Dialogue 2 – The Library Archive

Intro Page

AUDIO

Anthony takes a trip to the library archives to visit an old librarian friend, Eva Cortez. Like Anthony, Eva is a vampire. As a librarian, she has spent many years in the library archives. Like most librarians she is agreeable and service oriented. She particularly loves helping members of the public at the circulation desk. Although she feels bad about killing, she accepts this as a necessity to sustain herself. Her strategy is to lay waiting in the archives for her prey, usually overly ambitious research assistants. Although she enjoys the taste of blood, she often apologizes as the life drains from her victims. Eva has been a vampire longer than Anthony. She began her career at the oldest university in the world, the University of Bologna in Italy. The pair discuss the origin and evolution of the university. Their discussion centers on whether faith is the foundation of intellectual community.

 

Eva: So great to see you!

Anthony: You too. How long has it been?

Eva: Definitely pre-Enlightenment.

Anthony: Really? So much has changed since then. We’ve made so much progress.

Eva: I’m not too sure about that. We can’t even define what a woman is anymore, that’s hardly progress.

Anthony: OK. I agree with you on that. The gender fluidity nonsense has induced a form of institutional psychosis at the university. People that I’ve known for years are now stating their preferred pronouns in their email signature. You’re a mother of two and your name is Betsy. I’m not sure what putting ‘She/her’ in your email signature accomplishes other than to indicate you’re a virtue-signaling cipher.

Eva: Hey, I do that. But only because you’re going to get singled out otherwise. Plus, what’s wrong about being in support of the current thing? Your face! Ha. It’s so easy to get under your skin. No wonder Ursula has stayed with you all these years. But seriously, we’re vampires, we have to blend in otherwise people will get suspicious.

Anthony: Yeah, I wonder why I bother with it when it’s so much easier just to go along. So why do you think we haven’t made much progress? We have a better standard of living. People are living longer, living healthier. We have the internet now. We’ve entered the information age.

Eva: We’ve made material progress certainly. But the academic soul has become emaciated in the process. Pluralism and secularism have divorced faith and religion in the academic enterprise. The academic mission has veered away from freedom and truth toward intellectual enslavement and pandering to interest groups. This is the deep moral crisis of the postmodern university.

Anthony: You’ll need to unpack that for me; I’m not sure I follow.

Eva: Well, the university as an institution of higher education is the product of Christian culture. While it may not be politically correct to say this, it is very much the case. I started out at the University of Bologna. That university was founded in 1088 A.D. Back then all research needed to have its origin in scripture. Universities grew out of monastic orders and libraries blossomed with the advent of Gutenberg’s printing press in 1436.

Anthony: I’m not sure I buy that. Christianity, like all religion, relies on myth. The leap of faith. This faith is promoted as a virtue when really it has been a vice. It has resulted in untold suffering and wars. Look at how the Catholic priests abused children and set up the residential schools. You think our scientific understanding grew out of that? If anything, religion has impeded scientific progress. At some point you realize Father Christmas doesn’t exist. Besides, what makes Christianity any different from any other religion anyway?

Eva: Ever young and foolish Anthony. You really need to spend less time trying to predict the future and instead learn something from the accumulated wisdom of the past. The founder of the scientific method, Francis Bacon, was a devout Anglican. His approach promoted scientific experimentation as a way of glorifying God, relieving man’s estate and fulfilling scripture. Bacon was vehemently opposed to atheism. He remarked that a little philosophy inclines man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds about to religion. You, my friend, are a case in point.

Anthony: But you have to admit that the Bible has been interpreted to restrain rather than liberate people. It’s a tool that the dominant classes use to oppress everyone else.

Eva: You have a little too much Marx in your diet, Anthony. Religion is not the opiate of the masses; it sustains the individuals that constitute society. Witness the demons of depression and anxiety that emerge in its absence. Our science and culture flows downstream from religion. In the absence of religion, academics end up establishing idols of the mind. They become overly obsessed with metrics that do not matter to prove points no one cares about. The intellectual pursuit of truth unmoored from its moral and religious underpinnings creates a multiversity — academic silos discussing their discipline using increasingly abstruse terms. What tends to be forgotten is the word discipline has its etymology in the Latin ‘discipulus,’ meaning pupil. The concept developed from the disciples or followers of Jesus Christ during his lifetime. Christ as the embodiment of Truth as symbolized by the cross was the focal point to which all research questions and indeed all human endeavors were to be aimed.

