More From the Realm of Bad Analogies: On the Role of Faith In Our Belief in God

I get frustrated at the fact that so many philosophers seem to ignore the obvious. That is, they want things like theories that are consistent or arguments where conclusions logically follow from the premises. They like things like precision. But they ignore the fact that life, and especially life as it is lived by humans, just doesn't give us the consistent, logically correct conclusions that we'd like to get from life. Life just ain't that way. but still, they try and try, and push themselves further and further away from what or how people actually think and feel. There. I just said it. Philosophers push themselves away from how people feel. Emotions are somewhat akin to dirty words in philosophy. They're not supposed to be mentioned among educated company. Emotions are irrational. Emotions live in the realm of wishful thinking and contradictory beliefs. We can't use them. At least, no philosopher would ever trot out a "I think that because I just feel that it's right" during an argument. Although sometimes, I secretly begged that one would. But they don't. They can't. It wouldn't be philosophic. Which, by the way, all that clinging to all things orderly and philosophic has always bothered me when I hear philosophers discuss matters of God and religion. It seems that, with all of their finely-tuned arguments that philosophers kinda miss the point. They know what they need to say, but they can't say it. God is meant to be felt. But our philosophic arguments for believing in God won't allow us to say that exact reason why any of us ever accepts God, or Jesus, or whatever in the first place. Jesus is a better high than any drug. And not only does God love us, but we love him. And you can't argue for or against that. I had a constant question that I kept asking in my philosophy of religion class: who was all of that reilgious philosophy written for? I mean, I may knock Alvin Plantinga or Peter van Inwagen or whomever, not just because it's fun to take shots at people who are more intelligent that I can possibly become, but because I wanted these guys to lay their feelings (yes, feelings) out on the line. I wanted to hear some philosopher say, "look buddy, this is what I believe. And no, wise guy, I don't have a legitimate reason for doing so. It's all about what I feel when I'm in church, or when I know that God is with me". This is the way that most believers speak about their beliefs. They say, look, if you don't appreciate what I believe, then you can take your non-believing, condemned ass out somewhere and take a hike. I was waiting for the moment when I would read one of these guys say, "you don't believe, then that's too bad. I'm dusting off my feet, now". But nope. All I read was arguments. All of those premises, and inferences, and conclusions, possibility and probability and all those possible worlds... The funny thing is, is that when you get down to the wire, arguing for the existence of God is like explaining to someone who doesn't like chocolate that chocolate tastes good. You can't say exactly what makes chocolate good other than saying that you feel the goodness when you put it in your mouth. When you eat chocolate, your mouth goes, "yeah". If you don't experience the "yeah" you never will. You can put up the most logically correct argument, and the world will look at you, and philosophers will adore you, and tell you that your proof for the existence of God is elegant and wonderful. But the plain truth is, is that no matter how wonderful, there will always be some asshole (most likely me) that shrugs and says, "nah, I ain't buying it". No matter if your argument pushes the existence of God from possible to probable (and if you're reading the Bible, from probable to certain), so long as any person can say they ain't convinced, your wonderful, logically correct theory is just another example of overthinking on a rather simple thing. And the lesson is this: No matter what anyone, philosopher or otherwise, will tell you, God is more than the sum of our arguments. We cannot ignore the fact that what we feel, call it faith if you want, is at the heart of our belief in God. There isn't an argument that any man can construct that can sway, crush, or create faith in the hearts of men. And that is a capital T truth. But then, I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before. I think that I like this one from the Book of Luke: The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, "here it is", or "there it is", because the kingdom of God is within you. (Luke 17:20-21) 'nuff said.

A Word

Before I lay into my topic, I want to say that I've been cruising the blogisphere lately, and I've seen something that others possess that my blog severely lacks, namely pictures. As I have chosen to write about the influence that popular culture has on philosophy, and by extension, on our collective psyches, I realize that a tremendously important element of our popular culture is the visual image -- the photograph, the motion picture, the television, YouTube, etc. I realize that my omission is well... disabling in that a blog about pop culture should reflect just that -- popular culture. I should have pictures of Gerard Butler or Megan Fox plastered all over my blog. But I do not. It's the philosopher in me that insists that I need not display flashing lights nor need I show big boobs to garner an audience. Which just serves to prove why Katy Perry is more popular than Alvin Plantinga.

