God and Subjectivity

This came about sooner than I wanted to, but Hex and Bryan have been hashing it out in the most recent post, and Bryan and I have been discussing it for a long time now: God and subjective morality.

You can see the example in the comments to the last post. If God does not exist, then everything is relative, and humans will be prone to selfishness. I can't speak for Bryan, but there are several illogical points in this argument. I'll try to dismantle them one by one and posit my own views as well.

First, the claim that an all-seeing, all-judging God removes relativity. Besides the lack of evidence for this entity (the merits of its position can be discussed later), the question remains to be asked: Does it really? As a conscious human being with an opinion, I could still reject that all-seeing, all-judging God and declare its actions evil according to my judgment. There is nothing inherent in humans that prevent them from judging God(s); they have been doing it for thousands of years, and we're still doing it today. Just take a look at Richard Dawkins.

Personally, I feel that if we take the God of the Bible or Quran to be the God Bryan is talking about, I would judge that deity as "evil" - I make the moral statement that any entity which orders the complete elimination of all a people to be evil. The ethnic cleansing of the Hebrews is morally comparable to Hitler. On the Hebrews behalf, I excuse the times surrounding the elimination; this was common practice in those days. But it is inexcusable as morally "good" today, and therefore any "infinite" being, encompassing both this time and the time past, would have to be moral in both times. He fails our moral expectations. I know many atheists who would refuse to bow down to the Biblical God. I would be hard-pressed to believe that he would be acting as morally as possible.

Now, does removing God introduce relativity? Well, the previous response makes this moot - every independently thinking entity has to receive the world, and how they acquire mundane knowledge differs slightly (taken from the fact that no one can agree on everything). Therefore, everything is already subjective, and there is no inherent objectivity in the world. As I once formulated (and I'm sure I am not the first to proclaim such): Everything is relative, including this statement. Another variant would be: There are no absolutes, including this statement. This is also for another time.

This brings me to the last charge: Are humans inherently selfish? Yes, but this goes for everyone, both for the God-fearing and the Godless. Evolution has driven all species (including humans) to survive, and therefore our survival is the greatest goal. But is it our survival as an individual or our survival as a whole? I'd opt for a mixture of both, and studies have been done to show this. Obviously everyone wants to personally survive at some level (most people who fail at committing suicide later regret trying at all, barring the mentally unstable or deranged), but we also have a sense of commitment. There's a famous phrase down South here: God, Country, Family. The ancients rationalized it that way as well; Sulpicius writing to Cicero thought that the Republic is primary in defending, rather than the family, since without the Republic the family could not exist. And why worship God at all if not for selfish reasons: yes to Heaven, no to Hell, yes to belonging to a group, no to ostracism, yes to emotional stability, no to inner turmoil. Really now, what's not selfish? Who has selflessly died to save Ecoli?

Practical Christianity

“So what?,” one might ask.

The endless debate between Christians and other religionists on the one hand and secular skeptics on the other is, well, endless, and – at the end of the day – one might be justified in asking if it makes any difference anyway. A difference in this life, that is, as distinct from any possible life to come beyond the grave.

What follows is my apologia for the practical implications of Christian faith in the context of our ordinary lives in this world.

First, a brief “impractical” theology.

The human problem is Death, Death understood as a challenge to “our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence” (Schubert Ogden). All religions, including such secular “isms” as exclude explicitly religious language in the false belief that by evading religious language one has evaded questions of religious significance, seek to address that challenge.

Death (capitalized in cosmological / mythological deference to the New Testament writers for whom Death was chief amongst the powers and principalities) is not merely the biological end of life. It is, instead, all the many ways in which the darker events of life (depression, illness, suffering, failure, rejection, etc.) force us to anticipate our own deaths and challenge us to consider the strong possibility that our lives and loves and struggles may ultimately amount to nothing. (*)

As process philosopher Charles Hartshorne put it, "If 'All's well that ends well" is a sound principle, what are we to make of the apparent facts that a human life ends in death and that being dead seems as far as possible from being well?" (Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes)

The failed human response to this challenge is sin, which is either a direct attempt under our own power to overcome death (by bombing the evil-doers?) or an attempt to run away from or deny death through distraction and escapism or, finally, an attempt to “do a deal” with death through achieving something (riches, fame, a relationship, family, even, as a last resort, religion as Luther was shrewed to note) that we presume will survive us and thus sweeten the bitterness of death. (See Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death for a secular form of this argument in detail.)

The biblical term for these unsuccessful coping behaviors is idolatry – worship of something other than God as a means of securing our lives in the face of death.

