The Faith Delusion

Ed. note: I'm dragging this back up simply because I've been re-reading Annie Dillard's "Holy the Firm," in order to teach it in the morning. And that's left me full of beans. That, and I had to respond to ProfWombat.

You know, I come across something like this, and I realize there is no end of ignorance in the world. First, let's give the devil his due:

When it comes to arguing whether God exists, or whether she is a figment of the human mind, first-year theological students have it all over Richard Dawkins.

Review after review after review after review states this.

Only they never mention why our first-year theological student is correct and Dawkins is wrong. Or, if the [sic] do, it’s a point so peripheral and probably misinterpreted, that the end result is the same.

This is why Dawkins riles so many. Because, in essence, he is absolutely correct in his utterly logical condemnations of God and religion. And because he married Romana from Dr. Who, the lucky bastard.

Yeah. My problem with Dawkins is Leela Ward-envy. I guess somehow I knew they were married. And my other problem is, I'm obsessed with the question of God's existence, without even knowing it! Of course, what follows is peripheral to whatever "proof" Dawkins' submits as to God's non-exsitence, and it's probably misinterpreted, too. Well, misinterpreted by someone.

What is it about God's existence that so riles people? Maybe it's the Turing Test mentality of it: "existence" is known by experience. If I "chat" with you on a blog, then clearly we both have "existence." Right? But consider (again) Kierkegaard's answer to the issue: can I prove the existence of the prisoner in the dock, or can I only prove his identity as the criminal he is accused of being? Careful how you answer: the entire project of ontology, ontotheology, Western metaphysics, and phenomenology, are involved in the issue. The problem is, as I've pointed out before:

It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists-worse still, for the brave souls who venture to do it, the difficulty is of such a kind that fame by no means awaits those who are preoccupied with it. The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore, whether I am moving in the world of sensate palpability or in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who does indeed exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium [addition] or the eternal prius [pre-supposition], it can never be demonstrated. We shall take our time; after all, there is no reason for us to rush as there is for those who, out of concern for themselves, or for the god, or for something else, must rush to get proof that something exists. In that case, there is good reason to make haste, especially if the one involved has in all honesty made an accounting of the danger that he himself or the object being investigated does not exist until he proves it and does not dishonestly harbor the secret thought that essentially it exists whether he demonstrates it or not.

If one wanted to demonstrate Napoleon's existence from Napoleon's works, would it not be most curious, since his existence certainly explains the works but the works do not demonstrate his existence unless I have already in advanace interpreted the word "his" in such a way as to have assumed that he exists. But Napoleon is only an individual, and to that extent there is no absolute relation between him and his works-thus someone else could have done the same works. Perhaps that is why I cannot reason from the works to existence. If I call the works Napoleon's works, then the demonstration is superfluous, since I have already" mentioned his name. If I ignore this, I can never demonstrate from the works that they are Napoleon's but demonstrate (purely ideally) that such works are the works of a great general etc. However between the god and his works there is an absolute relation. God is not a name but a concept, and perhaps because of that his essentia involvit existentiam [essence involves existence].

Johannes Climacus, Philosophical Fragments.

Basically, if we're going to approach this from the posture of a scientist (like Dawkins), we'd first need to establish what "existence" is, and to establish it as something falsifiable. Existence, of course, is merely a concept, even to the most hardcore empiricist. Can someone tell me the difference between a sleeping person and a corpse, except that one is "alive," and the other, purely by definition, is not? (If you doubt me, recall Poe's fears of "premature burial," in an age where recognizing what we now call "coma" was a serious medical issue.) Where does the "alive" come from, and where does it go? What is it that animates a body, that gives that body "existence"? Because surely, if someone is dead, they no longer have "existence". What, then is "existence"?

Nexus 6 wants to assert Dawkins falsifies the proposition that God exists by running rings around people like me, logically. Socrates, of course, would have a field day with anyone asserting "existence" is provable or unprovable, and by his relentless logic (and little else), he "proved" the existence of the immortal soul stoutly enough it is still an almost ineradicable part of Western culture (we argue against the proposition to this day, if we argue it at all; no one argues from the assumption the soul does not exist. Such is the one-sidedness of logic, eh?)

Not that you'd know any of that from people who call a reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement a "First year theological student." Speaking as a graduate of a theological seminary, I can confidently state that at no time did we have a class arguing or even studying the existence of God, or any of the many proofs thereof. (Of course, what do I know? Unlike Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, or Dennett, or the blogger at Nexus 6, I've actually attended a theological seminary. Clearly those who are unsullied by the experience know better than I what goes on there. You want to know what seminary is like? I have an anecdote here that sums it up nicely.) We did have some lively discussions on the nature of God, and of metaphysics, and the faculty included people from traditional theists to process theologians (in terms of metaphysics, of which the subject of "existence" is primary theme, those two barely speak to each other.) . Although, as I pointed out in the post that caused Nexus 6 to include me in his/her/its ignorant diatribe, I've studied all the proofs for God's existence, and find all of them wanting. And for much better reasons than Dawkins managed to elucidate. And despite all that, I'm still an ordained minister and a confessing Christian.

Clearly, however, I'm not as well off as the ignoranti on this subject. Orwell was right: ignorance is bliss.

Google, which is my grate gud friend (N. Molesworth), popped up this link, which is another worthy examination of the topic of belief and biology. One serious question which is never explored as it should be is the simple, empirical one (via Karl Popper or David Hume; take your pick): is the concept of "belief," or "faith," for that matter, falsifiable? If not, it isn't subject to empirical analysis, and therefore, per Hume the uber-empiricist, we can't talk about it because it's nonsense. End of discussion. But, of course, that presumes the empiricism is the only way we can speak validly about anything. And if Christopher Hitchens, for example, only speaks of his politics or his wife and daughter in purely empirical terms, then, well, I'd be surprised (and sad for them). Even Hume didn't think such an end result of thought meant everything had been thought. He concluded it meant an end to philosophy, and a good excuse to take up sheep-herding.

Then along came Immanuel Kant....but that's another story, and another problem.

Because what really interests me here is the continued debate over God's existence, as if determining that argument would end all discussion. It's an atheist's canard, and I don't say that derisively but descriptively. The 19th century idea that, if we eliminated God (God's Funeral, A.N. Wilson called it), morality would cease, was not formulated by a hand-wringing theologian challenged by Enlightenment reasoning (I've yet to find any modern-day critic of religion who shows even a passing knowledge of theology, by the way), but by Friederich Nietszche, in Thus Spake Zarathustra. Atheists, you see, are forever setting up straw men and knocking them over. And then they are puzzled why all the world's believers don't explode like puffballs. Go figure.

The primary reason is, of course: Christians aren't worried about the question of God's existence. That has become a hot topic in the philosophy of religion and "Christian philosophy" (I'm not sure whether that's really a category of philosophy or not), and Heidegger critiqued such concerns as "ontotheology," claiming the issue confused Being with "a being," a position Tillich took up in describing God as the "ground of being" (as God transcends experience, Tillich argued, it is wrong to speak of God has "having existence.") Tillich also argued that everyone has an "ultimate concern," and so atheism is, strictly speaking, impossible. Given how many atheists wrap themselves around the question of God's existence, it's hard to argue against Tillich's point. But it's always atheists who bring this up as the "logical" demonstration that all believers are fools. It is a topic usually considered to have come from Christians, as the primary "proof" of God is usually considered to be Anselm's. Only problem is, it isn't so clear today that Anselm was engaged in apologetics (intellectual defense of the faith) when he crafted what Kant later labeled (and undermined) the "ontological proof." The argument of Anselm's proof (pace Charles Hartshorne) seems aimed more at providing intellectual (i.e., Greek rationalistic) support to a faith position already taken, rather than an argument for bringing the faithless to faith. Which brings us, mutatis mutandis, back to Kierkegaard:

The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore, whether I am moving in the world of sensate palpability or in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence.

If I don't suppose God exists, in short, how am I to prove otherwise? If I do suppose God exists, why do I need proof? And so the whole obsession with God's existence is an obsession of the non-believers; not the believers.
Yes, yes, I know many Christians who worry themselves over the proof of God's existence, and it's still a lively topic among Christian philosophers (such as Alvin Plantinga's ontological argument from modal logic). But the argument as a form of apologetics is not the same as an argument for the necessity of faith (which is not to be confused with belief). In fact, that's the real problem, and the good Lord willing I'll return to it eventually (promise! promises!): the distinction that needs to be made between "faith" and "belief." Oh, and the problems of epistemology, Christian and otherwise.

