The Antichristian Phenomenon
A tack on Cartesian dualism: Christianity I
Posted by: LeaT in Culture, Philosophy, Religion, tags: Book of Genesis, Christianity, Dualism, Earth, God, monotheism, Omnipotence, Origins and Creation, Physical body, Physical objects, Religion and Spirituality, René DescartesAfter c0nsulting a little with Waldheri I decided to edit this post properly to make it more cohesive and actually present the problem at hand in a more focused light. This article will deal with the problem of Christianity’s belief that God is an omnipresent being and how it contradicts Descartes’ argument of the seperation of mind and body and that Christianity is in fact, not a monotheism but a pantheism.
Anyway, let’s start off in the beginning with Genesis and the creation of the Earth:
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1
Nowhere does it say that God made “the heavens and the earth” out of any form of matter. This passage has in turn made the assumption that there was nothing in the universe before God’s Creation, as it is a “beginning”, before God’s Creation there was nothing. Obviously God, while omnipotent, cannot make something out of matter which doesn’t exist, so let’s just ignore that for a while and assume that it is possible that God can make matter out of nothing and that he popped the Earth out from his arse (we are in fact God’s diviniely poo!) and thus, the Earth is created. Without the need of overquoting Genesis, it is made clear that God made the Earth into what it is today and that we are all a part of God’s creation:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27
Therefore that we can draw the conclusions that not only is the Earth immaterial but also supernatural, and that God is indeed everywhere, and in humans too:
In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God,
for whom and through whom everything exists,
should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Hebrew 2:10
This idea strongly disagrees with the Cartesian dualism, formed to explain the relationship of God and humans, because in Descartes’ philosophy it is not possible that the body in this case, can have a two-way relationship with the mind. But if this is not true, then it is not possible for God to be everywhere and everything and this obviously directly questions God’s omnipotence.
Now, what defines Pantheism is that there must be a force, almighty or not, present everywhere and in everything and this force should be conscious and even preferrebly, sentient. This very much agrees with the Christian God, because we are shown that God is very well possible to make demands and have emotions on his own. For example maybe the one of the most blatant examples are the 10 Commandments where God more or less demands his followers to live after these rules or they will be cast into eternal Hellfire:
1 And God spoke all these words:
2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before [a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything
in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.
5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them;
for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children
for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
6 but showing love to a thousand {generations}
of those who love me and keep my commandments.
7 “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
8 “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God.
On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter,
nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals,
nor the alien within your gates.
11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
13 “You shall not murder.
14 “You shall not commit adultery.
15 “You shall not steal.
16 “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife,
or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Exodus 20:1-17
God even states himself that he is a “jealous God”, I guess we must congratulate him in his truthfulness. Now, the hardest concept to maybe grasp would be that of the universe not being physical as Descartes claims it to be. The reason I have already mentioned before, namely that if God is a supernatural force, then God is also nonphysical, and since the universe is a part of God himself, then the universe too, is of nonphysical and supernatural matter. Therefore the only conclusion can be that Descartes made a false dichotomy based upon the assumption that our universe is made out of physical matter. But, but, isn’t it made physical as in that we can touch and feel it? Yes, indeed we can, but it doesn’t matter if we assume that the physical is actually sprung out of the nonphysical and even less so if assuming the physical and the nonphysical is the same or if there is a heavy communication between the two where we cannot discern when the physical ends and the nonphysical begins. Descartes’ argument rather means that there can be no communication between and therefore even the slightest union is thus, impossible. However, as shown, there is a great flaw in his logic as presented above which he failed to see, even though he based his entire theory upon Christianity itself and its dualism. Christianity is not a dualism, it’s a monism and even more it is a pantheism and not a monotheism as has been previously believed. While certainly the idea of monotheism is supported in Pantheism too, thanks to the Trinity, it actually matters little since the focus no longer lies on the Trinity and in the existence of Jesus being God’s son. This becomes rather self-evident if we are to understand that God is omnipresent and as such, we can go even a step further and argue that Christianity actually believes us to be our own personal gods since God is indeed inside of us, and this gives us the power and will to use the God inside of us to do as what we see fit; hopefully into making our environment a little nicer to live in for others.
