| Thought of the day: I need to work on my aesthetics. For those who don't know, aesthetics could be said to be the "science" or philosophy of beauty. I'm constantly struck by how many great truth tellers out there have some form of poetry in their soul. C.S. Lewis wrote children's literature. George MacDonald loved faerie stories. Peter Kreeft and other great philosophers have their dialogues.
Understanding the ins and outs of metaphor, representation, rhyme, etc. has use to it. Truth-bearing value. Not that I don't appreciate the hard sciences, but I've met more than my share of scientistic people whose lack of understanding of metaphor is a great hindrance to their comprehension of truth. They will point to something like the beautifully pictoral language of Hebrew and say "aha! The bible uses phrases like 'the four corners of the earth' and 'the floodgates of heaven.' But there are no floodgates in the sky and the earth is round, not flat. Therefore, the bible is wrong." Or, another of my favorites, "Do you really think faith comes from the heart, an organ that pumps blood?" It's a metaphor, for crying out loud. It means roughly "It rained real hard," or "from all over the earth," or "faith comes from the core of one's being." Such things were never meant to be taken literally.
By this same scientistic logic, these people believe some pretty strange things themselves. Like the fact that there exist things like "laws of gravity" and that stones "obey" these laws. What an absurd thought! Stones don't have wills, they can't make choices. And they certainly don't qualify for citizenship. Silly scientists.
Lewis used to say that, in their thinking, naturalists are like dogs for much the same reason. When you point to something you want your dog to look at, he considers only your finger, and not what lies beyond it: what you are pointing to. He sees and comprehends everything that is there (probably more than you do, what with his extremely acute senses and all) except the meaning; what lies beyond it. In the same way, naturalists fail to comprehend what lies beyond this life. But such things deal with meaning and metaphor, things that are appropriate to studies such as philosophy, literature, and art. After completing college, I feel like I'm getting the hang of the philosophy part, but I don't know that I understand the other two very well yet... |
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