I know you can't wait. I'll bring okra.

Oh, that you would rend this keyboard

Sorry, I think I left my keys over there. Won't be a minute...

and make me step away from it!

Something I  read over the weekend has prompted me to examine again the issue of the "proof of God's existence."  I can't find it now but the concept is a perennial chestnut, so here goes:

The Gospel According to John, Chapter 12:

Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.
 
“Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.Father, glorify your name!”
 

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.
Jesus said, This voice was for your benefit, not mine.

Isaiah 64:

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
    that the mountains would tremble before you!
² As when fire sets twigs ablaze
    and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
    and cause the nations to quake before you!
³ For when you did awesome things that we did not expect,
    you came down, and the mountains trembled before you.
⁴ Since ancient times no one has heard,
    no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
    who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.
Exodus 19:

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled. Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the cloud descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.

Exodus 20:

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

So, moving from bottom to top, when people accepted the existence of God, they really wanted God to keep God's distance, and they knew God's presence as theophany (thunder and lightning).  Or they wished God would produce some thunder and lightning because, you know, prove it to them non-believers!  Or they heard the thunder, and weren't sure what it was, even though it was solely for their benefit.


And things are so much different now?


If God's existence were established as firmly as the keyboard my fingers are dancing over...oh, wait, that's the wrong use of the concept.  Category error, sorry.  Let me start again.


If God's existence were established as firmly as my own existence...oh, wait, I can't do that, either.  If I don't exist, the proof is pointless.  If I do exist, the proof is not evident.  I can prove my identity:  that I am the person named on my driver's license (if it isn't a fake), that I'm the person named on the diplomas and certificates and licenses on my wall (if they aren't fakes), but I could be Don Draper or Dick Whitman and still exist; except you might say you don't really know who I am.   But could I prove my existence?  I don't know how to do that.

It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists--worse still, for the brave souls who venture to do it, the difficulty is of such a kind that fame by no means awaits those who are preoccupied with it. The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who indeed does exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium or the eternal prius, it can never be demonstrated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, back to Johannes Climacus again, but how do you get away from him when this is the topic for discussion?  The real question is:  if I am going to prove the existence of a person, I first have to identify what existence is.  If I cannot reason from conclusion to existence (that, by the way, is the form of argument Socrates used to establish the existence of the soul; if you reject that, what form is available to prove your own existence?), but must reason from existence to conclusion, then I have to presuppose existence, or do without it altogether.

Either way, I end up unable to prove anything about existence.  At most, we wind up here:

 If, however, I interpret the expression "to demonstrate the existence of the god" to mean that I want to demonstrate that the unknown, which exists, is the god, than I do not express myself very felicitously, for then I demonstrate nothing, least of all an existence, but I develop the definiteness of a concept.

My existence is not a concept merely, but a reality.  How do I prove it, however?  I am known; or at least knowable.  As Climacus points out, God is the unknown (to the philosopher; to the non-believer); to demonstrate anything about that is to develop the definiteness of a concept.  But concepts can never be definite; if there's anything in human history that has been established, it is that.

So what does this business of the "proof of God's existence" have to do with anything?  If God's existence could be established beyond doubt or question (a fictional occurrence, I grant you), we would still face the situation of John 12, where some hear the voice of an angel, some hear thunder, and no one realizes, as the narrator says, that it is the voice of God.  God speaks to Moses but the people of Israel hear thunder and see a cloud shot through with lightning.  Isaiah wants God to make a demonstration that will convince people even in a day when we think everyone was convinced, and yet God declines to do so.

The entire question is a rubbish argument, a 19th century holdover still resting on the idea that without God humanity cannot be moral or even behave itself, and the God required for that is the Cosmic Thunderer who will smite the unbeliever and the immoral actor, even though the God of the Hebrew Scriptures never smote one unbeliever or one immoral actor, even among the Israelis at the time of the Exile.  This is why atheists get so worked up about moral systems that don't require a deity to make the systems moral; they are still fighting the 19th century fight while everyone has moved on into the 21st century.  Does God exist?  It isn't even a serious question.  Does it matter, is the only legitimate answer.  If God did exist, would you live your life any differently?

Depends on the nature of this God you think exists, doesn't it?  If you think God could only exist as Cosmic Punisher waiting to smack you down for failing to mind your moral "p's" and "q's", then I'd say no, God does not exist.  Not that God.  Does a God exist who wants only to save you from hellfire and damnation?  No, I'd say that God does not exist, either. Does God exist who wants to be in relationship with you, because truth is a relationship?  Yes, I think that God does exist.  Doesn't say much about the nature of God, but it's a beginning, and it's an improvement on those other concepts.  There are several Gods of human conception; well, they all are, aren't they?  What else could the conception of God be, except human?  If God was wholly of inhuman conception, we couldn't begin to conceive God at all; so that limitation is hardly the silver bullet that slays the werewolf so many atheists think it must be.  But there are several Gods of human conception, and I suppose we could argue over which exist, and which don't.

But I'm far more interested (though you wouldn't know it, would you, from how I go on) in the more important question:  how should we then live?  And the "we" is more and more the important word in that question.  Because truth is a relationship; which means truth involves "we."

It's that point that drives the atheists crazy.  They think they're being left out.  They think the only way in is to knock this relationship down; to establish that is a relationship with an illusion, because only that which is known empirically can be true.

Which is funny, because there's nothing empirical about love, yet we've devoted whole industries to it, reshaped lives because of it, created art works in praise of it; and while no one can establish it empirically, I've yet to meet anyone who is taken seriously for doubting its existence.

Um, yeah, whatever....

Anthony, in comments below, gives me a heads-up about this: An Atheist’s Guide to What You Need to Know about Theology. This is, of course, kind of like a Creationist's Guide to everything you need to know about Evolutionary theory. And rather like Creationists, who imagine if they know of the 2nd law of Thermodynamics they know all the science they need to refute Darwin, this "guide" rests on the category error of failing to distinguish between questions of theology, and questions of philosophy of religion. Such as, for example, the question of the existence of God; which is the central issue of this "guide:"

Part One. Do you feel the need to argue with a religious believer about why one should instead doubt God? To be effective, learn some theology (see Part Three). If you don't like arguing over God, then you don't need to know anything about theology. Your non-religious worldview is amply justified by common-sense, reason, and science. Relax and let others do any needed arguing.

Part Two. Do you feel the need to argue with religious believers about why religious belief has bad consequences or immoral implications? To be effective, you need to get good at "religious criticism" (rather than just match their opinion against your opinion), and you should acquire a philosophy that has rational standards of what is good/bad and what is moral/immoral (see Part Four). If you don't like arguing over religion gone bad, then you don't need to know anything about theology. Relax and smile at your religious neighbors, so they will wonder how an atheist can be so happy.

Part Three. Next, check whether this religious person is religious basically because this person enjoys their cozy worldview or this person finds religion morally satisfactory. If so, then proceed to Part Four instead. Still here? Then you are dealing with a religious person who could probably give you some frail arguments for why God exists.

Part One already betrays a complete ignorance, not of theology or philosophy, but of religion. Doubt God? Have you read the Psalms? ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") Job? The prophets? Jonah? The Gospels?

Idiot.

Parts Two and Three is an attempt to re-hash the 19th century arguments about God=morality=whatever society likes. I'll stick to Dostoevsky, thanks; more insightful and far more entertaining on this hoary chestnut. Why, even the film version of The Brothers Karamazov is a better investigation of those issues than this "guide" is. And as for Part Four: please. I'm a theologian and a philosopher of religion, and I can probably summon up better arguments for atheism than this "Guide" can. I won't even give you a "frail argument" for the existence of God, because I consider them all frail. But let's be distinctly clear about this last issue, and distinctly clear about where this "guide" is aimed.

Judaism, I am told, does not have a theology. The concept of theo logos is Greek, not Hebraic, and it's one reason Martin Buber is considered a philosopher, not a Jewish theologian. Islam seems to have a theology, but there is no serious discussion of the existence of God in Islam, at least not one I am aware of. Hinduism? Buddhism? Does anyone think of these when they hear the word "Theology"? And do you attack them by attacking the notion of God's existence? No, of course not. And it's an interesting thing that no one attacks observant Jews for believing in the same God Christians do; no one attacks them for their beliefs, that is. I guess that would seem rude....

