https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MpxQfUd8ZH0
part of the striving towards monotheism, let’s say, if you think about that psychologically, I would say the striving towards monotheism is a descriptive enterprise to some degree because it’s an attempt to characterize the nature of the spirit that should be put at the highest place in the hierarchy of perception and action. And then that begs the question, is what should be put in the highest place? And so let me walk through something and you guys tell me what you think about this. So I used to ask my students, why are you writing this essay? And so, and that’s a variation of the question, why do anything? But let’s make it concrete. Why are you writing this essay? Well, so that I can get a grade for the class. Why are you taking the class? So that I can finish my year at university. Why are you finishing your year at university and motivated to do that? To get my degree. Why do you want the degree? Well, then it gets fuzzier. Well, maybe I want a job, or maybe I wanna be an educated person or some amalgam of those. Why do you think it’s a good reason to be an educated person or to have a productive career? Well, because I wanna be a good person. Well, why do you wanna be a good person? Well, because that’s part of acting out and this is where it starts to delve into the mythological because being a good person makes society work properly and is the best route to say life more abundant. And so what does it mean to be a good person? Then it means something like, well, to orient yourself towards the highest good and to speak the truth. And then that’s a whole hierarchy of value that is definitely governing either in an integrated manner or a disintegrated manner, the actions of the person who’s writing the essay. And you might say, well, how hard are you gonna try when you write this essay? And the answer to that would be, well, it depends on how well integrated my view of the ethic is all the way up to the highest place. And then we could say, well, the highest place is the divine place. And we could make that a matter of definition. And so then we might say, well, what should be in the divine place? And I would say, well, it has to be something that you can look at the world through and it has to be something you act out. And then we could say, well, that still leaves residual mystery. And then we might ask, well, how do we characterize it? I would say we characterize that using fiction because fiction is the abstraction of hierarchies of attentional prioritization and action. And so we could say that in the highest sense in the biblical corpus, God is the ultimate fictional character. And then we’re trying to characterize his nature as that which should be emulated that unites us psychologically and socially. And so I’ll walk through like five representations. So what should be in the highest place? Okay, the spirit that allows you to walk unselfconsciously in the garden. The spirit that calls you to the appropriate dedicated sacrifice. So that’s from the Cain and Abel story. The spirit that calls you to batten down the hatches if you’re wise when the floods are coming. The spirit that warns you against producing totalitarian spirits of towers of Babel. The spirit that calls you to, out of your father’s tent, that’s Abraham, to the adventure of your life. The spirit that calls you out of the tyranny of Egypt or any tyranny into the desert and then guides you through the desert. And then I’ll skip the rest of the Old Testament for the sake of brevity and jump into the New Testament because there’s a characterization of that which is in the highest place that’s revolutionary that emerges out of the Old Testament. But it’s the spirit that makes you voluntarily willing to bear the entire cross of human suffering and malevolence. And then that character that’s at the top of the hierarchy of attention and action, that’s characterized as God. You can say, well, is that a fiction? It’s a fiction, but you have to retool your notion of fiction because fiction then becomes the deepest form of ethical abstraction. And so it’s a meta-truth rather than a falsehood. And then if Jonathan’s right, and I think he is, and I think John Vervecky agrees with this, is that if we have to perceive the world with its multiplicity of possibilities through the lens of an ethic, that ethic becomes the defining tool that we use, in fact, to extract even factual information out of the infinite array of information that presents itself to us. And so not only is science nested inside a fiction, in some sense, the fiction is more deeply true than the science, and it’s so deeply true that without the fiction, you don’t even have the precondition for science. Although is it still a fiction? Is it still a fiction, Jordan? For you, this is your stuff in the Shopping Harry. Jonathan and I were talking about this last night, because we just sat and did this long seminar on Exodus, and you might ask, well, did the events in Exodus really happen? And our conclusion was, well, not only did they, they happened in a meta manner, they’re still happening. They happened with such reality that they