The Ancient Tradition — Episode: Exorcising the Ghosts of John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant
Opening Credits
Music
You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition — a Wonk Media production. Music provided by Joseph McDade.
Here is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.
Introduction & Website
Welcome to The Ancient Tradition podcast. I’m your host, Jack Logan. It’s great to have you back, and welcome to all of our new listeners.
Before I jump into today’s episode, I want to let our listeners know about our website. This podcast has a companion website — theancienttradition.com — where you can learn more about the evidence that I’ll present in today’s episode. If you go to theancienttradition.com, click on Evidence, and then, in the dropdown menu, you’ll see a page dedicated to today’s episode, where you can find pictures and links, the ancient accounts, and full citations for everything discussed in this episode.
Today’s episode is “Exorcising the Ghosts of John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant.” I love the title. I adopted it from a book written by a fellow by the name of John Rosner — you can find that on the website as well. We’ll get into why it’s critical that the ghosts of these gentlemen be exorcised in a podcast that’s dedicated to reconstructing the religious tradition that was imparted to human beings in the beginning.
My Background
The best way to jump in is to tell you a little bit more about my background. I’m coming at this from a hybrid background. In terms of my formal education, I have a master’s and a PhD in the social sciences, and I teach at one of the best universities in the United States. I’ve been teaching in higher education for a couple of decades, so I’ve been thoroughly trained in the scientific method and the language of academia.
At the same time, I grew up in a home full of faith and love for God. I can’t even remember — I’ve tried — but I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t know, deep inside, that I was connected to a supreme being who loved me beyond my comprehension, and loved me perfectly. Now, I recognize not everybody knows that or feels that, but it’s something of which I’ve always had a certain knowledge.
How Do I Know? (Epistemology)
So this begs the question: How do I know this? How do I know with such certainty that there is a supreme being who loves me?
In academic speak, we’re talking about epistemology — the study of what can be known. What is knowable, and how is it known? As you might guess, there’s a lot of debate — in academic circles and in religious circles — over what can and can’t be known. Many in the academic community would argue that there’s just no way I could know that there is a supreme being who loves me. They’d argue it isn’t knowable.
And yet, when I tell myself that it’s not something I could possibly know, I still know. It doesn’t go away. It’s always there. I know, deep inside, that there’s a Supreme Being who loves me. It’s a knowledge that’s apparently a permanent part of my knowledge set. It’s like knowing that the sun is a blazing ball of gas — I can’t unknow it. I just know.
Why Academia Often Rejects This Knowledge
Why does academia reject the knowledge I have of a loving supreme being? Well, you can blame that — you guessed it — on John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, among others like René Descartes and Francis Bacon. Beginning in the 17th and 18th centuries, these philosophers argued that reason and sensory knowledge were the best — and later the only — methods by which one could acquire knowledge or know something for sure. In other words, they argued that the only knowable things were acquired through reason and the senses; everything outside of reason and the senses could not be known.
What they did was essentially convince the world that nothing could be known unless it followed the methods they deemed capable of producing knowledge. In two short centuries, they convinced the world that all other methods of acquiring knowledge outside the methods they privileged were incapable of producing valid knowledge.
Their epistemological movement is known as rationalism (ratio being the Latin word for reason), and rationalism is alive and thriving all over the world. In fact, it’s so deeply embedded in society that we could refer to it as a Weltanschauung — the German word for a profound philosophical worldview, one so comprehensive it permeates and shapes a person’s entire conception of the world.
Locke, Hume, and Kant’s rationalist Weltanschauung is so powerful that it’s socialized into every rising generation. We reinforce it every day in the ivory towers and academic halls all over the world. And as John Rosner, whom I mentioned earlier, says:
Schools, colleges, and universities — and nearly every major social institution present in the lives of Western people — have inculcated Enlightenment principles, either overtly or subliminally. And for the most part, they’ve discouraged belief. (He’s talking about belief in God.)
Rational conditioning is so much a part of our daily perception about what can and can’t be known that very few of us ever question whether rationalism itself is a valid view of what can and can’t be known — or whether rationalism is the only way to come to know something.
The Ancient View: A Knowable Spiritual Reality
What’s extremely important to point out is that the ancients had a completely different view of what could be known. For roughly 5,600 years of documented history before these rationalist philosophers arrived on the scene, the ancients were uncompromising in their claim — found in ancient records, mythologies, liturgies, and symbols — that there was a spiritual reality outside of this one, a reality that could be known to human beings.
The ancients hadn’t been socialized into the limitations of Lockean, Humean, Kantian rationalist epistemology. If they lived today, they would outright reject the notion that knowledge was limited to analytical or sensory functions.
A Note on Science (I Love It — and It’s Limited)
I love science. This is not about bashing science. I love learning about science and teaching science. I love the wonderful things that science has taught me — especially in astronomy (I’m a bit of an astronomy nerd).