Not to wear my heart on my sleeve about the matter, just to point out how truly narrow the vision of this "guide" is. It's aimed at some idea of Christian theology, and probably aimed at Protestant theology and some Roman Catholic theology. Orthodox doctrines are of no interest, and the Copts aren't even on the radar screen. So, are we clear so far?

The question of God's existence came up first among Christian theologians, although variants on the issue were used to condemn Socrates, and led to Aristotle's explanation of a causal universe that required a first cause, lest it be a closed loop with no beginning and no end, and so no cause and effect. But that shows only that the questions came into Christianity through Greece, not through Israel. And while the question intrigued theologians like Anselm and Aquinas, the answers were never the basis for faith, but arose from faith. So, at best, they were tautological; or, as Kierkegaard puts it, illogical:

If, namely the god does not exist, then of course it is impossible to demonstrate it. But if he does exist, then of course it is foolishness to want to demonstrate it, since I, in the very moment the demonstration commences, would presuppose it not as doubtful--which a presupposition cannot be, inasmuch as it is a presupposition--but as decided, because otherwise I would not begin, easily perceiving that the whole thing would be impossible if he did not exist. If, however, I interpret the expression "to demonstrate the existence of the god" to mean that I want to demonstrate that the unknown, which exists, is the god, than I do not express myself very felicitously, for then I demonstrate nothing, least of all an existence, but I develop the definiteness of a concept.

If you at least get the sense of a dog chasing its tail from the excerpt, you are on the right track. Proving the existence of God is a bootless enterprise, And it isn't a theological issue at all. The question of God's existence is a philosophical one; the question of God's nature is a theological one. But contemplating God's nature presupposes God in the first place, and no theologian ever came to the work having reasoned out God's existence without some experience of God that was far more important than the product of any rational analysis. (Consider the example of Aquinas, one of the supreme reasoning minds of the Western world. He had a mystical experience sometime after completing his Summa, and said that all his words were straw in comparison, and he never wrote another word. Did he need to argue a proof for God's existence? Would it have mattered?) Yet the existence of God is the central premise of this "guide," and it purports to explain enough theology to the uninformed to make them experts at destroying the faith of believers. Uh-huh. Kind of like how that 2nd law of thermodynamics just shoots down the whole theory of evolution.

Once again, what puzzles me is why "atheists" care so damned much what other people believe. I don't care that atheists don't share my beliefs; why do they insist I share theirs? Don't tell me it's because "Christians" force their beliefs on you, an atheist. A lot of Christians don't like my theology, either, and would love to force their version of Christianity on me, but I've learned to live with them, and to leave them alone. And as a "guide," I presume that blog post is supposed to lead somebody somewhere. But it's hardly going to provoke the kind of exploration that will lead back to the place of beginning, where it can be known for the first time. In fact, it's just another road to nowhere.

So it goes.

Either/Or: In Which God Dies (#2 in a series)

The central question of religion of philosophy in the 20th century and now the 21st seems to be the proof of the existence of God. This is the either/or on which so much rises or falls. Yet it's a curious pursuit, since we cannot prove the existence of a platypus or a ceolocanth: we can only produce an animal or a fish we can identify as a platypus or a coelocanth. We do not thereby prove it's "existence," but then the popular discourse seldom questions the definition of "existence" that it is demanding proof of. That way, of course, lies phenomenology: Husserl and Heidegger, Sartre and Levinas, and even, to some degree, deconstruction and Derrida. Too much idealism, and too Continental; so we content ourselves with equating existence with presence, and when adequate reports of the presence of platypi and coelocanths are obtained, we ask no more of them. No such reports of "God" can be obtained, of course, because all such reports are subjective, and none can produce an object for examination, so the "proofs" fail and the subject is considered closed against those who assert any faith at all.

The problem is one Johannes Climacus considered over 150 years ago, in a little noticed discussion of the issue. Climacus first puts the issue in the context of the paradox. He praises the paradox, asserting: "the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion, a mediocre fellow." But he quickly looks beyond that:

But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.

There is a buried epistemological assumption there, one we should not glide over lightly: thought "discovers," in proper Hellenistic fashion (we will leave the Platonists and Aristotelians to thrash out whether it is truly "discovery," or merely "recovery", and move on). Hebraic epistemology, at least as it pertains to matters of the God of Abraham, does not depend on discovery, but rather on reception. It is the revelation that enlightens; knowledge of God is given, not found, is revealed, not unearthed. The shift is a small but important one; indeed, it is central to the question of the importance of the will.

Thought, Climacus points out, wants most to think something it cannot think. It wants, then, to be able to think the existence of that which it cannot know except through experience. It wants to be able to discover, for itself, irrefutable proof of that which is by definition not subject to such proof. We cannot establish the existence of a platypus, but we can identify a specific monotreme as a platypus. We can dissect it, study it, classify it, discard it, and never prove the existence of it. But since we cannot do these things with Deity, we discard it. We demand proof of Deity's existence, even as we cannot imagine what that proof would be. We want to think the thought we cannot think, even if thinking that thought would be the downfall of the thought itself. So here is the first problem: we set ourselves a task we know is impossible and then, when it cannot be done, we declare the subject of the impossible quest responsible, and declare the impossible, at the very least, the question that must be answered and, since it cannot be, content ourselves with our paradox. Our passion can never be satisfied, never reach the collision, never face its downfall: and of how many passions in our lives can the same be said? Is it any wonder we are so passionate about the proofs of God's existence, and the inability of any of them to satisfy?

But that is only the beginning, and it still establishes nothing; it still leaves the passion waiting expectantly for a fulfillment it knows can never be, that it doesn't even want. Let's pursue the question, and find not what it's establishment would mean, but what the inability to establish it means. We have put so much on that issue, we have staked everything on its outcome. Even if we really don't want to know the answer, what answer do we presume there could be?

But what is this unknown against which the understanding in its paradoxical passion collides and which even disturbs man [sic] and his self-knowledge? It is the unknown. But it is not a human being, insofar as he knows man, or anything else that he knows. Therefore, let us call this unknown the god. It is only a name we give to it. It hardly occurs to the understanding to want to demonstrate that this unknown (the god) exists. If, namely the god does not exist, then of course it is impossible to demonstrate it. But if he does exist, then of course it is foolishness to want to demonstrate it, since I, in the very moment the demonstration commences, would presuppose it not as doubtful--which a presupposition cannot be, inasmuch as it is a presupposition--but as decided, because otherwise I would not begin, easily perceiving that the whole thing would be impossible if he did not exist. If, however, I interpret the expression "to demonstrate the existence of the god" to mean that I want to demonstrate that the unknown, which exists, is the god, than I do not express myself very felicitously, for then I demonstrate nothing, least of all an existence, but I develop the definiteness of a concept.

What is lurking here is the analytic/synthetic distinction from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Is "existence," in other words, an analytic truth (one where the truth is established solely through analysis of its meaning), or is it synthetic (one which "add[s] to the concept of the subject a predicate which has not been in any wise thought in it, and which no analysis could possibly extract from it,” i.e., one which can be based on empirical facts about the world.). The common assumption is that existence is synthetic; but the proofs of the existence of "the god" all presume the statement is actually analytical. Small wonder the result of all of these efforts is an epistemological black hole.

"It is generally a difficult matter to want to demonstrate that something exists--worse still, for the brave souls who venture to do it, the difficulty is of such a kind that fame by no means awaits those who are preoccupied with it. The whole process of demonstration continually becomes something entirely different, becomes an expanded concluding development of what I conclude from having presupposed that the object of investigation exists. Therefore in the world of thought, I never reason in conclusion to existence, but I reason in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something which exists is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who indeed does exist, is a criminal. Whether one wants to call existence an accessorium or the eternal prius, it can never be demonstrated.

The demands for proof of God's existence, of course, presume existence can be proven, and once it can, then proof of God's existence cannot be far behind. But the proof of existence itself is still wanting. As Climacus points out:

If one wanted to demonstrate Napoleon's existence from Napoleon's works, would it not be most curious, since his existence certainly explains the works but the works do not demonstrate his existence unless I have already in advance interpreted the word "his" in such a way as to have assumed he exists.

