I’m sure you’re relieved to see the title of this post, as most of you haven’t taken kindly to the quotes I’ve put up from Hart’s new book, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. But you don’t seem to realize that I’m doing you a two-fold favor here: not only saving you from having to read the book (and therefore keeping your credibility as Sophisticated Atheists), but also holding up to the harsh light of day the kinds of arguments that pass as The Best Case for God.
So bear with me while I reproduce one last quote. Please do read it, for it’s a long riff on the deepity that “God is love.” It comes from page 276. I’ve made a few comments, highlighted with asterisks and explained at the bottom.
“For none of the great theistic traditions is ‘God’ the name of a god, some emotionally changeable entity who has to deliberate upon his actions, either in respect of standards independent of himself or in respect of some arbitrary psychological impulse within himself. ‘God’ is the name, rather, of that eternal and transcendent principle upon which the gods (if there are such beings)( are dependent for their existence and for their share in all the transcendental perfections of being. For all the great monotheisms, God is himself the Good, or the Form of the Good, and his freedom consists in his limitless power to express his nature (goodness)* unhindered by the obstacles or limitations suffered by finite beings. He is ‘the love that moves the sun and all the other stars,’ as Dante phrases it, at once the underlying unity and the final end of all things. And the absolute nature of that love is reflected in the unconditional quality of the transcendental or ecstatic desire it excites in rational natures. As Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) says, ‘Love is sufficient in itself, gives pleasure through itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. . . I love because I love. I love so that I may love.** Love is something great insofar as it returns constantly to its fountain head and flows back to its source, from which it ever draws that water that continually replenishes it. . . For when God loves, he desires only to be loved in turn.*** His love’s only purpose is to be loved, as he knows that all who love him are made happy by their love of him.'”
_________
*If God is the ineffable Ground of Being, how does Hart know he’s “good”?
** Classic deepities!
***Throughout the book,Hart denies strongly that God has any anthropomorphic properties. Yet here he clearly agrees with Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) that God not only lovees, but has a desire to be loved. If that’s not anthropomorphism, I’ll eat my boots!
I can’t say for sure, of course, but I believe most comments of a seemingly negative nature were tongue in cheek. I feel most us appreciate to no end your efforts in bringing this to us in your always incredibly keen and insightful manner, sparing us from doing the dirty work as well. I, for one, am extremely thankful for your summary and analysis of this book given the high falutin’ claim with which it was tagged.
Agreed. I’d like some more quotes actually to give a fuller sense of the book without the pain of reading it.
Pretentious piffle, painful to read is the sense I get from the gooey snippets we’ve been treated to.
I too thank Ceiling Cat our kind barkeep has the patience to slog through such drivel.
Yes, I too “appreciate to no end your efforts” in reviewing this stuff. Even the few paragraphs of Hart you’ve posted are just exhausting because they really don’t make much obvious sense. I’m in awe of your ability to wade through his piles of random assertions and provide clear and enjoyable responses. Hart’s writing is really painful to read. Do they have a special course “Writing to ward off readers” in schools of theology?
For pity’s sake! Not only does the Old testament God have “to deliberate upon his actions”, but He actually changes His mind. twice tomy knowledge; He repents of having created humankind (Noah’s flood), and He repents of having apponted saul, a manic-depressive, to be King of Israel.
Or are Genesis and the Books of Samuel not part of “the great theistic traditions”?
From reading the Amazon sample of Heart’s book, it seems that he plays the No True Scotsman game for religious tradition. All religious tradition that reads the Old Testament even remotely as it is written is a banal fundamentalism and not True Religious Tradition. Those millions of Catholics, Baptists, and so on who read it thus are merely the false religious tradition that the new atheists, in their own fundamentalist zeal, have tilted their spears against. If the silly atheists would only study true theistic traditions, with a helpful theologian to explain it to them, they’d see that they are attacking a straw man. The real theistic tradition, so far as I can tell, is the negative space of whatever atheists claim about theism. That seems to be the essence of his schtick.
