A Mouse in Wolf's Clothing (Part V)

Spinoza did not view human beings as bodies with souls in them, or as souls with bodies wrapped around them. The Spinozistic body and soul are not separate things, but are simply two different ways of looking at the same thing. With body and soul as two aspects of one thing, whatever happens in one also happens in the other. What appears as a motion of the body appears to the mind as the idea of the motion. As Spinoza says, “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” The problem of interaction disappears. Whatever happens in either the mind or the body happens simultaneously in the other.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who you are), while Spinoza’s rescue makes it possible for the body and soul to reunite, it also snatches the rug from beneath the feet of Descartes’ compromise. The reunification of body and soul denies them true separateness, and thus denies significantly separate roles for religion and science. Those things considered important and proper for religious man to think about, now become equally important and proper for scientific man to think about. As Spinoza might have said, “The order and connection of religious matters is the same as the order and connection of scientific matters.” In short, a man cannot truly exist who is religious but not scientific, nor a scientific man who is not religious. The scientist may not know he’s religious. The religious man may not know he’s scientific. And even when reminded of the inescapability of their dual nature, both may doubt that they are the other. But if Spinoza has got the straight of it, the truth of science (if there be such) constitutes a critically inseparable part of the religious man’s truth. That is, what’s true of God is true of the world, what’s true of the world is true of God.

Oh, and one other thing, if Spinoza is right, then the mainstream beliefs of western culture are essentially false. Aristotle permitted an error of gross proportion to endure in his work. Aquinas brought about a unification of the worst of Aristotle and the worst of religion, producing a work so shot through with metaphysical and theological flaws that by no stretch of the imagination can its literal meaning ever be made compatible with science. The Cartesian compromise, an error of first magnitude, left religion and science to walk their separate ways, both headed in the wrong direction. The common people of the world – those who are in fact the world’s critical mass – still think of science and religion as separate areas of concern.

One may doubt that science and religion will ever be routed back into the single path where they belong. Scientists trust nothing that cannot be demonstrated by repeatable experiment. Religionists regard such demonstrations as of trivial importance, with the real values resting upon articles of faith that, by definition, cannot be demonstrated. [See Hebrews 11:1.] Both the scientists and the religionists have so deeply implanted the separateness of their domains in the psychological makeup of the human race that, even if they were to admit their errors and seek to change direction, the chance seems remote that the new course would be adopted by humankind. Some stupid people are flying airplanes into tall buildings because they believe what their religionists tell them. By way of revenge, other stupid people, by implying that they speak to God, are justifying the destruction of innocent nations. So-called rational scientists, while admitting placebo effects, still deny the mind a place in the eternal chain of causes and effects. In some of their most socially meaningful theories (I have evolution theory in mind), they refuse – almost angrily – to admit mind as a causative agent. To the extent they believe that minds exist, they seem content to live with Descartes’ error. What method can possibly change any of these people – scientists and religionists – into truly rational human souls?

[To be continued]