Napoleon, of course, is not necessary to his works, but the god is presumed to have an absolute relation to the god's works. So perhaps that is the difference that allows a proof of the god to be formulated:

But then, what are the god's works? The works from which I want to demonstrate his existence do not immediately and directly exist, not at all. Or are the wisdom in nature and the goodness or wisdom in Governance right in front of our noses? Do we not encounter the most terrible spiritual trials here, and is it ever possible to be finished with all these trials? But I still do not demonstrate God's existence from such an order of things, and even if I began, I would never finish and also would be obliged continually to live in suspenso lest something so terrible happen that my fragments of demonstration would be ruined. Therefore, from what works do I demonstrate it? From the works regarded ideally--that is, as they do not appear directly and immediately. But then I do not demonstrate it from the works, after all, but only develop the ideality I have presupposed; trusting in that, I even dare to defy all objections, even those that have not yet arisen. By beginning, then, I have presupposed the ideality, have presupposed that I will succeed in accomplishing it, but what else is that but presupposing that the god exists and actually beginning with trust in him.

Is it any wonder Rudolf Bultmann wrote his magnum opus on John's gospel with John open before him, and Johannes Climacus open beside him?

When he was in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many believed in him once they saw with their own eyes the miracles he performed. But Jesus didn't trust himself to them, because he understood them all too well. He didn't need to know more about humanity; he knew what people were really like. John 2:23-25, SV.

So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen everything he had done at the celebration in Jerusalem. (They had gone to the celebration too). Then he came back to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine.

There was an official whose son was sick in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had returned to Galilee from Judea, he approached him and pleaded with him to come down and cure his son, who was about to die.

Jesus said to him, "You people refuse to believe unless you see portents [semeia] and miracles [terata]."John 4:45-48

"Now my life is in turmoil, but should I say, 'Father, rescue me from this moment'? No, it was to face this moment that I came. Father, glorify your name!" Then a voice spoke out of the sky: "I have glorified it and I'll glorify it further."

The crowd there heard this, and some people remarked that it had thundered, others than an angel had spoken to him.

"That voice did not come for me but for you," Jesus rejoined.--John 12:27-30

In fact, after reading Bultmann, one wonders if Kierkegaard didn't have John's gospel in mind when writing the Philosophical Fragments. The Johannine distinction between semeion and dunamis seems almost tailor made for the philosophical concerns of his namesake Climacus. Either we see signs, proof, irrefutable evidence, or we do not believe! "The works from which I want to demonstrate his existence do not immediately and directly exist, not at all." They are signs, but only if we already see what they point to. If we don't see that, we don't see the signs, either, except as objects. And objects, no more than signs, can speak to us, and overcome our ignorance, our doubt, our lack of knowledge. Either we already know, and the sign merely confirms it for us, or we do not know, and at most what we hear is...thunder. Was it an angel who spoke to Jesus? Why didn't anyone in the audience get even that sign right? If that sign cannot demonstrate, finally and absolutely, the existence of the god, what can?

Climacus would leave the matter here:

The paradoxical passion of the understanding is, then, continually colliding with this unknown, which certainly does exist but is also unknown and to that extent does not exist. The understanding does not go beyond this; yet in its paradoxicality the understand cannot stop reaching it and being engaged with it, because wanting to express its relation to it by saying that this unknown does not exist will not do, since just saying that involves a relation. But what, then, is this unknown, for does not its being the god merely signify to us that it is the unknown? To declare that it is the unknown because we cannot know it, and that even if we could know it we could not express it, does not satisfy the passion, although it has correctly perceived the unknown as frontier. But a frontier is precisely the passion's torment, even though it is also its incentive. And yet it can go no further, whether it risks a sortie through via negationis or via eminentiae.*

But that simply leaves us where we began; although it explains rather nicely the energy some bring to this discussion, so determined are they to resolve once and for all the existence of the unknown; a resolution, of course, which can never be reached, at least not by the understanding.

And how do we understand this?

When we attend to the debates of philosophers and theologians about faith we are struck by the fact that every participant, no matter how he assails the faith of others, expresses some confidence of his own. And then we further note that confidence is usually professed not in one object only but in several and that often the effort to state this faith moves in a kind of circle from a first object to a second and perhaps a third and back to the first. The common, usually unanalyzed, association of faith with such terms as democracy, the people and education, or nature, experience, and reason, in popular statements about the things we can rely on has its counterpart in the more careful analsyses of academicians.

An example in philosophy of this expression of a pluralistic and circular faith is offered by A.J. Ayeer's radical book, Language, Truth and Logic...."We rely," he writes, "on our senses to substantiate or confute teh judgments which are based on our sensations." This is indeed a faith, an expression of sheer trust in what is not sensibly perceived, since the continuity and unity of sense-experience is not something that is sensed....A kind of structure of faith emerges in his confession. He relies on science because he is loyal to human life, not his own merely; and because science is based on sense-experience which he trusts. There are three objects of faith here: sense-experience, science and human values. And faith moves in a kind of circle justifying reliance on each of these objects by reference to the others.

And where does this lead? Back to the either/or:

In the midst of all these questionings and arguments about faith; in the controversies of the religious sects and philosophical schools; among the contentions as defenders of this and that faith attack others with different beliefs, we become aware of a strange fact. Belief and disbelief, trust and distrust, fideilty and infidelity toward one another is present in all those who contend or agree with each other as they argue about faith. Defensiveness of one's own beliefs and suspicion of those with other beliefs, distrust of their intellectual ability or honesty accompany men [sic] in all their encounters with each other. Confessions of loyalty to values of one sort or another and of reliance upon powers, no less than the implicit and explicit confessions of doubt or confidence in one another can be heard in the midst of all these arguments and analyses. Belief and trust and fidelity and their opposites are forever present as active attitudes in the very subjects who make them the objects of their inquiry or disputation.

So:

"Questions about faith, about its relation to action, to sight and understanding, about its objects and circular movements are important to us only because we have previously been required to answer the questions of faith."

When we are reduced to the either/or, the question of faith is put before us, and we have to answer. Faced with the unknown, we cannot explain it, but we cannot avoid it. And so we tried to see what would happen if we did without it; and so in the 1960's, a small group of theologians tried to proclaim God "dead." That theology alleged traced its roots back to Kierkegaard, to Bonhoeffer, even to Barth and to Tillich. There is a rather tedious revisionist history argument to be had about the length, breadth, purpose, and efficacy of the "God is dead" movement. But it actually asked a series of questions arranged around a central point: what is the metaphysical nature of God in a non-metaphysical world? One answer was to face the abandonment of metaphysics. The other answer was to reconsider the proposition that metaphysics had no meaning. And from that came reconsideration came phenomenology (out of German Idealism) and process theology (out of the ruins of the Principia Mathematica, following the acceptance of Gödel’s theorem of incompleteness.) But the clear question of the movement was: could we live without God? Could we reject the orthodox explanations of the nature of God (the heart of theology) and still practice theology? In what, in fact, did we have faith? What we could understand, if not see? Or what we could believe?

Was belief still an either/or? And could we ask that question without being accused of simply seeking publicity? (Ironically, Emory University shifted from an obscure college to a major research institution largely because of the notoreity of Thomas J.J. Altizer, a professor in the seminary at Emory, and one of the proponents of the controversial theology.) If we cannot prove God’s existence, must we necessarily lose faith in God? If we cannot establish the first object and then the second and perhaps a third and fourth, is it impossible for our faith to be generated by the movement among them? Or are: “Belief and trust and fidelity and their opposites …forever present as active attitudes in the very subjects who make them the objects of their inquiry or disputation”?, so that even the declaration that the ground of faith, God in this case, is dead, is gone, is simply another statement of belief and trust and fidelity or perhaps, its opposites? The argument of Climacus lingers, though: if God is “dead,” does that mean the unknown is no more? And if it cannot mean that, then how can the unknown, the god, be “dead,” destroyed, obsolete, removed from all further consideration? “But a frontier is precisely the passion's torment, even though it is also its incentive. And yet it can go no further, whether it risks a sortie through via negationis or via eminentiae.”

So for all that effort, where have we gone, except to the place where we began? And is it possible yet to know it for the first time?


*The via negationis is the way of negative theology; i.e., we can only speak of what God is not, not of what God is. It is a theology that has its own satisfactions and limitations, and while it much appealed to Luther, it is not the final word on the nature of God, or even the best word. The via emenentiae is the way of idealization, essentially the ground of Anselm's ontological "proof," i.e., that God is all that can be best possibly conceived, which ultimately is no more definitive nor satisfactory.

