“Rationalist” philosophers have long claimed that our reason can generate knowledge about things which go beyond what we can experience with our senses. “Empiricist” philosophers to the contrary have insisted that all genuine knowledge must in fact be grounded in sensory experience. The British philosophy A. J. Ayer (1910-1989) takes this empiricist idea a step further: it’s not merely knowledge that must be grounded in sensory experience but also meaning. A given sentence is only meaningful if it is “verifiable”: that is, if it is either a direct statement about something we can observe with our senses or logically leads to such a statement. Any sentence which is not verifiable isn’t even worthy to be called “false”: rather it is literally meaningless or nonsense, and therefore no more true or false than some random series of sounds. And if so, it certainly is not something one could be said to have any “knowledge” about.
This criterion of meaning now wreaks havoc with many areas of philosophy, including that concerned with God.
For what, exactly, is the meaning of a sentence such as “God exists”?
Well, “God” either refers to something which transcends the world or is somehow present within it. Most theists have in mind the former, but to say that God transcends the world is precisely to say that He is not accessible to sensory observation. But if so then the sentence “God exists” is not related to anything observable and therefore, by our criterion, as meaningless as a sentence like, say, “The huppity hoo-ha exists.” To avoid this conclusion some may insist that “God exists” entails the existence of certain regularities within the world, perhaps even the specific laws of nature. But then the sentence “God exists” must either mean simply “there exist regularities in the world” or it means something more than that. If the former then the sentence is true but not useful to the theist: asserting that God exists amounts merely to asserting that there are regularities in the world, which even the atheist can accept. But if the sentence means more than that then once again it transcends sensory observation and is therefore meaningless.
Either way the theist is not in good shape.
This result also sheds some light on the age-old question of the conflict between religion and science. There can be conflict only where the sentences of one are inconsistent with the sentences of the other. But that occurs only if both are uttering genuinely meaningful sentences. If religious sentences are not genuinely meaningful then they can in no way conflict with any scientific sentences.
This may seem bad for theists but in fact many theists ought ultimately to agree, or at least Ayer suggests as much. They commonly admit that God transcends our intellectual capacities, but that is to admit that God is unintelligible--and what is unintelligible cannot meaningfully be talked about. Or they say that God is an object not of reason but of faith, accessible only by some purely mystical intuition that cannot be put into words. But if it cannot be put into words then one is bound literally to talk nonsense when describing it!
This is not to say that religious experience or feelings have no value. It is only to say that religious sentences are not properly meaningful sentences. Whatever “truth” religious belief might contain, it is not truth in the way in which ordinary sentences are true--in which case there can be no such thing as genuine religious knowledge, or knowledge about God.
Lest this give comfort to the atheist, however: note that the sentence “The huppity hoo-ha does not exist” is no more meaningful than the sentence claiming it does.
The whole debate between theists and atheists turns out to be a meaningless one!
Source: Alfred Jules Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (London, UK: Gollancz, 1936). 2nd. Edition, 1946. Reprinted by Dover Publications (New York, NY: 1952).
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Everywhere At Once: The Problem of Omnipresence
"God is the soul of the world--and the world is therefore His body...."
One of the traditional attributes of God is His omnipresence: God is “everywhere.” But this idea is immediately problematic. The world is filled with physical bodies separated by small, large, and vast gaps of empty space; if God is neither a physical body (as traditional theism says He is not) nor empty space, then where exactly is He? And if God is “simple” in the sense of not being composed of any parts (as traditional theism also says He is), then how could He be present both here and there, for such divided presence would seem precisely to divide Him into parts? Indeed what could it mean to say that God is present even in any one location, much less in every?
The American philosopher Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) borrows some ancient wisdom to make some sense of divine omnipresence.
The first point to recognize is that anything we say about God must rely on analogies and metaphors. Theists tend to invoke interpersonal relations: God’s relationship to his creatures is like that of a parent to a child, a ruler to subjects, or a teacher to students. But the great ancient philosopher Plato invoked a quite different, intrapersonal analogy: God’s relationship to the world is like that which a mind or soul bears to its own physical body.
Think about our relationship to our bodies. We conscious souls are a single “simple” indivisible reality while our body is a diverse society of realities, composed of smaller bodies composed of still smaller bodies. In a sense we “rule over” our organs and cells; our thoughts and decisions move large numbers of them, for example when we choose to eat dinner and our entire body heads towards the kitchen. In so doing we preside over the coming to be of our cells, over their constitution and organization. We are quasi-deities in our own bodily system.
Yet at the same time we are also constituted by our bodies, our cells, our molecules.
And that is how we should think about God: not as entirely removed from the world but as embedded or embodied within it. Not as some remote eternal being ruling from afar but as one governing from within, just as we govern our own bodies.
Now how can this illuminate the idea of omnipresence?
Consider: some things we know vividly and directly, such as our own thoughts and significant changes occurring in our bodies. Other things, such as what is going on elsewhere or with others, are known only indirectly, by inference. Similarly, some things we have direct power over (such as our own volitions and bodily movements) while other things we can control only indirectly, through intermediaries. Since direct knowledge and power are superior to indirect knowledge and power, God must have direct knowledge of, and direct power over, the world as a whole.