Was this better Waldheri? 
I am still waiting for your reply.
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January 7th, 2009 at 6:27 am - Edit
I frown upon this article. It gets a bit too fantastical for my liking. Analysing mythology by use of folklore is like balancing on the edge of a knife. I think you are far outside the bounds of Christian theology, one example being Dante's Inferno which, even though based on Christian mythology, is not taken seriously within Christian theology. You wouldn't analyse the conception of existence before the formation of the universe through Christian lenses using Milton's Paradise Lost either, would you? Furthermore, you seem to be confusing dichotomies like physical, material and natural versus nonphysical, immaterial and supernatural. as you go off into the wild of ghosts, UFOs.
You seem to be trying to get across that the separation of mind and body according to Cartesian dualism also is present in the Christian wordview, even though that conflicts if you accept a the omnipresence of God and thus have a pantheism in which the boundaries between mind and body can not exist. That's about the only thing I understood. Is there more to your article? Why do you invoke ghosts, UFOs, the Makuna, et cetera?
January 7th, 2009 at 6:34 am - Edit
Well, I had to write down the context from where I got the idea because I didn't know how to else explain it. Also, I am not talking about Christianity in a deeply theological sense but rather Christianity as perceived in culture, but yes, what I really wanted to explain is that the idea of an omnipresent god does conflict the idea of the dualistic view in Christianity and I really try to explain what I mean with this by giving linking examples of how a Westerner would generally perceive the spiritual world and it's hard to argue over the spiritual world without dragging up ghosts as they are probably the only real tangible example of why the spiritual world would exist in a Western culture at all. I agree that the article might not be very clear in its composition which probably stems from the fact that the article was primarily written as a way for myself to sort out the concept, as it's easier to discuss something and get an overview if you write it down.
maybe you could help me sorting out the dichotomies? I admit I am not too well versed with Cartesian dualism and would probably never have thought about it in the first place if my exam didn't explicitly mention it.
January 7th, 2009 at 7:01 am - Edit
Descartes mainly concerns himself with the central problem of the philosophy of mind: In what way are the mind and the body connected? This problem concerns only objects who possess a mind (most humans and animals according to some philosophers). A subquestion is whether the mind is entirely nonphysical, entirely physical, a mixture. To Descartes the mind is completely nonphysical even though it is somehow connected to the body (his idea was that the pineal gland is the gate to the mind, which was a nice try for his time).
You can divide the universe into physical and nonphysical (but be careful what definitions are used). One can state that a abstract concepts exist but are not extended in space like a rock or a bucket of water. The fact that a thought is nonphysical and exists in the universe makes it natural as opposed to supernatural, which deals with things outside the universe. Note: It is very possible that abstract ideas transcend the universe so they are both natural and supernatural. There is also the dichotomy of material versus immaterial, which stems from materialism and immaterialism. Materialism states that everything in the universe is built out of something. Finding that undivisible substance is what the early natural philosophers were keeping themselves busy with. Within materialism you can understand that the mind must also be considered a material object somehow formed by the body. In immaterialism the roles are turned around as everything is thought not to exist materially but only in the mind.
I hope this has shed some light. ;D
January 7th, 2009 at 7:34 am - Edit
Ok, I think understand what it means with physical, natural and material. I admit that I thought material and physical were the same, they are often synonyms in general speech as the material world is physical and vice versa.
But if we now say that god made a world out from nothing (since it nowhere says where god then would create the world), wouldn't that leave the whole world as immaterial and such also nonphysical as the next step of that logic? If arguing from a point that god is supernatural and is the world is a part of god that makes the whole world that makes the whole world supernatural as well.
