Atheism & Agnosticism Defined or, Why Christians are Agnostic, & Atheists Should be Too (With Diagrams!)

Atheism and agnosticism are both terms that are thrown around quite loosely and sometimes even interchangeably. Because of this, discussions between professed members of either group, or between theists and members of either, can be remarkably unfruitful.

One sadly typical battle between theists and atheists is that fought over which position requires more faith. This interaction usually features the atheist deriding the theist for holding beliefs without sufficient evidence and the defensive believer replying that the atheist requires even more faith because an atheist is alleged to be someone who claims to know so much about the universe that they are able to confidently rule out the existence of a God or gods.

First off, this is a bad tack to take because the theist here is granting the premise that faith has something inherent about it to be avoided. Not a good strategy for a believer to take in the long run. Second, and more importantly, hardly any atheists really occupy this rather sophomorically rejected position. (Some of our crop of 'new atheists' might be exceptions, but we'll leave that alone for now.)

To properly define these terms would require a lot of background definitions like, for example, of belief, knowledge, faith and doubt etc. etc. Upon these definitions rest those for the isms for atheists, theists and agnostics. Since I must here skip over that background work I will begin by provisionally defining theism as the holding of a belief in God or many gods who in some meaningful way transcend the created universe, including - essentially here - human ways of knowing. (In most of what follows, though I will discuss theism generally, I am primarily concerned with Christian theism. That Christian beliefs about the God revealed in Christ.)

Based on this definition, I take atheism to mean simply someone who lacks such a belief. So atheism's definition is purely negative, saying only what the atheist does not believe, and nothing about what they actually do believe. In other words, to be precise: an atheist doesn't believe there is no god, they just don't believe there is a god. The difference is subtle but important.

It seems here that the very language we speak expresses the assumtion that most people hold some kind of belief in a god such that the exception is denoted by negation. This fact is also recognized by the rather silly spin campaign of Dawkins, Dennett and others to rename people who share their perspective, 'brights' in a self-conscious imitation of the homosexual community's appropriation of the term gay. (I say the campaign is silly because of how fatuous the term 'bright' is in itself and of how unlikely any change in useage actually is, given the aforementioned preponderance of believers.)

The lines thus far, though sometimes treated sloppily are fairly clear. We can still talk about what counts as a theistic belief - what kind of G/god is needed to be the subject of the belief - but we know ahead of time that an atheist won't believe that that god exists.

Agnosticism, being the new kid on the block, is where things get really muddy.

The term agnosticism didn't even exist until it was coined in the 19th century by the famed bulldog of Darwin and debater of Bishop Wilberforce, T.H. Huxley. By his own description, Huxley intended agnosticism to denote something opposed to the certainty with which others seemed to hold their metaphysical views. In other words, to Huxley, believers and atheists seemed to be claiming to know a lot more than they could reasonably be expected to.

The problem with this opposition is in the implicit assumption that the only knowledge that counts is certain knowledge such that anything that can be doubted is not really knowledge. There is a huge philosophical conversation behind this, but suffice it to say that this is to set the bar for what counts as knowledge incredibly high. (Just to note in passing another thread this could follow, I believe part of the reason knowledge had become almost equivalent with certainty was an essential change in philosophical assumptions in the modern period.)

So in the world as sketched out by the Huxleyan agnostic, there would seem to be basically three options on the table based upon one's answer to two basic questions. (See Fig. 1) For the agnostic one must first decide if knowledge (taken to be certainty) of something like God is possible, then if it is, come to a conclusion about whether there is or is not something actually in existence to be named God. If agnosticism, as Huxley seems to set it up, is a live option, one who answers "no" to the first question is labeled agnostic, one who answers "yes", becomes either an atheist or a theist based on their answer to question number two.

Being skeptical about our ability to answer big questions like the existence of God wasn't invented in the 19th century. What Huxley really did was define a firm position wherein decision is withheld indefinitely on any serious question, the answer to which can be doubted.

Agnosticism is often described as the position that certain questions are undecidable. What I want to question is the degree to which belief one way or the other can just be withheld because one feels like it. So what if you've decided that knowledge of the divine is undecidable! Does that somehow free you from having any opinions leading you one way or the other, just an inkling perhaps? Maybe opinions and inklings don't count as beliefs, but how strong of an inkling would a Huxleyan agnostic have to have to be counted as actually believing or disbelieving that there is a god?

Since I have already discussed why most atheists are actually atheistic-agnostics. I'll now briefly discuss why the Christian variety of theists are really theistic-agnostics. (Again, a similar argument could be made for theists generically but I am less interested in that grouping, and further am less able to characterize the nature of any god other than the Christian God.)

There are basically two reasons why the orthodox Christian position should be recognized as agnostic. Most basically, we could just rest our argument on the simple assertion that for the Christian believer faith is always part of the mix. If faith is involved in one's belief, and the Huxleyan definition of agnosticism as being a lacking in certainty is granted, then clearly the Christian is an agnostic. Christians seek assurance, they cannot attain certainty the way Huxley thought of it. If you try to believe what a Christian believes, then you will inevitably have your doubts. Jesus certainly did.

