Tag Archives: Philosophy

The Value of Myth in Depicting the Conflict Between Good and Evil, Part Two: Reinhold Niebuhr on the Superiority of Christian Myth

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In a previous essay, I discussed the conflict between good and evil tendencies within human beings and the role of myth in depicting these tendencies. The philosopher Plato employed colorful myths to depict the struggle within humans between a lower nature and a higher nature, but he argued that reason could direct human impulses to a devotion to ideal forms.

The American Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was also concerned with the internal conflict between good and evil within human beings, but argued that Christian myth was ultimately more accurate in diagnosing the problems of human nature and more effective in providing guidance in how to live. Niebuhr’s essay, “The Truth in Myths,” (The Nature of Religious Experience, Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1937) made the case that, despite the historical and scientific inaccuracies of the Christian religion in the books of the Bible, Christian myths used symbols to express moral and holistic aspects of reality more effectively than reason, philosophy, or science.

How is it possible that stories composed of fictions (partly or in whole) can serve as the basis of a valid belief system? According to Niebuhr, there are several aspects of reality that defy attempts at explanation solely by logic, mathematics, and the sciences, requiring recourse to myth.

The first such aspect is that of value or goodness. The search for goodness is fundamental to human experience — it is the basis for morals and art, and it even underlies the creative inspiration responsible for mathematical and scientific discovery, as Robert Pirsig argued in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Religion illustrates what is good not only through commandments but through stories that contain a greater or lesser amount of fiction. Of course, moral systems can be developed through reason, but there must first be a commitment to a transcendent vision before one can begin deducing. Without a commitment to a higher, ideal state of being, reason can just as easily justify self-aggrandizement without limit. According to Niebuhr, religion supplies ideal ends through its imaginative and poetic interpretation of life.

The second aspect of reality that religion addresses is wholeness. In science and logic, analysis attempts to explain reality by breaking it down into parts and observing how the parts fit together; misalignment or malfunctioning of parts leading to disorder, decay, and destruction. But knowledge of how things work is not the same as knowledge of what things are as a whole, what qualities and properties existing things have, and the value of those qualities and properties. This latter knowledge is holistic knowledge. Holistic knowledge moves beyond atoms, molecules, and chains of causation, and evaluates wholes, including the meaning and value of existence. (For an extended discussion of the role of holism in understanding reality, see this post.)

A third aspect of reality that religion addresses, according to Niebuhr, is the organic nature of reality. The devotion of science to predictive cause-and-effect sequences has led to a mechanistic view of the universe, in which eternal laws dictate the motion of objects, from the very beginning of the universe to its likely end. The mechanism metaphor has been widely used in science and is responsible for a great many useful predictive models. However, the mechanism metaphor sometimes goes beyond specific predictive models to support general interpretations of the universe as being merely a mechanism. This interpretation is too sweeping. In fact, the universe can also be interpreted as being analogous to an organism — that is, an organized structure containing parts that are coordinated in a single, harmonious whole. In this metaphor, the universe is more similar to a life form than a machine — and in fact, the growth of the universe from its very simple beginnings to the gradual creation of stars, heavier elements, planets, primitive life forms, and complex life forms — does resemble a growing organism more than a machine. In fact, a number of physicists have even proposed that the laws of the universe themselves emerge and grow over time, and are not unalterably fixed from the beginning.

These three aspects of reality — value (goodness), wholeness, and the organic nature of the universe — are symbolized and communicated in the myths of religion, according to Niebuhr. While the myths cannot be taken as literally accurate depictions of events, they illustrate aspects of existence, life, and meaning that straightforward historical descriptive accounts and scientific explanations have difficulty expressing.

Religion in contemporary western societies was declining in Niebuhr’s time (1892-1971), and has diminished even further since Niebuhr’s death. But Niebuhr noted that even the modern, rational, science-based civilizations of the west relied upon secular myths – in particular, the myth of historical progress. The idea of inevitable historical progress toward an ideal end is, in Niebuhr’s words “really a rationalized version of the Christian myth of salvation,” in which faith in the redeeming love of Christ is replaced by allegedly unstoppable historical forces. Unfortunately, Niebuhr argues, the myth of historical progress “is more optimistic and really less credible than the Christian myth.”

