Worldview thinking

Peter Leithart wrote a critique on worldview thinking back in 2003. Some of this may be in reaction to how he was seeing this played out at the time. Nevertheless, I don't find the complaints generally valid.

God has an opinion about everything. As God is truth, his opinion is correct. In as much as we think correctly we are thinking God's thoughts after him. At its simplest: the Christian worldview is the worldview of God; of Christ.

All people have a worldview. All worldviews are at least somewhat incorrect and usually inconsistent in places. One may therefore complain that we cannot know God's thoughts for certain, which is true. Because we are not outside ourselves how can we, with an imperfect worldview, know the true worldview. The errant man is chasing an inerrant truth external to himself but is only judging with his own errant perspective.

These complaints are true enough. But they are not insurmountable. And they neglect how we know and approximate truth.

Leithart's complaints are: 1) how do we get external to ourselves to judge (as my above paragraph); 2) worldview thinking is intellectual, specifically how do we know whether our worldview forms our externals compared to whether our externals shape our worldview; 3) worldview presupposes a birds eye view; and 4) worldview philosophy overrides theology.

The 4th complaint is merely a problem to avoid. And it is not a problem confined to worldview thinking. It is a problem all men take to the Bible, at least men who see the Bible giving a somewhat consistent testimony. We all systematise to some extent and we all categorise our ideas; thus our prior ideas may frame our theology at the expense of Scripture. Fine as a warning, but a warning all men need. And at least worldview thinking reminds us that theology is philosophy, or rather our philosophy is our theology.

The first 3 complaints are very much related. It is a confusion that appears to come from a more binary perspective: truth is not falsehood. Which is entirely correct. But falsehood is not entirely untrue and incompletely understanding is not necessarily false understanding.

We gain knowledge by degrees and we modify our thinking incrementally. This is a design feature. We learn from our elders, and our reason. And our ability to reason leads us into increasing amounts of truth. So complaint 2 is in fact not a problem, but why worldview thinking works. Our thinking comes from our surroundings and shapes our surroundings. That is how we grow in knowledge. God gives all men nature from which we gain knowledge. He gives us all the ability to reason. These externals (nature and reason) lead us to more truth. And the truth allows us to modify our environment based on that truth. It is a spiral of gaining more and more truth. Worldview thinking does not know everything that is true, rather it gains knowledge of the truth. Thus complaints 1 and 3 are also dealt with. We don't get external to ourselves, but we judge from what true knowledge we do have, using that knowledge to weed out wrong ideas and gain new right ideas. And we do end up getting a bird's eye view or sorts, only incomplete, out of focus and a few misinterpreted pictures. But as our view gets better the gaps are slowly filled in, items come into focus, and we come to realise that some of the things we thought we were seeing are in fact something else.

Or to change the analogy. We struggle with advanced calculus but we can count. We learn our times tables. We are taught what primes are. Then the trigonometry we were getting wrong we now get right; and not only do we get it right, we can see why it is right.

Further to natural knowledge we have Scriptural knowledge. This gives us greater understanding than natural knowledge and curbs the extent our reasoning can mislead us. When we submit ourselves to Scripture we allow God to guide us into truth increasingly. The spiral goes inward to truth.

This also explains why those who consciously reject God have a tendency away from the truth; how overtime their worldview becomes increasingly incorrect. Worldviews are not just an intellectual exercise. We need faith that God has given us reason. We need faith in our fundamental presuppositions, and faith that God will guide our divine-originating (but broken) reason into truth. Those who reject trust in God grow in foolishness as God does not protect them from their faulty presumptions and faulty reasoning.

Monday quote

Violation of conscience is a grave act against man. It is the most painful blow inflicted on human dignity. It is, in a certain sense, worse than inflicting physical death.

Pope John Paul II (1982).

---

Under the threat of losing their jobs, citizens are being forced to sign declarations that do not agree with their conscience and with their convictions,... Violation of conscience is a grave act against man. It is the most painful blow inflicted on human dignity. It is, in a certain sense, worse than inflicting physical death, murder.... The principle of respect of conscience is a fundamental right of man, guaranteed by constitutions and by international accords. I raise my voice to God, together with all men of good will, so that the consciences of my countrymen are not suffocated.

Monday quote

Those who refuse to let their opponents dispute have no right to complain if they hear instead lewd catcalls in the streets; in a sense, it is what they have chosen.

C.S. Lewis.

Monday quote

A common argument in modern culture is that differences between the sexes are essentially social constructs;... it is in fact social constructs that allow sexual differences to be minimised.

Matthew Hosier.

Monday quote

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

Billy Graham

Monday quote

People often form "strong opinions" based on "weak statistics."

Alan Reynolds

Monday quote

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.

Attributed to Vladimir Lenin by John Maynard Keynes.

Monday quote

History will show you not all the answers, but it’ll tell you a lot of the questions to ask and furthermore, it will show you how other people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar type issues.

James Mattis.

Monday quote

Our days are happier when we give people a bit of our heart rather than a piece of our mind.

