Video Transcript: Regulation not Derivation
In this session, I want to try to show you what I mean by a religious belief that is a divinity belief, a belief in something, as the self evident reality that generates everything else about such beliefs, exercising influence on theories, I'm going to show you that it makes a difference to theories, what someone puts in the slot of being the divine reality. Let me start with an example of a theory that may be familiar to a lot of you. Freud, famously has a theory in which he talks about the ID as the serving surging driving power of desire in a person. Then he talks about ego, and what he calls super ego. And he gives, he wrote many books in which he speaks of these as the components of a human psychological makeup. This is a drive, sometimes it's equated with sex drive, but he says, it's not only that acquisition, ego is what emerges out of the conflict between ID and super ego. The super ego is where you have conscience, and you worry about what's right. I have a drive and I want to accomplish this. Do I have to trample somebody to get it? Maybe, if so, super ego kicks in and says, Oh, but that's wrong, you wouldn't want to be treated that way. And he described human makeup and human decision making and so on. In terms of these three postulates, there is a theory that there's such a thing as ID. the ego, the super ego, and what kind of thing those are, is treated very differently, depending upon a person's divinity belief. Freud himself pot posits these three things, right, these are proposals, hypotheses, in order to explain the human psychological makeup, why people behave the way they do, and make the choices they do and so on. In fact, at one point, Freud even said, that all the decisions we make, are driven by our unconscious emotional needs, or everything we believe we believe, because of our unconscious emotional needs. Notice, that's a theory that undercuts itself. Right? Because if every belief is that way, then Freud's beliefs that all beliefs are controlled by an unconscious emotional needs, is quote, unquote, controlled by his unconscious emotional needs. Very good, doesn't recommend itself. But these three have caught on, they've entered into the language. And most people take these to be non physical, they are, they are psychological. They are a part of the mind, the mind is not a physical object. So there are brains and glands on one side and the non physical mind on the other. And these are disposition, natural disposition, dispositions, of the, of the non physical mind. But Freud himself was a materialist. And so in one of his late books, I was surprised to read on that when was the title of it right now? These are just temporary ways of talking about things. Until brain research will locate what it is in the brain, that's the ego, the ID, the ego and super ego. So he thinks that they are physical. Right? And that's because what what it is the divine for Freud? is a purely physical though if someone is a duelist, as most people who aren't philosophers are, they believe that we have a mind or soul in addition to the body? Then they're going to say, Well, no, that's why would you locate these in the brain, this is characteristics of the mind, the non physical component of the soul, or whatever you want to call it, and they would have a very different
view of it, particularly a rationalist. A rationalst will tell us that this has more to do with a person's rational nature, tempering and restraining the emotional side. So he just he would tend to regard these as emotional and this as rational. That's what we get in Plato or Aristotle or a modern rationalist who says it's the reason that's going to restrain the emotions and the evil it comes out of emotion and good comes out of reason. That's another view. That view sees the divine as two things. Reason as well as the purely physical, that is to say, this person has two divine principles, that's what dualist means has to there is not there is not only the purely physical body, there is the purely rational mind. And the emotions arise out of the purely physical body. And the reason arises out of the mind and reasons is the super ego that restrains the other stuff. No, that would be wrong to do, and so on. So how one postulates, the nature's of these things, right is that's what I'm saying. It's not that a divinity, belief, hands Freud, these three as a theory, no, those are invented by brilliant people, they think up their own theories. But the nature's they attribute to these are controlled always by what they put in the slot of being divine. So the materialist is not going to tell you those are non-physical. To him, everything is physical, or caused by the physical, the dualist is not going to admit that he's gonna say no, no rational, and so on the other side. And we can get yet other things depending on what people put down here. But clearly, think of Pythagoras, everything is mathematical mathematical numbers. If these things exist at all, they too are combinations of numbers. And they're rational. And maybe this is less so and this is more so something like that. But that's what I mean by exercises regulative control of a theory, the person's divinity belief does not hand him or her the exact postulates of a theory what the theory proposes exists, that we don't ordinarily see, like the molecules in the paint, or the ID, ego, and the super ego. They don't hand them the very proposals of what they're saying exists in order to explain what they want to explain, but it controls how we think of a nature of the proposal. So it's not that if a person is a Christian, they'll think of atomic theory that a persons a rationalist, they'll think of another theory. Everybody agrees, sometimes atomic, atomic theory has said any number of interpretations. Let me use that too. As the second example, we won't talk about ID, ego and super ego here, we'll talk about the atomic hypothesis. There are atoms. There we go. There are atoms, plus subatomic particles. And laws that govern them, we find the chemical laws, for example, of Valence with the outer shells, the electrons of one atom interchange with the outer shell electrons of another atom, and we have a chemical bonds, and so on all that kind of stuff. Well, that hypothesis been around for a long time. And most people are unaware that there are radically different interpretations of it. So let me tell you what they are. Now some of this, you're gonna think is pretty silly. And I'm not recommending these theories. I'm just showing you how they in fact, have worked out how divinity beliefs have exercise of their control. Of course, there