The point is that science is limited. Having taught the scientific method quite a bit in my career, I have a healthy understanding of these limitations. I want to outline them. This isn’t about throwing the baby out with the bathwater — I love science and all the knowledge I’ve gained — but it is about challenging the unwarranted dogmatic position that science is the only method by which something can be known.
In fact, the word science itself is derived from the Latin scientia, which means knowledge. As one scholar put it:
To define science as knowledge has its own problems. It gives the impression that science is the totality of knowledge and the totality of science is knowledge.
Using knowledge as the word for science conveys that they are one and the same, giving the impression that anything not obtained via the scientific method is invalid — which is an extremely dogmatic statement.
What most in academia won’t tell you is that rationalism, which led to the scientific method, is itself a social construct. In many ways, rationalism and the scientific method are built on less stable ground than most people think. I want to walk you through some philosophical, metaphysical, evidentiary, and technological limitations of science.
Nine Limitations of Science
1) Science (and the Scientific Method) Were Invented by Philosophers
“Scientific method was formulated by philosophers, the preeminent dealers in ideas. These philosophers — not scientists — are responsible for the package of ideas now called scientific method. Scientific method was not divinely given to scientists on stone tablets.”
— from What’s Behind the Research
When students are taught the scientific method, it’s usually presented as if it were given on stone tablets. Imagine the irony. Students are left with the impression that the method is infallible — the ultimate culmination of our quest for absolute truth — and that there are no epistemological frontiers left to explore. Very few leave with the impression that science and the scientific method are social constructs, the product of philosophers, invented by philosophers and advocated by philosophers.
Thomas Kuhn argues — in the most widely cited work in the social sciences, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions — that science is a socially constructed paradigm of knowledge: a subjective consensus about how truth is achieved and defined.
2) The Scientific Method Is a Theory
From What’s Behind the Research:
“Science itself is based on theories or speculations. The method used to support or disprove other theories is itself a theory about how this supporting and disproving is done. There’s no foreordained or self-evident truth about how science is to be conducted, or indeed whether science should be conducted at all.”
If science is a theory about what constitutes knowledge and how it’s obtained, then it could be misdefining knowledge, be too narrow, or be flat-out wrong. It’s a theory, after all — which leads us to the next limitation.
3) Science Cannot Empirically Validate Itself
Again, from What’s Behind the Research:
“Scientific method cannot itself be experimentally tested. Scientific method has what some philosophers call the bootstrap problem. Just as those who wear old-fashioned boots cannot raise themselves into the air by pulling on the straps of their boots, so practitioners of the scientific method cannot use its method to validate itself.”
In other words, you can’t use the scientific method to validate whether the scientific method — a theory of knowledge — is valid. There’s no way to test whether the method truly yields knowledge. We’re left with no way to verify science’s veracity. So what does this mean? It leads to the next point.
4) Belief in Science Requires Faith
Since you can’t use the method to prove the method, anyone who uses it must have faith that it does what it claims to do. The scientific method isn’t built on sturdy pillars of established validity; it’s on sand — lots and lots of sand.
We have to take scientists at their word that it leads to valid knowledge — but scientists didn’t invent it. Philosophers did. So, ultimately, we’re placing faith in Locke, Hume, and Kant. See how quickly we go from “science equals valid knowledge” to “it’s all about faith” — in particular, faith in certain philosophers? How is that better than faith in a Supreme Being who is infinitely smarter than human beings?
5) Scientific Success ≠ Validity
You might say, “What about iPhones, vaccinations, airplanes, gene therapy?” One scholar put it like this: the prestige of science is largely due to the striking successes and the expanding reach of its applications.
What’s Behind the Research notes that citing success to demonstrate validity has the same bootstrap problem. What counts as success and how it’s verified are speculative, theoretical issues. Success may be in the eye of the beholder.
Basically, Slife and Williams are arguing we’re back to how scientists define knowledge. If we define knowledge empirically, the method looks like a roaring success. But if we define knowledge as, say, knowing I’m loved by a Supreme Being, then science is an utter failure at producing that kind of knowledge. Whether science is a success depends entirely on how knowledge is defined. And who decides? Back to Kuhn: science is a subjective consensus on what constitutes truth. There’s nothing inherently true about defining knowledge only as the product of analytical or sensory functions.
6) Science Rests on Metaphysical Assumptions
Since it can’t validate itself, science begins by making major assumptions about reality — metaphysical assumptions (meta: beyond; physics: the physical world).
Here are some common assumptions:
- Reality is thing-like (observable via the senses) — often naturalistic or materialistic.
- Because reality is thing-like, we can establish its objective nature (we can split ourselves from the object to find its true, objective reality).
- A precedes B in time, allowing assertions of causation.
