I’m sorry to say that Stanley Fish is treading the same futile path that every defender of religion follows: there’s the knee-jerk detestation of atheism, then there’s the argument that atheism is nothing but faith itself, and now he’s reduced to impotent handwaving about a sublime but unknowable god, and therefore religion is … what? He’s not clear. He seems to be saying we can’t criticize religion because we have imperfect knowledge of a perfect being.
It’s very silly stuff. These are the desperate excuses of a theologian who wants to believe but knows he’s got nothing of substance, so he has to make sure his god is hidden away from skeptical eyes. Here are his pathetic efforts:
If divinity, by definition, exceeds human measure, the demand that the existence of God be proven makes no sense because the machinery of proof, whatever it was, could not extend itself far enough to apprehend him.
Nobody has demanded that the existence of god be proven—the case for its existence is much shakier than that. All we ask for is some evidence, some token of an objective, reasonable clue that there is a divine intelligence. It has not been forthcoming. Instead, we get rationalizations like the one above. So we can’t measure the awesome magnitude of divinity; I’m not asking for the whole thing, just show me one millimeter of god-stuff. All these people who claim to believe surely must have some reason, beyond the usual mundane indoctrination from childhood, right? Or if they do not, it seems perfectly reasonable to conclude that their beliefs are a delusion and a product of human culture.
I’m not even going to get that tiny demonstration of god’s reality, though: Fish uses one of the oldest excuses in the book.
The criticism made by atheists that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated is no criticism at all; for a God whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn’t be a God; he would just be another object in the field of human vision.
Not only won’t Fish show us any evidence for a god, he can’t — by his eminently convenient definition, any being who deigned to show so much as a bit of lace from the edges of his/her robe wouldn’t be a god at all. It creates an interesting potentiality. Imagine that a great bearded man, 10 miles tall, suddenly manifests himself on Earth, and shouts out in a voice every human being on the planet can hear, “I AM JEHOVAH, LORD OF LORDS, CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE, ULTIMATE JUDGE OF YOUR WORTHINESS,” and he’s accompanied by a flock of winged angels with trumpets, and all the birds and beasts congregate around him, bowing and acknowledging his majesty, everyone who uses his name in vain abruptly bursts into green flame and crumbles to ash (I won’t even mention the horrors that descend on those who break the other commandments), laws of nature are suspended, televangelists are teleported to his outstretched right hand and stand their wearing crowns of gold, etc., etc. etc.
Every atheist will be saying “Right, well, I guess I was wrong then—there is an almighty awesome being.” And we’ll be rummaging in our closets for that tatty old bible we got from our devout spinster aunt years ago.
Stanley Fish, on the other hand, will be standing there squeaking, “I can see him, therefore he isn’t a god.”
Douglas Adams dealt with this particularly silly conundrum well enough and long before I tried.
The Babel fish is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy recieved not from its own carrier but from those around it, It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. the practical upshot of this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any language.
Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes like this : “I refuse to prove that I exist”, says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”
“But”, says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? it could not have evolved by chance. it proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”
“Oh dear”, says God, “I hadn’t thought of that,” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
The curious thing, though, is that many of these same people who insist that their god is not subject to common demands for evidence because that would nullify the faith that is an essential component of his existence will also turn around and insist that they have good reason to believe in god — other than that it was dunned into their heads by their Sunday school teacher in childhood — and that, for instance, the existence of a creation itself implies a creator, or that the malaria parasite is evidence for special creation, or that the power of prayer is a testimony to the power of Jesus.
Stanley Fish has now declared that his god is unreachable by evidence or reason and that demonstrating any facet of his existence contradicts his nature. I take it this means that Fish is now done trying to support the existence of any gods, and that next week, he’ll be writing about Piers Plowman or something similarly tangible. I don’t think I want to bet on it, though—more likely, we’ll get yet more indignation at atheists and sympathy for religion.
God is clearly so perfect that it doesn’t even have to exist to exist – that’s just how perfect it is.
Most people’s cognitive processes will simply overload and give a Blue Screen of Death in response to arguments like this – which is precisely what the theologian is looking for. People with functional rational capacities don’t make for easily-controlled and productive members of society, donchano.