Anthony: But surely no one believes that now.

Eva: When enough people orient themselves away from truth, they are easily deceived because their internal condition is not well-ordered. Chaos is around the corner. At some point society will go into free fall. Lies reign when no one wants to tell the truth.

Anthony: You can’t be serious. You don’t need a 2,000-year-old superstition or a belief in a bearded guy in the sky in order to do science or to know to tell the truth.

Eva: Really now? Are you sure? What difference does it make what we do if there’s no God? If there’s no God, there’s no right or wrong. Those categories are irrelevant. Without a belief in an immaterial transcendent creator, nothing makes sense. There’s no university because there’s no universal truth. Everything devolves into relativism as a series of random unconnected facts of no consequence whatsoever.

Anthony: That’s not true. Human beings have evolved to have reason and the ability to act rationally.

Eva: Darwinian evolution is a scientific theory. No theory in science is immutable since every field of human knowledge is tentative, provisional and corrigible. Theories are not valueless of course; they enable us to participate in a shared illusion that allows us to interact with each other. Language and money are prime examples of this. They are the great inventions of humanity as they allow us to communicate and exchange with each other. But they are ultimately abstractions that serve a symbolic and semiotic function. They have no intrinsic value. When we lose sight of this, the shared illusion becomes a shared delusion.

Anthony: But there’s an overwhelming scientific consensus on Darwin’s theory. It’s all been empirically confirmed by practically everyone. You’re going to tell me that the earth is flat next.

Eva: The world is too perfect to have been created by chance. The theory of evolution is for the intellectually indolent; it ascribes randomness to anything that is unknown. Many theories once thought iron-clad have since been debunked. Prior to the Copernican revolution and the heliocentric model with the Sun at the centre of the Solar System, everyone believed the Earth was stationary and at the centre of the universe. Man is more than a highly evolved amoeba, wouldn’t you say?

Anthony: Yes. We have logic and reason and this separates us from lower organisms. This allows us to make laws that govern ourselves and engage in scientific research.

Eva: If what you’re saying is true then the government of the day or scientific consensus is essentially God, since it is the final authority beyond which there is no appeal. I have less faith in politicians or scientists. They are becoming increasingly indistinguishable from each other these days in any event. What’s popular is what’s right and what’s right is what’s popular. That’s the problem with consensus, it often obscures the truth.

Anthony: But your way of thinking relies on something that has no proof.

Eva: What proof would satisfy you? If Jesus Christ showed up today, he would be immediately dismissed as fake news. You operate on the assumption that seeing is believing but it is in fact the opposite that is true. Believing is seeing. What we expect is framed by what we believe. Without this lens of perception human beings would not be able to filter out extraneous information, prioritize choices and take action. Science only enables methodological observation of matter, meaning — what matters is found through Jesus Christ.

Anthony: Are you saying that Christianity is better than other religions?

Eva: That depends on what you mean by better. Every religion can be judged by the culture it has produced since cultures flow downstream from a society’s religion. The religion of any society represents its highest ideal. You would be hard pressed to find a society more tolerant and economically prosperous than the ones that have been based on Judeo-Christian ideals. Modern science would not be the same without Christianity. Indeed our experience of time would not be the same.

Anthony: Time?

Eva: Every cheque you have ever written, every contract you have ever signed will have a date. That date is a reference to Christ. The calendar that the world uses today, the Gregorian Calendar, was settled in 1582 by Pope Gregory. It was in this year that the astronomical observations of Kepler were incorporated to recalibrate the inaccuracies of the Julian Calendar. This is why we have leap years. We forget that A.D. after the date takes after the Latin Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. We instead focus on the efficiencies and the material benefits that come with quantifying and commodifying time. However, we lose our religion in the process, becoming slaves to time rather than followers of Christ. This is a modern problem and it is a pattern that gets repeated again and again in the biblical narrative. We turn away from God rather than toward Him. Eventually we suffer the consequences. Every generation has to learn and relearn this. The time and date is a prime example of scientific discovery and religious truth. There are many other calendars from various cultures and religions, but the date and time developed by Christians is the most widely used. Without an agreed date and accurate time-keeping modern technology simply wouldn’t work. The text message you sent when you arrived could not be routed via cell towers, satellites could not be coordinated so your GPS would not work. Secular academics generally don’t like hearing about the role Christ plays in their lives. Everyone, certainly everyone in the West, owes something to Christ.  Unfortunately, many want the gifts that come with Christmas, without participating in the suffering of Christ.  Most people have no problem making land acknowledgements recognizing indigenous treaty lands. Such vapid sentiments are almost entirely self-serving and devoid of any meaning. They allow people to feel good about themselves while they continue to do what they have always done. Most people would much rather engage in this nauseating charade of virtue signaling than acknowledge Christ. It is not without good reason of course, standing up for truth as it will put you at odds with those that are comfortable with deceit. This is lamentable since suffering in Christ’s name is the best that can be accomplished with our life.

