Thanks for your clarification about the nature of reasoning and rational reflection and how we all espouse metaphysics. But surely you resign too quickly to division, forgetting the possibility of conversion, not just clarification, through beauty, truth, and metaphysical depth. Lest the reality of "metaphysics for all" have us all begging our own questions, we could reclaim a more classical understanding: the role of metaphysics is to clarify, enrich, and expand one’s vision of reality--not to partition people into mutually unintelligible tribes, axiomatically consigned to agree or not.
Not denying the possibility of change or conversion. Just the utility of debate/argument in bringing about that conversion. I've never seen people who hold strongly divergent metaphysical or ideological commitments converted by a debate/argument. Especially on social media. I think it's much more effective, and healthier, to pray for or befriend people than debate them.
That may say more about the nature of most debates than about the possibility of conversion. When arguments are framed to win rather than to understand, they rarely change minds. But history offers many counterexamples—Augustine, Malcolm X, Simone Weil—whose transformations were sparked not by force of will but by force of truth, beauty, or a crack in their assumptions. Conversion doesn’t always look like surrender. Sometimes it begins with a single question that won’t go away. (Anyway, I'm grateful, not just for what you say, but, just as much, for the thoughts you bring to mind. Thanks!)
In short, everyone worships. We all put something at the top of our hierarchy of concern. If the human heart is an “idol-making factory,” we all have gods.
I love Isaiah’s passages on this, where he talks about the blacksmith, or those who fashion idols of wood. From the wood—a temporal, natural substance—some fashion an idol, then without reflection use the same substance (wood) as fuel to bake their bread.
Here, the prophet shows the utter futility of this: our idols cannot save, and though they may have utility, pass into ash.
Dr. Richard Beck, I’ve been reading your blog since about 2013 and have been meaning to drop a comment eventually— thank you so much for writing yet another excellent piece! Reading this article got me thinking about Hamlet’s existential soliloquy (“to be or not to be, that is the question…”) plus John Donne’s “no man is an island” prose as a living-in-community contrast to either Alexander Pope’s “Ode on Solitude” or Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone”…Like Brentwood hinted at— I think you do a great job provoking thought about such questions as: what do we idealize, value, or worship, and how does that affect how we go about living? As I was reading this piece, I also found myself thinking about how some folks propose strong distinctions between “brute facts”, “institutional facts”, and so forth— a question I keep asking myself is: how do we navigate finding the “brute facts” that lie beyond the “institutional facts”? (Also, who are your top 5 favorite epistemologists?) At any rate, I love how thought provoking your writing always is, Dr. Beck— thank you for being you! ♾️😎🖖🏻🙏🏻♾️
“As it appears, our knowledge is confined, disproportionately to our arrogance, which is unlimited” - Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia & Lavreotik
This comment was in reference to those who were drawing parallels between the ‘Higgs Field’ and creation-like ‘God Particle’ suggestions found in scripture –
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”
Colossians 1:15-17
Since much of the foundation of Western philosophical thought begins with the Pre-Socratic concept of the ‘Divine Logos’, which as a Rational Principle which permeates all things, it is not an irreconcilable metaphysical axiom that is at odds with the physical entity [fundamental Higgs field] that also permeates the whole universe; without which nothing we recognize would even exist. It’s rather question of ‘Who’ created it, and Who’s controlling or [not controlling] it (?) And ultimately why (?) The idea that God is initially separate from his Creation, and not an inherent part of it, is the standard (but limited) revealed model in Judeo-Christian thought, but what if this is narrow in its initial and progressive comprehension? And that potentially [Creation itself] is inseparable from the Person of the Son? Since the Christian Faith espouses (from our limited linear finite perspective) that Teleologically & Eschatologically God will ultimately be “All in All”, therefore God ontologically exists both in and out of time (simultaneously) as he is both immaterial and material in eternity. The Incarnation is not just and event, but it is literally who God [Is] as a Triune Being. The problem with atheistic conceptions of Christian Theology is that they are not ‘Trans-temporal’ enough. I think that arrogance is potentially found in any inflexible axiom that comes from a lack of imagination and inspiration.