Here’s how William Blake put it, a lot more succinctly than Fish or similar essayists:
To F_____
I mock thee not tho I by thee am Mocked
Thou callst me Madman but I call thee Blockhead
He’s a Blockhead who wants a proof of what he Can’t Perceive
And he’s a Fool who tries to make such a Blockhead believe
Few believers decide that it’s a waste of breath to preach to “blockheads”; so there will be lots and lots more writings like Fish’s.
Formatting problem there: the first two stanzas are Blake’s, the last paragraph is by me.
…sublime but unknowable god, …
This is like Gilder’s god in the fog on the summit.
He thinks god is in the fog.
He fails to see that god is the fog – inside his own head!
Fish said:
This is entirely self-defeating:
A) If god is not apprehensible to us, then there is no reason whatsoever to presume he exists.
B) Unless we are to presume god has revealed himself to us, in which case he most certainly is apprehensible, at least to some degree.
Fish wants it both ways. The bible says we need to have faith, so don’t go asking for proof. But if we are to take the bible as proof, then Fish must admit that the bible claims several people had direct contact with his incomprehensible, unknowable god. Quite the conundrum.
The interesting thing about the “argument” that “he’s there, but we can’t see him” is how obviously it plainly amd simply isn’t an argument. How can saying what we can say just as easily no matter how unequivocally wrong we are qualify as another side?
As for a real argument, how about science providing us with the undeniable power to do what we otherwise couldn’t do, and doing this to the point of transforming our lives so radically that the ancients would find our modern world an incomprehensible melange of miracles beyond number?
Professor Fish is simply doing at the “meta” level what the faith-pushers themselves have always done in lieu of offering evidence for their assertions: the con artist’s sine qua non of manipulating our emotions by telling us whatever we want to hear.
So which came first, God or faith?
p.s. PZ, I have been a lurker here for sometime. Love your writing!
Thanks!
Stanley Fish has now declared that his god is unreachable by evidence or reason and that demonstrating any facet of his existence contradicts his nature.
What about all the stuff from the Bible he’s quoting like crazy. How could he even know there aren’t a zillion gods.
Mr. Fish says:
He qualifies that with “however – again if there is a God”. Well why not just as well qualify it with “however – again if there is a God not in the world blah blah blah whatever,” or “however – again if there is no perspective then therefore there is no perspective, but that’s only assumong there is no perspective blah blah blah.”
Yep, I can hear old grandpappy right now… “Why you’re just full of all kinds of excuses aren’t you Mr. Fish!” Lol.
Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!
You just dont get it!
God is everywhere and is embodied through faith! Thats how the trinity works you see. Now you cant measure God because his essence is in the quantum sphere, but like shrödingers (sp?) cat he is there and not there because he is everything.
The babelfish proves God, for you see, Man says its a dead give-a-way and God disapears in a Puff of smoke. But if there is a puff of smoke that means God must exist because the laws of thermodynamics teaches us that order cant come from chaos!!!1eleven!!
So theology makes great sense, you just have to get into the mindset.
:)
And that is why there is no such thing as cosmology, since no one could possibly discern the universe.
As others have suggested, this position would seem to require denying the Biblical accounts of miracles and direct contact with god (e.g, parting of seas, burning of bushes, rising of dead, etc.). And once we rule out such things, once we toss out the Bible, what possible reason could one have to believe in the Judeo-Christian god?
“What about all the stuff from the Bible he’s quoting like crazy. How could he even know there aren’t a zillion gods.”
In the Ultimate universe, Galactus is a swarm of worldeating ships that drive all humanity into screaming madness before devouring us all.
Must be Professor Babel Fish writing these stupid op-eds.
To be completely honest, though, we have to ask ourselves exactly what might constitute evidence for the supernatural. How would you come to believe, based on evidence, that some effect had a supernatural cause?
The easy answer is that if you can’t find a natural explanation, it must be supernatural, but that’s the argument from ignorance. At what point do you stop looking? It’s really not a trivial question. If you stop too soon, you are a gullible supernaturalist, if you keep going no matter what, you are an inflexible materialist ideologue.