All the quotes from Philosophical Fragments, by the way, are from: Kierkegaard, Søren, Philosophical Fragments/Johannes Climacus, tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1985). Quotes from Niebuhr are: Niebuhr, H. Richard, Faith on Earth, ed. Richard R. Niebuhr (New Haven: Yale University Press 1989).

"A description of something that actually takes place in human life"

Somebody's gonna have to clean this up!

Suppose I say that the body will rot, and another says "No. Particles will rejoin in a thousand years, and there will be a Resurrection of you." If some said: "Wittgenstein, do you believe in this?" I'd say: "No." "Do you contradict the man?" I'd say: "No."
...
Suppose someone were a believer and said: "I believe in a Last Judgment," and I said: "Well, I'm not so sure. Possibly." You would say that there is an enormous gulf between us. If he said "There is a German aeroplane overhead," and I said "Possibly I'm not so sure," you'd say we were fairly near. It isn't a question of my being anywhere near him, but on an entirely different plane, which you could express by saying: "You mean something altogether different, Wittgenstein."
...
Whether something is a blunder or not--it is a blunder in a particular system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in another.

So recently I wandered over to Crooked Timber, where a post announced that Robert Bellah had died.  Bellah is a very important sociologist in the field of sociological studies of religion, and while I don't think such a science (or any science) is dispositive of truth (I'm not, after all, a positivist), I studied Bellah's work in seminary (where I was first introduced do it) and recognized its importance.

And after all, Crooked Timber is an "academic" blog where often the talk is academic gossip of one sort or another, but just as often it is enlightening and informative.  But about the third comment in was a long quote from Bellah critiquing Dawkins's work in The God Delusion.  It wasn't a brilliant critique, but it was eminently defensible; and yet because it was about "religion" it was also eminently foolish, at least in the eyes of the commenter; who wondered why any information arising from an "age of ignorance" (i.e., any time before the Enlightenment) was taken seriously as anything except the prattle of stupid children.

I lodged my complaint with such stupidity and then, feeling I'd actually left a turd in the punchbowl (well, a second one, anyway), I decamped. (I'm argumentative, and that's not always the best way to behave; especially at someone else's blog.  It's too much like walking into a strange bar and picking a fight with the biggest guy in the bar, just because you can.)  But the experience prompted me to re-read Terry Eagleton's review of The God Delusion, and that's where I found this comment by A.C. Grayling:

Terry Eagleton charges Richard Dawkins with failing to read theology in formulating his objection to religious belief, and thereby misses the point that when one rejects the premises of a set of views, it is a waste of one’s time to address what is built on those premises (LRB, 19 October). For example, if one concludes on the basis of rational investigation that one’s character and fate are not determined by the arrangement of the planets, stars and galaxies that can be seen from Earth, then one does not waste time comparing classic tropical astrology with sidereal astrology, or either with the Sarjatak system, or any of the three with any other construction placed on the ancient ignorances of our forefathers about the real nature of the heavenly bodies. Religion is exactly the same thing: it is the pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our forefathers, which (mainly through the natural gullibility of proselytised children, and tragically for the world) survives into the age in which I can send this letter by electronic means.

Eagleton’s touching foray into theology shows, if proof were needed, that he is no philosopher: God does not have to exist, he informs us, to be the ‘condition of possibility’ for anything else to exist. There follow several paragraphs in the same fanciful and increasingly emetic vein, which indirectly explain why he once thought Derrida should have been awarded an honorary degree at Cambridge.

Eagleton is no philosopher?  Neither, I would say, is Grayling (and yes, I know who Grayling is).  "Religion...is the pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our forefathers"?  Did his education stop in the early 19th century?  He falls, frankly, into the positivist error Eagleton points out in his review:

 Only positivists think that ‘rational’ means ‘scientific’. Dawkins rejects the surely reasonable case that science and religion are not in competition on the grounds that this insulates religion from rational inquiry. But this is a mistake: to claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself.

Dawkins holds that the existence or non-existence of God is a scientific hypothesis which is open to rational demonstration. Christianity teaches that to claim that there is a God must be reasonable, but that this is not at all the same thing as faith. Believing in God, whatever Dawkins might think, is not like concluding that aliens or the tooth fairy exist. God is not a celestial super-object or divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in. Theologians do not believe that he is either inside or outside the universe, as Dawkins thinks they do. His transcendence and invisibility are part of what he is, which is not the case with the Loch Ness monster. This is not to say that religious people believe in a black hole, because they also consider that God has revealed himself: not, as Dawkins thinks, in the guise of a cosmic manufacturer even smarter than Dawkins himself (the New Testament has next to nothing to say about God as Creator), but for Christians at least, in the form of a reviled and murdered political criminal. The Jews of the so-called Old Testament had faith in God, but this does not mean that after debating the matter at a number of international conferences they decided to endorse the scientific hypothesis that there existed a supreme architect of the universe – even though, as Genesis reveals, they were of this opinion. They had faith in God in the sense that I have faith in you. They may well have been mistaken in their view; but they were not mistaken because their scientific hypothesis was unsound.

In a classic example of  a language game (which was the beginning of the end of positivism), Eagleton presents a compact summation of basic theological doctrine, and Grayling swipes it aside as meaningless because it is the product of  "the pre-scientific, rudimentary metaphysics of our forefathers."  They are simply talking past each other, with Grayling refusing to give Eagleton any credence, lest Grayling have to learn something he doesn't know.  He might must as well have said an "age of ignorance;" his would be no less ignorant a remark.  And it fails entirely to get at the substance of what Eagleton said, because Grayling denies there is any substance to what Eagleton says; because theology is the equivalent of astrology or phrenology (which was actually considered a science).  Need one point out the extremist Christians who make the same claims about science?  And the difference in premises between Grayling and the science denier is substance?  or simply subject?

But if we take Grayling more seriously than he takes Eagleton (and dismissing an argument by declaring it without merit is not a product of rigorous logic; it is simply letting your knee-jerk be your answer), we are back  to the argument all atheists think is fundamental, but it is so only to them:  that the "existence of God" is first and foremost the question of religion.  And yet what "existence" means is always presumed, never defined.  Do you exist?  How would you prove it?  You can say you are alive.  You can even prove your identity (if I accept the indicia of papers and photos as proof.  But are they?  If you have amnesia, does a driver's license convince you the name by your picture is yours?  If you present a fake ID, does that prove your identity?  Or just prove your assertion of identity?  I ask simply to know how narrowly we can define this subject.).  Do you exist?  What does it mean to exist?  Is it the same as life itself?  Is it more, less, or neither?

I ask merely for clarification.  What is this concept "existence" and how does one "have" it?  Do I have it as I have the computer before me?  As I have a wife, a daughter, a life, a job?  I can easily define my family and friends in terms of relationships.  Do I have a relationship to existence?  If so, who is the "I" having this relationship, and what is "existence" that I can, or even must, have a relationship with it?

What is "existence"?  Is it "being"?  Then what is that?

We seem to be going in circles, and yet I am told this is the critical question:  if God's existence cannot be established, how do I believe?  But how do I establish existence at all?  Do atoms exist?  Do they exist as my daughter exists?  Her existence is bounded by life and death; does an atom die?  Her existence is bounded by memory; and when no one remembers her, does she cease to exist?

Where do I go to get these questions answered?  Science?  Atheism?

As Kierkegaard pointed out, I can identify a man named Napoleon with a set of actions, and thereby establish the identify of Napoleon with an individual.  But does that mean Napoleon exists, or did?  And what does "exist" mean in that sentence?  That he was "real"?  If a Turing Test program convinces me that a computer program is a human being, does that program have "existence"?  Why?  Why not?

But it's the positivism that is the falsehood.  God must "exist" before anything about the nature of God can be posited?  Why?  Because God must be a being among other beings, and therefore an individual, and therefore a supernatural individual, like Zeus or Apollo?  Does Grayling understand the first thing about monotheism, or radical monotheism?  He doesn't, because he says he doesn't have to:  prove God's existence first, then he'll consider the rest.  I might as well ask him to prove the existence of an atom before I accept the conclusions of modern physics.  What would he show me?  How would he do it?  If I don't accept the existence of the atom, what proof will persuade me?  Eagleton specifically says:  "God is not a celestial super-object of divine UFO, about whose existence we must remain agnostic until all the evidence is in.  Theologians do not think [God] is either inside or outside the universe...."  No, Grayling doesn't touch on that language, on Eagleton's attempts to make a summary of bog-standard Christian theology.  He simply assumes it's bosh and derides Eagleton for not thinking so, too.

