Part 2:
From Knowledge to Non-Belief, or Becoming More of An
Atheist
NT. Let me
remind you what you said earlier:
‘God’ is a possible reality… The lack of such evidence for deity is
self-evident. Nor is there any self-evident or incontestable proof against the existence of deity.
Therefore, unless there is some kind of indubitable divine self-disclosure –
some kind of ‘Second Coming’, for example – the divine remains a possibility. A possibility. Nothing more
– and nothing less.
When you say that the reality or existence of God is a
possibility, nothing more and nothing less, that certainly sounds like
agnosticism to me. By ‘agnosticism’ I mean the view that the evidence for and
against the existence of God is so ambiguous or insufficient that we ought to withhold judgement – that is to say, we
ought to neither believe that there is a God nor believe that there is no God.
But now you seem to be saying something very different:
you tell us that you do believe in God, after all, but belief (you add) does
not amount to knowledge. But if that’s what you think, then in your opinion God
is not a “possibility and nothing more”, but a reality, an actuality. You do
not claim to know this, but you do believe it. The point is an elementary one:
do not confuse metaphysical claims (e.g., God is a possible reality) with
epistemological claims (e.g., We can have no knowledge of God).
The passage I just quoted also contains what I regard as
an unjustifiably high standard as to what counts as “good evidence” or a “good
reason”. In response, you claim that the standard of evidence should be set
very high because there is a great deal at stake in the question of the
existence of God. I agree that the standard should be set reasonably high, but
not ridiculously high. For, as I
pointed out, if your standard of self-evident or incontestable proof were
adopted, then virtually everything that we ordinarily believe should be
rejected. I believe that you exist. I believe that the world has existed for
more than 10 minutes. I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. (In fact, I
think it is more correct to label these as cases of ‘knowledge’ than ‘belief’,
but let’s put that aside for now.) But can I offer you any “self-evident or
incontestable” proof for these beliefs? Surprisingly, you claim that you “can
easily prove” things of this sort “in various ways”. Well, why have you been
holding this secret from us for so long? Please show us the proof! And if you
succeed you will have succeeded in doing something that no other person in the
history of philosophy has managed to do, Descartes included. But keep in mind
your standard of evidence: your proof, in order to be valid and sound, must be
self-evident or incontestable – by which, I gather, you mean that it cannot be rationally
doubted or contested by any person.
I think you gave yourself away when you said that
witnessing the Second Coming on CNN would constitute the kind of evidence that
you long for, the kind of evidence that would finally sweep away all doubt and unbelief.
But what exactly do you think you would see? Would you see a Christ-like figure
descending from the clouds in the sky, amidst trumpets sounding from the angels
surrounding him, before taking his place on a splendid throne, ready to
pronounce the Final Judgement? If you saw this on CNN, would you be witnessing
Christ, or would you be looking at a Disneyland imitation of Christ? Similarly,
if CNN were to disclose to the world tomorrow that they have miraculously found
video footage of the entire life of Jesus of Nazareth, and they were to
broadcast this, would it become immediately obvious to everyone that this
wandering Jew is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity? In our visually
overloaded age, we uncritically assume that seeing is believing, when in fact
belief requires much more than (and sometimes the very opposite of) seeing.
There are fantasies, not only in the sexual life, but in
the intellectual life as well. We cannot do without them, but we can at least
become aware of the more damaging and pernicious ones and try to let them go.
One problematic fantasy that philosophers and theologians are particularly
drawn to is that God – that which is the very source of the being of
everything, the reality which lies beyond the world and makes it to be as it is
– is fundamentally just like us, only infinitely greater, and so we can see and
interact with God as though he were like our wise, old grandfather. To believe
in a god like that is to believe in an idol. Atheism, insofar as it calls for
the rejection of such idols, is a salutary thing. I wonder whether you should
be more of an atheist.
