Crisis of Context

Without context there is no meaning. And yet context is something our society has almost rid itself of.

Why is context so important, and why have we fled from it so?

Definition

Context is a very broad term, and it simply means the surroundings of something that give it a setting in which to understand it.

More formally, you could define context as a set of coherent concepts, some of which have already been determined as having strong correspondence to reality.

Context is important in communication (see http://smartdreaming.blogspot.com/ for some discussion on context in computer UI's), the arts (see this amazing story in the Washington Post, one of the most powerful examples of how important context is that I've seen -- it's a great read, too), science, society, etc.

Loss of Context

Yet our society has lost so much respect for context. How is that evidenced? Well, think about watching TV. As you watch it (unless it's something like ABC in Australia, or BBC in the UK), the program you're watching will be interrupted every few minutes by some 30 second segments talking about something (usually products or services) with no relationship whatsoever to what you are watching. These "advertisements" are completely without context, and yet we have grown so familiar with them that we can provide our own context for them.

Another example is in the "sound bites" that make up TV "reporting". We expect, even demand, that everything that someone has said be boiled down to a ten-second "sound bite". But such brief comments can never provide us with sufficient context to really understand anything.

Even Reality TV pretends to be able to reduce people's lives to an hour a week, stripping their actions of all context.

Finally, we expect to learn something of significance in the tiny half-hour or hour long segments we allow for learning or training. We try to create "quality" time with our kids by packing lots of context-free activity into the shortest time possible, etc. etc.

You may think it ironic that someone with a blog called "Eclectica" is writing about lack of context, but pay attention to both my first post and the second part of the subtitle of the blog. These are deliberate and careful attempts to give some context to what I'm saying here.

Why Context was Lost

So why did we move so aggressively away from contextuality in our society? Why did we value it so poorly that we thought we could discard it in our headlong rush into busyness? The answer's simple, and the more formal definition above gives it away.

Context is only necessary if you value the correspondence property of truth statements. Or, to put it more simply, if you don't care whether things are really real or not, but just care about whether they "work for you", then context becomes unimportant.

The whole point of context is to provide us with a sufficient surrounding network of truths in order to be able to fit the new, potential truth we are learning into our network of beliefs. If our network of beliefs is very loose (ie. we don't care much about whether the beliefs conflict with one another) or disconnected from reality (ie. we don't bother testing our beliefs against reality), then context really isn't much use to us.

And this is precisely the direction that society moved in over the last century. Nowdays this movement is called postmodernism. As is hinted at by the name, postmodernism is a reaction to modernism. Modernism values coherence and correspondence of beliefs, but refuses to accept the existence of anything beyond nature. (I've mentioned it before, but called it by a different name, naturalism or scientism, both of which are variants of modernism.) The problem with modernism is that it gives absolutely no foundation for reason, logic, meaning, or any sort of real thought. Post-modernism recognises this and, rather than invoking supernaturalism as a foundation for these things (as Christianity does), or throwing away reason and embracing supernaturalism (as New Age does), postmodernism continues to embrace naturalism (nothing exists apart from nature) and discards reason and logic.

Without reason and logic, context is worthless. In fact, postmodernism denies the significance of context, claiming that the interpretation of truths is not contextual, but rather purely up to the individual (known as deconstructionism). While full-blown postmodernism is not accepted by most people, it has had a huge influence on our society, and the devaluing of context is one of those influences.

Context is on the way back

The good news is that context is on the way back. An easy way to see this is the rise in popularity of the "serial" programme on TV. Back in the 90's Babylon 5 revolutionised TV SciFi with it's five-year story, with complex, pre-planned character arcs for all the major characters, and it's multi-layered mysteries and story. Now, more than ten years later, this trend has truly penetrated the mainstream, with shows like 24, Lost, Prison Break, and the like demanding the viewer pay attention over an extended period of time. Each episode has so much context that the "Previously on ..." teasers are simply not enough to understand the story.

The arts are well ahead of the rest of society at the moment, but there is hope that things like the news will rediscover the value of context.

Context and Christianity

What does this have to do with Christianity? Well, Christianity was not immune to the influence of post-modernism. Over the years, Christians became so ignorant of the importance of context that they fell into all sorts of error due to failing to take context into account.

Greg Koukl has an excellent resource called "Never Read a Bible Verse", which explains what should not need explaining: you need to understand the context of a verse in order to understand the verse.

Context is crucial to understanding the Bible, and it's also crucial to explaining it to others. We need to insist that people pay attention to the context, even when they wish to ignore it, and we need to be prepared to show why it's so important.

So, what examples of egregious context-ignorance can you think of? What ways have you found useful for explaining the importance of context? This is an important issue, and I'll be talking about it more in the future.

The Improbability of God (another fallacy)

I recently read Dawkins debating Francis Collins in Time (God vs Science, Nov 13, 2006). Now Dawkins should have made mincemeat out of Collins, who is a Theistic Evolutionist, and so very much open to attack due to his views having a serious lack of coherence. However Dawkins failed to capitalise on his opponent's weaknesses, and instead made huge gaffes like, "The problem is that this says, because something [the anthropic principal] is vastly improbable, we need a God to explain it. But that God himself would be even more improbable."

This may sound like a reasonable statement to you if you share Dawkins' assumptions. But actually thinking about this statement reveals that it is completely irrational.

Dawkins is assuming that God is like a material thing, brought about by chance, so that its complexity is improbable. But a creator God either is, or isn't. You can't say, "Well, for God to have such-and-such a characteristic would require such-and-such a probability" like you can for an amoeba or a shrew.

Why not? Because the amoeba and shrew are contingent. This is a philosophical term which means that they're not necessary. The universe would have continued existing whether or not the worm or shrew evolved (assuming Dawkins' worldview) or were created (from a Christian worldview). God, on the other hand, is not contingent. He is what is called in philosophy "necessary". While a creator God could exist by himself, the universe (in such a worldview) could not, since it is contingent upon God's creating it. But God is not contingent on anything -- he is the ground of all reality: he is necessary.

In Dawkins' naturalistic worldview, the material universe (the space-time continuum or whatever you want to call it; Sagan called it The Cosmos) is necessary, but any of the forms it takes (such as worms and shrews) are contingent.

It is possible to calculate the probability of contingencies, since they don't have to happen (and you can therefore compare the chances of them happening to the chances of them not happening). But it is impossible, by definition, to calculate the probability of necessary things (since they are necessary, they have to be, there is no way for them to not happen so you can't compare the chances of them not happening to the chances of them happening).

The only way, then, we can choose which thing we hold necessary (or the ground of all reality or being) is as our presuppositions or assumptions. Does this mean we can't test these assumptions or presuppositions? That we're just doomed to be randomly either right or wrong, depending on which side of the fence we land on? Not at all. If our presuppositions are valid, they will lead to a valid worldview, namely one that is coherent (internally consistent) and that corresponds to reality. This is why there are no straightforward deductive or inductive arguments for the existence or non-existence of God. However, I would argue that only the presupposition of a creator God supports a valid worldview (for a number of reasons, perhaps topics of future posts, but you can also find them addressed in various places on the web and in books).

So when Dawkins claims that the existence of God is improbable, he is doing one of two things: 1) revealing his utter lack of understanding of philosophy (dangerous for someone very publicly playing a philosopher, as he does in The God Delusion) or 2) confusing God with his creation (i.e. making God contingent, but contingent upon what?).

Either mistake is pretty fundamental, and since this is a core part of his argument, seriously weakens it.