We humans sometimes act as if our fragments of knowledge are absolutes. For example, ecologists routinely predict that global warming will cause sea levels to rise. Yet in Alaska, freed of billions of tons of weight by melting glaciers, the land has risen faster than the sea. (Cornelia Dean, “As Alaska Glaciers Melt, It’s Land That’s Rising,” New York Times, May 17, 2009)
Similarly, Stanley Fish has written two columns posted in the New York Times arguing that faith is unavoidable. (“God Talk - Stanley Fish Blog” and “God Talk, Part 2 - Stanley Fish Blog”) Positivism, the philosophical approach that demands absolute proof before accepting anything as a fact, leads only to dead ends. Fish contends that those who deny the necessity of faith, such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, are wrong. The only way to prove the rationality of reason, Fish maintains, is to presume that rationality as an implicit element of one’s proof.
The fundamental epistemological question is not whether one has faith but in what one places his or her faith. Religion can obfuscate the search for truth with myth, superstition, and dogma that may once have proven helpful but now seem anachronistic. Alternatively, religion that points to a deeper reality, a reality not apprehended through normal sensory perceptions, can helpfully enrich life.
By way of analogy, art does not merely replicate what the sense normally experience. Art invites a person to experience reality in a fresh way, to see more than the eye had previously beheld, the ear to hear more than before, etc. The “truth” of art is the deeper reality to which it points.
The rituals, myths, and practices of religion invite one to transcend normal experience, to perceive a deeper “truth.” Religion leads one toward the reality that underlies and permeates the cosmos (we Christians call this reality “God”) and toward the ethical imperative of loving our neighbors as ourselves. Taken together, these dual “truths” infuse life with a meaning and direction otherwise lacking.
The non-religious willing to embark on a journey to that ultimate reality may depart full of skepticism. Even the long time believer frequently wonders if that reality does in fact exist, if the experience of the ultimate is more illusion or delusion than substance. Yet the journey leads to a beauty and love otherwise unknowable.
2 comments:
"For example, ecologists routinely predict that global warming will cause sea levels to rise. Yet in Alaska, freed of billions of tons of weight by melting glaciers, the land has risen faster than the sea."
You are using an ultra-local example in an attempt to question a general see level rise. Alaska avoiding the consequences doesn't stop the sea rising.
"infuse life with a meaning and direction otherwise lacking."
Maybe for you, but we as humans have many ways to achieve this. Apprehension of 'God' is but one method and not necessarily even the most common one in history cross-culturally.
As an Atheist I feel that the universe has great mystery, there are so many things left to be discovered.
I feel humbled by my place in the cosmos. I am one small being on one tiny planet on the outer spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, most of my universe is uninhabitable and we are lucky to still be here.
My understanding of biology and evolution gives me a deep connection with this world. I am literally related to every being on the planet through billions of years of evolution and the ecologies that we share.
My empathy (a socially evolved mechanism) lets me see through the eyes of these other beings and attempt to understand how they feel. In doing this I can come to know and love them as myself, even knowing that many of them and the world we inhabit will never feel the same way about me (some are incapable). Co-operation can be as important as competition.
All of these things can be had by apprehending this universe alone.
Your comments evoke no disagreement from me about the possibility of answering those questions without reference to God. However, for me the questions point toward the existence of a deeper reality. Ultimately, I think belief in God, like all beliefs (i.e., all knowledge) is experiential.
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