An Essay Toward the Other: Arguments in Support of Theism: from the Good, the True, and the Beautiful

By John Streed

An Essay toward the Other considers the three fundamental verities of the human experience-the True, the Good, and the Beautiful-and presents three arguments, one from the domain of each verity, in support of theism and in opposition to materialism.

The True is the way things are.
The Good is that which contributes to the happiness of the individual and the group.
The Beautiful is an indefinable quality that evokes a pleasing and enjoyable inner experience.

The verities derive from a Divine source and point toward that Divine source, thus the opening sentence, "From the One, three; from the three, One." While the verities are part of the human experience, their source and their vision transcend our realm. They are of God.

The author accepts the classical view that all human intention, however flawed and misguided, looks to a final good. That final good we call happiness, and insofar as our aims and ways are shaped and guided by the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, we are drawn toward happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 5, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595910243

John Streed

Born in Minneapolis, John Streed presently lives in a suburb of that city. He has published a volume of humorous poems about gardening, Garden Revisions, a study of ethics, The Other Way, and various essays and articles in English teacher publications including The English Journal.

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Contents

A SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY

Part I

A. The Verities: The True, the Good, and the Beautiful

B. Belief: Causes and Reasons

C. Theism: A Belief in the Other

D. Materialism: A Denial of Theism

Part II

A. From the True: Interdependency

B: From the Good: Free Will and Choice

C. From the Beautiful: An Other Gift

Part III

A: The Creation-Evolution Dispute

B: About the Other

C: Love

Part IV

Appendix A: On Happiness

Appendix B: On Contradictions

Appendix C: On the Typing Monkeys

Appendix D: On the Golden Rule

Appendix E: On Beauty and Consciousness

Appendix F: On Chronological

Appendix G: On Myth, Legend, and History

Part v

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION:

Part VI

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.

—William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I had no means of expression, nor had I anything to express save the knowledge, deep, full and certain that the world we know is as we see it and is yet at the same time totally other.

—Ancilla, The Following Feet

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

A SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY

INTRODUCTION: There are, in the human experience, three verities, or fundamental realities: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. These come to us from, and point back to, the one ultimate reality, the origin of all that is. A belief in that ultimate reality—herein called the Other—is commonly called theism. The denial of that ultimate reality—the view that the universe, the cosmos, is the totality of all that is—is atheism or materialism. This essay presents three arguments, one from the domain of each verity, in support of theism and in opposition to materialism.

ARGUMENT FROM THE TRUE: Throughout the cosmos, from the smallest organizations of the microcosm to the grandest organizations of the macrocosm, interdependency prevails, and the fact of interdependency is an argument for order and intention in the cosmos. It follows that it is an argument for a theistic origin of the cosmos. It is, at the same time, an argument against chance and accident as an explanation of cosmic origin.

ARGUMENT FROM THE GOOD: Morality requires volition. What is of necessity we do not judge morally good or bad, though such may have effects that we judge good or bad as they are or are not to our benefit; but those moral judgments themselves require choice, else they are not judgments, moral or immoral. Therefore, freedom of the will is essential for morality. Freedom of the will is an argument for a theistic origin and presence of mind and consciousness in the cosmos and, at the same time, an argument against the determinism of materialism.

ARGUMENT FROM THE BEAUTIFUL: There is such a thing as beauty. It is an unfathomable reality, inexplicable to theist and materialist alike, but which hints at theism rather than materialism.

CONCLUSION: The human experience rests on the verities which offer some understanding of the nature of, and our relationship to, the Other.

Part I

THE INTRODUCTION

A. The Verities: The True, the Good, and the Beautiful

From the One, three; from the three, One. From realms of eternal being to the transient present, from our trifold harmony to the ultimate unity; so does That Which Is All reveal itself into our time and space, and so also do we, as we desire and as we are able, reach through the appearances toward the reality beyond.

For ages, people, knowingly or unknowingly, have been guided on their journey toward that ultimate reality by the three fundamental realities of the human condition, which we recognize as the three verities or three transcendentals: the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. All else is a falling away from and rejection of these three. Some people might be inclined to take the terms as platitudes, empty words, or labels for the obvious, but that would be an error, for the fact that something important is unrecognized does not diminish its importance, only our understanding; and the verities are important, for together they open to the ultimate source of all things. The two conceptions—the One and the three, theism and the verities—are herein brought together not merely for convenience or balance but because each, though unique, shows forth the other. The One appears in our life as the True, the Good, and the Beautiful; and these are for us, as it were, the face of God, and testify to the nature of that ultimate source of life and being. The verities have their own value and significance, but they also here provide the structure for three very different kinds of arguments in support of theism.