Such are the intellectual arguments engaged by most Anglo-American philosophers.  The presumption is an atheistic one; not just a disinterest of denial of complete knowledge, but a denial that such knowledge is even possible.   It is also a blinkered and frightfully limited engagement with reality, which Eagleton describes in terms very familiar to anyone familiar with Anglo-American culture:

 There is a very English brand of common sense that believes mostly in what it can touch, weigh and taste, and The God Delusion springs from, among other places, that particular stable. At its most philistine and provincial, it makes Dick Cheney sound like Thomas Mann. The secular Ten Commandments that Dawkins commends to us, one of which advises us to enjoy our sex lives so long as they don’t damage others, are for the most part liberal platitudes. Dawkins quite rightly detests fundamentalists; but as far as I know his anti-religious diatribes have never been matched in his work by a critique of the global capitalism that generates the hatred, anxiety, insecurity and sense of humiliation that breed fundamentalism. Instead, as the obtuse media chatter has it, it’s all down to religion.

 Dawkins and Grayling replace insight with platitudes, and understanding with cliches.  And they don't wind up all that far away from Rep. Reid Ribble.    There is, as ever, an intellectul argument to be had (but clearly neither Grayling nor Dawkins are equipped for it), but the ultimate question is still:  "How should we then live?"  And if the answer is "As a self-content and self-righteous Oxford don, comfortable with the products of global capitalism and critiquing only straw men of your own creation and only on purely intellectual grounds," then I really have no respect for you.

As if, of course, my opinion on such things matters to anyone else.

There are many valid critiques to religious practice and even arising from religious history:  I learned about many of them in seminary.   I'm also familiar with every published argument over the existence of God, and the refutations of each argument.  But this flat rejection based on an ignorance proud of what it knows nothing about turns Western philosophy on its head. Socrates famously declared that he knew nothing, and so asked those who claimed knowledge to teach him.  What he usually did, of course, was prove they understood less than Socrates did (and he also proved understanding was far more important than knowledge.  The foundations of Western philosophy rested on sophia, not techne; since the Industrial Revolution and the Triumph of the Empiricists, that has shifted.).   Consider the classic syllogism:

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore:  Socrates is mortal.

Is it necessary for "Socrates" to exist, to make this syllogism sound?  No; because the syllogism makes no claim to either identity or existence; it speaks merely to a form of reasoning.  Logic cannot establish the validity of the propositions in that syllogism; it can only say that the syllogism itself is soundly constructed, and the conclusion arising from it is valid, within the system of logic.  Does logic automatically apply to the world?  No more than math does.  As I've pointed out to my students before, 1+1=2, except in biology where it =3, 4, perhaps even hundreds.  In biology individuals do not vanish into a new whole on the other side of the equation:  if they did, biology itself would soon come to a halt.  Granted, it isn't precisely the same thing to say that 1+1=2 is to say one male plus one female =?.  But then again, for most species, without one of each, there is never another; and that other is always (at least) the third.  You have to be very precise about how you discuss matters.

Is love, for example, analyzable by logic?   Is desire reducible to a mathematical formula, or to be best understood as the product of genes?  Do I love the music of Bach, or of polyphony and chant, because I am genetically predisposed to do so?  I find it quite unnecessary to explain it in those terms, and I'm not sure any such explanation would make sense, as well as a mockery of Occam's Razor. 

But back to Socrates and the syllogism:  is it really necessary for me to prove the existence of Socrates before I prove that Socrates is mortal?  No, because we are all familiar with the class of "man" and the concept of mortality, and since no one has yet experienced an immortal man (even Jesus died), we have no problem with the conclusion of the syllogism.  What, then, of the reality (or existence) of God? Can we posit that God is an experience like the experience of mortality among men?  No; by definition, God is beyond all categories of human experience.  God is infinite, God is eternal, God is creator ex nihilo, God's very speech is the act of creation; etc., etc.. etc.  All of this is beyond human experience, if not human understanding (to the extent it is, we enter into the realm of negative theology; let's keep this simple).  So God is impossible?

Perhaps.  An unstoppable force striking an immoveable object is impossible, since we can't posit the reality of one or the other.  But, as Wittgenstein said of Christianity:

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For 'consciousness of sin' is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.--Ludwig Wittgenstein, "Ethics, Life and Faith," The Wittgenstein Reader, ed. Anthony Kenny (Oxford, Blackwell Press 1994).

"A description of something that actually takes place in human life."  If that experience is foreclosed to you, is God impossible?  Well, if you can't love my wife the way I do, is my love for her impossible?  It is beyond your experience.  You have only my word for it.  No visible manifestation of my love is proof of its reality.  In fact, there is no proof of my love for her at all.  You either accept it, or you don't.  Does it, then, exist?  How would I prove it to you?  And more importantly, why would I bother?

 For it is clear that when we look at it in this way everything miraculous has disappeared; unless what we mean by this term is merely that a fact has not yet been explained by science which again means that we have hitherto failed to group this fact with others in a scientific system. This shows that it is absurd to say 'Science has proved that there are no miracles.' The truth is that the scientific way of looking at a fact is not the way to look at it as a miracle. For imagine whatever fact you may, it is not in itself miraculous in the absolute sense of that :om. For we see now that we have been using the word 'miracle' in a relative and an absolute sense. And I will now describe the experience of wondering at the existence of the world by saying: lt is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle. Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself. But what then does it mean to be aware of this miracle at some times and not at other times? For all I have said by shifting the expression of the miraculous from an expression by means of language to the expression by the existence of language, all I have said is again that we cannot express what we want to express and that all we say about the absolute miraculous remains nonsense. Now the answer to all this will seem perfectly clear to many of you. You will say: Well, if certain experiences constantly tempt as to attribute a quality to them which we call absolute or ethical value and importance, this simply shows that by these words we don’t mean nonsense, that after all what we mean by saying that an experience has absolute value is just a fact like other facts and that all it comes to is that we have not yet succeeded in finding the correct logical analysis of what we mean by our ethical and religious expressions. Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.

Wittgenstein uses the term "existence" in that passage, but does he mean it in the same was as we say animals have existence?  No, of course not.  But reading the passage carefully, we can say with Wittgenstein that "...we see now that we have been using the word 'existence' in a relative and an absolute sense," because "The truth is that the scientific way of looking at existence is not the way to look at it as being."  In fact, I'm not sure there is a scientific way to look at existence.  And if we use the word "existence" in both a relative and an absolute sense, we need to nail down which sense we mean when we ask "Does God exist?"  The question is not:  is God's existence absolute, but rather:  is existence an attribute God must absolutely have?  And if it is, what does "existence" mean in that context?

Does science even deal with questions of existence in any but the relative sense?  That is, the platypus or the coelocanth exists in the relative sense that it can be shown to be present in the world; but in the absolute sense, existence requires neither platypi nor coelocanths.  Is there an absolute sense in which existence itself must be present; that the world cannot not exist, therefore it must exist, therefore there is an explanation for why there is something rather than nothing?

And yet, again:  what is more important to us?  Scientific advancement?  Or understanding our own existence?  As Terry Eagleton points out, there is nothing in Richard Dawkin's philosophy (or lack thereof) which compels him to consider questions of justice or equality (or lack thereof) extant in the world, although Dawkins does get quite worked up about the science curricula in American public schools (so his world does extend to at least this side of the pond).  But he's quite complacent about economic injustice and social inequality, so long as it doesn't affect him.  And what is more important to the rest of us:  that Dawkins is right in his science and his atheism?  Or that we consider the substance of our own existence, and what we are doing with our own lives on this planet, among all these people?

How should we then live?  And do we expect science to provide a satisfactory answer to that question?  Or would the right answer to that question explode all the books in the world, including those of Messrs. Dawkins and Grayling?

P.S.  The sculpture in the photo is "The Shattering of the Vessels" by Anselm Kiefer.  It's one of the sculptures I used to admire at to the St. Louis Art Museum.   Follow the link if you want to read about it.

This picture is just to give you a sense of scale.  And no, the pictures don't do it justice at all.