haven’t stopped happening. And so, and what does that mean? Well, everyone still struggles with the spirit of tyranny, and everyone still struggles with the fact that when you escape from a tyranny, you don’t hit the promised land, you hit the desert. And then when you’re in the desert of your imagination or with your lost peers, then you need to struggle with what guides you and what should guide you when you’re lost. And then you have to grapple with the problem of appropriate and reliable forms of governance, because that’s all part of the Exodus story. And so it didn’t happen the way a happening would occur if you just detailed it out as a camera holding empirical observer. It happened in a way deeper way that just doesn’t stop happening. So I think that that’s, for me, like for sure, the fiction thing is a difficulty for me, that category. But I can follow the process and understand this idea that they have abstracted, this abstracted story that moves up. But then what I think is that it’s causal, that we’re actually discovering a pattern which is causal to the rest. And so that it’s not just that it’s a fiction, it’s actually that which gives it, makes it possible for the world to exist. And so the word fiction at this point becomes ridiculous. It’s not a fiction, it’s actually the source of reality. And so that’s God, right? It’s the source of the possibility for reality to exist. And the manner in which, let’s say, that happens is not just a description of mechanical causes. It has to do with this orientation towards the good, this ethic which comes down and makes it even possible for us to perceive the world. And so I think that for me, for sure, it’s not a fiction. I think that the events in scripture happened, but they don’t have to be described in a way that is equivalent to our scientific understanding. Because they’re trying to account for more than our scientific understanding. Just like, well, the reason I would throw a word in here for fiction, I mean, we would have to retool our understanding of what fiction is. And so that’s part of the problem. But when I read something like a novel by Dostoevsky, I think, well, is this true? And the answer is, well, those precise events never happened. So on that basis, it’s not true. But then there’s something wrong with that description because the characterizations in Dostoevsky are so true that in some sense, they’ve never been surpassed. And so, and I do think, to elaborate on Jonathan’s point, is that imagine that human beings, like any other object, have a being and then a realm of possible becoming. And I would say our attempts to characterize the spirit at the top of the attentional hierarchy is an attempt to flesh out and to discover the realm of human possibility. And so it does bring it into being to some degree, even though it’s implicate in the order. And that would be the logos of the world, right? It’s like, what’s the Bible about? Well, it’s about people, clearly. And so everything that’s detailed out in those stories is about the nature of humanity. Now, how that’s related to the nature of the divine is something we’re trying to puzzle out. But it’s clearly about people. And is it true? Well, it has this weird sense of being true that we just described, which is- But there’s also a reality, which is that in a world that understands this or lives in this way, then the manner that they will perceive, remember, and tell stories will be different from the way that you tell a policeman the type of proofs that you saw. And so what we’re asking of scripture is not only not the right questions, we’re not understanding what type of descriptions that they are. And so I do believe that the stories in scripture happen, but I don’t believe that the people who recorded them had to do it in a way that accounts for our forensic nature, let’s say. The way that we think that something happened in the world in terms of a scientist would describe phenomena. I think that they’re doing it in a manner to show this very pattern in the story of what it is that was happening in the world. Yes, I’m wary about some of this because we need to get down to brass tacks, as it were. And Jonathan has done one, but Jordan, you talked about it again as a story, and as you say, Dostoevsky, obviously, if you say is Dostoevsky true, you need to say in what sense. But then, I mean, the issue with the Bible, the issue with Christianity, the issue with faith, is that it’s obviously different. It must be in a different realm. It’s clearly in a different realm because it claims different things for itself. Dostoevsky doesn’t demand that we believe that Raskolnikov lived. The Bible, if you’re going to be a believer, you have to be able to say, in the words of the creed, that you believe in the virgin birth, but you believe, most importantly, in the resurrection. And as you well know, Jordan, many of us can walk 99% of the way there in terms of belief in the truth of the story, or as Betjeman puts it, but is it true, is it true? And then stumble on the last thing. Yeah, yeah, well, okay, so… So, I think that’s a good point. I think that’s a good point. 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