Husband&Father
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Yes, I would agree (with mush emphasis on "by necessity"). So you will get no argument from me on this point.
I'm sorry I guess I was not clear in the way I made my point.
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Who Wants to Join a Book Club?
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Yes, I would agree (with mush emphasis on "by necessity"). So you will get no argument from me on this point.
I'm sorry I guess I was not clear in the way I made my point.
Husband&Father
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That's a lot to write about. And in fact, so much, that I would be skeptical of ANY general overview of such a massive subject.
Well, let's not forget that Chesterton was writing this book in answer to H.G. Well's classic "An Outline of History" If Wells could outline all of history then it's only fair that Chesterton has a crack at it.
Chesterton really enjoyed Well's "Outline" but he thought that Wells downplayed the importance of the person of Jesus in the course of history. Wells put Jesus down as just one more religious leader among many and Christianity just one more religion.
The Everlasting Man was an effort to correct that error and to demonstrate that the coming of Jesus and the onset of Christianity was the very peak of history.
Yes the book has a very broad overall topic but, as Chesterton himself was fond of saying: "There is something called the point of a story". The Everlasting Man is an effort to show that Jesus IS the point of history.
Husband&Father
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The believer THINKS he is open-minded, while his 'faith' ensures that he is not.
The thing is, that only really matters to Chesterton. The rest of us have to investigate and determine the truthfulness of such propositions, for ourselves. One of the ways we do that is by interrogating the "believers", like Chesterton. But when we try, we almost always hit that wall of bias, called "faith".
It's the same wall that makes the church very resistant to criticism, and positive change.
Any honest person (believer, skeptic, or seeker of truth) should admit that a personal bias is possible and even likely. A debater should be aware of this difficulty and should take steps to address it. Early in The Everlasting Man, Chesterton admits his difficulty in attempting to talk about Christianity objectively.
That-being-said, it is often assumed that it is only the believer who has a bias and only the religious person who has "faith".
As Chesterton points out critics of the Church are often more inflexible and more dogmatic in their beliefs than are Christians.
Chesterton claims that it takes more faith to be an atheist than to be a believer because to be an atheist you must actively deny what you would otherwise naturally believe.
Materialism is a religion. Non-believers are just as stubborn and fall back on their "faith" just like believers. Only the faith of the non-believer is that nothing supernatural has ever happened.
Husband&Father
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Wow, I just started the part about evolution and the typical wisdom about cavemen. Fascinating. I'm learning a lot already. Will discuss this more when I have more time.
Chesterton finds the "caveman" highly dubious.
The only evidence we have about men who lived in caves shows that they were already men. There is much talk about "prehistoric" man and much conjecture about how "man" lived before he was man, but all actual evidence shows that men have always been men.
In the book Chesterton says:
"If he [the caveman] was an ordinary product of biological growth like any other beast or bird, then it is all the more extraordinary that he was not in the least like any other beast or bird. He seems rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one."
Husband&Father
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Chesterton on man evolving from animals:
If he [the caveman] was an ordinary product of biological growth like any other beast or bird, then it is all the more extraordinary that he was not in the least like any other beast or bird. He seems rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one.
In-other-words, if man was just an animal it is that much more incredible that he out-strips all other animals by an order of magnitude.
If he [the caveman] was an ordinary product of biological growth like any other beast or bird, then it is all the more extraordinary that he was not in the least like any other beast or bird. He seems rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one.
In-other-words, if man was just an animal it is that much more incredible that he out-strips all other animals by an order of magnitude.
Husband&Father
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Chesterton on human exceptionalism:
There is not a particle of proof that this transition [ from beast to man] came slowly or even that it came naturally. In a strictly scientific sense we simply know nothing whatever about how it grew, or whether it grew, or what it is. There may be a broken trail of stones and bones faintly suggesting the development of the human body. There is nothing even faintly suggesting such a development of this human mind. It was not and it was; we know not in what instant or in what infinity of years. Something happened; and it has all the appearance of a transaction outside time. It has therefore nothing to do with history in the ordinary sense. The historian must take it or something like it for granted; it is not his business as a historian to explain it. But if be cannot explain it as a historian, he will not explain it as a biologist. In neither case is there any disgrace to him in accepting it without explaining it; for it is a reality, and history and biology deal with realities. He is quite justified in calmly confronting the pig with wings and the cow that jumped over the moon, merely because they have happened. He can reasonably accept man as a freak, because he accepts man as a fact. He can be perfectly comfortable in a crazy and disconnected world, or in a world that can produce such a crazy and disconnected thing. For reality is a thing in which we can all repose, even if it hardly seems related to anything else. The thing is there; and that is enough for most of us. But if we do indeed want to know how it can conceivably have come there, if we do indeed wish to see it related realistically to other things, if we do insist on seeing it evolved before our very eyes from an environment nearer to its own nature, then assuredly it is to very different things that we must go. We must stir very strange memories and return to very simple dreams, if we desire some origin that can make man other than a monster. We shall have discovered very different causes before he becomes a creature of causation; and invoked other authority to turn him into something reasonable, or even into anything probable That way lies all that is at once awful and familiar and forgotten, with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact. We can accept him as an animal, if we can live with a fabulous animal. But if we must needs have sequence and necessity, then indeed we must provide a prelude and crescendo of mounting miracles, that ushered in with unthinkable thunders in all the seven heavens of another order a man may be an ordinary thing.