I have a bone to pick with you, Alvin Plantinga

Ok. So today I'm out for a walk, doing as I always do, which is relive old philosophy classes inside my head. Quite pathetic. Well, while on this particular outing, I started thinking first, about my general anger towards philosopy in general, and second, about my still fuming hostility towards a certain class that I sat in on last summer. Being that I am an atheist, I have a fondness towards those who believe in god (albeit foolishly) and, even more so, those who take all that believing in a supreme deity seriously enough to write about their belief. What's even more amazing than that is the fact that they encourage others to believe, and others actually do so. So, as I walked down the street, I thought about last summer's philosophy of religion class. Now, there are exactly two things that I have something of a dislike for -- one, bees, and two, the city of Clairmont, Califorina. I can't exactly explain what it is that unnerves me about the environs, but there's something that makes me cringe whenever I'm there. Maybe it's the fact that the people who attend the college(s) there look like "college people". They look exactly like what college people would look like if someone were casting a TV show about a liberalesque college hamlet filled with people that you'd only meet in a TV show about a liberalesque college hamlet. As I am a natural-born cynic and anti-collegian, the whole scene unnerves me greatly. But, that's where the class was held, and if I wanted to learn anything about god, that's where I'd have to be. Wait -- let me clear up this one thing first. I wasn't there because I actually wanted to be there. I was there for a friend, who, so to not be taking an independent study class alone, wanted me to tag along. I did, but soon realized that I could have stayed home, since the class consisted not only of my friend and I but also of two other people, not including the professor. But, dispite my cynicism, I am a loyal friend, and I accompanied my buddy (albeit begrudgingly) to Clairmont for talk of God. Well, if anything, what the atheist hates more than belief in general, are those who write about why we should believe. Most atheists, fortunately for them, are only aware of those who tend to garner the spotlight, that is, the usual round of televangelists and religious "motivational speakers". They don't have to deal with those who, in addition to calling themselves intellectuals, also call themselves believers. Unfortunately, I was one of those unfortunate lot who had made the mistake of thinking that philsophy was a have for the fallen like myself. How wrong I was. The philosopher on the summer's agenda: Alvin Plantinga. I had been exposed to Plantinga the previous spring, during another philosophy of religion class. Try as one might, I was never swayed by Plantinga's position on the problem of evil. And, I spent a lot of time being made to feel like disagreeing with Plantinga was some sort of philosophic blasphemy -- which is kind of funny when you think of it considering the fact that the man writes about god. At least I found it slightly amusing. Anyway, there I was again, reading Plantinga in Clarmont -- seething. I know that from time to time we encounter an idea, be it philosophical or not, that we just have to yell 'that's complete crap!' even if we can offer no better position to the one to which we object. Well, I encountered one such idea: sensus divinitatis or divine sense. This, in my nutshell, is the idea that we somehow have warranted belief in god because god somehow afflicts our brains directly. Whatever. I didn't believe it then, and I don't now. You see, I learned several things during that class. One thing I learned is that it is useless to argue against an agnostic philosophy professor. I mentioned on several occasions, that we could just as easily explain our god experiences by pointing to a physiological cause. That is, if we could prove that we can create the divine sense by way of artificallly stimulating specific areas of the brain, then we can say that perhaps it is not god that touches our brain, but a particular sensation caused by particular chemical and/or electronic reactions going on inside of our brains. I wasn't claiming to have come up with some sort of Plantinga-busting argument, or at the very least coming up with anything original. My idea truly was not -- I had fully copped it from an article that I read in Time magazine. Still, I had the feeling that no matter what I said, even if that included god himself explaining how he wasn't touching our brains, but that what we experienced as "Him" was in fact a mere chemical process, I wasn't going to get far with pushing my point of view into the realm of equal consideration. Which brings me to today's walk outside. I was thinking: maybe I was going about what I thought all wrong. I was focusing on causes and effects and not on the beliefs themselves. Here's what I mean: I was confusing what I thought because I wasn't thinking clearly about what I was thinking. (And as a fan of Orwell and Wittgenstein, this is the wrong thing to do). I was casually using words interchangably when I shoud have been focusing on them for precision. What I was doing was using the words "belief" and "hope" as the same. They are not. I can hope for a great many things, but every hope isn't, and indeed shouldn't be necessarily tied to any particular belief. Such is the case when I think about god. I was about 23 when I "outed" myself as an atheist. (I believe that there are Three Closets: One: outing oneself as a homosexual. Two: outing oneself as a "bear". And, Three: Coming out as an atheist. I can only imagine the torment of atheist gay bears out there). And it took even more years before I really felt any comfortability saying it to people other than friends and family. I had said that I didn't believe in god while somehow secretly smuggling the hope that there is. So, whenever I would think about what I "believed", I always ended up in some dreadful agnostic position, which was exactly where I didn't want to be. I even started qualifying my statements, like saying that I lived "atheistically" meaning that I reserved the right to claim that god exists, while simultaneously verbally denying his existence and living as if he did not exist. My spiritual life became a weird celestial contradiction: I believed and yet did not believe in god. But the contradiction wasn't real, as much as it was a product of sloppy thinking. My backdoor hope was muddying up the waters because I had mislabeled it as a belief. Now, I suppose that I could ask if sentiments (that is some sort of emotional feeling) qualify as beliefs. I'm not sure whether I want to venture a guess on that subject. But, what is clear to me now is that what I felt in my head (and I am using the word 'felt' intentionally), was not the hand of god rapping at my brain, it was the hope that, when I die, I'm not wrong after all. I want there to be a god. I sincerely do. But, all that I believe tells me that he does not exist. ( I am fond of saying that I had a long conversation with god during which he revealed to me that he does not exist). I don't know where exactly my thoughts fit in to what I was reading during the summer, or whether some philsopher much brighter than I has already trotted this one out, and it's already been rendered to the philosophic dustbin. All I do know is that I now know that what I thought was my feeling of god was neither a simple firing of a dendrite nor was it god himself letting me, for a split second, experience the awsomeness of what he is. It was ... well, I'm not sure exactly what to say that it was. It is my hope, (there it goes again) however, that whatever it is that is actually going on in my brain, that it does not ever lead me to sit in on another philosophy of religion class in Clairmont again. Cheers!

