Bryce left the Newman Center and walked back to the Caldwell House, where he and Damon shared an apartment on the second floor. On the way, he considered how his recent session with Father Miller and his meditations in the chapel would play out in practice. One thing was definite. His discussions with his friends would not lead to alienating anyone. It was not worth it. Of all the things Father Miller said, the one which stuck with him the most was the admonition that trying to force the point by demanding that his friends follow his logical processes might result in alienating them, especially if it came across as implying that they were not as bright as he. That had not been his intention, but Father forced him to see that it could certainly be seen that way. But what was he to do? Those discussions had been initiated by Jason Todd, backed by Damon, as they knew he believed that in order to be a full human being, one had to have a spiritual life. It would probably not be well received if he simply said he was not going to discuss these matters any longer, and might be interpreted as meaning he was unable to uphold his side of the argument. Besides, he enjoyed the mental workout. But how could he continue without coming across the wrong way?
At the time he reached the apartment, and was greeted by Damon, he was still undecided on that point, and simply would play it by ear until he had time to work out something more. What Damon actually said as Bryce entered the apartment was, “Well, it’s about time. What took you so long?”
Bryce replied, “I had a rough session with Father Miller, and needed to give it some thought.”
“A rough session? How so?” Damon asked.
“I don’t want to go into details now. Basically, he told me I was off base thinking I had the answers to everyone’s problems,” Bryce admitted.
“Big deal,” Damon taunted him. “I’ve been telling you that all along.”
At that, Bryce attacked his partner, and the two engaged in a bit of roughhousing, which might have gone on longer had not a timer sounded in the kitchen.
“We’ll have to resume this ‘discussion’ later,” Damon decreed. “Dinner is ready.”
Damon had prepared a dinner based on his exchanges with Caroline Koehler, which was a delicious hamburger Stroganoff. Bryce made very certain that Damon understood how much he appreciated this contribution to their joint living. But he was quite reserved about adding anything more to what he already said concerning what he and Father Miller had discussed earlier in the day. Damon was obviously curious, but did not push.
As Bryce was doing the clearing off and washing the dishes after dinner, there was a phone call. Damon answered, and then came into the kitchen, his phone still to his ear.
“I’ll ask,” he said into the phone. Turning to Bryce, Damon said, “It’s Jason. He suggests that we meet at Pat’s later this evening, and continue what he’s calling our philosophical roundtable. Pretentious ass.”
That comment brought a chuckle from Jason, loud enough to be heard by Bryce.
“Hey, I thought I was the pretentious ass in this group,” Bryce protested.
That brought an even louder laugh over the phone.
“I didn’t realize there was a restriction on the number of pretentious asses allowed,” Damon replied. “But how about it?”
“I have a few things I need to do for my classes, but that shouldn’t take more than, say, an hour and a half to two hours. How about meeting at 9:30?” Bryce suggested.
Damon put his phone to his ear. “Did you hear that? ... Okay, it’s settled then, 9:30.”
Bryce and Damon both settled down for some serious studying for the next few hours. Perhaps it was actually not thinking about the issues raised by Father Miller which allowed Bryce to come to some conclusion by the time they were again all assembled at Pat’s. Once again, there was a full contingent, consisting of Jason Todd, the music history major; his partner Nate Hagan, the art history major; Mike Sandoval, the English major; his partner David Simpson, the chemistry major; Damon Watson, the political science major; and Bryce Winslow, the history major. Bryce, Mike, and Nate were Catholic, while David came from a strict fundamentalist background in the Pentecostal tradition, which he has rejected, and Jason came from an entirely secular background, with no religious associations. Damon came from the most dysfunctional family of the six, but when the matter came up, his mother claimed to be a Baptist, and took part in revivals from time to time of a very emotional nature, although they seemed to have no lasting effect. Damon described himself as a work in progress.
The first order of business was securing beers for all six. As Mike was a senior and over 21, he made the trip to the bar to order the beer. Pat Flaherty, proprietor of the tavern, knew very well that not all the guys were legal, but as they had never been a problem, he decided once again to simply accept Mike’s identification as applying to the whole group, and pulled six drafts. As he did, he said to Mike, “Tell Winslow that I followed his advice and contacted Mr. Castleman today. Looks like things will work out.”
“Glad to hear it,” Mike responded. “From what I hear, he’s a lot more successful in the courtroom than Cuttlesworth.”