So, I think he’d say “No”, Genesis and the Books of Samuel, read as literal stories about an anthropomorphic God are not part of the *great* theistic traditions, only part of the vapid fundamentalist theistic traditions.
And after telling Abraham to kill Isaac, he later says “On second thoughts, don’t”. You can say this is not a change of mind, but merely a test of Abraham; but that just makes G*d malevolent.
But, on a larger scope, process theology proceeds on the assumption that G*d both affects and is affected by temporal processes, neither immutable nor impassible.
Another one: God originally plans to kill everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah; after Lot pleads with him, he is willing to modify his plans: he won’t destroy the cities if there are at least 10 good men.
But being omniscient, Yahweh knew how that ’10 good men’ deal was going to work out.
Apparently, children are cheaply disposed of in the good ol’ days.
Not anthropomorphic at all.
She just has some needs.
Gives a whole new spin to the slogan “Jesus is coming again.”
The quote on it’s own is disappointing, but bellowed and accompanied by dramatic hand gestures? Checkmate!
Teh schtopid! It burns! Teh googles they do not woooooooork!
b&
Here you go.
As metaphors go, a wave of toxic sludge fits this post’s quote quite well I think.
Hart:
In contrast, here’s the Bible, Genesis 3, 8:24: (my apologies for such a long quote, but if you don’t see “some emotionally changeable entity who has to deliberate upon his actions” in this story, then I’ll eat Jerry’s boots too):
Is in a monotheistic tradition, the whole this distinction not moot? After all if there’s only one god, why bothering that God is not a proper name?
If there was only one cat, we could simply call it Cat, since anyone would understand what you would mean with that. The only reason we give cats names, is to distinguish one cat from another
Of course, there aren’t any monotheists, save for insignificant rounding errors of Spinoza-ists.
Never mind the Trinity; if Set and Hades are the gods they most surely are, then Satan is also a god. If the Olympians, then the Heavenly Host; if pagan ancestor gods, then personal guardian angels. And on and on and on. “God” merely occupies the same place in the pantheon as Zeus or any other all-father god.
b&
Indeed, and what about the canonification of saints? Declaring people saints is nothing but a modern version of pagan apotheosis.
Eric, I don’t see this quote as evidence of a changeable god, I see it as entrapment. God set Adam and Eve up to fail, precisely so he can yell at them and tell them how they disappoint them and punish them.
Arg! For 2nd “them” read “him”.
On NPR’s Fresh Air last night, Terry Gross interviewed a comedian raised as a Hindu who was more or less atheist as a young man, but now he “believes” in god because the world is so messed up, there has to be a god.
By this, I think he means that he HOPES there is a superhero who will protect him with magic if something really bad should happen to him. That seems to me to be Hart’s reason for belief, also.
Speaking of God being Disappointed, there is a funny remake of the Bible with that very name. God is Disappointed in You . If I ever wish to read the Bible, this will be the version I would choose.
Entrapment implies deliberation just as much as a sincere “because you have done this” implies it. So either way you interpret it, the story shows a deliberating God.
The Adam and Eve Fable is absurd on so many levels. The God character of the bible is a huge jerk but believers will never see it. Its amazing how much time, money and life has been lost to this ridiculous fantasy.
The desire not to die is a powerful force. Wish thinking is very seductive.
Well, that quote seems to completely contradict everything that we’re told about the god of the Bible.
It also seems that Hart is making assumptions about how at least some Muslims see their god…
True. Most Muslims view their God as a personage that loves, hates, can be angry, happy, etc. Anthropomorphic, in other words.
I actually found it painful to read this excerpt from Hart’s book. It is up there with some of the worst writing I have ever seen.
I wonder why the word “good” could not be substituted for “evil” in this long diatribe of Hart’s. Just another long unjustified assertion for us to wade through in order to earn our Sophisticated Atheist merit badge.
Again, more wordplay. Now if I say god does not exist he can laugh and say I do not think goodness exists. Then he can switch definitions again should I be so blinkered as to agree his god exists. As Prof Ceiling Cat rightly notes, the definition even changes from when the subject is the “ground of being” earlier in his own book.
