Posted on 02/04/2014 3:25:22 PM PST by Carry_Okie
The origin of the modern belief that Nature is self-optimizing and alien from people is in the writings of a 1st Century BC poet, Titus Lucretius Carus. It was adopted by the philosophers of the 18th Century Enlightenment as a means to demean religion. This is an examination of the errors in that adoption and the practical consequences of the Nature mythos in modern life.
(Excerpt) Read more at wildergarten.com ...
Enjoy the irony.
Ping for the Enlightenment of it.
What about the talking donkey? Was that misunderstood as well?
Now now--remember, "science" has no objection to the talking donkey, the Portuguese sun dance of 1917, or anything in between. All of those beliefs are perfectly legitimate. It's just Genesis 1-11 that science "knows" could not possibly have happened, and therefore that those who believe in those events should be ridiculed (while getting all sweaty about the aboriginal "dreamtime" and any other creation myth in existence).
BTW--Soferim do not "have fun" with the Torah. You probably have no idea of what is involved in writing Torah Scrolls.
If you read the whole thing I think you'll find it reinforcing. Lucretius had quite apparently been taught by a Jew. Interesting isn't it that the "Enlightened" philosophers, in their zeal to reject Christianity, adopted a teaching based in total ignorance of its Jewish foundations?
Shouldn’t it be “urban”?
Good article, it made me better understand your book.
It's a pun on the self-defined character of the Enlightenment philosophers as urbane.
Good article, it made me better understand your book.
Thanks. The way philosophy modifies perception is actually reflected in law. It is an important topic.
Cf. THE SWERVE by Stephen Greenblatt. It tells the remarkable story of the recovery of Lucretius' text by one Poggio Bracciolini in 1417. It had been preserved in a German monastery for a thousand years, and Poggio's recovery of this single copy caused an immediate, if subdued and slow moving sensation. Something of a miracle, wouldn't you say?
The pun went unnoticed in my case. “Urban legend” is such a common meme that it is hard to read the two words as they are.
Now, to the subject matter. Perhaps it is obvious to you, but to me it is not. Where do you see the patristic Catholic Christian reading of the Creation depart from the rabbinical?
I understand that there are modernizers in modern Catholicism, and I understand that a Christian will see in the Old Testament numerous prefigurements of Christ, that a Jew would say are not there. But where do you see a philosophical difference between someone like St. Paul, Irenaeus or Origen, and the rabbis contemporary to them, on the character and place of nature?
I understand one distinction. If one reads the Old Testament alone, he will see the nature at rest, because God rests. But a Christian knows that God is not resting: he gave us His daily presence in order to “make all things new”. That seems to be the point of Hebrews 4:1-11. But St. Paul is quoting Psalm 94/95:11, “I swore in my wrath that they shall not enter into my rest”. So it would be difficult for me to derive a philosophical difference from a passage in New Testament that quotes the Old over the matter of which day is more properly the Sabbath. Could you point to more distinctives like that?
In main, I don't. That is part of the irony insofar as the philosophes (as Gay called them) are concerned.
I understand that there are modernizers in modern Catholicism, and I understand that a Christian will see in the Old Testament numerous prefigurements of Christ, that a Jew would say are not there.
I just wish more Christians would see Judaism in what Christ taught, but I digress... The best source on that insofar as Paul is concerned is Marc Nanos' book, The Mystery of Romans.
But where do you see a philosophical difference between someone like St. Paul, Irenaeus or Origen, and the rabbis contemporary to them, on the character and place of nature?
I am not familiar with either Irenaeus or Origen.
If you want my frank opinion, I see the bulk of Christ's ecclesia as stuck in a mistaken paradigm going back to Ezra. I just completed a section for the rewrite of my second book on the Sabbath Year discussing the fact that one can take a more literal interpretation of the Hebrew in Genesis and find it all over the place in the archaeological and geophysical record, but only if one recognizes it as the product of a pastoral nomad (you know, those guys the Lord was the first to inform upon the birth of Messiah). I ended up reading about 80 papers on the topics of climatology, geophysics, and anthropology as applies to the desertification in the Sahara per the Cain and Abel story as I've translated it. It's a shocker: measurable reality and recorded history confirm the Torah as written by Moses, although the aleph-bet at the time may have read from left to right!
So it would be difficult for me to derive a philosophical difference from a passage in New Testament that quotes the Old over the matter of which day is more properly the Sabbath.
First of all, almost NOBODY keeps the Sabbath rigorously as instructed in Ex. 16:29, and almost every rabbi in Judaism would have a fit if they did. I don't hold that the Sabbath could be any other day than the seventh. If however one wishes to celebrate the Lord's resurrection on Sunday, go for it. One reasonably takes into consideration Paul's discussions about food suggesting not creating offense over matters less important than "the weightier matters of the Law," justice, mercy, and faith. I hope that addresses at least that part of your question upon which I might be qualified to comment.
Lol, it did bring home the Bacon. Without it there might have never been a Darwin (as demonstrably errant as his theory may be).
Ah, and now that I have your attention. Psalm 94 (I use Douay numbering) does not really have "not" as in "not enter". Do you understand "אם־יבאון" grammatically? The Greeks translated that as "if" and St. Paul also says "if" even though most English translations "correct" it back to "not", often without consistency between the psalm and Hebrews 4.