That's why he says that man is: "... rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one. "
There is not a particle of proof that this transition [ from beast to man] came slowly or even that it came naturally. In a strictly scientific sense we simply know nothing whatever about how it grew, or whether it grew, or what it is. There may be a broken trail of stones and bones faintly suggesting the development of the human body. There is nothing even faintly suggesting such a development of this human mind. It was not and it was; we know not in what instant or in what infinity of years. Something happened; and it has all the appearance of a transaction outside time. It has therefore nothing to do with history in the ordinary sense. The historian must take it or something like it for granted; it is not his business as a historian to explain it. But if be cannot explain it as a historian, he will not explain it as a biologist. In neither case is there any disgrace to him in accepting it without explaining it; for it is a reality, and history and biology deal with realities. He is quite justified in calmly confronting the pig with wings and the cow that jumped over the moon, merely because they have happened. He can reasonably accept man as a freak, because he accepts man as a fact. He can be perfectly comfortable in a crazy and disconnected world, or in a world that can produce such a crazy and disconnected thing. For reality is a thing in which we can all repose, even if it hardly seems related to anything else. The thing is there; and that is enough for most of us. But if we do indeed want to know how it can conceivably have come there, if we do indeed wish to see it related realistically to other things, if we do insist on seeing it evolved before our very eyes from an environment nearer to its own nature, then assuredly it is to very different things that we must go. We must stir very strange memories and return to very simple dreams, if we desire some origin that can make man other than a monster. We shall have discovered very different causes before he becomes a creature of causation; and invoked other authority to turn him into something reasonable, or even into anything probable That way lies all that is at once awful and familiar and forgotten, with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms. We can accept man as a fact, if we are content with an unexplained fact. We can accept him as an animal, if we can live with a fabulous animal. But if we must needs have sequence and necessity, then indeed we must provide a prelude and crescendo of mounting miracles, that ushered in with unthinkable thunders in all the seven heavens of another order a man may be an ordinary thing.
That's why he says that man is: "... rather more supernatural as a natural product than as a supernatural one. "
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Husband&Father
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Vulgar is as Vulgar Does
Vulgar is as Vulgar Does
The vulgarity Chesterton was referring to was the vulgarity of trying to make humans look insignificant by making us (the earth, the solar system, even the galaxy) look insignificant by comparison to the entire universe. If you watched the opening segments of the original Cosmos show you will pick up Carl Sagan's real disdain for humanity. I agree with G.K. Chesterton on this one; there is something vulgar about that attitude.
Vulgar is as Vulgar Does
A wise man would not be biased by one 'perspective' or another. If I were to visit the Grande Canyon, I would want to see it from many different perspectives. From a satellite out in space; from the tip of the highest rim, from the bottom, looking up; perhaps from the back of a horse traversing down an ancient wall path, … etc. My humanness would want to experience all these perspectives. Not deliberately limit myself to one perspective, calling it "human" and the others "vulgar".
They're ALL human, both the actual and the imagined; the microcosmic and the macrocosmic.
So I find this statement suspect; perhaps indicating a bias against science and/or philosophy.
The vulgarity Chesterton was referring to was the vulgarity of trying to make humans look insignificant by making us (the earth, the solar system, even the galaxy) look insignificant by comparison to the entire universe. If you watched the opening segments of the original Cosmos show you will pick up Carl Sagan's real disdain for humanity. I agree with G.K. Chesterton on this one; there is something vulgar about that attitude.
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Husband&Father
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I precieve that you are wrong about perception.
I precieve that you are wrong about perception.
No man can fail to be biased by his perspective. Perspective is too important an aspect of opinion to be dismissed. It would be nice if humans could be objective regardless of their perspective but that is impossible.
Perspective means perception; you can not disregard your own perception. Your perception is a huge part of your opinion.
Chesterton's point was that in some cases your perception hides great truths. He gives the example of a boy who lived on a rocky hill and went looking for a legendary stone giant. When he gets far enough away he looks back at his house and sees that his little cottage is on the stone giants nose. He was living on the face of the statue he was searching for but could not see it.
So no matter how wise you think you are perception is critical to clear thinking.
I precieve that you are wrong about perception.
A wise man would not be biased by one 'perspective' or another.
No man can fail to be biased by his perspective. Perspective is too important an aspect of opinion to be dismissed. It would be nice if humans could be objective regardless of their perspective but that is impossible.
Perspective means perception; you can not disregard your own perception. Your perception is a huge part of your opinion.
Chesterton's point was that in some cases your perception hides great truths. He gives the example of a boy who lived on a rocky hill and went looking for a legendary stone giant. When he gets far enough away he looks back at his house and sees that his little cottage is on the stone giants nose. He was living on the face of the statue he was searching for but could not see it.
So no matter how wise you think you are perception is critical to clear thinking.
Husband&Father
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More History Than Fiction
More History Than Fiction
Fair enough.
But The Everlasting Man is not a work of historical fiction.
The author could be wrong about things but he's not making them up as a fiction writer might.
Even Roots by Alex Haley, which has been shown over and over to be a fraud (even multiple times in a Court of Law) is still listed as a history book.
Enjoy the book but realize it is much more historical philosophy than historical fiction.
More History Than Fiction
The historical fictional novel is a great way to get acquainted with history. .
Fair enough.
But The Everlasting Man is not a work of historical fiction.
The author could be wrong about things but he's not making them up as a fiction writer might.
Even Roots by Alex Haley, which has been shown over and over to be a fraud (even multiple times in a Court of Law) is still listed as a history book.
Enjoy the book but realize it is much more historical philosophy than historical fiction.