Einstein's essay is valuable because it can communicate to a modern interlocutor when others will be ignored.
But his statement already presupposes the Humean "can you derive an ought from an is" disjunction, implicitly making morality irrational. Problem is, our entire moral language (as MacIntyre shows in _After Virtue_) is predicated on reason being able to derive an ought from an is: by knowing what something is and what its final cause (telos) is, we can then know how it is to be treated to realize rather than frustrate that telos.
It would be more correct to say that, because the physical sciences deal in phenomena rather than teloi, they cannot teach us what ought to be done; that job is for philosophy. Both fields, however, deal in truth.
I do appreciate that corrective and perhaps I will bring it up in a few days. We could certainly point to examples of both Jesus and Paul reasoning from the created order. You could have another whole discussion about, if the universe transitions from "created order" into "just something that happened" in your mind, does that deal a major blow to your ability to transition from "is" to "ought" in that way? Alas, ss I tell students, "nature of science" is just one short unit in our class but it could quite easily be a whole class.
I am a bit confused...are you saying Einstein would have supported mask and vax mandates because non-scientists like Fauci, Biden, Whitmer, and Walensky have a broader and deeper view?
(joking)
Do pastors ever say a mask mandate feeds the State beast and covers our God-given faces or that we can't live just in order to not die? I haven't heard it. They usually say, my gift is expository research and making sermons, the scientists have spoken and therefore we need to elevate politeness to have unity because we don't have the expertise to disagree with Fauci, NIH, NY Times, etc. That is, "I just spent all week with 18th century theologians, Greek dictionaries, and a Confession, how do I know anything about masks - can't you guys just get along?"
I was listening to the Citizen of New Jerusalem podcast last night: https://citizenofnewjerusalem.com/ , and I did appreciate his point that there is no urgency in our churches today, and there needs to be. World is collapsing around and and we're busily teaching congregants about the finer distinctions of 18th century theology (and that's the GOOD churches). For example, if Christianity has anything to say about the growing bio-surveillance and coercion state, the time to speak is NOW church. Tomorrow might be too late. Speak NOW.
I'm not sure this problem is unique to the modern American/Western church. It seems churches in a number of different eras have all suffered from the paradox of being good at reacting to a crisis (e.g. helping people economically harmed by an economic downturn), but terrible at anticipating and preventing fat-tail risks. Indeed, there's something in the nature of Christian thought that celebrates reactive thinking to immediate harm and short-term risk, but displays an aversion to prevention of longer term, high-impact risks. It feels like Christians have always been caught completely off guard by the gradual emergence of totalitarian ideologies, in every era of history.
It would be encouraging to find an example in history of when the Church acted successfully to prevent a potentially harmful large-scale change in social order. You'd think that, in the more distant past when Christendom was in a stronger social position, there would be some strong examples. But the only ones that comes to mind are anti-totalitarian wars in which churches were mostly on the sidelines in an advisory role.
Can you think of any good historical models for what it would look like for Christians to stand up against state power?
I totally agree with your assessment here, by the way. It feels like "smart Christians" (conservative Reformed Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc) are very easily sidetracked into wasting vast energy on stagnant theological tangents that no longer feel like active points of controversy, while ignoring more immediate threats that would obligate them to forge uncomfortable alliances with too many "stupid Christians" from the low-church generic-evangelical or charismatic world.
Einstein came of age at a pretty remarkable time for physics, and after some extraordinary scientific advances between, say, 1870-1910. Then he saw World War I and II, the Depression, Nazis, and Russian communism. Scientists either helped those things happened, or were unable to prevent them from happening. That left Einstein in a better position to realize the limits of science in guiding human life than we have been recently.
Einstein's essay is valuable because it can communicate to a modern interlocutor when others will be ignored.
But his statement already presupposes the Humean "can you derive an ought from an is" disjunction, implicitly making morality irrational. Problem is, our entire moral language (as MacIntyre shows in _After Virtue_) is predicated on reason being able to derive an ought from an is: by knowing what something is and what its final cause (telos) is, we can then know how it is to be treated to realize rather than frustrate that telos.
It would be more correct to say that, because the physical sciences deal in phenomena rather than teloi, they cannot teach us what ought to be done; that job is for philosophy. Both fields, however, deal in truth.
I do appreciate that corrective and perhaps I will bring it up in a few days. We could certainly point to examples of both Jesus and Paul reasoning from the created order. You could have another whole discussion about, if the universe transitions from "created order" into "just something that happened" in your mind, does that deal a major blow to your ability to transition from "is" to "ought" in that way? Alas, ss I tell students, "nature of science" is just one short unit in our class but it could quite easily be a whole class.
I am a bit confused...are you saying Einstein would have supported mask and vax mandates because non-scientists like Fauci, Biden, Whitmer, and Walensky have a broader and deeper view?
(joking)
Do pastors ever say a mask mandate feeds the State beast and covers our God-given faces or that we can't live just in order to not die? I haven't heard it. They usually say, my gift is expository research and making sermons, the scientists have spoken and therefore we need to elevate politeness to have unity because we don't have the expertise to disagree with Fauci, NIH, NY Times, etc. That is, "I just spent all week with 18th century theologians, Greek dictionaries, and a Confession, how do I know anything about masks - can't you guys just get along?"
I was listening to the Citizen of New Jerusalem podcast last night: https://citizenofnewjerusalem.com/ , and I did appreciate his point that there is no urgency in our churches today, and there needs to be. World is collapsing around and and we're busily teaching congregants about the finer distinctions of 18th century theology (and that's the GOOD churches). For example, if Christianity has anything to say about the growing bio-surveillance and coercion state, the time to speak is NOW church. Tomorrow might be too late. Speak NOW.
I'm not sure this problem is unique to the modern American/Western church. It seems churches in a number of different eras have all suffered from the paradox of being good at reacting to a crisis (e.g. helping people economically harmed by an economic downturn), but terrible at anticipating and preventing fat-tail risks. Indeed, there's something in the nature of Christian thought that celebrates reactive thinking to immediate harm and short-term risk, but displays an aversion to prevention of longer term, high-impact risks. It feels like Christians have always been caught completely off guard by the gradual emergence of totalitarian ideologies, in every era of history.
It would be encouraging to find an example in history of when the Church acted successfully to prevent a potentially harmful large-scale change in social order. You'd think that, in the more distant past when Christendom was in a stronger social position, there would be some strong examples. But the only ones that comes to mind are anti-totalitarian wars in which churches were mostly on the sidelines in an advisory role.
Can you think of any good historical models for what it would look like for Christians to stand up against state power?
I totally agree with your assessment here, by the way. It feels like "smart Christians" (conservative Reformed Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians, etc) are very easily sidetracked into wasting vast energy on stagnant theological tangents that no longer feel like active points of controversy, while ignoring more immediate threats that would obligate them to forge uncomfortable alliances with too many "stupid Christians" from the low-church generic-evangelical or charismatic world.
Einstein came of age at a pretty remarkable time for physics, and after some extraordinary scientific advances between, say, 1870-1910. Then he saw World War I and II, the Depression, Nazis, and Russian communism. Scientists either helped those things happened, or were unable to prevent them from happening. That left Einstein in a better position to realize the limits of science in guiding human life than we have been recently.