Another way of putting this is to say that for the Christian, belief in God is also recognized as undecidable. The difference is that the Christian recognizes that a decision must be made on a matter that is at the same time undecidable. Christians, despite all evidence to the contrary, are not primarily about believing in God but in following Christ. Christ called us to follow him and the problem with a callinlg is that one does not first decide that a call should be responded to, one just responds, even if the response is to ignore the call. The disciple called by Jesus cannot wait for all the data to come in before deciding, he either follows or he does not.

This is why faith is a leap not a conclusion. If beliefs were easily decidable, the results would be as obvious as two plus two equals four. Arithmetic sums are not decisions, they are calculations and inevitably reached. For something to even count as a decision in the first place there must be some element of risking making the wrong decision. Anytime a decision is made, faith is there. If faith is there, then doubt is too. Faith, it must be said, is never inevitable.

The second point is just to point out that in simple historical terms the orthodox Church Fathers were those specifically opposed to the varieties of groups who called themselves, or were called by others, gnostics. As before, we should expect that those lacking what one group claims to have could be safely labeled using an alpha privative. Thus the orthodox believers opposed to gnosticism become: agnostics.

Now note, that this is all granting Huxley's characterization of a kind of binary choice between certainty and non-certainty. When I say that Christians are agnostic I only mean on these terms and in no way imply that Christian faith imparts nothing that could be called knowledge. I believe there is much that counts as knowledge that falls short of certainty, including specifically Christian beliefs. The gnostic opponents of orthodoxy weren't just advocating that Christians know things in the everyday way we use the word. Gnostics were those who presented the possibility of a kind of direct, unmediated experience or certain knowledge of God.

(This is as true now as it was then as the temptation to discard faith is constantly with us. Philip Lee wrote a very fascinating book, Against the Protestant Gnostics, that is both entirely engrossing and at times quite chilling. In it he writes about the areas contemporary protestants, especially evangelicals, share many emphases with the gnostics and are in danger of repeating the mistakes of those ancient heretics. This area of the interaction of modern philosophy, Protestantism and gnosticism is just crying out for more attention.)

Because I believe that both Christians and those we would usually call atheists share a sense of agnosticism, I would argue for keeping four options on the table, with a possible fifth for the really faint of heart. In my mapping (see fig. 2), the two questions are the same as before. If one answers "no" to question number one, thinking that certainty is not attainable in these matters, one might try to cling to position number five by not thinking about it at all, but one who is honest with oneself must admit that they either tend to believe there is no god or that there is. They are thus either an atheist, simply lacking belief in a god, or a theist, a believer who has their doubts at times. If one answers "yes" to being able to know about the existence of God with certainty, one is labeled, depending on their answer to question number two, either an incredibly (scarily) confident atheist or just some nutty sort of theist strongly resembling a gnostic. This last option could only be called heresy in a Christian light.

In short, agnosticism is either a position of epistemological false humility when presented as a distinct option or else it is already just a part of the make-up of the majority of your average red-blooded atheists and theists and most certainly what any reflective Christian should recognize themselves as.

I'm afraid that agnosticism as a stand-alone term causes much more confusion than it is worth. My apologies Thomas, you'll always have that debate to be remembered by.

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Conversation Part III: Morality - Theistic, Christian and Otherwise

(continued from previous)

The conversation on the moral superiority of religion vs. atheism is in a way not interesting to me. If that argument were a horse race, mine would still be in the stable, biding his time, thoughtfully munching hay. As I've tried to say, I don't think being religious or having faith is itself any kind of virtue precisely because I do not recognize any strict epistemological dichotomy between faith and reason. (This is why I always gag when I hear someone lauding 'people of faith' in the political realm. The grouping 'people of faith' is beyond vacuous. What a stupid category of people to be in favor of.)

The only reason I pick up the gauntlet here is because the 'new atheists' so consistently seem to hold the opposite view in that they portray having religious faith in general as an inherently morally dangerous enterprise and thereby not holding such beliefs as inherently morally superior. (This is especially so for Harris, Hitchens and Dawkins, Dennett is much more sophisticated as is perhaps to be expected.) They do this without significantly distinguishing between different religions based on the content of their teachings and without distinguishing between actions taken by nominal believers that utterly contradict the tradition's teaching (hypocrites) and those taken in response to agreement with the broadest streams of the tradition.

At the same time that they do not deign to actually engage the content of the traditions they lump together, they speak from a perspective which is impossible to define and, as I will argue, is unable to defend its own moral standing on the same grounds it criticizes the theistic worldview. So we have a group of people speaking as if from a moral high-ground which they are completely unable to give a reasonable defense for holding, denouncing another group that, however in-credible you find its basis, at least has very specific internal reasons for holding its moral perspective. This confusion is why my horse is out of the barn. I am not out here to win the argument between theism and atheism or religion and secularism, but to significantly reframe it.