MM. Now
we’re getting deeper into the abysses, which means more thinking – more joy. The abyss with which you begin this
time around is the abyss of ‘possibility’. I’m not sure if I’ve succeeded in
conveying my full-bodied configuration of it – perhaps I don’t want to be too
hyperbolic about it, which is a risk when I’m speaking of the things I love. The possible – how can one not be in
love with it? I’m not sure if I would go as far as Aristotle and Heidegger who
privilege it above actuality – no need to play favourites here – but we
certainly need to re-affirm its place, its parity with actuality, the two
alongside each other, perhaps even intertwined – like lovers. Perhaps that’s
why my qualification “nothing more and nothing less” is open to misunderstanding,
because people focus on the “nothing more” without paying attention to the
radical “nothing less”. Possibility is more – much more – than its typical anorexic caricature, of being barely
more than nothing. Part of the richness and fullness of possibility is its ‘twoness’:
possibilities may (‘also’) be actualities, and therefore worthy of belief but
not befitting the word ‘knowledge’ when evidence is lacking. Full-bodied
possibilities, glorious possibilities. Possibilities which are beliefs but are not knowledges, for the time being.
Hence, some possibilities remain beliefs – nothing more and nothing less. God-dess, for example.
Next, you refer to ‘agnosticism’ – another thing I love.
Like ‘possibility’, it’s another thing that hasn’t received enough attention,
something that requires much more attention. Much more loving attention. So
let’s participate in giving agnosticism its due by beginning with your
definition: “By ‘agnosticism’ I mean the view that the evidence for and against
the existence of God is so ambiguous or insufficient that we ought to withhold judgement – that is to say, we
ought to neither believe that there is a God nor believe that there is no God.”
Now, this kind of definition seems to denote what may be termed ‘existential
agnosticism’, for it pertains to the experience of not knowing whether one
believes or doesn’t believe. Now, do I
experience that kind of agnosticism? I don’t think so; I’m not sure. Perhaps
there may be a little bit of that in
me – I don’t know. Am I unsure I have faith in my faith? – good question. Like
any reasonable person, I have bouts of doubt, but I doubt whether that
constitutes an ‘agnosticism’ in which I must “withhold judgement” regarding my
belief or unbelief. I’m not sure what to make of ‘existential agnosticism’ – of
its possibility and experience. What I do know for sure is that one can believe
or otherwise – perhaps simultaneously (who knows?) – precisely because there is
a lack of evidence, one way or the other.
And it is this lack of knowledge or validation (for the
time being) that takes us – or returns us – to an ‘agnosticism’ that is perhaps
more relevant to the questions and abysses we are considering, what may be
termed ‘epistemological agnosticism’, which relates to the knowledge claims of
belief rather than belief ‘itself’. If what we are actually dealing with here
is ‘epistemological agnosticism’, then your definition would need to be
modified by substituting ‘know’ for ‘believe’: agnosticism requires that we
“withhold judgment” in terms of knowledge claims regarding the thatness (and
whatness) of divinity. Agnosticism doesn’t deny the experience of faith or
unfaith; it suspends religious knowledge claims like ‘God-dess is’ and ‘Goddess
isn’t’. Agnosticism allows such claims to remain articles of belief – but not
statements of fact, for such claims cannot be known to be true or false, for
the time being. Agnosticism’s crux is knowledge, not belief. Acknowledging its
own beautiful nature and scope, agnosticism does not nullify belief or unbelief
– indeed, it is, in a certain sense, a condition of their possibilities. Its
very name – agnostos, ‘without knowledge’ – discloses what it
is, what it does. And so, we must “withhold judgment” – but not in terms of whether
a particular belief is a belief (that’s pretty self-evident) but whether a particular
belief is a known fact.
And so, (epistemological) agnosticism is the recognition of
the nature of the content and claims of one’s faith, not the abandonment of faith
itself. And, the greater the recognition, the more provisional and progressive
our faith. A true and honest and noble faith – how can one therefore not love
agnosticism? How can we afford continuing to ignore it, to repress it, to
misinterpret it as a vulgar ‘fence-sitting’ or a lazy ‘cop-out’? No: agnosticism
is thoughtful; it allows thinking believers to affirm their faith as faith – contra the devilish religious leaders and their ignorant herds who dogmatically
consider their beliefs self-evidently true, some of them believing them to be
so self-evidently true that they die for their faith and often take many of the
rest of us with them. No: our agnosticism is hard work; it’s relentless, persistent,
persevering. It’s hard work reigning in one’s hubris – we need all the help we
can get. Armed with arrogance-eroding and mind-opening agnosticism, the
believer – at least this one – can believe
but not know whether one’s religious
beliefs are true.