On the other hand, it just doesn’t do much for the credibility of an argument to say that it’s too complicated for us mere humans to get, so the more incomprehensible gibberish the better. (Insert hand-waving and incomprehensible gobbledegook here)
Seems to me dear Mr. Fish is just availing himself of the traditional dodge that is ‘negative theology’… detailing what can not be said to be true about his god… You know: my god does not answer phone calls, my god will not RSVP for your dinner party, my god is not defined in such a fashion that I myself could reasonably have any evidence for its existence, my god could actually be the weak nuclear force, and you’d never know the difference…
I can add a few to these. Or, technically, I can offer two, one of which must be true. Either:
a) Stanley Fish’s god did not help him write his essay, or
b) Stanley Fish’s god, as an editor, does not possess the power or inclination to help his followers craft persuasive arguments.
i suppose god created us to test stanley’s faith.
You know, I used to not like Douglas Adams; I felt he was the kind of writer you liked as a smart 7th grader but then just grew out of. Working in bookstores I would sell his stuff to adults while thinking, “You’re only reading this *now*?” Kind of like reading Catcher in the Rye at 30–what’s the point? (Of course, just like all snobs, I am a hypocrite, as I never outgrew Adrian Mole.)
But I’m realizing the error of my ways, especially after learning how highly he is esteemed by Dawkins. So maybe I should stock up on some Adams. Stanley Fish, not so much. He sounds like one of those po-mo leftists I outgrew after college.
Almost; you spelled babble incorrectly.
If Fish is right about this:
…then I guess the whole “road to Damascus” thing doesn’t count for a whole lot. Not to mention that burning bush. Since God demonstrates his existence all the time in the Bible, Fish is as much as admitting the Bible is either untrue, or, if true, promoting the worship of a being that is not God after all. It’s hilarious when believers get tripped up by their own rhetorical drivel like this.
Also, the grammar police ought to fine Fish for overuse of semicolons.
Everyone’s already mentioned the Biblical accounts of miracles that contradict Fish’s assertion that any True God doesn’t show his face, but you’ve all missed the biggest problem with Fish’s argument. Namely, Jesus, who, according to Fish’s religion, was God incarnate on earth. So, I assume Fish doesn’t believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection that his own religion is founded upon?
Fish’s three fatuous responses to the “three atheists” amount to nothing more than empty ad hominem arguments, and at least serve us as fine examples of several variants of this logical fallacy.
Perhaps the best response to Fish, who not having even tried to address the content of the arguments presented in the books he pretends to have read, is with another ad hominem, this one from Steven Weinberg made after Fish’s reponse to the Sokal Hoax:
Theologians are given special dispensation to commit blasphemy when arguing against atheism.
I wish all these fancy theologians were required to deliver their arguments against atheism every Sunday at church; church-going believers would surely boo them down, if they didn’t string ’em up.
Allow me to quote Bertrand Russell:
Question: How do you answer the argument that God is beyond the conception of the human mind?
Answer: My answer to that would be that so far as it is true, God becomes quite irrelevant to our thinking, and those who say that God is beyond comprehension of the human mind profess to know a great deal about God. They don’t really mean that God is beyond comprehension… generally they mean that He is beyond the comprehension of your mind and not beyond the comprehension of theirs.
Bertrand Russell, Russell on Religion, 1999, essay “The Existence and Nature of God”
To be fair, though, in the absence of definitive proof, stating there isn’t a god is a statement of belief — not faith — though it’s considerably more rationally defensible than siding with the theists.
But that’s essentially a technicality, pouncing on the unwillingness many of us share to state flat declarations when we know there’s the possibility of a nonzero chance of us being wrong.
That said, I’d be pretty damn surprised if any god of any kind ever did put in an appearance.
Will E —
I felt somewhat similar about Douglas Adams, but I’ve been re-reading HHGTG. He’s not a heavy-weight writer; his literary hero is PG Wodehouse. But Adams is certainly smart, and funny, and he refuses to be taken too seriously. And that might be exactly why Dawkins likes him.
I think for serious iconoclasm, I’d look to Kurt Vonnegut (who is now in Heaven) first, though he’s a serious jokester of the first order as well. And that’s why I like him.
You know what, Will, you probably just need to pour yourself a few Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, and you’ll be all right.
