I haven’t read “The Stone”—the philosophy column of the New York Times—in quite a while, but I seem to remember that it was very soft on faith and very hard on atheism. Well, today’s piece, by George Yancy, continues that tradition. (Yancy is a philosophy professor at Emory University, specializing in in critical whiteness studies, critical philosophy of race, African American philosophy. He’s also written a ton of books.)
Rightfully distressed by the shootings in Dayton and El Paso, and by Trump’s racism and divisiveness that seems to have changed the national mood in a way that might prompt such killings, Yancy offers up a column-length prayer to God. It seems that Yancy is a believer (he defines himself as a “hopeful Christian theist”), and thus sees nothing to lose by writing up a prayer. No matter that God, if He existed, would hear the prayer without having to read it in the New York Times, but Yancy clearly has bigger fish to fry. (Bigger than God?)
This part I don’t quite get, for why is writing a long prayer to a possibly nonexistent God a “risk worth taking”? Why couldn’t Yancy just think the words he writes? That way he wouldn’t have to embarrass himself in the pages of the good gray Times:
So, why write this letter? Ralph Waldo Emerson argues: “Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchers of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticisms. The foregoing generations beheld God face to face; we through their eyes. Why should not we also have an original relation to the universe?” Emerson emboldens a legitimate question, though one with a theological inflection: Why can’t I have an original relation to You, God? There is nothing about our universe that proves a priori that this letter will not be heard by You. So, I’ll just take the leap.
Notice that he’s looking for any a priori reasons that God doesn’t exist. I contend that the reasons to doubt God are a posteriori: not enough evidence! But let’s leave that aside and move on. Yancy:
I realize that the act of writing such a letter is itself hasty as it assumes that You exist. Of course, if You don’t, and there is no absolute, faultless proof that You do, then this letter speaks to nothing at all. The salutation is perhaps a bit silly. Yet, that is the risk that I take. In fact, it is a risk worth taking.
Then there’s a bit of implicit atheist-bashing, followed, ironically, by a plea for God to show himself. Yancy seems curiously unaware that the fact that if God wants us to know him and accept him (remember, Yancy is a theist), he’s remarkably reluctant about letting us see Him. Yancy doesn’t contemplate one of my favorite sayings by another philosopher, Delos McKown, “The invisible and the nonexistent look very much alike.” Yancy goes on:
Karl Marx would be quick to remind me that I have been seduced by religion, the opium of the people. Sigmund Freud would tell me that I’m infantile, needing a “God-figure” that functions as an illusion to restrain certain human impulses. Bertrand Russell would tell me that many arguments for Your existence (cosmological, ontological, teleological) are simply false and that science, in terms of its access to genuine knowledge, eclipses religion. The atheists Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and, before his death, Christopher Hitchens, have no place for You in their thinking unless it is to show that You have been created by human religious superstition, whose history, they might add, has proved to be morally abysmal. Yet, the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at least calls himself an agnostic; he is on the proverbial fence until there is verifiable evidence to the contrary.
Give me a break! Tyson calls himself an agnostic because that word falls more sweetly on public ears than the word that really describes Tyson: “atheist”. For Tyson has admitted that he is a nonbeliever. He sees no possibility that God might exist.
Yancy goes on, raising the big problem with his theism:
I’m often possessed by a visceral angst, at times unbearable, a sense of suffering that I feel isn’t satisfied by atheism, agnosticism or, paradoxically, theism. Theists, after all, are too certain; for me this certainty can too quickly satisfy that profound sense of searching, of really wanting to know, of painfully screaming in the night for Your existence to be revealed, a face-to-face moment. You, of course, remain hidden (Deus Absconditus). Why? Is it too much to ask, as a philosopher in the 21st century, to reveal yourself to me, to the world, to have an original relation to You, like Moses?
Apparently, yes. God is very shy! Or, as McKown implies, perhaps it’s more parsimonious to assume that God doesn’t exist. (Yancy never tells us why he’s a theist.)