Gah, well it's all confusing at this point because you want them to be different.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:20 am - Edit
Yes, in general speech they are often synonymous. We have to be careful when discussing philosophy though
And I this makes things very complex I might come up with a constructive answer to your question later. I'm going to watch a movie. ;D
January 7th, 2009 at 10:08 am - Edit
Heh, Cartesian dualism. In a matter of decades there won't be anyone defending this philosophical equivalent of the panda bear. As a matter of fact, I'll write an article about that. It might even be interesting.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:56 am - Edit
I read your article, I didn't know you wrote it as an answer to my own article
It was interesting although your aim was slightly different than mine. I left a reply which I think you can pretty much disregard since you already commented here. And db0, heh I know, I had to theorize two exam questions about how the Cartesian view gave birth to industrialism 
But it's really interesting once you start looking of how people actually think of the dualism because once you are aware of it it's VERY ingrained in our mentality but yet we have troubles to fully grasp the concept it seems.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:57 am - Edit
Please do, it would be interesting although it at the same time feels strange to argue that the world in fact could very well be supernatural (and this argument in turn also makes the Cartesian dualism void).
January 8th, 2009 at 8:20 am - Edit
That (your article) would be rather awesome. Most modern philosophers reject dualism too.
January 8th, 2009 at 8:31 am - Edit
Regardless of that, there are still proponents of it in various forms which unless you realize it, you will always misunderstand. One such example is Islam
January 9th, 2009 at 3:07 am - Edit
Unfortunately I think you would need New Testament quotes to support this thesis. Most Christians cherry pick the Old Testament and it is hard to prove anything about Christianity using it alone. Judaism, sure, but Christianity… not so much.
There is also quite a bit more to the "create" thing. It is easy to say one thing about the phrasing in English, but in Hebrew it is quite different. The Etz Hayim says of it: "The Hebrew stem of the word translated as “create” is used in the Bible only for divine creativity. It signifies that the created object is unique, depends solely on God for its coming into existence, and is beyond the ability of humans to reproduce. The verb never means ‘to create out of nothing.’” In other words, that particular point stands up to ignorant Christians, but not to the Jews who wrote the thing, and in a sense it does mean "make".
It is an interesting idea, but I do disagree with the core premises. Christianity focuses on a 'personal relationship' with your imaginary friend, forms of pantheism do not, instead asserting a more passive role for him, generally one that does not care to intervene in human affairs…
I also find Cartesian Dualism quite dated as Descartes wrote prior to the knowledge of neuroscience. He was actually writing around the time scientists were first able to dissect the brain and preserve it to REALLY study it's functions, so by the time a more materialistic view came around, he was dead.
January 9th, 2009 at 3:39 am - Edit
Ah right, you obviously know more than me regarding Hebrew so I can't argue there
I can obviously only use English sources, this of course does ample the meaning of "creation" indeed. Nor do I argue that God in fact did create something out of nothing; however, since we do not know if there was anything before the creation of earth we can only assume there is, a fallacious assumption I may add, but we are arguing from a point of what Christians/Jews would believe, not so much what we ourselves find logical (then the whole assertion would be rejected to begin with).
While it is true that Christianity indeed focuses on a personal relationship, I guess it is possible to read it this way and we both know that OT and NT don't fare well together so it's really just a matter how important OT is a part of Christianity, however, you will not find much of Cartesian dualism in NT since NT primarily focus on the life of Jesus Christ. Is it possible for you to provide exampels from NT which could potentially be replaced with the OT quotes I got?
Indeed Cartesian dualism IS dated, I think this argument also proves it is possible that he was flat out wrong to begin with, maybe prior to some popular belief (which is of course changing now). But I guess I leave it as it is for now unless there is some proof to be taken out from NT, I could possibly change the title to show that there is no absolute proof that this also adheres to Christianity (although I admit it would be very fun to say, no, you completely misunderstood your whole religion!). Also, however assuming God has a more passive relationship does explain the Epicurean argument of god's benevolence and it also rings pretty well along with the idea of free will.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:14 am - Edit
Okay, this updated version is a lot more coherent than your previous one. I still have issues with some of the things you've written though.