It’s only a belief if there’s some evidence upon which to make a judgement. I no more don’t believe in god than I don’t believe in purple farknarglers.
That’s why I’m always careful to tell people that I’m an purple farknargler agnostic.
For Douglas Adams at his best (he thought so, at least–I was fortunate to exchange emails with him shortly before his death), I suggest his nonfiction book, “Last Chance to See,” in which he and a biologist travel the world seeking to meet animals near extinction. It’s funny, poignant, sometimes heartbreaking. Think Monty Python meets Michael Moore by way of Jane Goodall.
Fish:
I’m surprised this howler didn’t get more prominent coverage. One ought to really take a moment out to meditate on who Stanley Fish is and that he really wrote that. Of course, if called on it, he’d claim, “But I didn’t say it is proof of divinity, just that is can be read as proof of divinity.” Maybe that’s the get out of jail free card that postmodernist literary critics get to use–lucky him.
A word that Fish should think about more often:
hy·pos·ta·tize [ hī póstə tz ] (past and past participle hy·pos·ta·tized, present participle hy·pos·ta·tiz·ing, 3rd person present singular hy·pos·ta·tiz·es)
transitive verb
Definition:
give idea concrete existence: to treat something conceptual as if it were real
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861619707/hypostatize.html
Theologians are given special dispensation to commit blasphemy when arguing against atheism.
I wish all these fancy theologians were required to deliver their arguments against atheism every Sunday at church; church-going believers would surely boo them down, if they didn’t string ’em up.
I’ve heard it commented that atheists are the last people who actually respect God, because theists continually tear away at his supposedly unlimited powers in order to prop up their beliefs against contradiction, while atheists, when they assume God for the sake of argument, give God all the glory that he is due and make God as omnipotent and omniscient and omnibenevolent as he is supposed to be. (And then, of course, disbelieve in God based on the internal inconsistency of that glory. But that’s not the point.)
Declaring that there is no evidence for god is a statement of fact, not belief. Insisting that god exists despite this lack of evidence is what requires belief, and faith.
Given Fish’s criteria, the best one can hope for is to be agnostic: god is utterly unknowable, so why bother trying?
Next week: Fish uses the Wookie Defence to justify the existence of God.
Oh wait, he’s already done that – it makes no sense.
Obviously faith. The worship of Yahweh was by no means the first religion developed by humans.
Noooo!@!!
Don’t you understand!!! You’re dooming us to yet more years in this little intellectual backwater!
The great and glorious Purple Farksnardlers have been preparing us to join their intergalactic legions for thousands of years…. but as true democrats, cannot invite us to join, if we are not ourselves united!
Unfortunately people keep mistaking their clerks and assistants for angels and imps (easy to do when you’re 3 foot tall and bright pink in your second moulting, and 8 foot tall and silvery grey in your fifth!)
Purple is of course the pre-dominant color of those farksnardlers who have made it as far as a tenth moult! All hail the Purple Farksnardlers! (Why else do you support purple is always a royal color?)
When will you people understand! We need to all recognize and listen to our great and glorious envoys from Fark! Just open your eyes, and unplug your ears – the evidence is everywhere around you!!!
We need to all be on the same page on this, or we’re doomed to another eon of insane interfactional wrangling!
@mothworm
“So, I assume Fish doesn’t believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection that his own religion is founded upon?”
I suspect that wouldn’t deter him. Y’know, the whole logical argument thing.
What cracks me up is when farksnardler atheists accuse us farksnardlerensians of being stupid. As if someone stupid could have painfully tracked and developed the color pattern of farksnardle moulting? Or disocvered the True Meaning of Farksnardling? Or meditated daily on the gifts of the farksnardle? It is the atheists, with their dismissal of all the wonderful bounty of the purple (and pink) farksnardlers who are the real morons! And, you know, we’re not all just blindly following the dictates of a book, either. There’s a healthy debate whether ultra-maroon follows purple in the moulting process, or if it resets to white. It’s a debate that has been raging for literally hundreds of years, and will likely rage for a hundred more, because farksnardling isn’t about answers, it’s about questions, about the journey, about mystery, and that’s something a-farks will never understand. I pity them, with all their answers, and their “evidence.” How sad.
