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June 12, 2007

On Canon: A Thought Experiment

John Hobbins at Ancient Hebrew Poetry continues both his series on canon and his summaries of various reactions. He says this about Tim Bulkeley's and my contributions to the discussion.

Duane and Tim highlight what might be called the exclusionary function of a canon. It sets outer limits.

I'll let Tim speak for himself but that characterization my view is correct only in a somewhat superficial way. Sure, I do see canon as exclusionary. But what do I see it as excluding? I see canon, even when viewed dynamically, as excluding an independent rational thought process that is otherwise available in all other important areas of our lives. I posted the following comment on Chris' Higgaion blog.

Thanks for your response and the extension of my thoughts. The direction of your extension is clearly a valid one and very useful. If I were to offer such an extension, I would go in a somewhat different direction. Why the need for any kind of authority other than that derived from critical reflection on and synthesis of life experiences (including scientific experimentation and observation)? I’m not talking about old fashioned empiricism with its antirealism baggage. As you know, I am more of a Bayesian than an empiricist. One can only approach the fact of any matter as a limit. But there is a fact of the matter even if it is beyond our ken. Authority contributes nothing but a starting point to such an approach. I’m not saying that authority is never useful. It certainly is when I am just too lazy to look into something and that is most of the time on most subjects. In these cases, I take the word of an authority. I have not measured the circumference of the earth and have no intention to do so. Whenever I need this information at more precision than my memory allows, I look it up. But when something is of great importance or great interest or just plain fun, I try to abandon authority or at least I try to apply a critical perspective to authority. To put it crudely, if religion is so important why isn’t authority abandoned from the get go? I know that there are philosophers, theologians and biblical scholars like you who try with various levels of success to do this, but my psychological question is, “Why isn’t it the norm?”

I continue to wonder why authority remains so important precisely in the area of religious doctrine. Doctrine that I assume is of exceptional importance.

Let's try a little thought experiment based on the circumference of the earth. What if by some evangelical process you came to be absolutely convinced that your eternal salvation is dependent on knowing and accurately repeating daily the circumference of the earth at the equator to ten significant figures. For the purpose of this experiment, let's assume that along with this central dogma is an definition of the "circumference of the earth at the equator" that takes into account global irregularities like the earth not being quite round, local irregularities (for example, mountains and valleys), expansions and contractions like tides, rising sea levels and anything else that might make the definition of circumference ambiguous. The important thing is that being wrong even with regard to the tenth significant figure will insure eternal torment. Also, while being wrong has terrible consequences, another doctrine allows believers who come to see the error(s) of their ways to change to a different and hopefully better number and thus, if the new number is correct, avoid the consequences of their previous error. To add to the thought experiment, let us further assume that among those who hold this belief there is some disagreement as to the circumference of the earth at the equator. For the purposes of this thought experiment, the central dogma, as stated above, cannot be challenged.

What to do? Perhaps one might reasonably start by checking out the differing opinions among the faithful. Note: I am now changing for "you" to "me." I'll let you decide how you will work through this problem. But remember this is a problem of the utmost importance for your eternal life. After consulting the opinions of the faithful, I would see what those outside the faith think. I would try to understand how both the faithful and infidels came to their conclusions. I would look very closely at the differences to see how to I could account for these differences. I would go over everyone's math. I would discount any results that had obvious errors. I would then look at the raw data. To what extend is everyone using the same raw data? If there were differences that I cannot account for by differences in technique, I would ask why. I would want to understand the various methods by which each synthesized the data to get their answer. I might need to get together a group to finance the collection of a new data set. I might even develop a new and hopefully better method to synthesize that data. In other words, I would move away from the differing authorities rather than towards anyone of them. It might turn out that I came to agree with one or more of the authorities but that is only because I eventually reached the same conclusion independently. I may not get the correct answer, but it will be an answer that I have higher confidence in than that of any authority. Because I might be wrong, I would go through the process from time to time to make sure that I still had confidence in the answer. I would certainly do this anytime I learned of someone else having a different solution to the circumference of the earth.

Here's a big worry. Even with a "faith" proposition as trivial as this, I worry that eventually a kind of intellectual laziness would set in and I would adopt the view of my favorite authority (my canon, written or otherwise) and begin to call anyone who disagreed with me a heretic.

I am fairly certain that most if not all religious doctrine succumbs to my worry. After one cuts through all the finery, most people base their doctrines and beliefs on their favorite authority. As humans, we very often move toward authority rather than toward reason. Heck, there are even those who think reason is bad and they think this based on some authority. I think such movement toward authority is to our great detriment and to the detriment of society as a whole. It may even be to the detriment of our beliefs about religion.

As my favorite theologian once said,

Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world-and never will. [Mark Twain, Consistency speech, 1887]

But then old Mark was not a recognized authority on the question. I have independently come to agree with him. At least I hope that is the case.

Extra credit thought experiment:

Now drop the restriction disallowing challenging the central dogma and assume that the definition of "circumference of the earth at the equator" is otherwise ambiguous. Keep all the other parts of the above thought experiment.

Posted by Duane Smith at June 12, 2007 10:24 AM | Read more on Religion |

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Posted by: John Hobbins at June 12, 2007 11:12 AM

Posted by: Duane at June 12, 2007 4:06 PM

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