The White Tree of Gondor, one of the few remaining signs of Numenor (and a symbol of the light of Valinor).
2 Timothy 3: 3-9
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as their’s also was.
At first glance, this would seem to be a mistake: how could some one be “ever learning” but “never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” You could try diminish the harshness of it by pointing to the Mysterious Ineffability of God: we can spend an eternity learning about His glory and never master the subject. But that’s not what Saint Paul is saying: he’s saying that there is something fundamentally flawed in the approach to learning that made it ineffective. The rest of his prophecy certainly applies to our time, as it has to other wicked and perverse generations. We have more than our share of hedonistic, unthankful, and incontinent lovers of pleasure. And it is certainly true that the world has its own form of godliness to which its servants pay lip service but never follow through on.
But is is true that our learning is so flawed that we cannot come to the knowledge of the truth? Despite our incredible ability to measure things and the number of people purporting to do “science.”, I afraid that it is true. After the Sundering, you cannot sail west to Valinor of Aman, no matter how high your sails.
The problem is not with the scientific method or the accuracy of our measurements; the problem is with our minds. It is common for Christians to say that pride is the root of all sins, but I’m not sure they understand the full implication of this truth. It’s not just that people are selfish traitors (although there are enough hucksters and publicity hounds willing to trade scientific objectivity for profit and fame… come to think of it, the whole R&D process seems to encourage such corruption). If that was the case, it might be enough to set up oversight bodies and the like…. but the problem is more subtle at its core and so subversive that no bureaucratic SOP can protect against it.
The problem is that our minds are flawed. Confirmation bias is powerful enough to subvert our search for truth all on its own. It turns even the best trained scientist into a silly egoist. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Khaneman describes how even psychologists who are aware of the biases in their wetware still fall prey to their effects. So what is the answer? Part of it is found in procedural changes to the institutions of doing science, but there really needs to be a profound change in the investigators themselves. St. Paul provides the clue: all of the vices he describes (to include fruitless investigation) can be remedied through the Gospel. Saint Paul does not just describe the problems of the world, he provides their solution. Silence, repentance, and nepsis (vigilance/watchfulness) are fundamental to real objectivity and epistemology.
But this won’t happen on its own. The people who are sailing the Sundering Seas do not know that they cannot find their heart’s true home of Valinor; they keep coming up with better charts of the waters and lands they find. This is their world and it is hard for them to imagine another. The irony is that our modern culture pits the acquisition of knowledge through science against religion when the hesychasm of true religion would allow the scientist see true.
The flaws in our psychology are complex and subtle. Even ascetics who work on this every day are prone to automatic miscalculation; the thoughts of modern Jannes’ and Jambres’ are full of it. We may not be able to solve this problem in the short to medium term, but the 70% solution would be nice. That solution would involve all of us developing just enough humility to keep us from presenting flawed opinion as if it were inspired or enlightened dogma.
