Trintarian Meditations
The Father <--> the concept of a work of art
The Son <--> the working out of the concept
The Holy Spirit <--> the power of the work itself
Hat tip to the late, great Dorothy Sayers.
This brings to mind the criticism of some of my previous trinatarian meditations: one commentator wrote that I was generating novel, wild interpretations of the trinity that would shock most Christians. Maybe so, but, as I recall, the interpretation that induced that critique was drawn straight from St. Bonaventure, who lived 700 years ago and was, after all, canonized by the Catholic Church.
This sort of criticism is of a piece, I think, with that claiming that "ordinary Christians" don't share my "high philosophical" view of Christian doctrines. Well, so what? Would it be a good critique of modern evolutionary theory to note that many of those who profess to believe in it believe silly things, for instance, that every human activity has a gene that codes for it, so that we can talk about a "God gene," or that they think that DNA is analogous to a program that the rest of the cell simply executes?
No, any knowledgeable NeoDarwinist would surely complain that one ought to direct one's critique at the best, most sophisticated version of the theory extant, and not at the bastardized versions held by most netizens. Any good physicist would surely object to my critiquing quantum theory by analyzing the works of Deepak Chopra. "No," they would say, "you have to look at Heisenberg and Dirac and Feyneman and so forth."
Well, yes, that is exactly right.
The Son <--> the working out of the concept
The Holy Spirit <--> the power of the work itself
Hat tip to the late, great Dorothy Sayers.
This brings to mind the criticism of some of my previous trinatarian meditations: one commentator wrote that I was generating novel, wild interpretations of the trinity that would shock most Christians. Maybe so, but, as I recall, the interpretation that induced that critique was drawn straight from St. Bonaventure, who lived 700 years ago and was, after all, canonized by the Catholic Church.
This sort of criticism is of a piece, I think, with that claiming that "ordinary Christians" don't share my "high philosophical" view of Christian doctrines. Well, so what? Would it be a good critique of modern evolutionary theory to note that many of those who profess to believe in it believe silly things, for instance, that every human activity has a gene that codes for it, so that we can talk about a "God gene," or that they think that DNA is analogous to a program that the rest of the cell simply executes?
No, any knowledgeable NeoDarwinist would surely complain that one ought to direct one's critique at the best, most sophisticated version of the theory extant, and not at the bastardized versions held by most netizens. Any good physicist would surely object to my critiquing quantum theory by analyzing the works of Deepak Chopra. "No," they would say, "you have to look at Heisenberg and Dirac and Feyneman and so forth."
Well, yes, that is exactly right.
I'm glad you also think the "meme" thing is ridiculous. Nowadays people tend to use the term as a synonym for "fad". It's a bad substitute; it's certainly worse than using "decimate" in place of completely destroy.
ReplyDeleteThanks, traumerei. Yes, I believe "meme" is empty of any scientific content.
ReplyDeleteBut what led to this comment appearing in this thread?
I posted in response to:
ReplyDelete"that every human activity has a gene that codes for it,"
I interpreted that as "meme" but now that I think of it, it looks like you meant real genes and not the loose figurative ones, haha.
But I have written several other posts on memes.
ReplyDeleteAh, I might not have read them. Sometimes when there are hundreds of posts in my newsfeed I just clear them all.
ReplyDeleteHere's one.
ReplyDeleteI chuckled. Don't think asking for Punnet squares for memes will go over too well with users of the term.
ReplyDelete