Yet God is silent while Yancy proclaims his own even-handed humanity:
Yahweh, I die just a little when Palestinian children are killed by Israeli forces. Allah, I die just a little when Israeli children are killed by the hands of Palestinians. According to one report, 2,175 Palestinian children and 134 Israeli children have been killed since September 29, 2000. There is a deep feeling of personal moral failure when I read about such deaths. Shiva, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda, Oshun, Kami — we need your help. Allah, if you are there, please hear the cries of those Israeli children. Yahweh, if you are there, please hear the cries of those Palestinian children. Even as billions of religious believers across religious traditions prostrate themselves in ritualistic prayer, we continue to suffer from horrible acts of violence.
Earth to Yancy: Yahweh ain’t listening!
The presence of moral evil against innocents (as well as physical evils like cancer and tsunamis) is the Achilles Heel of the theist; it’s an issue that, to my mind, no theologian has successfully rebutted. Either God could prevent the tragedies but won’t for reasons that are completely obscure (that is, he isn’t “all loving”), or he can’t prevent the tragedies, in which case he’s not omnipotent, or he’s an evil God that actually likes tragedy.
At any rate, Yancy seems to have more or less accepted that God, if he is all-powerful, isn’t doing much to stop the mass murders. What is a theist to do, then? Yancy decides that we need to pray for God not to stop the tragedies, but to make us better people, people who aren’t bigoted, people who don’t want to kill “the other”, people who are in favor of unification rather than division. And so here is Yancy’s prayer to his God:
So, it is with this letter that I seek You, that I ask for something more than we seem to be capable of, more than the routine prayers that are said in response to tragedy and sorrow. I don’t want to simply repeat clichés and recall platitudes. I am a philosopher who weeps; I am a human being who suffers.
This letter is not for me alone. It can’t be. The suffering of others is too great not to be moved by it, not to feel somehow partially responsible for it. So, it is with this letter that I seek an original relation, one that seeks our collective liberation, one that desires to speak especially on behalf of children and to free them from our miserable failure as adults to honor their lives more than we honor flags, rhetorical mass distraction, political myopia, party line politics, white nationalistic fanaticism and religious vacuity.
But if God is powerful enough to make us better and stop us from killing people, why can’t he just stop the killings in the first place? For if he’s capable of one, he’s capable of the other. Verily I say unto you: the ways of Yancy’s God are truly mysterious.
This column is embarrassing, to both Yancy and to the New York Times. If I were in charge of “The Stone”, I’d sure as hell do a better job than the present editors. For one thing, I wouldn’t publish soppy, chest-beating pabulum like this.
Oy.
Does he get paid for writing this stuff?
Yancy is blaspheming by even seeking a reason to believe. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe. To God, the highest human virtue is credulity.
Blessed are those that expect nothing, for they shall be fulfilled.
Wow. OK. I guess that’s sorted. Thoughts and prayers, people. Thoughts and prayers.
Please everyone, no snide remarks. You know the correct posture when a preacher is talking in those serious hushed tones: you look at your shoes and retain a polite silence, just like we learned in scripture class. Everyone could learn at least that lesson, surely.
I always look around the room to see if anyone else isn’t buying this.
I wouldn’t do philosophy at Emory.
GEORGE YANCY: “critical whiteness studies, critical philosophy of race, African American philosophy”. Sounds like more invasion of universities by crap disciplines.
If this letter is a typical example of his philosophical insight and massive self-involvement, the next time Emory has budget problems, I know where they could save some dosh.
“Dear God, are you there?” God didn’t say “Yes” and He can’t very well say “No” can He? So the fact there is no answer is your answer.
A pathetic and embarrassing load of pontificating drivel. Also, his plea to solve the problem by asking God to make us better people plays right into the NRA’s favorite line “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
“The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray.”
-Robert Green Ingersoll
And the lips that prey.
“God helps those that help themselves.” Which I always took to be an atheistic statement on Franklin’s part.
It sounds like he is looking for a similar experience:
From 0:42 – 0:45
The Shack
https://bit.ly/2GSLiqV
This movie was unbearable.
I love his line about wanting to be like Moses. He wants to have a relationship with the burning-bush. He’s yearning for a fictitious relationship that a fictitious figure had to a fictitious figure.
Also, the US is not in a “spiritual crisis”. There is no spiritual aspect to letting lunatics have guns and then they shoot people. It’s a stupidity crisis.
It’s a greed crisis- greed for both money and power.
