Making Room for Volitionism in a Non-volitional Model of Belief Formation

1. Introduction

In this paper I will attempt to synthesize volitional and non-volitional, or representational theories of belief formation. More precisely, I will attempt to show that the two accounts occupy different logical space in the larger discussion over the matter of how beliefs are formed, and that one can consistently hold a position that preserves the most essential features of them both. Moreover, I will argue that the two positions should be merged with one another so that we might have a model of belief formation adequately equipped to handle the primary concerns of both respective views.

In brief, the two positions hold the following sets of premises regarding the nature of belief formation:

Volitionism[1] –

1. A volitionally acquired belief is acquired by a basic act. Believing itself need not be an action, but some beliefs are obtained by acts of the will directly upon being willed.
2. One must be fully conscious of what one is doing in acquiring a belief through an act of the will.
3. The belief must be acquired [at least in part by extra-evidential considerations]. That is, the evidence is not decisive in the belief formation.

Non-volitionism[2] –

1. Acquiring a belief is a happening in which the world forces itself upon a subject.
2. Happenings in which the world forces itself upon a subject are not things the subject does (i.e., are not basic acts) or chooses.
3. Therefore, acquiring a belief is not something a subject does (i.e., is not a basic act) or chooses.

The two theories come apart most markedly in application to discussions regarding the ethics of belief. For instance, from a volitionist perspective, the beliefs an individual holds can become the appropriate objects of moral evaluation since they involve basic acts of the will. From a non-volitionist perspective, however, it simply doesn’t make sense to treat beliefs as morally evaluable, since the will is not active in their formation. The apparent dichotomy between these positions, I will argue, derives largely from the failure to recognize the unique role beliefs play in the practical versus the speculative sphere. The transition between the processes of speculative and practical reasoning provides a natural joint by which we may mark out the respective domains of non-volitional and volitional theories.

So why don’t I think we should be satisfied with leaving the territory divided as it is between these two opposing views? In short, because I don’t think either view on its own is sufficient to handle our full range of doxastic concerns satisfactorily. Volitionism does a great job explaining our sense that people are sometimes morally culpable for the beliefs they hold, but leads us too far astray from the most plausible account of how our beliefs are formed under default conditions. Non-volitionism, on the other hand, provides the most compelling model of belief formation, but taken to its furthest logical conclusion, predicts that beliefs should escape moral evaluation. As long as the two remain separate, I suspect we will constantly feel ourselves gravitating back and forth between each position as one or the other concern becomes more salient.

In summary, the following two considerations serve to motivate the present project: (1) the general representationalist picture of belief formation that the non-volitionist provides strikes me as fundamentally correct (if only under ideal conditions); however, (2) the arguments in support of the moral evaluability of beliefs seem to me strongly compelling. In the discussion that follows, I will present Clifford’s case for why one should think beliefs are morally evaluable. After having provided the non-volitionist with a reason to feel insecure about the sufficiency of their doxastic theory, I will provide some further discussion to soften our attitude toward volitionism.

A peripheral point that I will begin to develop in this section is that evidential considerations are never decisive in forming empirical judgments (of which, not insignificantly, all practical and moral judgments are species). The reader is encouraged to note how strongly Clifford relies on vague allusions to “sufficient evidence” and “unworthy reasons” in the communication of what is morally significant about a belief. This type of vague, unreflective thinking about the decisiveness of evidence in the formation of beliefs is common to both evidentialism (Clifford’s view) and non-volitional theories. A little clarification on this matter, I suggest, can take us a long way toward ameliorating the two views under discussion.

2. Clifford and the Scientific Thesis

Clifford argues that what is morally evaluable about a belief is its fidelity to the evidence, either already possessed or readily accessible. The position he champions, which we may call evidentialism, is represented by the slogan, “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence.”[3] The position holds further, “The question of right and wrong has to do with the origin of [a person’s] belief, not the matter of it; not what it was, but how [the person] got it; not whether it turned out to be true or false, but whether [the person] had a right to believe on such evidence as was before him.[4]

To support his argument, Clifford provides several examples in which an individual forms a belief on insufficient evidence and negative consequences result. In one example, a ship owner, ignoring all evidence to the contrary, forms the belief that his ship is fit to carry a large group of people to their destination across the sea. Behaving in accordance with the belief he formed, the ship owner neglects to inspect the ship before it sets sail. Once at sea, a violent storm hits and sinks the fragile ship, killing the entire crew. What shall we say of such a man? poses Clifford. “Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him.”[5]

Now, it is certainly an epistemic vice to form beliefs on inadequate or contradictory evidence, but do such epistemic vices really amount to moral wrongdoing? For instance, are naive people bad people? If this sounds strange to us, perhaps we may object that the ship owner’s great moral error was not his poor epistemic performance, but rather his disregard for his practical responsibility to those individuals that rely on his experience and better judgment to make their journey safe.[6] If only the ship owner had demonstrated the appropriate professional conscientiousness and subjected the ship to the standard inspection, what moral difference would it have made to find out later that he all the while harbored the private belief that his ship was sound (or even, as an implication of this first belief, that such conscientious inspection itself was superfluous)? Sounds reasonable enough.

But Clifford disagrees. Such an explanation, he argues, is good only “so far as it goes” – which is not that far, it turns out. In the ship example, it was possible to tease apart the belief from the actions that ensued, but only because we imagined the ship owner to be operating under a clearly defined professional code of ethics. Such a code, however, merely stands in the place of the ship owner’s innate ethical sensibilities for precisely those situations in which he believes such practices to be unnecessary. In the absence of such quality control mechanisms, the ship owner would presumably have relied on his default behavioral mechanisms and, guided by his private beliefs, foregone the inspection. Because we are often forced to live and act in the absence of such safety nets, Clifford concludes, “it is not possible to sever the belief from the action it suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other.”[7]

It seems right to me to exclude from our moral considerations such contingencies as whether or not some third party is present to dictate to us our moral responsibilities relative to a given set of circumstances. What is morally significant, rather, is what we ourselves contribute the decision: the care with which we treat the evidence, the fairness with which we weigh it, the discretion of our judgment, etc. And each of these, Clifford argues, depends on the sustained integrity of our faculties.

Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self-control, of doubting, of judiciously and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained great and wide. But a greater and wider evil arises when the credulous character is maintained and supported, when a habit of believing for unworthy reasons is fostered and made permanent.[8]

Clifford’s thesis states that the sum moral value of preserving sound epistemic faculties is greater (or will be greater, all things considered) than the sum value of any number of possible individual performances achieved at the expense of weakened epistemic faculties. Let us call this the scientific thesis. Implicit within this thesis is the sub-thesis that soundness with respect to our epistemic faculties consists in assenting to that judgment of which the evidence weighs most heavily in favor. However, since Clifford often uses vague qualifiers – e.g., “insufficient evidence” and “unworthy reasons” – in communicating the essential theses of his position, I cannot take it for granted that the scientific standard is exactly the standard he means to invoke for determining whether a given belief is morally justified or not.[9] Nonetheless, I think some interesting conclusions may be drawn from considering alternative theses against this stark background, and so, excusing Clifford from our discussion, we will proceed to consider the weaknesses of the scientific thesis in application to practical reasoning.

3. The Role of Beliefs in Practical Reasoning

It is my contention that practical reasoning involves a fundamentally different type of belief formation mechanism than what is involved in ordinary belief formation, and that this fundamental difference is what renders one’s practical deliberation strategies morally evaluable while one’s default belief forming processes are not so evaluable. In practical deliberation, one is occupied not with the question What should I believe, but rather What should I do, and how far will my stock beliefs support any particular alternative. During this transition from speculative to practical reasoning, unreflective beliefs are transformed into reasons with practical utility. Scott-Kakures refers to this active process as “reflective reasoning,” and suggests that it is it rather than its passive counterpart that poses an issue for morality. As he writes, “It is reason, and not its sleep, that produces monsters.”[10] This statement is true not only with respect to the various forms of self-deception that were the target of his critique, but also of reflective reasoning generally. As he writes, “There is, additionally, evidence that reflective reasoning itself, independently of familiar biasing mechanisms can play a role in our doxastic seductions.”[11] He goes on to quote portions of a study by Timothy Wilson, Sara Hodges, and Suzanne LaFleur (1995) that argues that the very process of reflective reasoning can distort our cognition. “Wilson and his colleagues argue,” for instance, “that reasoning serves to boost the ‘judged usability’ (Higgins, 1996) of [the most] accessible information. They argue that ‘analyzing reasons can increase the perceived applicability of accessible thought’ (p. 18) in three ways:

First, when a thought comes to mind as part of a search for reasons, its biased sources might be less evident than when people simply recall information…A thought that comes to mind as a result of a search for reasons is, by definition, more diagnostic than a simple recollection; it is, after all, a reason…Second, the act of analyzing reasons might cause people to go beyond the information recalled generalizing from specific memories to more general qualities of the attitudinal object…Finally, thinking about reasons might trigger memories that are consistent with accessible information (Ross, Lepper, Hubbard, 1975). When reasons are analyzed, for example, the information that is accessible might remind people of specific memories that are perceived as highly relevant to their attitude. (ibid.)”[12]

Something happens in transition from passive to reflective reasoning[13] that renders our beliefs morally evaluable. As I have already suggested, the beliefs that support actions are of a different kind than what we might consider ordinary beliefs, and it is this difference that is morally significant. To begin with, I think the beliefs that serve to justify actions are more complex than ordinary beliefs, and are, in this respect, really more akin to hypotheses. These hypotheses typically involve predictions about future states of affairs made on the basis of stock evidences (e.g., background beliefs and other readily accessible factual data). I will have more to say about the conditions under which these hypotheses are developed in the section to follow.

It is ultimately from these hypotheses that derive our practical and moral judgments – our answer to the question What should I do. These judgments, in turn, become the internal motivation for practical action and the basis of our moral evaluations. Therefore, when someone is accused of wrongdoing, that person’s only means of vindication is to supply his/her reasons for acting as they did. If they can produce the right reasons, that person’s action may be considered morally justified, and the accusation will be dismissed. Reasons applied to support moral activities are often called “excuses” for this very reason: when they are the right sort, they serve to excuse us from moral culpability.

The next question to consider, then, is what makes a reason “of the right sort.” Is it, as the evidentialist suggests, that the belief best reflect the weight of evidence? In this case, a mother that abandoned the search for her abducted child after the first three hours had elapsed would be morally justified.[14] If we are not satisfied with this result, then we are going to have to reconsider the plausibility of the evidentialist’s criterion. But if this criterion is flawed, then we will be forced to conclude that the non-volitionist model of belief formation is flawed as well, insofar as it is based upon the very same foundation (i.e., the presumption that evidence is decisive). In the next section’s discussion, I will offer considerations toward developing a more plausible ethic of belief based on our discussion so far. There I will argue that the suspicion that some are inclined to feel toward the notion of volitional beliefs is a symptom of unreflective thinking about the decisiveness of evidence in forming empirical judgments.

