On Critisism

The last few days I have spent some time looking at critiques of various writers, and several on G.K. Chesterton have set me wondering as to how we can make an objective critique of a writer, mainly because there are some writers I dislike almost as intensly as some seem to hate Tolkien and Chesterton. After some thought, here is what I have come up with.



You cannot dismiss someone's arguments simply by saying they are not a trained philosopher or scientist. In the past, and a little today, people educate themselves. If someone has made stupid mistakes, it will take little or no effort to point out said mistakes. If you want to dethrone someone from a wrongly held seat of cultural authority, show what is wrong with their work, and how that corrupts what they have to say.



It is not enough however, to prove them wrong by showing how it conflicts with your beliefs. The two places that philosophies and worldviews can destroy themselves by having conflicts. If an idea conflicts with itself, or how the world works, then it can be viewed as false. Too often ideas are dismissed because they do not fit a belief system they are attempting to challenge simply because that belief system is the one held by the reviewer.

The problem is that it is difficult to show where an idea conflicts with how the world works, but if there were no problem, philosophy would not be fun.

Christianity v. Life

I have been looking at a lot of different books and blogs about and by atheists and christians, and I have to say that the amount of weight given to the study of plants and animals is far out of proportion to it's actual importance. Despite the fact that most of our construction of 'pre-history' is based on falicious assumptions and straight up guess work, it is still treated as the irrefutable refutation of theism in general and Christianity in particular. The fact is that such pre historical guestimating is far less important than what the world is doing now, or within the last two hundred years.

The fact is that Christianity fits reality better than any other belief system. You can say that we can have morality without God because we have no need of logic, that life is illogical and thus has no meaning (using logic to prove such), but the fact is that people living their lives know that logic and reason are basic pieces of how life works. No one has ever lived their life without logic and no one ever will.

You can say that Christianity is cruel and causes people guilt, but it also gives them redemtion, while aethism gives people dispaire and leave them in it. Christianity has a problem of evil only when you demand that God be accountable for everything and man for nothing, but when man becomes responsible for his actions, the problem vanishes. Evil is still there, it is still painful, but it is not a permanent part of the cosmos as it is in aethism or eastern philosophies. You can say, as Budhism does, that good and evil, peace and war, life and death, are all the same, but people do not live that way.

You can say that we are chance products of matter and that thoughts and emotions are simply chemical reactions in the brain, but again, people simply don't live that way. Some people may find it convenient to blame behavior on such chemical reactions, but the theory undercuts itself by denying man's ability to theorize.

You can say that what we do doesn't matter, that it will all vanish, but man cannot live that way, and those who have tried usually end up blowing out their brains. Life and man only make sense in Christianity. Why are we continually amazed by how fast or slow time moves? Why can we not simply accept murder and rape as good? Why are we sad when people die? Why are we consumed with love, burn with hate, sink in despair, or rise in joy? Why do our hearts leap at the sound of the horns of Rohan as the Witchking stands at the gate of Gondor? Why do tears start to our eyes as random people pay their respects as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl escorts the body of PFC Chance Phelps home from the Iraq War?

Before people bash Christianity for being "full of contradictions" (Which are usually idiotic readings of the scripture that a six year old can understand), they might want to look at the bleakness of their own beliefs, and look at the hundreds of ways that such beliefs simply do not fit reality.

Hurrah for Good Old Southern Manners (and guns)

In my Arthurian Literature class this week, we have been discussing Chivalry (how you act as a warrior) and Courtly Love (How you act as a lover) in the romances of Chretian de Troyes. Most of the young men in the class still open doors for ladies and give up their seats on the bus (To be fair, there were a good number of Corps people there). What was interesting was the small number of girls who would want their boyfriend to be a 'courtly lover', a grand total of zero. I think the reason was the impression that such a friend would be a push over. Maybe, maybe not, I have no experiance in that area so I can't talk much lest I set my foot firmly in my mouth.

What I can talk about a little, and was slightly disappointed we did not discuss, was Chivalry, a code of conduct for combat. If they have no code of conduct, are you still bound by one? Obviously there are boundaries, i.e. if they use human shields or launch missles from hospitals you can't do it either. However, the practice of taking prisoners is dependent to a large degree on the assumption that the prisoner will not suddenly blow up in your face or pull a knife when you turn your back.

Also, in combatives this morning we learned something very interesting. Who always wins an unarmed fight?

The guy who's buddy with a gun shows up first.

Fiction

I would highly encourage all of you to read Martin Cothran's article 'The Rhetoric of Amazement', I think he is spot on in what he is saying. I would like to add just a few thoughts of my own.

Fiction, and Fantasy in particular, has been attacked as escapist, full of lies, and not worth our time, etc. Much of this stems from the pragmatism that has become the trademark of modern times. Like everything else, fantasy can be good and bad, but it is not bad because it is fantasy.

Fantasy is an instrument that allows the author or creator to do two things. The primary joy that Tolkien and many other Fantasy writers had from their work was the joy of creating. It is the same joy that God felt when he made heaven and earth, and it is a reflection of his image in us. Also, fantasy is and always has been, a tool to explore and make moral points. Until recently, if you wanted to know how to or not to act you looked at heroes and villians in legends. You followed the example of Hector, Beowulf, Diomedes, Sir Gawain, and avoided the actions of Paris, Unferth, or Loki (The modern 'dark hero' has changed all that, but another time). Humans learn best by experiancing, worst by lecture. Literature and stories is one of the best ways to learn without actually making every mistake yourself.

Just as we would neither subsist on a diet of sweet potatoes nor on a diet of cookies, neither should we subsist on only one type of literature, much less disregard it completely.