I swear Sophisticated Theology seems to be little more than secret Mad Libs for clever wordsmiths to justify their untenable beliefs. They change word meanings so fast and loosely they can’t even keep them straight in their own heads over the course of a single book.
Exactly a point I was about to make. Our points are both very pointy, you see. One could substitute ‘bat shit crazy’, or ‘callously indifferent’ for ‘love’. It would make more sense.
Yes, callously indifferent. That is how the sun moves and the planets around the sun, in different, if not in defiance of Hart’s love.
Daniel Dennett calls doing this playing with “deepities” — words, phrases, or concepts with two interpretations. One of them is ‘true, but trivial’ (meaning not unimportant but not earthshaking); the other is ‘extraordinary but false.’ If you keep slipping back and forth between them you can make them seem to be the same thing. That is, if you’re not paying attention.
If “God” is just another word for “Good,” then atheists are right. But Hart is also turning “Goodness” into a Being. So atheists are wrong. And they don’t believe in Good.
I’d bet dollars to dust that if you pressed him Hart would claim that the word “Love” as he uses it here doesn’t mean any ordinary sense of the word “Love” (a strong feeling, attraction, friendship, altruistic action, etc.). He’d jump up and say we were being naive, fundamentalist, atheists to take his “love” talk to be in any way about these anthropomorphic qualities. No, “love”, like all other words applied to “God”, including “God” itself, is a metaphor for something ineffable. Silly atheists, reading what he writes as though it means what it says!
It is difficult if not impossible to create any recognizable definition of “love” without anthropomorphizing. Or, at least, animal-morphising. Plants and rocks can’t love in any recongizable sense, they don’t have the machinery. So no matter how ineffable he makes it, if he’s using the word “love” at all, he’s attributing to God a property or feeling that is taken from our understanding of humans and the bigger, more complex animals we commonly interact with. A nonanthropomorphic plant-God would more likely be described with metaphors like “god is ineffable sunlight” or “god is ineffable spore release.”
Note that Spinoza’s god (= the universe) is explicitly said to not love humans in return.
Are you suggesting that the Theological God is the source of all our allergies?
Sure would explain a lot….
b&
I always thought the idea of anthropomorphic gods was as old as the idea of gods themselves. To quote Xenophanes: “Each man represents the gods as he himself is. The Ethiopian as black and flat-nosed the Thracian as red-haired and blue-eyed; and if horses and oxen could paint, they would no doubt depict the gods as horses and oxen.”
Very human emotions are found in the gods of all kinds of cultures. How does Hart get around that?
By stamping his feet and saying, “No, no, no! That’s not what I mean!”, even though that’s exactly what he believes.
The quote from Xenophanes reminds me of one whose author I don’t recall (maybe Bertrand Russell): The study of comparative religions makes it clear that man invented gods in his image, rather than the other way around.
“His love’s only purpose is to be loved, as he knows that all who love him are made happy by their love of him.”
Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic feedback constitutes clinical narcissism. This God is one sick bastard.
It might be inferred that Hart is one sick bastard. At least, he voluntarily bootstraps his wishes and hopes on the selfsame transcendence he is defending.
When I saw “Form of the Good” above, I wondered: if I asked Hart any question about it would I find out I’m no true Platonist?
And why infinite bliss? why not infinite ennui?
Why would anyone want infinite bliss in the first place? I mean sure, it sounds really cool before you stop and think about it. But really think about it now – its pretty difficult to get anything else useful or fun done when you’re experiencing direct, powerful, overwhelming pleasure. Infinite bliss would mean that you would miss out on a lot of other physical and intellectual pleasures that you can’t really appreciate when your eyes are rolled back, so to speak. Infinite bliss means no more intellectually stimulating conversations, no more simple pleasures like playing or watching sports, and so on. You can’t do those things “blissed out.”
And as your earlier Genesis quote shows, God is sometimes more pissed off than blissed off.
Maybe do a review for the book on Amazon, to balance the dribble over there?