4. Empirical Judgments and the “Decisiveness of Evidence”

In the formulation of those hypotheses that support our practical and moral judgments, the evidences one has to draw on are typically non-exhaustive. Therefore, while the evidence in our possession imposes very real constraints on the sorts of judgments we may make (i.e. by defining the outermost boundaries of what is rationally defensible), they do not determine them. Pojman defines a volit as “an act of will made in full consciousness of acquiring a belief which is underdetermined by the evidence.”[15] But it would seem in light of the general nature of empirical judgments that all beliefs are of this sort. As Clifford himself acknowledges, “every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions…The question is not, therefore, ‘May we believe what goes beyond experience?’ for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but ‘How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?’”[16]

Much of our doxastic activity takes place within the leftover space between inductive certainty and impossibility. Occupying this remaining space are all those considerations that evidence has neither explicitly allowed nor disallowed. Let us call this space possibility. It is within the domain of the possible that we must supplement our judgments with extra-evidential considerations. The judgments that result from such syntheses of evidential and extra-evidential considerations have sometimes been characterized as “leaps of faith,” and are often criticized, I think unfairly, as being irrational.[17] Take, for instance, Pojman’s criticism of volitionism:

Volitional believing is not simply irrational believing, but is incoherently irrational, for it offers an account of believing that confuses the nature of believing. In volitional believing I not only believe without decisive regard for the evidence, but I do so for no other reason than because I want to (i.e., I don’t believe simply because of the evidence but because of others desires). Hence we can say that doxastic incoherence is a species of epistemic irrationality.[18]

Besides the vague and dubious reference in this passage to “decisive regard for the evidence,” consider that Pojman himself admits that “Most volitionists would confine the power of the will to situations where the evidence is not sufficient or irresistible in forming a belief.”[19] That is, by the volitionist standard, “leaps of faith cannot occur just any time over any propositions, but only over propositions that have some evidence in their favor but are still inadequately supported by the evidence.”[20] Insofar as volitional beliefs are built upon such considerations as the available evidence neither explicitly allows nor disallows, I don’t see that there is anything strictly irrational about them. On the contrary, as Bach argues, certain extra-evidential considerations are essential to both good scientific method as well as to everyday thinking:

There is nothing intrinsically irrational about explaining away evidence against what we already believe. This is part and parcel of good scientific method – theories should not be discarded without a fight – and of everyday thinking as well. Initially we try to deal with ‘recalcitrant experiences’ not by adjusting our beliefs but by looking for something wrong with the experiences. Before making serious changes in our beliefs, we try to render contrary data not worthy of accommodation. Only if we cannot do this without constructing theoretical epicycles do we adjust our beliefs, making changes as local and minimal as possible.[21]

In light of these considerations, I recommend that we reject the evidentialist’s suggestion that the “right sort of reasons” in the justification of moral judgments are those that the available evidence most strongly favors. In its place, I suggest we adopt the view that reasons are “good” when they properly represent one’s moral commitments (i.e., that one include among their extra-evidential considerations the practical consequences of adopting alternative hypotheses), and “bad” when such commitments are purposely excluded from one’s extra-evidential considerations.

The scientific thesis, which we took to underlie the evidentialist’s criterion, argued that the sum moral value of preserving sound epistemic faculties is greater than the sum value of any number of possible individual performances achieved at the expense of weakened epistemic faculties. Such a thesis presupposed that soundness with respect to these faculties consisted in reliably forming judgments that reflected the weight of evidence. Having been provided reasons to reject this crude characterization, we may adapt our understanding of what it is to “preserve sound epistemic faculties” to better reflect the complex nature of our doxastic situation. Applying this more refined notion of soundness to the analysis of volitional beliefs (i.e., those reasons that support practical and moral judgments), we see that it is not the inclusion, but the exclusion of extra-evidential considerations from our beliefs that is fundamentally irrational.

5. Conclusion

Consider the following argument constructed from the several conclusions drawn from our discussion: If evidence is decisive in the formation of beliefs (as the non-volitionist has claimed), then beliefs are not morally evaluable. However, Clifford has provided compelling arguments to suggest that there is at least a class of beliefs that are morally evaluable. Such a conclusion challenges the notion that evidence is decisive in the way that non-volitionists have argued. If evidential considerations are not decisive in the formation of all beliefs, then at least some beliefs must be constructed in part upon extra-evidential considerations. Such beliefs would be volitional in nature, and so would be the proper objects of moral evaluation (as the volitionists have claimed). The task is therefore set before us to discover what makes a belief “of the right sort” to justify a moral judgment. Since the evidentialist’s criterion yields the absurd result that a mother who abandons the search for her abducted child after the first three hours have elapsed is morally justified, we chose to reject it. In its place, we developed an ethic of belief based upon a criterion that better reflects the complex nature of our doxastic situation.

These arguments serve to support my thesis that there is a legitimate place for volitional beliefs in our otherwise non-volitional framework. Although we accept the non-volitionist’s model of belief formation as fundamentally correct under ideal circumstances (i.e., in contexts in which there is sufficient evidence available to render extra-evidential considerations irrelevant), we deny that the vast majority of our doxastic activity occurs under such ideal circumstances. The reality of our doxastic situation demands that our theory of belief formation be able to accommodate not only those beliefs acquired under default conditions but also those complex hypotheses that we formulate to support our moral and practical judgments. Such a theory is achievable by merging the non-volitional and volitionist accounts into a single comprehensive unit, regarding non-volitionism as the fundamentally correct model of belief formation in its default setting, but also affirming volitionism as the correct model for evaluating the application of stock beliefs toward the activities of practical reasoning.

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[1] Premises slightly adapted from Louis P. Pojman, “Believing and Willing,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Mar., 1985), 38-39.

[2] Premises slightly adapted from ibid., 40.

[3] W.K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief and other essays, (New York: Prometheus Books, 1999), 77.

[4] Ibid., 71.

[5] Ibid., 70-71.

[6] This is a classic non-volitionist-type response.

[7] Ibid., 73.

[8] Ibid., 76.

[9] Although, certain passages lead me to believe something like this is what he has in mind: “[Belief] is rightly used on truths which have been established by long experience and waiting toil, and which have stood in the fierce light of free and fearless questioning” (ibid., 74). And also, “Laying aside, then, such tradition as is handed on without testing by successive generations, let us consider that which is truly built up out of the common experience of mankind. This great fabric is for the guidance of our thoughts, and through them of our actions, both in the moral and the material world” (ibid., 88-89).