1. You say that "in Descartes' philosophy it is not possible that the body in this case, can have a two-way relationship with the mind.". This is false. Wikipedia tells us: "The central claim of what is often called Cartesian dualism, in honour of Descartes, is that the immaterial mind and the material body, while being ontologically distinct substances, causally interact."
2. I don't think Descartes based his theory on Christianity. He merely observed that there are important differences between the body and the mind. Therefore he viewed one as material and the other as immaterial. Furthermore, I don't think we should judge Descartes' philosophy on how well it fits with a certain religion, even though I agree he seems to have been wrong on many things. Answers are not as important in philosophy as they are in science, and even though we can now (in)validate certain claims from philosophy through science, we still count Plato, Descartes and others as important philosophers simply because their thought has been innovative.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:24 am - Edit
I will not comment on 1, but casually interacting is not the same as heavy communication though, it can be clarified.
On 2 however, I can however rephrase my statement that while it might not have explicitly based his arguments UPON Christianity, the idea of the physical vs the nonphysical is a very apparent idea Chiristianity and its siblings adhere to, more so than older religions that prefer a monostic view. What I want to say is that Descartes is in a way, a product of what the society he lived in was based on, and that is Christianity. So one can say that his thoughts and ideas are very much indirectly influenced, may it have been consciously done or not.
I am quite certain you are not familiar with Melöe, (can't do a Norwegian ö), but there is a strong argument that we can only perceive things within the frameset we were taught to perceive in; that we now for example do prefer view the world as an object matter instead of a subject, or why we prefer to view ourselves as individuals and than to view ourselves as a part of a whole. While many might not reflect on these ideas but they consider them rather given, these ideas also frame the way we view the world and perceive ourselves. I never wanted to say though that Descartes never was innovative, I do recognize him as a central figure in classical philosophy, neither did I want to say that he lacked intelligence or was wrong, but I do believe that his dualism affected the way we view Judaism and Christianity and what I wanted to do was to present an alternative concept maybe not everyone would buy, but regardless is interesting because there is also a lot of evidence backing up that it could be this way.
January 11th, 2009 at 5:04 am - Edit
Which is funny, because that means god is nonexistent for all practical purposes. If something can not be experienced through the senses, not measured nor studied because it does not play any causal role in the universe, it does not exist for all practical means. It is appropriate to quote Berkeley now, and I only agree with him in this for this severe case of a total lack of interaction with the universe – "To be is to be perceived".
January 11th, 2009 at 6:18 am - Edit
Yes, but I guess you agree that this is a valid argument for why we can't testify god's existence in science? Really, no matter what stance you take there is probably going to be some sort of error along the way because the philosophies in Christianity and Judaism aren't very thoughtout and often contradict themselves, not that I feel it should be necessary for me to rephrase this though more than for clarification purposes.
If you are interested in it I would gladly try to see if there is a possible solution without making too much mental gymnastics that in the end mean nothing and doesn't prove anything. I don't say that this thesis would be the absolute word either, I know very little of basic philosophy in general and I am still learning so naturally I am probably more prone to errors than someone who has studied it for a while. Anyway, point being, I also do agree with Anath that it is an interesting idea and I would really like to see a possibility to expand it further because I hope there is some sort of potential in this argument, mostly about god's lack of actual intervention, the questions about free will and the Epicurean argument as well as why we cannot prove god's existence in science.
If there was ANY way we could prove that god is a casual force in the universe, then how come we haven't found it out by now in modern science? If the answer is negative and that we can't but such a force exists, then the conclusion can only be that we are too stupid to notice it or understand it, but this makes the idea of a god rather useless too, especially for a Christian which indeed believes in the personal relationship to god. If you cannot understand god because of stupidity, then what is the point even believing in the first place? Ahaha, thinking a little further, yes indeed, don't they blame the lack of human understanding in "god's ways are mysterious"?
January 11th, 2009 at 8:26 am - Edit
It is an interesting and at the same time problematic question you pose: How would you go about to scientifically prove god?
The problem first and foremost is that it is a forward problem. You have already set a goal: "Finding god". As such, you are already biased in the way you would interpret data or phenomena. One could attribute something to god without looking further into the matter and never finding out nothing special happened in the first place.