The verities come to us from outside eternity, but we know them as ancient formulations or categories within which we place thoughts and experiences and around which we might organize our lives as best we can. Who first worked out these orderings, and how and when that happened, cannot be known. However, it is reasonable to think that thoughtful people, as they had the opportunity to do so, reflected on their human condition and realized that all yearnings, all efforts, all desires, however inadequate or misguided they might be, have one goal: that final good, which we call happiness. (The word is not to be used lightly. Happiness is that state in which nothing more is desired; we are content and wish nothing to change. Such contentment is not easily attained. See Appendix A: On Happiness), and whatever brings happiness is of the True, the Good, or the Beautiful. Weakly or strongly, the verities are part of the substance and goal of our lives. They provide meaning and structure throughout, and the more they prevail, the more happiness and contentment we enjoy and the deeper our understanding of the One who is the one ultimate Verity, the source of the three. It is probably true that any given entity—any thought, activity, or object—is a mixture of verities and/or their contraries. Few things, if any, will stand alone as solely true, solely good, or solely beautiful, yet we may talk of the verities individually even though we may never experience them as such.

The True is what is. It is the way things are. The True is a popular verity from every perspective, although a particular truth may have its enemies. The True is a public verity, open to public scrutiny; our perception of the True is, even perhaps always, limited and imperfect. We do not cause the True; we discover it.

The Good is that which contributes to the well-being and happiness of the individual and the group. Many goods—health, intelligence, the natural world—are given to us, but good also comes from our choices. Those goods we do not discover, we cause.

The Beautiful is that which evokes a pleasing and enjoyable inner experience. The Beautiful is both a public and a private verity, for while it presents itself to all openly and publicly, the experience it engenders is entirely private. We both discover and cause the Beautiful. In the text, the three terms—the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—will be capitalized and preceded by the article to distinguish them from their various appearances and manifestations.

Although many accept with Keats that Beauty is truth, truth beauty, I think that cannot be so. The truth may be beautiful, and beauty is true, and both are good, but the three are not identical. Two or three verities will often be present in one instance, but they are not simply and only equivalent. There must be three distinct domains or realms, however fused together they might appear to us. There cannot be fewer; there cannot be more. They may be considered separately, yet there is unity, for the three merge in various ways according to the specific human experience involved. The verities indwell one another,1 and, though separate and distinct, they need each other. They are interdependent: the sides of a triangle, the legs of a tripod, the partners in a dance. They are a threefold whole that provides form and meaning—not just for the human condition, but for everything—throughout all time and space and beyond. In our lives, each one depends on the other two for support and correction; and each one, without the support or the influence of the other two, can be perverted and misused, and

A. The Verities: The True, the Good, and the Beautiful

to the degree that that happens, the verities mutate to their various perversions and contraries.

For example, truth without the compassion of goodness can be cruel and unfeeling. Without beauty, truth can be mechanical—even dull. Goodness without the guidance of truth leads to self-righteous zeal and revolutionary excess. Without beauty, goodness is gray ritual and joyless duty. Beauty without goodness leads to narcissism and perversion; without truth, it can lead to pure novelty and aimless posturing. Anything worthwhile is of at least one of the three verities, each of which looks to and supports the others. There will be disagreements—even within one’s own self—about what qualifies as true, good, and beautiful. Nevertheless, that is what we seek. The verities are what we want, whether we know it or not. However vague or distorted our vision, however misguided or inadequate our efforts, however pushed and pulled by our appetites, however hindered or diverted by the culture around us, we look to the verities even if we look the other way. And the human condition being what it is, we can look the other way; that is to say, we can persuade ourselves that something false is true, that something bad is good, and that something ugly is beautiful. But that is folly, for these perversions bring boredom, anxiety, and hopeless despair—in a word, unhappiness. True, our misuse of the verities is almost always well intended, but, as is insufficiently understood in our world, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In their own ways, the verities shape and guide us as we make our way from birth to death. We draw, from all three, direction and purpose—strength, per-haps—and in the case of this essay, arguments toward theism. These arguments, it will soon be apparent, when compared to the works of philosophers and scientists, are neither original nor profound (the science, minimal; the logic, elementary; the exposition, basic), but the writings of the learned are sometimes a little out of reach for those of us who do not have the specialized learning—or even the intelligence—required for understanding. Fortunately, though, there have been written, both by those who understand those experts and by the experts themselves, very useful books that put forth discoveries and theories in plain language that the rest of us can understand. This essay draws from some of those sources, and I hope it draws enough to be useful in spite of its many limitations.