[10] Dion Scott-Kakures, “At ‘Permanent Risk’,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Nov., 2002), 592.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] These correspond to what I referred to above as speculative and practical reasoning, respectively.

[14] “In late 1993, the Criminal Division of the Washington State Attorney General's Office undertook a 3-1/2 year research project, partially funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, to study the investigation of child abduction murder cases…In 76 percent of the missing children homicide cases studied, the child was dead within three hours of the abduction–and in 88.5 percent of the cases the child was dead within 24 hours.” (http://www.atg.wa.gov/page.aspx?id=2354)

[15] Pojman 1985, 40.

[16] Clifford 1999, 92.

[17] Pojman defines rational believing as “believing according to the evidence,” and fully rational believing he defines as “believing simply because of the evidence” (Pojman 1985, 48).

[18] Ibid., 49.

[19] Ibid., 38.

[20] Ibid., 39.

[21] Kent Bach, “An Analysis of Self-Deception,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Mar., 1981), 358.

Faith: Part 3 (Originally posted Aug. 27, 2007)

Let me preface my response by telling you that C.S. Lewis has already discussed this issue at length in the first chapter of The Abolition of Man. By the end of my post, I hope to have provided what I have just asked AS for in my last post - that is, the “shape” of supernatural discernment. But so that we are first all agreed in my general premise, let me describe the “real world” correlative as referenced in Plato’s Republic (pgs. 122-125):

“It would seem…that the direction in which education starts a man, will determine his future life. Does not like always attract like?…Until some one rare and grand result is reached which may be called good, [or] may be the reverse of good?…[so then,] shall we condescend to legislate on any of [the] particulars? I think…that there is no need to impose laws about them on good men; what regulations are necessary they will find out soon enough for themselves…”

“…[but] without divine help…they will go on forever making and mending the laws and their lives in the hope of attaining perfection…[such men] are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra…” (pg. 122-124)

(If it is not clear what Plato is describing, think of these individuals as the ethical equivalent of a hypochondriac. The person is always troubling himself with trivial matters, when it is his general character which he should attend to. They “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel (Matt. 23:24).”)

“…the true legislator will not trouble himself with this class of enactments whether concerning laws or the constitution [of a State]…many of them will naturally flow our of our previous regulations.”

In the book, Socrates returns later to describe what is to be the emphasis of sound instruction with this illustration:

“You know…that dyers, when they want to dye wool for making the true sea-purple, begin by selecting their white color first; this they prepare and dress with much care and pains, in order that the white ground may take the purple hue in full perfection. The dyeing then proceeds; and whatever is dyed in this manner becomes a fast color, and no washing either with lyes or without them can take away the bloom. But, when the ground has not been duly prepared, you will have noticed how poor is the look either of purple or any other color. Then now…you will understand what our object was in [educating our citizens]; we were contriving influences which would prepare them to take the dye of the laws in perfection, and the color of…every opinion was to be indelibly fixed by their nurture and training, not to be washed away by such potent lyes as pleasure - mightier agent far in washing the soul than any soda or lye; or by sorrow, fear, or desire, the mightiest of all other solvents.” (pg. 128-129)

As C.S. Lewis comments:

“In The Republic, the well-nurtured youth is one ‘who would see most clearly whatever was amiss in ill-made works of man or ill-grown works of nature, and with a just distaste would blame and hate the ugly even from his earliest years and would give delighted praise to beauty, receiving it into his soul and being nourished by it, so that he becomes a man of gentle heart. All this before he is of an age to reason; so that when Reason at length comes to him, then, bred as he has been, he will hold out his hands in welcome and recognize her because of the affinity he bears to her (see Republic, pg. 95-96).’” (The Abolition of Man, pg. 16-17)

Up to this point, we have considered only Plato’s philosophy of education, and it seems to me a good one. Now, is there any reason preventing us from applying the same principles to God’s approach with man? I think, rather, that the Bible supports this principle, as evidenced in the verse below.

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - His good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Rom. 12:2)

The concept is that the heart is like an instrument requiring fine tuning if it is to resonate in harmony with God’s heart. Or perhaps it is better thought of us an antennae which must be regularly tweaked in order to tune in to God’s frequency. Or it could even be thought of as the helm of a ship. This is my personal favorite because it treats the heart as a fixed mechanism with an explicit purpose: to direct the ship. (Furthermore, it isn’t as accommodating of those cutesy clichés as my previous illustrations, and the fewer cutesy phrases I have to use, like “quiet time” for instance, the better.)

People - particularly academia - often ridicule someone who “follows their heart” or “trusts their gut” (by the way, the Israelites also placed the heart’s activities in the bowels and the kidneys, so the terms are interchangeable). Thomas Jefferson says it best:

“'Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity (The God Delusion, pg. 34).’”

Jim Watson, founder of the Human Genome Project, commented: “I’m a bit embarrassed [laughs] because, you know, I can’t believe anyone accepts truth by revelation (The God Delusion, pg. 99).”

And, here comes the slippery slope, we all probably agree that reliance upon feelings is unwise (reminiscent of the Fact-Faith-Feeling train from certain Christian tracts). But telling someone not to follow their heart is, relative to Biblical principles, the equivalent of telling someone not to navigate their ship at the helm. To further illustrate this point, consider Jesus’ rebuke of the Pharisees:

“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matt. 12:34)

“The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

What I like about the concept of living from the heart - well, one thing anyway - is that our hearts are capable of inspiring actions that we would not have otherwise made intellectually. It allows such experiences as falling in love, bearing someone else’s burdens, or even laying down our lives for someone else. I like that we describe this kind of inspiration in terms of being “swept up” into something “bigger than ourselves.” It seems to reestablish our position in relation to God - we recognize in we do are not doing the work, but participating in the divine nature. It distinguishes us from other creatures, even from ourselves when we are acting as mere creatures, and makes us feel truly human. “…for in the image of God has God made man.” (Gen. 9:6)

But back to the attitude of academia toward what Jefferson would call “unintelligible propositions”, that is, those that are based on some subjective intuition of the heart, let me clarify what is really being debated. What most critics mean when they call a proposition unintelligible is that it can’t be assessed empirically. And to further clarify, let me provide a definition. Empiricism is defined as the way we assemble what we know of ourselves and our world from the "association of ideas" that come to us from our five senses. Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. But is that all there is? Are the “five senses” really the only contributing constituents to what we acknowledge in our minds as sound reason? Philosophy would not exist if it were. But when we’re studying the natural world, that one side of what many acknowledge is a two-sided coin, all voices besides those coming from our five senses are silenced. And this is what we call being empirical.

