Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.

• 1 Corinthians 2:14

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

• Philippians 4:8

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

• Romans 1:20

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

• 1 Corinthians 13:13

“ ‘The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in.’ – Charles Sanders Pierce”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914) was an American polymath.  While he helped found the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and worked for them for over thirty years, he was a prolific writer.  His subjects ranged across logic, mathematics, philosophy, and statistics.  He was the founder of the philosophical study of pragmatism.  He was a co-founder of modern semiotics (theory of signs).  After all his successful writing and work life, he died in abject poverty.  So, if you take his quote to heart, financial success is not real, or it was at least not real for him.

When you read the quote from Peirce, it somehow seems like a “Duh” moment.  Isn’t that obvious?  Then again, pragmaticism is essentially determining the sum of the practical effects.  And his quote above might be the ultimate of the sums of all the various sums.

But there is a problem with that.  Let us look at the mouse trap.  Engineers throughout history have been asked to invent the better mouse trap.  The phrase “inventing the better mouse trap” applies to anything that an engineer does.  It is the ultimate invention idiom even when mice or traps are not part of the equation.

But in the literal, the phrase comes up constantly, but when looking at the mouse trap, what is the best mouse trap?  Obviously, the one that catches the most mice.  Maybe it only catches one mouse at a time, but it is durable and can be reused often.  Whatever your criteria may be, that is the best mouse trap.

But what if someone invented a better one, but the inventor had the personality of a toad and his publicist was the worst in the business.  The best mouse trap never sees the light of day due to better marketing.

I saw drawings of a carburetor for an automobile that was supposed to be more efficient than anything that had been made to that point.  Since cars could double or triple their miles per gallon of gasoline, the big gasoline producers made the penniless inventor a millionaire just so that the patent could never be put into production.  Allegedly.  I have no idea if the carburetor even worked.

Other industries do the same thing.

In the end, those invention of things that never get built are indeed not part of reality, for whatever reason.  But that does not mean that they were not the best that had ever been invented.  It depends on how you judge the best reasoning and information.

And if we could really achieve consensus in the field of philosophy, philosophy would die on the vine.  If we really figured it out, then why ever argue about it?

But the key flaw in Peirce’s quote is that he pragmatically ignores the spiritual.  How can you logically determine with information and reasoning such concepts as the Philippians quote above?  Can you measure the pressure of something noble?  Does purity have a pulse?  Does admirable have a proper temperature range?  Notice that I did not say anything about lovely.  To one who lusts after the “lovely” (not what Paul was talking about at all), the lusting person might have an elevated pressure, pulse, and temperature.

So, these factors that the Apostle Paul tells us to ponder, we can only ponder them if we contain the Spirit within us.  Without the Spirit, these things seem foolish, but in rejecting them, there is no excuse.

But I would like to consider what we take with us when we go to be with the Lord.  The last quote says that faith, hope, and love endure.

When we are with Jesus, in His presence, He is the embodiment of our faith and hope.  And the greatest of those enduring gifts is love.  We will experience God’s love in its fullest, forever.

Now that is the fullest of sooner or later.

Thus, what is real is Jesus: all true faith, hope, and love are found in Him.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.