in a city job can learn how to do it more or less reasonably quickly, because the information he needs comes in quickly. A city person used to the rapid repeat of the city information cycle tends to get lost in country tasks, because the information comes in so much more slowly. In urban software technical writing (I used to do that) I could have a dozen or two dozen assignments each year to learn from. In the country, I will have perhaps only two dozen more farming seasons for the entire rest of my life. This is quite humbling, and it’s one of the reasons that I use the Equinoxes to keep track of the passage of time.

Right now is the sixth Autumnal Equinox we’ve spent up on this hilltop in Appalachia, a long way from Silicon Valley in California, where Shawna and I met writing computer manuals for IBM. We bailed out of that world right when people were trying to figure out how to make money off the Internet and decided to run 1000 beehives for pollination and commercial queen breeding instead. So we left San Jose and moved into the fertile Central Valley, where temperatures were 114 degrees and our bee business had lots of customers. And now we’re here.

We have 25 acres of hayfield and hardwoods, a perennial stream (sort of), an ancient post-and-beam animal barn, a carriage house, milk house, a brandy-new 3000-square-foot insulated metal building with a half-mile of heating coils in the floor, about 900 dead-out beehives (another story) and lots of potential. Almost nothing but potential, it seems.

In the winter the road is under snow, in the summer the well goes dry, we have inadequate fencing and little of the necessary equipment. The wheels fell off our old Farmall Super-C when we tried to load it into the trailer in California to get it here, and it’s still sitting there where I rolled it back. Tractors are expensive, and we don’t have a replacement yet. But we have plans. Lots and lots of plans.

And this is where they are going to be:

http://songoftheturtle.blogspot.com/

Shawna put this new blog up to allow us to organize what it is we want to do with the rest of lives—what we want to grow, build, preserve, learn to do, and most of all, keep track of. Stop by and offer suggestions, or just check on our progress. We'll be running this project from now until the cows come home. And we don’t yet have cows.

But we still have those stinking goats. Tina from the junkyard wants goats, and said she would come by and look them over last Saturday. But she didn’t come, so I assume her husband talked some sense in her. But Tricia (who drives the school bus) is looking for goats. Our kids are the first ones on and the last ones off the bus, so maybe if I hog-tie them one at a time I can toss them up in there on the floor sometime next week.

Or before the next Equinox, anyway.

Quakers in the Country: Cats

Cats are cheap in the country. We have a lot of them, but individually they don’t have a high number on the scoreboard of country life. Now, that might be considered a hard saying to a cat lover, but it’s a true one nonetheless. Individual organismal life isn’t valued as much by Mother Nature as it might be by people, and so cats out here where we live tend to be short-lived and temporary. Not that we don’t like having them around—we do—but we don’t worry much about them as individuals.

Right now we have about 14 cats, I think—seven or eight adults and as many kittens. There are a few that we don’t see as often as the others, but most all of them tend to congregate on the kitchen porch at meal times, so we can often get a reasonable idea of what we have then. Some of the cats are special, after all--there’s One-Eye, an elderly female whose right eye exploded during an infection years before we took her on. One-Eye is a delightfully good-natured animal who doesn’t presume on anybody’s good intentions. She’s low on the cat totem-pole, though, because she can’t deal with rivals if they approach from the wrong side, so she tends to stay on the fringes of social activities. Another special cat is Old Mama, a tortoise shell of indeterminate age who may be the primal ancestor of some of the others currently wandering about the porch. Old Mama is a friendly but sober animal who takes a dim view of our dogs in her territory, and savages them mercilessly. Then we have a variable number of unnamed cats that come and go, often quite pleasant animals, but so temporary that we don’t get attached enough to them to actually give them a name.

The cats are transients, drifters. For some reason, the people in town seem to think that dropping cats off in the country is a kinder fate than taking them to the pound to be gassed. I don’t know why. We’ll hear a car slow down near the house, and then speed up and drive off. Then that evening there will be another cat, or two, or three, on the porch for dinner. But they often don’t last. Coyotes love cats, and a town cat dropped off in our neighborhood generally has about a two or three-day life expectancy before the coyotes run them down, unless they latch on to a household pretty quick. Most country folks take a dim view of additions to their local cat population, and often solve the problem with a shotgun, what the Amish call a “long-distance cat-catcher.” We don’t do that here, as I like cats. When we get too many, we just load a few up into the van and drop them back off in town on our way to Meeting . They have a lot better chance of doing well in town than they do being deposited off somewhere else in the countryside, and for all I know might re-join the household that passed them to us in the first place.

We don’t bother with sterilizing them, because it doesn’t matter. Most of our older cats were spayed somewhere along the way (we don’t keep the toms around long—too much violence), but we still end up with a half a dozen new ones every year. Our additions from town often have a litter a week later (which is why we got them), so paying money to sterilize them isn’t part of our limited budget.

Barn cats are useful animals to have. They’re not house animals, although the kittens constantly invade through open windows and doors, always on the lookout for something interesting to destroy. As they get older they have less interest in the house and spend more time in the woods and outbuildings nearby.

They keep the mice under control for us very well. Although there are lots of Deer Mice, White Footed Mice, and various voles around, we seldom have them in the house, because the cats eat so many of them. Same with Eastern Moles, although I don’t know how the cats catch them. They bring in beautiful Short-tailed Shrews, too, huge insectivores to contrast with the tiny Sorex that show up as well. And of course, they keep the chipmunks down, and the larger tree squirrels stay away. Having a dozen dedicated predators around also means that the fledgling birds have a chancy time, but they seem to cope. The Barn Swallows don’t do well under the porch eaves, but then we do have barns for them, after all. As I write this I can hear a Mockingbird cursing the cats from the maple tree by the mailbox.