Semantics, shamantics.

Last summer, I made the mistake of following along with a pal of mine while she attended a summer philosophy class. Philosophy of religion, it was. As an avowed atheist, I thought that it would be fun, not to mention funny to take a class on a subject that I cared not one iota about. I am proud to say that my budding abilities of prognostication did not fail. There is really nothing more unintentionaly amusing than reading the works of Alvin Plantinga. The more I sat through discussions about the problem of evil or whether my brain is functioning properly, I realized that what I spend most of my spare time musing about is not whether God can communicate to me through some sort of God-sensing apparatus located inside of my head, but something else entirely. No, it was a short conversation I had with the professor concerning my declaration that many, if not all so-called "philosophic" arguments are, in fact, mere arguments of semantics. Of course, as a professor, and a philosophy professor at that, the response that I expected. What I got was an objection to my (completely unoriginal) statement that all arguments are semantic. My remark, in its intention, was meant to be one of those off the cuff things that students say more to appear to know more than they know than as a real statement in need of a counterargument. Oops. Now, if there's one thing that I hate, it's an argument. And the one thing that I hate more than just any argument is an argument about philosophy with a philosophy professor. (The one with the phd always wins). So, sensing, no -- knowing that the odds were not in my favor, I quickly ceded the point to the professor, agreeing that there are at least some truly philosophic arguments, and went back to making fun of Plantinga (which I've heard is not a good thing to do). Although outwardly I continued to participate and gave the appearance of a student convinced that there are in fact legitimate philosophic arguments, inside I was steaming. I insisted (inside my head, at least) that I was right. We may try to dress up an argument to make it seem philosophic, I thought, but when we strip it naked, the emperor is a pale, flabby semantic argument (with hair on it's back, no less). Well, these many months later, I realize that I was wrong... or at least, somewhat wrong. My wrongness was revealed by way of simple observation. Observation one: I once had a disagreement with a fellow student over the merits of positivism. He was trying to convince me that any theory that fails by way of its own principle must be thrown out of our philosophic grab bag. As any philosopher knows, real philosophic theory must be airtight, like Kant. I, of course, insisted that the beauty of positivism is the fact that the verification principle fails to prove the theory right ( but that's another argument for another day). The thing is, is that each of us was on exactly one side of the argument, and neither was moving from his spot. We weren't listening to each other, because we had already made up our minds where we stood. I argued that positivism is right, and he argued that I was stupid. And that made me think... So, fast forward to the election of 2008, and Prop. 8. Now, I've argued for and against gay marriage (because I am a professional devil's advocate), but all the while, I realized that I was never actually addressing the question. I'm not sure if anyone has even actually asked the right question. Or if we know what the "right" question is. What I remember arguing most of the time was what the word "marriage" means. You define it one way, and I say it's another (and my boyfriend says it's this...). But, no one is even getting close to what we should be asking ourselves. I asked myself why is that so? First, I went along with the old song and dance that the language that we use is defective, so any time we try to communicate (especially philosophically), we end up further away from the question. We get so bogged down in the language itself, so the thought goes, that we're really asking nothing at all. As Gloria Estefan sang, the words get in the way. So, when we argue over things like gay marriage, we get ourselves caught up in the messiest of all semantic arguments -- constitutionally-based semantic arguments. And, like my fellow philosophy student and I, each side of the gay marriage argument holds fast to what it believes is right and sticks to it, no matter what the other side says. But, on the biggest of all political days I made a revelation. It was on the night of November 4, 2008, that I realized exactly what I should have said to that philosophy professor. It wasn't that I believed that all arguments are semantic, it was that I just don't care what anyone else thinks. I plain don't care. I don't want to know what you think, or believe, or intuit, or got gettierally correct, or dare I say know , I'll always be convinced that what I think is right. There's not an argument in the world, philosophic or otherwise, that will convince me that positivism isn't the 3rd greatest philosophic theory to emerge from the mind of a human being. I actually think that not caring what the other philosopher thought was the motivation for many philosophic theories. I can imagine Kant just not giving a flying fig what Hume thought, or knew empirically. And if you do have a slamdunk debunking philosophically correct argument, I probably won't care enough to change my mind. More importantly, I will try my absolute hardest to ruin your argument as thoroughly as possible -- even if that means quibbling over or intentionally distorting the meaning(s) of every word that you use. And if taking philosophy classes has taught me anything, it's the bevy of fallacious arguments that we have at our disposal. So, I guess in the end, it doesn't matter whether all arguments are semantic or philosophic, neither or both. No one cares anyway. dli