You then go on to instruct me not to “confuse metaphysical
claims (e.g., God is a possible reality) with epistemological claims (e.g., We
can have no knowledge of God).” I hope what I’ve just been saying about abysses
like ‘possibility’ and ‘agnosticism’ has substantially cleared up any confusion
as to whether I’ve been confusing metaphysical and epistemological claims. Just
in case: yes, I believe in the
metaphysical claim that deity is a possible reality and, yes, we do not presently have any self-evident knowledge of
divinity. Yes, yes. That’s faith.
That’s reasonable.
You return to the question of my standard of evidence
being high, too high – “ridiculously high”
(your emphasis). You offer some everyday beliefs: that you believe I exist;
that the world has existed for more than 10 minutes; that the sun will rise
tomorrow. Let’s begin with the reasonability – more accurately: the degree of reasonability – of these
beliefs. The first two are extremely reasonable, so reasonable, in fact, that what
you state in parentheses – with the qualification “but let’s put that aside for
now”, a statement that now demands our immediate attention – certainly applies
to the first two ‘beliefs’; you state: “In fact, I think it is more correct to
label these as cases of ‘knowledge’ than ‘belief’ . . .”. I wholeheartedly
concur when it comes to the first two everyday beliefs: so reasonable are they
that it’s somewhat ridiculous to label the first two beliefs ‘beliefs’ – for
they are self-evident knowledges, facts. In other words, they may be ‘beliefs’
but because they are so-self evident, so ridiculously reasonable, it’s more credible
and less ridiculous to speak of them as knowledge rather than ‘beliefs’.
The third belief – i.e. that the sun will rise tomorrow – is
somewhat problematical. It involves a claim about tomorrow which is a claim about
the future, and claims about the future certainly do not have the same degree
of certainty – perhaps they are marked by relatively little certainty, if any? –
compared to propositions such as ‘I exist’ and ‘the universe is older than 10
minutes’. Remember: we live in a very spontaneous cosmos. Our universe may
explode tonight. Hence, it is possible that
the sun won’t rise tomorrow. Who knows? Of course, there is a certain amount of
incredulity when faced with this counter-possibility, an incredulity not only
informed by the fact that scientific theory indicates that the sun will probably
still keep rising for trillions of days, but an incredulity also attributable
to the fact that we homo sapiens are
creatures of habit who anthropocentrically assume that the sun will keep rising
for us. Nonetheless, when it comes to the future – even the
cosmically-miniscule future of what-will-follow-tonight – many things are
possible, including the sun’s non-arising. I would therefore be somewhat wary
of figuring ‘the sun rising tomorrow’ as ‘knowledge’. I’m comfortable with the
claim that it’s quite reasonable to assume or believe that the sun will rise
tomorrow – but I don’t think it constitutes ‘self-evident knowledge’.
And so, to summarize: some beliefs are ‘also’ knowledge
(e.g. ‘I exist’, ‘the universe is older than 10 minutes’, etc.) – so much so
that it is discordant to label them ‘beliefs’; some beliefs (e.g. ‘the sun will
rise tomorrow’) are somewhat reasonable because they have some kind of evidence
(e.g. predictive scientific theory), though they remain ‘beliefs’ precisely
because it is not self-evident that the sun will rise tomorrow – probable but
not indubitable; and then there are some beliefs (e.g. ‘that God-dess is’) that
remain beliefs precisely because there is no ‘good evidence’, for the time being.
