I have been thinking recently about the question of seeking to apply the Exile/Empire project more broadly than we have done here, beyond the borders of theology and religion, to the reigning paradigm that governs virtually everything else in our culture.
Before I elaborate, a couple things….
To jog your memory, here’s a quick refresher course: I have been using the label Empire to denote “strong theology,” the kind of theology that flexes its muscles and relishes wielding its power and authority. For example, when the Church (with a capital C) defines the New Testament canon as these 27 books and these alone, or when it defines Dogma (with a capital D) by pronouncements like these doctrines are essential to the Christian faith and all Christians must affirm them, these are imperial acts of strong theology, or, Empire. The response of Exile is not to reject these claims or replace them with alternatively dogmatic ones. Instead, Exile slow-blinks and looks askance at this kind of certainty.
In a word, Exile is simply a suspicion of Empire.
Secondly, should this even be attempted? Ought we try to apply the same theological humility to the reigning cultural or political issues of our day?
It seems to me that a refusal to do so is an implicit claim that quote-unquote spiritual matters are to be cordoned off from supposedly temporal ones, which from the standpoint of orthodox faith is a christological error if there ever was one. After all if, as the story goes, the Incarnation involves divinity and humanity becoming one in the person of Christ, then who are we to put asunder what God hath joined together?
OK so let’s go….
What is the reigning imperial paradigm, the mack daddy of all rubrics under which we have been taught to evaluate everything else? To ask it another way, what set of truths is so presupposed and obvious that we never even think to question them or even argue for them?
To my mind, the answer is clear: Scientific Materialism.
In a word, Scientific Materialism is the view held by the vast majority of scientists and scholars in the field, from Neil deGrasse Tyson to Richard Dawkins, from Stephen Hawking to Bill Nye the Science Guy. It teaches that the material world of atoms (and the stuff they comprise) is all there is. In this view there is no such thing as souls, spirits, or even a non-local consciousness (whatever “consciousness” is, we are told, it is merely a product of the brain and exists only within our individual skulls).
Here’s where it gets super interesting. I have been on the record as a vocal opponent of Scientism (another term for Scientific Materialism) for a couple decades, suggesting that it is not only reductionistic but also extremely boring and sad. But I am now wondering whether I have been broad enough in my understanding of what I was criticizing.
According to Steven A. Young in his recent book, A Fool’s Wisdom, there are five components of Scientific Materialism, each of which depends and builds upon the one before it:
- Atomism
- Gravity
- Heliocentrism
- Evolution
- Germ Theory
I know, right?
The entire time I have been publicly questioning Scientism, I have presupposed the truthfulness of all five of these tenets. While my criticisms have been valid as far as it goes, Young would insist that I have barely scratched the surface of truly understanding what I was so incredulous about (and as a Ph.D. in theoretical nuclear physics, he would know).
That’ll have to do by way of introduction. And while I typically don’t write series of posts on a topic before I feel like I have a firm handle on it, I will break that rule here and just write as I read and engage in some good old-fashioned thinking-out-loud.
Before we go on, what do you think? Do these five components really stand or fall together? And is it really okay to question them?