“Yeah. I asked around. That part looks good, too,” Pat agreed.
When Mike returned to the table with a tray laden with six draft beers, he also relayed Pat’s message. “I hate to start off by inflating our boy’s ego,” he related to the group, “but Pat said to tell you, Bryce, that he had contacted Mr. Castleman, and things look positive.”
Bryce grinned. “Sometimes I give good advice.”
“And other times?” Nate teased.
“Oh, other times my advice is brilliant,” Bryce replied in the same spirit.
The other five moaned.
“How is it that you can make these discussions, Mike?” his partner asked. “I thought you said you had to work almost every evening in the family enterprise.”
“Well,” Mike replied, “as I am a senior, about to be the first member of my family to graduate from college, I am being cut some slack. Besides, Kyle has been asking for extra hours, as he wants to build up a nest egg for that little dictator, Peter Charles.” Mike paused, then added, “And I put in four hours earlier today.”
“That’s a good, cooperative uncle,” David congratulated him.
After some additional badinage, Jason addressed the purpose of their assemblage. “Well, Bryce, are you going to tell us why we are less than complete?”
Mentally, Bryce cringed. That was so close to what Father Miller warned him about. With a sigh, Bryce replied simply, “No.”
Jason was clearly surprised. “No? What do you mean, No? I thought that was what this was all about. Are you going to tell me that you no longer think religion and what you call the spiritual are important?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all. You all know that I think religion is important, and you all know that I think you’re missing a part of reality if you don’t acknowledge the spiritual life. But it’s not my place to tell you you’re any less complete than I am,” Bryce declared.
Jason just looked at Bryce for several minutes. Then he grinned. “You know, you just derailed my whole approach. I was all prepared to attack the omniscient Bryce, and suddenly he switches tactics on me. Very clever.”
“Oh, don’t give him too much credit,” Damon said. “He just got reamed out for being too omniscient by Father Miller this afternoon.”
Bryce gave his partner a disgusted look for revealing his weakness.
At that Nate laughed heartily. “I know how that feels. I’ve been deflated by the good padre more than once since Bryce bullied me into seeing him on a regular basis.”
“I did not bully, I convinced,” Bryce protested weakly. He was blushing furiously.
“Oh, look. Somebody’s embarrassed,” Mike teased.
“I have no secrets,” Bryce complained, as his friends laughed.
“You know we love you. Otherwise we would never have put up with you all these months,” Jason assured him, putting his arm around Bryce’s shoulder.
To extricate himself from this embarrassing situation, Bryce turned and kissed Jason. That so surprised him that Jason drew back, while Damon complained, “Hey, watch that stuff. Don’t go getting promiscuous on me.”
That evoked more laughter from the group. Bryce then turned towards Damon, but catching the sight of another student and his date all over each other in a nearby booth, and not finding that public display appropriate, he reversed his intention, saying, “That’s enough PDA. I’ll deal with you when we get home.”
“Oooooh, promises, promises,” Damon teased.
But the guys settled down some.
“Okay, then,” Jason said, “if Bryce is not going to tell us where we all went wrong, what are we going to talk about.”
“Maybe we need a little clarification here,” Mike said. “I would never have said things the way Bryce has over the past few discussions. He gets kind of abstract or theoretical from time to time, I guess. But I don’t recall anything he said that I would really disagree with. Not as far as religion is concerned, that is. I’m not sold on his interpretation of our history, even if he is the history major. It’s not a case of Bryce verses the other five of us, though, you know.”
“Don’t forget,” Nate added, “while we may not be as outspoken as Bryce, and may not have worked out all the logical syllogisms involved, Mike and I are also Catholics. There’s a lot we have in common.”
“Hey, I wasn’t being anti-Catholic,” Jason protested.
“And I wasn’t implying that you were. Disagreeing with Catholic teaching is not the same as being anti-Catholic,” Nate replied. “And criticizing the hierarchy is definitely not the same, or we three Catholics would also be anti-Catholic. I’m just saying, we have a lot in common, and, like Mike said, I don’t really disagree with any of the essential points Bryce was making about our religion. In fact, I’m kind of glad Bryce laid things out some, as I had not thought of all the things he brought out.”