Anthony: Why do you say that?

Eva: It is said that you are what you eat. But it is more accurate to say you are what you worship. Man does not live by bread alone. Since you are going to suffer and die as a result of living, in choosing to worship God, your death can be regarded as a fulfillment. Anything less than this is the worship of an idol.

Anthony: But we’re vampires, we don’t die.

Eva: Yes and what a cruel fate this is. To live forever and never experience God’s grace. It’s the case that most vampires die as a result of self-immolation, you know. The need for sacrifice is strong even among our ranks.

Anthony: I can’t argue with you on this; I long to be human again. But I see great danger in abandonment of reason and the wholesale adoption of faith. That’s how naïve people get exploited.

Eva: People of blind faith should be exploited; they are naïve and they think that God is some sort of benevolent Santa Claus that makes a list of who is naughty and who is nice. Rain falls on the good and the evil alike. The application of reason to faith is necessary for the spirit to progress. A process some Christian theologians refer to as sanctification. Reason alone yields hubris, faith alone piety. Reasonable faith requires courage to ask and humility to accept the answer. This is the purpose of prayer. Secular academics refer to this as a research question.

Anthony: I see your point. I know my fair share of prima donna academics. But why do you need faith in research?

Eva: The truth is hard to tolerate. We’ve created ‘safe-spaces’ so that students can live their own truth or simply avoid any reality they don’t like. This a secular response to an existential problem: How do you handle the problem of existence with all the suffering to which flesh is heir?

Anthony: I agree with you about safe spaces, students are far less tolerant these days. I hate having to preface practically everything that I say with a trigger warning. Truth is uncomfortable and if you say anything of any significance offending someone is inevitable. Although I’m not sure how religion offers anything better.

Eva: Secularism invariably collapses under the weight of its own conceit. Reason deals with a certain class of problems well. It is just the rest of reality that is the problem.

Anthony: You’ll have to explain that.

Eva: Both science and religion deal with the problem of a complex and ultimately unknowable universe. They just deal with it differently. They are not incompatible when it is understood their response to complexity is different. Scientism with its emphasis on reason and rationality will tend to frame the problem of complexity as one that is epistemologically uncertain. This theory of knowledge operates on the assumption that it is possible to specify the uncertainty in objective terms. This being the case, the research objective is to discover the outcome based on known facts and stated limitations. Religion, by contrast, accepts that we cannot objectively specify the nature of reality, existence and being. Complexity in religion is framed as a problem that is ontologically indeterminate. The future is inherently unknowable and faith enables us to step forward in the face of that indeterminacy. There is no way to control life and run the experiment again to empirically confirm the results. You have one life and no one knows what happens when we die. The only outcomes that are available to us are the ones we have imagined. Religion populates our imagination and faith moves us forward. What we believe affects how we behave and will in turn characterize the meaning of our lives. Life with all its latent potential cannot be subject to objective specification. Scientific reductionism has as its goal the grinding down of man to the molecular level, turning human beings into human resources. It’s no accident that corporations have HR departments.

Anthony: I can’t say I’ve thought of it this way. I’ve always thought of religious types as being mindless cult followers.

Eva: Some are, but by the same token you would not describe all academics as paragons of reason either. They are often the most petty, self-absorbed, neurotic people on the planet.

Anthony [laughs]: That would make a great job description!