And its destructive impact on both individual and communal life and, for that matter, the entire ecosystem, is grievous.

But God in Christ has in fact defeated Death on the cross. This defeat of Death, however, has both an irony and a hiddenness to it as Christ defeats Death precisely by succumbing (as the world sees it) to Death.

In the Christian tradition, God in Christ is the true Lord of this world but that Lordship is exercised from a cross rather than a throne and that makes all the difference.

Which brings us to the new human possibility in Christ, which is the point of this essay.

Two things...

First, it doesn't happen all at once. The act of being saved, what the Church calls “justification,” may happen in an instant. But the full capacity to recognize the new reality in which one lives and to fully live out its implications (which the Church calls “sanctification”) will last a lifetime. For slackers like myself, even longer. Maybe two lifetimes. :-)

Second, it doesn't entail any particular lifestyle. Christians can be poor or rich, supportive of what they consider to be “just war” or pacifists (see Bonhoeffer, who was both), fully engaged in their society with all its moral gray areas or isolated and sectarian (with, I might add, all it's moral gray areas). They can be meat eaters or vegans, pot heads or teetotalers, gay or straight, pro-choice or pro-life. I suppose one could follow the slippery slope and say they could be racists or serial killers but – while there may be Christians who happen to be committed racists or serial killers – one would certainly be justified in at least questioning their understanding of Christian belief, the sincerity of their belief, the seriousness of their commitment to that belief or, finally, their sanity.

The point is, the beginning of the new human possibility in Christ is an attitude that is profoundly and ultimately hopeful while remaining penultimately realistic.

Christians should be ultimately hopeful about human existence and the existence of all Creation in their acceptance of Christ's resurrection as a sufficient ground to know that God is Lord over life and over death. And this confidence in the Resurrection allows that hope to be accompanied by the clear-eyed capacity to look at and deal with the darkest areas of human experience which is as should be expected by followers of a savior whose destiny in this world was crucifixion.

Those who encounter, share and live out their belief in God in Christ should be marked by their hopeful yet realistic engagement of life in all its aspects, be they light or dark. And, as they surrender their anxieties about the ultimate security of their own lives' worth, they should become progressively more available to the needs of others.

It is this hopeful yet realistic engagement of life coupled with an increasing availability to others rather than any simple bright-line cultural badge (e.g., hard working, law abiding, ethically serious, family oriented and religious) that marks the life of an individual – or Christian community or any community - that encounters, shares and responds to the reality of God in Christ as that reality is consistently encountered in the every day events of life.

Bill Bekkenhuis
(Bethlehem, PA)
[I warned you all that once you got me going it would be difficult to shut me up :-) ]


* People might notice a relationship between my take on this and that of the late William Stringfellow. That relationship, as 'Professor' Peter Schickele of P.D.Q. Bach fame once put it, is “identity” :-)

Some Thoughts on the Knowledge of God

I have usually thought of myself as a fideist and such thought probably dominates my decade-long neglected web site.

Since reading David Tracy and Schubert Ogden, I've been provoked by their suggestion that I'd paraphrase as follows: if God's very definition is such that human life as we know it would be all but impossible or even inconceivable without it, then what higher bar could it possibly pass to be considered a metaphysical truth?

Schubert Ogden proposes such a definition:

I hold that the primary use or function of “God” is to refer to the objective ground in reality itself of our ineradicable confidence in the final worth of our existence. It lies in the nature of its basic confidence to affirm that the real whole of which we experience ourselves to be parts is such as to be worthy of, and thus itself to evoke, that very confidence. The word “God,” then, provides the designation for whatever it is about this experienced whole that calls forth and justifies our original and inescapable trust, thereby meaning existentially, as William James once said, “'You can dismiss certain kinds of fear.'” From this it follows that to be free of such fear by existing in this trust is one and the same thing with affirming the reality of God. (The Reality of God, Schubert M. Ogden, p.37)

A few quick points before scurrying off to work...

First, the experience of God so defined is not limited to any one sectarian religion. In fact it is not tied to any particular use of religious language at all. All people associated with any religious tradition – Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, etc. - participate in this reality and have this knowledge. So do atheists – though they will balk at the idea of calling such a thing “knowledge of God”.

Schubert later says that even a suicide commits the act because he or she thinks there is some final meaning or worth to their lives – otherwise, why even bother?

Second, as a Christian, I believe the particular Christian spin on this knowledge of God is that for Christians, God is revealed in the crucified Jesus Christ. That is to say, it is not only in the good, the beautiful, the joyous events in life in which we encounter this “objective ground” that calls forth our “original and inescapable trust” in “the final worth of our existence”, but also the dark and tragic aspects of human experience.

