tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post114081774253065138..comments2023-08-10T05:32:21.163-04:00Comments on An Examined Life: Dangerous FictionVitae Scrutatorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141232524403739282006-03-01T12:02:00.000-05:002006-03-01T12:02:00.000-05:00Come on now, Mark is supposed to be the sophist he...<I>Come on now, Mark is supposed to be the sophist here, not you.</I><BR/><BR/>What is sophistic about it?<BR/><BR/>If, as you wrote, it doesn't matter what such people believe about anything, then it doesn't matter whether they have the faith in Christ necessary for salvation. so it doesn't matter if they go to hell.<BR/><BR/><I>Well, as far as I'm concerned, words either mean certain things or, if you're a sophist, they mean what you want them to mean.</I><BR/><BR/>You must meet a lot of sophists, then.<BR/><BR/>In my experience, people use words all along a continuum from strict, Webster-parsing prescriptivism to full-bore Humpty Dumpty fungibility, with most attempts at conversation in the "dictionary with idiosyncratic excursions" range.<BR/><BR/>I don't have any objections to idiosyncratic excursions (I shouldn't, since I make them often enough myself), as long as the speaker is aware of his idiosyncracies and I can figure out where the excursions wind up. It's when one or both of us is unaware that he is using words to mean something they don't mean to me (which for the most part is what they mean to lexicographers) that serious problems arise.<BR/><BR/>That said, I don't mean to defend Mark's hyperbole as such, merely to suggest that it is not altogether meaningless.<BR/><BR/><I>If by "phlegmatic" you mean "realistic", then I agree.</I><BR/><BR/>Ah, no, I wasn't being so idiosyncratic. But when you ask for "evidence to the effect that reading this book really is dangerous in any way at all," I'm still not sure we agree on what constitutes danger. In particular, I'm not sure you agree with me that it is dangerous to cause people to have false ideas about Jesus.<BR/><BR/>If you do agree, the question becomes whether <I>The DaVinci Code</I> causes people to have false ideas about Jesus. On that, I have only third-hand anecdotes. And even if you accept the historicity of the anecdotes, I'm not sure you would accept that they constitute evidence that the book actually caused a false idea.<BR/><BR/>So I'll just refer you to the archives of Amy Welborn's blog, where she deals with the "C'mon, it's just a novel" objection.Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14850575419673561383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141229523834544852006-03-01T11:12:00.000-05:002006-03-01T11:12:00.000-05:00To hell with them, then?Come on now, Mark is suppo...<I>To hell with them, then?</I><BR/><BR/>Come on now, Mark is supposed to be the sophist here, not you.<BR/><BR/><I>one of Mark's stock tropes</I><BR/><BR/>Well, as far as I'm concerned, words either mean certain things or, if you're a sophist, they mean what you want them to mean. If all you're saying is that you agree with me that Mark used the words sophistically, then fine. The one thing I won't let go, though is the suggestion that it is a mere pedantic interest in "philosophical rigor" that prompts folks--even non philosophers--to wonder whether people really mean the things they say. It is a rather base sort of ad hominem to suggest that, because I am a philosopher, any attempt of mine to hold someone responsible for what he has actually said is nothing more than a kind of philosophical pedantry. Well, it's either ad hominem, or it's desperation. The fact is, it's letting people get away with that kind of meaningless hyperbole that has tended to "make people more stupid" in our culture. We're losing a sense of rationality and proportion because we're living in a Rush Limbaugh kind of world where you say whatever you need to say to get your point across.<BR/><BR/><I>yours is a more phlegmatic temperament than mine</I><BR/><BR/>If by "phlegmatic" you mean "realistic", then I agree. But if you have some kind of <I>evidence</I> to the effect that reading this book really is dangerous in any way at all, please let me know. Until then, I don't see any reason to think of the whole thing as anything more than it is--marketing.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141223376566998062006-03-01T09:29:00.000-05:002006-03-01T09:29:00.000-05:00It does not matter what such people believe about ...<I>It does not matter what such people believe about anything, let alone what they believe about the Church.</I><BR/><BR/>To hell with them, then?<BR/><BR/>I apparently have completely missed your point. I thought you were criticizing Mark Shea for exaggerations and overblown rhetoric, criticism which for the most part is valid, if perhaps beside the point (e.g., regarding "X makes you more stupid," one of Mark's stock tropes).<BR/><BR/>But if your point is that we shouldn't care about <I>The DaVinci Code</I> because it won't cause the utter destruction of the Catholic Church, then the best I can say is that yours is a more phlegmatic temperament than mine.Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14850575419673561383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141217603752249372006-03-01T07:53:00.000-05:002006-03-01T07:53:00.000-05:00Tom,I think you might be missing my point, or else...Tom,<BR/><BR/>I think you might be missing my point, or else I'm just not making it very clearly. I don't doubt that there are people who believe the stuff in The Da Vinci Code. Their number may even be Legion, for all I know. And Dan Brown may really believe what he writes in his FAQ. Who knows.<BR/><BR/>But I don't think any of that matters.