Thanks for your clarification about the nature of reasoning and rational reflection and how we all espouse metaphysics. But surely you resign too quickly to division, forgetting the possibility of conversion, not just clarification, through beauty, truth, and metaphysical depth. Lest the reality of "metaphysics for all" have us all begging our own questions, we could reclaim a more classical understanding: the role of metaphysics is to clarify, enrich, and expand one’s vision of reality--not to partition people into mutually unintelligible tribes, axiomatically consigned to agree or not.
Not denying the possibility of change or conversion. Just the utility of debate/argument in bringing about that conversion. I've never seen people who hold strongly divergent metaphysical or ideological commitments converted by a debate/argument. Especially on social media. I think it's much more effective, and healthier, to pray for or befriend people than debate them.
That may say more about the nature of most debates than about the possibility of conversion. When arguments are framed to win rather than to understand, they rarely change minds. But history offers many counterexamples—Augustine, Malcolm X, Simone Weil—whose transformations were sparked not by force of will but by force of truth, beauty, or a crack in their assumptions. Conversion doesn’t always look like surrender. Sometimes it begins with a single question that won’t go away. (Anyway, I'm grateful, not just for what you say, but, just as much, for the thoughts you bring to mind. Thanks!)
In short, everyone worships. We all put something at the top of our hierarchy of concern. If the human heart is an “idol-making factory,” we all have gods.
I love Isaiah’s passages on this, where he talks about the blacksmith, or those who fashion idols of wood. From the wood—a temporal, natural substance—some fashion an idol, then without reflection use the same substance (wood) as fuel to bake their bread.
Here, the prophet shows the utter futility of this: our idols cannot save, and though they may have utility, pass into ash.
Dr. Richard Beck, I’ve been reading your blog since about 2013 and have been meaning to drop a comment eventually— thank you so much for writing yet another excellent piece! Reading this article got me thinking about Hamlet’s existential soliloquy (“to be or not to be, that is the question…”) plus John Donne’s “no man is an island” prose as a living-in-community contrast to either Alexander Pope’s “Ode on Solitude” or Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone”…Like Brentwood hinted at— I think you do a great job provoking thought about such questions as: what do we idealize, value, or worship, and how does that affect how we go about living? As I was reading this piece, I also found myself thinking about how some folks propose strong distinctions between “brute facts”, “institutional facts”, and so forth— a question I keep asking myself is: how do we navigate finding the “brute facts” that lie beyond the “institutional facts”? (Also, who are your top 5 favorite epistemologists?) At any rate, I love how thought provoking your writing always is, Dr. Beck— thank you for being you! ♾️😎🖖🏻🙏🏻♾️
“As it appears, our knowledge is confined, disproportionately to our arrogance, which is unlimited” - Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia & Lavreotik
This comment was in reference to those who were drawing parallels between the ‘Higgs Field’ and creation-like ‘God Particle’ suggestions found in scripture –
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”
Colossians 1:15-17
Since much of the foundation of Western philosophical thought begins with the Pre-Socratic concept of the ‘Divine Logos’, which as a Rational Principle which permeates all things, it is not an irreconcilable metaphysical axiom that is at odds with the physical entity [fundamental Higgs field] that also permeates the whole universe; without which nothing we recognize would even exist. It’s rather question of ‘Who’ created it, and Who’s controlling or [not controlling] it (?) And ultimately why (?) The idea that God is initially separate from his Creation, and not an inherent part of it, is the standard (but limited) revealed model in Judeo-Christian thought, but what if this is narrow in its initial and progressive comprehension? And that potentially [Creation itself] is inseparable from the Person of the Son? Since the Christian Faith espouses (from our limited linear finite perspective) that Teleologically & Eschatologically God will ultimately be “All in All”, therefore God ontologically exists both in and out of time (simultaneously) as he is both immaterial and material in eternity. The Incarnation is not just and event, but it is literally who God [Is] as a Triune Being. The problem with atheistic conceptions of Christian Theology is that they are not ‘Trans-temporal’ enough. I think that arrogance is potentially found in any inflexible axiom that comes from a lack of imagination and inspiration.