Thanks for the Russell quote Carey. “They don’t really mean that God is beyond comprehension… generally they mean that He is beyond the comprehension of your mind and not beyond the comprehension of theirs.” The theists have drawn attention from their own hubris by calling atheists arrogant for far too long. My Mormon coworker always retreats to the old “I know God exists due to [vague and ill-defined] personal experience but I understand why you might not because you can’t know what’s in my heart” evasion when I call her out.
As has been noted above, Fish has fallen victim to one of the classic blunders (the most famous being “never get involved in a land war in Asia,” and “never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line”): A god who is by definition unknowable and undetectable by humans is thus amoral and unworshipable. We cannot, by Fish’s definition, know whether s/he wants us to abstain from sex and murder or spend every waking hour screwing and strangling. Maybe s/he loves chaos, and hates any vestige of consistent morality. We most certainly cannot be sure whether such a god wants us to worship him or her, since any sign affirming our worship or lack thereof would invalidate his existence.
In the case of Fish’s god, a modified Pascal’s Wager might then apply. I call it Brownie’s Time-SaverTM:
1. If an unknowable, undetectable god exists AND wants us to worship him or her, then
a. worshipping her or him correctly is likely impossible, since we can’t, by definition, know what s/he wants of us. Only 1/infinity number of ways to worship won’t piss him or her off. Therefore worship is a waste of time.
b. not worshipping will piss her or him off, but considering choice a., s/he’ll be pissed off anyways. Think of the time you’ll save.
2. If an unknowable, undetectable god DOESN’T exist OR wants us to worship him or her, then
a. S/he doesn’t exist. Worshipping something non-existent is a waste of time.
b. If there’s no deity to care, then think of the time you’ll save!
What do you guys think? One for the philosophy texts or what?
Tony, inkadu, the next time I need to Nargle my Fark, I’m definately calling you first.
Definitely. Snarf it.
An even earlier and more succinct refutation before Adams is the kindergarten joke:
“Hey, why are you carrying a green carnation?”
“To keep the tigers away.”
“But there aren’t any tigers around here.”
“See, it really works.”
Yes, *all* the arguments from “God, be def, is a perfect and if he didn’t exist that wouldn’t be perfect, would it” to whazzname’s argument that as human’s are imperfect so must our reasoning be, would be true *if* one begs the question that god exists a priori. But without it it’s just hypothetical (and admittedly unverifiable) tiger repellant.
Normally I hate to criticise, but I wish PZ were more careful with his spell-checking. This post should have been titled: Your weakly Fish.
inkadu, are you the originator of comment #38? I’m going to have to quote you wide and far.
Brownian – I think Homer Simpson beat you to it. “But what if we’re going to the wrong church? Then we’re just making God madder and madder.”
What really gets me is all these uppity afarks who presume to know everything by saying purple farksnarders don’t exist.
I ran across this line several years ago, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since:
“It is the final proof of God`s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.” -Peter De Vries
There’s an odd sort of truth to that.
It’s a clever meme that can tie its hosts in such knots, just to keep it alive.
This puts me in mind of one of the funniest quotes from The God Delusion:
Has any one of these deluded blatherers ever engaged with the Zeus/Thor/FSM objection? Ever??
“The criticism made by atheists that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated is no criticism at all; for a God whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn’t be a God; he would just be another object in the field of human vision.”
Who gave Stanley Fish sole right to define what is and isn’t a god? The ancient Egyptians could certainly demonstrate the existence of their pharaohs, and their pharaohs were defined as gods. I’d say there probably have been far more gods who, if they existed, could have their existence demonstrated than not.
How can there be meaningful discourse on the existence of gods when the understanding of the concept exists purely in speculation and human imagination and there’s no real consensus on what does and doesn’t qualify?
PZ:
There’s a great line somewhere in Borges about this problem. After mentioning some medieval theologian who claimed that nothing can be affirmed about God, only denied, he slipped in the quip, “This theology is the only true one, but it has no content.”
Brownian – Yeah, 38 is mine. But I want to be clear, when we thank the pink farksnardlers for their bounty, I’m referring specifically to the infra-pink farksnardlers. Tony is correct that after second moulting, farksnardlers are bright pink. It is only after their thirteenth moult that they become ultra pink, and only after the seventh that they begin to shower us with their (invisible) bounty.