First I will describe how materialist or secularist assumptions do not entail a morality. Second, I will revisit the case of the morally hypocritical atheist. Third, I will consider some secular sources of morality and look at how the materialist's own assumptions interact with his moral beliefs. Fourth, I will attend to an important mistaken conclusion from the case for morality depending on something transcendent. Fifth, I will return to the case of the one inherently dangerous element that can attend secular morality.

It is of course very common for philosophers or theologians to speak analogically of 'height' or 'transcendence'. The secularist or materialist worldview on the other hand is a flattened perspective. The strict materialist or secularist is one who insists on understanding everything immanently and thereby cuts off the possibility of appealing to any external criteria. The mechanism of flattening a worldview comes in re-description. The materialist points to a perceived dimension of height or transcendence and reduces it to another, immanent, level of explanation - for example the biological, political, psychological or economic. Viewing everything flatly doesn't change what counts as morality, it redescribes behavior previously thought to be moral on another, amoral, level.

So not only is there no longer recourse to terms like God to defend desirable criteria, anything substituted for God is either itself a transcendental term, belief in which is equally or even more inexplicable, or, if it is truly immanent, fails to be able to provide criteria able to qualitatively assess the immanent world.

I propose that for the word morality to have any meaning, the morals must actually represent something really real, not merely an appearance of one thing that is really just some natural epiphenomenon.

The atheist employing the idea of morality derived from universal human feelings or common sense is missing the fact that flattening the world into two dimensions has removed the possibility of morality even being a useful word. The flat world is the world reduced of its transcendent dimension which is the dimension ideas like morality lived in. In the flattened world, morality is no longer really right or wrong - who could have the authority to say so? - it is just whatever the interest group or species with the power to do so defines it as. If we're going to start down the road of reductionism, we should have the courage to follow through to its logical conclusions unless compelled otherwise.

The game of reductionism is a dangerous one, its sword really is two-edged. If one starts with an assumed naturalism or materialism in order to say that all kinds of religious phenomena are just expressions of various natural phenomena, fine. But to be consistent one has to be able to swallow the conclusion that human morality, all of it, is just a chimera as well. If one dislikes that conclusion and knows of some other way of coming up with a basis for morality, I'm more than willing to listen. But beware, as Hitchens mentions in his book (and then ignores the implications of): nobody has been able to come up with a logically convincing and consistent secular basis for morality at least since David Hume pointed out the impossibility of bridging the gap from is to ought. As in, these are the facts; therefore, this is or is not as it should be. No pile of facts is big enough to constitute a single qualitative judgement on the rightness or wrongness of any other fact. If you can't provide a foundation either, then you have to admit that with respect to morals the theist and the atheist are on exactly the same ground relative to one another.

The theist operates upon a morality consistent with his worldview which is itself largely based on faith, the atheist operates upon a morality he has no rational basis for but takes to be correct based on faith. The atheist cannot provide a rational defense of the reality of his morality given his metaphysical views for exactly the same reason that the theist cannot coerce belief in the ground of his morality. The theist has at least the luxury of being internally consistent in his views, the atheist does not, and the discomfort of this leads to all manner of logical abuse.

This amorality of materialism is where my point of the impossibility of a morally hypocritical atheist originates. We've agreed, atheism as such, has no moral content and I am happy to add that neither does theism. What morality a theist holds comes from the character of the god he believes actually exists. The work is done on the level of faith that God exists. But once this is believed, the basis for morals, for good or ill, is firmly in place. The atheist believes himself to be 'neutral' or without any faith commitments as regards the existence of any gods. I don't buy it, but for the sake of argument, fine - he has no faith in regards to the existence of God or gods. He still hasn't explained how he could begin to defend morality from its detractors or conjure up a particular moral perspective, let alone one from which to denounce the theist from.

(Another hypothesis might be that one could just be a hypocritical human being. I have no idea what this would mean. The (biological?) definition of 'human being' implies no morals in and of itself. For example, let's say I'm a human being that just happens to enjoy rape and murder. But those are such value-laden terms! Let's try to be more neutral and objective. Really I just like (or rather am programmed) to spread my genetic material and get rid of competitors for successful completion of such. Perhaps this behavior is part and parcel of being human like it is for so many other purely biologically determined species. After all, we don't speak of bacteria committing rape or wolves murdering. They're just animals being animals, the perfectly flat biological definition of which rules out morality or immorality. For me to be hypocritical in my actions, I would have to hold some further belief about humanity that entailed that the forceful spreading my genes and disposing of rivals was wrong. If I don't believe any such thing then maybe I just have a different idea of humanity than someone who does. Such a one would either need to convince me that their idea of humanity is the right one or else how true morality can be derived without any tradition-based view of humanity.)

Frankly I find the solution of morality coming from 'human solidarity' to beg as many questions as it attempts to answer. I am not convinced humans have such an inborn idea of solidarity with their species. My evidence for this is strictly empirical. Even if they did though, this would not necessarily constitute morality. At most I could go along with the human animal having an evolved sense of protection of its own extended kin network or tribe; one protects and cares for those sharing one's own genetic material. But this is not morality anymore than it would be for any other species. A Water Buffalo protecting her calf from a pack of Lions might look noble to you and me (because we're anthropomorphizing), just as the human mother going without food to feed her child might bring tears to our eyes. But come on, set the sentimentality aside for a minute and let's really follow the skeptical rabbit hole all the way down. If morality is just nature's way of tricking the individual organism into caring about the next generation and the genetic community's survival more than its own, then we have not yet found something that could rightly be called morality.