And that is what His omnipresence is: God is “present” in or to the world precisely insofar as His direct knowledge and power extend to every location in the world, just as we ourselves have direct knowledge of and power over our own bodies. In that sense we too are present in and to our own bodies, even to the “gaps” within and between our cells and molecules--which answers the first problem above. So too the “simple,” undivided being which we are may now be said to be wholly present everywhere our body is present--which answers the second problem.
What makes this particular region of matter and not some other region our body, in fact, is just this knowledge and power we have concerning them.
Which makes the world, therefore, God’s body.
Sources:
(1) Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1941).
(2) Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984).
One of the traditional attributes of God is His omnipresence: God is “everywhere.” But this idea is immediately problematic. The world is filled with physical bodies separated by small, large, and vast gaps of empty space; if God is neither a physical body (as traditional theism says He is not) nor empty space, then where exactly is He? And if God is “simple” in the sense of not being composed of any parts (as traditional theism also says He is), then how could He be present both here and there, for such divided presence would seem precisely to divide Him into parts? Indeed what could it mean to say that God is present even in any one location, much less in every?
The American philosopher Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) borrows some ancient wisdom to make some sense of divine omnipresence.
The first point to recognize is that anything we say about God must rely on analogies and metaphors. Theists tend to invoke interpersonal relations: God’s relationship to his creatures is like that of a parent to a child, a ruler to subjects, or a teacher to students. But the great ancient philosopher Plato invoked a quite different, intrapersonal analogy: God’s relationship to the world is like that which a mind or soul bears to its own physical body.
Think about our relationship to our bodies. We conscious souls are a single “simple” indivisible reality while our body is a diverse society of realities, composed of smaller bodies composed of still smaller bodies. In a sense we “rule over” our organs and cells; our thoughts and decisions move large numbers of them, for example when we choose to eat dinner and our entire body heads towards the kitchen. In so doing we preside over the coming to be of our cells, over their constitution and organization. We are quasi-deities in our own bodily system.
Yet at the same time we are also constituted by our bodies, our cells, our molecules.
And that is how we should think about God: not as entirely removed from the world but as embedded or embodied within it. Not as some remote eternal being ruling from afar but as one governing from within, just as we govern our own bodies.
Now how can this illuminate the idea of omnipresence?
Consider: some things we know vividly and directly, such as our own thoughts and significant changes occurring in our bodies. Other things, such as what is going on elsewhere or with others, are known only indirectly, by inference. Similarly, some things we have direct power over (such as our own volitions and bodily movements) while other things we can control only indirectly, through intermediaries. Since direct knowledge and power are superior to indirect knowledge and power, God must have direct knowledge of, and direct power over, the world as a whole.
And that is what His omnipresence is: God is “present” in or to the world precisely insofar as His direct knowledge and power extend to every location in the world, just as we ourselves have direct knowledge of and power over our own bodies. In that sense we too are present in and to our own bodies, even to the “gaps” within and between our cells and molecules--which answers the first problem above. So too the “simple,” undivided being which we are may now be said to be wholly present everywhere our body is present--which answers the second problem.
What makes this particular region of matter and not some other region our body, in fact, is just this knowledge and power we have concerning them.
Which makes the world, therefore, God’s body.
Sources:
(1) Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1941).
(2) Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1984).
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
And behold, it still IS pretty good
“And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)
It might have been easy to agree with this verdict after Day Six of Creation, when God renders it. But now? A quick look around reveals much that does not seem very good at all: everything suffers, decays, and dies. If the perfectly good and all-powerful God is responsible for the existence of everything, then how could there be so much imperfection and evil in the world?
It’s a hard question, and which continues to vex philosophers to this day, but the great medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides (1135-1204) thinks it can be answered.
Consider, to begin, the difference between light and darkness. Light has genuine being or existence, and wherever it does exist something actively produces it, some source of light. But darkness has neither genuine being nor must be actively produced: it’s what you get when there is nothing to produce light. Similarly creatures who can see have a genuine property: seeing is something we do and sight is an ability we possess. But a creature who is blind does not possess some other ability for blindness; not seeing is not something it does. Rather, blindness is what results in the absence of sight.
The natural evils of the world, then, are like darkness and blindness, with no real existence of their own. Terrible things like poverty, illness, and death are really nothing but the absence of wealth, health and life. Once we recognize this then we see that God does not create evils after all, for these evils are not “actively produced.” Everything God creates is in itself good. But goodness is a matter of degree, and when He produces things with less goodness than we might like, we call it an “evil.” But in itself it is just a lesser degree of that healthy goodness we desire.
And indeed we often show great ignorance in our judgments about what is evil! We naturally think of our own illnesses and deaths as great evils and wish they could be avoided. But that doesn’t really make much sense. We are physical beings made of matter and it’s the nature of matter to decay; to wish that we didn’t become ill or die would be like wishing we material beings were not material beings. But that is not to wish that we were healthier; it’s to wish that we didn’t exist at all, since a non-material being wouldn’t be us! And nobody wishes that.