Any thoughts?

Bill Bekkenhuis
(Bethlehem, PA)

How do we know what we know about God(s)?

On a previous entry of mine, an exchange in the got to a point where bryan wrote:

It's quite fair of you to turn the question back at me. Perhaps it is a flaw in my own understanding / practive of Christianity, but I have always had great difficulty separating what God does / has done versus what has simply happened. I have "feelings" about things, but I suppose I don't trust them...what if what I "feel" is simply my will or desire, not God's will?

This is why I say I have always been skeptical of the "experience" claims. I suppose at times I "experience" "good feelings" at church. Sometimes I "feel" things in my life are spiritually right. But what does this really mean? Is it me or is it God? How do those who express God through "experience" of him distinguish that from their "feelings"?

I guess I just don't trust my "experiences" to be anything of or from God. Rather, I simply do my best to try to practice the "essense" of Chrisianity as I believe it was passed down.

Now, this really got me to thinking. Without a 'first-hand' sensory experience, how could one know or even believe that there is anything in the supernatural at all? What is it in the messages that come from, say, holy texts that can be so amazingly convincing that one will choose that one particular theological system/ cosmogeny over all the others that are out there?

Is it the ethical system? As I understand the last paragraph of the quote from bryan above, it's the system that's the important part. (Apologies bryan if I'm mis-understanding.) The "essence" of a religion is more, as I see it, a version of how it's said rather than what's expressly said. Look to the Sunna(h) and Hadith of Islam for an example of this; it's more about how the Prophet 'meant' than what he literally said. In this then, one can't look to the 'literal' interpretation as the convincing element, but something underlying it.

What underlies the literal story/ recording/ laws/ etc. of a theological system? Something that holds it all together; a worldview. The worldview is the interpretation of the individual based on their cognitive map, which is based on their experiences. If the 'thread' of the cosmogeny is similar to the experiences of the individual, they see/ perceive/ feel a better 'fit' with the cosmogeny in question. They accept it as 'right' because their experiences 'fit' the system proposed.

Now, one must recognize that for people 'brought up' within a culture with a particular cosmogeny as the prevalent system, with public expression and sanctions, it becomes obvious that the prevailing system does, in fact, represent the workings of the world, and thus the experiences of the person. Especially at younger ages, when one's cognitive map is still in the formative aspect with no other frames of reference. In such cases, there would have to be observations/ occurrences of discordant actions/ systems to cause a doubt, and thus to make one begin to question the prevailing system.

And, it is just this sort of an occurrence that many religious systems try to avoid, probably to reinforce the 'fit' of their message by trying to keep their adherents from examining other systems. In the organic model that I use in my classes, the systems try to inoculate themselves from other systems by restricting who you can/ can't associate with or marry, or who must convert to which religion after marriage for a mixed religious couple, or in which faith children from such a religion must be 'brought up' in, or how such a system has the 'one truth' and all others are simply products of lies and deceits by the 'bad guy(s)' of the system.

And, a couple of questions to think about for those who have 'searched' outside the religion they've been 'brought up' in:

Why did you think/feel you needed to search for a different religious system?

What appealed to/ detracted from religious systems that you researched/ encountered?

If you have decided on one now, why did you choose it over all the others?

If you choices were not based on sensory experiences, what were they based on? (And, were those bases based on? Was it from previous experiences/ observations that were sensory-based?)

Please note that I don't think these are necessarily easy questions to answer. We base our choices on so many factors that it may be unknowable from our own immediate perspective. But I would like to know why. That initial question of 'what is in the messages that come from, holy texts that can be so amazingly convincing that one will choose that one particular theological system/ cosmogeny over all the others that are out there,' is, I think, primal to understanding what we can 'know' about beliefs in God(s).

And it is also important for understanding why some people will cling to beliefs even when the evidence is shown time and again to be against such a system.

Thanks!

Additional Intro for Bill Bekkenhuis

Just a quick (for me) introduction...

I'm not a dedicated internetist (if that's a word) but I have a web page at http://www.users.fast.net/~bekkenhuis/index.html . It hasn't been updated in about (no lie) about ten years as my web-publishing software is corrupt and I'm too lazy to just convert everything to bare-bones html. Someday I will.

I don't believe my theology has changed in any substantial way other than that I'm becoming persuaded by the idea (from both David Tracy and Schubert Ogden) that Christian metaphysics, even in this anti-metaphysical age, is a possibility... and maybe even an inevitability.