And you know what, this is a perfect standard for the field of science. Science is only concerned with the natural, therefore it only makes sense to exclude non-empirical data. The problem comes in when someone becomes so habitually dependent on the natural, that he/she forgets its limitations. It is nothing but a case of nearsightedness. Narrow-mindedness. Bias. None of the terms are meant to offend, only to remind anyone who has forgotten that such a state of mind is quite common. We all do it. But every once in a while, we need to expose ourselves to the many correctives this world has made available. We are acted upon by reality in the same way our government is acted upon by the system of checks and balances. As C.S. Lewis has said, “All reality is iconoclastic (A Grief Observed, pg. 66).” There are experiential counter-weights everywhere, if only we are open to them.

In the illustration below, we see the potential consequence of a life lived shut off from the reality and its iconoclastic nature. As you read it, keep in mind that we are sometimes kept from the reality by forces outside ourselves (as is the boy in the story); but at other times, we are our own imprisoner (as we have just discussed).

“Let us picture a woman thrown into a dungeon. There she bears and rears a son. He grows up seeing nothing but dungeon walls, the straw on the floor, and a little patch of the sky seen through the grating, which is too high up to show anything except sky. This unfortunate woman was an artist, and when they imprisoned her she managed to bring with her a drawing pad and a box of pencils. As she never loses the hope of deliverance, she is constantly teaching her son about that outer world which he has never seen. She does it very largely by drawing him pictures. With her pencil she attempts to show him what fields, rivers, mountains, cities, and waves on a beach are like. He is a dutiful boy and he does his best to believe her when she tells him that the outer world is far more interesting and glorious than anything in the dungeon. At times he succeeds. On the whole he gets on tolerably well until, one day, he says something that gives his mother pause. For a minute of two they are at a cross-purpose. Finally it dawns on her that he has, all these years, lived under a misconception. ‘But,’ she gasps, ‘you didn’t think that the real world was full of lines drawn in lead pencil?’ And instantly his whole notion of the outer world becomes a blank. For the lines, by which alone he was imagining it, have now been denied of it. He has no idea of that which will exclude and dispense with the lines, that of which the lines were merely a transposition - the waving treetops, the light dancing on the weir, the colored three-dimensional realities which are not enclosed in lines but define their own shapes with at every moment with a delicacy and multiplicity which no drawing could ever achieve. The child will get the idea that the real world is somehow less visible than his mother’s pictures. In reality it lacks lines because it is incomparably more visible.” (The Weight of Glory: "Transposition". pg. 109-110)

Needless to say, we have all had personal experiences with individuals who affirm - and under no compulsion - certain feelings or experiences which Christianity presents as evidence of our origins but which science (or more strictly, the monist perspective) disregards. One of the most wide-reaching examples of this kind of experience which I have found is that which Lewis describes as Joy. This experience, when understood as Lewis intended, is to me one of the strongest arguments on the side of Christianity and deserving of a separate discussion all its own. For now, suffice it to say that even atheists are sometimes caught off guard with experiences that draw them outside themselves.

Before closing, I would like to discuss the thing which takes the conversation full circle…I have already suggested that faith is a reliance upon those things which God has made known to us intuitively, in our hearts. But this is a double-edged sword, because as intangibility protects intuition from being ruled out by science, so it also prevents us from making empirical judgments about its conclusions. It, perhaps unfortunately, introduces a measure of subjectivity into the discussion, allowing not the accountability to peer review as does science, but personal accountability to one reviewer: God. As the Bible affirms, “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?…The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment (1 Cor. 2:11).” But if you think about it, is this not a much more appropriate type of accountability for intuitive knowledge, since morality (or better, right standing with God) is at its heart? Morality really goes no further than the heart (as in, there is no prior source). Actions in themselves are morally benign; it is sin in the heart that brings death to the soul. “…but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death (James 1:14-15).”

For all these reasons, I am inclined to agree with A.W. Tozer’s assessment (I think this is Tozer?) that “God’s voice must speak from within to bring enlightenment. It must be the Spirit of God speaking soundlessly within. That is what brings in man and makes him accountable to God.” (Peter Lord, Hearing God, pg. 20) And if all this is true, true of Christianity at least, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to return to my position as devil’s advocate for a while…the consequence of establishing a system of such immense expectation - that of God entering into intelligible dialogue with man - creates the potential for deep emotional / spiritual wounds to develop. It is as if God signs on to what is very largely, in our experience anyway, a human enterprise, where the rules of engagement are well-agreed upon. How does the God who reveals Himself to Job as an unpredictable, uncontrollable whirlwind (Job 38:1) condescend to such a position? How does He then borrow such emotionally-infused qualifiers as friend, brother, father, and lover to describe His relationship with us? God was not wary, not the least bit cautious, in building up the incredible expectation that exists around Him today. And I find this is a frustrating, an exasperating, promise of scripture that demands our deeper exploration.

(Suggested reading on this subject includes John Eldredge’s Journey of Desire; Peter Kreeft’s Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing; C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man (Chapter 1: Men Without Chests); Peter Lord’s Hearing God, and of course all of the context implied by quotes included in this response.)