Monday quote

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. This principle is, contempt prior to examination.

William Paley

Monday quote

It is not enough to mean well in life. One must also do well. And the two are frequently not the same thing.

Dennis Prager

Monday quote

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Winston Churchill

Brain death

In an earlier post some years back Blair D raised the question of brain death. He mentioned those who are considered brain dead

I have never known of a person diagnosed as brain dead to breathe, in a manner consistent with life sustaining way, for very long. In other words the brain dead person has commenced the process of dying.

and those in a persistent vegetative state

To the clinicians and she was as good as dead in that she was deemed to have none of the higher brain functions remaining intact and therefore was described as a "living brain stem" but no more. No ability to perceive, experience (to give meaning to) and or communicate in any way.

One needs to be careful how death, including brain death, is defined, this should not be happening,

Stephen Thorpe, then 17, was placed in a medically-induced coma following a multi-car pileup....

Although a team of four physicians insisted that his son was “brain-dead” following the wreck, Thorpe’s father enlisted the help of a general practitioner and a neurologist, who demonstrated that his son still had brain wave activity.  The doctors agreed to bring him out of the coma, and five weeks later Thorpe left the hospital, having almost completely recovered.

Today, the 21-year-old with “brain damage” is studying accounting at a local university.

Now many people whose brains are non-functional following trauma never recover, they fail to wake up ever. However because some do wake up, perhaps brain death may not be the best way to define death. This position is consistent with what I understand the biblical definition of death to be. If we are going to have "brain death" then we need to have absent brain function. If there is no brain function then such a person will stop breathing because breathing is controlled by the brain. (The heart is affected by the brain but can continue to function without brain input.) Heart cessation will occur shortly following breathing cessation.

Then why not call brain death a form of death when there is no brain activity in the region that causes respiration? Perhaps medically this could be a definition. However the situation could arise where the breathing centre of the brain has some damage (temporary or permanent) but the person retains higher cognitive functions. He will then be aware that his breathing is being maintained artificially (similar to high neck injuries). So for brain death we need evidence of minimal brain activity, no awareness, and lack of respiratory effort. Even with all these we cannot be certain of irreversibility and people can be maintained in this situation for years. Contra cardiac cessation which is permanent after several minutes (somewhat depending on the temperature).

If we accept that death is cardiac (plus or minus respiratory), where does that leave us with those who are considered brain dead or others who are in a persistent vegetative state?

This is actually a different question to whether or not brain death is death. I would phrase the question: Can we withhold medical treatment from a minimally conscious person who is unlikely to recover?

Which raises another question: What is medical treatment?

The answer to the first question is a guarded yes. If a person is thought to be permanently brain damaged and is in an induced coma the least one should do is "wake" him up. Assessment of response to stimuli should involve significant stimuli in the absence of sedation. But if there is strong evidence for irreversible brain damage and no response to stimuli (without sedation) and the person is without consciousness, then I see no ethical command to maintain life using ongoing medical treatment. This is not to say that  providing such medical treatment is necessarily immoral, rather that there is not an automatic moral responsibility to maintain life artificially indefinitely.

Which leads to the second question: What is medical treatment? If a person is unable to breathe then the removal of ventilation will lead to cessation of respiration followed shortly by cardiac arrest and death. If a person is able to breathe then they may continue to live for several days but die from kidney failure without fluid. The provision of air via an artificial respirator is considered medical treatment because it is a high-tech intervention. The provision of water and food via a feeding tube is not considered high-tech and it is often assumed that this is not a medical intervention but providing the essentials of life. However the respirator is also providing an essential of life: oxygen. That a respirator happens to be more complex than a tube is morally irrelevant. What is relevant is that we are providing air or water or food for the patient. That the person cannot breathe for themselves or swallow for themselves means that we are providing not just vitals for life but the mechanism of receiving vitals.

Brain death may not be the best definition of death. There is no moral duty to maintain medical treatment for someone who is brain dead. Medical treatment is providing the mechanism of receiving the vitals of life regardless of how high-tech that mechanism is.

Why faith isn't a work

A Calvinist complaint against Arminianism is that the latter implies works based salvation. Both sides agree that the Arminian perspective is that a man takes part in the salvation process: that is, a person must agree to God's call to salvation. Arminians claim that salvation itself is still from God, that we are unable to save ourselves.

Calvinists sometimes argue that any involvement of a person in the salvation process makes salvation works based and not faith based. The problem with this claim is that this understanding of works does not line up with Scripture.

Faith is a decision. It is trust placed in someone. Faith is contrasted with works, and works are activities we do. Works are things like obeying the commandments, helping the needy, fasting, giving money to God's work. These are all behaviours.

Faith is related more to the mind, works more to the body (though we must be cautious with this distinction). Now it is true that faith may involve a specific action (ie. a work), but this action is not the faith per se, rather it is the acting out of the faith decision; an action which proves that the faith is real and not just an empty assertion.

Monday quote

God does not even tempt men to do evil, much less sovereignly and unchangeably determine that they will.

Leighton C. Flowers.