As I get older, my theology is becoming simpler (and more boring :-).

I'm about at the point of saying that loving something in its proper relation to God can both enhance your life and, when it dies or disappoints, break your heart - both of which make us more human.

On the other hand, to love something in place of God is to ultimately become consumed by it.

Think Gollum (and, to a lesser degree, Frodo) and the Ring.

More later - don't worry, I'm not normally this brief :-)

Bill (Bethlehem, PA)

Evangelical Manifesto

Until I can find the time to post something more substantial, I stumbled across the "Evangelical Manifesto" yesterday and thought I'd share it. Its intent (although extremely - too? - vague) appears to be to (rightly) depoliticize the label "Evangelical".

Evangelical Manifesto

Opinions? Comments?

Rational Methods

G. Gigerenzer claims that we often make use of 'fast and frugal heuristics' in coming to beliefs. Such fast and frugal heuristics in the case of the question, "Is this food safe?", might be,

1. Do I recognize this kind of food? If not, don't consider it safe.
2. Do I recognize it as being rotten or spoiled or contaminated? If so, don't consider it safe.
3. Have I had this kind of food before? If so, did I have an allergic reaction to it? If so, don't consider it safe.
4. Have I had this kind of food before? If so, is it from a clean establishment such as a supermarket? If so, consider it safe.
5. If I've not had this kind of food before, is it a food that I think is typical for people to be allergic to? If so, don't consider it safe.
6. If I've gotten this far without disqualification, are people telling me that it's safe? If so, consider it safe.
7. If not, don't consider it safe.

How in the world did I consider coming up with these heuristics instead of something totally different or opposite? Why isn't a heuristic, "Is the food the color red? If so, consider it safe," a heuristic cue that I would use?

Belief that a heuristic is adapted to the environment is rational when that heuristic helps the believer achieve beliefs which help them do it is that they want to do in the world. A person chooses the set of heuristics that optimizes for consistency and for usefulness towards achieving beliefs that correspond to increased success.

A belief that "the 7-step method [above] for considering food safe above is adapted to the environment" is rational if and only if it is formed from application of a set of heuristics such that belief that "the 7-step heuristic for considering food safe above is adapted to the environment" is positively correlated with behavior based on it that results in the satisfaction of the actual goals of the believer.

Here the method behind adopting this heuristic could be,

1. Has following this set of heuristics (e.g. the 7-step heuristic) always resulted in beliefs where behavior based on them resulted in satisfaction of my actual goals? If so, continue using them.
2. If behavior based on the beliefs formed from this set of heuristics sometimes results in failure, have I also met with a great number of successes such that there is still a positive correlation? If so, continue using them.
3. If the number of failures is considerable, try to come up with a better set of heuristics.
4. If the number of applications made is low, consider another set of heuristics if one presents itself to the mind and try and follow it if it seems promising.

The logical mind is now saying, what about this list of four? When is a belief that this set of four heuristics is adapted to the environment going to be rational? Here the method could be,

1. Has following this set of heuristics (e.g. this 4-step heuristic itself) always resulted in beliefs where behavior based on them resulted in satisfaction of my actual goals? If so, continue using them.
2. If behavior based on the beliefs formed from this set of heuristics sometimes results in failure, have I also met with a great number of successes such that there is still a positive correlation? If so, continue using them.
3. If the number of failures is considerable, try to come up with a better set of heuristics.
4. If the number of applications made is low, consider another set of heuristics if one presents itself to the mind and try and follow it if it seems promising.

This is not an exercise in a priori reasoning or pontification about the self-evident. If the subject has applied this heuristic for coming to the belief that a heuristic is rational, and if the resulting beliefs (that a heuristic is rational) are positively correlated with behavior based on them that is successful in that environment, then this heuristic is rational. If the heuristic is applied to belief that the heuristic itself is rational, and if the heuristic itself is rational by its own guidelines, then the search can stop, and there is no infinite regress. Application again (and again and again and again) in increasing levels of abstraction would give the same result as the first case of application to itself. There is no question here of, 'but is the belief that the four-step heuristic reaches correct results really true?' Such belief is rational and justified. And the belief that such belief is rational is rational, and so on ad infinitum.

Let me proceed to another example.

Suppose two people were playing Tic-Tac-Toe, and it was X's turn, as follows:

X * O
O X *
X O *

The belief under consideration is, 'is this move a good move?' One of the first heuristics could be, 'does this move connect three in a row?' Which reflects that the generalization that good moves include those that connect three in a row positively correlates with behavior that results in the satisfaction of the actual goals, which in this case is (presumably) to win the game.