Our judgments about evil can also be remarkably self-centered. If something happens against our personal desires or interests we immediately condemn it as evil, as if everything were all about us personally. But individual people, and even all humanity, are but the tiniest components in this immensely vast world--a world which is not made worse because some beings enjoy less goodness than others but rather more beautiful by the tremendous variety of beings it contains. We may not like it but the world just might be better off overall, as whole, if we personally happen to be enjoying less goodness than we might. Who are we to declare that the world as a whole is only good if things go well for us in particular?
So everything God does is good, to various degrees, then and now, Maimonides concludes--and we shouldn’t be so quick to judge as an evil our own rank in the relative distribution of goods.
Source: Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, Part III, Chs. X-XII. Transl. M. Friedländer, 2nd edition (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1904/1956).
It might have been easy to agree with this verdict after Day Six of Creation, when God renders it. But now? A quick look around reveals much that does not seem very good at all: everything suffers, decays, and dies. If the perfectly good and all-powerful God is responsible for the existence of everything, then how could there be so much imperfection and evil in the world?
It’s a hard question, and which continues to vex philosophers to this day, but the great medieval Jewish thinker Maimonides (1135-1204) thinks it can be answered.
Consider, to begin, the difference between light and darkness. Light has genuine being or existence, and wherever it does exist something actively produces it, some source of light. But darkness has neither genuine being nor must be actively produced: it’s what you get when there is nothing to produce light. Similarly creatures who can see have a genuine property: seeing is something we do and sight is an ability we possess. But a creature who is blind does not possess some other ability for blindness; not seeing is not something it does. Rather, blindness is what results in the absence of sight.
The natural evils of the world, then, are like darkness and blindness, with no real existence of their own. Terrible things like poverty, illness, and death are really nothing but the absence of wealth, health and life. Once we recognize this then we see that God does not create evils after all, for these evils are not “actively produced.” Everything God creates is in itself good. But goodness is a matter of degree, and when He produces things with less goodness than we might like, we call it an “evil.” But in itself it is just a lesser degree of that healthy goodness we desire.
And indeed we often show great ignorance in our judgments about what is evil! We naturally think of our own illnesses and deaths as great evils and wish they could be avoided. But that doesn’t really make much sense. We are physical beings made of matter and it’s the nature of matter to decay; to wish that we didn’t become ill or die would be like wishing we material beings were not material beings. But that is not to wish that we were healthier; it’s to wish that we didn’t exist at all, since a non-material being wouldn’t be us! And nobody wishes that.
Our judgments about evil can also be remarkably self-centered. If something happens against our personal desires or interests we immediately condemn it as evil, as if everything were all about us personally. But individual people, and even all humanity, are but the tiniest components in this immensely vast world--a world which is not made worse because some beings enjoy less goodness than others but rather more beautiful by the tremendous variety of beings it contains. We may not like it but the world just might be better off overall, as whole, if we personally happen to be enjoying less goodness than we might. Who are we to declare that the world as a whole is only good if things go well for us in particular?
So everything God does is good, to various degrees, then and now, Maimonides concludes--and we shouldn’t be so quick to judge as an evil our own rank in the relative distribution of goods.
Source: Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, Part III, Chs. X-XII. Transl. M. Friedländer, 2nd edition (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1904/1956).
Friday, September 11, 2009
The Ménage à Trois
For many people “God” is an abstraction, something to be analyzed logically and debated philosophically, something we make arguments about and whose existence we try to prove. But to conceive God as a problem to be solved, the Jewish existentialist thinker Martin Buber (1878-1965) thinks, is to misconceive Him. Like other thinkers before him, Buber stresses that religious belief is to be grounded not in philosophy but in some form of direct experience; but unlike his contemporary, the German thinker Rudolf Otto (1869-1937), he finds what Otto calls the "numinous," the “wholly other,” to be too remote and impersonal to be the proper object of that experience. Rather it is in our most personal relationships with others that we develop our most personal of relationships directly with God.
To be a human being is to be in relationships. But there are two different sorts of relationships, Buber suggests, which we may designate by the phrases “I-You” and “I-It.”
The I-You relationship is characterized by intimacy, mutuality, dialogue, exchange; it is a two-way relationship in which we treat the other as a genuine person with needs and interests to be explored and respected. We are thus directly engaged with that other as those needs and interests are directly present to us.
The I-It relationship to the contrary is one-way: the other is a mere object with no intrinsic ends of its own, something which we may simply use or exploit or dismiss. Here there is no direct engagement: we may think of the other any way we like, mediated by our own concepts and ideas, however it suits us.
Our typical I-You relationships are with other persons, naturally, and I-It relationships with “things,” but they are not restricted in this way: we may also have I-You relationships with a pet, or a tree, or even with inanimate objects, and we may similarly have I-It relationships even with people--as we do, for example, when we think of others as mere objects to be used for our own ends.
There is nothing wrong with I-It relationships, at least when they involve mere objects. But we become fully human only through the I-You relationship with other human beings. When we treat other people as objects, as “It”s, we lose something of our own humanity.