The kicker: maybe none of these assumptions is true. Consider The Matrix: Neo’s sensory-rich world isn’t the real-real; it’s a simulation. Philosophers like Locke, Hume, and Kant decided to limit the real to what is thing-like. They could be wrong. Maybe some parts of reality are thing-like while others are not. We don’t know. We don’t have to accept their assumptions — especially when lived experience contradicts them.
One last note: because metaphysical assumptions can’t be investigated by the scientific method, scientists are safely guarded against ever learning whether they’re wrong. How convenient. Never forget: the metaphysical assumptions upon which science is built are unproven. Change the assumptions, and you change the picture of reality. Maybe not everything real is thing-like; maybe not everything real is observable through the senses.
7) Science Is in Its Infancy (Astronomy as Exhibit A)
I love astronomy, and it’s an excellent example. Not long ago, many believed there weren’t that many planets in the Milky Way — possibly only those in our solar system. Why? We lacked instruments capable of detecting them. Planets are dark; against a dark sky, they’re virtually impossible to see. If we couldn’t see them, maybe they weren’t there.
Just 30 years ago, astronomers searching for exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) were ridiculed. In the United States, Dr. Geoffrey Marcy and Dr. Paul Butler, despite years of skepticism, kept searching. Dr. Marcy recalls:
“When I told older astronomers that I was gonna hunt for planets around other stars by this Doppler technique, I remember they would look down at their shoes, scuffle their feet a little bit, and change the subject. They felt sorry for me — that I was reaching for little green men and pyramid power and some sort of crazy metaphysical effect like, you know, planets and life in the universe — akin to hunting for UFOs.”
It took them eight years to build tools capable of finding an exoplanet. Dr. Butler says:
“We were struggling without any roadmap. Nobody knew who we were. The few people who knew what we were trying to do also knew that our quest was quixotic at best and, more likely, flat-out laughable.”
After all that perseverance, on December 30, 1995, they found their first exoplanet: a massive world about seven times the mass of Jupiter, orbiting the star 70 Virginis (about 60 light-years away). That exoplanet is now known as 70 Virginis b. By 2008, more than half of the 300+ confirmed exoplanets had been found by them.
As The New York Times pointed out, just 30 years ago this was dismissed as science fiction in respectable academic circles.
Why? Because our science and our tools were in their infancy. We simply didn’t have instruments capable of finding exoplanets. Thanks to perseverance, we do now. In the past 30 years, scientists have developed a toolkit capable of finding them — transit photometry, radial velocity, reflection and emission modulations, gravitational microlensing, ellipsoidal variation, relativistic beaming, and more. (You can learn more on the website.) These tools continue to be refined to find more and more exoplanets.
The first confirmed exoplanet outside our solar system was PSR 125712b, found in 1992 by astronomers in Europe. Since then, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been found, with hundreds more discovered every year. Astronomers now estimate there are more planets than stars in the universe.
Consider this: there are about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, but between 1 and 10 trillion orbiting planets. That computes to between 2 and 25 times as many planets as stars. Unbelievable. Multiply that by the estimated 1–2 trillion galaxies in the known universe, and you get a number of planets not even comprehensible to the human mind. The cosmos are littered with planets — they’re everywhere.
Thirty years ago, making that claim would have gotten you thrown out for astronomical heresy (yes, pun intended). With that many planets, the chances of life are enormous. Today, exoplanet exploration is a worldwide phenomenon. NASA started the Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech in 2008. The whole scientific community has jumped on board. And if you’ve been watching the news just this week, NASA announced that the Webb Telescope had found its first exoplanet, LHS-475b — a rocky planet almost exactly the size of Earth. Pretty neat.
The point: What can be known via science is limited by how technologically advanced our instruments are. If our instruments can’t find or see something, it may not be because it isn’t there — it may be because our instruments are too young or inadequate. The exoplanets were there all along, whether we could detect them or not.
Is the same true of a spiritual world? Perhaps what the scientific method deems “not real” — the spiritual or supernatural — is only labeled that way because we currently lack instruments capable of observing it. Who knows? One day our instruments might be refined enough to observe a spiritual realm beyond what is presently known. Because science invalidates or delegitimizes what it can’t find or see, it doesn’t follow that it doesn’t exist. Look at the exoplanets. As the old adage goes, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
8) Science Is Limited by Available Evidence
Science is limited to the evidence it can get its hands on. If it can’t, then the thing can’t be “known” — but it’s a far jump from not known to doesn’t exist. Because of this, all conclusions from the scientific method are inherently tentative, subject to further evidence. No absolute truths can be established, because new or different evidence may contradict earlier conclusions.
Case in point: before 1992, there were no exoplanets (as far as the evidence showed). Afterward, there are so many that the number is beyond comprehension. Science can never prove anything to be absolutely true; it can only claim that the available evidence hasn’t disproven it yet. Perhaps scientists could be a little more humble about what they actually know — and the tentative nature of that knowledge.