Life goes on, for all of us, not just the cats.

Deus Ex Machina

Materialism: a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter. –Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, 2003.

As I usually hear it expressed, materialism is a modern philosophy that explains the universe in terms of scientifically knowable and testable causes and effects. I distinguish it from what I call the supernatural, which for me also includes the agency of unknown, unexplainable, supernatural causes as a part of the hypothesized real world.

Typically, materialists tell me that their philosophy is equipped to answer any significant question. Then they sometimes tell me that the questions that it can’t answer are either unimportant, or should be set aside as temporarily unknowable. Sometimes they go on to admit that although the materialist approach may not be able to answer all questions today, they are confident that it can explain everything sooner or later, if pursued correctly. In contrast, I’ve had them tell me that a supernatural view is invalid because it takes the questions that it can’t answer, and then explains them by fabricating an imaginary world in which the causes are external to the local frame of reference: “It was God who did it,” and so forth.

Deus ex machina, so to speak.

You’re probably familiar with “Deus ex machina.” It’s an old Greek theatrical ploy, in which hopeless predicaments are resolved by the sudden intrusion of an Olympian god, who imposes a cheap fix by divine intervention. In some of the crasser theatrical productions, an actor portraying the appropriate god was actually swung over the stage props by a crane, and precipitated into the story by mechanical means: “Deus ex machina”—“God from the machine.” All just in time for dinner, of course, but not a profound solution. The materialists, in effect, accuse me of invoking Deus ex machina when I suggest that a possible addition to my explanations of the physical world might include the hand of God.

Now, my understanding of the scientific method asserts that testable ideas are required before an assertion can be said to be phrased in scientific terms. This is how we use the scientific method in both the earth and the life sciences, on our better days, anyway. If a hypothesis invoked supernatural mechanisms, then valid ways of testing the supernatural would be required before the explanation would be a tenable scientific theory in explaining the world. Not proven, you understand, but merely an acceptable theory subject to routine scientific investigation. But the other day in conversation, when discussing what supernatural evidence might be appropriate in a test of that sort, my local materialist told me, “If I ever experienced a vision of angelic visitation, I would conclude that I was hallucinating, because angels don’t exist.” Or in my re-phrasing, “My pre-existing belief is more valid than any contrary evidence I might be presented with.” And I asked my other materialist what evidence could convince him of the reality of a divine intervention in his life. You know what he told me? “Nothing.”

Wait a minute, here …

Scientists agree that for a theory to be “scientific,” it must be possible to think of a prediction that can theoretically disprove it—a null hypothesis. If any theory cannot be tested this way, then it has not been stated in a scientific way. Note that you don’t have to disprove it—if it’s true, you won’t be able to anyway—but if you can’t ever come up with an experiment that would prove it wrong if it was wrong, it ain’t science. A scientific-sounding theory for which you can't generate a prediction that would disprove it remains just speculation, no matter how many professors gravely nod their heads at it. There is a place for speculation in science, but it is to generate testable hypotheses. If enquiry stops at the speculation stage, we don’t have the scientific method in action, just daydreaming.

Now listen carefully, because I don’t want to hear accusations that I’m creating a straw man:

If a materialist tells me that he would always consider a visitation—of angels, say--to be a hallucination, then he is asserting that physical evidence cannot shake his disbelief in angels. The admission that contrary evidence cannot disprove a theory renders it untestable, and indicates that it rests on faith--not facts, not reason. If physical, sensory evidence is not acceptable to demonstrate that a supernatural vision was real, a priori, then materialism is not ultimately logical or scientifically supported by facts, but is instead maintained independently of natural evidence, and hence is a supernatural world view—a religion, so to speak. I’ve asked materialists what would convince them, and many of them are so sure of the truth of materialism that they don’t even understand my question.

This is a typical materialist world view, but when it is supported in this way, materialism is no more logical—or scientific—than supernaturalism. In my argument, such a materialist world view rests on scientifically unproven assumptions, and while the superstructure built above the premises may be internally consistent and logically valid, it cannot be said to depend on a logical or scientific framework. This is fine with me, but it upsets the materialists I explain it to.

I am not trying to prove the existence of God here, which I will maintain is not a scientific question, but denying the existence of God because no evidence is acceptable is also a materialist position that I hear frequently. I am pointing out that with respect to the supernatural, the materialist appeal to science is frequently unjustified, because ultimately the materialist point of view often departs from the scientific method into reliance on unproven assumptions. Not in theory, but in practice, which is where the money is. This puts them in the same boat as the supernaturalists, albeit unwillingly.


The exception that will disprove this line of reasoning is if a materialist is able to state a situation or occurrence that would disprove the null hypothesis that angels don’t exist—or that God does not exist--in other words, to describe a real-world situation in which his disbelief in angels or God could be scientifically disproven, to the standard level of confidence accepted in science—perhaps a P value of 0.95, for example. It is unnecessary to perform it, merely to describe what it might be. Unless that can be done, this type of materialism is a religion that relies on non-material evidence for its validity.

This isn’t hard for me to conceive of, but it would require a materialist to explain what might make him believe in God. Any materialists out there who might suggest something like that? (And don’t say that you’d have to visit Heaven yourself to believe in it, because I’ve never been to Australia, and I’ll tell you to prove to me that Australia exists, too.)