What does this have to do with God?
For many people “God” is an abstraction to be analyzed logically and debated philosophically. But to conceive God in this way is to conceive of Him as an object, an object of thought, and so it is to have an I-It relationship with Him. To the contrary we must aim for an I-You relationship with God: one where God is directly present to our experience and not mediated in any conceptual way.
And indeed that relationship in fact is always present to us--to be found in every genuine I-You relationship we enjoy! God is not merely Otto’s “wholly other” but in fact is also wholly present in all our I-You relationships. It is thus no accident that we speak of God as being a “person” since it is in our relationships with persons that we discover God--at least when we put aside our reasoning and language and concepts, our arguments and debates.
And so God is neither a principle nor an idea nor an object; nor is He the conclusion of some philosophical argument. Rather God is something to be experienced within our proper relationships with other beings. We speak with God, in effect, whenever we speak with another genuine You.
Thus every particular You affords us a glimpse through to the eternal You.
Source: Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923). Transl. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970).
To be a human being is to be in relationships. But there are two different sorts of relationships, Buber suggests, which we may designate by the phrases “I-You” and “I-It.”
The I-You relationship is characterized by intimacy, mutuality, dialogue, exchange; it is a two-way relationship in which we treat the other as a genuine person with needs and interests to be explored and respected. We are thus directly engaged with that other as those needs and interests are directly present to us.
The I-It relationship to the contrary is one-way: the other is a mere object with no intrinsic ends of its own, something which we may simply use or exploit or dismiss. Here there is no direct engagement: we may think of the other any way we like, mediated by our own concepts and ideas, however it suits us.
Our typical I-You relationships are with other persons, naturally, and I-It relationships with “things,” but they are not restricted in this way: we may also have I-You relationships with a pet, or a tree, or even with inanimate objects, and we may similarly have I-It relationships even with people--as we do, for example, when we think of others as mere objects to be used for our own ends.
There is nothing wrong with I-It relationships, at least when they involve mere objects. But we become fully human only through the I-You relationship with other human beings. When we treat other people as objects, as “It”s, we lose something of our own humanity.
What does this have to do with God?
For many people “God” is an abstraction to be analyzed logically and debated philosophically. But to conceive God in this way is to conceive of Him as an object, an object of thought, and so it is to have an I-It relationship with Him. To the contrary we must aim for an I-You relationship with God: one where God is directly present to our experience and not mediated in any conceptual way.
And indeed that relationship in fact is always present to us--to be found in every genuine I-You relationship we enjoy! God is not merely Otto’s “wholly other” but in fact is also wholly present in all our I-You relationships. It is thus no accident that we speak of God as being a “person” since it is in our relationships with persons that we discover God--at least when we put aside our reasoning and language and concepts, our arguments and debates.
And so God is neither a principle nor an idea nor an object; nor is He the conclusion of some philosophical argument. Rather God is something to be experienced within our proper relationships with other beings. We speak with God, in effect, whenever we speak with another genuine You.
Thus every particular You affords us a glimpse through to the eternal You.
Source: Martin Buber, I and Thou (1923). Transl. Walter Kaufmann (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970).
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Room Without Rants (Or, The Sorry State of Public Discourse)
They talk a lot, and loudly, and all at the same time. If they were your family during Thanksgiving, they’d be talking with their mouths full and the football game blaring in the background. It would be almost amusing if it weren’t in fact rather tragic.
I’m referring, of course, to the nonstop talking heads who can be found at almost any hour of the day, talking nonstop, all over television and radio. They talk about everything and nothing, so much so that they actually blur the distinction between talking about something and talking about nothing. They are, alas, the face – or perhaps I should say the food-stuffed mouth – of public discourse.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Not even when it comes to the more controversial topics of public discourse: politics, the economy, “death panels,” and in particular the crucible within which these all are raised beyond the melting point, namely the cluster of issues relating to religion, faith, and God. As I was researching my new book The God Question: What famous thinkers from Plato to Dawkins have said about the divine, in fact, I discovered a very appealing alternative. The religion debate shall serve as my example, but the points in fact generalize to all forms of debate.
There are primarily four sorts of people, it seems to me, who participate in debates about God: the reasonable theist, the reasonable atheist, and unreasonable versions of each.
By a “reasonable theist” I mean someone who believes (or is inclined towards belief) in God but who is open to exploring (and critiquing) that belief with all the normal tools of knowledge acquisition, including perception, experience more broadly construed, and most importantly reason. The reasonable theist desires not merely to believe in God, but to believe in God in the strongest and most coherent way he or she can – which requires investigating, in a genuinely open-minded and frequently critical way, the strongest and most coherent versions of theism available.
By a “reasonable atheist” I mean someone who believes (or is inclined to believe) that God does not exist but who is open to exploring that belief with all the normal tools of knowledge acquisition, including again, most importantly, reason. Such a person recognizes, in particular, that to reject belief in God in a reasonable way is to reject the strongest and most coherent versions of theism – which in turn also requires first investigating those theisms in a genuinely open-minded (if frequently critical) way.