Why is it that we are able to pick out food that is edible or to play a game like Tic-Tac-Toe? It is because we have evolved the ability to form intelligent beliefs about the world in order better to manipulate and survive in it. For this reason, nature provides the bootstraps of rationality in terms of methods that we cannot ignore and keep our sanity, such as that what you see is generally there, and that doing the same thing twice generally gets the same result. From these primitive methods spring up methods of increasing complexity, perhaps even increasing reliability, and very often increasingly esoteric application; they are accepted based on their consistency with methods already assimilated, which go back to the primitive methods supplied by human evolution.

The reason that this is accepted as the correct account of knowledge is that it corresponds to what we observe of human behavior with regard to knowledge. When determining whether something happens to be, the first question off the lips is, "How do we know?" This question skips past even "Is this part of what we know?" because the quality of the answer to the "How" question is presumed to answer the particular question of the state of this piece of information. This fact bodes ill for those who understand knowledge in terms of basic beliefs and bolsters those who see it in terms of methods applied.

And the way that the methods to be applied are themselves selected, that is the method of methods, is by optimizing for consistency with existing methods, and by seeding the procedure with a set of methods obtained in order to achieve rudimentary function in the world (a set of methods that help you find success as an organism in the beliefs formed). I use the word "seeding" because from that seed of mostly similar basic methodology spring several varied and sometimes incompatible more complicated methods, often because they apply to subjects that are far removed from the original domain to which knowledge applies, which is day-to-day human living.

This subject of epistemology is itself fairly abstract and removed from daily experience, which explains why it eludes a universally accepted solution. With slight irony, this can serve as weak confirmation for the theory that knowledge proceeds from methods learned for success in the realm of daily human experience.

'Respect atheists', says Cardinal

The Archbishop of Westminster has urged Christians to treat atheists and agnostics with "deep esteem".

Believers may be partly responsible for the decline in faith by losing sense of the mystery and treating God as a "fact in the world", he said in a lecture.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor called for more understanding and appreciation between believers and non-believers.

The leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales said that a "hidden God" was active in everyone's life.

The Cardinal's lecture at Westminster Cathedral comes after a spate of public clashes over issues such as stem-cell research, gay adoption and faith schools.

Taking a quick breather from the questions of faith and knowledge, I'd just thought I'd share this. It's from the BBC.

Actually, implications and questions on faith, mystery, and fact are pertinent to the discussion after all. Either way, I encourage you all to read.

A Theory of Knowledge

This is a theory of knowledge that I propose to employ. It seeks to resolve the regress problem while avoiding a principal failure alleged of foundationalism, that any belief can be declared basic and thus that absurdity results.

The regress problem in epistemology refers to the argument that, if knowledge is justified true belief, and if justification requires other knowledge in order to proceed, then an infinite regress of justifications referring back to other knowledge would be required to get just one piece of knowledge established. This is supposed impossible.

Foundationalism addresses the regress problem by considering some beliefs basic, and properly so; some beliefs need no justification for themselves beyond an understanding of the basic belief. Once a set of properly basic beliefs is established, justifications can proceed by referring to them.

I am not a foundationalist. The foundationalists generally do not declare the criteria for regarding a belief as basic, and thus they are rightly open to the allegation that any belief can be declared basic, with absurd results. Furthermore, foundationalists have the problem that knowledge does not appear to proceed from a limited set of basic beliefs in actual point of fact, since people first acquire knowledge without any inkling of what a basic belief and justification from them might even be.

The main school standing opposite foundationalism is coherentism, which the Wikipedia says "hold[s] that an individual belief is justified circularly by the way it fits together (coheres) with the rest of the belief system of which it is a part." The same source goes on to say that a principal problem of coherentism is regarding the whole system as corresponding to reality, since completely false sets of consistent beliefs can be constructed.

The theory of knowledge that I hold may be termed methodism (or methodist-coherentism). This theory states that we start with methods of acquiring knowledge, which we acquire from exposure and put to the test through trial and error. Those methods of acquiring knowledge that bear fruit we keep and refine; those that do not we discard. Methods bear fruit either by allowing us to achieve the results that we desire, or by being consistent in results with methods already accepted as valid.

Methods can be quite literally any kind of heuristic or procedure, and they are rational so long as they conform to the bearing fruit principle, by allowing us to achieve results that we desire and by being consistent in results with methods already accepted as valid. There is some give in the second part of the bearing-fruit clause too; we assume that methods will possibly be refined or are only partially reliable if they are not completely consistent with other methods in their conclusions.