*drivel*
“Dribble” was pretty apt!
I never understood this desire to equate god with love. If there is a god, the world / universe makes a whole lot more sense if it were an evil entity. Like a shit load more sense… The vast majority of the universe is lethal to us, and even on our planet the ecosystem is just brutal. Disease, parasites, poisons, carnivores, etc. Only a complete psychopath would design it in such a way.
According to some of the New Age versions of metaphysics, God is Love and never intended to create the physical world. That mistake happened when part of the God-Consciousness manifested Ego and Fear (individuality and reason.) The purpose of life is to lose Ego and Fear and return to Love.
Christianity’s version, Catharism, didn’t work out too well in the end.
The more I consider the arguments that Prof CC is attributing to Hart, the more I think that he should really be classed as a heretic by most mainstream denominations. In As Bernard of Clairvaux’s day he’d either be 1) executed or 2) locked up in a monastery where his ideas couldn’t harm anyone else!
The problem of good.
It’s the Argument from Awesomeness. Love is awesome, and real, true, requited love is about as awesome as it gets. So the most awesomest thing in the entire universe must be made out of love, right?
Bacon seems more reliable and enduring…
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Now I’m hungry
A snippet from Jerry’s quotation of D.B. Hart:
“As Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) says, ‘Love is sufficient in itself, gives pleasure through itself and because of itself. It is its own merit, its own reward. Love looks for no cause outside itself, no effect beyond itself. . . I love because I love. I love so that I may love.** Love is something great insofar as it returns constantly to its fountain head and flows back to its source, from which it ever draws that water that continually replenishes it. . . For when God loves, he desires only to be loved in turn.*** His love’s only purpose is to be loved, as he knows that all who love him are made happy by their love of him.'”
Jerry lightly dismisses Bernie’s little lesson on love (how alliterative of me!) with the comment “Classic deepities!” I think we ought to delve deeper and pursue Bernie’s depiction of love and demand proof from him. Oh yeah, he’s been dead for almost nine hundred years….well, damn….
Now, I can’t speak for Bernie, but I would guess that his thesis is partly derived from John the Apostle’s words: “God is love” (I John 4:8), and the ubiquitous John 3:16, “God so loved the world…” But, really, where did John get this idea? We should demand proof from him. Oh yeah, he’s been dead for nineteen hundred years, if he even existed… well, damn ….
Really, Bernie’s thesis, in humanistic terms, is covered by the current concept of “paying it forward”. Love’s source is the care we humans hold for ourselves, for each other, and our planet – to the limits of our influence. Love is replenished by our never forgetting this and acting on it continually. To attribute love to God (especially the Judeo-Christian-Muslim one) is making a huge leap because there is very little proof of this in any writings before John, or whoever he is. It’s like John just decided to equate love with God out of thin air. He surely couldn’t have gotten this from the Old Testament. Of course, this is quite likely, because literacy was not one of the apostles’ strong points.
My point: D.B. Hart’s use of millennia-old quotations is pointless. “Love” is not a godly concept, it is a human-ly concept. We keep it alive and fresh not by our words, but by our current and future actions in our various spheres of influence.
Part of the reason I am no longer an evangelical Christian (can you tell?) is that, by attributing human attributes to a God, Christians (among others) have ducked the responsibility to act humanely, the way bipeds with advanced brain capacities should.
I think that what does it for me is that apologists quote ancient sources for some kind of universal enlightenment, but modern humans know far more about the cosmos then these people could have imagined.
Now I’m not knocking the great authors, poets, or the engineers, jewelers, etc who would be at the pinnacle of their arts even today. We are perfectly happy to label Newton as one of the greatest scientists who has ever lived, but his grasp of metaphysics was demonstrably wrong by modern standards (and wastefully so given the amount of time that he spent on alchemy & etc).
Historical theologians had an excuse, people like Hart less so!
…God not only lovees, but has a desire to be loved. If that’s not anthropomorphism, I’ll eat my boots!