"They will say 'How his hair is growing thin!' "

We begin here:

As to atheists, there are multiple types just as there are multiple types of Christians. One dichotomy is between those who lack a belief in god or gods, having lost faith or never having it, and the anti-theists, who actively deny that gods exists. Applying the term 'religious' to the former is akin to calling bald a hair color. The latter do seem religious in your sense.

Which got me thinking about the word "atheist."  What follows may be rank conjecture, as I haven't even consulted my OED (although I may before I'm through)  but when have I ever let that stop me?

At one point in Western culture (Europe and the North America) "theism" was the presumed default for everyone.  It didn't take commitment, affirmation, even confession:  you were presumed a theist.  Most accepted that state of affairs even if they were, as some pastors now call their congregations, "baptized heathens."  Kierkegaard railed against the lack of discipleship (to use Bonhoeffer's term, and tie this conversation completely up in anachronisms as soon as possible) in "Christendom," but he wasn't assuming an antipathy toward the basic assumptions of theists. Atheists were soon prominent enough in 19th century Europe to challenge the entire premise.

They were not disinterested, shrugging off theism and all it entailed like an outworn coat:  they were anti-theistic, ripping and tearing at the very fabric of theism as part of the established social order.  Even the atheists of the 19th century who decided religion was all a bit of social immaturity and a lingering sign of the coming of age of humanity which must inevitably occur, feared the widespread loss of theism would lead to social disorder.  They reasoned that it was fear of God, rather than fear of the state, which kept most people in order (especially the Babbitry of the middle class; yes, another anachronism, but bear with me, it's a blog post, not a scholarly treatise), and a lack of a deity meant a lack of respect for...well, the intellectuals comfortably pronouncing all things religious to be all things foolish.

This state of affairs continued for a long time.  It's no accident Bertrand Russell fell compelled to explain why he was not a Christian, and also no accident almost no public intellectual since has felt it necessary to make the same claim.  I have heard a pastor who was now a businessman explain that he "hid" his ordination from his European business contacts because religion in Europe, at least among the people he worked with, was considered such a negative, to explain his religious convictions would actually cost him money.  (You may admire that, or not, as you choose).  He felt he was in a better position appearing to conform to the European norm, and for him that norm was either non-theist or even atheist.

That doesn't yet get us to the distinction I want to make, but it illustrates how much the social default has been reset.  The expectation, at least among the people he knew, was for non-theism at least.

So when atheism was first identified, it was an opposition to the status quo.  Let me stop and point out this is where the philosophical question about the existence of God first gained prominence.  Yes, there are ancient examples, such as Anselm's argument, the one Kant dubbed the "ontological argument," but one has to note there are about 800 years between Kant and Anselm, and that most of the arguments about God's existence come from the 18th (among philosophers) and then 19th century (among intellectual generally).  It was in this period that atheism was identified as a legitimate intellectual stance (and not just a word for condemning the unbeliever, levied by a predominantly theist social order).  Here I will stop and invoke the OED:  "Atheism" is defined by the OED as a doctrine denying the existence of God.  The first use of it is in the mid 16th century, where it would have been used against a non-believer as a condemnation, not merely a description.  The "atheist" is defined as one who denies the existence of God, or who denies God's existence and so is not bound by morality.  Again, the reference is to the mid-16th century, and the presumption is that morality comes, not from human society or individuals, but from a deity.  (We cannot escape a certain amount of anachronism in this discussion; but we can try to identify it.)

So atheism begins with those who deny God's existence, but that argument doesn't get its own status against the status quo until after the Enlightenment, and by the 19th century it is fairly clear that the question of God's existence is the central question of atheism, and atheism itself becomes a legitimate, if still controversial, public stance.  Russell, as I said, felt the need to clarify his atheism in 1927.  He was arguing against the social norm.  Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and the last Christopher Hitchens have similarly argued against what they perceive to be the social norm, but their arguments are altogether more limited, blasting, as they do, Christian and Muslim fundamentalism as they define it.

But that's a topic for another day:  the salient point is that atheism is not indifferent to theism, it is opposed to it.  You cannot deny the existence of God without being interested in the question in the first place.  It was, as I say, a burning question in 19th century Europe, and still a question in 20th century Europe, especially after the horrors of Nazism and World War II.  That war marked "paid" to the comforts of religion for most people:  Sartre may have been scandalous in an America that added "In God We Trust" to the coinage and "Under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, but by and large his atheism carried the day, and speaking in the simplest terms (i.e., using Sartre to stand in for many others), he turned us from theism not to atheism, but to what I would call non-theism (which, once you live in Sartre's world, and by and large we do, is now the default position.  You no longer have to posit a world without God; now the burden has shifted to the theists, and why God is necessary at all.  Sartre's position, that God is not necessary, has become the default.).

It's not such an difficult move to make.  Hemingway's justly famous story "A Clean, Well-lighted Place," is the best possible example of the death of theism but the absence of atheism.  The story carefully presents a world in which there is no third-party looking on; the story itself brilliantly avoids the use of the third-person narrative voice, though it seems to narrated by an omniscient observer.  This is quite purposeful on Hemingway's part:  he is parting ways with the old assumption that God is in the quad watching the tree when no one else is there to know it is present.  And the story line is a meditation on a universe that now has no deity in it (there is no straight line to Sartre here, but he symoblizes for many this line of argument).  The arguments for and against are set aside in the story; non-theism is now the given.  A great deal of the impetus of the work of the "Lost Generation," in fact, is the loss of God.  But that loss doesn't turn into atheism, into denial of the existence of God:  it becomes non-theism.  It becomes wrestling with the absence of God, wrestling with a universe in which only human beings and their ideas, can be said to exist (and do ideas really "exist"?).  I would not call the Lost Generation and those who came after "atheists," because for the most part they simply assume a new default:  that there is no God, and that issue is beyond argument.  It's how we continue on, which is the point.

Atheists, of course, still want to argue the question of God's existence.  If they don't, how can they be atheists?

Consider the example of the late Madalyn Murray O'Hair, whose claim to fame was being a party to a number of suits to remove compulsory prayer from public schools.  Hers isn't even the case studied by first year law students, because the important decision on the issue was handed down in a related case considered by the Court at the same time (sic transit gloria).  I lived in Austin while Ms. O'Hair was still alive, and she could be found on the public access cable channel (those were the days!) ranting and spewing (there really is no other word for it; the woman was positively hateful) about anything and anyone she didn't like, and constantly pressing her opinions against whatever status quo she perceived to be relevant.  This was kind of odd because Austin was one of the least religious towns in Texas, even then.  I think more people went to Sunday brunch than any other town in Texas.  Had Ms. O'Hair really wanted to oppose Christianity, Dallas, then home to many TV evangelists (all gone, now) would have been a better place to be.  Still, opposition was her meat and drink, and she used her atheism to promote her protests to every subject that came to hand.

For the most part, of course, no one cared; and Austin being a largely more tolerant place for such ideas than Dallas, she was free to rant and rave as much as she wanted, because most people just weren't interested enough to be offended.  I find, more and more, that the questions of theism are no longer live questions for most people.  I teach a variety of college and high school students (and many Freshman who are just out of high school), and the prevailing religious sentiment is that of their surrounding culture. Most are still theists by default, although I've met more than a few for whom the Biblical stories (David and Goliath; Abraham and Isaac; Noah's Ark; Jonah and the Whale) mean nothing at all.  This may be because the popular churches, the ones with TV cameras and rock bands and exciting!, relevant! preaching about how to live! your! life!, don't dwell much on what was once standard kid's fare in church (I've never heard Joel Osteen mention one of those stories, but I don't pay attention to him, so that's no proof of anything).  It may be they simply don't go to church.  I have had students in that category, ones for whom the question of theism or atheism is as relevant as the question of racism or non-racism.   I think, and have long thought, President Obama was right in his recent remarks about an American generation that doesn't understand the race distinctions I grew up with (and tried to abandon).  I think the same thing is happening with issues of theism.  The difference is, we don't have to be racists; and we shouldn't be; but we can be theists, without being destructive to others or society.