are materialists. They hold that everything is either purely physical or caused by the purely physical. So for them, an atom is a physical thing. The electrons in the outer shell denote neutrons and protons in the nucleus. They're all purely physical. That's a theory. That hypothesis about the nature of them is a theory that is controlled by this materialistic ability belief or put DB divinity belief. Why? Well, because there are other people who think that the essential characteristic of an atom isn't physical, it's mathematical people, this would be more in accord with the old Pythagorian view, there's matter there. But what's really important is the organization and that's governed by mathematical law. Here's another example. Okay, we have materialists and we have rationalists of some sort rationalist, it's the laws of math or math and logic or logic, that are that is the real essential characteristic of atoms and other subatomic particles. And then we also get another theory. Now there are also people and in philosophy, this is called the phenomenalist position. I hope you're sitting down for this. These people have held that our experience the world that we experience, and everything about it consists of sensations. We never really get past our own sensations sensations register inside of us. Sights, taste, touches, smells and sounds. In addition to that, we have the capacity to do logical reasoning. But all the we experience are sensory perceptions, bunches of sights, taste, touches, smells, and sounds, if they're not atoms then that's what they are. But do we don't have any sight, taste, touch smell sound of an atom. And so the phenomentalists, the people who hold this, the ultimate reality is our sense perceptions. This divinity beliefs and here's their interpretation. Here's what one of them said, very famous atomic physicist, atoms are useful fictions. They don't exist. Neither do tables and chairs exist as objects outside of our minds, they're just sensations in our minds, we can have this idea and we can fool around with it. It's that's why it's useful. This is an atomic physicist, this is Ernst Mach, the guy whose name you all know without knowing that you know it. Mach one is the speed of sound, double the speed of sound is Mach two, Mach three is three times the speed of sound This fella. That's the way you spell his name. I had the unpleasant task one time of reading five books by Mach for my first book. This is what he held. And in doing so he followed thinkers like George Barkley and David Hume, they held the same thing. And in the 20th century, right up till about 1960, there was a powerful philosophical movement made up of people who were devoted to that point of view, called they were called logical positivists. Not phenomenaistsl. That's a mouthful. But at any rate, because the guy holds that this is the character of reality. That's the character of any hypothesis he proposes. There, we've got three different views of what an atom is. A fello like Verner Heisenberg says in his book, when we find finally find the ultimate laws for physics, they will undoubtedly turn out to be eternal laws, mathematical laws for motion. Eternal mathematical laws, and then he hit that he says, This fits with the Pythagorean religion. And there's no proof of it. But I and a number of my
colleagues hold this view. He recognizes very well that he's making the numerical, the ultimate reality, the mathematical realm of math and laws, and so on, and that, that this will give us the insight into anything that's true about this. So he has a rationalist, one version of a rationalist point of view, what somebody puts into this slot of being the divine reality, their divinity, beliefs, controls how they, how they think of the nature of the things that they postulate, the guesses that they make, whatever those things are, whether it's atoms, Ids, egos and super egos, whether they're syndromes, whatever it supposed to be historical cycles, that it's going to have the nature of whatever the guy thinks is the nature of the Divine. And here's, here's the kicker. For a Christian, it shouldn't be any of those things. Right? The Divinity that holds all things together, is the power of God through Jesus Christ. And it's not identical with the mathematical, the spatial, the physical, the sensory, the logical, or anything else. Those are all created. None of them are what they are the real nature of reality, because they're the real nature, the ultimate overall nature of reality is just to depend on God doesn't have an intrinsic nature. Other than that, things that we encounter in the world do a plant has a different nature from a boulder, which is a different nature, again, from a horse, and so on. And we can give a good goodly account of that sort of thing and those differences from a Christian point of view, that doesn't need to deify turn into divine, any aspect of the reality we in which we live in order to explain things or to provide the nature of of our hypothetical guesses that we put forward in theories. I hope that helps to clear up what it is we're looking for. It's not that our Christian religion is going to hand us a of theory of geology, paleontology, biology, astronomy physics, if that's not going to hand us the postulates that we need in those fields, but it is going to prevent us from deifying any one aspect of them and saying they are only of this nature. One of the first consequences that follows is that things have a many sided nature. Those are all true. Atoms have a sensory side, a logical side of mathematical physical. Atoms have more than that. And we'll go we'll see how that works out in some detail in our coming talks. I think you've had enough for today. Something to think about.