“Unreasonable” people of either persuasion, meanwhile, are roughly everybody else (including, unfortunately, myself much of the time).
When you look at what the famous thinkers have said about God you are, generally, in the presence of very reasonable persons, both of the theist and atheist variety. But when you turn on your TV or listen to your radio or read most of today’s periodicals and even best-selling books, you are generally in the presence of not very reasonable persons, of both varieties. What you witness is often about as appealing as your uncle Fred’s screaming “Touchdown!” with his half-chewed turkey bulging from each cheek. There are the loud voices and the raving rants. There is the invoking of labels and the calling of names: theists are foolish, irrational, close-minded and crazy, while atheists are hedonistic heathens, selfish and soulless sinners. Mostly there are people talking – shouting – right past each other, there is lots of noise and very little significance, and there is definitely, most definitely, no listening.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Public discourse cannot generally be on the same level as scholarly discourse; of course not. But discourse can be reasonable even when it is widely accessible, even when it dispenses with jargon, Latin phrases, and little logical symbols. Public discourse in fact could learn a lot from the famous thinkers, not specifically about their therefores and reductios and if p then q’s, but about something more general. For when you enter the presence of the famous thinkers you are in a room dominated first and foremost by respect – not merely for the other occupants of the room, but for something more fundamental: respect above all for the norms of reason, of reasonable debate, and for the very act of inquiry itself.
This is a room where the conversation is at non-rock-concert decibels. This is room without rants, where points are made and defended and – here is the amazing part – there are actual pauses in speech where other people can get not just a word in but whole paragraphs, and respond, actually respond, in a relevant way, to the points the speaker is actually making. There is no name calling here. Or maybe there is some, for we may call what goes on, in this rant-less room, a name which has become increasingly irrelevant in public discourse in recent years: namely, a conversation.
This need not be imagined as a warm and mushy love-fest, of course, replete with herbal tea and frequent group hugs. The word “conversation” here characterizes only the genuinely participatory nature of the discourse. “Conversation” can, and in this case does, include many diverse kinds of content, even the kind more regularly associated with caffeinated beverages: argument, disagreement, and debate.
For to those people committed to the norms of reason, reasonable debate, and ultimately to the act of inquiry itself, one thing quickly becomes clear above all else: reasonable people may (and generally do) disagree about almost every important topic. What that means is as simple as it is profound: namely, the sheer fact that someone reaches a different conclusion from yours doesn’t itself mean that they are unreasonable.
And once you realize that you realize something else.
This: that you can learn a tremendous amount from people with whom you disagree, as long as they are as committed to the act of inquiry as are you. For if they disagree with you it is because they have reasons they find persuasive: arguments they find compelling, objections which seem to them to undermine your own positions, and so on. Well, if you really want to believe whatever it is you believe on the basis of genuinely good reasons, then who, we might ask, do you want to talk to: the person who already agrees with everything you believe, or the person who has discovered problems and objections and counter-arguments to your beliefs?
When you look at what the famous thinkers have said about God, the most startling thing you discover is precisely that: the widespread recognition that they can learn from those with whom they disagree even the most profoundly. Historically the famous thinkers from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions have read each other’s works, debated each other’s positions, and learned from each other, even as they diverged in their conclusions about as radically as one can. The same goes for thinkers from competing denominations within any one of these traditions.
And the same goes too, most of all, for theistically-inclined thinkers and the atheistically-inclined.
Or rather, to return to my own labeling and name-calling above, it goes for the reasonable theist and the reasonable atheist. They may reach quite opposite conclusions in the end, but you can see, as you look at my description of each above, that they both will spend much of their time engaged in precisely the same activity: investigating, in a genuinely open-minded (and frequently critical) way, the strongest and most coherent versions of theism available. It is no accident that they each might well make each other’s best, most productive, study partners. For their goal isn’t to “score points,” or to “win” the argument -- but instead to reach the truth, or at least the best approximation to the truth of which we are capable. And that is something that just might best be accomplished precisely through genuine conversation amongst disagreeing parties – that is, conversation governed by the norms of rational inquiry and all that that entails.
The lesson for today’s world is obvious: much goodness ensues when those conversing are reasonable non-ranters who, as a bonus, often swallow before speaking.
But don’t just take my word for it: ask such thinkers as the Jewish Maimonides, the Christian Aquinas, and the Muslim Averroes.
Or don’t take anyone’s word for it. Think it through for yourself.
Though, of course, it is only in a room without rants, in the end, that you can even hear yourself think.
[Adapted from an essay originally appearing on www.religiondispatches.org.]
I’m referring, of course, to the nonstop talking heads who can be found at almost any hour of the day, talking nonstop, all over television and radio. They talk about everything and nothing, so much so that they actually blur the distinction between talking about something and talking about nothing. They are, alas, the face – or perhaps I should say the food-stuffed mouth – of public discourse.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Not even when it comes to the more controversial topics of public discourse: politics, the economy, “death panels,” and in particular the crucible within which these all are raised beyond the melting point, namely the cluster of issues relating to religion, faith, and God. As I was researching my new book The God Question: What famous thinkers from Plato to Dawkins have said about the divine, in fact, I discovered a very appealing alternative. The religion debate shall serve as my example, but the points in fact generalize to all forms of debate.