For another way of showing why secular alternative sources for morality are not logically compelling, allow me to illustrate how reductionist skepticism of religious morality works just as well on secular morality by translating a paragraph intended to dismiss the specificity of religiously derived morals. I will put the original vocabulary in parentheses and my suggested substitutes in brackets.

"To invoke a (heavenly)[common-sense secular] morality you must be specific in your judgments. If (God)[reason or conscience] told you this or that action is unethical, be prepared for an answer that will get you no where close to justice. (God)[Reason] tells you its wrong? Well (he)[it] tells me it's right. This is the kind of relativism we keep (out of)[in] real courtrooms for a reason. You can swear on the (Bible)[human solidarity or the categorical imperative] (or not), but the moment you pull it to your side to defend yourself you will be very quickly dismissed." [Because why in the world should anyone else care if you think one should feel solidarity with the species or only act in a way that one could consistently will that everyone followed a similar course of action. What if they happen to think that that's perfect nonsense and choose to (unhypocritically) act in whatever way they please?]

My belief that reductionistic worldviews do not have sufficient criteria to muster any morality whatsoever is the reason that secular humanism - so proud of its morality - is, and always will be, so utterly unappealing to me. Philosophically it contains all of the 'weaknesses' of Christianity and nihilism without the consistency of either. Secular humanist thinkers who attempt to defend morality are, in my view, just sentimentalists unwilling to give up the ghost. The only philosopher's doubt who gives me pause is the nihilistic laughter of a Nietzsche. If there is no God then there really is nothing.

Allow me just to anticipate another common objection before it's made. It is often said that the theist who argues for the dependence of morality upon a worldview including a certain kind of God as I do (or at least some other kind of transcendental principle), is demeaning humanity and himself. The argument goes that humanity had morality before religion - people knew it was wrong to kill before they had the ten commandments (Though if it were really such universal common sense, then why would it still happen so much?) - and that further it is scary to assume that any particular theist would be out raping and pillaging if only he lost certain of his beliefs about God.

It is important to see why this misses the point completely.

I do not think that I would go out and commit a whole slew of abominable acts if I woke up tomorrow completely lacking in faith. I would probably continue in largely the same behavior I do now based upon what I have been taught is right and wrong (some of which very well might be wrong). The difference is that I would no longer have any rational reason for committing moral acts and refraining from immoral ones. I would still believe that rape and murder were wrong but I would no longer have any reason why they were.

The fallout of the above is that while both the Christian and the materialist atheist can be moral, and both probably will have some type of morality, the Christian must be moral, while the materialist's flattened worldview makes morality optional, a commitment of faith not derived from his more fundamental commitments. This means that materialist atheists or any others who assume their own neutrality must give up their presumably privileged position from which they adjudicate the morals of others.

So again we come around to the point of a certain danger inherent in secular morality. I am not reneging on my point of the moral neutrality of theism vs. atheism in general. The danger of secular morality is not that it doesn't have any morals, or has worse morals, but in its utter confidence in their rightness; its perceived lack of faith. Faith seeks assurance, secular moral reasoning seeks, and too often thinks it has found, certainty. This is why (at least three of) the 'new atheists' sound so like fundamentalists to much of even their atheistic audience. They are so unabashedly confident in the way that only one who believes his ideas derive from reason alone can be. (Atheist fundamentalists largely share a philosophy of knowledge with their Christian cousins. Fundamentalism in Christianity has not to do with the doctrines believed but in how one thinks those beliefs are arrived at; not with what is believed but how those beliefs are held. Orthodox Christians have been around for millenia, fundamentalists are a very modern phenomenon and, to my mind, are basically heretics.)

The Christian may take decisive action, but if she is thinking Christianly, she must do so in fear and trembling. She may err greatly, but if she is a Christian, she is aware of this possibility just about better than any, called so often as she is to repent for past mistakes. If she continues to consciously err in disregard of her professed beliefs then she is a hypocrite and should be named as such. The strict materialist as we have seen cannot be called a hypocrite if he denies the reality of any morality. But if he does feel a moral calling, the secular moralist, if he fools himself into thinking he has banished faith and proceeds by the pure light of reason, will come to his conclusions without-a-doubt and will proceed without caution. Woe to those who get in his way!

This goes to the point about the dangerous confidence of a nation like America. I don't necessarily disagree with defenses of the pleasures and privileges of living in America. The point I was making didn't have to do with life in America, but the life of America and Americans on the rest of the world. The Roman empire was undoubtedly a fine place to live too, if you were a citizen. But I hardly think the Romans patting of themselves on the back for the height of their civilization went over that well with those unfortunate enough to be labeled barbarians. The confidence of America in its status as such a great (the best!) place to live is why it has been so damned confident spreading its wonderful way of life to places like the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, Central America and Iraq, countries and civilizations whose "thanks but no thanks" isn't very readily listened to. "No," says America, "You don't understand how great it is to be an American. Just try it!"