That’s why atheists don’t really bother me much — they clearly don’t know enough about farksnardlers for their opinions to matter.
“Am I to believe every absurdity? If not, why this one in particular?” – Sigmund Freud
It occurs to me that the New York Times is now clearly what some of us always suspected it was.
Fish-rap.
I think it is worthy to note that Fish admits that there isn’t any real objective evidence for God, and he excuses it under the guise that God would be diminished if he provided that evidence. Well and good, but there is a problem:
1) If God exists, then he created me with the gift of rational thought, one who will not accept something with evidence, and one who requires evidence to justify belief. If God exists, this is the way he made me.
2) If God exists, then he does not (cannot?) provide evidence for his existence, and it requires faith (“belief held without evidence”) to believe it
3) However, to believe by this faith requires that I don’t utilize the gift of rational thought that God gave me.
4) Not using God’s gifts to their fullest extent is an insult to God, and would be a sin
Therefore, given Fish’s admission that there is no evidence for God, I am forced to conclude that, if God exists, it would be a sin for me to believe in him.
The Mormons believe that to see a proof of God would be so powerful it would make it impossible for you to continue to live here on the earth and you would be immediately transported/translated into His presence. Kind of Professor Fishlike in a way. God is too great for mere humans to comprehend. Typical religious nonsense.
I’m not sure what the point of responding to Fish is, really, since he’s self-refuting. He’s been opposed to metaphysics, but his entire case of apologetics for God rests on a bunch of good (for the time), but ultimately faulty, reasoning by the ancients who understandably didn’t have much of a basis from which to think.
Anyway, if you accept Fish’s conception of God, there’s really nothing to talk about, since it’s a self-consistent view of the world for which he can give us no evidence that speaks in favor of it. In other words, while one might indeed accept the view that God is for some incomprehensible reason unable or unwilling to reveal any of his awesome power through an apparently voluntary display, one has no evidence that Fish’s view of God has any merit to it. We’re either lacking evidence for God, or we’re lacking evidence that his conception of God is worth taking up. He fails at one point or the other, he just hopes that the shift becomes obscured at some point.
But to be fair to the old metaphysical view of God, there was indeed some good thinking that went into figuring out that “God must exist,” or a variation of it, “God is beyond existence” and thus does not “exist” per se. Of course it was all predicated on anthropocentric assumptions, but their often impressive “reasoning” isn’t studied in philosophy just because it is wrong and still used, rather it is also because it is superficially seductive.
A major problem for the ancients was to found logic, math, and geometry, which as we all know rest upon axioms which cannot be proven. Plato and many other Greeks credited “the Good”, or some similar notion, and flashes of insight made possible by turning to “the Good” to make evident the missing components of logic. This is why up through Descartes knowing something “clearly and distinctly” is considered to be sufficient to show that it is true.
In Xian times the various adherents of the Abrahamic faiths used God to vouchsafe logic and “clear and distinct” knowledge. It makes sense on some level, and presumably was accepted by genuinely good thinkers because they had no alternative that was better than crediting God with providing and revealing the paths of truth known as logic and geometry (or at least, especially geometry).
Well, now we know that logic is just another tool, which can lead us astray no matter how useful it is. Mathematics deals in what we consider to be small-t “true”, yet can be pursued as something having nothing to do with any kind of “truth” except “mathematical truth”. And even the Kantian view of geometry as simply our noumenal understanding of phenomena failed when Lobechevsky and Riemann demonstrated other versions of geometry. Furthermore, knowing something “clearly and distinctly” often marks stupid belief, as can be shown via cognitive science and psychology.
Thus everything that was supposed to point toward God in the absence of any direct evidence for such a “mind” has disappeared. Even the inference that logic and geometry depended upon the rational “mind of God” was always quite tenuous and could only be considered to be a hypothesis at best, as we see in the various interpretations by the Pythagorians, the Platonists (arguably a version of the former), the Aristotelians (Aristotle didn’t credit God for our knowledge, not in extant writings anyhow), and the Abrahamic theists.