I’d say it’s a reelection crisis. Or perhaps a campaign contribution crisis. Or maybe that’s what you meant by greed and power??
Anyway, there are several gun control measures that regularly poll at >50% approval…even >50% approval with gun owners. The issue is republican Senators and House members being scared of primaried with NRA money if they pass even popular gun control measures.
Yes, what I meant. If Moscow Mitch survives, all gun measures die. Simple as that. (Plus a lot of other death things will surely happen.)
Beautiful:
Professor Yancy specializes in a field called “Critical Whiteness Studies”. His essays include collaborations with such luminaries as bell hooks, Judith Butler, John D. Caputo, and Linda Martin Alcoff. Wiki explains the contributions to human knowledge by the third of these as follows: “Caputo is a specialist in contemporary continental philosophy, with a particular expertise in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and deconstruction. Over the years, he has developed a deconstructive hermeneutics that he calls radical hermeneutics, which is highly influenced by the thought of the French philosopher, Jacques Derrida. Additionally, Caputo has developed a distinctive approach to religion that he calls weak theology.”
As for the fourth, who specializes in “epistemology, feminism, race theory and existentialism”, Wiki reports on one of her particularly brilliant breakthroughs as follows. “In 1991, Linda Alcoff wrote an essay called:“The problem of speaking for Others”, where she analysed all the aspects of this discursive practise. She recognises that there is a problem in speaking for Others and she introduces significative concepts as: the social location/identity, the ritual of speaking. …The conclusion of Linda Alcoff’s essay is significative, her text is complicate and full of questions, the answers are few, because as she underlines, the issue is complicate and is difficult to find a solution.”
Indeed, the academic specialization(s) explain it all.
Derrida. F**k my old boots. ‘Nuff said.
Um, let’s reflect on the history of mass shootings to date. After each event politicians have pronounced, theologians have advocated prayer, philosophers have pushed their philosophies, and ordinary people have hoped that such events would never happen again.
None of that appears to have reduced the number of mass shootings significantly. Perhaps we should ignore politicians, theologians, philosophers, and the delusion of hope – and do something else instead? Prayer and exhortations are not enough.
Perhaps they need to look at what Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand did after their mass shootings? Unfortunately, American exceptionalism on the part of Republican politicians means they think that they can’t learn anything from other countries. Also, they don’t WANT to change. Dead children are collateral damage when it comes to their right to own a gun.
Almost every other OECD country is less religious than the US, and we don’t have the issues with gun deaths that the US does. Maybe it’s time to get rid of religion? Maybe less religion makes you less selfish about gun ownership?
(Obviously, I don’t actually think getting rid of religion would fix anything. The comment is sarcastic.)
Obviously, I don’t actually think getting rid of religion would fix anything.
Actually, I think it would fix some whole lot-a things.
You’re right that it would fix a whole lot of things. I just meant there are other things re guns to focus on.
Yes. McConnell is right on that. 🤨
“This part I don’t quite get, for why is writing a long prayer to a possibly nonexistent God a “risk worth taking”? ”
I think Yancy refers to Pascal’s wager. He takes the risk that his God doesn’t exist, that there is noone to answer.
But a major problem with Pascal’s bet is that the alternative between “Christian God exists / Christian God does not exist” is an oversimplification. There is far more alternatives when you include non-Christian Gods and other non-theistic views.
In that light, another possibility could be that there is an ‘evil’ God (Baal?) perfectly happy with suffering, mass shootings, iniquities, etc. If it is the case, why such a divinity would care about whining humans and their prayers?
I’m not exactly sure what the ‘risk’ is there. (Pascal’s wager suggests that the risk, in the event of being worng, is zero).
Unless of course one was relying on G*d doing something.
(I’m taking the definition of ‘risk’ as entailing adverse consequences. If one takes ‘risk’ to mean just the probability of getting no answer, then I would say the risk is near 100%).
cr
I took the risk as being the public embarrassment he would endure for making a public request for action from a nonexistent entity.
Other than the effect of public embarrassment to his reputation, the only other commodity he is risking is the time and effort required to write and submit.
None of which warrants advertising oneself as a risk taker. Is a good example of a line from which editors should have spared us.