“I was getting a little uncomfortable the other day when you were saying what is right or wrong is entirely decided by some kind of majority, Jason,” Damon added. “If that’s the case, then it was right for white folks to treat us black folks as inferior beings for centuries. I don’t know all the religious arguments, and I can’t quote as much history as Bryce, but I do know that the great majority of Americans considered us blacks as something less than equal for most of the history of this country, and I will not accept that that was right, and as I understand it my people never accepted that as right. It was just a matter of who had the power. Based on my experience, that’s a shitty way of determining what’s right or wrong.”
“Damon, I ...,” Jason began, but David cut him off.
“Besides that, you very rightly criticized Bryce the other day for failing to take into account his Church’s position on gays when he was defending it, but that cuts both ways, Jason. Just as Damon pointed out with respect to blacks, the same applies to us gays. I know maybe more personally than the rest of you what it means to grow up in an environment in which being gay is equated with being wrong, and even evil, in the sense of sinful. I had a real struggle to come to grips with that, and it has torn my family apart. There is no way I’ll agree that the general consensus determines right and wrong on this issue, so I can’t invoke it on others.”
Jason was looking defensive. Remembering what he had decided that afternoon, Bryce intervened at this point. “Look, guys, it’s obvious that we won’t be able to agree on a lot of things. But it’s important to remember something I tend to forget myself, and I think maybe some of the rest of us do, too. A disagreement with someone’s ideas is not the same as a rejection of that person. We need to remember that we’re all friends, and are able to talk like this because we’re friends, and can put up with each other’s peculiarities.”
“Who are you calling peculiar?” Damon joked.
“Oh, you. Definitely you. None more peculiar,” Bryce threw back at him.
“As someone said earlier, I’ll deal with you when we get home,” Damon riposted.
“Does this mean we can’t discuss those abstract or theoretical ideas we were dealing with before?” Jason asked.
“I don’t think so,” Bryce cautiously proposed. “But when we do, we need to remember something Father Miller reminded me of this afternoon.”
“At last we get some idea of what hit Bryce so hard,” Damon commented.
Bryce just made a face at him, and continued, “We were arguing logic, but Father pointed out that logic is a process, a method, not a content. He used the analogy to geometry. In geometry there are axioms, or things which are assumed to be true because they seem so obvious, like parallel lines never meet, and a perpendicular creates two right angles. Likewise, in the kinds of arguments we were having, logic works if we all begin with the same axioms, the same assumptions about reality. Then, we can see that this or that position has or lacks logic. Maybe there is a flaw somewhere, and we can identify it, and everyone can agree on the outcome. But if there is no agreement on the assumptions we start with, about the nature of reality, then we can argue logically from now to doomsday and still completely disagree, and both be completely logical.”
“In a way, that supports my position,” Jason claimed. “I said before that there is no absolute right or wrong. We all see things differently, so there is no way we can agree on such things as abortion, Bryce’s favorite topic.”
“My least favorite topic, actually, and specifically because the sides begin with different concepts of reality. The answer would be simple if we could agree on whether the child in the womb is a real human being or not. But then, we’d have to agree on the definition of a human being, and we don’t. And this bring us back to one of our many previous points, namely the reality of the spiritual,” Bryce insisted.
“What is the evidence for the reality of what you call the spiritual?” Jason challenged.
“About the same as for most things. Human experience. From time immemorial humans have experienced things which cannot be explained in purely material or physical terms,” Bryce replied.
“Can’t be explained? ... or maybe just haven’t been explained as yet?” Jason replied.
“That’s kind of circular arguing,” David said. “You’re beginning with the assumption that spiritual experiences are not real, but are merely some unexplained material experience. You’re not presenting a level playing field, accepting the reality of the experiences being analyzed.”
“But probability would indicate that some things are more likely than others,” Jason objected.
“True, but there are limits to that argument,” David rejoined. “First of all, probability is part of mathematics, and mathematics is a human creation, so it’s not infallible. Contrary to what some people seem to think, mathematics is not the equivalent of reality. You need to consider the evidence. If you want to talk about the probability that I will be able to flap my arms and fly, then there are mounds of evidence against the proposition. But when you get into things like the reality of God, or the reality of spiritual experience, then there are so many factors, and so many ways of interpreting those factors, that the exercise is essentially meaningless. I actually looked up the probability of God existing, and I found so many contradictory answers, all from presumably qualified mathematicians and scientists, that it’s clear there is no ‘right’ answer to this as a mathematical problem. It all depends on the factors taken into account when calculating probability, and the attempt to take all factors into account simply doesn’t work, because no two sources agree on what those factors are.”
“So, where does that leave us,” Damon asked.