I am not aware of anything significant in the philosophy of nature among the patristic writings. I simply mentioned a few of the fathers of the Church at random, in order to place the conversation in the early undivided Church brackets, because surely during the so-called enlightenment a lot of stuff was written of questionable probity, stuff that drove the wedge between science and religion.
Are you familiar with Raymond of Sabunde? That would be enlightenment-period Catholic that stood against the tide.
It is a fascinating topic.
Perhaps someone can improve my understanding. The author says that Lucretius got his underlying themes from Jewish teachers. The proof of that is that his themes map pretty well over onto genesis. The big thing that enabled him to see this was that all ancient religions viewed the heavenly bodies as gods except the Old Hebrews. For them as for us—God stands outside of nature. Somehow the author saw a bit of this OT/Torah theology in the writings of Lucretius.
Here’s the part I don’t get. The author then goes on to say that somehow this confusion caused by trying to replace genesis with an origin myth that contains many genesis themes created an urbane myth....
So the urbane myth is that there is another version of genesis in Lucretius that turns out to be surprisingly similar to genesis.
Well, ok.
But then how does the author go from there to this statement?
“The consequences of this urbane myth are so enormous in scope and are so far along in propelling this nation into a profound political and economic disaster, that to ignore it is equivalent to abetting collective suicide.”
I do agree with the principle that some profound mistakes were made in the early 17th century. But I tend to lay them at the feet of Descartes. He was the guy whose tree of knowledge placed theology along side witchcraft as a sub branch of philosophy and the roots of the tree are metaphysics. The problem with this is that theology doesn’t even belong on the tree of knowledge. Because the tree of knowledge presumes that man is the measure of all things. Whereas theology presumes that God is the measure of all things.
And then of course you can compare Descartes Tree of Knowledge to the Genesis tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
....................
So yes I do agree that some profound mistakes were made in the 17th century. But I don’t get how the writer of the article above gets the apocalypse out the urbane myth that grew from Lucretius poem.
You might say never a Newton! Not that Lucretius was the cause of the whole thing, but he, or the discovery of him, was part of it.
BTW, there's no real suggestion of evolution in Lucretius. He is quite remarkable for positing a material, i.e. atomic basis for life, and in particular embryonic development. A very advanced way of thinking! OTOH he seems to accept a fixed order of things emerging from an original "creation", and his view of origins is creationist in that sense.
So the urbane myth is that there is another version of genesis in Lucretius that turns out to be surprisingly similar to genesis.
OK, full disclosure, I am the author.
The mistake at issue is laid out very clearly at the beginning: That to presume "Natural" as being equivalent to "no influence from people," believing "Nature" to be a self-optimizing system but only if people are not involved, is a very dangerous and destructive thing to the productivity of "wildland" habitat, PARTICULARLY when that landscape has been shaped by people for 10,000 years. It is a philosophy that defines wildland management to this day and it carries a presumptive primacy in law. The way that this belief has modified our ability to see what we are looking at is perhaps its most destructive attribute.
The way Lucretius presents it, nature was self-generating, but the way he describes it is very much coherent with the story as told in Genesis, but without benefit of a god. The Enlightenment philosophers took that idea and ran with it.
It is also true that the philosophers did mistakenly adopt the same foundations to their thinking as what they thought they were repudiating.
For them as for us—God stands outside of nature.
I see the form the world takes as a manifestation of how the Lord set things up to work based upon our choices. He holds us accountable for the results too and teaches how we are to recognize whether we are keeping the Law in the shape the landscape takes. Moreover, I can show how even weather is modified by whether or not we keep the Law, as given, not as interpreted. I know that's a tall order, but that's what it says. The archaeological and geophysical record bears that out too.
The word translated as "create" in Genesis (bara) actually means to shape a preexisting workpiece. Be sure to read the entire page including opening up the Genesius' lexicon entry.
I hope that answers your questions; thanks for asking.
I never said there was. It is still true that Darwin may never have developed his theory without Lucretius.
He is quite remarkable for positing a material, i.e. atomic basis for life, and in particular embryonic development.
Lucretius' Atomism was borrowed from Democritus.
OTOH he seems to accept a fixed order of things emerging from an original "creation", and his view of origins is creationist in that sense.
Correct, it was a creation but without a creator, the latter being an idea with which he was clearly uncomfortable given the pagan religion of his day.
The poem opens with a paean to Venus ( so named in the Latin ) "... since therefore you alone govern the nature of things, since without you nothing comes forth into the shining borders of light ..." and thus Venus stands very much in analogy to the Creator God in this respect, but of course with the difference that Venus is the creative force personified, and not a ruler or governer.
I am not familiar with Sabunde, but then Pascal did a pretty good job of parrying the "philosophes" as well.
Do you understand "אם־יבאון" grammatically?
It is indeed problematic to convert "im" into 'should not be.' Look at the lexicon entry. I would have held the prefix as an "if." "Not" would be lamed vav (לו). The Greek also suggests an "if." The verse is a tough slog from there; it's often how things are.
If you haven't got it, the Interlinear Scriptural Analyzer is a very powerful tool. It is a free download at scripture4all.org. Pull up the verse, gander the Concordant Literal Interlinear, grab the Strong's number, and plug it into the Blueletterbible page I've linked above with reference to the Hebrew.
Lucretius was a slavish disciple of Epicurus, and lavished fulsome praise on him throughout his poem. The Loeb introduction does mention, "Epicurus derived his physical theory from Democritus", but Lucretius wasn't borrowing anything from anybody.
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