I’d agree with that.
cr
I don’t have any problem with asking God for help After years of infertility and being told my odds were less than 1%, I went and got a St. Anna blessing from a monk, mostly to humor my priest, who I like. I was pregnant about five days later, as evidenced by a home test that was reading positive earlier than it should have been. It could be coincidence, but the circumstances were unusual enough to give me pause (I also dreamed about the baby and whatnot). I am agnostic regarding what the most accomplished spiritual types can do, and I consider myself lucky to have received the blessing.
What I don’t think one can do, however, is treat God like a treat dispensing machine. To my mind, the most promising evidence of a spiritual realm comes from monks and nuns, ascetics, mystics, and so on. In those traditions, at least in my understanding, the focus is not on getting God to do something for you, but rather, purifying oneself so that one can sort of commune with that realm (for want of a better framing) more naturally. The idea being that if God or a spiritual realm exists, it always exists – and God is not the one with a problem, we are. So if we wish to see this aspect of things, it’s on us to see it, and to go through that process – not to remain in a hapless state and send entreaties to God to fix it for us. A rough analogy might be entreating math or chemistry to come and fix something for you – math and chemistry do in fact exist in some sense, but they’re not going to walk over and create pharmaceuticals. The onus is on humans to understand them in such a way that we can do this ourselves.
Seems to me that is exactly what you are doing. Crediting god for granting you the treat of a baby delivered through the dispensing machine of your body.
I’m not saying if something wonderful happens to reject it. I certainly wasn’t expecting to get pregnant, but I’m happy I did. But, as the priests would say “In God’s time, not our time.” Meaning, acceptance is also a huge part of religion. If something happens to this pregnancy, then it will be on me to remember that.
This doesn’t apply to atheists of course, but regarding the author of the NYT article, I feel like he is getting stressed and wanting to demand things on his schedule. 100% understandable, of course, but in a religious framing, I think maybe he needs to remember that this is always how things have been. Religion has always had to contend with worldly difficulties. Outside the prosperity gospel or whatever, it rarely if ever promises worldly success and happiness.
Well, no. People have always had to contend with difficulties. Religion is just a bad tool many people have used to try to do so. And it is a demonstrably ineffective tool.
I’d be more impressed, Roo, if your odds had been zero. 🙂
I’d probably be somewhat impressed if I knew for sure they were 1%.
Getting the interface between us and the spiritual world says nothing at all about matters of theodicy. So perhaps you got the software to work for you after toying with it for a while, but what do you think about the problem of evil?
For me, learning about evolution put the final bullet in religious belief. Had I lived hundreds of years ago I would “probably” be faithful, but that still wouldn’t solve the problem (or my own personal problem) with theodicy. Perhaps I would have finally come to the conclusion that there was a Designer, without settling upon whether He/She was good or evil.
Regarding the problem of evil, my framing is that this makes more sense once one reaches a certain level of enlightenment and sees everything as perfection. Or something like that, I don’t claim to be there. That is not a Christian framing of course, it’s more of an eastern one. A “suffering is all in the mind” type of thinking.
You don’t claim to be there. Then how do you know such a “level” even exists?
Strikes me as simple wishful thinking run wild.
Or the kids killed in a mass shooting, or an earthquake, or etc etc? I call it the Bart Ehrman problem.
Suffering is in the mind. Our brains produce the conscious experience of pain or anguish; that doesn’t mean it’s not a real experience. You can’t mean that you’d say to a child being tortured “hey, this is actually still perfection; you just have to find the right way to look at what’s happening to you.”
If I understand you correctly, you are blaming all the involuntarily infertile couples of the world for their own misfortune in that category. If they only ‘purifi(ed)’ themselves and ‘commune(d)’ with ‘that realm’, they would gain the ‘blessing’ you attribute to god. Which must have actually occurred days before the monk blessed you. So your ‘blessing’ even changed time.
And your attribution of blame must also extend to all the gun violence victims who prayed to be safe. Had they purified themselves and communed with some realm for which their is scant evidence, they would be unhurt and their families would not mourn. So you are saying it is all their fault, not the shooter’s.