A second problem arises with the very nature of science: it tries to find answers that fit inside a naturalistic world view: a godless worldv iew. Even if some "miracle" would happen before our eyes, science is "biased" to finding a naturalistic explanation for this. I say "biased" because any explanation is of course better than 'goddidit'. If such a mentality prevailed in research, we would never discover anything, being content with an empty answer as 'goddidit'. Centuries of scientific research have given us enough reason to believe that a god is entirely unnecessary. It is this fact that forces me to conclude that IF a god exists, he is hiding and not showing himself.
If anything can be called "god" in science, it is something that obeys no natural laws, has no stationary properties, has ever-changing causal relationships. Anything other than that can be explained within the frame of the naturalistic world view. If "god" exists, he must exist outside the understanding of science, and hence outside of the universe, and is hence totally useless. If a god exists within the bounds of the universe, we can theoretically understand it through science. In that case, it is a god no more, but at most a complex riddle for us to solve.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am - Edit
Dualism, in it's purest form, doesn't claim that the mind is supernatural, but merely nonphysical. If indeed we all are part of the very same pantheistic supernatural being, there could just as well be a clear distinction between physical and nonphysical entities within the supernatural realm.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:38 am - Edit
My claim is though that god is supernatural as well as nonphysical. We cannot see, touch, hear, sense or taste god.
January 12th, 2009 at 7:34 am - Edit
I think I'll draw a schematic later today that may make things a bit more clear so we can talk more elaborately about this without stumbling over semantics.
To be continued!
January 12th, 2009 at 12:39 pm - Edit
Well, it's late so I will try to leave a shorter response now (I also need to do some heavy thinking as well which I am most likely too tired to do now properly). I agree that there is an inherent problem with viewing the universe as an object and this clashes with the idea of god being a supernatural force unless by chance, as I provided as an argument, the universe is also supernatural, but then there is a problem of defining what is natural and supernatural, and I have myself great troubles understanding this to full, simply because my mind isn't used to this concept at all. I just cannot comprehend how the universe could be anything but natural.
Anyway, I will just say in conclusion that I would very much like to expand the article with the help of you if possible and other bright minds as well who know the topic fairly well, because indeed, if god is a supernatural force we cannot prove its existence unless god would do something which interferes with our own natural world. Then we are back at question 1) where we are either too stupid to understand or 2) god merely doesn't exist.
Maybe the whole problem rather lies in the concept of god being an omnipotent, benevolent, omniscient and omnipresent force (well, not so much benevolent in this case maybe), but does pantheism actually argue for god needing to have these properties more than sentience? Ok, omnipresence is required but the rest, I don't think so much. In pagan religions we often find personal gods being more limited in their behavior and they too are finite creatures that can be born and die. Why can't we apply this concept to god? It makes god far more tangible I'd say, although I know it contradicts the idea of the Abrahamic one, but let's just ignore that for a moment since it's not that relevant to this very question.
February 1st, 2009 at 3:32 am - Edit
Surfing the net on Cartesian Dualism and I stumbled on this – and found it quite ironic that CD is being cast in an unflattering light here. I say this as a Catholic (I know, "Intruder Alert!") who is gradually coming to appreciate the (negative) effects this subtle outlook has/is having on Western civilization.
So, I suppose part of the irony is that I would decidedly agree with what I understand as at least part of LeaT's original premise, namely, that CD setup a false dichotomy in its reduction of 'be'-ing to the "cogito". CD effectively split the atom of holistic being, so to speak, and we've been reeling ever since, drunk on the power of sheer objectivity.
Anyway, hope y'all don't mind my putting in 2 cents on the subject.
February 5th, 2009 at 3:20 pm - Edit
Aye, I think you got it pretty right on spot. Also, we aren't necessarily hostile to to theists, just those who come off as jackasses
If you want to read some more of my thoughts about it, you are free to look up my Cartesian Dualism II article, but which dabbles more of what impact it had on atheism and contemporary moral beliefs today.