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Notes for a Conversation with My Friends, the Atheist Respecters of Transencence, Part I

My dear friends, even though you are all basically agnostic or atheistic in your thinking and I am a Christian (and a pretty theologically conservative or orthodox one at that,) I do so appreciate and enjoy our discussions on the idea of transcendence and the philosophical categories involved in thinking about it, I would like to delve deeper into that conversation here.

You have quoted approvingly Wittgenstein's statement that "what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." [1] I would happily agree that there is an important truth in this statement not just for the atheist respecter of transcendence but also – or even especially – for the Christian. (Another part of me bristles at the presumption of Wittgenstein’s ‘must’. Whence comes his right to make such an authoritative claims? But I’m getting ahead of myself.) Since I have assumed that you are either atheist or agnostic [2] with respect to belief in god, but have this idea of an ineffable transcendence, I have decided to call you atheist respecters of transcendence. [3]

There are a few points I want to develop here. In this Part I posting, I will try to describe, as far as possible, the common ground we seem to share in our view of transcendent reality and the attendant difficulties that inhere in using finite language to talk about it. Then I will try to describe how postmodern thought – insofar as it undermines any strict dichotomy between faith and reason – makes religious speech, knowledge and thus the religious life, more not less tenable. In subsequent posts, I will address further outcomes of this paradigm change in epistemology.

First, in Part II, I will flesh out the argument touched on here that the only understandings truly troubled by the postmodern turn, are those based upon a purportedly neutral view of truth. I will look especially at the idea of atheism’s alleged ethical superiority using the arguments of the current crop of apologists for atheism: Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens, as case studies.

In Part III, I will explain a possible Christian response to postmodern thought, namely, how the way past the impasse of the apophatic impulse is to be more, not less, open to tradition-based teachings, institutional understandings and in-credible stories of transcendence. Included in this, I will discuss the paradoxical nature of Christian teaching, arguing that it essentially always incorporates into its positive theological assertions, strong negative theological elements.

If I’m able to continue on to a Part IV, it will be on how, a trajectory parallel to that of the postmodern critique of modernity and resultant re-opening to tradition would be exactly the path required of any post/modern human commitment robust enough to undo the imprisonment of the self from its own bubble of narcissism.

Now, we have discussed the idea of transcendence but not what transcendence means. So before I explore how the postmodern outlook affects the discussion, we have to stake out some common ground in our views of the nature of transcendence. One of the difficulties with the conversation though, is that its very possibility is a big part of what needs to be discussed. I’m not assuming that everyone would immediately agree with the picture I describe, nihilism is still a live option, I am just trying to cautiously lay out a shared sense or intuition we, and many others, all seem to have. To pin down a reason isn’t my goal here, but just to give outlines of what we seem to share, experientially or phenomenologically, in order to move forward to the topic of how one could talk about any possible transcendent reality.

To explain my use of the word transcendence, I will use a few examples of ways or even degrees that something can be described as transcendent. To begin with the most mundane: as I look at a three-dimensional object, say a cup, the far side of the cup transcends me perceptually, but not essentially, I can simply turn the cup around and that transcendence is flattened. [4]

To skip ahead a little, there is a deeper way in which the past, even my own past experience, transcends me. It is not present to me for perception in any first-hand way, thus any views I have on it are at best theories and partial reconstructions. This transcendence is no longer accidental, able to be undone like the far side of the cup, but essential to the nature of what is experienced.

For my purposes, the really interesting step occurs when we talk about the experience of other persons. To encounter another person is to encounter some’thing’ which, no matter how familiar, or known or even studied, will always, and essentially exceed my comprehension. [5] Imagine the most brilliant psychologist in the world who also happened to be in possession of a machine which could scan an individual’s body and brain in a way as far beyond today’s MRI as an MRI is beyond an x-ray. Then make the person under observation the scientist’s spouse of 50 years. We would still say that, beyond the amazing amount of detail available, there is an essential something that cannot be grasped. As much as we might think the mind arises or emerges from the brain’s functioning and personhood from the interaction of the brain and the body, most of us would say that you or I cannot be merely reduced to these things. To put it another way: another’s stream of consciousness can never fully overlap with one’s own. We are always, irreducibly, mysteries to one another.