Or rather, you didn’t even purify yourself in your narrative, the monk did so. So those involuntarily infertile couples only needed to go to your purified monk to all become parents. If you truly believe that, shouldn’t you publish the name of this monk for all others? If you receive a ‘blessing’ rather than it being the usual coincidence of pregnancy, then his blessing must work on every other infertile couple (at least far greater than 1%. 1% of other couples ‘blessed’ by that monk would indicate your doctor was spot on the chance. Slightly greater would indicate your doctor was slightly off in his diagnosis, not that the physical laws of the universe were suspended in your personal favor).
Why hasn’t your purified monk ever prayed for peace?
Contrast math and chemistry with theology:
Some people are willing to invest the time to understand math and chemistry and they achieve predictable and reliable results which are the same regardless of ideology. And the people who fail to invest the time have unpredictable and unreliable results. Which demonstrates the real effects of math and chemistry. You properly calculate the surface area of a particular solid and you will get the same result every time. You mix chemicals under the same conditions and you will get the same result every time.
Theologians invest considerable time to understand god, and they all have different results and none can be demonstrated as effectual.
Let me know if I somehow misunderstood your point.
If I understand you correctly, you are blaming all the involuntarily infertile couples of the world for their own misfortune in that category. If they only ‘purifi(ed)’ themselves and ‘commune(d)’ with ‘that realm’, they would gain the ‘blessing’ you attribute to god. Which must have actually occurred days before the monk blessed you. So your ‘blessing’ even changed time.
That is not at all what I’m saying, quite the opposite. These were two separate points, not the same one, apologies if that wasn’t clear. So saying:
1. I disagree that it’s shameful or weak to ask God for help (although I certainly don’t expect atheist to agree on that, just sharing my own opinion,) I think it’s perfectly ok, and you never know, maybe sometimes it does something. But…
2. Religion is really more about purifying one’s own mind. Yancy’s tone struck me as more “Why isn’t God listening!” (although perhaps I misread it) – to which I would say, while praying for something is fine, to my mind, you do so with the expectation that you’re going to ask and accept whatever answer you get. Religion is not really about satisfying one’s own desires, however difficult that may be. God is not going to come down and make the world ‘right’ in a way that aligns with our idea of ‘right’. (I guess in some religions they have God doing this, but not until the end of the world, generally.)
I will say, I think the idea of praying for something (other than wisdom, virtue, patience, etc. – I feel like those are in a separate category) is a bit of a koan. If you really accept whatever happens, 100%, then why pray for it in the first place? Even, as you mention, praying for peace – I think most religious types would recognize that as a good thing to do, but would simultaneously say “It’s all God’s will” anyways. That gets into levels of zen that are beyond me. I suppose the idea is that if you let go of egoic thinking that peace and wisdom for oneself naturally follow, although I’m not sure.
That is an interesting reply, Roo. When we had our brief free will exchange the other day I tagged you as a hard determinist. I see now you are more of a Buddhist karma type of thinker. Let me ask, had you not got pregnant would you still be a happy fatalist? Whatever your answer, I wish you well. I enjoy reading your comments.
Thank you! I am still a determinist – I think that even if some sort of ‘woo’ exists in the world, it was always going to exist (or, if the future is based on probabilities and not set in stone, those probabilities apply to the spiritual as much as anything else.) I’m not sure about fatalism – Sam Harris has a new podcast up where he discusses whether ‘possibility’ exists or is an illusion, which I thought was an interesting take on fatalism, but from what I could tell he didn’t conclude anything one way or the other. It’s seems to me it would be very difficult to test whether the future is based on probabilities, or if the outcome we see is the outcome that was always going to happen. As for getting pregnant, I don’t think it has changed my views much – I started musing about “the spiritual realm” after going on meditation retreats, and I think that was more formative regarding my views. My openness to the idea of “spiritual stuff” is probably more an extension of that time in my life than a new development. I take it all with a grain of salt but don’t rule it out either.
The whole point of woo is to contradict physical determinism.
I find such exchanges somewhat twee. Are we really in the third millennium?
It’s all nonsense, but I can at least see why believers brutalised by faith from early age can’t let go of deism or Sophisticated Theology™ they reason into shapes to fit the knowledge of the day (e.g. the right elements are “metaphorical” when challenged, and literal when the emotional need arises). Intelligent people are rather good at rationalisation.