Consider the fate of the two most prominent theories of historical progress, those of Hegel and Marx. The German philosopher Hegel saw the ideals of the French Revolution as culminating in the full realization of freedom and reason at the “end of history”; and yet the French Revolution devolved into terror, the attempted conquest of Europe, and the crowning of Napoleon as emperor. Karl Marx took Hegel’s idea and proposed communism as the logical endpoint of history, with all societies governed according to the principles of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Fired by Marx’s vision, communist parties emerged throughout the world, and at one point, communist governments controlled nearly one-third of the world’s population; yet the result was oppression, starvation, and the extermination of populations.

The Christian view of human history, by contrast, is definitely not one of inevitable worldly progress. Rather, Christianity sees the growth of both good and evil in history. In this view, there is no motor of history that gradually builds toward an end state of lasting human freedom and happiness; only divine intervention can rescue humanity from its predicament. Now this Christian view of history is not easy for secularists to accept. But the secularist view history as an unstoppable motor of liberal progress seems scarcely more credible, given actual historical events. For Niebuhr, the myths of Christianity provide a much better explanatory framework for the human predicament than frameworks that emphasize human reason and historical progress:

“The real fact is that the mystery of both good and evil in human life and in the world can not be completely comprehended or stated in perfectly rational terms. Every sensitive human spirit is conscious of belonging to a reality which embodies values beyond his achievements; but he is also conscious of incarnating forces of evil which mysteriously defy this order. . . . Neither the vital thrust of life, nor its organic unities nor its disharmonies nor its highest possibilities can be expressed in terms of logic and rational consistency. The dynamic and creative energy of life can be described but not comprehended by reason.”

Niebuhr argues that human beings have free will, but that human sin is also inevitable. This paradox cannot be solved or fully explained by reason, nor can it be overcome by history. Only myth can express it. Even if humans can transcend most of their animalistic impulses, these primitive impulses are easily replaced by human dreams of conquest, great wealth, and rule over others:

“The relation of man to freedom and to mechanism is paradoxical. His conscious self is never in complete control of the mechanisms of impulse with which nature has endowed him. Yet it is in sufficient control not only to check these impulses in the interest of a more inclusive purpose but to interfere with the harmony of natural impulses, and to transmute the harmless impulses of nature into demonic lusts and imperialistic purposes. It is, in other words, the nature of human sin that it arises at the juncture of nature and spirit and is as much the corruption of nature by spirit as the corruption of spirit by nature. All this is darkly expressed in the myth of the fall in Christian theology, much more adequately than in rational explanations of human evil. . . . It is because man can transcend nature and himself that he is able to conceive of himself as the center of all life and the clue to the meaning of existence. It is this monstrous pretension of his egoism, the root of all imperialism and human cruelty, which is the very essence of sin.” (p. 128)

Whatever the historical and scientific inaccuracies of the Bible, then, the Christian religion still contains profound truths. These truths are communicated through stories that have a greater or lesser degree of falsehood about historical events, but the stories are still capable of telling facts about human nature, about the conflict between good and evil, and about reconciling our desires with the needs of others. The teachings of Jesus and the nobility of his self-sacrifice on the cross point to clues about the meaning of our existence that philosophy and science alone cannot fully express. In the words of Niebuhr, “The Cross justifies itself to human faith because it symbolizes an ideal which establishes points of relevance with the deepest experiences and insights of human life.”

God as Love

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The Greek philosopher Empedocles wrote that the universe was characterized by conflict between two cosmic forces, Love and Strife.  In his view, the universe originally existed in a state of perfect love and unity, with no distinct elements or separate life forms.  However, the force of Strife emerged and began to destroy this unity; separate parts broke off from the whole, forming the elements of matter.  The attractive force of Love exerted its remaining influence by bringing the elements together in different combinations, creating animals and humans.  But these beings were mortal, as the force of Strife gradually pulled the elements apart again, leading to disintegration and death.