There are primarily four sorts of people, it seems to me, who participate in debates about God: the reasonable theist, the reasonable atheist, and unreasonable versions of each.
By a “reasonable theist” I mean someone who believes (or is inclined towards belief) in God but who is open to exploring (and critiquing) that belief with all the normal tools of knowledge acquisition, including perception, experience more broadly construed, and most importantly reason. The reasonable theist desires not merely to believe in God, but to believe in God in the strongest and most coherent way he or she can – which requires investigating, in a genuinely open-minded and frequently critical way, the strongest and most coherent versions of theism available.
By a “reasonable atheist” I mean someone who believes (or is inclined to believe) that God does not exist but who is open to exploring that belief with all the normal tools of knowledge acquisition, including again, most importantly, reason. Such a person recognizes, in particular, that to reject belief in God in a reasonable way is to reject the strongest and most coherent versions of theism – which in turn also requires first investigating those theisms in a genuinely open-minded (if frequently critical) way.
“Unreasonable” people of either persuasion, meanwhile, are roughly everybody else (including, unfortunately, myself much of the time).
When you look at what the famous thinkers have said about God you are, generally, in the presence of very reasonable persons, both of the theist and atheist variety. But when you turn on your TV or listen to your radio or read most of today’s periodicals and even best-selling books, you are generally in the presence of not very reasonable persons, of both varieties. What you witness is often about as appealing as your uncle Fred’s screaming “Touchdown!” with his half-chewed turkey bulging from each cheek. There are the loud voices and the raving rants. There is the invoking of labels and the calling of names: theists are foolish, irrational, close-minded and crazy, while atheists are hedonistic heathens, selfish and soulless sinners. Mostly there are people talking – shouting – right past each other, there is lots of noise and very little significance, and there is definitely, most definitely, no listening.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Public discourse cannot generally be on the same level as scholarly discourse; of course not. But discourse can be reasonable even when it is widely accessible, even when it dispenses with jargon, Latin phrases, and little logical symbols. Public discourse in fact could learn a lot from the famous thinkers, not specifically about their therefores and reductios and if p then q’s, but about something more general. For when you enter the presence of the famous thinkers you are in a room dominated first and foremost by respect – not merely for the other occupants of the room, but for something more fundamental: respect above all for the norms of reason, of reasonable debate, and for the very act of inquiry itself.
This is a room where the conversation is at non-rock-concert decibels. This is room without rants, where points are made and defended and – here is the amazing part – there are actual pauses in speech where other people can get not just a word in but whole paragraphs, and respond, actually respond, in a relevant way, to the points the speaker is actually making. There is no name calling here. Or maybe there is some, for we may call what goes on, in this rant-less room, a name which has become increasingly irrelevant in public discourse in recent years: namely, a conversation.
This need not be imagined as a warm and mushy love-fest, of course, replete with herbal tea and frequent group hugs. The word “conversation” here characterizes only the genuinely participatory nature of the discourse. “Conversation” can, and in this case does, include many diverse kinds of content, even the kind more regularly associated with caffeinated beverages: argument, disagreement, and debate.
For to those people committed to the norms of reason, reasonable debate, and ultimately to the act of inquiry itself, one thing quickly becomes clear above all else: reasonable people may (and generally do) disagree about almost every important topic. What that means is as simple as it is profound: namely, the sheer fact that someone reaches a different conclusion from yours doesn’t itself mean that they are unreasonable.
And once you realize that you realize something else.
This: that you can learn a tremendous amount from people with whom you disagree, as long as they are as committed to the act of inquiry as are you. For if they disagree with you it is because they have reasons they find persuasive: arguments they find compelling, objections which seem to them to undermine your own positions, and so on. Well, if you really want to believe whatever it is you believe on the basis of genuinely good reasons, then who, we might ask, do you want to talk to: the person who already agrees with everything you believe, or the person who has discovered problems and objections and counter-arguments to your beliefs?
When you look at what the famous thinkers have said about God, the most startling thing you discover is precisely that: the widespread recognition that they can learn from those with whom they disagree even the most profoundly. Historically the famous thinkers from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions have read each other’s works, debated each other’s positions, and learned from each other, even as they diverged in their conclusions about as radically as one can. The same goes for thinkers from competing denominations within any one of these traditions.
And the same goes too, most of all, for theistically-inclined thinkers and the atheistically-inclined.
Or rather, to return to my own labeling and name-calling above, it goes for the reasonable theist and the reasonable atheist. They may reach quite opposite conclusions in the end, but you can see, as you look at my description of each above, that they both will spend much of their time engaged in precisely the same activity: investigating, in a genuinely open-minded (and frequently critical) way, the strongest and most coherent versions of theism available. It is no accident that they each might well make each other’s best, most productive, study partners. For their goal isn’t to “score points,” or to “win” the argument -- but instead to reach the truth, or at least the best approximation to the truth of which we are capable. And that is something that just might best be accomplished precisely through genuine conversation amongst disagreeing parties – that is, conversation governed by the norms of rational inquiry and all that that entails.