9) The Rational-Scientific Picture Often Misses Lived Human Experience
John Rosner notes:
For the most part, the more limited empirical sciences of today are still largely based upon a collage of already outmoded rationalistic, materialistic a prioris and perspectives, which are incapable of coping with such vital human issues.
Which issues? The lived experience of human beings: love, hate, hope, meaning, morality, ethics, mystery, aesthetics, beauty, forgiveness, joy — all huge parts of lived experience, yet inscrutable to science.
Try taking a rationalistic, scientific approach to a student who feels a deep sense of anomie — completely rudderless — who doesn’t know what to do with his life, doesn’t feel society cares what he does, and doesn’t know if there’s any point. I’ve met students like this; unfortunately, there are many. Science has zero answers for this situation.
A psychologist observes:
“The present outlook of science has all but destroyed the natural capacity of modern man to hope, to believe, to love. More and more of our patients complain of a sense of meaninglessness in life. More and more often, the reason is the outlook of science — or what has become, through them, the outlook of science. Sometimes it’s called reductionism. Thinking people tend to feel that science has cut man down. It’s explained away everything that matters. Religion then becomes nothing but wish-fulfilling fairy tales. Love is nothing but body chemistry. Art is nothing but a surge of conditioned reflexes. All color has gone and all hope is lost. Science has made everything hollow and pointless. I wouldn’t call it a flight from reason to look elsewhere than science for rescue — that’s thoroughly rational.”
Rationalism becomes irrational when it doesn’t match lived experience or human needs — when it dehumanizes us.
A scholar by the name of Makali Kanu, writing in the Journal of Humanities and Social Science, puts it this way:
“On the issue of the ultimate purpose of our existence or of the universe, science is lacking. The belief in purposes cannot be observed and therefore cannot be addressed by the methods of natural science, which are tied to observation. The fact that science does not make use of the concept of ultimate purposes in no way suggests that the concept is not meaningful or important to lived human experience. It is also argued that the method of investigation that is deliberately restricted to the naturalistic or the purely material or mechanistic will not be competent to deal with most of the fundamental questions of morality and value, psychology, theology and religion, philosophy, and some other areas as well.”
One scholar said it best: “Man cannot live by science alone.” I concur.
In modern society there are many problematic issues associated with the scientific Weltanschauung. In this podcast, the most problematic is the philosophers’ wholesale rejection of spiritual knowledge.
At the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that for my entire life I’ve had a certain knowledge that I’m loved by a Supreme Being. I don’t necessarily know how I know that, but I know — and it has never wavered. Rationalists reject this: “How can you know there is a God who loves you? That’s not knowable.” What they’re really saying is that my knowledge doesn’t conform to the a priori assumptions of rationalist, scientific epistemology. My knowledge isn’t thing-like or observable; therefore, it can’t be knowledge. It must be a figment of my imagination or some chemical response. Whatever it is, it’s not knowledge.
The Ancient Tradition’s Claim
This is where the ancient world radically disagrees. The ancients declared that the spiritual realm is knowable — that it’s possible to have direct knowledge of the spiritual realm. The ancient record is rife with sacred writings, myths, liturgies, cosmologies, and symbols attesting to a knowable spiritual world — to a knowable God.
I’m not talking about secondary book knowledge — reading about someone else’s spiritual experiences. I’m talking about acquiring direct knowledge of spiritual truths and the spiritual world for oneself.
This is where the ancient tradition comes in. It is unequivocal: the spiritual realm is knowable. Not only that, it emphasizes the absolute necessity of acquiring spiritual knowledge if one desires to reach their full potential.
For this reason, I hope it’s evident why it’s so important to exorcise the ghosts of John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, who told the world that it could not know God. The ancients exorcise those philosophers who tell us we can’t. It’s one of the most damning philosophies of men. The ability to know God is one of — if not the — most important gifts given to human beings.
Recap, Resources & What’s Next
That wraps up this edition of The Ancient Tradition.
To recap: The ancient record attests — in stark contradistinction to 17th- and 18th-century philosophers — that the spiritual realm is knowable, and that human beings can obtain direct knowledge of a Supreme Being.
If you’re interested in learning more about the evidence presented in this episode, visit theancienttradition.com. Search for this specific episode under Evidence, and you’ll find pictures and links — and sometimes a bonus section. Near the bottom of the podcast page, there’s a button to subscribe to the podcast, as well as a running countdown for next week’s episode — all of which you can share with your family and friends.
Next time, I’ll dive into the origin of the ancient tradition — who started it, and where did it start?
For now, remember — in the words of William Shakespeare — “knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.” I’m Jack Logan, and I’ll see you on the next edition of The Ancient Tradition.
Closing Credits
You’ve been listening to The Ancient Tradition — a Wonk Media production.