Theism, though, is gradually falling away as the default position of all people. In my childhood every store in town either closed on Sunday, or didn't open until noon.  Non-church goers didn't put their heads out until that time, for fear of the social shaming.  That may still be true in a few small towns, especially in the South, but that stricture is crumbling everywhere in America, at least where it hasn't vanished altogether.  And the ire of the public atheists, the Dawkins and Hitchens and Harrises, is aimed at fundamentalist Christians or Muslims and mostly concerned, not with the fact of their belief, but with the political actions arising from their beliefs:  from terrorism at one extreme to forcing the denial of evolution in public school curricula at the other.  Is that a different flavor of atheism from that of David Hume or Madalyn Murray O'Hair?  I don't think so.  I think it's just a recognition that the major battles (such as government demands for public prayer) have been won, and that Christianity in the public square (it was never really a question of Judaism or Islam or Hinduism, to name three) is pretty much in retreat.

So is atheism an umbrella term that includes those without a theistic belief of any kind?  I don't think so, especially since theism is fading as the assumed position of everyone in American (and European) society.  Buddhism does not confess the existence of a deity, but I don't think one of the tenets of Buddhism is to deny the existence of God. It is not necessary to deny the existence of the god of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, or the gods of Hinduism, in order to be a Buddhist.  You can practice Buddhism quite well by simply ignoring the issue.  So it would be more accurate to call Buddhists non-theists than to call them atheists.  And many people who are not religious today (and who may have been in the past just as a matter of social comfort) are not really antithetical to the notion of God's existence:  they just aren't concerned with it.  We don't have a convenient term for such people, but they are, I suspect, becoming the default position of Western culture.  Perhaps, being the majority (if they are, or soon will be) they don't need a term.  Perhaps it is the theists and atheists who must identify themselves, but that doesn't get us away from the undeniable: the stance of atheism is to be against the confession and profession of theism.  Atheists deny the reality, presence, "existence" if you will (although the term is highly problematic, especially in this context) of God.  And you can't stand in opposition to something, make that a central tenet of your identity, and then say you don't really oppose anything, that the very questions of theism are of no interest to you.

In the 19th century, when atheism became a more or less respectable intellectual position, agnosticism was proposed as the reasonable alternative to the extreme affirmation of God, and the extreme denial of God.  That term illustrates perfectly the nature of the entire discussion.  The default position, as I say, was theism; any strong disagreement with that position had to take it into account, and so be antithetical to it.  Agnosticism comes along as the reasonable compromise between the extremes; but it is still interested in the question.  It is interested because it has to be:  the default is theism, you must define yourself against that if you are not for it.  What prevails now, I would argue, and will come to prevail, at least in Western culture, is non-theism:  people who, like the agnostics, don't know, but who, unlike the theists, atheists, or even the agnostics, just don't care.  In Western philosophical circles, the default position is either atheism (opposition to belief in a deity) or non-theism (the question is of no importance).  There are slippery distinctions, especially among the Continental philosophers:  Jacques Derrida, an Algerian Jew by birth, a non-believer by profession, was a philosopher of religion and credited with trying to develop what some called a "negative atheology."  He wasn't, however, an atheist:  he wasn't interested in philosophical discussions about the existence of God, and wrote lucidly about Kierkegaard and Abraham and Isaac, as well as about Christianity and Islam.

These are deep waters, and easy categories lead to easy errors.  My primary complaint against the latest crop of public atheists is that, like the late Ms. O'Hair, they are remarkably ignorant of subjects they profess to have so much contempt for; and they're contempt for it seems to be their raison d'etre; or at least, they're raison d'publish.  Their identity as atheists is to be in opposition to theists; but this isn't 19th century Europe (or, for that matter, America) anymore.  Most public figures do not have to assert their religious beliefs (if they have any) by now.  The default position is that we don't know if you attend church (Christianity is still the default; synagogue is invisible (the assumption is most Jews are cultural, but not observant) and mosques are scary), and we really don't care (except perhaps during political campaigns, and even then, absent the President, I don't see man politicians making much use of their regular church attendance, or lack thereof).  Are there people who don't share the interests of either theists or their opponents, the atheists?  I'm quite sure of it.  And I think it rather unfair to lump them in with the atheists whose entire point in identifying as atheists, is to deny the claims (real or imagined) of theists.

To the cloud!

"I believe in you."

"I believe in God."

Two statements that should say the same thing, but that couldn't be more different in meaning.  And the difference lies, not in the prepositional phrase, but in the verb.  What do we mean when we say "I believe"?

We don't mean the same thing as "trust" or "faith," which are synonymous terms.  If I trust you, it doesn't necessarily mean I believe in you.  You might say I can't trust God unless I believe in God, but you've skipped right over the issue and again committed the error of using the term without examining the meaning.  So, if I believe in you, what do I mean?

I mean, at a minimum, to be supportive.  Obviously I don't mean the same thing when I say "I believe in God."  But what do I mean?  That I assent to certain propositions about the nature of a deity?  But do those propositions have to include "existence" in the way that word is commonly understood?  Can the concept include "being"?  And then, what does "being" mean?  If I say "I believe in God," am I saying I believe in a anthropomorphic deity, like Zeus or Apollo?  Or am I saying something about a more complex concept, a concept better grasped by the word "unknowing" than by definition (one of the ultimate acts of knowing)?

We wander off immediately, you see, into the concept "God".  What do we mean by "God"?  Some insist a bearded old man, a la Blake's engravings.  Did Blake even believe in such a concept of God? Or was it simply an artistic contrivance, a convenient shorthand the way a man in a coat (we'd call it a  robe, not meaning the kind of bathrobe or house robe we use today; "coat" is the Biblical translation) with long brown hair, a brown beard, and a kindly expression.  No one knows what Jesus of Nazareth looked like, but most Americans are convinced they know him when they see him, especially when he's with little white children.

I suppose we could settle that concept first, but the problem then is, we have to decide whether or not God "exists."  And the problem is, how do you define "exist"?  No, seriously:  does the computer screen you are reading this on "exist"?  In the same sense as your family, friends, co-workers?  You?  What do we mean by "exist"?  A stone exists, but not the way a cat does, and a cat doesn't quite exist the way my wife does.  The usual distinction is that my wife (if not the cat) has being.  But what does "being" mean?

And then apply that concept to what Tillich called the "Ground of Being"?  He didn't come up with that label to make God ineffable or more a product of philosophical rumination.  He was pointing to the fact that God as Creator is also source of life, or existence (which may be two different things).  God is the source of being (not Being, that's Heidegger, and perhaps a whole 'other complication) and so God cannot have being, any more than your thoughts mean you have thinking.  You think, and you have thoughts, and so you are the ground of your thoughts.  But you are not thought; that would be a reductive argument, indeed.

It's not an elegant argument, but the terms of the discussion are abstract and somewhat obtuse.  We can do three hundred pages on being and existence right here, or we can get to the nub for our purposes:  God is not a human being with superpowers.  God is God; Creator of the Universe and Ground of Being.  God is "I am."  God is without referent.  You are the children of your parents; the colleague of your co-workers; the brother/sister/cousin/niece/nephew in your family; mother or father or spouse.  You are in community with others, you know yourself by who you are not as much as by who you are.  Your "existence" is not merely a matter of identity, because if you lose your identity you do not cease to exist.  You may lose your "mind" to dementia, but you will still exist in the world, still be a person, still deserve the respect accorded to persons.

You are you even if you are not you, because you are a human being among human beings.  God is "I am."  God is without referent, even without peer.  God is not Zeus with a wife and other gods to argue with; God has no father Chronos, no Titans to fight for control, needs no other god to drive the sun across the earth or welcome souls to Hades or to stir the waves or carry messages or model beauty.  It is perhaps more correct to speak of God apophatically, since everything said about God directly is sure to be wrong.

Now, what do I believe in?

I don't even know what's being said when someone says "I believe in God."  To me it's an empty phrase, like "God Bless America."  Is that a command?  A prayer?  A wish?  A declaration of national pride?  Is it performative, or declarative, or simply decorative?  Saying "I believe in God" is not the same thing as saying "I believe in luck," or "I believe that children are our future" (well, what else is except the ones who will carry one after we're gone?).  "I believe in God"?  In what?  And what does it mean in that sentence to "believe"?

This is the kind of thing I wish I could crowd source.  Because, really, "I believe in God"?  I might as well be saying I believe in mac and cheese.  Which is not to say I reject the very idea of God and want an argument for God's "existence" (what a silly notion).  But to say "I believe in God" is to say nothing.  It's a null set.  It's a sentence without content, a sign that doesn't signify.

Isn't it?