I don’t think the term ‘anthropomorphism’ is precisely apt here. There is a lot of evidence that non-human animals love, and desire to be loved; sometimes a human companion, often another animal. But I don’t think you should eat your boots.
Besides, since the bible declares that humans were ‘made in His image’, that term is sort of backwards; should be more like deimorphism.
If the child resembles the parent then the parent resembles the child. I don’t think the term “anthropomorphic” entails a causal direction.
Granted, but that still ignores the fact that animals “love.”
Anthropomorphism is only a special case of theriomorphism.
This sounds like an Argument from Belief. The fact that some people really, really get excited when they think about how much they want God is evidence that God must exist. Why would they have this desire otherwise?
Notice how this particular passage denies atheists even a “rational nature.” We’re irrational because we fail to swoon.
Your boots are safe. Yup. That’s anthropomorphism.
God doesn’t have to resemble the human body to be considered anthropomorphic (though Hart needs to stop giving God a sex if he really wants to duck this one.) God can resemble the human mind. In fact, God can resemble any part or aspect or ability of the human mind and still be considered ‘anthropomorphic.’
This means that yes, you can deny that God ever plans or deliberates and if God loves or even IS LOVE then God is STILL anthropomorphic.
I maintain that every version of God is anthropomorphic by necessity, since the supernatural is best defined as pure mind (or mental products.) And the mind which God resembles is never the ‘mind’ of an insect or chipmunk. No, it is always the “higher” bits of the human mind. It’s Love or Goodness or Intelligence or Compassion or Justice or Willpower or some heady combination thereof.
Try taking everything mental out of God — remove every resemblance to our minds. Now consider what God is through the apophatic tradition. It can’t think, it isn’t conscious, it isn’t intelligent, it isn’t intentional, it isn’t aware of anything, it doesn’t feel, it has no emotions, it has no values, it has no virtues, it has no plan, it has no purpose, it has no meaning.
The only thing left is “it’s mysterious and unknowable.”
Come on. Not even Hart would call that “God.” Not even Karen Armstrong, even.
I’ve been going over these types of issues over at Edward Feser’s blog, under his recent post about the New Atheists.
Sometimes you’ll get “sophisticated theists” trying to make a cohesive case for Christianity by building it first from philosophical proofs of God. They use this as a way of “raising the probabilities” of a supernatural occurrence (once you have a God, then you get the possibility of miracles). So you can’t just dismiss Jesus’ miraculous Resurrection, if miracles have already been established as possible via the possibility of a God.
But, as I keep arguing, the ineffable, vague God of metaphysics, Hart’s and Feser’s, offers no predictive power whatsoever in order to raise the possibilities of ANY specific purported divine intervention.
In order to derive any higher probabilities from the ineffable God, you’d have to be able
to describe this God’s character, and especially with LIMITS that suggest what we would and would not see. But everything anyone has ever experienced is compatible with the cause of all things God, so it no more raises the probabilities of Jesus rising from the dead than it does Eggo waffles rising from my toaster. It’s all God, doncha know.
And you get this seemingly unbridgeable gulf between the ineffable God to Revelation for the same reason. If you can’t know God in any specifics, how would you ever recognize God, and know you weren’t being duped? You can’t say “God wouldn’t do X or Y” if this God is so ineffable, and Jesus can rise until he’s blue in the face – you’ve nothing logically to connect the claim of a revelation to an conceptually formless God.
Aquinas, having painted himself into a corner in terms of making God an unknowable Being appealed to Revelation as a way God reveals more about Himself. But that just begs the question – you can’t jump between the two. You’ve burned the epistemological bridge – you can’t say “we can recognize Jesus as an instantiation of God” if you don’t have anything effable in the metaphysical God to recognize.
Of course they start invoking words like “Love” into the description of the metaphysical God, in order to recognize Jesus’ love as divine (or visa versa).
But then the door is open to the Problem Of Evil even with the metaphysical God. Some theists will retreat again “oh, we don’t mean exactly love exactly as humans use the term.” But then you are back to a “what the hell ARE you describing?” God, that you can’t connect to Jesus again.