Regardless of how questionable the former thinking was, the fact that we can’t view math, logic, and geometry as having the absolute reliability that the theists and Platonists believed in undercuts the only rationale that existed for Fish’s posit of the “God beyond evidence” (not really what was claimed at all). The “clear and distinct truth” of geometry and logic was supposed to be the evidence, and now we have early explanations for logic and math from evolution and the neurosciences, and even better indications that logic and math don’t belong to some dualistic perfect realm.
Properly, then, we would conclude from this fact that Fish’s God now belongs to a rather small closed-off logical “universe” that cannot be reasonably reached from where we are today. We can play around with it as we can with any sci-fi fantasy, of course, but the only value of it in philosophy or in science is to show how self-consistent logical circles can be set up (the trouble in the Hitchhiker series was that God made the mistake of revealing himself) which deal only with empty (or fictive) sets. Fish can assign “God” to a set if he wishes, but any real philosopher will deconstruct it as a mere logical device (assignation), not even a logical device (humanly) connected with the logic used in science any more.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
This one is going in my keep file for Relgion vs. Science posts. I might even print up the three paragraphs on God appearing and the reaction of atheists and dear Fish, to drop on a few church steps. Well, maybe not, but it would be a damn funny way to get their goat. lol
“for a God whose existence could be demonstrated wouldn’t be a God; he would just be another object in the field of human vision.”
Whither the angels: angels are apparently in the presence of God and therefore his existence is demonstrated to them. Do they not consider him a God, but think he is just another object in their field of vision?
Stanley Fish [n=1]:
vs. the first words of the Wikipedia entry on the Koran:
It’s funny. Once upon a time God was a big, powerful guy (but a little distant and forgetful) who lived on top of a mountain. His wife interceded on the behalf of humans with him. His two children were important players in his pantheon, as well.
First the kids get written out. Then the wife; though the Catholics replaced her with Mary, bless their hearts.
As people begin to understand the universe God has to move. From the mountains to the sky, then the “heavens” then to… some unreal place outside of space and time…
As this happens he looses more and more of his power. He no longer causes floods, earthquakes and lightning. He no longer causes raises nations, destroys cities for trifles, unleashes plagues and infestations or makes miracles.
In 2000 years of progress, God has faded away to… nothing. Really. All gone. No miracles. No thunderbolts. Heck, it’s been shown he doesn’t even answer prayers.
Sadly, this old relic is still with us. This modern God, a pitiful, impotent and doddering old deity who is a shell of what he was… And yet, the zealots can’t see this. They can’t read their cobbled together superstitious rantings and see what a pathetic excuse their omnipotent, omniscient deity has become compared to his old testament glory.
Go tell it on the mountain, Moses.
Not bad for a dead guy!
I think I’ve got mercury poisoning. ;-)
Fish doesn’t claim to be a Christian. In fact, AFAIK, Fish doesn’t claim to be anything. From this article:
He’s against legalizing abortion, but apparently on emotional first-principles rather than for any theological reason. I would say he basically likes feeling religious, but finds the content unimportant.
I honestly don’t get all these supposedly “non-religious” people getting their knickers in a twist over the plain atheist statement that the god they apparently don’t worship doesn’t exist.
Not true. It is true that lack of evidence is not proof of non-existence, but the null hypothesis is the default position in science.
It isn’t a statement of belief for me to say that there is no china teapot in orbit around Pluto (Russell) or an invisible, intangible dragon living in my garage (Sagan)
By your argument, the existence of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and leprechauns are also open questions.
#60 Moses – if you could write that up as a picture book it would be great. Include throwing some thunderbolts and stuff. In the penultimate scene he could be the ‘ether’/force in between the subatomic particles or some-woo-thing when it was decided he wasn’t even needed there!
#55:
The Mormons believe that to see a proof of God would be so powerful it would make it impossible for you to continue to live here on the earth and you would be immediately transported/translated into His presence.
… -the hell? I don’t know where you get your ‘facts’, but you might want to double-check them. One of the major differences between the LDS (Mormon) faith and say, Catholicism, is that the LDS believe in CONTINUING revelation from god. That’s why they have more books of scripture than just the bible! The Book of Mormon is (supposedly) a collected volume from the Americas from before/around the time of Christ, and the Doctrine & Covenants is the writings of many of the ‘prophets’ since the Restoration by Joseph Smith.