The lesson for today’s world is obvious: much goodness ensues when those conversing are reasonable non-ranters who, as a bonus, often swallow before speaking.
But don’t just take my word for it: ask such thinkers as the Jewish Maimonides, the Christian Aquinas, and the Muslim Averroes.
Or don’t take anyone’s word for it. Think it through for yourself.
Though, of course, it is only in a room without rants, in the end, that you can even hear yourself think.
[Adapted from an essay originally appearing on www.religiondispatches.org.]
Monday, August 10, 2009
"The God Question" on tour
Much of the past week or so has been spent promoting my newly published book, The God Question: What famous thinkers from Plato to Dawkins have said about the divine. I've done a number of talks and signings at bookstores, churches, and synagogues, and, so far, about a dozen radio interviews -- with a bunch more scheduled, so check the website (www.god-question.com) to see if my mellifluous voice can be heard in your city any time soon.
One thing I've learned from the experience is there are a lot if interesting and interested people out there -- people who want to think more carefully and deeply about the idea of God, both those who are inclined and those who are disinclined to believe in the existence of a being fitting their idea.
A second thing I've learned is that many of these people are truly surprised to discover that the idea of God can be pushed in a lot more directions than they have imagined -- those inclined to believe discover that their belief becomes richer and more sophisticated as they explore what famous thinkers have said about God, while those disinclined to believe discover that the thing they reject is a lot more resilient than they had realized.
A third thing I've learned is that it's awfully hard to get people to even know this book exists unless I pretty much tell them directly about it myself. That's worked fine for my immediate circle of family and friends, but it sure would be nice to get some word of mouth going. So if you're reading this -- go out and tell someone!
And finally I've learned that almost everyone -- at the talks and signings, and the radio hosts interviewing me -- inevitably asks me whether I believe in God.
Ought one to assume that I do believe in God because I wrote this book?
I find myself presenting the following response. Generally one of the first questions my students ask me at the start of the semester is whether I believe in God; and generally one of the last questions of the semester is the same one. That reveals two things: first, that I didn't answer the question the first time, and second, more importantly, that they were not able to tell what my views were throughout an entire semester of discussing the issues.
That seems to me to be exactly right. I see my role -- in this inquiry in particular, but as a philosophy teacher in general -- as one of a facilitator: I aim to lay out the most interesting or important ideas and arguments, objections, responses, and so on, bringing out what is best or strongest about them, and then to let the student (or the reader) make up his or her own mind. I wouldn't want anyone to be influenced by my own opinions -- either to agree with me or to disagree with me -- since the terrain is rich and interesting and, like all philosophical issues, not one which is close to generating any sort of consensus. So it's not my business to tell you what to think. It's only my business to help you sharpen your thoughts, and provide you with as much relevant information as possible, in the clearest way I can.
So no, one doesn't have to believe in God in order to carefully explore, in a productive way, what famous religious thinkers have said about God. Nor does one have to disbelieve in God to carefully explore, in a productive way, what famous non-religious or anti-religious thinkers have said. Reason-oriented believers and reason-oriented disbelievers can learn an awful lot from reason-governed conversations on the subject.
For this is indeed the ideal of a life of reason: one reaches one's conclusions on the basis of the ideas and arguments themselves. Just who is making them does not matter.
One thing I've learned from the experience is there are a lot if interesting and interested people out there -- people who want to think more carefully and deeply about the idea of God, both those who are inclined and those who are disinclined to believe in the existence of a being fitting their idea.
A second thing I've learned is that many of these people are truly surprised to discover that the idea of God can be pushed in a lot more directions than they have imagined -- those inclined to believe discover that their belief becomes richer and more sophisticated as they explore what famous thinkers have said about God, while those disinclined to believe discover that the thing they reject is a lot more resilient than they had realized.
A third thing I've learned is that it's awfully hard to get people to even know this book exists unless I pretty much tell them directly about it myself. That's worked fine for my immediate circle of family and friends, but it sure would be nice to get some word of mouth going. So if you're reading this -- go out and tell someone!
And finally I've learned that almost everyone -- at the talks and signings, and the radio hosts interviewing me -- inevitably asks me whether I believe in God.
Ought one to assume that I do believe in God because I wrote this book?
I find myself presenting the following response. Generally one of the first questions my students ask me at the start of the semester is whether I believe in God; and generally one of the last questions of the semester is the same one. That reveals two things: first, that I didn't answer the question the first time, and second, more importantly, that they were not able to tell what my views were throughout an entire semester of discussing the issues.
That seems to me to be exactly right. I see my role -- in this inquiry in particular, but as a philosophy teacher in general -- as one of a facilitator: I aim to lay out the most interesting or important ideas and arguments, objections, responses, and so on, bringing out what is best or strongest about them, and then to let the student (or the reader) make up his or her own mind. I wouldn't want anyone to be influenced by my own opinions -- either to agree with me or to disagree with me -- since the terrain is rich and interesting and, like all philosophical issues, not one which is close to generating any sort of consensus. So it's not my business to tell you what to think. It's only my business to help you sharpen your thoughts, and provide you with as much relevant information as possible, in the clearest way I can.