Eva: It would. We shy away from these topics in the university. The other day I had to sit through a meeting debating whether we could have a Christmas tree in the common area. It was going to be called a festive tree in any event but the idea was shot down as reinforcing the dominant hegemony. It’s a strange time when tolerance serves as a mask for totalitarianism.

Anthony: But don’t you think the university should have the goal of realizing the potential of students and their personal development?

Eva: Students all have potential; they also all have limitations. We tend to dislike discomfort in our safe spaces. Understanding limitations and making decisions under hard constraints and limited information necessarily requires strength of character. Unfortunately, this quality is not developed with academic pillow fighting. Undergraduates have four years in which to develop themselves and define their purpose. However university administrations increasingly cater to the student experience; they leave like marshmallows ready to be roasted on the corporate campfire.

Anthony: That might be going a bit too far. There must be more to personal development than that. What about growth in personal autonomy and intellectual independence?

Eva: Personal development, self-love and living your truth are based on the individual’s feelings. But feelings are transitory at best. Trying to make happiness last based on what feels right in the moment is like trying to catch the wind. It makes for a life that is both quixotic and chaotic. Have you heard of the law of mimetic desire?

Anthony: No.

Eva: The term was first introduced by the philosopher Rene Girard. Girard observed that man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires — a mimesis. No one springs out of the womb knowing exactly what they want to do. We copy even though we do not understand. This process characterizes all human behavior. There is no escape from this, the only choice we have once we have developed sufficient cognitive ability, is who or what we choose to imitate. Faithful Christians attempt to imitate Christ — a life that cannot be duplicated but one that is everlasting. In this way, their lives give expression to their highest ideals.

Anthony: I think Jordan Peterson makes a similar point about taking responsibility and sacrifice for a noble goal.

Eva: Peterson gets a lot of things right. However, he makes the secularist error of applying reason to a space that should be occupied by faith. While he recognizes the Bible as the foundation for the manifestation of truth in Western society, he professes to act as if God exists. He is unwilling to submit to what he so clearly articulates is a higher authority. Since we have established that you are what you worship, it is possible to fall into the self-realization trap of fashioning an idol from one’s own will rather than conforming to Christ.

Anthony: I’ve always wondered what that means, to worship an idol.

Eva: The concept of idolatry is very valuable.  We can make an idol out of anything: Family, Career, Success, Wealth, Image, etc.  It’s really anything that takes the place of God in your heart.  Calvin remarked that the human heart is a ‘factory of idols.’  Family, success, etc. are not inherently bad of course; Peterson makes the claim that if we improve our lives along these dimensions we will develop our character and strengthen our communities. But these things don’t last.  Trying to make these things permanent, we cause suffering and rob ourselves of joy.  By seeking to hold onto it, to control it, we lose the thing we love.  This I think is the meaning behind Jesus’ statement, ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’.  We are required to align our desire with God’s will, trusting that He works in our best interest in ways that are incomprehensible to us.  At some point human reason must yield to faith and this occurs when Truth has entered into the human heart.  I provide research support to a lot of highly intellectual people; the most dangerous are the ones that are also arrogant.  Unbridled intellect can rationalize the most immoral actions.  Similarly, blind faith is equally problematic because it can so easily be manipulated and exploited.

Anthony: That’s deep. I’ll have to think about this. What do you think this all means for the future of higher education?

Eva: Education takes its etymological root from the Latin educare meaning to lead out. If the university is to serve its pedagogical function it must necessarily be leading to something higher. Academic freedom comes with responsibility. Ultimately faith must be the foundation of intellectual community otherwise our research agendas will be controlled by the university administration and besieged by market forces. Increasingly sophisticated efforts will be made to empirically validate the performance of academics in the first instance and more broadly to the knowledge workers in the information economy in the second. Human relationships will become more transactional and commodified as students become increasingly treated as consumers of education rather than seekers of truth. The absence of a higher ideal on which to aim one’s life will result in correlative loss of meaning. This in turn will breed mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. In order to not lose revenue and not be perceived as a toxic environment, the university will allow more and more student accommodations, creating activist students protesting for more rights and accepting less responsibility. They will become more bitter and angry and less tolerant of others as they get older, but by then it will be too late to do anything about it.

Anthony: So what happens in the end?

Eva: Students and their professors that turn away from God will become lifeless, soulless and always seeking blood.

Anthony: You mean like us?

Eva: Exactly like us, only mortal.