I think we are on common ground so far, but I also believe that we can go one step further. It also seems to me that we find ourselves believing that there is some type of existence or some quality of experience that is more essentially transcendent of us; something from which these other instances of transcendence derive their transcendence; something that is at the very least phenomenologically and ethically transcendent, but that also defies description in any human categories including, but not limited to, current scientific, philosophical or religious categories, but probably also any imaginable future category. Some might describe this as a god or God, but to others it might be a philosophical notion anywhere from a Platonic form like Truth or Beauty, all the way to Derrida’s idea of the undeconstrucible, in the name of which deconstructions are carried out (i.e. the Justice in the name of which all particular instantiations of justice are deconstructed). This would mean that whatever concepts one could bring to bear on whatever is behind this experience of transcendence, those concepts would even more so than for the above categories of transcendence, essentially and always fail to completely capture what they are pointing to. [6]

John Caputo (perhaps another atheist respecter of transcendence) wrote, in an intensification of Wittgenstein’s sentiment, that “by the time one has said that something is ineffable, that one cannot say a thing, one has already been speaking for some time and one has already said too much.” [7] On this view, not only is every interpretation of the absolute imperfect insofar as it misses something, the very act of predicating something to that which is beyond predication is a mistaken undertaking. Caputo notes the difficulty of remaining faithful to this insight in thinkers from contemporary philosophers to Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart, who all want to insist on the absolutely indescribable nature of the absolute but who also spend gallons of ink and reams of paper saying exactly why this is the case. It feels a bit like the bind one finds oneself in claiming “the only rule is that there are no rules.” Is this just hypocrisy or paradox or both?

It’s clear that both atheist respecters of transcendence and Christian namers of the ineffable together, contra Wittgenstein and the apophatic impulse generally, seem to be compelled somehow to speak on this subject, even if it is only to make negative statements. My own wrestling with this issue has been specifically over whether this type of via negativa, can also incorporate any positive pronouncements on the nature of transcendence. If we agree that every truth claim made about the ultimate is wrong, I want to add that some are clearly more wrong than others, which means that some are more right. (See my earlier post on Deb Rienstra’s beautiful way of putting this.) So the question really becomes whether purely apophatic thinking is even humanly possible, leave alone desirable. I take it as a matter of deductive logic that any statement of the form “God is not…” or “the transcendent is not…,” if true, reveals knowledge of the transcendent. This might appear a simplistic conclusion, but the implications for how to think and speak of ultimate things are broad.

We all feel, not just comfortable in pointing to different social orders and saying “this is not just!” We would insist on it as a right, even perhaps a duty to do so. When asked to define Justice itself though, we are at a loss to do justice to it. (Try to imagine yourself as a character in a Socratic dialogue making this attempt and succeeding in a way that would compel the great gadfly to agree with you and you’ll know what I mean.) So too, I’m comfortable saying God is not the flying spaghetti monster, Thor, Zeus, myself, nature or even just the the Prime Mover. But in the name of what or whom do I say this?

It’s not fair to, on one hand, commit (or submit?) to a belief in a positive understanding of Justice through critiquing fallible instantiations of the ideal, and then on the other hand argue that it’s incoherent to believe there is a God, who is by definition conceptually transcendent, just because one isn’t able to provide a proper definition. I am not making the argument (at least at this point) that if you believe there is such a thing as Truth, you have to agree with me that there is a God who is the source of it. But, it is only fair that if you find it credible to set the bar at one level for thinking about one class of transcendent ideas you can’t suddenly jack it up for another. If we can muddle about making our provisional theories about the nature of Truth, Justice, Beauty, and Love, and even act upon them, then we are at least as justified epistemically to proceed in like manner with respect to the divine.

To insist on speaking about the unspeakable “is not a matter of ‘giving up the infinite’ but rather of giving up the assumption that the only way to ‘do justice’ to the infinite is to speak of it in its infinity - which, of course, is impossible.” [8] Perhaps it is a better service to Justice to make our best attempts at bringing it about according to our limited understanding than to just sit on our hands out of false humility, and perhaps it is more respectful of the transcendent to name it God and worship him, than to just feign absolute ignorance.

Thus far I’ve been trying to deal with the background of approaching the infinite with finite words. Now what does postmodernism have to do with this picture? First, let me provide some tentative definitions. When I use the word modern or modernism, I refer roughly to the period immediately following the Enlightenment, up to and possibly including today. The Enlightenment itself is of course at least as complex a phenomenon as postmodernism, but I will rely on a terribly simplistic working definition to function as a launching point: that of Hans-George Gadamer’s characterization of the Enlightenment as having a basic “prejudice against prejudice”. [9] The paradigmatic example is, as always, Rene Descartes and his 'discovery’ of hyperbolic doubt as the way to true knowledge. The idea is that we should doubt everything (again, says who?) until compelled to belief on pure, objective, rational grounds. Doubt, in other words, is given the benefit of, well, doubt. All beliefs are guilty until proven innocent. All prejudices are prejudicially swept aside. Descartes famously comes to all kinds of conclusions, including the existence of God, as if out of thin air, and while his success is not very accepted, his method and standard of what counts as success have stood as the ideals behind most of western philosophy ever since.

One of the key elements in the formation of the Enlightenment was its reaction to the confessional wars. The Catholics were fighting the Protestants, the Protestants were fighting Radical Protestants, all (apparently) over theological differences. So it made some sense then – since it seemed to be these stories and prejudices which were dividing us – to have thought that we needed to get beyond them in order to establish peace. It is no accident that the seeds of postmodernism, already perhaps sowed in the 19th century, began to sprout in the aftermath of the World Wars which were seen in many quarters as a signal of the failure of the Enlightenment project. The time period that saw the rise of postmodern thought was also defined by the Cold War, a conflict which, while threatening the very extinction of the species due to the facing-off of two superpowers, was carried out by the nations which were most thoroughly rooted in and defined by modernist philosophies. Both communism and capitalism can be easily described as different versions of the story that humanity is on a march of progress toward inevitable utopia. The nations that had the strongest beliefs about their representation of objective justice and morality seemed the most bent on killing each other with the real danger of taking the rest of the world with them.