Methods are developed ad hoc and to the task. I have particular methods that I apply when I am trying to determine how to understand someone and respond to them, and almost entirely different methods that I apply when I am trying to understand a math problem and solve it. There is no doubt that several of our methods of acquiring knowledge are in some sense hard-wired into our species, thus saving us trial and error on the individual level. There is also no doubt that some of our methods are highly sophisticated and perhaps only accessible to domain experts.

It is this framework for understanding knowledge that I bring to the discussion. I invite others to present their own theories of knowledge.

"Empirical Atheism"?

Chris W.' post brings forth an interesting question: Since there is a non-theistic parallel to empirical theism, what is the non-theistic parallel to fideist theism (Peter's terms)?

Most religious believers in recent times would be willing to assert that their basis for asserting their belief system are experiential and thus largely non-rational. Whether she gets a funny feeling in her stomach while reading the Bible, believes numerous prayers to have been answered, or some other form of religious experience, this system of thinking cannot be addressed by empirical atheism. Simply said, the languages used are incompatible (Hex draws attention to this). Nothing Richard Dawkins (or any other so-called "new atheists") says can counter the religious experience of the fideist believer.

It is odd then, that it seems that conversions to atheism are generally couched in experience, too. Whether the death of a loved one, a new familiarity with modern scientific discoveries, or disillusionment with a given religious institution, these are individual experiences. It need not be as personal as these examples. However, the language of skepticism allows it to be framed within larger philosophical problems that have long been the subject of discussion (e.g., the problem of evil, the "god hypothesis" as superfluous) that uses rational terminology to express what is fundamentally an experiential objection to the existence of a personified divinity. That is, if no one had ever experienced "evil," then such an objection would never have been raised. Richard Dawkins' rejection of his Anglican faith was both experiential and empirical: his experience of scientific education conflicted with his religious background. If it were "simply" empirical, then everyone who completed 9th grade biology would be an atheist. Perhaps it is the all-pervasive aspect of "religion" and "god-talk" in North America, but theism is the default position for most of America, whereas one generally "(de)converts" to atheism. Thus, I think it is misleading to categorize the atheist's beliefs as inherently more empirical than the fideist theist's.

Regardless, the experience of the fideist theist cannot be denied. Any productive conversation between the atheist and this individual cannot involve the experience's denial, but the interpretation of the experience could be a matter of contention. Appeals to neurosciences, arbitrariness interpretation of the experience as related to a specific deity, etc., are entirely reasonable and debatable objections and -importantly- are on the same playing field as the fideist theist (again, Peter draws attention to the importance of this). Because the theist's claim is propositional, they are given the benefit of the definition. Unfortunately, there has long been a dearth of a consensus on this matter, problematizing efforts to atheists to respond in any capacity.

To frame atheism as more empirical than any form of theism, pace Chris W., seems to be a matter of modernistic idealizations of the "objectivity" over and against the "subjective" and is not convincing. To go a step further and remain within the realm of civility, I would contend that this dichotomy between faith and reason is somewhat androcentric. This betrays assumptions about a Platonic mind-body dichotomy that Carol P. Christ has argued are male-oriented and need to be rejected. Nonetheless, it seems that the lines between empirical and fideist are not quite as clear as they are often made to be. The atheist's views (at least in most of North America) are just as experiential as the theists', despite their rationalization.

To add to Peter's observations about the variety of conceptions about "God's" personification, one might add to that the attributes. Omniscience and omnipresence are usually asserted as characteristics of God (with omnipotence and omnibenevolence less so), but it is useful to think of divinity apart from these terms or in heavily revised forms: maxiscient and maxibenevolent (though certainly not omnipotent) god of John Cobb and other process-relational theologians would be but one example. Perhaps before continuing too far, a loose definition of "god" might be attempted by someone in order to avoid talking past each other. Certainly, alternative definitions of "god" apart from traditional theism should not be overlooked by either theists or atheists.

Varieties of god worth recognizing

When a stranger says the word "god," we do not know what he means without a context. This is because the symbol has been used and appropriated by different groups for different purposes.

Consider the three groups defined by Chris. The first and the third groups (empiricist theists and fideist theists) will contain people who have used the symbol to refer to something that does exist in their respective concepts of reality, while the second group (empiricist atheists) will contain people who have used the symbol to refer to something that does not exist in their concept of reality. If one subset of the first group (empiricist theists) defines the symbol "god" to point to a thing that exists in their concept of reality, as well as in the concept of reality of some in the second group (empiricist atheists), the debate will shift to a question, not of evidence concerning the correct concept of reality, but of propriety of definition.