“More or less where we began,” Bryce suggested. “We will never be able to prove each other right or wrong, because we can’t agree on the starting assumptions, the axioms, for our exercise in logic. One aspect of the question we might consider, though, is the logical consequences of one position or another.”
“Oh, oh, I think we’re back to Bryce’s crazed fanatic with the automatic rifle,” Jason warned.
“Well, I think it’s a valid question,” Bryce insisted. “Ask yourself, if I am a Christian, and consider suicide and taking out as many others as I can at the same time, what’s to stop me? Then ask yourself the same question beginning with the supposition that the person is an atheist.”
“There are other alternatives to being Christian or atheist,” Jason protested.
“True, but let’s try this one as a start. If I am an atheist, and do not believe in any kind of existence after death, and also do not believe in any kind of God, then why not kill myself in this spectacular manner?” Bryce asked.
“I could say because an atheist can still believe in acting like a decent human being,” Jason replied.
“True,” Bryce conceded. “In practice, there is a broad area of agreement on social behavior, but as Damon and David pointed out, that is not sufficient to make anything right or wrong, it’s simply what’s done or not done. But let’s say I’m not a socially responsible atheist. I’m someone completely wrapped up in myself, and only concerned with what pleases or displeases me. Then what?”
“I’ll be interested to hear what Jason says. I can’t think of an answer to that,” Mike said.
“Okay, I admit I can’t either,” Jason admitted. “But I rely on that broad consensus. I can believe in basic human dignity as much as any Christian, and just as strongly.”
“True, but what do you do about the odd man who doesn’t, given your views of reality?” Nate asked.
“For the common good, such people have to be restrained. We call them sociopaths, and there are asylums just for such people. It’s a matter of what’s best for the majority,” Jason replied.
“There we are, back to that troublesome majority again,” Damon commented.
“So, you are saying there is no logical reply to that individual, but we must rely on force to preserve social order,” Bryce interpreted his position.
“I wouldn’t put it that way, but I guess from one perspective that’s so,” Jason admitted. “But how is that different from the Christian approach?”
“Well, admittedly, there is that question of belief. Just as your atheist can believe in the common good, so also the Christian, by definition, believes in a common good, defined by the transcendent God,” Nate began.
“But then what about the one like the atheist who does not accept the common good?” Jason pushed.
“We are assuming our bad guy is a Christian, right, just what we might call a sinful Christian?” Mike checked to be certain.
“Yeah, okay,” Jason agreed.
“In that case, we rely on the four last things,” Mike stated.
“What’s that?” Jason asked.
“It’s a part of Christian spirituality to consider the end of this life. The four last things are death, judgement, hell, or heaven,” Bryce explained.
“Isn’t that relying on force, just like the insane asylum?” Jason asked.
“I don’t think so,” Bryce said. “As I understand it, the Christian position is that following death, each of us will be judged by an omniscient God, who is absolutely just. I know, I know, there are those troublesome absolutes, again. But Christianity involves absolutes. When God renders judgement, we will then see exactly what we have done right and wrong, and will see that whatever judgement is rendered is a just judgement, so it is not just power or strength which determines the outcome. It is justice.”
“Isn’t that kind of stacking the deck, making that kind of assumption about your god?” Jason queried.
“Ah. That leads to another extremely complicated question. When we say ‘god’ just what do we mean? In my example, I mean the Christian God,” Bryce insisted, “but there are other definitions of ‘god,’ such as the impersonal force of the deist. But I don’t think we can adequately investigate that issue this evening, and remember, in my example I specified that my guy was a Christian.”
“But, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that you can’t prove your position from reason alone, and have to rely on an appeal to belief,” Jason said.
“That’s true,” Bryce agreed, remembering his session with Father Miller. “I am saying that as far as purely human efforts and reason are concerned, there are no absolute answers. But it is part of my belief that a generous and loving God provided us with the added resource of revelation, and in that context, there can be absolute certainty.”
“Where does that leave us who do not believe?” Jason asked.
“Back where we began. Missing out. Lacking,” Bryce replied.
Jason sighed. “Lacking, or incomplete, it works out the same to me, but I guess that’s the best we can do this evening.”
“Have we solved anything?” Damon asked.
“Of course not,” Mike said. “People have been arguing these things forever. You don’t suppose a few undergraduates will find the answer over a couple of beers, do you?”
“Only as far as their own satisfaction is concerned,” Damon replied.