To turn the discussion to this emerging postmodern thought, it is first necessary to distinguish postmodernism from postmodernity, the latter of which I take to be a cultural context while the former is more a philosophical sensibility. While the two inevitably have an intertwining cause-and-effect relationship, I limit my comments to postmodernism. Even cutting the matter down in this way still leaves a huge topic. But since I’m not attempting an exhaustive study, I’m just going to jump in head-first again and go with the definition used by Lyotard who described postmodernism as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” [10]

The crux of this definition is obviously in how one defines a metanarrative. Many responses to postmodernism implicitly assume that religions like Christianity are metanarratives par excellence and thus, depending on who’s doing the reacting, either Christianity or postmodernism is to be rejected. I do not take this view. Christianity does have an explicit teaching on the past, present and future, not only of every human being’s life, but also of humanity, life and the world itself. If Christianity is true, then it affects everything.

So how can this not be a metanarrative? Maybe the misunderstanding arises from a lack of Greek vocabulary. The “meta” of metanarrative basically means beyond, so a metanarrative is beyond a narrative in a way roughly analogous to the way metaphysics (dealing with the nature of reality – determining what kinds of things exist) is beyond physics. The story goes that the librarians at the ancient library in Alexandria were categorizing the works of Aristotle and when they got to the philosophical works they didn’t have a word for, simply labeled them metaphysics, because they were shelved after, and were obviously different from, the works on physics. Now it would be nonsensical if a physicist felt he had to give up his understanding of the world gained from Newton, Einstein and Hawking because he read yet another philosopher declare the end of metaphysics. But this is the reaction that some Christians have, or others expect them to have, toward their beliefs in the light of postmodern thought.

Jamie Smith writes that in defining metanarratives, “what is at stake is not the scope of these narratives but the nature of the claims they make. For Lyotard, metanarratives are a distinctly modern phenomenon: they are stories which not only tell a grand story (since even premodern and tribal stories do this), but also claim to be able to legitimate the story and its claims by an appeal to universal Reason. On Lyotard’s account, the Enuma Elish, though telling a story that is universal or grand in scope, is nevertheless not a metanarrative because it does not claim to legitimate itself by an appeal to scientific Reason. On the other hand, Lyotard sees classical Marxism as a metanarrative insofar as it claims to be a system legitimated by Reason, and therefore to be universally accepted on that basis.” [11] So much for postmodernism.

To connect the two ideas, I take it that the Enlightenment began as a heightened suspicion of local narratives; any particular or historically-based tradition which claimed to connect to Truth. Postmodernism then is really a kind of extension of, or even hyper-modernity, as it turns suspicion toward the Enlightenment itself, seeing it as merely the tradition of being against traditions, or as just another story about the origins and ends of mankind. (Once upon a time, say the objective philosophers, there was the state of nature where there was a war of all against all. Since then, we have been steadily marching forward in progress – with the occasional setback - and we will one day live happily ever after.)

Enlightenment thinkers doubted faith in order to seek knowledge, postmodern thinkers have doubts even about doubt and either give up on attaining real knowledge of the world, becoming nihilistic, or recognize that some sort of leap of faith is the necessary beginning of knowledge. But it’s not so much that postmodern theories of interpretation imply one needs to make a leap of faith, but that even to hold out on faith is itself a faith-like commitment. What the break-down of the dichotomy between faith and reason entails is that any interpretive, hermeneutic commitment, including of course moral ones, are always already faith commitments.

When doubt is made the primary means of attaining knowledge, we should hardly be surprised when we only end up with more doubts. It seems like the path of doubt, once begun, works like a kind of Chinese finger trap: the harder one tries to free oneself, the more stuck one gets.

So there are really two moves going on here. The first is, in pointing to the fundamental faith commitments of all interpretations, postmodernism levels the playing field for all modes of discourse, whether they be scientific, rationalistic or religious. [12] The second is to point out the fundamental difference between self-consciously, narratively-based belief systems, like religions with a founding myth which they need not be embarrassed about unabashedly proclaiming, and stories whose very tale seeks conceal its basic narrative character, like modernist beliefs in Truth, Justice, Humanity and Freedom.

Another way to look at this is through the claim made in modern society and politics that what is needed is a naked public square. To extend the image, it is as if the emperor of modernity has mandated a neutral space where everyone must shed the clothing of their respective presuppositions and faith commitments before entering. Postmodernity is like the child pointing out, “The emperor has clothes! Everyone in this square is still fully clothed and just pretending to be naked.” The emperor, himself luxuriously clad, and his followers are all duly ashamed. [13] The Christian is not troubled by this, she knows, at least when properly reminded, that her belief in God is not arrived at from an objective standpoint but always and only through faith seeking understanding. If the Christian thought there were some basis on which to believe in God other than God himself, they would obviously be worshipping in the wrong direction.