And on and on…
Vaal
I don’t believe they believe in an ineffable, vague God at all. Although they use a lot of waffle words I don’t think they even think their God is really without any content and incapable of being known. I mean, look at Hart’s description. Here’s what it is, here’s how we know it. That’s content.
Yeah, I call that the Pink Problem. God is pink — but not pink in the sense of the color pink. God has no color at all. It’s more like the essence of pinkness if color was removed.
They want it both ways. They want God to be familiar — but not too familiar. God can’t be too much like something a human would make up — or something a skeptic can attack. So they deal with an anthropomorphic God which resembles the ‘higher’ aspects of the human mind and then throw a Thesaurus open at “Mysterious” at it every now and then so they can feel they transcend even the highest aspects of the human mind.
It’s “ineffable” only the same way that first person experience can’t be directly transferred.
That only works for the Invisible Pink Unicorn (PBUHHH), and is She ever going to be pissed at you suggesting that Jesus is invisibly pink the same way She is! No pineapple and ham pizza for you! Indeed, you’ll be lucky to escape the Pastures of Short Grass and High Manure….
Cheers,
b&
No, the IPU’s pinkness is a contingent, accidental property, whereas the Pinkness of God is Essential to its Inherent Necessary Nature.
Clearly.
Pointedly.
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That one was too corny.
Uniquely so.
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And what, pray tell, would you call an Invisible Pink Unicorn Who isn’t invisibly pink? Hmm?
Whereas any other god that’s pink and invisible is clearly a Commie sleeper agent.
When your next pizza is pepperoni and mushroom, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
b&
Reminds me of a “family game night” a short time ago. I don’t remember the name of the game, something like ‘The last word.” It’s played with a small electronic thingy that has a timer and screen that gives the player a word, which he/she must hint at so the other players can guess the word. It is played in teams and we were playing ‘boys against the girls and my word was ‘fushia.’ Have you ever had to make a group of guys distinguish different shades of pink? That might require a miracle.
Well, spelled correctly, and pronounced as written, *fuchsia* is the shade of pink with the rudest name… which should appeal to most boys. 😉
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You’ve just helped me come to a realization.
I remarked earlier that an excellent definition of a god could well be a faery that somebody believes is actually real. And that certainly applies perfectly to the gods actually worshipped.
The sophisticated theological gods, however, are best defined as any entity which cannot be demonstrated nonexistent, regardless of any logic or evidence applied from any source.
Thanks!
b&
Apparently Hart has never heard of the “pathetic fallacy”. There are ID proponents who make more sense than what I’ve read from him, especially in this case. They’re wrong, he’s not even wrong.
All these quotes from Hart sound like he’s whispering sweet nothings to someone. No contents, just sweet talk. But to whom? I think to himself, to convince himself he’s on to something meaningful and deep.
However, I myself often stand in awe of the question “Why is there something, rather than noting?” But I don’t make up pseudo-explanations for it. I just realize my ability to comprehend the answers, partial and tentative though many of them may be, is very limited. Some of those answers may always escape us.
If it helps you sleep at night…the “Why is there something rather than nothing?” question seems profound, but is actually incoherent.
The “nothing” of philosophy in this context is most akin to that which is north of the North Pole. What’s north of the North Pole? Nothing! So, why is there something rather than whatever it is that’s north of the North Pole?
Phrased like that, it’s a bit easier to understand why the question itself doesn’t make any sense.
There’s also the problem of the very strong implication of teleology. Why is the sky blue? We can answer that by describing the optical and chemical and other factors at play that give the sky its color…but that doesn’t answer the other possible interpretation of the question: Why is the sky blue as opposed to purple and pink polkadot with green stripes? And that question only makes sense if there was a “somebody” picking and choosing between color schemes for the sky; without such a “somebody,” the question is as meaningful as the North Pole one.
Cheers,
b&
Yes, and why think there ever was a “nothing” to begin with?
The Laws of Thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed, and E=MC2 says that matter is just a form of energy, so maybe the amount of energy we have right now has always existed and will always exist. No “nothing” at all.