But how come a literate person entertains infantile folk faith? Why is it, that such views coexist with Sophisticated Theology™? The faith-afflicted bother with atheism, when the next believer they meet believes something utterly incompatible with their own faith, but I don’t see them sorting it out among themselves. They even say flat out that silly folk beliefs won’t exist, when atheists challenge them.
Of course the idea of an all-knowing, perfectly good God is at odds with everything we know. He created humans through sheer pain, suffering and extinction, through evolution. He equipped “higher” life with nervous systems, and filled the planet with bugs, parasites and predators to bore, tear, rip apart. He let several human species die out in miserable conditions, and tormented the surviving one through ten-thousand harsh winters. Some day recently, He “revealed” himself in a region already awash in mythology, to maximise confusion, sow discord and always knowing that this method of “revelation” would lead to countless wars, countless deaths through the ages, and eventually, dissuade humans from believing in him. Why would a good, all knowing God do that?
Thoughts and prayers, and lengthy, self-indulgent whinges like this, are the easy option. One hears this sort of stuff all the time, from pulpits and podiums and presidents. I could churn it out by the yard myself, if I wanted. Actually doing something about the problem seems to be a bit more difficult.
Some of us on this side of the pond will have been amazed – but not surprised – by Trump’s dismissal of the idea of limiting access to assault weapons. Some of us would say that the very desire to possess an assault weapon is itself an indication of mental illness. What is it with you guys?
Then your diagnostic skills are on a level with your knowledge about guns and the people who own them.
You don’t know me, but are you familiar with Sam Harris? Do you think Sam Harris is insane? No need to take “insane” medically, take it in the sense of irresponsible, careless, uncaring, unthoughtful, or whatever.
As someone with a modicum of firearms knowledge, through owning and operating a gunshop in the UK for six years, and having owned a small collection of antique firearms, I can only agree with Steve. I am not, however, medically qualified, so I’ll stick with your non-medical definition.
I have read Sam Harris’s arguments, and don’t think he is insane, but do believe he is misguided. In the face of all his statistics, the one statistic that impresses me is the comparison of violent gun deaths per 100,000 people between the UK (0.06) and the USA (4.43) (in 2017). Source: NPR
I’m pleased that he quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson and James Baldwin, but less pleased at the criticism of atheists.
I a pleased with the tone of emotional honesty, but note many readers would like something pragmatic.
Sam is in favor of very, very stiff requirements to own a gun. Said on his last podcast and a previous blog post. Just thought that needed to be added.
Sorry that was meant to be a reply to Carl and Steve Pollard.
I wish people would actually read the blog and listen to the podcast. He has very many things to say, and picking one without his reservations, reasoning, and explanation is a form of quoting out of context.
Sam Harris on Guns
The preamble to Harris’s latest podcast was recorded following the first two mass shootings, which he discusses. He also has excellent advice about how to understand Trump, at least if you don’t want him re-elected. First seventeen minutes here:
Here
We acolytes of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have our own theodicy. We explain that Absolute Evil (like meaningless mass killings) is to existence… as shredded parmesan cheese is to spaghetti. So, our counterpart to Pascal’s Wager we call
Parmigiano-Reggiano. We await further elaboration of these thoughts by professors of feminist deconstructive hermaneutics.
What would you think of Paul Newman’s Sockarooni?
When an atheist can present in just a few sentences an analysis of one of religions most sacred tenets there is something absolutely wrong with (privileging) religion, or better, the mechanism of religion stands revealed.
At issue, the trinity. Analysis of this religious issue was taken up by the likes of Newton. What a waster of brain power! Trinitarians vs …
The basic posit is that all religion offers a denial of death. It has been said that if a religion did not offer such a denial, it would be worth nothing.
In the trinity with see how religion offers a denial of corporeality, and per force a denial of death.
In the trinity the father and son are conflated. Therefore, there is no biological generation and therefore there is no degeneration (death: death is transcended).
Such a story is a ghost story of sorts (the ghost serves as a connection between the generations). A high order ghost story, ergo a holy ghost.
Done
“specializing in in critical whiteness studies, critical philosophy of race, African American philosophy.”
That’s two ‘criticals’ and one ‘studies’. One would expect a sensible output from this person – how?
[/snark]
😎
cr
Shorter Yancy: “God, your original human depravity settings are wrong. Please adjust them.”