Faith: Part 2 (Originally posted Sept. 13, 2007)

Ok, so now that we’ve gotten to the point of proposing a “mechanism” for receiving and discerning spiritual truth, we can move on to testing our hypothesis. Just to recap AS’s definition, let me cite some of his statements along with the supporting scripture references:

“Why do differences in doctrine exist? Sin. Laziness- an unwillingness to do the hard work of interpreting the Scripture rightly, which may include things like learning the original languages and reading books by gifted teachers, etc. etc. Spiritual immaturity or perhaps better stated as a lack of spiritual maturity in certain areas - we may just plain be unable to handle certain truths at particular points in our lives. Bad English translations of the Bible. Who knows what else?”
-AS

“My point in reviewing all those texts you provided that speak of spiritual enlightenment coming via the Holy Spirit was to emphasize I don’t think that the Holy Spirit is necessarily the means by which every spiritual truth is understood.” -AS

“But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” (Heb. 5:14)

“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” (2 Tim. 2:7)

“I think there is a fine line between understanding spiritual truths as intellectual constructs and understanding them as spiritual insights.” -AS

This is one distinction which I have to recognize. The intellect certainly plays a role in discerning truth, spiritual or otherwise, and intellectual laziness can certainly be blamed for poor theology. Jameson already did a good job providing the scripture to support this point (Heb. 5:14, 2 Tim. 2:7 and 15).

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:12-13)

“Again, I think this is a disciple-limited promise that the Holy Spirit will guide the apostles ‘into all the truth’ in the early church age so that they may speak the very words of God and communicate the ‘whole counsel of God’ to believers as was achieved via the New Testament.”
-AS

Someone could probably ascribe a name to this position, whether it be one of the proposed “dispensations” or something else. Whatever the case, I don’t know that I subscribe to the idea that God revealed spiritual truth to his apostles any differently than He does to us today. Even if I could accept that they received a heightened capacity for discerning spiritual truths, I cannot accept that we operate by any different principle. And it’s the principle that I think we are most concerned with. The simple fact that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Truth in John 14:17 (see also John 4:23-24) reveals that spiritual discernment is one of the roles of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. (And anyway, what part of the scripture you cited do you not believe to apply to the modern-day believer?). I think our contention, if there is any, concerns the location of that subtle line distinguishing that truth which is discernible through the work of the intellect versus that only discernible by supernatural revelation. I think in many cases the latter is no more than a unique condition of preparedness to receive the lesson…Spiritual revelation in my experience has always come to me as a sort of chain reaction connecting hundreds of previously understood lessons which effectively produces a glimpse of the larger picture of who God is and what He’s all about. I call that “revelation” because it’s a moment where the intellectual components work together in a uniquely orchestrated fashion that allows me to “see” God. Perhaps the only supernatural part of the whole thing is that God is responsible for directing the course of my intellectual growth that allows that moment of “enlightenment” to unfold (see Ps. 119:130). In this case, maybe the question is more about the extent to which we can expect to hear from God via means other than our intellect. Can you think of any instances in which spiritual discernment is more strongly differentiated from discernment via intellectual constructs. How are such revelations validated? Against what measure or standard are we to test these revelations?

“What I do know though is that we have the Bible. Why? Why didn’t God just give us a systematic theology book that we could just turn to a page and get the answer to whatever question we had under the appropriate heading? I can’t be sure, because I’m not God, but I could guess that one of the reasons is because he wants us to work.” -AS

This is a worthwhile question to consider. Why is the majority of the Bible (particularly the Old Testament) written in story form rather than as a book of systematic theology? Why also, within these stories, would God choose to be less than clear on the intrinsic lesson - assuming there is one (not very didactic of Him, huh Jameson)? As Justin has previously pointed out, the Bible tends to be more descriptive than prescriptive. It tells the story as it happened and very seldom takes the extra step to supplement the events that are occurring with any moral qualification. So, why Story? Let me provide the only possible explanation I have come across as presented in John Eldredge’s book, Epic.

Story is the language of the heart. Or, in other words, the heart receives and frames its beliefs within the construct of story. As Eldredge suggests, “Life doesn’t come to us as a math problem. It comes to us the way that a story does, scene by scene (Epic, pg. 2).” He goes on to suggest that story is also how we figure things out (as evidenced by our fixation with the news, novels, and movies and our tendency to look to them for illumination into our own lives).

This principle has applications to our spiritual life as well. For instance, God uses this tendency to redeem all those dead, stagnant periods of time (chronos in Greek) by providing also divinely orchestrated moments (kairos in Greek) which infuse them with meaning. But if we understood life and internalized our experiences with our bare bones intellect, we wouldn’t find it necessary to draw a distinction between chronos and kairos at all. But the fact of the matter is that we do perceive such a distinction, and this is why human beings love stories. All the elements of a great story - setting, plot, conflict, character, point of view, theme - work because there exists a corresponding quality in our nature. If we can accept this principle, then we’ve understood the premise of Eldredge’s worldview. He goes on to say,

“Every story, great and small, shares the same essential structure because every great story we tell borrows its power from a Larger Story, a Story woven into the fabric of our being - what pioneer psychologist Carl Jung tried to explain as archetype, or what his more recent popularizer Joseph Campbell called myth.” -Epic, pg. 12-13

“Every story we tell is our attempt to put into words and images what God has written there, on our hearts.” -Epic, pg. 73

While I might be missing some inherent flaw in his theology, I think Eldredge’s explanation serves at least one crucial purpose and that is to provide a framework within which we can understand our communion with God. If God has made our hearts to learn and grow through the medium of Story, then it might follow that He meant for our communion with Him to be an experience more centered around the heart than the mind. We can all agree that our intellects are more adept to learning through concise, systematic presentations of facts and principles. Stories, on the other hand, tend to teach us things which our intellect often has difficulty putting to words. The lessons take a “back road” to accomplish its intended purpose. Blaise Pascal writes in Pensées, “The heart has its reason which reason knows nothing of.” We’re all familiar with the idea of a girl’s emotions preceding her intellectual comprehension of those emotion’s source. They cry before they even know intellectually what’s wrong. Stories do that…after watching the movie Braveheart, you might feel inspired to take up arms with William Wallace without ever grasping the politics or necessity of his cause. It moves our hearts, and so we act.