There are obviously fascinating parallels between Empedocles’ philosophy and Christianity in terms of the centrality of love, though in contrast to Christianity, Empedocles viewed cosmic history as cyclic.  But whether we accept Greek philosophy or Christianity, or both, is it helpful in understanding the order of the universe If we think of God as Love?

From a purely scientific standpoint, the notion that particles come together to form larger structures, including life forms, because of love sounds ridiculous.  Do hydrogen atoms really come together with oxygen atoms to form water because of love?  It makes no sense, many would argue, to anthropomorphize mindless matter and attribute human desire and emotion to particles.  However, I would argue that it makes sense to think of love as a broader phenomenon of attraction, with attraction between humans being a highly complex and sophisticated type of love, attraction between animals being a less complex type of love, and attraction between particles being a very primitive type of love, but love nevertheless.

Although it used to be thought that animals had no real emotions, we now know that animals do have emotions, that they are capable of love between their own kind and love of those from other species.  The question of whether insects have emotions is less settled, though some scientists who study the issue argue that at least some insects have primitive emotional responses originating in rudimentary brain structures.

It seems unlikely that there would be emotions in lower life forms, such as cells and bacteria.  However, even though we can’t know exactly how lower life forms “feel,” scientific studies have demonstrated forces of attraction and repulsion even in these lower life forms.  Paramecium will swim away from unfavorable environments (such as cold water), but remain in favorable environments (containing warm temperatures and/or the presence of food).  Egg cells in both humans and animals will exercise choice in determining which sperm cells with which to join, weeding out bad sperm cells from good.  In fact, the human body itself has been described as a cooperative “society of cells.”

Given that forces of attraction and repulsion exist in even the lowest life forms, is it really absurd to posit such forces as affecting even atomic and subatomic particles?  I believe that the general principle is the same, if love is defined simply as an attractive force that brings separate entities together to form a greater whole.  The only difference is that the principle is expressed in a very primitive form among lower forms of order and in a more sophisticated form among higher forms of order, such as animals and humans.

Physical Laws and the Mind of God

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The American philosopher of science Charles Sanders Peirce once wrote that the physical laws of the universe were the expression of an evolving cosmic mind.  As he put it, physical laws were the outcome of a mind become habitual: “matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws.”  However, he notes that the cosmic mind is not merely habitual, but has a powerful element of indeterminacy and spontaneity, which is why the universe continues to evolve and to produce life.  The evolution of the universe, in Peirce’s view, is the gradual crystallization of mind.

There is much merit to Peirce’s idea — rather than seeing the physical laws of the universe as separate entities that pop out of nowhere and have no unifying foundation, Peirce’s concept expresses the underlying unity and order of the universe, which is still developing even as the human mind itself develops.

One criticism of conceptualizing the physical laws of the universe as being part of a cosmic mind is that physical laws by their nature have an unvarying determinism and regularity that contradicts the notion of a conscious being capable of thinking, planning, and exercising free will in order to shape events.  But the physical laws of the universe are really only part of the universal order.  On the large, astronomical scale certainly, there is determinism and regularity; but on the very small, subatomic scale, there is a high degree of indeterminism and unpredictability; and life forms have the freedom to partially evade or escape the bounds of physical determinism.  In this conception, determinism and regularity provide a foundation of order on which freedom and creativity can flourish.  One can analogize this conception with the human mind, in which many essential functions of the brain (control of breathing, heart rate, sensation) occur mostly or entirely without conscious planning or control in the lower part of the brain (the “brainstem”), while higher thought processes are conducted on top of this primitive foundational order.

Granted, there are limits to employing the metaphor of “mind” to the cosmic order, as there are with any metaphor.  But metaphors are often a necessary tool to describe things that simply can’t be communicated with literal precision.  Even the most rigorous and skeptical of scientists cannot do without metaphors.  The “physical laws” of the universe is itself a metaphor; the “Big Bang” is a metaphor; and the “selfish gene” is a metaphor.