So no, one doesn't have to believe in God in order to carefully explore, in a productive way, what famous religious thinkers have said about God. Nor does one have to disbelieve in God to carefully explore, in a productive way, what famous non-religious or anti-religious thinkers have said. Reason-oriented believers and reason-oriented disbelievers can learn an awful lot from reason-governed conversations on the subject.
For this is indeed the ideal of a life of reason: one reaches one's conclusions on the basis of the ideas and arguments themselves. Just who is making them does not matter.
Monday, August 3, 2009
In the beginning was the beginning
You can read in the Bible that in the beginning God made the heaven and earth. But unfortunately the Bible doesn’t quite explain what that means. The whole notion of the “beginning” is actually very problematic--for it invites the question, which many have raised: “What was God doing for all those eons before He created the world, and why did He wait so long?” The great early Christian thinker St Augustine (354-430) notes his own temptation to give the jesting answer: “He was getting Hell ready for people who pry too deep.” But he admits that the question deserves a genuine answer. He is quite sure that before God created the world He did nothing at all, as His creating occurred “in the beginning.” But that still leaves us with many problems.
For example, if prior to creation God spent vast ages doing nothing, then what could have suddenly moved Him to create? And could God, whom many conceive to be eternal and unchanging, even undergo the sort of change required to transition from not creating to creating? But if not, if one insists that God is eternally unchanging, then His will must also be eternally unchanging. But His will is that by which He acts; He does things by willing them. If His will (like He) is eternally unchanging, then shouldn’t the world created by His will also have existed eternally, as long as He has, in which case it has no beginning? In short, how could an eternal and unchanging God suddenly create the world at a given time, when prior to that act of creation there was nothing other than Him?
So what was God doing before He created the world?
Nothing. But not quite in the sense you might think.
For one must recognize, Augustine observes, that time itself is something created by God, and the “beginning” of the world is also the beginning of time. So understood, it’s not the case that countless ages passed before God’s creative activity; before God created the world--heaven, and earth, and time--there was simply no time at all. But then it makes no sense to ask what God was doing “before” He created anything since there was no “before.” And since time itself begins with the world, at all actual times, beginning with that first moment, God has been busy creating the world and keeping it in existence. We don’t have to say that God suddenly switched from first not creating to subsequently creating. There never was a moment when God wasn’t creating.
Of course this now raises a new problem. For if there was no time “before” the cosmos, then the world has existed at all times--and so itself seems to be as eternal as God! But wouldn’t that put the world on a level with God? Isn’t what makes God unique precisely that He is the only being that exists eternally, while all other things come and go?
True, Augustine replies, the world has existed at all times--since time itself arose with the creation of the world--but God Himself is eternal in a different, more profound sense: He is outside of time altogether. Every created thing comes and goes, waxes and wanes, with the passage of time, but the eternity of God is like His entire being existing unchangingly, permanently, all at once.
So the world has existed since the beginning, but only God simply exists, period, eternally immune from the ravages of passing time.
Source: Augustine, The Confessions of St Augustine, Book 11.
For example, if prior to creation God spent vast ages doing nothing, then what could have suddenly moved Him to create? And could God, whom many conceive to be eternal and unchanging, even undergo the sort of change required to transition from not creating to creating? But if not, if one insists that God is eternally unchanging, then His will must also be eternally unchanging. But His will is that by which He acts; He does things by willing them. If His will (like He) is eternally unchanging, then shouldn’t the world created by His will also have existed eternally, as long as He has, in which case it has no beginning? In short, how could an eternal and unchanging God suddenly create the world at a given time, when prior to that act of creation there was nothing other than Him?
So what was God doing before He created the world?
Nothing. But not quite in the sense you might think.
For one must recognize, Augustine observes, that time itself is something created by God, and the “beginning” of the world is also the beginning of time. So understood, it’s not the case that countless ages passed before God’s creative activity; before God created the world--heaven, and earth, and time--there was simply no time at all. But then it makes no sense to ask what God was doing “before” He created anything since there was no “before.” And since time itself begins with the world, at all actual times, beginning with that first moment, God has been busy creating the world and keeping it in existence. We don’t have to say that God suddenly switched from first not creating to subsequently creating. There never was a moment when God wasn’t creating.
Of course this now raises a new problem. For if there was no time “before” the cosmos, then the world has existed at all times--and so itself seems to be as eternal as God! But wouldn’t that put the world on a level with God? Isn’t what makes God unique precisely that He is the only being that exists eternally, while all other things come and go?
True, Augustine replies, the world has existed at all times--since time itself arose with the creation of the world--but God Himself is eternal in a different, more profound sense: He is outside of time altogether. Every created thing comes and goes, waxes and wanes, with the passage of time, but the eternity of God is like His entire being existing unchangingly, permanently, all at once.
So the world has existed since the beginning, but only God simply exists, period, eternally immune from the ravages of passing time.
Source: Augustine, The Confessions of St Augustine, Book 11.
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