As implied in this framework, Story is the language of the heart; and incidentally, Story is also the dominant form of divine expression available to believers. It must follow that God intended a communion of the heart to be the center of our relationship with Him. Story is an especially powerful tool to teach, grow, and challenge believers in their faith walk with the unique characteristic of transcending the intellectual limitations of its hearers (positive actions can be inspired without the antecedent of intellectual comprehension). This quality of Story relieves the tension that exists between intellectual capacity and one’s ability to “rightly divide the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

I believe God intended for our heart, rather than our intellect, to be the center of our faith walk. I think this point is communicated in Prov. 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding…”; and Prov. 4:23: “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” We cannot ignore the emphasis the Bible seems to place on the heart’s activity and the debilitating limitations He has placed on our intellect. In Ecclesiastes 11:5, Solomon writes, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.” In 3:10 he writes, “He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” David reflects on God’s intimate knowledge of him and responds, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain (Ps. 139:6).” And Proverbs 25:2 suggests that God conceals things in mystery for the sake of His glory (it’s interesting to consider the “God of the gaps” discussion in this light).

The intellect is indispensable in discerning spiritual truth, but I believe that God intended our heart to be the primary instrument for communion with Him. Granted, the concept of the heart is kind of ambiguous and can hardly be separated from the mental process, but I think we are all aware of the distinction between the type of meditation our hearts engage in as compared with that of the intellect. The intellect, stripped to bare bones, would produce a naturalist or a monist. The metaphysical heart is the bridge between our bare bones intellect and that abstraction which we call the supernatural (see The Abolition of Man, pg. 25). An acknowledgment of both is essential to the Christian worldview, yet they have different means of receiving truth.

So, anyway, let me bring this back to the essential question. How does God’s choice of story form to express Himself (according to Eldredge’s worldview) relate to the discussion of discerning spiritual truth? For one, It appeals to a heart-centered form of communion whereas our discussion up to this point has more supported discernment via the intellect. I feel pretty certain that, if we are to take the Biblical perspective, we are going to have to accept some degree of supernatural discernment which is not so dependent on intellectual capacity. Likewise, I think there are fundamental qualities of the Christian faith that are lost to an intellect-driven faith walk. On the other hand, I think the alternative forces us back into that uneasy territory of subjectivity, which is very difficult to defend. In one last quote, AS, you said:

“But if the primary means through which God speaks is the Bible, and I think it is, it might would be an apt illustration to say that that voice is in a language that needs to be interpreted. Interpretation, of course, involving the intellect.” -AS

What would you propose is the “shape” of spiritual discernment (that not arrived at via intellectual constructs). What does it look like? How is it practiced? What is it and what is it not? Is there communion with God beyond that which is freely accessible through intellectual exploration of His word? Can we truly expect the type of intimacy which many Christians are claiming is available to us or is nearness to God nothing more than harmony with the theology of the Bible? WHY DOES IT SEEM THAT CHRISTIANS ARE CONTINUALLY MISSING IT!?…“Like sheep without a shepherd…” That is the question.

Faith: Part 1 (Originally posted June 17, 2007)

I wrote, rewrote, started over, and revised this one until I could have no more...My skeptical side would present the arguments one day only to have my spiritual side feel compelled to answer them the next. Consequently, I think I'm going to kick this one off with a short post more in keeping with my original intention - as an expression of the world's view of Faith - and follow it up later with a more in-depth assessment of what I believe to be the real issue. I think allowing some time between the two will better serve our purposes anyway as you will all have time to consider your own response to the questions surrounding the biblical virtue of Faith.

Here are some examples of the kinds of things the world says about faith:

“Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief. The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence. It really is a different matter. Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they present overwhelming quantities of mutually buttressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn’t happen with holy books…we believe in evolution because the evidence supports it, and we would abandon it overnight if new evidence arose to disprove it….As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.” (The God Delusion, pg. 282-284)

“…religious faith is an especially potent silencer of rational calculation, which usually seems to trump all others. This is…partly because it discourages questioning, by its very nature. Christianity…teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue.” (The God Delusion, pg. 306)

“Irrefutability is a virtue for committed believers, but a scientific vice.” (Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D.)

“More generally, what is really pernicious is the practice of teaching children that faith is a virtue. Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument. Teaching children that unquestioned faith is a virtue primes them - given certain other ingredients that are not too hard to come by - to grow up into potentially lethal weapons for future jihads or crusades.” (The God Delusion, pg. 307-308)

Without picking apart these statements (and there is room for it), let me just restate what I understand to be the heart behind their criticisms:

1. The commending of faith as a virtue creates an environment for fundamentalist and extremist attitudes to develop among believers.

2. Faith, when nurtured in this way, undermines the scientific enterprise by encouraging believers to defend claims which evidence seems to contradict.

3. Faith, lacking a clear and objective definition, can be used as a trump-all sort of justification for almost any action (many of these, we can freely admit, could even be loosely supported by scripture).

My question is whether the nature of Christian faith is really as it is perceived by the secular community. Let’s consider the different definitions of faith we have heard from spiritual leaders in our own lives…how far are they from Dawkins’ and Sheldrake’s appraisals? Once we have taken time to consider those definitions we have at one point accepted, or at least tolerated in our spiritual mentors, we can then move on to consider the Bible’s definitions and see if we have missed something in our understanding of biblical faith. I think whatever we discover, it is important to realize how gray the lines must appear to the common Christian for such deviant definitions of faith to persist within the church. That realization may be an issue in and of itself, evidence which might reasonably suggest neglectful parenting on God’s part. But one thing at a time…

Hebrews 11:1-3 defines faith in this way…I am including three different translations to get every angle on what the terminology might actually infer (Justin, if you have any insight into the Greek, that’d be helpful too):

(In the NAS translation) “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.”