In conclusion, though my Christian beliefs are not dependent upon postmodern philosophy, I do find myself compelled by some of its ways of viewing the world and ways of human knowing in the world. I find in postmodernism a peculiar kind of ally; a sort of enemy-of-my-enemy, contingent alliance. Insofar as I find myself in dialogue with atheist thinkers who are still wedded to modernist epistemological assumptions, postmodernism is a useful tool not only because it deflects some of their more strident criticisms of faith in general and Christianity in particular, but also because it ironically makes those criticisms seem even less tenable than ever on their own terms! I will turn to the question of how criticisms of faith commitments backfire on the more militant atheists in Part II.

For now, Adieu and Goodbye (God-Be-With-Ye)!


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notes
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1. Wittgenstein, Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus, proposition 7

2. I’m taking up atheism as the more appropriate term. Agnosticism – without knowledge – is to me not an interesting middle ground between theism and atheism. Even vocal atheists admit the possibility that there could be a God, they don’t claim certain knowledge that there is no God, they just don’t believe in one, they lack theistic belief: a-theism. The orthodox Christian is really agnostic about God as her belief is based on faith and not the pure and certain knowledge to which the modern definition of agnosticism seems to oppose itself. It’s also important to remember the arch-enemy of orthodoxy in ancient and modern times, was and is Gnosticism. So it would make sense that orthodox Christian belief is in an important sense agnostic as well.

3. I apologize if this nomenclature feels limiting and I will happily refine it if you think it's a mischaracterization. But you see, I just can't help using labels, imperfect approximations of reality, as a means of moving forward. I also understand that I'm speaking to multiple people and that there are differences in your opinions. But I'm doing my best to address what seem to be common elements in your thinking.

4. I don’t remember which particular professor of mine used this analogy, it was probably more than one. (Maybe all philosophy professors use something like it.) I’ll just cite my reference as: Calvin College philosophy department, 2002-2004

5. I’m relying here on my understanding of Levinas & Derrida’s treatment of what they call the essential Otherness or alterity of human persons one to another.

6. Trying to describe the phenomenological transcendence of the four examples I’m dealing with is difficult because I’m trying to describe different levels of qualitative difference. A rough analogy would be to say that to go from black-and-white to color is one qualitative change, but to go then to 3-dimensional moving images is a greater qualitative change.

7. Caputo, Against Ethics, p. 75

8. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation, p. 129

9. Gadamer, Truth and Method, p. 273

10. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, xxiv

11. Smith "A little story about Metanarratives" In Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, p. 125

12. This leveling of the playing field does not mean an anything-goes relativism of interpretations.It just means there is no neutral or objective perspective on any class of knowledge. I guess a conclusion one could take is that “I’ll just think whatever ever I please”, and believe, for example, that the earth is in the center of the universe because the Bible says so. It’s true, this probably couldn’t be proven false. But this would be a silly conclusion. It would be to give up on the task of hermeneutic discernment, missing the other half of the statement that some conclusions are better than others.

13. I thought I made this up, but later (re)discovered that the source for this metaphor is from Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology, p. 182-83

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Descartes, Eat Your Heart Out, or: Augustine's Thoughts By a Fireplace

Don't worry. This isn't going to be another rant against everybody's favorite philosophical whipping boy, poor old Rene Descartes. I came across the following quote a while back in The City of God by the eminent Aurelius Augustinus, otherwise known as St. Augustine. In the 26th Chapter of Book II, he says the following:

"I am not at all afraid of the arguments of the academicians: What if you are deceived? For if I am deceived, I am. For he who is not cannot be deceived. And if I am deceived, by this same token I am. And since I am, if I am deceived, how am I deceived in believing that I am. For it's certain that I am, if I am deceived. Since therefore I the person deceived, should be even if I were deceived, certainly I am not deceived in this knowledge that I am. And consequently, neither am I deceived in knowing that I know. For as I know that I am so I know this also, that I know."

Now it's been a little while since my formal philosophy-studying days or since I've read any Descartes, but doesn't this sound uncannily familiar? Wasn't Descartes' claim to fame, or infamy, depending on your perspective, supposed to be his innovation in proving his own existence, his cogito ergo sum? I for one feel cheated. Not only does Augustine seem to accomplish the same thing as Descartes did, he did it over a millennium earlier and quite elegantly to boot. It's interesting though, to see how the two thinkers come to the seemingly same argument and what they intend to do with it. For Descartes, his cogito is his attempt to ground an unshakably sound philosophical system, the baseline from which he intended, and attempted, to go on to prove everything else that interested him, like the existence of God for example. For Augustine, the argument that, at the very least, he has no reason to doubt that he exists, comes across more like his way of making quick work of what seems to him like a rather silly line of questioning. One pictures the ever august Bishop swatting away, like so many bothersome flies, the arguments of a rabble of pestering academics who have so much time on their hands they've forgotten who, or even that, they are.

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