And this is a debate that the second group (empiricist atheists) will have a hard time winning against the first group (empricist theists). It is generally regarded as good to allow those within a group to define their own terms; i.e., to let Catholics define what a Pope is, to let Buddhists define what the Buddha means, and so forth. If a community of theists regards the symbol "god" to apply very certainly to an object that is also within the conceptual universe of one who regarded himself as an atheist, the atheist has a couple options, but an option that is not available to him usually would be to convince the theist that he has wrongly so labeled himself.

One option would be to concede that he is an atheist in respect of some understandings of "god," and a theist in respect of other understandings of "god." Another option would be to maintain that the second group (empiricist atheists) has developed their own definition of the "god" in which they do not believe, and thus that others must respect the atheist's narrower definition of "god" just as much as atheists must respect theistic definitions.

What would be varieties of god worth recognizing in this way? I can think of five very quickly.

1) Nature itself, the pantheistic god.

2) The laws of nature, the god that science uncovers.

3) Particular aspects of nature, such as the Sun or a volcano.

4) The human society as a whole, as Durkheim defined the aboriginal god.

5) The king or other divine man.

Before the atheists (or anyone else for that matter) rejects any of these definitions for god, they should note that each has been held by a significant portion of humanity and that, whether or not they end up somehow as the correct understanding of "god," they should be used to illuminate how that word has been used historically, not devalued as aberrations.

What can we know about God(s)?

"how could we know ... whether there is a God?"

What a great place to start.

Knowledge is at the beginning of all studies and epistemology is the beginning of knowing.

Now, in the scientific realm, one -must- have the repeatable, observable phenomena. Without it there's no testing for validation, and without that, no science. So then, how can one assess the validity of a non-repeatable, non-observable phenomena? One can't.


But, that doesn't stop people from doing just that. The observations are made by themselves. How?

They use their senses to experience the world. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell - these are the means by which we connect our brains to the outside world. And, these can be faulty.

Now, don't get me wrong, I depend on my senses all the time. I make lots and lots of choices based on what I see, hear, touch, etc. But to make true sense of them, I have to have a framework within which they function. This is what anthropologists call a 'cognitive map'. Made up of a recognition of objects nearby (of which I am one), the spatial relationships they have to each other, and then the normative meanings, not only of those things in different combinations, but because I'm human, the social settings as well. Through this 'cognitive map' I make sense of the world I'm sensing.

Why am I off on this seeming tangent? Well, I'm getting back to how we can explain knowledge of God(s).

People's personal experiences tend to weigh heavily in the interpretive power of their 'cognitive map'. And usually, people like to have these built around explanations; cause and effect that is subject to future manipulation or at least just explanation of why things occur in the manner they do.

It is into this model and understanding that I'd like to put God(s).

If you look to the disputes between religions/faiths and science, you'll find that people can be utterly convinced that what they believe is true, even in the face of repeated, observable evidence to the contrary. This is because, to them, their experiences, interpreted through their senses and 'cognitive map', make a better explanation of the events that transpire for them than the repeatable phenomena.

This is important because, with the lack of repeatable phenomena, one has to ask not about the origins of God(s), but rather human discovery of them. If they can break the laws of time and space, then they only ways they can be experienced is going to be at the level of the personal. However, even someone who 'hears' the explanations of someone else's understandings is likely to integrate that possible cause and effect relationship into their own 'cognitive map' and thus, to interpret certain situations along those lines when the phenomena occurs.

In science, this is the realm of teaching. Gravity, as we understand it, is based on the attraction that two objects have on each other, as a function of their individual masses and distances. I could go out an observe this, but, overall, I take it to be a good explanation of the cause and effect of what happens to objects when I let go of them in midair. I am taking the testimony of someone else and using it to frame my world.

I might just as well latch onto the understanding that the reason things fall is because of invisible floor demons. They're invisible, so obviously they can't be seen, and they're greedy. They jump up in the air to grab things (except those filled with the lighter gases like H and He which they just detest and push away), and if the thing they grab is small enough, they scurry away with it (which is why sometimes you can't find the thing you dropped).

How would I know about invisible floor demons? Well, I'm likely to have to rely on the word of a specialist, since I can't see invisible things and have no demon-detector. I'll be taking someone else's testimony and using it to explain the phenomena.