<BR/><BR/>First, there have always been lots of suckers out there who will believe anything, and it hasn't hurt the Church one bit. There are not more such people nowadays than ever before, they've always been quite abundant. It does not matter what such people believe about anything, let alone what they believe about the Church.<BR/><BR/>Second, Dan Brown can say whatever he likes, and it may be true, or it may not be true. He may be saying it because he believes it, or he may be saying it because he wants to generate publicity for himself. I believe I covered both of those possibilities. Whatever the truth is regarding his own personal beliefs, it does not make his book more dangerous than it is. And it is not dangerous. Not even a little bit.<BR/><BR/>Or perhaps what I should say is, I would like to understand a little better in what sense it <I>is</I> dangerous. Surely it is always a bad thing when people believe false things, but that will happen whether or not they read Dan Brown's book, and I'm not at all convinced that Brown's book will significantly increase the belief in False Things. I just don't see any real danger to the Church itself if people believe false things about it, convinced as I am of Our Lord's promise that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141141358963806452006-02-28T10:42:00.000-05:002006-02-28T10:42:00.000-05:00When somebody comes along and sophistically stirs ...<I>When somebody comes along and sophistically stirs up a bunch of controversy where none exists, it's really just a failure to speak with philosophical rigor?</I><BR/><BR/>You phrase that as though the answer should be, "No."<BR/><BR/>I think, though, that you might underestimate the amount of controversy that exists, or more precisely the number of people who believe that the core myth of <I>The DaVinci Code</I> is or might be true.<BR/><BR/>Any why would people believe such absurdities might be true? Because Dan Brown says they are.<BR/><BR/>Whether he truly <I>believes</I> in this alleged "secret that remains protected to this day by a clandestine brotherhood" is harder to say, but it is clear at least that he wants people to believe that he does.<BR/><BR/>Was the book written "with the express intention of destroying faith in Jesus Christ and replacing it with neo-pagan goddess worship"? I don't know; I would have taken that as an example of Mark's hyperbole.<BR/><BR/>But Brown has said, in a <A HREF="http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html" REL="nofollow">FAQ</A> on his website, "Two thousand years ago, we lived in a world of Gods and Goddesses. Today, we live in a world solely of Gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power. The novel touches on questions of how and why this shift occurred…and on what lessons we might learn from it regarding our future."<BR/><BR/>That, perhaps, explains the neo-pagan Goddess worship. And "destroying faith in Jesus Christ"? To the extent he wants people to believe, as is evidently claimed in his book, that Jesus was a "mortal prophet" whose divinity was only declared in AD 325 by a close vote... well, yeah, that's close enough to the repudiation of the orthodox Faith for me to let Mark's comment go without comment.<BR/><BR/>(In that same FAQ, Brown claims, "Much of the positive response I get from within organized religion comes from nuns (who write to thank me for pointing out that they have sacrificed their entire lives to the Church and are still considered 'unfit' to serve behind the altar)," which perhaps speaks to the the putative dangers of reading Brown's book.)Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14850575419673561383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141077340757654352006-02-27T16:55:00.000-05:002006-02-27T16:55:00.000-05:00Let me see if I follow you here. When somebody com...Let me see if I follow you here. When somebody comes along and sophistically stirs up a bunch of controversy where none exists, it's really just a failure to speak with philosophical rigor?<BR/><BR/>I suppose it may not be exactly like selling snake oil, but I did think that some of the stuff he said about the putative <I>dangers</I> of reading Brown's book were somewhat overblown. On the one hand, one might really think that folks are going to read this book in droves and soak up every erroneous claim like a sponge. My opinion, unsupported by anything that could masquerade as empirical evidence, is that this is extremely unlikely. On the other hand, one might think that it's just plain Bad that these lies are circulating at all. With that I could agree, but it's hardly a novelty: people have been saying this, and much worse, about the Church practically since its inception. There's no <I>new</I> danger here and history has shown that what danger there is is in fact minimal.<BR/><BR/>I have no qualms with folks drumming up business, mind you--especially if they're decent God fearin' folks as Mark appears to be. I'm sure I would have tried a similar tactic if I had a book to sell. I think I might have said that every tenth copy of the shrink-wrapped copies of the book has a $50 bill in it.Vitae Scrutatorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12808120163472036743noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1141076810587992842006-02-27T16:46:00.000-05:002006-02-27T16:46:00.000-05:00Well, I mean to say, Mark Shea has many virtues, b...Well, I mean to say, Mark Shea has many virtues, but he has never made a personal fetish of speaking with philosophical rigor. Just as well; we all know how dull that can be, what?Tomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14850575419673561383noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14247942.post-1140919643648871362006-02-25T21:07:00.000-05:002006-02-25T21:07:00.000-05:00I have nothing of substance to add, but found myse...I have nothing of substance to add, but found myself chuckling so much while reading this post that I had to put a word in to thank you.Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.com