A Potpourri . . . Skepticism, Final Causes, And Some Apocalyptic Thoughts

• 2 years ago

By GEORGE A. KENDALL

The issues surrounding modern philosophy’s addiction to skepticism — that is, to questioning whether it is possible to know reality — to know what is (being), as opposed to being locked up in our own subjectivity — can be clarified by reference to an old proverb: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” We know things (beings) because they reveal themselves to us by reaching out to us through our senses.

Another way of saying this is to say that they give themselves to us. The whole world of knowable realities is a gift to us, ultimately coming from our Creator, and the only real question we might ask about it is: How are we, with our free will, going to respond to it?

The correct response to a gift is gratitude. The incorrect response is suspicion. Those whose response is suspicion basically ask themselves: Is some evil cosmic force imposing on us the illusion that we can know things, taking us for suckers? Or is the creation so badly ordered that it includes beings with the need and ability to know in a universe which cannot satisfy that need? Is it God who is doing this to us?

Just asking the question whether we can know reality involves us in this second response. In asking it, we commit ourselves to the alienated perspective, which tells us that we are somehow estranged from being. There are logically two possible answers to the question whether we can know reality: Yes and No. But once we ask it we reduce the number of possible answers to one — No.

Just in asking it, we are assuming the alienated position, which is pathological, and leaves us only the negative response. And, of course, just by rejecting the question, we leave ourselves with only the positive response. That response takes the form of gratitude for the gift of the creation, and gratitude to the Creator, the giver of the gift, the only mentally and spiritually healthy response.

Modern philosophy starts from the principle of methodical doubt, which goes on doubting until it comes to something that cannot be doubted. The only problem is, that never happens, and we are lost in doubt forever, unless we can bring ourselves to go back to the beginning, and withdraw the question.

And this contributes to the understanding of ideology. I have previously spoken of ideology as a kind of pseudo-cognition, or at least a seriously distorted cognition. The source of the distortion is that the ideologue’s perception of reality is through the deformed lens of suspicion.

Using that suspicion as a foundation, he constructs an alternative reality in which the other, the non-self, is the enemy. Here existentialism would have to be seen as Exhibit A. And so, the refusal of love and gratitude for the gift of the creation and to the gift-giver, inaugurates the project of building a world without love.

The authors of books and articles for the general public on topics such as the evolution of living organisms are generally eager to warn us against the “fallacy” of reading purpose into the origin and unfolding of life — that is, seeing the whole process as a movement toward an ultimate goal, known to philosophers as an end or final cause. Most sane people would think something of the sort was quite plausible.

But the sophisticated people tell us, rather condescendingly, that in fact everything came about through random events, chance mutations that just happened to give a particular living thing an advantage in the struggle for existence, thus enabling it to live longer and be more successful than others in reproducing itself, resulting in a modified species.

The attractiveness of this idea lies, for these writers, in the fact that it doesn’t require the existence of a Creator to explain how everything got here. The mutations do not occur for the purpose of helping the organism to meet the challenges presented by the environment but happen by pure coincidence and, if they happen to help the organism, are preserved in the species. No Creator needed, thank you. And no purpose, either.

But there just might be a few problems with it. Statisticians have evaluated the probability that, in the time available for life on Earth to evolve to its present state, enough mutations could have occurred randomly, and have concluded that the time required would have to be many times what the age of the universe is now believed to be. Most changes sufficient to enhance an organism’s prospects for survival would require multiple simultaneous mutations to happen. Some situations call for simultaneous changes in more than one species.

These considerations certainly make it less plausible that things happened in the way current science says they did. It is hard to see how the huge multiplicity of living things could have come to be without some kind of force or process working to achieve a purpose — the survival of individual organisms and the development of species into more and more forms in order for them to live and flourish. And it is even harder to imagine how it could happen without the orientation toward an end — i.e., a final cause, which is a constituent of every being. That, I would say, calls for a Creator who implants it in the creature.

My present speculation on this is that somehow living things can modify their own DNA when a change is needed. The brain may play a role in this, somehow recognizing a challenge and rewriting the DNA to make the necessary changes. (The more science studies the brain, the more we realize how unimaginably complex it is.)

Be this as it may, the very progress of science is going to force it to make room for final causes rather than dismiss them as medieval superstition.

• + + Anytime I write about the disastrous state of just about everything in today’s world, I am conscious that, once I am finished running through my catalogue of atrocities, readers will be on the lookout for a little serving of optimism to make the meal palatable. I usually try to oblige, but I believe my supply of that commodity has about run out. I am put in mind of an incident in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, where Scrooge asks Marley’s Ghost to speak comfort to him, and Marley replies, “I have none to give.”
  
  The administration of this dose of optimism (to switch metaphors) consists of pointing to some positive trends in the current situation that could help us to find a way out. For instance, we are seeing some excellent scholarship today by people, some of them even academics, who are working hard to restore consciousness of the classic and Christian tradition which is the foundation of what is left of our civilization.
  
  We see Catholic writers and leaders struggling to keep our 2,000-year tradition alive in the face of a hierarchy more and more committed to imposing the modernist agenda on us. We see a pro-life movement which has not given up over nearly half a century in its efforts to reverse Roe v. Wade and has not lost heart.
  
  True — but the reins of social and political power remain pretty much in the hands of those who oppose these trends. Our colleges and universities are mostly dominated by far left ideologues who use their academic positions to indoctrinate their students. Their sane colleagues are dismissed and marginalized, and rarely get tenure. Many cannot even get hired. The schools turn out marginally literate graduates while rotting their brains with atrocities like critical race theory.
  
  They also indoctrinate children in the ideology of the sexual revolution, guaranteeing them lifelong misery and, quite possibly, an early death. The right to life movement may be on the verge of a major victory in the Supreme Court (though that is far from guaranteed), but even if that happens, the struggle will be far from over.
  
  We Americans now live in a nation on the verge of civil war between our spiritually diseased elites and their more or less sane fellow citizens. Comparable situations exist in other parts of the world. War with China strikes me as being right on the horizon, a war which may well go nuclear.
  
  Now Jesus told His disciples to expect a great tribulation so terrible that, were it not cut short, no flesh could survive (Matt. 24:21-22). This, I think, is what Mary had in mind when, at Fatima, she predicted the Chastisement. When the fundamental relationships that hold societies together disintegrate (a process I have been observing since I was a young man in the 1960s), civilization collapses and people enter a dark age. What seems more and more evident to me is that the buildup to massive worldwide destruction is approaching critical mass. We could be living in a world at war and a nation at war. When that is over, whatever survivors there are will have to begin a long process of rebuilding.
  
  Simeon foresaw that when Christ, the true light, came into the world, He would be a sign of contradiction, that the light would be received joyfully by many people, but many others would reject it. We can see this historically. First, there was a long period of time (more than a millennium) in which a Christian civilization grew and flourished in Europe, then began to break apart with the Renaissance and the Protestant revolt, followed by the out-and-out apostasy of the so-called Enlightenment (Is there such a word as “Endarkenment?”), principal source of the totalitarian ideologies and states of the modern age.
  
  The evil empire (by which I mean Satan’s Kingdom) is striking back, and is approaching the end of its war on the Creation.
  
  There is little reason for optimism here, if any at all. But there is reason for hope. Jesus did say, after all, that the tribulation would be cut short. That is another way of saying that He is not about to allow the enemy to win this terrible war.
  
  (© 2022 George A. Kendall)