Since I know about the floor demons, why do I really use the gravity explanation? Well, for me it's a better explanation (more exact and predictable) and I've never experienced an invisible floor demon personally.

Is it an easy step from invisible floor demons to God(s)? Absolutely, if gravity is taken out of the picture. Without a repeatable, observable phenomena that someone has tested, one answer that seems to fit the phenomena is as good as another that also seems to fit.

If God(s) must be discovered by humans so that they can be known, we can argue that such a knowledge is likely to be 'viral' in nature. For instance, I experience God(s) while very hungry and tired. As I discover more about the role God(s) play(s) in the workings of the world, the more I'm likely to tell people what I know, especially if my view is cohesive. Through my act of telling people about my/God(s) system, I'm priming them to 'see' the same relationships in the occurrences of the world around them. Thus giving them the experiential knowledge and adding personal validity to the system which they are likely to pass on to others.

When I talk about this in my classes, I use the terms first-hand belief and second-hand belief. First-hand belief is experiential; you have the proof because you've lived it - it happened to you. Second-hand belief is hearsay; you have no proof, but you have an understanding, based on the testimony of others.

One has to realize then, that people with first-hand belief know, and those with second-hand belief have something perhaps less convincing. Without the experience of God(s), it's harder to know they exist.

But your knowledge need not be proof for others. Moreover, what is a proving experience for one person need not be interpreted as such for another, even when they share the same system in their 'cognitive map', as everyone's cognitive map is, of course, constructed from their own experiences and all the past systems of interpretation they've used to make sense of things.


So ... why all my rambling?

Well, from my perspective, only you can know about your conception of God(s). For this subject it has to be personal, since only you use your own senses and only you use your particular 'cognitive map'.


Be well with what you know.

Faith and Knowledge

Welcome everyone to the Theological Discussions blog. I would like to begin by a laying of the foundation for this discussion blog on the idea of God, chiefly how could we know that whether there is a God?

Generally people fall into one of three camps concerning God. The first one is perhaps the oldest, that God(s) simply exist(s), and that either it is obvious so (the older position), or that there is enough evidence for this proposition (the more recent variant after the introduction of science).

The second camp of people are those who deny God(s) because the evidence does not support that hypothesis. This is certainly an old position, going back at least 2000 years, and very likely more (see Job). This has been making waves lately with Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris in a front against theism.

The third camp of people fall into the "faith" category for the existence of God(s). I'll admit not being sure when this came about, but it seems more of a reaction to the second camp. That is, while there may not be empirical evidence for the existence of God(s), one just needs "faith" to believe it.

I put faith in quotation marks for a reason. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin fides, which actually meant something like loyalty. The usage is secured in English with respect to marriage, such as being faithful to one's spouse, and we get the derivative fidelity which lacks the religious "faith" connotations.

But for certain religions, belief in God(s) is "faith", used in the way not necessarily of loyalty, but rather just accepting the belief as true without empirical evidence. Hebrews 11.1 usually is trotted out for this, though I'm not sure if it can really be understood in that way. But regardless, modern Christians and some other religions tend to just have faith that God(s) exist(s), etc.

Nor is it only limited to God(s) either. People can have faith in many things. Usually, however, they don't really have faith for it, but rather they think the evidence is good enough to point to a positive reaction.

Let me take just one example. I've often heard something along the lines of "You have faith that your car will start in the morning." Well, actually, no. I don't. It might not start in the morning. I hope that it does, and the evidence usually points toward it actually starting, so I do not need to just accept that it will start.

For the car, that millions of people drive cars daily is great evidence for cars working. That my car was checked out by mechanics is more evidence that my car will work in the morning. That my car continues to start every morning is great evidence that it will start.

But one day it didn't start. But since I didn't merely have faith that it will start, my beliefs weren't shattered. I just accepted that my car didn't start, figured out why, got it fixed (had to get a running head start to crank that sucker up...which is one good thing about stick shifts), and now it starts up again. The testimony of many people who have first hand experience with tangible, measurable success with new starters is more evidence that my car will start tomorrow morning. Will it? I hope so, I'd even bet my money on it, but I would never say that I'm 100% sure, or that it is part of my beliefs that it will. It might not. It's a very real possibility, all things considered. Older cars sometimes stop working.

This is not the case with God(s). There is no empirical, measurable evidence for God(s). And for those whom claim that he/she/it/they are measurable, there doesn't exist any evidence for him/her/it/them. The God hypothesis, insofar as I have seen, has failed. No repeatable test or observation can be made to understand the proposition many people have put forth for the existence of God. With that, why should I or anyone accept God(s)?