The president of the Church is considered a prophet of god, and one of the major points covered in the Missionary discussions is that god still speaks to mankind even today! (I know, I served a full 2-year mission before finally getting out of Utah and starting to learn for myself..) Sure, it’s mostly the same mealymouthed ‘You’ll know His answer to your questions when you feel it in your heart’ that all the other churches claim, but that sort of internal answer IS ‘proof of God’ to just about every ‘Christian’ I’ve every spoken with or read about.
I can’t think of anything offhand, but there -might- be some passage -somewhere- in the LDS literature that suggests something like this happening if you saw the face of god Himself, But even the Book Of Mormon lists at least one instance of someone (The Brother of Jared, as I recall..) seeing the actual finger of God and not being dragged away to angel land.. I’d have to see some hard evidence of this claim in writing, considering it’s not something I ever heard in my life while growing up in the LDS church.
I have no problem with people discussing the insanity that Christians in general believe, but I really hate to see people attributing beliefs to a religion that are demonstrably NOT an actual belief of that religion.
How do WE feel when someone says ‘Athiests believe {insert ludicrous falsehood here}’, or ‘Scientists believe {demonstrably incorrect thing}’, when we know it’s patently untrue?
Please. If we’re going to speak on the side of honesty and reason, can we please try not to make claims about others’ beliefs unless we’re SURE that our claim is factual? What one co-worker may believe is NOT necessarily the actual doctrine of whatever church they attend, people come up with all SORTS of ideas all on their own.
Thank you,
The Lesser of TWO Weevils!
So, if Fish is going to say that the god that can be spoken of is not the true god… does he know that Lao-Tzu kind of beat him to the punch there?
I believe in an ancient entity of immense power and complexity that, in a sense, created the solar system, the Earth and humanity. I call it “the Universe”. But I try to avoid personifying immense cosmic forces because, well, when you do that you usually end up being wrong. The attempt says more about the perceiver than about the object perceived.
The concept of a god that created the universe doesn’t really work any better than the concept of a god that pushes the sun around or a god that aims lightning or a god that pulls unsupported objects to the ground. (I don’t know if any religion in history has ever actually *had* a god of gravity, actually. All hail Gravitas, Father of Landslides and Avalanches, the Unrelenting, Enemy of Climbers, He Who Chains the Moon.)
Death, the ocean and earthquakes do what they do without needing plans, intentions or feelings; trying to invent minds for them is just an elaborate form of self-deception. Why shouldn’t that extend to the universe as a whole?
complete contradictions are not only a common part of religion, they are in fact essential. only if people blindly accept obvious and complete contradictions, they are able to believe all the nonsense the bible telss them.
Actually, we should welcome FIsh’s conclusion.
That “god” is unreachable through evidence or reason …..
If this is the case, then why bother at all?
We have the real world to cope with.
Wasn’t Fish also one of the prominent pomos singled out for humiliation in l’affaire Sokal a decade ago? IIRC, he’s always had a reputation for anally-focused research.
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy has an excellent little entry by Jane O’Grady addressing Fish’s tiresome Shakespearean argument:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
(Shakespeare, Hamlet)
What Hamlet says to his friend Horatio could be an indictment of philosophy in general or specifically of Horatio’s philosophy. Or if, as some Shakespearian scholars contend, the correct reading is ‘our’, the philosophy referred to could be that of Horatio and Hamlet, whose undergraduate faith in rationality Hamlet may be mocking, or of all humans. No amount of scholarship, however, will dislodge people’s tendency to counter scepticism about the supernatural, or philosophical stringency, with this quotation. The quoter usually purports to ally him or herself to ‘the Bard’, and flourishes Hamlet’s rhetoric as if it were Shakespeare’s own assertion–and decisive proof of the existence of God, the paranormal, or anything else that it is thought desirable to believe in.
Reference:
Ms Jane O’Grady “more things in heaven and earth” The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford University Press 2005. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Melbourne University. 27 June 2007
Unfortunately for all of us, Postmodernism definitely breathed new life into Religion, and made irrationality fashionable again.