Now, even though you yourself identify the examples you
have offered as ‘knowledge’ rather than belief (and I totally agree that the
first two are self-evidently true, the last being more questionable), you still
demand proof. You remark that if I could prove their self-evidence I “will have
succeeded in doing something that no other person in the history of philosophy
has managed to do, Descartes included.” Philosophy is already too ridiculous
and ridiculed for me to add to this ridicule by ‘proving’ that I exist and that
the world is at least 10-minutes-old. Sophistry is one of the discreditors of
philosophy, and I won’t participate in it. I love sophia – not sophistry. Don’t
get me wrong: a bit of Cartesian doubt is good and healthy, but I refuse to become
a Cartesian extremist. Now, a more productive task is an analysis of the reminder
that you immediately attach to your hyper-Cartesian challenge: “But keep in
mind your standard of evidence: your proof, in order to be valid and sound,
must be self-evident or incontestable – by which, I gather, you mean that it
cannot be rationally doubted or contested by any person.” Let’s focus on the
last two words “any person”: what is required here is the insertion of the word
‘thinking’ to produce the phrase ‘any thinking person’. Any reasonable person
would think that the examples you raised (especially the first two) are
self-evidently true. As I stated before: hyperbolic doubt was unique and
perhaps remains necessary (anything to break us from our various dogmatic
slumbers), and, as I noted before, it’s fun and interesting for philosophy
students experiencing the joy of radical questioning. But if we can’t agree that
‘the universe is somewhat older than 10-minutes’ is self-evident while
‘God-dess is’ is not, then we have irreconcilably different understandings of
what is obviously true (and therefore knowledge) and what is possibly true (and
therefore belief).
As part of this continuing question on the nature of
‘self-evidence’, you state: “I think you gave yourself away when you said that
witnessing the Second Coming on CNN would constitute the kind of evidence that
you long for, the kind of evidence that would finally sweep away all doubt and
unbelief.” A first point concerns my longing – more accurately: longings, epistemological and
existential-theological. To begin with, as a reasonable person, I am someone who
longs for evidence for my beliefs. Thus, some kind of Christic ‘Return’ would
confirm this belief, would confirm its facticity. Otherwise, it remains a
belief. Of course, my longing for Christ’s ‘Return’ is
more-than-epistemological, having (‘also’) to do with my very being: a Second
Coming would be a good thing – and not a moment too soon. But since we are
primarily dealing here with the thinking person’s faith and its relation to
knowledge, then, yes, witnessing a self-evident self-revelation like a
globally-telecast Second Coming would constitute incontestable evidence. In the
same way that the footage of 9/11 – however manipulated – was evidence that
this spectacular event did in fact happen, CNN-style footage would constitute
good evidence, validation. Given the mass of evidence, it is self-evident that
9/11 happened – hence, the knowledge that it occurred – not ‘just’ the belief
that it occurred, but the knowledge that it happened – its thatness. There is
no such self-evidence for divinity’s thatness.
Of course, it should also be noted that the details of 9/11
– its whatness – are obviously more blurred, obstructed: the exact contexts,
mechanics, and dynamics of 9/11 remain hidden from us. This question of detail
also applies to your hypothetical situation in which you propose that newly-found
footage of Jesus would not make it “immediately obvious” that “this wandering
Jew is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.” Now, if the tape captured any of
his purported miracles, this would certainly disclose something of the divine
in Jesus – but would it confirm his being “the Second Person of the Holy
Trinity”? Well, if the footage captured his miracle-making, and if he himself
proclaimed in the footage that he was “the Second Person of the Holy Trinity”,
then this would constitute incontestable evidence to any reasonable person – his
status confirmed by the telecasted Second Coming and the attendant miracles.
But our present situation is very far and very different from this hypothetical:
we don’t have good proof of divine existence – let alone a divine personality
which is partially constituted by a risen Jewish carpenter. Which, when you
think about it, sounds rather ridiculous – but nevertheless remains possible,
and therefore possibly true.
I also like your closing meditation/suggestion: “I wonder
whether you should be more of an atheist” – which isn’t as ridiculous as it
sounds. I think it’s noble and valuable for the theist to become “more of an
atheist”: a little bit of atheism will ensure that we don’t become religious dogmatists
and militants; a little bit of atheism will keep our minds open. Who knows – a
little bit of atheism may even make us better Christians. One could even
propose – perhaps only somewhat ridiculously – that even Jesus experienced a
little bit of ‘atheism’ up there on the stake, asking why he was abandoned by
his divine parent. A little bit of atheism isn’t only religiously and theologically
valuable, it’s valuable for thinking and living in general. If atheism spawned
some Christic doubt; if it spawned the ‘atheisms’ of Marxism and psychoanalysis
and Nietzsche – well, then, perhaps I should take up your advice of becoming “more
of an atheist”. Then again, perhaps I already am.