5

This essay is for the ordinary person who is genuinely interested in the issue of theism versus atheism, the reader who has the capability of being open-minded. It is for the one who, if atheist, will give theism—at least this elementary presentation concerning it—a hearing, or who, if theist, looks for support and affirmation. As you read, read, as Sir Francis Bacon (1561—1626) said, not to contradict and confute … but to weigh and consider.2 Always good advice, not only for others but for ourselves as well—even though the practice is sometimes very difficult because most of us, most of the time, have little doubt about our own beliefs. This is entirely natural. After all, they wouldn’t be our beliefs if we did not feel confident about them. But there are degrees. There is the one who will say, I am right and you are wrong, so I won’t waste my time listening to you. If you are such a one, now is the time to close this book and do something else, because you really would be wasting your time in reading on. But there is also the one who says—and there is a considerable difference—I believe I am right and you are wrong, but I’ll listen to you anyway, just to hear what you have to say. It can’t hurt anything. If that is the case, then you may find this book useful, if for no other reason than that you might better understand why you are a theist or an atheist. And that is something worth understanding, for there are all kinds of reasons why people believe what they do.

B. Belief: Causes and Reasons

Some are theists because their families were; some are theists because their families were not. The same for atheists. Theists have become atheists, and atheists have become theists, both having been persuaded by scientific or logical argument. Some have been persuaded by what may be called emotional—rather than intellectual—reasons, although the line between emotion and intellect is not always plain and clear. Many are theists because they have been persuaded by some remarkable event(s)—alleged paranormal experiences, for instance—or, to the individual, astonishing circumstances. Not rarely, the pivotal events are close calls and narrow escapes from death, bodily harm, or personal detriment. Some are atheists because of their own misfortunes or because of the unfathomable pain and suffering the world over. There are theists—though fewer, I think—for the same reasons. Some are persuaded one way or the other by their associations and/ or their circumstances. My own father, apparently, gave over his religious upbringing and the theism it included because (or so he remembered) other children in the Sunday school made fun of his cheap and much-mended clothes.

There are many who are theists or atheists because they admire or dislike other atheists or theists, and rare is the one who is not at least a little influenced by the crowd or, very powerfully, by the Inner Ring, that ever-changing circle of unofficial insiders in any organization.3 Often, people will hold beliefs simply because they don’t like the opposite views. The attention and applause that comes with just being contrary, or even outrageous, is sometimes that which determines belief. Some beliefs are merely compensations for feelings of inadequacy or guilt or of power and superiority. There is a long list. Belief, then, may be for all kinds of reasons—or, even better, for all kinds of reasons and causes, for although there is probably always a degree of overlap, a reason is not quite the same thing as a cause.

Essentially, a reason is intellectual; a cause is circumstantial. A reason is an examined influence; a cause is an unexamined influence. A reason is something you have thought about, something that helps you make up your mind; a cause is something you have not thought about, something that makes up your mind before you make it up. A reason works within conscious thinking; a cause works outside of thinking, outside of logic. Sometimes, it works so far outside that you are not even aware of what is going on. (Freud and Jung had something to say about that.) A reason is something we act upon; a cause is something that acts upon us. Reasons have conclusions or answers; causes have effects. You can make a mistake in a line of reasoning and come up with a wrong answer, but you cannot make a mistake in a series of cause-and-effect events, because an effect is neither wrong nor right; it is just an effect. If you think it would be a good idea to walk on thin ice, you would be making a mistake in reasoning, but when you go through the ice, that is not a mistake in reasoning. It is not a mistake at all. It is an instance of cause and effect in the material world. You will note that the influences in the preceding paragraph are chiefly causes, not reasons. Sometimes, we are able to examine causes and then either keep or abandon them. If, after examination, we keep the idea, the cause becomes a reason. Often enough, we are moved by a blending of the two: more of one, less of the other, and then the reverse, an unrecognized merry-go-round of influences that misleads many of us some of the time and surely all of us once in a while.

The causes come to us first, sometimes the very first, even when we are infants. Then, as the years pass by, we are more able to exercise reason. Paradoxically, however, the more able we are to reason, the more difficult it is to do. In the nature of things, we find ourselves using our reason to reinforce, rather than examine, those causes which, as time goes by, insinuate themselves deep into our own selves. For example, with respect to the purpose of this essay, most readers will open the book with predispositions to view the matter in a certain way. Some will naturally view the issue from an atheistic perspective and some from a theis-tic perspective, and we are all inclined to think our perspective derives from reasons rather than causes. But self-deception is so easy. Again, we can but do our best to reason as carefully as possible.

C. Theism: A Belief in the Other

In any case, readers will find that this essay—however persuasive it may or may not be—is in support of theism, not religion; for although there is overlap, and although many view the two as one, theism and religion are not at all the same thing. True, many will say that theism is a religious belief and therefore the two are really one—but that is careless. Many and various religious elements may lead to theism. The two may even necessarily be connected. Theism may draw forth religion. But the two are not identical.

Theism is a concept, a proposition about something; religion is the response, in thought and act, to that proposition. Theism is a belief in an ultimate reality that is other than the natural, material universe; religion is the pattern of beliefs and behaviors of those who think they ought to respond to that belief in some way—and that ought can be very strong, for theism is inherently imperative. (The root of the word