(In the NIV translation) “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

(In the KJV translation) “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report. 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.”

Within these verses, I think it is significant that faith is being defined in terms of evidence, substance, and assurance. These terms don’t seem congruent with the criticisms of Dawkins or Sheldrake. It might be worthwhile, then, to consider which passages of scripture might be supplying Dawkins - and those like him - with the particular picture of faith they now hold. Regardless of how close (or how far) Dawkins or Sheldrake may have come to describing the real thing, one thing is certain: the form they were criticizing has all but replaced true faith within the church.

…This moves me on to my next question: If the church has misunderstood the biblical virtue of faith so as to adopt a deviant definition of it, is God to blame? John 14:26 and 16:13 say that we are guided into all truth through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 12 tells us that it is by the Holy Spirit that we are granted the gift of discernment; and in Matthew 13:11-12, that we understand the secrets of the kingdom of heaven through tuning our spiritual ears to hear His voice. All these things seem to point to God as the source of spiritual understanding, in which case we might rightly call Him the “author and perfector of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). It seems a reasonable accusation, then, to suggest that God should be held accountable when His children err due to an imperfect understanding of His will. I remember a discussion with Justin in which we decided the Bible does not support this sort of scapegoating, but for the sake of argument, let’s consent the accusation for now. Also, if spiritual enlightenment is in fact a spiritual phenomenon, you would expect little or no correlation between sheer intellect and one’s ability to discern spiritual truths. However, there is considerable evidence that such a correlation does exist.

“A…study by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi ‘found that among Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences, as well as those in literature, there was a remarkable degree of irreligiosity, as compared to the populations they came from.’ A study in the leading journal Nature by Larson and Witham in 1998 showed that of those American scientists considered eminent enough by their peers to have been elected to the National Academy of Science (equivalent to being a Fellow of the Royal Society in Britain) only about 7 per cent believe in a personal God. This overwhelming preponderance of atheists is almost the exact opposite of the American population at large, of whom more than 90 per cent are believers in some sort of supernatural being. …It is completely as I would expect that American scientists are less religious than the American public generally, and that the most distinguished scientists are the least religious of all. Michael Shermer, in How We Believe: The Search for God in and Age of Science, describes a large survey of randomly chosen Americans that he and his colleague, Frank Sulloway carried out. Among their many interesting results was the discovery that religiosity is indeed negatively correlated with education (more highly educated people are less likely to be religious). Religiosity is also negatively correlated with interest in science and (strongly) with political liberalism. None of this is surprising, nor is the fact that there is a positive correlation between religiosity and parent’s religiosity.” (The God Delusion, pg. 100-102)

When you think upon those individuals whom you consider to have the best or most accurate understanding of scripture, are they not also the most intelligent individuals - at least as you personally measure intelligence? It seems, at least in my experience, that those with whom I most closely relate on spiritual matters are those who, curiously enough, think like me. So, it would seem that spiritual discernment, in many instance, is no more than recognition of your preferred thoughts expressed through others. Hence the wide array of religious flavors available to believers. Denominations are a product of personal preferences (or, at its best, personal conviction), not of sound theology. This poses a problem for me personally, as I tend to hold spiritual revelation among believers as one of the most central and necessary characteristics of true faith. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3).” But then, is our experience as Christians resonant with John 10’s description that “the sheep recognize His voice”? Do we not vary in spirituality as much we vary in personality? It must be that Christianity is either a faith embracing of a certain degree of subjectivity, or Christians just aren’t hearing God’s voice properly. I’m not sure one conclusion is any less problematic than the other. What do all of you think?

The meeting has reconvened...

Welcome to the Meeting of the Minute Minds, the annex to a prior series of discussions occurring between 2006-2008 that went by the same name. As the annex to this prior series, this forum will feature many of the same questions and themes as the original, as well as some of the specific content which those first discussions precipitated. Most of our discussions, then, will center around issues of faith, with primary attention being given to the question of whether the tenets of faith can be conciliated with principles of reason. Discussions of the past have featured such themes as the reliability of scripture, variant interpretations of the doctrine of faith, and the possible mechanics of conversing with God.

As the reader will no doubt recognize in the course of time, none of our contributors (at least presently) are experts on the topics we are discussing. However, the vast majority of us are highly sympathetic to the plight of the critically-minded to have their questions addressed in a manner that is intellectually satisfying. Therefore, though we might often in the course of our discussion fall well below the level of meticulousness that these subjects rightly warrant, we are nonetheless committed to the ideal of scholasticism, and will do our best to produce content that has at least appreciable intellectual merit. It is my hope that whatever ineptitudes we bring to the discussion do not serve to deter potential contributors from joining in, but rather encourage them to offer their own perhaps less-than-sophisticated thoughts and opinions on what is, admittedly, very complex and difficult subject matter.

Finally, in the process of browsing through the archives of past entries (particularly that content that is original to the first series), the reader will notice that prior discussions were largely motivated by a positive desire to defend the tenets of faith before the potential critiques of reason. This motivation, however, was largely a function of convictions which I no longer hold to the same degree. As such, though I might continue at times to proffer arguments in defense of faith, it is expressly not my intention to act as its guardian, and would be happy if future discussions featured a slightly more balanced representation of views. In short, the purposes of this present forum are NOT reflected in the bulk of its archived content (that is, occurring between the years 2007-2008), in which a distinctly pro-Christian bias pervades. I hope the tone of these prior discussions, which was merely an indication of the different goals I then held, does not too greatly burden our present discussions by obscuring the fact that it is driven by its own unique set of goals and motivations.