Actually, cosmology has demonstrated that the net energy of the universe is actually so close to zero that zero is within the error bars.
Over at Sean Carroll’s bl*g, Max Tegmark has a guest post including a sample chapter of his new book. It’s all about Inflation, but much of it is incidentally relevant to the subject.
b&
Another way I like to rephrase the question is: “why do things always exist instead of impossible philosophical abstractions?”
Or the shorter version, which is not quite a deepity (but close) — in one sense it is trivially true, and in another is easy to verify as incorrect (as opposed to meaningless, which I suppose would make it a true deepity):
“nothing is impossible”
“why think there ever was a ‘nothing’ to begin with?”
Exactly. All our experience is that something exists; it seems trivially obvious that this is the natural state or affairs.
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*Mass* is equivalent (sometimes) to energy, not matter.
“If that’s not anthropomorphism, I’ll eat my boots!”
Of course it’s not anthropomorphism, because it’s either analogous to desire such that our finite language can only express a limited sense of God’s being, or God created us in His own image so of course words like desire make sense. How can it be anthropomorphism when we are the likeness of God?!
Checkmate, Atheist!
What drug was Hart on when he wrote that? I haven’t read so much drivel in a long time. I must save the paragraph as a classic example of how not to write in English.
“He is ‘the love that moves the sun and all the other stars,’”
Gravity? The Higgs boson really IS the ‘god particle’!
So glad I don’t have to read this stuff.
To be fair, Dante was writing a few hundred years before Kepler and Newton… but Hart should know better than to quote that in the face of several hundred years of cosmology.
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Still waiting to hear about how this ineffable, nebulous, ground-of-being God can also be the god of the bible and the one who sent Jesus to be temporarily inconvenienced for…well, no reason that I can understand.
Deepities that I once saw on a car with two bumper stickers, draw your own conclusion:
God Is Love
Love Is a German Shepherd
(Note that as a cat lover, I agree with neither proposition)
Reminds me of what’s perhaps my all-time favorite syllogism.
If God is Love, and love is blind…and Ray Charles is blind…does that mean that Ray Charles is God?
b&
No, he’s Stevie Wonder.
Heretic!
Ah, but the clue is in the name. And his song lyrics: “Made from love.”
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Ray Charles is Stevie Wonder? No, that can’t be — they’ve been seen in public together!
b&
Nope. Helen Keller.
This reminds me of the strangest church sign I’ve seen. A few years ago in December I drove by a church that had this up:
“On Christmas day God gave you a present wrapped in flesh.”
A present wrapped in flesh… like bacon wrapped scallops… I hope.
You know, there is one God that fits in with Hart and isn’t anthropomorphic in the slightest. His Noodliness the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
He boiled for your sins!
Correction: in a few minutes he will be boiled. And not for my sins, but for my supper.
…and then tossed with a bowl full of whole cloves of garlic slowly sauteed in olive oil….
b&
There are a few clips of Hart on youtube demeaning Dawkins and atheism.
“But you don’t seem to realize that I’m doing you a two-fold favor here: not only saving you from having to read the book (and therefore keeping your credibility as Sophisticated Atheists),”
I sense an ambiguity here. Does this mean Sophistimacated Atheists should have read the book, or Sophistimacated Atheists should not have read it?
Either way, if being a Sophistimacated Atheist means I have to read the book (or not?) then I guess I’m just not Sophistimacated enough. I’m very good at not doing things which other people tell me I have to do (my boss would regretfully agree on that point). But I do thank Prof CC for the extended quote which provides ample grounds for not reading it. Are we sure it isn’t a Sokal-type hoax? (“syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever”- Alan Sokal)
Thanks for this, and I’m sorry you had to wade through this guy’s gaseous prose. Truly wretched stuff — and I’m referring to the actual words on the page, the style of writing (not the “content”).
And if I have any say in this, you will not be eating your boots any time soon.
Late, but it wasn’t a party anyway. Or rather it was a farewell party.
Thanks for the effort, greatly appreciated!