World picture puts a frame around reality

Some people look at things so bizarrely.

Like Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, authors of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series of books that takes a fictional view of events surrounding the Second Coming of Jesus—which for LaHaye and Jenkins won't be fiction when the Big Day comes.

Yesterday I heard them interviewed on a right-wing Portland talk show. The host asked them how they were faring on their book tour to the least-churched state in the nation.

(Whenever I hear that fact, I always feel like cheering, Yay, Oregon! We're #1!)

LaHaye and Jenkins said, "Just fine. We've got a lot fans here." Which I'm sure is true. To a certain sort of Christian, it's got to be hugely appealing to hear that unbelievers are going to be consigned to some nasty suffering come the Tribulation—I'm short on the details, never having read any of their books.

When asked if it was fair that non-Christians were going to be treated so badly when the Good Times start to roll, the answer basically was: "Well, that's what the Bible says, so that's the way it's going to be. End of story."

Weird! I thought, turning off the car radio as I pulled into the natural food store's parking space. So freaking weird. How could anybody believe that stuff?

And yet…during my Eastern religion fundamentalist phase I believed in equally strange weirdness. I was certain that the guru had implanted his radiant astral form in my forehead consciousness at the time of my initiation, and that this being now was aware of my every thought and action, stepping in now and then to tweak my karma as he saw fit.

If LaHaye and Jenkins heard that, they'd be entirely justified in saying: So freaking weird. How could anybody believe that stuff? Yet millions of Sant Mat disciples all over the world do.

Here's the thing: to some extent everybody is weird from any perspective other than our own. Close to home, my wife thinks that my habitual failure to shut kitchen drawers all the way is completely mystifying. Well, she has her own quirks, believe me.

Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein speaks of world pictures that frame the way we see the world. Milton K. Munitz talks about this in "Does Life Have a Meaning?", which I've just started reading.

According to Wittgenstein, a world picture is a set of fundamental beliefs comprising a fixed framework that, for the one who adopts it, is groundless. This means that it does not rest on deeper grounds or foundations: it is not derived from and justified by appeal to other, supposedly more fundamental, beliefs or evidence. "At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded." [Wittgenstein quote]

Fascinating. I love it. We're all floating free in well-structured belief bubbles, but each of us is supremely confident that mine is tethered firmly to reality—as contrasted with how blowing-in-the-wind the belief structures belonging to other people are.

Yeah, right.

When pressed, none of us, not one, could point to any solid evidence that the way we personally view the world leads to an objectively true understanding of reality. Science has a pretty good claim in this regard, but science isn't a person. And it relies on mathematical world pictures, which are much less subjective than beliefs.

Thus religious world pictures (Munitz says Wittgenstein preferred this term to "world view") are as groundless as any other sort. There are people whose life largely revolves around the fortunes of their chosen sports team. My mother wasn't quite this extreme, but when "her" San Francisco Giants won, you could sense an elevated mood in the Hines home.

Similarly, finding a choice empty parking space elicits a "Praise Jesus," "Allah is great," or "Guru's grace!" in those whose world pictures filter reality in a certain fashion. Every day events get attached to a structured belief system like ornaments being placed on Christmas tree limbs. Ah, another little miracle.

In a recent issue of Newsweek, mega-church pastor Rick Warren speaks of the evidence he sees for God.

I see the fingerprints of God everywhere. I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in nature. I see them in my own life.

Okay. But the impressions Warren takes to be divine fingerprints appear much different to non-Christians with an alternative world picture. For example, as a mark from the hand of Darwinian natural selection.

Personally (as if it were possible for me to start off a sentence with "Impersonally"), I find the notion of pruning my belief structures increasingly appealing. Like everyone else, my world picture always will determine the lens through which I view reality.

But I can see through the glass more darkly, or less darkly. Pulling into a parking space can just mean that I'm pulling into a parking space.

As noted in a previous post, I like the world picture of David Ignatow, a poet:

I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment on my life.

Comments

[tao]

The Black Hole of Belief:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3azqF_OMu4

[Bryan]

I agree with almost everything you say here, except for the comment about science "almost" having the right to claim objectivity.

There is nothing objective about science, since its discipline is subject to exactly the same limitations of perspective as any other endeavor. You only have to consider the many scientific revolutions that have occurred to see this. Science merely offers useful fictions, not truth.

[Brian]

Bryan, a key word in your comment is "useful" in regard to science's world pictures.

What I was trying to get at (I think) is that a mathematical world picture is much more amenable to testing against observable reality than is a conceptual/belief world picture.

It's indisputable that scientific models (or world pictures) are able to predict how many things work in physical reality. These models can be shared, and result in a consensus world picture--more or less.

So they're important. They represent humankind's best effort at forming a world picture that, though free floating like you say, still has pretty darn firm connections to the physical reality in which we live and breathe.

[Secret Rapture]

My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions! The Secret Rapture soon, by my hand!
Read My Inaugural Address
My Site=http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman
Your jaw will drop!

[Sita]

Yes we believed so many things that we can't now anymore.

I also gave satsang in ''earlier times''.

[Bob]

Brian,

I'm with your mom regarding the Giants!

I've been a Giant fan since they arrived in SF back in the late 50s - and still waiting for them to win their first world series since moving west from NY.

Bob

[Paul Sunstone]

The question of whether science is useful seems to me a more important question than whether science is objective. That's because I'm a bit uncomfortable with metaphysical speculation, and the notion there is or isn't an objective reality ultimately comes down to metaphysical speculation, doesn't it?

[PM]

First comment on this blog, though I've been reading it on and off.

A comment on science, religious world views, and objectivity. When I get on a plane in DC to fly to NY, I try to fly on a plane built by the cumulative work of scientists, engineers, etc. Theology? As Mencken said, it's the unknowable explained in terms of the not-worth-knowing.

Is science objective? When I get to NY, I know it to be NY, based on my own experience and knowledge. And if I ask 1,000 people if I am in NY, close to 1,000 will say yes. Why not all 1,000? Because I might run into Tim LaHaye, and he'll think it's A Place of Sin that the Rapture Will Deny. On the spectrum of objectivity, science is pretty close to the good side.

The argument over whether science is "objective" is a nice philosophical one, but religion and science should never be discussed in the same paragraph (including this one). Religion is just the primitive realm of superstition. Stand away from any religious ceremony or belief (transubstantiation?) and unless you are mentally imprisoned by fear and superstition, it looks pretty damned silly.

The religion story of the day -- http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0407ldsprotest0407.html

I recommend reading to the end so you'll get to the part about the King James Version controversy