Even Richard Dawkins, when pressed, would claim to be agnostic, even though he would rate himself 6.9 out of 7 on an atheist scale. In other words, if someone makes up a story about a teapot orbiting Mars, one can’t disprove it, so one has to be agnostic in that sense.
“In other words, if someone makes up a story about a teapot orbiting Mars, one can’t disprove it, so one has to be agnostic in that sense.”
I don’t know about the teapot, but the argument doesn’t hold water. Agnosticism is not based on the fact that the existence of God can’t be disproved. Generally, it’s based on the fact that one’s subjective, experiential evidence of a spiritual realm leaves one in doubt about the lack of scientific evidence for same. No one, as far as I know, claims to have subjective, experiential evidence of a teapot orbiting mars. But then maybe you know someone who does—in which case, I stand corrected.
There are two (main) definitions of agnosticism. The inability to disprove the existence of deities is one of them.
Gnosis = knowledge
Gnostic = knowing
A- gnosis = not-knowlege
A- gnostic = not knowing
It doesn’t mean being a waffler. Honest religious adherents would have to admit that they are also agnostic, in the sense that their “proof” of the supernatural is weak.
I’ve always thought that prayer serves as a psychological relief valve. Yancy is parsing his prayer with language like ‘risk worth taking’ and caveats about his agnosticism because (IMO), some part of him knows, deep down inside that he’s really just self-medicating via talk therapy. ‘Let the shooting stop’ is really just a cousin to ‘deep breath…let me kick butt at this interview’ or “make the kick…c’mon make the kick…MAKE THE KICK!!!”. I’m guessing there’s a lot of insincere believers that pray in highly stressful occasions. Yancy seems to be one of them. And I don’t really begrudge it, because I think it serves a purpose…even if nobody is listening.
I’m glad he capitalized the “You” or his god might send giant frogs or something.
I had to smile at the sentence beginning ‘Emerson argues. . . .’ Ralph Waldo Emerson does not argue: he asserts, boldly and with great amplitude. When, early in ‘Nature,’ he declares (as the article quotes) ‘Our age is retrospective,’ the only response an attentive reader can make is, ‘no, it’s not.’ [and, in any case, Emerson, while purporting to deal in universals, ironically here asserts what has to be time bound: your age, Ralph; mine; anyone’s, anytime?]
So-called ‘Continental Philosophy,’ along with its many bastard offspring, is really Platonism dandified. Transcendental (and therefore a priori), deductive, absolute. This is perhaps why such misbegotten ‘fields of study’ as ‘critical white’ whatever are so corrosive in academia and popular thought. They cannot be falsified because founded on belief posited in a supernatural realm. Like all other religions.
“Transcendental (and therefore a priori), deductive, absolute.”
The basic tenet of transcendentalism (at least a la Emerson and Thoreau by way of Coleridge—I can’t speak for Kant) is that God doesn’t need to reveal himself via scripture but that God can be intuited directly from nature.
This may not be demonstrable or amenable to consensus, but I don’t see how it can be called “a priori” or “deductive” (“absolute” maybe). On the contrary, it depends entirely on direct experience to the exclusion of both authority or deductive reasoning. For Emerson, as his essay on “Self-Reliance” makes clear, trust in one’s individual experience is primary.
Again, not making a case for transcendentalism, just questioning your sense of it.
Concerning ‘Nature,’ Emerson is both confused and confusing. As you point out, Nature-1 is the transcendental gateway. I take this to mean the nature we experience through perception and perhaps intuition (as in Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’–’of all the mighty world / Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,/ And what perceive’). But Nature-2 ‘refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf’–to term these ‘essences’ is badly to equivocate, to, I think, bring the ‘Forms’ to earth where humankind can participate in their ideality. But in fact the things E. enumerates are as material as anything human-made in the world.
When a philosopher says that a problem can’t be solved by philosophy, the next thing (s)he says should be, “So I will keep quiet about this.”
“…..chest-beating pablum” is, perhaps, the best description of religion that I have ever heard!
This is so sad. What possesses otherwise rational, well-educated people to think an appeal to a nonexistent being will result in anything more than a deafening silence?
Isn’t it an implicit admission of abject defeat, giving the appearance of ‘doing something’ when they’re doing bugger-all?
So, so depressing.